ANSTHRLD - Excerpt: December LoAR Cover letter

[Timothy A. McDaniel]

    From: Elsbeth Laurel <herald at sca.org>
    Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2001 18:08:52 -0500

Society for Creative Anachronism
College of Arms
1194 Firwood Dr.
Pittsburgh, PA 15243
412-306-0416
kvs+ at cs.cmu.edu

March 12, 2001

Unto the members of the College of Arms and all others who may read
this missive do Dame Elsbeth Anne Roth, Laurel Queen of Arms, and
Master Pietari Pentipoika, Pelican King of Arms, send greetings.

The December Laurel meeting was held Sunday, December 10, 2000, and
considered the following letters of intent: ... and Ansteorra (August
31).

The January Laurel meeting was held Sunday, January 14, 2001, and
considered the following letters of intent: ... Ansteorra (September
30) .... The January Pelican meeting was held Sunday, January 21,
2001.

The February Laurel meeting was held Saturday, February 10, 2001 [no
Ansteorran]

The March Laurel meeting was held Saturday, March 10, 2001 [no
Ansteorran]

The April Laurel meeting is scheduled for Saturday, April 14, 2001,
and will consider the following letters of intent: ... Ansteorra
(December 31). The Pelican meeting is scheduled for Sunday, April 8. A
Laurel road show is scheduled for Sunday, April 29, 2001, in An
Tir. Responses and rebuttals to commentary must be in the College's
hands no later than March 31, 2001.

The May Laurel meeting is scheduled for Saturday, May 5, 2001 (which
affects the dates of commentary - see below), and will consider the
following letters of intent: ... Ansteorra (January 31). Original
commentary on these LoIs must be in the College's hands no later than
March 31, 2001. Responses and rebuttals to commentary must be in the
College's hands no later than April 28, 2001.

The June Laurel meeting is scheduled for Saturday, June 16, 2001, and
will consider the letters of intent from February.  A Laurel road show
is scheduled for Sunday, June 3, 2001, at the Knowne World Heraldic
Symposium in Northshield.

Not all letters of intent may be considered when they are originally
scheduled on this cover letter. The date of mailing of the LoI, date
of receipt of the Laurel packet, or other factors may delay
consideration of certain letters of intent. Additionally, some letters
of intent received may not have been scheduled because the
administrative requirements (receipt of the forms packet, receipt of
the necessary fees, etc.) have not yet been met.

REMINDER: Until the packet containing the paperwork is received, the
letter may not be scheduled.

Nebuly Letter of Intent to Protect

This month, we considered a Letter of Intent to Protect submitted by
Nebuly, which proposed that we protect the arms of the provinces of
the Low Countries, among other things.

The Administrative Handbook specifies that the arms of a nation are by
definition sufficiently significant to protect.  In addition, Laurel
has registered provincial arms, with the following statement:

    Therefore we are registering as important non-SCA heraldry
    provincial arms. At this time the arms being registered are those
    of the provinces of Canada. If similar coats from other nations
    are brought to our attention on a letter of intent we will likely
    register those as well. This ruling applies only to coats of arms
    of analogous regions: not to designs which happen to have an
    armorial appearance, and not to the arms of smaller regions than
    provinces. (Cover Letter, 1/98)

The difficulty in implementing this standard is the absence of a clear
definition of "province."  The legal and geographical associations
vary widely from nation to nation.  It is insufficient to merely
define it as the highest level of subdivision within a nation.  The
highest level of a large country is typically vastly larger, more
populous, or more autonomous that that of a small country.  The
sovereign nation Principality of Liechtenstein is divided into eleven
districts.  Making no cultural judgements, it is implausible to equate
the commune of Schellenberg in Liechtenstein with the state of New
York in terms of importance to the Society.

Until this time, this standard had been used only to protect the arms
of the states of the United States of America and the provinces of
Canada.  These entities were considered important enough to protect
for two reasons, one explicit and one implicit.  The explicit reason
was that they were arms, as opposed to flags, belonging to
quasi-sovereign entities with powers often reserved to nations; the
implicit reason was that these entities are highly familiar to most
members of the Society.  We are, therefore, making the second
condition explicit and requiring that sub-national entities and their
arms be important or familiar to most members of the Society for their
arms to be protected.

Most of the provinces of the Low Countries do not meet these
standards. No evidence was given that they ever were independent
nations, whose arms we automatically protect. Evidence was presented
that they had legal status comparable to the Canadian provinces,
although it is unclear whether they continue to have such a status.
Nevertheless, most of the provinces and their arms were not familiar
to either the commenting members of the College of Arms or the general
populace of the Society.  The ones that we currently protect, such as
Flanders or Luxembourg, are especially important or well known
relative to the other provinces. The ones that we decided to protect
are similarly familiar (Holland) or important (Celje).

...

Administrivia

Send roster changes, roster corrections, to Lord Symond Bayard le
Gris, Bruce R. Nevins, 2527 E. 3rd St., Tucson, AZ, 85716-4114, (520)
795-6000, (520) 795-0158 (fax), bnevins at nexiliscom.com. College of
Arms members can also request a copy of the current roster from
Symond.  Send all other administrative requests or payments to Laurel.

For subscriptions to the paper copy of the LoAR, please contact
Symond, above. The cost for an LoAR subscription is $25.00 a year.
Please make all checks or money orders payable to "SCA Inc. - College
of Arms."  For subscriptions to the electronic copy of the LoAR,
please contact Laurel at herald at sca.org.  The electronic copy is
available free of charge.

Until then, I remain

In service,


Elsbeth Anne Roth
Laurel Queen of Arms
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