So, a bit over a year ago I started working with Mistress Inga, now my Laurel, on the Avacal Kingdom A&S Judging Forms. This consisted of a number of surveys of all of the Avacal artisans, and a more indepth one for the Laurels of Avacal. Based on those results we decided that a rubric would be the best way to go.
TL:DR scroll to the bottom for copies of the Avacal Judging Forms, the Judges & Entrants Handbook, and the Shire Judging Forms.
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Sometimes curiosity leads to rabbit holes.
I was curious about tomatoes, so I did a bit of research. I came across “The History of the Use of the Tomato: An Annotated Bibliography” by George Allen McCue, Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden Vol. 39, No. 4 (Nov., 1952), pp. 289-348, as well as “The history of tomato: From domestication to biopharming” by VéroniqueBergougnoux, Biotechnology Advances Volume 32, Issue 1, January–February 2014, Pages 170-189. And they give some very interesting information and about what people thought of tomatoes in the 16th and 17th centuries.
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Meals change over time. What we eat, and how much we eat changes. In the 16th century we see the transition from the medieval context of two main meals a day, with the first one happening sometime after 10 am, to a more modern concept of three meals a day. However, even still, they were not the same style of meals we’re used to.
How to put together a basic set of food for a day, not a feasting day, but a standard day. For some of this I’ll be using previous work I’ve done, the OED, and I double checked a few various texts. Think of this one not so much of an article as a set of guidelines for making things more period for those of us who are 16th century.
In Tudor England the three meals of the day were called Breakfast (brekfast, brekefast, breckfast), though this was not eaten by everyone, however it did gain in promenence through the 16th century; Dinner (diner, dyner, dinere, dener, dynnor, dennar) was the meal eaten around the middle of the day, from what I can tell it could be eaten as early as ten or as late as two, this also tended to be the larger meal of the day; Supper (soper, sopper, soupier, suppare, suppair, super) was the final meal of a day. There is the implication that this meal was a lighter meal than dinner and probably generally consisted of either soup or pottage.
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I’ve been fencing off and on (mostly off) for over fifteen years now. In that time the main teachers I had were Don Pierce O’Briain, Master Luther Magnus, and Fechtmeister Godfrey von Ravensburg. I was never an official student or cadet to any of them, and a few years ago Read more…
Swearing in the competitors
This past weekend was Avacal’s Kingdom A&S Championship and The University of Avacal. It’s the first time the Championship has been done at its own event, and based on how many people I saw there, the event was a massive success. There were a ton of classes in 12 tracks, an A&S display area, and of course the Kingdom Arts & Sciences Championship.
Champion of Arts and Sciences
There were two full entrants for the Championship, Her Ladyship Niesa Abdelmessah, and myself. It’s a difficult and stressful competition, but at the end, I felt very accomplished just for getting through the creation, documentation, display, presentation, and questioning. HL Niessa had an amazing display, and entered bone carving and hide tanning and I am in awe of her skills in that area. I entered a research paper on the history of bacon, and a beef stew that could have been prepared on board a Tudor naval ship. At court that evening it was announced that I had won both the highest single entry and the championship, and I swore fealty to Their Royal Majesties Kvigr Ivarsson and Svava Suanhuita.
I never have a problem getting rid of the leftovers
Here are links to my documentation:
Pre 17th Century Bacon PDF: Pre-17c Bacon
Stew On Board Ship PDF: Stew on Ship
The rest of the post is fairly photo heavy.
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I was revisiting my article I wrote for Tournaments Illuminated on the London Masters of Defence, and I got to thinking that a timeline setting the developments in rapier in Europe alongside the developments in rapier in England might be a good idea, it would give people an idea of what types of fencing manuals would be available to an English fencer at different times. For this I was aided by the lists of fencing manuals kept by both ARMA and Jared Kirby. I ignored the manuals that didn’t involve fencing, so that would be any manuals that focused purely on wrestling or horsemanship.
What I learned is that the early use of Rapier in England (such as the exhibition matches before Edward VI) would likely have been more like longsword combat utilizing a rapier (or rather what we’d call a sidesword) or would be similar to Manciolino or Marozzo; while the formal teaching of the rapier under the London Masters of Defence (1568 and later) would have been closer to Agrippa and later DiGrassi and Dall’Agocchie. It would be interesting to compare Agrippa and DiGrassi as it would likely show the difference between the teaching of the Rapier for the yeoman class and the gentleman class. The yeoman class would likely still be using modified longsword techniques as well as Agrippa and Marozzo while the gentry, being taught by Bonetti and other Italian fencing masters, would have been using the newer techniques from DiGrassi and Dall’Agocchie earlier. By the time Silver is complaining about the use of the rapier in England the manuals of choice were likely from the later manuals such as DiGrassi, Meyer, de Sainct Didier, Dall’Agocchie, Viggiani, Ghisliero, Lovino, and perhaps even Carranza, in addition of course to Saviolo. Swetnam’s teaching however would likely have been closer to Fabris’ manual than even Saviolo’s work.
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I enjoy getting to write letters in period style, the formulaic method that was used makes it easy to transform an invitation to the Crown into something that adds to the game.
Here are three letters I’ve written in the past by taking letters from about the same time period and utilizing the same formula in an SCA context. The letters were then given to those with a much better hand than mine to write out.
An invitation to the King and Queen of An Tir to attend an event I was running:
(more…)To Ieuan Dei Gracia Rex An Tir et Viscomes Tir Righ et dominus Aquilon, and Gweneth Dei Gracia Regina An Tir et Viscomitessa Tir Righ.
Your faithful subjects of Lionsdale wishing to observe their oaths and the fidelity due to God and to you, wish health, and tender their lawful service with all respect and honour. To this we desire for you to attend our Winter’s Tourney the Saturday following the celebration of the Presentation of our Lord (February 4th AS XLVI) that we may render our thanks unto you for being our sovereigns.
At Lionsdale, on the 15 day of January in the XLVI Year of the Society.
Lord Tomas de Courcy
This month at Montengarde Cookery Group the theme is Eat Your Vegetables, so it’s time for some spinach ravioli.
I’ll let you in on a secret, although I love redacting recipes and cooking them my wife, HL Kayleigh de Leis, is the better cook, especially when it comes to pastas. So she’s the one making it this time.
This month’s is coming from Sabina Welserin’s 1553 German cookery book. Rabiolin zú machen or “to make ravioli”.
(more…)31 To make ravioli
Take spinach and blanch it as if you were making cooked spinach, and chop it small. Take approximately one handful, when it is chopped, cheese or meat from a chicken or capon that was boiled or roasted. Then take twice as much cheese as herb, or of chicken an equal amount, and beat two or three eggs into it and make a good dough, put salt and pepper into it and make a dough with good flour, as if you would make a tart, and when you have made little flat cakes of dough then put a small ball of filling on the edge of the flat cake and form it into a dumpling. And press it together well along the edges and place it in broth and let it cook about as long as for a soft-boiled egg. The meat should be finely chopped and the cheese finely grated.