If you’re writing Medieval historical lit or pseudo-medieval fantasy and need a way to name your Jewish side-characters (we were there!) here’s a site that could be of some assistance. This is about the Iberian peninsula, but people travel… and the past thousand years have seen a lot of us being kicked out of various countries so even if your setting isn’t Spain or Portugal, these may still be useful.
[EDIT: Herald buddy says – “there ARE corollaries to the rules so we need to judge items on a case by case basis to take all of them into account.”]
I can certainly look at your idea and give you some advice. I can also reach out to the SCA Heraldry Chat Facebook group and get thoughts/input from them.
Let me know what you’d like to do. I’m happy to lend a hand.
<3, Your Friendly Neighborhood SCA Reference Librarian (Who isn’t a herald but knows some pretty awesome ones)
I’m working on creating a vector database that houses every common heraldic element uniform to the standard SCA device blank, as a free resource to anyone looking to build their own device.
(Eventually I would like to code a flash ‘game’ sort of thing where you can actually build a device by picking your tincture/ordinary/charges with SCA rules built in so that it won’t allow you to build devices that break any rules.)
((For further example of this, to make my device, I would click the ‘Base, blue’, the ‘Per Pale, red, right side’, then the ‘Cresset, gold, center’. Each element is on a transparent background, so they get layered on top of whatever element is chosen previous))
But for now, I’m just creating the vector database, so I would like to ask you all for your help.
What is your device blazon?
What charges would you like to see included?
Or, two squirrels rampant addorsed and a portcullis sable.
Orsines Presenting a Gift to Alexander and the Execution of Orsines, about 1470-1475, Master of the Jardin de vertueuse consolation. The J. Paul Getty Museum.
The Virgin and Child with the Archangels Michael and Gabriel, about 1504-1505, Unknown. The J. Paul Getty Museum.
Canon Table Page, 1256, T’oros Roslin. The J. Paul Getty Museum. Gift of the Catholicosate of the Great House of Cilicia
Tupac Inca Yupanqui, completed in 1616, Unknown. The J. Paul Getty Museum.
Illuminated manuscripts were products of encounter, exchange, and exploration in the Middle Ages.
Interested in the Global Middle Ages? This weekend, April 16 and 17, come by our free interdisciplinary symposium that examines artists, patrons, and audiences as agents who desired real, imagined, or exotic representations and narratives about the world and its peoples.
You’ve always loved history. Regardless of geography or blood,
knowing how the past functioned, not in dates and names but in daily
details, has always been fascinating. So this is not unknown ground for
you. And Renaissance Faires are fun: spending the day outside, geeking
endlessly about the minutia of history with other like-minded folk,
doing hands on demonstrations for kids. There’s nothing here you don’t
like.
Sure, you may be the only Black person there, definitely one of a
few, but don’t let that stop you. The chances of anyone throwing rocks
at you are low. The chances of anyone laughing at you are high, but when
has that stopped you before? […]
Some will try to tell you that
you are wrong, out of time, out of place. They are wrong. African people
have always been travelers, traders, and scholars. The Mediterranean
has never been impenetrable and we have always been everywhere.
“When one considers the evidence for medieval chastity belts, as Classen did in his book The Medieval Chastity Belt: A Myth-making Process, it becomes apparent pretty quickly that there’s not much of it. First of all, there aren’t actually all that many pictures of or accounts of using chastity belts, and even fewer physical specimens. And the few book-length works on the topic rely heavily on each other and all cite the same few examples.
"You have a bunch of literary representation, but very few historical references to a man trying to put a chastity belt on his wife,” says Classen. And, any literary reference to a chastity belt is likely either allegorical or satirical.“
You’ve got an idea of the Thing you want to do. You researched the Thing to get a better idea, and even to develop an understanding of how the Thing was done in period.
