With this week’s announcement that Herveus d’Ormonde intends to step down as Morsulus Herald after twenty-five years in the position, I took a moment to put together a timeline showing some notable moments in the history of the Society’s armorial database.
Continue reading “A Timeline of the SCA Armorial Database”Post Archive
Gadfly Herald Extraordinary
The personal heraldic title which I submitted earlier this year was accepted and registered on this month’s LoAR, which has prompted some to ask: “why a gadfly?”
I chose the name Gadfly not because of a particular affinity with the family of insects also known as horse-flies, but rather for its metaphorical connotations.
Continue reading “Gadfly Herald Extraordinary”Running the O&A via Docker
More than a decade ago, Tanczos Istvan put together “HeraldStick,” a software package for heralds running consultation tables at events with poor connectivity. The package let a herald with a Windows laptop run a pocket web server with a copy of the O&A web application and a bunch of sites full of names and armory articles and resources, so they could do the same kinds of documentation lookups and conflict checks that they would normally do online even though they were sitting in a tent beyond reach of wireless links.
Continue reading “Running the O&A via Docker”Additional Updates to the CoA Website
The next time you visit the College of Arms site you might notice a few changes:
Continue reading “Additional Updates to the CoA Website”Heraldic Registration Basics Redux
At the invitation of the Canton of Northpass, I ran an introductory session today about how participants in the SCA can register historical names and armory.
I used my “Heraldic Registration Basics” document as the basic outline for the class, although I glossed over some sections and went into additional detail in others.
My thanks to the class participants for the questions and comments during the class; the ensuing discussions inspired me to add a few more paragraphs to my notes so I can better cover those topics the next time.
On the Heraldic Submissions for the Ranged Weapons Peerage
The introduction of the proposed name and insignia for the new ranged-weapons peerage has provided a rare glimpse into an uncommon occurrence in the Society; a decade has passed since the last time this happened, and it’s unlikely another will be added any time soon.
As shown on the August 15 Laurel letter of intent, the proposal is for the name “Order of Esperance” and a tinctureless, fieldless badge of “A set of nesting scale weights within and conjoined to a mascle fleury at the upper point.”
Continue reading “On the Heraldic Submissions for the Ranged Weapons Peerage”Unregistered Badges of the Eastern Baronage
As mentioned in my recent post of baronial banners, House Runnymede is an association of the landed nobles of the East Kingdom, formed in an era when the baronage felt they might need to coordinate their efforts in response to royal overreach.
In years gone by, a badge was proposed for Runnymede, although it was never registered with the College of Arms. The insignia combines symbols of the House’s common greeting — tilting one’s coronet as you pass a fellow member — with its primary activity — gathering for informal conversation over drinks.
House Runnymede
A goblet argent enfiling a coronet bendwise Or.
For the landed baronage of the East.
Armorial Banners for House Runnymede
In the SCA, House Runnymede is an association of the landed baronage of the East Kingdom. Its name was inspired by the circumstances of its creation, at a time (decades ago) when some felt that a counterweight was needed to royal power; in recent years it functions more as a social and support network for the baronage.
Each year, Runnymede holds a dinner at Pennsic, and the vicereines of Østgarðr had offered to host this year’s gathering. Beyond the standard duties of organizing the venue, food, and entertainment, they wished to make the event memorable by providing their guests with personalized gifts, and I volunteered to assist with that effort.
In the months leading up to the dinner, I worked to emblazon the arms of the eighteen Eastern baronies, as well as the Crown Province, for production as fabric banners which would be presented to the guests — and now that the festivities have passed, I thought I would share those images here.
Continue reading “Armorial Banners for House Runnymede”Two Routes to Ancient Names and Arms
When our local canton changed its name a year ago, we piloted the introduction of the “ancient branch name” provisions, as discussed in the October 2023 cover letter. A few months later, the administrative handbook was updated to reflect this change, as well as cover an alternate route to establishing ancient branch names and arms, as discussed in the March 2024 cover letter.
Continue reading “Two Routes to Ancient Names and Arms”Geographic and Linguistic Indexes of DMNES
I was intrigued by a recent blog post by Anéžka Liška z Kolína, in which she describes a technique for locating names in the Dictionary of Medieval Names from European Sources from a particular region of interest.
However, it seemed to me like there ought to be an easier way to quickly find the relevant sources for such an exploration — a quick way to see all of the bibliographic entries related to a given region and language.
As DMNES doesn’t currently provide such an index, I made a simple mirror of the site and whipped up a quick-and-dirty Perl script to look for citations and build an index page:
A Geographic Bibliography of DMNES
Continue reading “Geographic and Linguistic Indexes of DMNES”