Noblesse Oblige Booklet

Excerpt from the Principality of An Tir booklet titled “Noblesse Oblige” by the Chatelaine’s Office, AS 19 (1985)

The Greatest Courtesy of All

an essay by Mistress Rowenna de Manning, who at the time held the title and rank of Laurel and Court Baroness

This is a true tale.

When I was a young girl in grammar school, my teacher had cause to chide me for a small revenge that I inflicted on a classmate.

“Why did you do that?” she asked me, in the – to the very young – unfathomable way that adults ask questions to determine disputes.

I scrambled for an acceptable answer. “Because of the Golden Rule,” I replied.

“The Golden Rule?” she asked blankly.

“Yeah. ‘Do Unto others as they do unto you.’”

She gave me a long, slow, considering look. “You haven’t got that quite right,” she said. “The Golden Rule is ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

I remember clearly how brilliantly the lightning struck me as I understood what she meant. I was not quite eleven years old and the SCA had not yet been invented.

Years later, when I knelt before the King and Queen and listened to the oath that I must swear to become a member of the Order of the Laurel, I had very little idea of the responsibilities and duties of a peer, but I knew what it meant to be one: it meant always being worthy of this honor; swearing to honor this oath and meaning it. And when the oath asked of me to “deal courteously and chivalrously with all persons of every degree,” — always, and not just when I felt like it — I remembered the Golden Rule and I said to myself, “I can. I can try!” For how can I expect any person to treat me as a peer if I do not do the same for them? Isn’t this what it means to be worthy of honor?

To paraphrase a famous etiquette author, “Courtesy is the grease on the wheels of life.” In the Middle Ages, courtesy was a necessary survival tactic in a society of warriors, where even a ‘formula’ courtesy could turn aside the blade of retribution. In the SCA, as in all small societies, courtesy is the medium we use to live together in small but sometimes very diverse groups. For we, like medieval warriors, have in our hands and tongues the means to ‘kill’ our critics or adversaries (or our friends!) by driving them out of the group. But this we cannot do, because we wouldn’t want them to do it to us.

Do you hear it? The Golden Rule.

There are many of us who joined the SCA, ironically, because we are not joiners, and because we found the mundane world gave little scope for our imaginations, or because our avocations did not fit the expectations of mundane ambition. For many of us, finding the SCA is like coming home. However, we discover pretty quickly that life in the SCA is run on fairly formal lines, because we have to share it with others. We can’t spend all our time in one room, using up the hot water, or eat all the cookies in the cookie jar, or leave our dirty laundry around for someone else to pick up. If we all did that, life in the SCA would not be attractive at all.

We remember that we share this Society with others, and we extend to them the greatest courtesy of all, we let them be medieval in the way they want, in order that they can do the same for us. This means that we are continuing examples to others, by how we treat them, of how we wish to be treated.

Please notice that I wrote “be medieval.” This is the special, out-of-the-ordinary concept that separates the SCA from the Masonic Temple or Thousand Trails. What the SCA does can easily be called recreational — after all, our favorite occupations are eating, talking, playing games, performing mock combat, camping, and drinking; that we do these things dressed in inconvenient clothing and using far more equipment than ordinarily thought necessary could be called vanity.

What makes it different — what makes it RE-creation —is our attitude and our deportment. We can very easily be people partying in costume; anyone can do that. The hard part about the re-creation is being SCA medieval; this takes effort, research, some self-control, and a little humility.

Our courtesy begins with the manners we learned at our mother’s knee: to say “please” and “thank you” and “excuse me;” to be respectful of other people’s property and of their persons. But this, in itself, is not “being medieval” until we understand the notion of honor — that we are polite in order to honor others and are thus honorable ourselves. We also show honor to the entire Society by being medieval, by adding to the ambiance rather than detracting from it. This means addressing people by medieval name and by title, wearing garb, helping to supply and set up the many props that create our medieval atmosphere, and eschewing mundane artifacts and conversation.

Our courtesy continues in our attitude toward the group. We recognize that the group — be it shire or barony or kingdom — is a necessary unit and is worthy of our support, to ensure that the group will survive. Sometimes, as 20th century people, it is hard for us to stifle our individuality for the benefit of the group, but at least we have that choice and knowledge; in medieval life, individuality was not an accepted idea. A person who did not belong to a place, a household, a village, a trade, or a function was viewed with suspicion.

In our Current Middle Ages, we can belong to any one of these divisions, or all of them, without conflict. We also have the opportunity to be both leaders and followers, depending on the activity, as we live our medieval lives. It behooves us to lead as we would wish to be led, and to follow and help with all of the enthusiasm we could hope to see in others.

In the Middle Ages, the order of life was defined by membership in a group, and there was precious little mobility from one group to another. Medieval thinkers really believed (or would have, if they had coined it) the adage, “a place for everything and everything in its place.” A peasant who knew nothing but his village didn’t miss his lack of upward mobility because he never heard of it. But we 20th century people know all about upward mobility, and so we have the responsibility to handle it carefully and with humility. Working for the advancement of the group or the success of the current endeavor, and becoming worthy by those labors, is far more courteous and honorable than having our eye on the idea of being a king or a peer for the sake of the status. It is important to remember that we have status in the Society only as and when others give it to us. Possessing a coronet is not as important as behaving in a manner worthy of the coronet; in that case, we can attain the honor that comes from the behavior and the coronet is not even necessary.

We have another courtesy within the group and that is to remember that everyone in the group is different, and to accept this, as we want others to accept us with all our differences. However, as we revel, courtesy is remembering that within the group are the young, the old, the ill, the exhausted, the late-arrivals, the non-revelers, the introspective, and the crotchety — and letting them be that way, as we want them to let us be revelers.

If only there were a medieval version of “Put yourself in the other fellow’s shoes.” How else can we express that empathy and sympathy can help us to live together in the SCA. We cannot all expect to be bosom buddies, and wouldn’t want to be. Spectacular things can occur when personalities conflict, and when this happens it takes great strength and self-control by everyone involved to keep things on an even keel. The SCA is our dream-game, and needs careful looking-after, and while we are doing this, we often grow to become greater persons than we had imagined we could be. And so the greatest courtesy of all is for us to be medievally courteous; it is our concepts of honor and courtesy that set us apart from the whole mundane world.