Returning to Jousts, Chivalry, and Honor

IT ISN'T very often that you get to watch a sword fight during dinner. Or that you go around bowing and curtsying to everyone you see. Or that you eat with your fingers and don't feel guilty about it.

That's probably because you don't go to too many medieval banquets. The Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) is out to change all that. Founded four years ago in Berkeley, the society is dedicated to recreating the medieval era, "not as it was," as one society member puts it, "but as it should have been."

SCA is trying to restore the personal values of grace, honor, and chivalry that its members feel are missing in contemporary life. The society sponsors tournaments, sword and shield and jousting contests, banquets, revels, and other remnants of medieval life.

From its start in Berkeley, the society has spread across the country, so that now it has three kingdoms, with shared Levine's feeling that modern a fourth set to open soon. The Western Kingdom is centered in the San Francisco Bay area, the Middle Kingdom in the Chicago area, and the Eastern Kingdom in New York. A New Kingdom is scheduled to open within the year in Arizona.

Each kingdom is divided into baronies, which are the central meeting places for society members.

The Baronny of Carolingia, a part of the Eastern Kingdom composed of students from Harvard, M. I. T. Wellesley, Smith, and Mt. Holyoke, recently held its first official gathering, a banquet and revel at Wellesley's Shakespeare Society House.

About forty students, the men wearing long capes and brandishing swords, the women dressed in long lace gowns, fought their way through a snowstorm to attend the revel. The revel consisted of medieval game playing, a banquet eaten in the medieval style, using knives but no forks or spoons, and singing and dancing after supper.

Dan Levine, an M. I. T. graduate student who is the Senechal of the Barronny of Carolingia, and as such the nominal leader of the group, explained that the society is attempting "to return to an era when people put more value on personal things, on things like courtship, and chivalry, and honor."

"People seemed to genuinely like each other more then," Levine continued, "and seemed to place a lot more importance on their personal lives than they do today. Now we've gotten all fouled up with achievement and competition, and the personal values have fallen behind."

"We're a little elitist and a little male chauvinist," one society member admitted. "The men duel for the hands of their chosen ladies, and carry their ladies favors into battle, much as medieval knights once did. But the women don't seem to mind."

Many of the society members society had eliminated many personal values from life. "I don't like technology," M. I. T. student John Forster said, "and this is my way of escaping from it."

The Baronny of Carolingia now plans to expand its membership and hold more frequent meetings through-out the spring. Plans for the spring include a tournament in May, and an attempt to storm and capture the Brandeis castle this April. A spokesman for Brandeis had no comment about the proposed assault.