Friar Valentine's Cell

  A brief disclaimer: For some, eyeglasses are merely fashion accessories, while for many, they are a necessity, prescribed by their doctor and custom-made to meet the specific needs of their eyes. Medical devices should always be off the table when it comes to scrutinizing medieval “appropriateness.” Always. A person’s eyeglasses are not a part of their garb, unless they choose to make them so. One’s choice of glasses and what is available (or not available) to them is nobody’s business but their own and their doctor's. The Ill-matched Lovers  by Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen  c,c, 1510 - 1519,  (oil on panel) - public domain I was employed for many years as a certified optician (ABOC). Although I left that line of work to pursue other endeavors, I spent a significant portion of my adult life in a hospital-based clinical setting, where I made lenses, analyzed issues, collaborated with Ophthalmologists and Optometrists on specialty lenses and devices, taught opticia...

In 2024, I started collecting issues of T ournaments Illuminated magazine. I wanted to begin my search with the oldest issues I could find, figuring that they would be the most difficult to obtain. Well, I was certainly right about the 1960s and 1970s. Until last week, I had never seen an issue for either one of those decades listed for sale, and I've never come across one in a box lot. Last week, I purchased Spring 1979, and I am anxiously awaiting the arrival of my first pre-1980s issue.  I have stressed to my parents, who are avid yard sale sleuths, that they should buy any and all issues of Tournaments Illuminated they can find, and have shown them some examples. I keep imagining that my mom will call and say, "We got a big box of those magazines you wanted, for $5," and it will be filled with every issue I need... but, back to reality.  Thus far, I've amassed a fairly robust collection of them, obtaining all but a few of the 1980s and all but one of the 1990s. ...

Disclaimer: Any resemblance to actual SCA event feasts, living or dead,  or actual events is purely coincidental.     Thankfully, we have a wealth of remarkable cooks in our kingdom, and as a result, I have only had delicious feasts. Additionally, I have never had to suffer an autocrat who was quite this disruptive. It's just good-natured ribbing. 

This is the documentation I wrote for a Paternoster I made to enter in an A&S Faire in Shire Abhainn Ciach Ghlais on 5 July, 2025. A Fine Fifteenth-Century Burgundian Paternoster   Valentine Garnett (m.k.a. Terry L. Mumma) valentinegarnett1524@gmail.com Shire of Abhainn Ciach Ghlais Kingdom of Æthelmearc 5 June, 2025 Oure fadir That art in hevenes Halwid be thi name Thi kingdom come to Be thi wille don On erthe as in hevenes Give to us this day oure bred ovir othir substaunce And forgiv us oure dettis As we forgiven oure dettours And lede us not in to temptacioun But delyevr us from yvel Amen (Skeat, 1871). The Our Father (Pater Noster), John Wycliffe translation, 1389 CE Bede, Old English for “prayer,” would become so synonymous with strung objects for counting prayers that by 1377, bede (or bead) would assume its modern definition. The Paternoster is an early Catholic prayer counter and is the medieval predecessor to the rosary. Paterno...