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Historical Bylaws & Corpora of the SCA

The following is a transcription, with some kibitzing, of some very old SCA documents that turned up in the East Kingdom Historian's files. They aren't very relevant to anything happening nowadays, but can help folks get an idea of where the SCA came from in the first place.

Much of this was originally posted to the Rialto a couple of years ago, in simple ASCII form. I've brushed it off, put it into HTML format, and placed it on the Web for general consumption. The hypertexting is quite light at this point; I'll probably continue to gradually refine it.

Please note that this is still a work-in-progress; I've only gotten about halfway through volume two of Corpora. I hope to gradually finish it up over the ensuing months.

What This Is

The edition I'm taking these excerpts from appears to have been published around 1975, by Lady Linda-Muireall von Katzenbrasse, then Chronicler of the Society, and Sir Thorvald the Grim, Steward. It was intended for the sole use of officers, to the degree that when you stepped down, you were supposed to either pass it on to your successor, or surrender it to the Kingdom Seneschal. (The warning at the beginning sounds remarkably worried that someone else might get it.)

It collects the Bylaws of the Society, and the first four volumes of Corpora. "Volume of Corpora?", I hear you say querulously. Yes, Corpora in those days looked a lot different from today. Instead of being structured as a single coherent document, it instead looked a lot like the current Governing and Policy Decisions -- a bunch of short decisions, on assorted subjects, in the order that those decisions were made. Each "Volume" corresponds roughly to a year; the first four volumes run from 1971 thru 1975.

This transcription isn't 100% complete; I omitted a few bits because they were long and not terribly interesting. Similarly, there are undoubtedly at least a few typos scattered herein. It's reasonably faithful to the original, though...

This transcription is done entirely without permission. Technically, this is probably violating copyright, but almost everything in here is public domain anyway, and I rather doubt anyone cares that much...

One thing should be made very clear: these are old documents. They are not currently operative; almost all of them have been superceded over the years. They are intended solely in order to present some historical background about the Society.

Editorial comments will be tossed in as appropriate, in italics (like this). Also, I'll have some commentary after many segments, pointing out the more fascinating implications of the segment. I try to keep my politics within reasonable bounds, but I do have some opinions, and they sometimes show. One overall change: most of the section titles in the original are in all-caps; I've generally changed this to mixed case to make it more comfortable to read (and write)...

I hope people find this interesting...

Justin du Coeur
Deputy Eastrealm Royal Historian