Rhode Kephalaina - Court Barony

 To Antecedent Excellency, Rhode Kephalaina:
You have raised Our spirits Whenever in Our Presence.
But you deceive Us, for your expressed worries, fears, and concern for this Barony have given the impression that of a despaired, hungered, and defenseless population.
We are here at Balfar's Challenge to ascertain this for Ourselves and find: contented populace, fed with the finest foods, and received by the finest warriors and skilled artisans. 
Thus, in this Anno Societatis LVII do We Imperator Brennan & Imperatrix Caoilfhionn suffice to rectify the aforementioned disparity between ephemeral fears and harmonious reality by granting thus: 
To wit Argent, a saltire gules within four roses sable, and a bordure gules 
Baroness of this Eastern Court and beyond. 
Be secure in your sojourns. Wherever travels may take you.

Word count 127

Calligraphy and Illumination by Fiona The Volatile

Look what it has come down to: Bloggers, Blogging from Bloggers!

~Madame DeFarge

The information accompanying the assignment for the recipient was not in depth at all. When that occurs, the first place checked is the recipient’s wiki and the Baronial Website. These were rich in detail of their years of service, and their work in the Barony as Baroness, but decidedly lacking on personal information. While I set to work looking at context clues, Fiona went searching for her own sources. Between the two of us, we put together a solid scroll that reflects the recipient’s time on the Baronial Seat of Dragonship Haven.

I focused on the recipient’s garb. In the photo they are wearing a matched set of blue Byzantine formal wear resplendent with pears and fur. Taking that as my clue to their persona, I went searching for Byzantine poetry.
My first hit was not actually wiki this time! Instead, it was a piece written about the fascinating Begging Poetry of 12th Century Byzantium. The Begging Poem, a Byzantine style scroll was a lovely blog about a personal art piece. While they wrote extensively about how they were creating their piece, there was not the kind of information I was looking for. The information found in that blog piece was encapsulated by the Wiki entry on Byzantine Literature.
From there I found Experimenting with Prose and Verse in Twelfth-Century Byzantium and Epistolarity in Twelfth-Century Poetry. These proved fabulous articles and I learned a great deal.
Essentially a “begging poem” which the sources claimed (as I understand it) to be a new invention of the poetic works found in 12th Century Byzantium. They seemed to be essentially letters to sponsors, royalty or even higher people in the hierarchy of a household, filled with flattery, self deprecation and begging for goods, money or services. 
From the Epistolarity:

“The “begging poet,” crying out for help and asking for various boons, usually
in the form of some sort of material remuneration, which governs the discursive narrative of much of the poetry written between roughly 1120 and 1170. 
Much twelfth-century occasional poetry is addressed to various individuals,
and so are both prose and verse letters. To make things even worse, orations
and letters are two types of texts that share many formal features, a similar
structure and an analogous formulaic language. Their main difference is that
the former usually presupposes the physical presence of both the author and the
addressee, while the latter builds upon a distant relationship between a sender
(the author) and the recipient (the addressee), or the supplicant and the patron.”

Then came the predicament of how to transfer the negative overtones of the Begging Poem into a scroll that is supposed to be praising the recipient. This nature of antagonistic, or what I interpret as negative attitudes of early through renaissance poetry is something that I have touched on before in other scrolls, dealing with in scrolls related to St Augustine’s writing, and The Owl and the Nightingale. We write award scrolls for praise and praise was not seen as a virtue in several of the time periods that scrolls are written in.
In the same source as above I found an example of a begging poem written by Theodore Prodromos. I am going to include the entire translated letter here so that it is clear how I used it as a guide to form the language of the scroll.

“To the imperial doctor sir Michael Pantechnes
You always raise my spirits with the hope that you will come and visit me,
but you always deceive me; in this way, you, who stride high in the air, look
down upon us, who tread on the ground. But finally, albeit late, throw away
the adhesive substance to which you have gotten stuck till now and become
my consolation. The fears you present to me are the bugbears of children, 
But the archbishop of all Bulgaria, who, according to the view of all those who see and hear him, measures his daily income
with medimnoi, will consider your visit as that of a poor man, who goes around
asking for a bite of food, not swords nor cauldrons, and who is satisfied with
what he receives, even if he receives only a little.
Just come [to me], and the paroikoi who have been concealed by Blachernites
will suffice to make you rich, if each of them gives you a clove of garlic. May
the Lord keep you safe from all evil.”

To Antecedent Excellency, Rhode Kephalaina:

In keeping with the letter format of the begging poem, I addressed the scroll to the recipient. How to address them here became another avenue of research. In the original letter above is to an imperial doctor, whose titles did not correlate to the recipient. Who’s award titles are in a state of flux in preparation for this scroll and the worry was how to address them to the court before the end of the scroll where their rank is elevated. 

It was suggested that "excellency" would work here because stepping down from a landed position would not actually change the status for which excellency was appropriate for.
I chose “Antecedent” as the descriptor for Their Excellency from the second definition, “a preceding event, condition, or cause.” 

You have raised Our spirits Whenever in Our Presence.

This is my appropriation of the second sentence. Whereas the original seems to be both heaping on of praise and to slightly guilt trip the recipient toward future visits, I changed this to imply that the recipient is a positive presence when with TRM.

But you deceive Us, for your expressed worries, fears, and concern for this Barony have given the impression that of a despaired, hungered, and defenseless population.

The transitory sentence away from the source material. Hopefully while still keeping the feel of the begging poem. By including the negative descriptors, framed as the worries the baronial seat has for its people. This particular sentence took a while to craft it in the direction that I wanted it to take.

We are here at Balfar's Challenge to ascertain this for Ourselves and find: contented populace, fed with the finest foods, and received by the finest warriors and skilled artisans. 

Here I deviated from the negative or begging nature of the source material. I turn it toward the nature of most award documents, effusive praise.

Thus, in this Anno Societatis LVII do We Imperator Brennan & Imperatrix Caoilfhionn suffice to rectify the aforementioned disparity between ephemeral fears and harmonious reality by granting thus: 

To wit Argent, a saltire gules within four roses sable, and a bordure gules 

The sentence before their arms I conclude the distinctions between the negative and positive praise with a direct counter to each and a transition into the recipient’s arms.

Baroness of this Eastern Court and beyond. 

At the last, the naming of the award being given.

Be secure in your sojourns. Wherever travels may take you.

In the closing of this begging poem, it followed very closely to the structure of a letter. This part in the original is structured around references to god. I think my conclusion sentence evoked both the finality of the piece and successfully eschewed any traditional religious references.

This was quite a lot of research put into the scroll, that didn't really end up sounding all that different from a typical scroll, and that’s okay. 

Photo by Fiona The Volatile