It’s a little-known fact that a seventh college exists at UCSD: the College of St. Artemas, named after a preaching Italian student who was stabbed to death by angry classmates wielding styluses in the time of the Roman Empire. The details of Artemas of Pozzuoli’s bizarre fate are hazy, like many stories of early Catholic saints, and they are just as much legend as they are history – but this blend of legend and fact is ordinary fare for UCSD’s chapter of the Society for Creative Anachronism.
Of course, the College of St. Artemas isn’t really located at UCSD – it’s just one organization in the Barony of Calafia, otherwise known as the San Diego area, which itself is part of the vast Kingdom of Caid, which includes Southern California, Southern Nevada and Hawaii. The college has been in operation for upward of 20 years – 40 for the SCA, which originated from a themed costume party at UC Berkeley in 1966.
The SCA is an international organization dedicated to the recreation of the Middle Ages, as stated on their Web site, “”as they ought to have been,”” but without the infant mortality and the Black Plague. In every other respect, members of the SCA are as dedicated to learning as any historian – and unlike most historians, they learn hands-on.
Members all take on medieval aliases – names accurate to the period that “”never actually existed,”” as club leader, seneschal and John Muir College senior Analee Jarleborn (or Duibheasa inghean Fhionnegaile, if you prefer) said. The SCA’s activities range far beyond just dressing up in costume, though, even if that is much of their initial appeal – and much of their spectacle, for nonmembers – as members recreate everything of interest in medieval life that they can.
While perhaps the most visible to outsiders, fighting and costuming are only two of the many areas of knowledge the SCA seeks to master. Participants craft fabrics, cook food, reproduce handwriting and make art that is accurate to the period – “”the period”” here taken loosely to mean nearly anything from the fall of the Roman Empire to the 1600s. The SCA’s cultural subject matter also spans separate groups that are dedicated to Celtic and Norse recreation even within the College of St. Artemas. Though the society’s focus is mostly European, members nationwide have also dedicated themselves to medieval Japanese and Chinese cultures, among others.
The College of St. Artemas at UCSD is technically quite small, consisting of about 12 student members. However, UCSD graduates continue to be involved long after they officially leave the university, bringing the number of active participants up to around 25, according to Jarleborn. The club does what it can to promote itself during Welcome Week at the university, including staging sparring matches, showcasing costumes and handing out fliers from Muir Quad to Sixth College.
“”We don’t care if we’re laughed at, if it gets a few more people to join,”” Jarleborn said. To fundraise, members also hold bake sales, sell clothing through an online store called CafePress and sponsored a screening of “”The Princess Bride”” at Price Center Theater.
Jarleborn, who has been involved in the university’s chapter since she was a freshman, has been seneschal since April, at which point the incumbent was killed by a Rodent of Unusual Size – or stepped down, according to the college’s Web site, which lists a colorful imaginary death for each of its previous leaders. Others have an SCA history much longer than this; club exchequer, or treasurer, Daniel Everson (also known as Eirikr Iversson) has parents who were members of the SCA during their own college years.
“”It’s a great way to learn about medieval culture and to experience the upsides of it,”” Jarleborn said when asked to sum up her fascination with the SCA. “”Experience”” is certainly a fitting word; SCA members try out things on the field that are normally restrained to historians’ speculations, from armor construction to combat styles.
“”You have to understand that the art of nonrapier swordfighting has pretty much been lost, and so we’ve been wandering around in the dark, rediscovering things,”” Everson said, referring to the SCA’s extensive study and practice of medieval combat. “”A lot of [what has been] found in the newly discovered fighting manuals or manuscripts actually details some of the stuff we’ve done or reinvented. Or when it’s something we haven’t done, somebody immediately goes out and tries it.””
The fun of the club is in how they discover what works and what doesn’t. A point of etiquette or battle maneuver might be someone’s flight of fancy or might have actually been used by a knight locked in deadly combat or a lady writing a letter to her fiance. More than anything, the members of UCSD’s College of St. Artemas have a whole lot of fun doing it – and at each of their events, at least for a little while, history becomes more than just things people used to do.
