Mephistos

Ulrich von Liechtenstein has been a hero of mine for some time, ever since I first of heard of him and what he had done in his life.  I know some of you are thinking of the movie from a few years back by the the name of A Knight’s Tale, which starred the late Heath Ledger and somewhere in  the back of your mind you recall that was the assumed name the peasant turned jousting knight used.  Someone associated with the movie must have actually had a bit of medieval history in their background, for there was indeed a true knight from the 13th century by the name Ulrich von Liechtenstein.

The real Ulrich had a life that was probably just interesting, perhaps more so, and certainly as ruled by the notions of courtly love and how to win the favor of his this lady that inspired in him all things.  Further, the true Ulrich was not only a knight and jouster of some reknown during his lifetime, but he was further was educated and used his talents to write poetry describing his exploits pursuing the love that spurned him.  The title of the work the famed poet-jouster, as he is often called, wrote in the original Middle High German was Frauendienst. Translated to modern English, it reads as Read more…

I have mentioned this before, but I am always continually amazed and just what a small world it truly is.  I had a plan to write something about this for a few weeks now as I had stumbled on something called the Medieval Campaigner back a bit ago.  It was a nice little document laying out some guidelines for striving to be the as authentic as possible, including a total immersion into the 11th or 12th century, having only those things which were available to that time period available and so on (incidentally, I plan a separate blog about that coming up soon – looking for it).  The interesting thing about it was that it borrowed heavily from a similar document writing for the American Civil War reenactors by a Nicki Hughes.

Nicki Hughes is a minor acquaintance of mine – someone that I know through having worked as a costumed interpreter at Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill over in Mercer county Kentucky.  Largely I know of Nicki through his wife, Susan, who was in a way I suppose over all interpreters, excepting those few of us that worked in the historic farm area.  Incidentally, Susan apparently modified the same thoughts that Nicki had for the campaigner into a civilian document for the same period.   Two things that stand out most about Susan and Nicki in my mind.  First, once when Susan was letting the village use one of her tents, an over zealous maintenance supervisor painted the iron tent stakes neon orange Read more…