Considering that outside of the odd person who makes friends with the scary weirdo, no one including their family wants much to do with someone with the gift than being taken as a hermetic apprentice is actually a good thing. They gain compatriots, the ability to interact with them unaffected by the gift.
The way I envision the code working is a lot more like the code of silence in the mafia. There are rules everyone is expected to live by. If you break those rules, courts can't help you, your own family will see to punishment. Since it is a small group, popularity more than logic rules. If you are regularly pissing off everyone, you better be strong!
No matter how strong one mage may be, if he pisses off enough people, someone, or a group, will take him out. Therefore, codified ways of wizards war. And just like the mafia, executing someone without sanction is going to cause a lot of problems. So having a code of how this is done is necessary.
We live in a world where laws actually mean something. Prior to modern times, might made right more often than not. And an organized group beat any single outlier. With every mage capable of dishing out considerable punishment, codes of conduct was about the best you could do. It wasn't fear of the Quasitors that would keep wizards in line, but fear of angering too many powerful wizards at the same time.
So the quasitorial function wasn't punishment, but investigation. If you couldn't do it in secret, other wizards would know, your reputation would suffer, and you would find yourself isolated. An isolated wizard, even Flambeau, might be in trouble against 4-5 full mages.
The organized crime analogy works better, for me, than comparison to modern systems of law.
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No, I wasn't referring to the Bonisagus privilege but to the general run of laws about the status of Apprentices and the fact that a child is not officially an 'apprentice' until the Magus has opened their arts. See (Inter alia) APPRENTICES p 37 and 38 et seq. (I knew when I wrote it I should have given references because people would assume I meant the Bonisagus clause. Mea Maxima Culpa.)
We can ascribe the large number of flawed magi with defective Arts to masters who had to start training before they were ready to in order to fend off predatory sodales who wanted to snatch what someone else had found and had no Bonisagus clause to justify it. We can ascribe a huge number of magi who have been bent out of shape by their apprentice years to the fact that the code regards the apprentice as a piece of alienable magical equipment and not the future inheritors of the Order and the Art. (See 'LEGAL ISSUES' at p38 of APPRENTICES) A Master can beat and terrorise his apprentice as he pleases, trade him away to another master or just transfer him to another's care. There might be good reasons to do so but no care is taken and no arguments can be made.
All of this among the Houses that don't deliberately abuse their apprentices in order to 'toughen them up' as House Tytalus does. ("Harumph! Didn't do me any harm...")
So you get generation upon generation of magi who hate their parens and perpetuate abuse upon their own apprentices. I understand the Doyleist reasons for doing this but the fact that there aren't reform movements or outright rebellions from time to time stretches my suspension of disbelief.
(Hmm, an uprising of apprentices! Magisters and schoolmasters poisoned or slaughtered in their sleep!)
I realise that the apprentice probably isn't going to be the most popular child of any family but I still find it peculiar that the magi don't get into trouble for 'interfering with the mundanes' for the shit they pull. I would expect at least a couple of mobs a year hunting for the baby-snatching witches.
People keep saying that I'm comparing the Code to a modern code of laws and a modern government. I really don't think I am. I don't believe people change much between periods of time and I believe that the same rules apply when constructing a code of laws and a culture that will work. Someone compared the Order to the Cosa Nostra which is sort of true but the thing about the mob is that punishment while not ever concerned with justice and often minimally concerned with facts is nonetheless swift and certain and supplied by Bosses who are clearly in charge in their own organisations.
The Order of Hermes, in contrast, is a tribe with too many Chiefs, most of whom would rather be in their labs doing the work they regard as important and only getting around to punishing someone too late and only when a majority of them can agree.
In order to rebel the apprentices would have to trust each other. With the gift that isn’t going to happen, on a large scale. Considering the normal treatment of apprentices in medieval Europe, Mages are operating within the paradigm of their time. Masters had all of the rights Mages do, at least until the Black Death changed the demographics.
The mafia analogy still works. New members are given the worst jobs, and can only rise through sponsorship. Until they are “made” their only protection is the fear of their sponsor. They have no rights, and are often insulted, and “toughened up.”
As to swift punishment, that is what Wizard's War is for. And having to justify killing another Mage would go a lot easier if you can point out what he did wrong, how he broke the code first. If you also had the sanction of a group of mages, or a quasitor, they could testify for your when you were tried for killing the offender. Popularity > Logic.
This scene from the Witcher comes to mind as an excellent example of how a parent might feel about their gifted child in Mythic Europe.
[quote="MichaelCule, post:24, topic:169333"]
So you get generation upon generation of magi who hate their parens and perpetuate abuse upon their own apprentices. I understand the Doyleist reasons for doing this but the fact that there aren't reform movements or outright rebellions from time to time stretches my suspension of disbelief.[/quote]
Look at history. Slavery is clearly worse than apprenticeships and it took up until the 1800s for meaningful reform there. The peasant - lord relationship is a tiny step above slavery and reform and revolt is uncommon. Look at fraternities and hazing rituals. They remember being hazed 3 years earlier, and still do the same.
Add to that, in a magi situation, the uneven power dynamic is terrifying on multiple levels.
In normal apprentice master situations, once the apprentice is an adult, it coincides with the beginning of physical decline of the master and the apprentice surpases his master. The apprentice just oulasts the prick, and if it makes the apprentice sleep better at night, imagines punishing the master when he's an old man. A magi just goes on and and on with his longevity potion.
The worst a master can do in non-magical situations is violence, deprivation of food, shelter, etc. A magi can do untold deprivations from mind control, mutations, etc. The consequences of a fail revolt is a magnitude scarier when magic is involved.
I consider reformation would be unlikely.
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The secret Society of the Lunar Escape has been formed by a handful theorists, mainly Bonisagus and Verditius, who have realised this. In the 15th Century will escape in a Greater Enchanted Rocket and reform the Order on Mars.
It's no crazier than the average magi scheme!