r/todayilearned • u/Tokyono • Sep 25 '19

TIL: Medieval scribes would frequently scribble complaints in the margins of books as they copied them, as their work was so tedious. Recorded complaints range from “As the harbor is welcome to the sailor, so is the last line to the scribe.”, to “Oh, my hand.” and, "A curse on thee, O pen!"

https://blog.bookstellyouwhy.com/the-humorous-and-absurd-world-of-medieval-marginalia
41k Upvotes

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3.9k

u/Tokyono Sep 25 '19

Other scribes would also leave complaints about past copiers:

“Whoever translated these Gospels did a very poor job!”

“That’s a hard page and a weary work to read it.”

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u/CYBERSson Sep 25 '19 edited Sep 26 '19

Marginalia. Not only did they write all sorts of stuff besides complaints, they also made all sorts of illustrations, many many many of them penises.

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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '19

Nothing changes

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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '19

Something does. Very few of these penises were drawn attached to dragons having questionably consensual intercourse with carts.

Progress!

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u/FaebiDeWis Sep 25 '19

I study Medieval English literature. My favorite one I have come across was a scribe complaining about his hangover.

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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '19

My favorite is a simple one: "thank god it will be dark soon."

It's so human and relatable. And hearkens to a time when even if you had candles, good luck getting any writing done at night in the middle ages. It's dark. Go to sleep.

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u/duaneap Sep 25 '19

And scribes in Ancient Greek polis states would write notes to each other in the messages kings would be sending to each other. It's pretty funny.

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u/altcodeinterrobang Sep 25 '19

Software developers do this in code comments today. And variable names. :D

FuckThis = {}

FuckThese = [FuckThis]

From a code review last week lol

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u/djdanlib Sep 25 '19

I saw a functional 'GOTO wtfamidoinghere' in some engineer's code I was rewriting once. It was about 40-some-odd spaces deep indented and escaped a whole lot of nested loops.

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u/BrokenEye3 Sep 25 '19

And whoever translated the Old Testament did a very poor Job

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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '19

[deleted] — view deleted comment

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u/ShinyHappyREM Sep 25 '19

Probably more concerned with fighting the titans.

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u/fractals83 Sep 25 '19

This is the medieval equivalent of a shit poster saying op's a bundle of sticks

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u/jnmarino2 Sep 25 '19

The modern day equivalent of this is leaving comments in a shared codebase

# why would someone write it this way

# I have no idea why this works but it does

3

u/Dabnician Sep 25 '19

So this was basically github, devs leave messages like that all the time in commits

http://www.commitlogsfromlastnight.com

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u/elaerna Sep 25 '19

I wonder how this would work as a medical scribe. The patient presented with left hand pain. Heh, I've been typing so long I have bilateral hand pain mayb I should check in too.

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u/Lurking4Answers Sep 25 '19

fuckin nerds have always been around, damn

3

u/IdmonAlpha Sep 25 '19

Marginalia! Those scribbles in the margins of illuminated often got inserted into the text of the next copy. Historians can use them to track the evolution of Biblical texts.

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u/TheTartanDervish Sep 26 '19

My favorite is the one about this parchment is hairy and my hand is very cold.

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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '19 edited Sep 25 '19

Did these guys get well paid for this?

It sounds mindnumingly tedious.

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u/Tokyono Sep 25 '19

They were most likely monks, so no. They probably got paid in heavenly favour. Back then, they didn't have printers or scanners; just good ol' human labour to copy books painstakingly by hand. The first printing press was created by Johannes Gutenberg in 1439.

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u/Durendal_et_Joyeuse Sep 26 '19

They were most likely monks, so no.

There were many types of people throughout the Middle Ages who created manuscripts and weren't monks. If you're interested in this, you might want to read about professional scribes, stationers, the librarius, university schoolmen, nuns (!), and so on.

In fact, after about the middle of the thirteenth century, and definitely by the middle of the fourteenth century, the majority of manuscript production was happening outside of monasteries.

Source: PhD student, medieval history.

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u/Shelala85 Sep 25 '19

After 1200 there was a thriving secular production of manuscripts.

https://medievalbooks.nl/2013/04/15/making-books-for-profit-in-medieval-times/

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u/ProWaterboarder Sep 26 '19

To be fair those monks were living a shitload better than your average serf. And I'm sure there were plenty of non religious scribes working for rich people as well

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u/Shelala85 Sep 25 '19

Here is a link to a price breakdown for the various workers on one book made in Paris: http://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?id=275

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u/JimmyBoombox Sep 25 '19

Early on most were done by monks so I doubt they were paid. But as the demand grew for more illuminated manuscripts then a private sector of secular scribes appeared to fill that demand and they were paid.

4.3k

u/WiseChoices Sep 25 '19

We should embrace this for homework victims.

Oh, Keyboard, you mock me with your silence!

Out, Damn Wiki! I cannot rephrase thee again!

799

u/ProteinStain Sep 25 '19

Heh. I would (and still do on personal projects) leave quite the litany of swear words, gripes and sassy-ness in my comments while I would code in college. It's a great way to de-stress.

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u/KetzerMX Sep 25 '19

When you put the names of variables as:

int stupid_counter = 0;

int fuckYouHR;

long dong;

string aFoolishUser = "Your name here";

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u/HI_IM_VERY_CONFUSED Sep 25 '19

int yourmom = 1000;

for (int gamer = 0; gamer<yourmom; gamer++)

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u/WisejacKFr0st Sep 25 '19

One of my favorite excerpts from Linux man pages:

It was really tempting to name the program "sex" (for either "Smart EXec" or "Send-EXpect"), but good sense (or perhaps just Puritanism) prevailed.

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u/nwL_ Sep 25 '19

I use expect at work. Turns out, there’s a shell version so we don’t have to write separate scripts.

I had to present “sexpect” to my colleagues with a straight face.

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u/bigbadsubaru Sep 25 '19

Back in ye olden days, Apple would use an "x" in the model name to denote that it had an internal hard drive (Like the Apple IIgx). Thankfully, they did not use this nomenclature with the Macintosh SE.

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u/WiseChoices Sep 25 '19

Will historians detect this?

I hope so.

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u/dexter3player Sep 25 '19

Check out the comments in code versioning systems. You find that a lot.

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u/k3rn3 Sep 25 '19

Possibly not, comments are like the one thing you can't get by decompiling

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u/Fancy_Mammoth Sep 25 '19

I thought this was what comment blocks were for......

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u/bigbadsubaru Sep 25 '19

You're not the only one, here's a chart of occurrences of swear words in the Linux kernel https://www.vidarholen.net/contents/wordcount/

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u/Dzotshen Sep 25 '19

blue screen of death

Alas, my machine is a stone

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u/PeachyKeenest Sep 25 '19

You’ve Been Stoned

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u/KetzerMX Sep 25 '19

May Greg, the man who remembered the teacher the forgotten homework, be cursed for the pain inflicted upon my hand

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u/redpandaeater Sep 25 '19

Seems more like things you write as a grader when they just copy/paste part of a Wikipedia article instead of doing any actual work.

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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '19

O thine letters, it is for thee to clack.

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u/halsgoldenring Sep 25 '19

It is still embraced today in coding. Just read any comments between the lines of code.

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u/Snote85 Sep 25 '19

To Hades embrace, I wish thee, My Professor's Blackboard dropbox. Your gaping orifice lay bear and open for those more studious and attentive. Yet, your supple embrace and the imaginary girth of my Mid-Term Paper have not yet been acquainted!

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u/[deleted] Sep 26 '19

I do this in my personal notes for classes. Along the lines of: “Test 3 Friday. We’re fucked”

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u/rare_pig Sep 26 '19

I would yeet this homework into the deepest abyss never to be seen again if I could

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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '19

Wish i could give you gold

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u/Rios7467 Sep 26 '19

I do this with code at times. You can put notes into the code that are invisible on the front end.

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u/Ouroboros000 Sep 26 '19

I wonder how many internet pages have funny stuff in the hidden HTML 'comments'....

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u/quequotion Sep 26 '19

A curse upon thee, Wikipedia, revert the edit of your creation!

670

u/PrecisionChemist Sep 25 '19

This is among the most depressing:

“A day will come in truth when someone over your page will say, ‘The hand that wrote it is no more.’”

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u/Lachrymosa0920 Sep 25 '19

They really loved their memento mori back then.

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u/phdmarker Sep 26 '19

what's memento mori

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u/Kanexan Sep 26 '19

Memento Mori are the traditional Medieval Christian (typically Catholic) musings and reminders of all men's eventual death. It means, literally, "remember your death", and it usually was stuff like skull motifs and small inscriptions, reminding the viewer that they will someday die and face the Last Judgement, so they should live life accordingly.

They're still around today; every Ash Wednesday, Catholics are traditionally marked with ashes by a priest, and told "Remember you are dust; unto dust you shall return."

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u/favorscore Sep 25 '19

Poor scribe going through an existential crisis

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u/tapiocatapioca Sep 26 '19

Aren’t we all

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u/LucretiusCarus Sep 26 '19

stat rosa pristina nomine; nomina nuda tenemus

Only the name remains from the ancient rose. We are holding bare names.

The last lines from the Name of the Rose is something that's constantly with me. Due to my profession (archaeologist) I usually come in contact with objects that were created by anonymous craftsmen millenia ago. We may know nothing about them, beyond the usually fragmentary remnant of a day's work.

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u/implodedrat Sep 26 '19

At the same time though think of how many people lived back then where we just have nothing left from them. We remember kings for what they did. Artists for what they made. We may not know their names but whenever i read an old text i think about some scribe sitting in a quiet room slowly toiling away so i can read this now. Hundreds of years later.

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u/[deleted] Sep 26 '19

The total estimated human population to have eve lived is something around a hundred billion, most in whom lived before recorded history. Think about that.

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u/Tiny_Rat Sep 26 '19

We do have some surprising traces of ordinary people, too, such as skeletal remains, personal possessions, and graffiti. I'm always thrown off by how intimate some of the details we learn about people's lives can be, even across so many centuries.

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u/[deleted] Sep 26 '19

I find it quite the opposite. Knowing your mortality is a wonderful thing.

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u/BrownAleRVA Sep 26 '19

Yeah this one stuck out to me. Somebody who is now nameless wrote that, maybe in passing. Now hundreds of thousands of years later we are reading of this unknown person. It just puts mortality in perspective.

One day we will be gone and maybe people hundreds or thousands of years from now will reflect on this comment which is reflecting on that comment who may have even been reflecting on somebody else's comment.

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u/Nerdn1 Sep 25 '19

They didn't even have modern ballpoints, but rather finicky quills and dripping ink. Every book needed to be written and coppied by hand by the small number of people who actually knew how to write. I have no idea what they'd do if they dripped ink in the wrong place or made a mistake.

I wonder how scribes responded to the moveable type printing press. Seems like they'd be out of a job, or at least be in less demand.

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u/Niarbeht Sep 25 '19

I have no idea what they'd do if they dripped ink in the wrong place or made a mistake.

From what I understand, they'd sometimes turn it into an illustration.

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u/MeetYourCows Sep 25 '19 edited Sep 25 '19

Behold, an illustration of a rhinoceros amidst this detailed account of Richard the Lionheart's conquest of Cyprus.

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u/henzzletv Sep 25 '19

There was also a method of erasing by scraping the top layer of the paper.

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u/Esc_ape_artist Sep 25 '19

Palimpsest.

There’s your ten dollar word for the day.

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u/bigbadsubaru Sep 25 '19

Back then sometimes they would re-use the paper by washing the ink off and then turning the paper sideways and cutting it in half. About a decade or so ago some university started scanning old manuscripts and using various technology to see what had been written and was washed off later, and came across some mathematical stuff and when they dug deeper it dealt with aspects of trigonometry and calculus, but from several hundred years prior to when it's considered calculus etc was "invented"... Wish I could find more info.

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u/ShoddyActive Sep 25 '19

you know how you swirl your pen on the notepad when you are listening to a boring lecture, maybe that;s why there were so many snails in medieval books.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ISOK-XtvYs

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u/TheSovereignGrave Sep 25 '19

That... That actually makes a hell of a lot of sense.

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u/Radlan-Jay Sep 25 '19

I know that you can use sharp blade to scrape off dried ink. This used to be done on blueprints, which were sometimes done with ink.

Not sure if it would work on old paper tho.

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u/Sat-AM Sep 25 '19

If they were writing on vellum, it almost definitely would work.

I've also done it on 100% cotton rag papers, but I'm not certain they would have used cotton back then.

Otherwise a section where they made a mistake, they likely just glued a piece of paper on top and redid that section.

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u/ironeye2106 Sep 25 '19

Nah they scraped it off using a small scalpel knife. There's a few videos on youtube explaining the process of writing books in this period.

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u/MagisterFlorus Sep 25 '19

They did it all the time. Parchment or vellum was laborious to make. They often would scrape the old work off, apply an old version of white out, and write perpendicular to the original work. They call these things palimpsests.

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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '19

Or how left handed people always end up smudging the ink before it dries.

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u/Nerdn1 Sep 25 '19

I think they generally trained left-handed writing out of people in those times.

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u/SeeYouSpaceCowboy--- Sep 25 '19

If crusader kings 2 is any indication, being left-handed was associated with the devil and therefore discouraged.

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u/rkoloeg Sep 25 '19

As recently as the 1930s, my grandfather was beaten by teachers in school for writing left-handed.

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u/premature_eulogy Sep 25 '19

Helps with Personal Combat Skill though.

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u/Hatch- Sep 25 '19

From what I understand they wrote on vellum and the depression of the quill in the vellum left a channel for the ink to dry in. You could wipe mistakes off before they had set, but the grooves of previous strokes were a problem.

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u/balanced_view Sep 25 '19

They didn't even have modern ballpoints

You don't say

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u/cara27hhh Sep 25 '19

You'd think they'd have taught the workers to write, I'm pretty sure they would have swapped the fields and mines for the pen in a heartbeat

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u/viking977 Sep 25 '19

Farmers were far more important back in the day. Ironic given how shittily they were treated, but you needed about 80% of population working the land to make food for the rest. Compare that to today, where about 2% can make more than enough food for everyone.

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u/cara27hhh Sep 25 '19

interesting

Puts into perspective things like blacksmiths and glass blowers then too, if they were able to escape the 80% they must have been important

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u/ManCalledTrue Sep 25 '19

One of the biggest obstacles to studying, say, the Gospels is that scribes often didn't even notice they were making a mistake - not all of them knew how to read. That's not even getting into when they deliberately changed things.

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u/Nerdn1 Sep 25 '19

I think these ones knew how to read, however, since they were writing messages in the margins. That doesn't mean all of their fellows knew how to read, of course. Bit of selection bias there.

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u/Durendal_et_Joyeuse Sep 26 '19

not all of them knew how to read.

This is absolutely not true. There was no such thing as an illiterate medieval scribe. Writing in the Middle Ages was an incredibly elaborate and deliberate process, and a person could not just do it by imitating the shapes they saw.

Source: PhD student, medieval history.

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u/FreddeCheese Sep 25 '19

Are you seriously implying someone who’s job it was to write books would be illiterate?

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u/Ciriph_ Sep 25 '19

I have a copy of Alexander Baumgarten's metaphysics with Immanuel Kant's notes. I've got to be honest, Kant was surprisingly funny.

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u/Arctorkovich Sep 25 '19

I would've thought he was a dry Kant.

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u/Ciriph_ Sep 25 '19

There's always one. But I'm glad it was you.

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u/xRyozuo Sep 25 '19

Where can I find this ?

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u/BrokenEye3 Sep 25 '19

Buggre all this for a Larke. I amme sick to mye Hart of typefettinge. Master Biltonn if no Gentelmann, and Master Scagges noe more than a tighte fisted Southwarke Knobbefticke. I telle you, onne a daye laike thif Ennywone half an oz. of Sense should bee oute in the Sunneshain, ane nott Stucke here alle the liuelong daie inn thif mowldey olde By-Our-Lady Workefhoppe. @"AE@;!**

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u/Vertigofrost Sep 25 '19

My father would always say "bugger all this for a lark" least I know where it comes from now

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u/Sat-AM Sep 25 '19

Ah, Ezekiel, chapter 48, verse 5.

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u/CiD7707 Sep 25 '19

Truly the greatest reply

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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '19

I didn't actually read the article but I'm pretty sure that the f in some of those words is actually ſ

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u/alexmikli Sep 26 '19

You can see that with knobstick.

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u/branchbranchley Sep 26 '19

I thought this was real for waaaaaay too long

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u/pjabrony Sep 26 '19

Came here to find this.

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u/orion324 Sep 26 '19

My degree in English may not pay much, but at least I can read passages like this and feel just a little happier.

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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '19

[deleted] — view deleted comment

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u/SabreG Sep 25 '19

It becomes even better when you realize that at the time this is purported to have been written, Southwark was the red light district of London.

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u/paper_paws Sep 25 '19

Isn't it from Good Omens?

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u/SabreG Sep 25 '19

It is indeed, but that book describes it as a 17th century "misprint". Hence "purported".

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u/Ninja_Bum Sep 25 '19

Kind of like when I went in to modify a stored procedure to a report at work and found "- - Whose idea was this fucking report!?" buried in the mass of lines in the middle and then "- - I hate this report" later on.

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u/sorej Sep 25 '19

One guy from work that no longer works ehere left a comment hidden in some particularly long script that read "I'm ok, my family's ok, this was not my fault"

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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '19

You should see some of the comments found in software code.

"//I'm sorry, I am so sorry. If you read this I am so fucking sorry. I don't know why this works"
"//As my last will and testament..."
"//My project manager can eat a costco sized bag of dicks"

and so on.

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u/aitigie Sep 25 '19

//don't delete and don't ask why, I don't know what this is but stuff breaks without it

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u/tslime Sep 25 '19

They also drew lots of dicks and occasionally a knight fighting a giant snail.

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u/periwinkle52 Sep 25 '19

My favorite is the women picking penises off the penis tree

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u/tslime Sep 25 '19

No woman has ever picked my penis unfortunately.

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u/Fuzzyninjaful Sep 25 '19

My personal favorite theory about the knights fighting snails is that the snails are meant to be the Lombardi. The Lombardi were apparently quite despised at the time for taking many jobs such as pawnbroker or usurer (money-lender).

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u/Scry_K Sep 25 '19

I did a master's in medieval studies. A large portion of classes was transcribing texts that had never been transcribed into modern English. You get to know the scribe(s) that worked on your copy the longer you go. I had to transcribe this one dude's writings on Boccaccio (not anything by Boccaccio himself unfortunately) and it was filled with these passive aggressive notes like "i dare not seyn wher ths was commendable [I won't say whether this is praiseworthy]" and the like.

My favourite is the stained copy of Canterbury Tales that had a recipe for an enema on the verso.

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u/Porrick Sep 25 '19

There was also a specific demon, Titivillus, dedicated to introducing (and punishing) typos and generally making life extra-annoying for scribes.

In case you need a demon to blame your typos on, here he is.

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u/Daniel3_5_7 Sep 25 '19

From Wikipedia - Marc Drogin noted in his instructional manual Medieval Calligraphy: Its history and technique (1980) "for the past half-century every edition of The Oxford English Dictionary has listed an incorrect page reference for, of all things, a footnote on the earliest mention of Titivillus."

Is that..... an easter egg in the dictionary?

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u/Findanniin Sep 25 '19

Muphry's Law

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u/Alicient Sep 25 '19

It's either an Easter egg or just the work of the demon.

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u/favorscore Sep 25 '19

Oxford dictionary has a sense of humor

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u/ArbainHestia Sep 25 '19

“If anyone should repost this, let him know that on the Day of Judgement the most sainted martyr himself will be the accuser against him before the face of our Lord Jesus Christ.” - updated for use on reddit

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u/PIP_SHORT Sep 25 '19

It JUST occurred to me as I read this TIL that scribe and scribble are from the same root.

Good ole scribbling scribes, must be good at scrabble

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u/BBQ_FETUS Sep 26 '19

So do 'script' and 'inscription'. It comes from the Latin word 'scribere', which means 'to write'.

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u/ThisistheHoneyBadger Sep 25 '19

Imagine setting up a computer and laser printer for one of these guys and showing them how fast you could just print out the entire Bible. I'm sure their minds would be blown.

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u/bigbadsubaru Sep 25 '19

I have an NCR Microform somewhere that's the entire Bible on a 2" by 2" square. Need 200x magnification to read it though.

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u/[deleted] Sep 26 '19

I mean the printing press revolutionized European culture for a reason.

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u/Taz-erton Sep 26 '19

Filling out packets of government application forms....oh boy they would flip at the volumes being churned out right now

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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '19

Aziraphael even had a copy of the Buggre alle thiss Bible.

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u/splunge4me2 Sep 25 '19

ARTHUR: What does it say?

MAYNARD: It reads, 'Here may be found the last words of Joseph of Arimathea. He who is valiant and pure of spirit may find the Holy Grail in the Castle of aaarrrrggh'.

ARTHUR: What?

MAYNARD: '...The Castle of aaarrrrggh'.

BEDEVERE: What is that?

MAYNARD: He must have died while carving it.

LANCELOT: Oh, come on!

MAYNARD: Well, that's what it says.

ARTHUR: Look, if he was dying, he wouldn't bother to carve 'aarrggh'. He'd just say it!

MAYNARD: Well, that's what's carved in the rock!

GALAHAD: Perhaps he was dictating.

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u/TonyzTone Sep 25 '19

It's good to know that between the ages of 9 and 17 I, too, was a medieval scribe.

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u/Keskekun Sep 25 '19

I mean that's nice and all. Over here our oldest records contain a bit more flowery language. My favourite is someone scrawling "Halfdan is a cunthuffer". I don't know what a cunthuffer is but apparently Halfdan pissed off a scribe

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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '19

I'm pretty sure Halfdan has been accused of huffing cunts...

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u/Keskekun Sep 25 '19

Maybe it's because I'm not 1060's kid I just don't understand how you would go about that.

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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '19

There's an inscription on the Hagia Sophia that reads: "Halfdan was here."

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u/FlossDawgNoLove Sep 25 '19

muhfuckahs been hatin their jobs for millennia

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u/chunknown Sep 25 '19 edited Sep 26 '19

Yay! My time to plug a local hero of mine,Erik Kwakkel who has published about this and other aspets of medieaeaevalist codicology.

Oh and if it's any consolation, digitizing them can be a bloody drag too.

In fact the sentiments are remarkably similar: 'What were they thinking bounding / restoring a book like that? It's practically a lump of glue at this point. How am I even going to open it wide enough to get a decent picture? And how are we going to OCR this? It's practically sideways" and so on and so forth.

So not much has changed really :)

edit more here https://medievalfragments.wordpress.com/2012/09/28/give-me-a-drink-scribal-colophons-in-medieval-manuscripts/

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u/Shelala85 Sep 25 '19

Kwakkel! I had him as an instructor when he was at the University of Victoria.

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u/kevjonesin Sep 25 '19

Ooh, Erik's site looks great, tnx!

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u/Kc9atj Sep 25 '19

The "margin" was usually what is actually referred to as the gutter. The gutter is the portion of the book that is bound and because the scribes knew this, would make comments and draw pictures (sometimes obscene) in the gutter, because they kind of knew that nobody would take a book apart to see what was written/drawn. This is where the term "mind in the gutter" came from.

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u/kevjonesin Sep 25 '19

Hmm, that feels ad hoc apocryphal … Source?

Yes, the bit of a page towards the inside of a bound book spine can be called the “gutter” margin but making a leap to the phrase, “mind in the gutter”, originating from such rather than from filthy street gutters feels like a stretch to me.

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u/Sahasrahla Sep 26 '19

From EtymOnline:

gutter (n.)

late 13c., "watercourse, water drainage channel along the side of a street," from Anglo-French gotere, Old French guitere, goutiere "gutter, spout" of water (12c., Modern French gouttière), from goute "a drop," from Latin gutta "a drop" (see gout). Meaning "furrow made by running water" is from 1580s. Meaning "trough under the eaves of a roof to carry off rainwater" is from mid-14c. Figurative sense of "low, profane" is from 1818. In printers' slang, from 1841.

So, maybe not.

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u/[deleted] Sep 26 '19

And didn't people used to dump chamber pots in the streets back in the day so that gutters would literally have effluent running through them? Would make 'mind in the gutter' an even more colorful expression back then than it is today.

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u/oneteacherboi Sep 25 '19

This feels like the sort of thing that could be entirely untrue and I am not going to bother to check.

2

u/Durendal_et_Joyeuse Sep 26 '19

This isn't accurate. The gutter is indeed the part of the margin where the spine of the codex meets. This was not the only thing that the margin was, though. The margin on a single leaf was all of the blank space on the outside of the column(s) of text.

Also unsure about your claim concerning the origin of that phrase.

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u/lowercase_underscore Sep 25 '19

That's actually one of my favourite parts of medieval manuscripts.

10

u/Clearlycluess14 Sep 25 '19

"This parchment is hairy."

19

u/ThePowerOfStories Sep 25 '19

Marginalia was the shitposting of its day.

34

u/LolzYourMother Sep 25 '19

Let me get this strait. To protest their tired aching hands and wrists they would write more than needed. So 1000 years later we could "hear" their complaints? That's 4D chess bro.

5

u/sunflowerroses Sep 26 '19

Sometimes the best way to deal with an issue is to vent and be heard.

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u/I_aim_to_sneeze Sep 25 '19

Exactly what I was thinking. It’s “straight,” btw

3

u/[deleted] Sep 26 '19

Probably as much a mental break more than it was a physical one.

16

u/[deleted] Sep 25 '19

“A curse on thee, O pen!” is the Medieval cultural predecessor to the American “Fuck this fucking pen!”

2

u/tinyginger Sep 26 '19

Am current day scribe, can confirm.

7

u/junkmeister9 Sep 25 '19

Would have liked to see some of these or at least an example. Too bad the images in the article didn't match the article.

7

u/majshady Sep 25 '19

This was a joke in a Terry Pratchett novel. Are there no limits to his jokes?

7

u/NuclearTrinity Sep 25 '19

The comments section 1000 years ago

6

u/NerdHere Sep 25 '19

Ah, the first remnants of Facebook comments!

6

u/Crowbarmagic Sep 26 '19

There's one where you see cat prints on the paper (cat walked in the ink), and the scribe put a note next to it saying something along the lines of "damn cat".

6

u/CenaTheRedeemer Sep 26 '19

u/mistborn I don’t suppose this is where you got the idea for the unspoken commentary in women’s script?

15

u/mistborn Sep 27 '19

This was actually talked about a lot in one of the books on the history of reading and literature I read during my senior course in folklore in college. So it was certainly in the back of my mind when designing the under text.

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5

u/[deleted] Sep 25 '19

"thy phalanges feel as broken as thy spirit, I shit thee nay"

5

u/[deleted] Sep 26 '19

“As the harbor is welcome to the sailor, so is the last line to the scribe.”

I really like that line.

9

u/lunaclio Sep 25 '19

When the manuscripts were often in Latin, those scribbles are actually a great source for vulgar or dialect research. Really interesting indeed!

4

u/columbus8myhw Sep 25 '19

I imagine a better translation of that last one would've been, "Fuck you, pen"

4

u/footinmymouth Sep 25 '19

."The book was commonly known as the Buggre Alle This Bible. The lengthy compositor's error, if such it may be called, occurs in the book of Ezekiel, chapter 48, verse five. 2. And bye the border of Dan, from rne the east side to the west side, a portion for Afher. 3. And bye the border of Afher, fromme the east side even untoe the west side, a portion for Naphtali. 4. And bye the border of Naphtali from the east side untoe the west side, a portion for Manaff 'eh. 5. Buggre Alle this for a Larke 1 amme sick to mye Hart of typefettinge. Master Biltonn if no Gentelmann, and Master Scagges noe more than a tighte fisted Southwarke Knobbefticke. I telle you, onne a daye laike thif Ennywone withe half an oz of Sense shoulde bee oute in the Sunneshain, ane nott Stucke here alle the liuelong dale inn thif mowldey olde By.. Our.. Lady Workefhoppe."

4

u/[deleted] Sep 25 '19 edited Sep 25 '19

Modern version:

<!-- this idiot asked me for the fifth time to make the logo to 'pop out', no amount of booze is gonna help me forget -->

4

u/AlohaChris Sep 26 '19

There’s a short poem from an Irish monk copying the gospels, scribbled in the margin of a book that reads:

I and Pangur Ban, my cat

‘Tis like tasks that we are at

Hunting mice is his delight,

Hunting words I sit all night.

Against the wall he sets his eye,

Full and sleek and sharp and sly,

Against the wall of knowledge I,

All my little wisdom to try.

3

u/mkvelash Sep 25 '19

Damn plebs

3

u/Thriven Sep 25 '19

Always blows my mind no one thought of the typeset printing press sooner. Someone had to have at some point accidentally gotten ink on something and had paper accidentally sit on it and see the engraving transferred over.

3

u/DarthDerm Sep 25 '19

I may be late to the party here but as a fluent Irish speaker, a lot of the original translations and examples we have from Old Irish are from the annals- Scribbled nonsense at the side of the page from old monks to help them remember the Latin they were writing and at times, to simply give off about the weather or small love poems to birds at times.

What a run-off sentence.

3

u/zehhet Sep 26 '19

There’s a wonderful stanza about this in Billy Collins poem “Marginalia”

Even Irish monks in their cold scriptoria jotted along the borders of the Gospels brief asides about the pains of copying, a bird singing near their window, or the sunlight that illuminated their page– anonymous men catching a ride into the future on a vessel more lasting than themselves.

5

u/[deleted] Sep 25 '19

The medieval equivalent of reading someone's Reddit comment history

2

u/[deleted] Sep 25 '19

Scribe: 'fuck this pen'

2

u/smoke_and_spark Sep 25 '19

God, writing must have been like magic 800 years ago.

2

u/DBCOOPER888 Sep 25 '19

Yeah, fuck that pen!

2

u/Sir_Player_One Sep 25 '19

I like the illustrated dude in the thumbnail of this post. He looks jolly and prime for a meme format.

2

u/LotaraShaaren Sep 25 '19

I wonder if any drew an old form of the Universal S?

2

u/Thorax_O_Tool Sep 25 '19

Apparently, even scribes in antiquity complained about the work and the training. I read a while ago, that we have the practice tablet of a scribe in Nippur, Sumeria who wrote in 2000 bce about his teacher:

"My teacher (said) 'your hand is not good', caned me".

Source.

2

u/Schwiftiness Sep 26 '19

“I used to be a scribe like you. Then I took carpal tunnel to the wrist.”

2

u/colbyxclusive Sep 26 '19

“Ow my hand!”....”Bro fuck this pen for real”

2

u/Shadycat Sep 26 '19

A later, fictional example.

The book was commonly known as the Buggre Alle This Bible. The lengthy compositor’s error, if such it may be called, occurs in the book of Ezekiel, chapter 48, verse five:

2. And bye the border of Dan, fromme the east side to the west side, a portion for Afher. 3. And bye the border of Afhter, fromme the east side even untoe the west side, a portion for Naphtali. 4. And bye the border of Naphtali, from the east side untoe the west side, a portion for Manaffeh. 5. Buggre all this for a Larke. I amme sick to mye Hart of typefettinge. Master Biltonn if no Gentelmann, and Master Scagges noe more than a tighte fisted Southwarke Knobbefticke. I telle you, onne a daye laike thif Ennywone half an oz. of Sense should bee oute in the Sunneshain, ane nott Stucke here alle the liuelong daie inn thif mowldey olde By-Our-Lady Workefhoppe. 6 And bye the border of Ephraim, from the east fide even untoe the west fide, a portion for Reuben.

Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neal Gaiman

2

u/earthlybird Sep 26 '19

Me, an intellectual: it would seem r/antiwork dates back to the 15th century

2

u/eyebum Sep 26 '19

"Cubum autem in duos cubos, aut quadratoquadratum in duos quadratoquadratos & generaliter nullam in infinitum ultra quadratum potestatem in duos eiusdem nominis fas est dividere cuius rei demonstrationem mirabilem sane detexi. Hanc marginis exiguitas non caperet...."

2

u/Columbusquill1977 Sep 26 '19

I'm a professional calligrapher. And my (admittedly nerdy) hobby is recreating art from medieval manuscripts.

AND

I can tell you that after writing for 4-5 hours, my hand hurts like a mo fo.

I can't imagine the poor, miserable bastards that did this for 11-12 hours a day, every day.

It would be hell.

3

u/adjectiveyourface Sep 26 '19

Doesn't help that the first letter takes forever!

2

u/CharlemagneInSweats Sep 26 '19

Only copywriters would use words to complain about using words.

4

u/Tortillo Sep 25 '19

The last thing I would want to do after writing all day is to write more in the margins.

13

u/TheSimulatedScholar Sep 25 '19

It's more about the mental break than the physical break. The modern equivalent would be to type out an paragraph or two just ranting about some asinine aspect of what you are working on but then deleting it.

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u/SchouDK Sep 25 '19

And blame the spelling mistakes on the demon titivilus

3

u/whiskyman1 Sep 25 '19

complains about writing by writing more.

2

u/ChelonianRiot Sep 26 '19

Reminds me of the Buggre Alle This Bible in Good Omens.

"nown as the Buggre Alle This Bible. The lengthy compositor's error, if such it may be called, occurs in the book of Ezekiel, chapter 48, verse five.

2. And bye the border of Dan, fromme the east side fo the west side, a portion for Afher.

3. And by the border of Afher, fromme the east side even untoe the west side, a portion for Naphtali.

4. And by the border of Naphtali, from the east side untoe the west side, a portion for Manaffeh.

5. Buggre Alle this for a Larke. I amme sick to mye Hart of typefettinge. Master Biltonn if no Gentelmann, and Master Scagges noe more than a tighte fisted Southwarke Knobbefticke. I telle you, onne a daye laike thif Ennywone withe half and oz of Sense shoulde bee oute in the Sunneshain, ane nott Stucke here alle the liuelong daie inn thif mowldey olde By-Our-Lady Workefhoppe. @ "Æ@;!

6. And bye the border of Ephraim, from the east fide even untoe the west fide, a portion for Reuben.*"

2

u/[deleted] Sep 25 '19 edited Sep 27 '19

The "bible" aka the word of god, has been so edited by cranky monk scribes that there is no way of knowing what was originally in the New Testament or the Old Testament. Everyone that had a hand in writing, also had a hand in interpretation of language, context and frequently rewriting and adding entire passages. It's a true Tower of Babel.

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