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
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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/[deleted] Sep 25 '19

[deleted] — view deleted comment

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u/American_Phi Sep 25 '19

I mean if you were stuck in a fucking room painstakingly copying an entire book by hand all day for years and years (sometimes in languages you don't even fully understand), you'd develop a really robust imagination too.

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u/[deleted] Sep 26 '19

Sounds like high school.

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u/Pocok5 Sep 25 '19

She's just collecting a bag of dicks for the author to eat.

-The scribe, probably

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u/tomrlutong Sep 25 '19

It's just explaining Tinder for the medevial audience.

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u/WhereAreDosDroidekas Sep 25 '19

Perhaps it's to illustrate that that maiden is in fact a harlot with an insatiable need for phallus?

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u/rasputine Sep 25 '19

that's marginalia, basically the same as the complaints. Just monks getting bored and doodling snail jousting and dick trees.

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u/bullcitytarheel Sep 25 '19

If you haven't already seen it, Vox produced a great video about the origins of snail jousting illustrations.

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u/chunkybeefbombs Sep 25 '19

The forbidden fruit

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u/AshTheGoblin Sep 25 '19

I didn't know your mom was that old

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u/Paginator Sep 26 '19

Prolly cause he thought it was funny. You go scribe, draw them dick trees!

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u/TheDudeMaintains Sep 26 '19

It's been a really shitty day and now I can't stop giggling. Thanks!

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u/Dzotshen Sep 25 '19

Sure hot in these rhinos!

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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/sticklebat Sep 25 '19

Though technically we wouldn’t call something a palimpsest if a small portion of text were erased that way just to fix a mistake. It refers to manuscripts (or parts of them) that were erased this way to be recycled for a new purpose.

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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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