Manuscripts - Tumblr Posts

The best notes written in manuscripts by medieval monks

Colophon: a statement at the end of a book containing the scribe or owner’s name, date of completion, or bitching about how hard it is to write a book in the dark ages

Oh, my hand

The parchment is very hairy

Thank God it will soon be dark

St. Patrick of Armagh, deliver me from writing

Now I’ve written the whole thing; for Christ’s sake give me a drink

Oh d fuckin abbot

Massive hangover

Whoever translated these Gospels did a very poor job

Cursed be the pesty cat that urinated over this book during the night

If someone else would like such a handsome book, come and look me up in Paris, across from the Notre Dame cathedral

I shall remember, O Christ, that I am writing of Thee, because I am wrecked today

Do not reproach me concerning the letters, the ink is bad and the parchment scanty and the day is dark

11 golden letters, 8 shilling each; 700 letters with double shafts, 7 shilling for each hundred; and 35 quires of text, each 16 leaves, at 3 shilling each. For such an amount I won’t write again

Here ends the second part of the title work of Brother Thomas Aquinas of the Dominican Order; very long, very verbose; and very tedious for the scribe; thank God, thank God, and again thank God

If anyone take away this book, let him die the death, let him be fried in a pan; let the falling sickness and fever seize him; let him be broken on the wheel, and hanged. Amen

Response to all of the sex bots trying to chat me up: I like big books and I cannot lie. Send me pictures of 19th century enyclopedias and you might get somewhere. Honestly I just assume most poorly worded highly nsfw flirting from strange accounts is going to infect my stuff with something unspeakable, and my digital device is a glorious temple that doesn't need lecherous viruses pawing at it. That said, a bot that tries to sabotage nerds by sending them pictures of 14th century illuminated manuscripts and 15th century block books might have more success. Just a suggestion.

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797–1851), Frankenstein, manuscript, MS. Abinger c.56, fols. 20v – 21r, 1816 – 1817. The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford.