It must have been an incredible amount of work to write in the middle ages a book. Before the invention of the printing press, scribes had to fill – mostly monks in monasteries – carefully, by Hand, line by line, page by page. It’s best if you do not make mistakes, neat writing, and not with the ink blots. For a book, a pen needed for at least several weeks. In the case of particularly extensive, valuable copies, sometimes more than a year. Not only the time-consuming and tedious work made such a manuscript of great value – the Material on which it was created. In the middle ages, most of the manuscripts were made of parchment, from animal skins. And were very expensive.
You can imagine how frustrated as a monk have been expected to be if it at work is a serious blunder to happen. Of such an incident, we now know exactly how he delivered – and how upset the hard-work was the end of the pen. In the year 1420, a monk from the Dutch town of Deventer left the book he was working on just open in the library. When he wanted to come back the next day and continue to write, was in the side he had started on the previous evening, a nasty yellow puddle. And particularly pleasant the not smelled. A cat had peed in the middle of the book.
Around 1420 AD a cat peed on this manuscript and a Deventer scribe added illustrations of the event, by drawing hands pointing toward the stain and cursing Oleybet the feline with the following words: pic.twitter.com/iQBr2yFgZU
— Ticia Verveer (@ticiaverveer) November 19, 2018
The poor monk dried the Disaster in the best possible way but the stain was still visible. He was apparently so angry that he drew a cat on the side, two hands with outstretched index fingers, which point to the spot, and wrote:
Hic non defectus est, sed cattus minxit desuper nocte quadam. Confundatur pessimism cattus qui minxit super gen around in nocte Daventrie, et consimiliter omnes alii propter illum. Et cavendum valde ne permittantur libri aperti per noctem ubi interior venire possunt.
Translated, this means: “Here is nothing missing, but a cat urinated thereon in a given night. Cursed be the cheeky cat that has been at night here in Deventer on this book! And the many other cats at the same time. And fits well, to leave your books at night, not in the open, where cats are in close proximity.”
A photo of the unusual and, in particular, pity, pretty funny book page, tweeted the Dutch archaeologist Ticia Verveer, her Tweet was more than shared 1550 Times, over 2800 users pressed the Like-hearts. Originally, this animal-human medieval anecdote but discovers the history Professor Thijs Porck and on his Blog, “The Dutch Anglo-Saxoninst” written about it. In his Posting entitled “Paws, Pee and Pests” (“paws, pee and vermin”) explains Porck also, why cats offices at all access to medieval writing, and libraries:
“were The cats, the mice. For a good reason, since medieval manuscripts were a tasty Snack for the little pests.” In museums and old libraries, according to a lot of old books, where the rodents have left their marks. In spite of annoying mishaps like the urine stain, and Thijs Porck, “should have preserved the Talent of the cats, to catch mice, a large number of manuscripts from ending up in the belly of mice.”
sources: “The Dutch Anglo-Saxonist” / Twitter
