Comments on: Complaints Department, medieval monk style

Complaints Department, medieval monk style

hurdy gurdy girl — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 07:40:18 -0800

Oh, My Hand: Complaints Medieval Monks Scribbled in the Margins of Illuminated Manuscripts.

Via Maria Popova at Brain Pickings, from the Spring 2012 issue of Lapham's Quarterly.

By: griphus

griphus — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 07:45:39 -0800

"What in God's name is a 'transistorized control system,' anyway?"

By: Gwynarra

Gwynarra — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 07:56:02 -0800

Sounds like medieval monks were as physically tortured from hours bent at a desk as the people who do coding now days, but at least computers give off heat. lol

By: RolandOfEld

RolandOfEld — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 07:57:18 -0800

Very nice. Surprised to not see something akin to "A ripped page here, do not blame Bernard".

By: holdkris99

holdkris99 — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 07:59:36 -0800

"Oh, mein leben!"

By: WinnipegDragon

WinnipegDragon — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 07:59:38 -0800

"This is sad! O little book! A day will come in truth when someone over your page will say, TL;DR"

By: Abiezer

Abiezer — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 08:01:15 -0800

Not all moaning though, sometimes charming poems to their cat.

By: vacapinta

vacapinta — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 08:01:25 -0800

Lapham's always attributes their sources. In fact, thats what they are about. So I was wondering why the source of these quotes was left out. The origin appears to be this book: Images on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art.

By: arcticseal

arcticseal — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 08:07:27 -0800

Not a single mention of a holy hand grenade?

By: TheWhiteSkull

TheWhiteSkull — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 08:10:56 -0800

Brother Joachim is drunk again. The food here is bad, and my bowels keep me up at night. The abbey is ridden with fleas. The Sisters of St. Gertrude are not real nuns, I have heard it said. This place is ill situated- it is dark in the day and darker at night. One of the brothers has stolen the cheese I was saving for the feast day of St. Jerome, but none will admit it. I await the final line the way a sick man awaits death. I am tired of beer. The benches in the chapel trouble me relentlessly and my piles are worse. Winter here is bad, but spring is worse. Brother Ignatius has breath like a privy. The third knob in my back burns like fire, but the sixth is like ice. The pains in my thumb mar my penmanship. These illuminations will amuse no-one. Someone farted. Every night, the rats eat a little more of my foot.

By: Clyde Mnestra

Clyde Mnestra — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 08:13:23 -0800

Most surprising one to me: "Here I sit all broken hearted Broke my quill and I've just started."

By: mph

mph — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 08:13:46 -0800

"I'm not even supposed to be here today!"

By: Slack-a-gogo

Slack-a-gogo — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 08:19:11 -0800

This one is very close to what I say every time I finish a stupid report for work: "Now I've written the whole thing: for Christ's sake give me a drink". I didn't realize that I was being monkly when I said that.

By: Kabanos

Kabanos — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 08:22:19 -0800

The ink is thin The parchment is hairy I've had it to here with Jesus and Mary

By: Zed

Zed — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 08:22:27 -0800

Not all moaning though, sometimes charming poems to their cat. This margin is useless without a pic.

By: jeribus

jeribus — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 08:22:49 -0800

"Buggre Alle this for a Larke. I amme sick to mye Hart of typesettinge. Master Biltonn is no Gentlemann, and Master Scagges noe more than a tighte fisted Southwarke Knobbesticke. I telle you, onne a daye laike this Ennyone with half an oz. of Sense shoulde bee oute in the Sunneshain, ane nott Stucke here alle the livelong daie inn this mowldey olde By-Our-Lady Workeshoppe. @*Ǣ@;!*

By: jocelmeow

jocelmeow — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 08:24:21 -0800

Shared this with my friend the medievalist, who says the best one she's ever found personally is "I suffer from headaches and am frequently confused."

By: RobotVoodooPower

RobotVoodooPower — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 08:29:31 -0800

ILLUMINATE ALL THE THINGS

By: mammary16

mammary16 — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 08:29:33 -0800

"My wrist is cramped." - Jean Genet, for many reasons.

By: this one is danny

this one is danny — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 08:32:23 -0800

Most surprising one to me: "Here I sit all broken hearted Broke my quill and I've just started." Reminds me of Here I Sit by the Ronettes.

By: rahnefan

rahnefan — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 08:32:35 -0800

Learn any historical calligraphic script, practice it for a half hour a day for months, become quite good at it, to where you can sell it or teach it...doesn't matter. A single page of satisfying calligraphy will test you physically. And that's with modern tools and substrates!

By: immlass

immlass — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 08:32:41 -0800

One of my regrets about not going into medieval history is the lack of amusing marginal notations by copyists in my life.

By: The White Hat

The White Hat — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 08:34:15 -0800

They omit my absolute favorite explicit from Wm. Caxton ca. 1474: "My pen is worn, mine hand heavy, mine eye even dimmed."

By: Namlit

Namlit — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 08:41:26 -0800

'Oh my hand - thank God it will soon be dark.' Erm. Yes??

By: TheWhiteSkull

TheWhiteSkull — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 08:46:34 -0800

My nose drips on the parchment, it is so cold. I can no longer tell what I am writing. We are downwind from a cow-pasture- it is obvious throughout the summer. It is lent but I desire mutton. There is not enough straw for bedding and my joints ache. Will Brother Albert never stop coughing? Forgive my hand, the lamp smokes excessively and I must squint. Brother Michael is no baker- the bread does not rise, and we break our teeth. My robe smells like a winding-sheet. Brother Albert is STILL COUGHING. The new novices have no more sense than a hen. I will not finish these pages today, and likely not tomorrow. Here, smell this ink- does it smell funny to you? The Prior is not a man blessed with letters or cunning. I think I am copying the same page as before. Brother Albert was taken in the night, I fear we shall all be next.

By: VTX

VTX — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 08:49:27 -0800

I am tired of beer. BLASPHEMER!

By: mazola

mazola — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 08:51:13 -0800

/*
     Now I've written the whole thing:
     for Christ's sake give me a drink.
*/

By: Stagger Lee

Stagger Lee — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 08:52:35 -0800

"There was no plot... and I discovered it by mistake." -Umberto Eco

By: curious nu

curious nu — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 08:54:19 -0800

'Oh my hand - thank God it will soon be dark.' Erm. Yes?? No electricity, candles kinda sucked to write by (not to mention being valuable), so once the sun went down your work was done for the day.

By: Clyde Mnestra

Clyde Mnestra — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 09:00:38 -0800

By: Jehan

Jehan — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 09:12:00 -0800

By: TheWhiteSkull

TheWhiteSkull — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 09:25:23 -0800

The oldest known piece of English vernacular music, Summer Is Icumen In, was thought to have been written by a copyist, to the same tune as piece of liturgical music with Latin lyrics.

By: kersplunk

kersplunk — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 09:30:24 -0800

In the margin of the Chi Rho page of the Book of Kells: "oh man, I'm tripping balls"

By: Memo

Memo — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 09:33:10 -0800

It's weird to think that the closest thing to this are the margin notes by fan manga translators with vulgar or "shipping" comments about the characters on the page.

By: IAmBroom

IAmBroom — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 09:39:43 -0800

'Oh my hand - thank God it will soon be dark.' Erm. Yes?? *** No electricity, candles kinda sucked to write by (not to mention being valuable), so once the sun went down your work was done for the day. If that's "work," you're not doin' it right. Clyde Mnestra, not sure what you're suggesting - that spending all your time from dawn to dusk in a barely-heated room with open (glass-less) windows writing, every day but Sunday and Feast Days, isn't work? Don't forget that you still have to attend prayers and the reading of the monastery rules pre-dawn, and evening mass after sundown. After that, you are allowed to sleep. BTW, how was your heated drive to "work" today? Radio have anything good on? Wanna go for a coke at the machine?

By: beagle

beagle — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 09:40:31 -0800

Links for those who are interested in more than just the Brainpickings brief: The original article from Lapham's Quarterly. The book that was based on, Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art.

By: Stagger Lee

Stagger Lee — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 09:43:00 -0800

I find the idea of monastic asceticism entirely appealing, but not enough to do it.

By: epersonae

epersonae — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 09:53:50 -0800

Um, I think Clyde Mnestra was trying to make a dirty joke?

By: entropicamericana

entropicamericana — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 10:17:14 -0800

And I said, I don't care if they lay me off either, because I told, I told Father William that if they move my desk one more time, then, then I'm, I'm quitting, I'm going to quit. And, and I told Brother Don too, because they've moved my desk four times already this year, and I used to be over by the window, and I could see the squirrels, and they were married, but then, they switched from the ostrich quill to the raven quill, but I kept my ostrich quill because it didn't leak as much, and I kept the ink for the ostrich quill and it's not okay because if they take my quill then I'll set the abbey on fire...

By: Mr. Bad Example

Mr. Bad Example — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 10:20:53 -0800

It's not strictly technically marginalia--it's a colophon--but my favorite example of this sort of thing has always been this: Explicit secunda pars summe fratris thome de aquino ordinis fratrum predicatorum; longissima, prolixissima, et tediosissima scribenti; Deo Gratias, Deo Gratias, et iterum Deo Gratias. (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.)

By: Kid Charlemagne

Kid Charlemagne — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 10:26:09 -0800

And that's with modern tools and substrates! Coming at this from a woodworking hand-tool angle, you'd be surprised how many changes in our tools in the last 200 years or so have less to do with making them better suited to doing their job, and more to do with manufacturing efficiency.

By: duvatney

duvatney — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 10:39:19 -0800

Image on the Edge is an awesome book by the way. Camille was a hell of a scholar who died at a lamentably young age.

By: booklovers

booklovers — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 10:40:04 -0800

Sounds like they hated their job as much as modern folk.

By: Clyde Mnestra

Clyde Mnestra — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 11:03:24 -0800

Well, I was really trying to explicate -- and then tack onto -- what I perceived to be a dirty joke by Namlit that was causing puzzlement. Apologies to all, including countless generations of undoubtedly clean-minded monks, if I have degraded the conversation.

By: mahershalal

mahershalal — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 12:01:17 -0800

I seem to recall that at least a few European languages have marginal notes as among their first written examples. Copyists working on some Latin text sometimes went off-piste in Dutch or Welsh because they were only making an aside. It was once thought that the earliest written example of Dutch was a phrase written in the margin of a Latin text around 1100: Hebban olla vogala nestas hagunnan hinase hic enda thu wat unbidan we nu ("Have all birds begun nests, except me and you - what are we waiting for?") But there are much earlier sources, some (depending on whom you ask) from the sixth century even.

By: Diablevert

Diablevert — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 12:07:01 -0800

Well, as long as we're doing monk-bitchery, Gr-r-r-there go, my heart's abhorrence! Water your damned flower-pots, do! If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence, God's blood, would not mine kill you! What? your myrtle-bush wants trimming? Oh, that rose has prior claims-- Needs its leaden vase filled brimming? Hell dry you up with its flames!

By: cmyk

cmyk — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 12:11:01 -0800

Now I'm imagining them passing notes like kids in class. Brother Joseph, you want to sneak out to test the wine the magistrates sent up? Brother Mark, I cannot, for the Abbot caught me but two nights ago amongst the chickens. Again? Dude, seriously? Our vows be damned, if those things do not stop crowing I will put an end to it myself. Well, you're the one who wanted to have a cell in the tower. A fact which I regret more and more each morning.

By: Mental Wimp

Mental Wimp — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 12:17:07 -0800

Well, I was really trying to explicate -- and then tack onto -- what I perceived to be a dirty joke by Namlit that was causing puzzlement. "Have you boys been whackin' in my trailer?"

By: Chuffy

Chuffy — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 12:30:48 -0800

Illustrations, or it did not happen.

By: Fizz

Fizz — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 13:07:58 -0800

I sometimes write random shit in the margins of books I sell back to the used bookstore. Just to fuck with people who will purchase and read my book in the future: "Remember to squeeze the oranges before bed or else suffer the consequences." pg. 23 of 1984 by George Orwell.

By: Paul Slade

Paul Slade — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 16:12:54 -0800

Newspaper sub-editors (the guys who wrangle range raw copy into shape and write the headlines) sometimes express their frustration in print too. A friend of mine once worked on a subs' desk where they had to deal with a rambling, disorganised and near-incomprehensible piece about what was going on among Danish politicians. Their contemptuous headline was "Something written on the state of Denmark".

By: blue_beetle

blue_beetle — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 05:06:46 -0800

They have taken the bridge... and the second hall.
We have barred the gates... but cannot hold them for long. The ground shakes.
Drums... drums... in the deep.
We cannot get out. A shadow moves in the dark.
We cannot get out...
They are coming!
Where's my coat?

By: IAmBroom

IAmBroom — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 09:24:51 -0800

Clyde Mnestra, apologies right back to you. I faced a tragedy very recently, and apparently my sense of humor is currently ailing, too.

By: Namlit

Namlit — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 10:18:16 -0800