Previously: Mercy Brown, Vampire.
What’s the best way to make sure library books make it back onto the shelves from whence they came? Fines? Late fees? Chaining books to the shelves so they can’t leave in the first place? I mean, sure, all of those strategies have been used in the past (yes, including the chains) — but none of them are quite as effective as a method that was particularly popular during the medieval era: Book curses.
They’re pretty much what they sound like — curses emblazoned in the fronts of books and manuscripts promising varying degrees of mayhem to be unleashed upon those who would dare consider stealing those books or manuscripts — but the devil, as they say, is in the details: Some of those curses are… let’s call it creative. Really creative. So creative, one can’t help but want to explore the subject a bit more.
[Like what you read? Check out Dangerous Games To Play In The Dark, available from Chronicle Books now!]
So let’s do that, shall we?
Ancient History: The Early Centuries Of Book Curses
Although book curses were arguably at their height during the medieval period, they’re actually much older than that: They’re literally ancient. The oldest surviving book curse dates back to the seventh century BCE. More specifically, it can be placed between the years of 668 and 626 BCE, as it protected the library of Ashurbanipal, who was king of the Mesopotamian civilization of Assyria at that time. His library in the city of Ninevah is widely acknowledge as one of his most important achievements.
This library, of course, did not consist of books printed on paper, but rather of clay tablets. Most of the tablets that have since been recovered bear the following inscription (emphasis mine):
“The palace of Ashur-bani-pal, king of hosts, king of Assyria, who putteth his trust in the gods Ashur and Belit… I have transcribed upon tablets the noble products of the work of the scribe which none of the kings who had gone before me had learned, together with the wisdom of Nabu insofar as it existeth [in writing]. I have arranged them in classes, I have revised them, and I have placed them in my palace, that I, even I, the ruler who knoweth the light of Ashur, the king of the gods, may read them. Whosoever shall carry off this tablet, or shall inscribe his name on it, side by side with mine own, may Ashur and Belit overthrow him in wrath and anger, and may they destroy his name and posterity in the land.”
As Marc Drogin wrote in his absolutely essential 1983 book Anathema! Medieval Scribes and the History of Book Curses, “destroy his name” meant much more than “the simple of ‘being forgotten.’” The written word, then new and astonishing, meant that the words themselves held an almost incomprehensible weight. Observed Drogin:
“The name of a god was that god. In religious processions, the carrying of his written name constituted his actual presence. To erase anyone’s name was not to remove the recollection of him, but to cause him to have ceased to exist.”
As such, continued Drogin, “Ashurbanipal … was offering to have his gods not only kill the transgressor, his children, and their children, but void no less than the existence of his ancestors. This is indeed ‘rage and fury.’”
There’s something of a gap in the history of book curses here; although a handful of papyrus rolls that seem to have their own curses written by Greek or Roman scribes have been recovered, the curses are fragmented and difficult to discern.
A complete curse does exist, however, in a papyrus roll dating back to somewhere between the first and third centuries CE and containing the third and fourth books of the Illiad. The curse reads:
“I am the guardian of the letters.
The reed pen wrote me, the right hand and the knee.
If you lend me to someone, take another in exchange.
If you rub me out, I will slander you to Euripides. Keep off.”
I like this one very much, for what it’s worth. It is extremely funny to me: “If you damage this scroll, I’m gonna go tell on you to ancient and extremely dead tragedian Euripides. So there. Thhhhbpt.” Not overwhelmingly threatening, perhaps, but still. In the parlance: Sick burn, my dude.
Don’t Make Me Go Medieval On You: Book Curses In The Medieval Era
In any event, we do eventually get to the medieval era, which begins roughly around the year 500 CE and goes to about 1500. At this time, we have books bound in parchment, rather than clay tablets or papyrus scrolls; however, we don’t yet have the printing press — or at least, we won’t have it until the very end of this period — which means that each book must be written out and illustrated by hand, work typically carried out by scribes and artists working within monasteries. Books are, as a result, costly to make and very valuable.
Naturally, this means that libraries, which largely tended to be housed at monasteries, had a great deal at stake when it came to the books on their shelves. Numerous methods to ensure the safekeeping of these volumes were subsequently employed, including the previously mentioned chains, as well as book chests — chests that, well, held books, some of which also included chains.
By far the most popular method, however, was one that relied entirely on both societal and metaphysical fears: Curses. Inscribed within the first pages of the books themselves — in the colophon, as it’s called — the medieval version of a book curse could threaten anything from excommunication to the eternal damnation of your soul.
The idea pushed by the curses, of course, was that if you mistreated the book in any way — damaging it, losing it, or otherwise failing to return it in its original, pristine condition — you would be cast out of the community, die horribly, burn in hell for all eternity, or any combination of the above. Powerful stuff during a period in which the Church could, and often did, have control over every aspect of the average person’s life and livelihood, no?
Medieval book curses could be quite brief, as in the instance of a ninth century manuscript from the Monastery of Lyons, which read, in the Latin, “Si quis furetur, anathematis ense necetur” — or, in English, “May the sword of anathema slay/ If anyone steals this book away.”
Similarly, a circa 1381 manuscript of the Harmony of the Gospels kept at Evesham Abbey, contains this little gem: “Morteque Malorum: raptor libri moriatur,” or, “Death from evil things: May the thief of this book die.”
They could also, however, be longer — and, as such, much more creative. (Brevity may be the soul of wit, but sometimes, a couple of extra sentences can be pure magic.) Consider the manuscript known as the Arnstein Bible (circa 1172), which bears a curse reading, in the Latin:
Liber sancte Marie sancti que Nycolai in Arrinstein Quem si quis abstulerit Morte moriatur in sartagine coquatur caducus morbus instet eum et febres et rotatur et suspendatur Amen.”
Or, in English, per the British Library’s medieval manuscripts blog:
“A book of [the Abbey of] SS Mary and Nicholas of Arnstein: If anyone steals it: may he die [the death], may he be roasted in a frying pan, may the falling sickness [i.e. epilepsy] and fever attack him, and may he be rotated [on the breaking wheel] and hanged. Amen.”
The frying pan bit is a nice touch. Well done. Full marks for especially vivid imagery.
At their most descriptive, we also have curses like this one, found within a manuscript believed to date back to the 13th century collected within the Vatican Library:
“Explicit iste liber
sit scriptor crimine liber.
Non videat Christum
qui librum subtrahet istum.
Hunc qui furetur
anathematis esse necetur
Ut me furetur
qui nitatur exoculetur.”
Or, in English:
“The finished book before you lies;
This humble scribe don’t criticize.
Whoever takes away this book
May he never on Christ look.
Whoever to steal this volume durst
May he be killed as one accursed.
Whoever to steal this volume tries
Out with his eyes, out with his eyes!”
Just magnificent. Makes you think of the end of the Grimms’ version of “Cinderella,” or Alice In Wonderland’s Red Queen screaming “OFF WITH HER HEAD!”
The Book Curse In The 20th Century And Beyond
With the invention of moveable type in the 11th and 13th centuries in China, and the Gutenberg printing press in Europe circa 1450, books became much, much easier — and cheaper — to produce. As such, threats of excommunication, death, and damnation weren’t required in quite the same way to ensure the care and keeping of library books… but that doesn’t mean they died out altogether. Indeed, by the early 20th century they were considered traditional, and could therefore still be found at the beginnings of many volumes.
As Lauren Alex O’Hagan wrote in her 2020 article “Steal Not This Book My Honest Friend: Threats, Warnings, And Curses In The Edwardian Book,” published in the journal Textual Cultures, the Edwardian era “marked a high point in the history of the book in Britain.” Both literacy and access to books was on the rise, thanks to advances both educational and technological — including the development of public libraries.
Class conflict, too, however, was on the rise, the tensions of which can be seen in book inscriptions in general, and book curses in particular. A clear indication of ownership — and, therefore, a tangible clash between those with more socio-economic privilege than others — an Edwardian inscription could be something as simple as “This book belongs to…” or “If lost, please return to…”; or, it could be significantly harsher, albeit still with an air of biting wit.
Sometimes, Edwardian book curses read less like curses and more like insults. Consider this sharp little rhyme, which O’Hagan found written inside a book by a 10-year-old boarding school student:
“Black is the raven,
Black is the rook.
But blacker the person
Who steals this book.”
Or, they might be words of caution, meant to appeal to a potential book thief’s better nature, as in this rhyme, which O’Hagan notes is the most common book curse in use during both the Victorian and Edwardian eras: “Steal not this book, my honest friend,/ For fear the gallows should be your end.”
Other times, though, they maintain the threatening aura popularized in the medieval era. Threats could be physical, as in this curse: “The pillory with ye, should this book fail to return to me!”
(This is a pillory — it’s related to the stocks, if that term means anything to you.)
Or, the threats could be more metaphysical, as in this commonly-found rhyme:
“This book is one,
And God’s curse is another.
He who takes one,
God give him the other.”
Put more plainly: Steal this book and God will curse you.
In the modern day, book curses are all but forgotten — although I’d argue that they actually have persisted, albeit in slightly altered forms. The Goosebumps tagline, for instance? “Reader, beware; you’re for in a scare”? That reads an awful lot like a book curse to me — except that, rather than warn readers off from the book, it’s meant to entice them and draw them in.
Or consider our very own Most Dangerous Games tagline here at TGIMM: “As always, play at your own risk.” Again: It’s meant to entice you. To draw you in. Not to warn you off, but to engage you.
There is, after all, a fine line between a blessing and a curse.
Tread lightly.
…Or else.
Further Reading:
Anathema! Medieval Scribes And The History Of Book Curses by Marc Drogin. If you only read one thing about book curses, it should be Drogin’s book. Despite having been published many decades ago at this point, it remains the most essential work on medieval book curses to date.
Interestingly, Drogin was not an academic by trade; he was primarily an artist, illustrator, and graphic designer, as well as a journalist. In the 1970s, he began studying medieval calligraphy — makes sense, given the importance of lettering in graphic design — eventually publishing his first book, Medieval Calligraphy: Its History And Technique in 1980. In the course of his research, he began encountering book curses — and, as is common for researchers who stumble upon something odd or unusual while looking into something else (hi, hello, it’s me, your friendly neighborhood Weird Stuff researcher), became, in a word, obsessed.
This, of course, led to even more research, which eventually resulted in this book. It’s great — a terrific read, highly informative yet still very approachable.
Drogin passed away in February of 2017 at the age of 80.
“Protect Your Library the Medieval Way, With Horrifying Book Curses” by Sarah Laskow Atlas Obscura. Want a quicker overview of Drogin’s work? Try this Atlas Obscura article. It’s basically a brief introduction to it, published in November of 2016, just a few months before his death. It’ll give you a good jumping off point.
“Steal Not This Book My Honest Friend: Threats, Warnings, And Curses In The Edwardian Book” by Lauren Alex O’Hagan in Textual Cultures. Interested in finding out more about how book curses functioned in the Edwardian era? Here’s Lauren Alex O’Hagan’s article. A historical sociolinguist with a focus on material culture, social class, and identity in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, she earned her Ph.D from Cardiff University in 2018.
O’Hagan’s primary argument in this piece is that Edwardian book curses were more performative than descriptive, which sets them apart from their earlier, medieval counterparts. It’s a compelling argument, well grounded and supported by some truly magnificent examples. The images of specific book curses that illustrate her taxonomy are particularly choice.
“Frying Pans, Forks, And Fever: Medieval Book Curses” at the British Library’s Medieval Manuscripts blog. A delightful roundup of some particularly good medieval book curses, complete with reproductions of the actual sources. Medieval books are truly works of art; it’s really something else to see them in all their glory — particularly when they’re threatening to cast you into the fires of hell by way of a frying pan. If you want a good look at some primary sources, here’s a good place to start.
“You Have Been Warned: Book Curses (And Cursed Books)” at the American Bookbinders Museum blog. Another basic overview of book curses, this piece also makes an important distinction at the end: Book curses should not be confused with cursed books. They’re entirely different beasts. Just, y’know… something to consider.
“Chain, Chest, Curse: Combating Book Theft In Medieval Times” by Erik Kwakkel at MedievalBooks.nl. Want to know more about the various other methods used to safekeep library books in the Middle Ages? Here you go.
Kwakel teaches and researches in the Library, Archival, and Information Studies program at the University of British Columbia; his area is on the history of the book, with a particular focus on medieval book design and other pre-printing press topics. His MedievalBooks.nl blog is a great resource in general — fun to read and very informative.
“9 Curses for Book Thieves From The Middle Ages And Beyond” at Mental Floss and “Top 10 Medieval Book Curses” at Medievalists.net. Friendly listicles with a handful of selected book curses. Fun, quick reads.
Pentiment (video game). Developed by Obsidian Entertainment and published by Xbox Studios, 2022’s Pentiment puts you in the shoes of artist Andreas Maler, who begins the game in 1518 as an apprentice at a Benedictine abbey in a fictional alpine village. Although he is simply meant to be a visitor to the community mastering his trade while illustrating books at the abbey, things get complicated, fast. What follows is 25 years’ worth of murder, mystery, and mayhem, all of which you find yourself needing to solve — whether you want to have been put in that position or not.
The art style of the game itself is reflective of the art style Andreas would have been producing and perfecting as he performed his work at the abbey — and although it’s set perhaps a little later than the high medieval period, it’s straddling the line between medieval and Renaissance, which was quite an interesting time indeed. There definitely would have been books in the abbey Andreas spends his working hours at that would have boasted some creative and colorful book curses.
Something worth noting: This game isn’t exactly a murder mystery. If you’re looking for something that’ll scratch the same itch as, say, The Case Of The Golden Idol or Return Of The Obra Dinn, this… might not quite be that. Although you are ostensibly trying to solve a series of murders and other mysteries, there isn’t One Correct Answer to any of them. The game isn’t interested in that.
It’s interested in something else — in questions of morality, and guilt, and responsibility, and how we deal with and respond to our own choices and behaviors based on how they affect everyone else around us. It’s interested in truth as a social construct — which really brings into question whether truth can actually exist in any objective form at all.
Personally, I found that quite interesting, indeed — but I can understand how some might find it a bit frustrating, especially if you’re going into it hoping for a mystery-solving experience where there is a correct answer.
Pentiment is out for Xbox, PlayStation, Switch, and Steam. If you have Game Pass, it’s currently included in the subscription.
“Libraries Are Getting Rid Of Late Fees. Here’s Why That’s A Good Thing” by Scottie Andrew at CNN. In recent years, there’s been a move to do away with late fines for library books. It is, in fact, a good thing. This report underlines why. Libraries for all! Books for all! Other resources for all! Heck yes!
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Follow The Ghost In My Machine on Bluesky @GhostMachine13.bsky.social, Twitter @GhostMachine13, and Facebook @TheGhostInMyMachine. And for more games, don’t forget to check out Dangerous Games To Play In The Dark, available now from Chronicle Books!
[Photos via Tama66, bohdanchreptak/Pixabay; Wikimedia Commons (1, 2, 3); labuero/Flickr, available under a CC BY-ND 2.0 DEED Creative Common license]
Source: https://theghostinmymachine.com/2024/11/18/creepy-wikipedia-book-curses-the-medieval-way-to-make-sure-library-books-get-returned/
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