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Book curse A book curse was a widely employed method of discouraging the theft of manuscripts during the medieval period in Europe. The use of book curses dates back much further, to pre-Christian times, when the wrath of gods was invoked to protect books and scrolls. Usually invoking threat of excommunication, or anathema, the more creative and dramatic detail the better. Generally located in the first or last page of a volume as part of the colophon, these curses were often considered the only defense in protection of highly coveted books and manuscripts. This was notably a time in which people believed in curses, which was critical to its effect, thus believing that, if a person stole or ripped out a page, they were destined to die an agonizing death.[1] With the introduction of the printing press, these curses instead became "bookplates [which] enabled users to declare ownership through a combination of visual, verbal, and textual resources. For the first time, warning, threatening, and cursing had become multimodal."[2] A book curse might read, for example, "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."[1] HistoryAncient cursesThe earliest known book curse can be traced to Ashurbanipal, King of Assyria from 668 to 627 BC, who had the following curse written on many or all of the tablets collected at the library at Ninevah, considered to be the earliest example of a systematically collected library:[3]
Another curse from Ninevah states: "Whoever removes [the tablet], writes his name in the place of my name, may Ashur and Ninlil, angered and grim, cast him down, erase his name, his seed, in the land."[4] Other book curses were more discreet: "He who fears Anu, Enlil, and Ea will return it to the owner's house the same day", and "He who fears Anu and Antu will take care of it and respect it".[5] Because these tablets were made of clay, and thus easily vandalized, there were specific curses to protect against such acts, such as: "In the name of Nabu and Marduk, do not rub out the text!"[5] Nabu was the Babylonian god of writing and wisdom, son of Marduk and Sarpanitu.[6] A more detailed curse to prevent vandalism went as follows:
Book curses date back to the creation of libraries themselves. Ancient librarians have historically regarded book thieves on par with murderers and blasphemers. Ancient librarians invoked the wrath of the gods upon book thieves and vandals. Ancient curses were even used to discourage lending books to others. One such curse stated: "He who entrusts [this book] to [others'] hands, may all the gods who are found in Babylon curse him!"[8] Medieval curses In their medieval usage, many of these curses vowed that harsh repercussions would be inflicted on anyone who appropriated the work from its proper owner. The punishments usually included excommunication, damnation, or anathema.[9] Excommunication was the lightest of the curses because it is a reversible state. Both excommunication and anathema required identification of the guilty party as well as action on the part of the Church. Damnation had the benefit of not requiring human intervention as it was a state that the Creator, not the Church, visited instantly upon the soul of the perpetrator. All three types of curses were considered to be effective deterrents against the book thief. At the time, these curses provided a significant social and religious penalty for those who would steal or deface books, which were all considered to be precious works before the advent of the printing press. Writes Stephen Greenblatt, in The Swerve: How the World Became Modern: "Books were scarce and valuable. They conferred prestige on the monastery that possessed them, and the monks were not inclined to let them out of their sight. On occasion monasteries tried to secure their possession by freighting their precious manuscripts with curses."[10] One oft-quoted example of a book curse, purportedly from a Barcelona monastery,[8] is actually fictional,[11] taken from the 1909 hoax The Old Librarian's Almanack:[12][13]
Medieval scribes wrote most curses in the book's colophon. This was the one place in a medieval manuscript where a scribe was free to write what he wished, so book curses tend to be unique to each book.[14][15][16] Occasionally, a clever scribe would put a curse in the form of a rhyme:
Marc Drogin's book, Anathema! Medieval Scribes and the History of Book Curses,[1] has been paramount in further understanding the concept of book curses, particularly those from the medieval ages, as he compiled the largest collection of curses thus far. According to Drogin, book curses are evidence of how valuable books were to the scribes and scholars of those days. Drogin also goes to some length in explaining how books were made in the era of monastic scribes, illuminated manuscripts, and parchment. The physical labor and resources necessary in producing a single volume serves to explain why scribes were so inclined to take drastic measures to protect them.
Since Nabu first used his own name to invoke a book curse, this practice has evolved. Using the book owner's name has changed from medieval to modern times as a way to mark ownership of books. After the invention of the printing press, to protect books, hand-written book curses evolved into printed bookplates that were pasted to the front covers of books, usually styled ex libris, then to the owner's name.[18] This practice has changed again back to using handwritten names on the interior front cover of books. In contrast, a scribe from the Evesham Abbey wrote a "A colophon that praises the scribe's work — and requests high-quality wine ('vini nobilis haustum') for him as a reward — ends with a curse in which the book's thief is wished a 'death from evil things: may the thief of this book die' (Morteque malorum: raptor libri moriatur)".[9] Edwardian cursesBook curses continued into Edwardian Britain, as an aspect of property ownership. However, by this time, curses were included more as a tradition than a real threat.[19] Document curseA significant subset of the book curse is the document curse. These curses were employed in much the same way as the book curse, but with one significant difference; while book curses almost always protected a physical book (or tablet), document curses were generally worded to protect the text of the document that contained them. They were often found in wills, grants, charters and sometimes in writs.[20] Document curses show an intersection between Christian beliefs, pagan practices, and legal proceedings.[21] A scribe added a curse to the end of the book of Revelation, which reads:
One document curse from an Anglo-Saxon will written in AD 1046 reads:
Another document curse from a land grant in AD 934 reads:
See alsoReferences
Further reading
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