"Deo gratias"; or he is
modest: "Nomen scriptoris non pono, quia ipsum laudare
nolo";[1] or he feels querulous: "Be careful with your
fingers; don't put them on my writing. You do not know
what it is to write. It is excessive drudgery: it crooks
your back, dims your sight, twists your stomach and sides.
Pray then, my brother, you who read this book, pray for
poor Raoul, God's servant, who has copied it entirely with
his own hand in the cloister of St. Aignan." Another
inscription, in a manuscript at Worcester Cathedral,
suggests that books were not read: why, argues this monk,
write them?--nobody is profited; books are for the edification
of readers, not of scribes. Note also the following:--
Finito libro sit laus et gloria Christo
Vinum scriptori debetur de meliori
Hic liber est scriptus qui scripsit sit benedictus. Amen.[2]
[1] Lecoq de la Marche, 103.
[2] In a MS. of Joh. Andreas, Super Decretales, Peterhouse,
Camb.--James 3, 29.
And this:--
Here endth the firste boke of all maner sores the
whyche fallen moste commune and withe the grace of gode I
will writte the ij Boke the whyche ys cleped the Antitodarie
Explicit quod scripcit Thomas Rosse.
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