Oh, My Hand: Complaints Medieval Monks Scribbled in the Margins of Manuscripts | Hacker News Reader

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

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219 pointspg82 comments

I'm currently hand-writing a copy of the Greek New Testament as a (theoretically) fun project. I've bound many books before, but this is the first I'll write by hand before binding. I sympathize with "Now I've written the whole thing: For Christ's sake give me a drink."

If you want to truly appreciate the work monks did to preserve knowledge in the medieval period, try writing a book out by hand.

If you don't mind my asking, are you making your own paper, and if not, what are you using for the pages of the book?

No, I don't enjoy pain and frustration that much. I get large 22 inch by 30 inch sheets and cut them down to size (do a search for 'Zerkall Book Smooth' if you want the exact material). I cut out four 10x14 pieces per sheet, which gives me one signature. A signature consists of four sheets of paper stacked, then folded in half to make a little booklet. That yields 16 pages. Then the signatures are sewn together during the binding process.

Edit to add: I would have loved to use real parchment for a more authentic end product, but that amount of parchment would have cost thousands of dollars.

Seems like that would be quite the family heirloom, good on you. How far through are you?

Somewhere around Romans 12, I think. The end product will be multiple volumes, with the gospels making the first volume. Judging by the size of Volume II (which contains Acts and in-progress Romans so far) I'll probably be able to fit in a few of the epistles before I split for Volume III.

Wonderful. I wish you continued perseverance and a steady hand.

Sounds like a very interesting project. I have a few questions, which I hope are not too much of an imposition.

How far have you gotten? What's your estimated completion date and total man-hours for the project?

What are you using as source material? If your source material contains non-canonical works (like the Epistle of Barnabas, included in the Codex Sinaiticus) are you going to hand-write those as well?

What does your copying process look like? Do you write whole sentences, one word at a time, one letter at a time, etc.? Do you have error detection and error correction processes? (Some Hebrew Old Testament scribes used a rudimentary checksum - counting how many times each character appeared on a page, locating the middle character, etc. - and would destroy pages with errors.)

Aside from a really cool book and hand cramps, what are you getting out of this? What have you learned so far, either about the process of hand-copying or about the content of the text you're copying?

> How far have you gotten? What's your estimated completion date and total man-hours for the project?

I'm working on two volumes right now. The first volume will contain the four gospels, the second Acts, Romans, and some of the epistles. I'm about halfway through Luke in Volume I, and in chapter 12 of Romans in Volume II.

I wish I had kept better track of the hours I've spent so far. I started the project 7 months ago, and I worked on it for about 3 to 5 hours a week. I imagine it will be at least another couple years before I'm completely finished.

> What are you using as source material? If your source material contains non-canonical works (like the Epistle of Barnabas, included in the Codex Sinaiticus) are you going to hand-write those as well?

My source is Nestle-Aland, 28th Edition, which is (I believe) confined to the 27 universally-accepted books of the NT. I may do an additional volume with some apocryphal works at some point, but I will need to find another source for those.

> What does your copying process look like? Do you write whole sentences, one word at a time, one letter at a time, etc.?

This has changed over time. When I first started the project, I could barely write the Greek alphabet, didn't understand what each letter sounded like, and had no knowledge of the language's grammar. So in the beginning, I drew every letter and accent and checked them against the source before continuing. This was extremely tedious.

As time passed, I became more familiar with the alphabet and didn't have to individually draw each character. I also taught myself the associated sounds, both by rote memorization and by listening to recordings. Now that I've done that, I can "read" the text and know what it sounds like, even though I don't understand the meaning. So I typically copy in chunks of a few words, then make another pass to copy accents, breath marks, and punctuation.

> Do you have error detection and error correction processes?

I decided at the beginning of the project that I was not going to attempt complete accuracy. I accept that there will be errors. If something is obviously wrong, I'll correct it, but I won't obsess over and strive for 100% accuracy.

A medieval scribe working with parchment would use a sharp blade to scrape away any mistakes. Since I'm working with cotton paper, I can't do that. I typically just cross out any word level mistakes. Any line level mistakes (it's quite easy to skip a line of text, especially when you're not literate in the language you're copying), are not so easily corrected, and I have to discard that entire sheet and redo it. This can be a pain, because in the signature format, the pages you are copying are out of order. (For example, the first sheet of a signature will contain pages 1, 2, 15, and 16.) So I have to re-copy up to four random pieces of text, while trying to maintain the same proportions of the previous copy so I don't throw off the text alignment of the next sheet. This is my least favorite part of the process.

> Aside from a really cool book and hand cramps, what are you getting out of this?

Enjoyment, mainly. I like to complain about the handcramps and eye strain, in the same way I like to complain about bughunting in code. But at the same time, in the same way I enjoy seeing my code do something cool and work right, I enjoy seeing the finished product of projects like this.

Also, I'm teaching myself Koine Greek, and this project has done wonders for my ability to read and write Greek text. My knowledge of Koine grammar is rudimentary at best at the moment, so I can't translate yet, but because of this project I can effortlessly read and write it.

> What have you learned so far, either about the process of hand-copying or about the content of the text you're copying?

You hear anecdotes sometimes about some ancient scribes being illiterate, so they simply drew each character individually and checked them against the source. I've been there and done that, now, so I can say I've had the experience.

I also now fully comprehend how much of a marvel the printing press was. It cannot be understated how important that invention was to both the spead of and creation of new knowledge.

As for the text itself, I guess the biggest takeaway I have is that we can lose a lot of the elegance of the text in our English translations. Greek, being an inflected language, doesn't depend on word order for meaning like English does, so the authors could order words as they saw fit to make the sentences flow. Greek is a beautiful language.

That was very interesting to read for me, having tried to make my way through Euclid's Elements some years ago while I was attempting to learn Ancient Greek. My knowledge of grammar and vocabulary is still very basic, and I think I would have had more success if I had incorporated more writing/transcribing as you have done. Maybe I'll have another crack at it some time :)

How are you proofreading your copy? I'd hate for an error to result in Seventh Day Advent Hoppists[1].

[1] http://reddwarf.wikia.com/wiki/Seventh_Day_Advent_Hoppists

He could use recaptcha and then diff against an electronic version.

They misinterpreted the word 'hop'. Obviously, it refers to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humulus_lupulus

Once you are done you will be all warmed up for Hebrew / Aramaic Old Testament - and writing from right to left might exercise another set of muscles ;).

My Godfather lived as a monk in a monastery in Switzerland for a number of years, and aside from chanting and prayer, the monks otherwise took a vow of silence. However, once a year the monks were allowed to utter a single word to the "head monk"...my Godfather chose the following year 1: "Bed", year 2: "is" and year 3: "Hard". At which the "head monk" replied "you complain to much". After time my Godfather did leave the monastery and one of his sons became a VP/General Counsel of Yahoo (retired).

(You do know that that's an old, old joke, right, and that it didn't actually happen to him?)

Oh no. This reminds me of a girlfriend who thought her parents really did take their old dog to a farm...

To be clear he was a monk for a number of years in a Monastery in Switzerland, and he did tell the story (as I am sure many former monks tell the same when reflecting on their experience); however, many people in the thread are drawing similarities between themselves and the unknown scribes, thinking the scribe's work sounds similar to their own as a coder, or that the both put hidden messages in their work. Simply the biggest similarity is human nature, humor and complaining are good examples. In other words I did not see to many people making the point that they too know what it is like to be cold like some scribes mentioned.

Although you make a great point it would be great if one of these margin notes had a second note underneath saying, "its really not that cold in here" or "given a few hundred years the paper softened up quite nicely" a la HN.

Edit: Sorry it must not have come thru, I know this is not my Godfather's actual experience...what made it great is that it was told to me by a former monk in the first person

Unless you were there with him, you have no way of confirming the veracity of the story. Even if he's your dad's good friend.

Welcome to uncertainty.

You make my point all that much more clear, that some HN'er would come along and write under a scribe's note challenging the "veracity" of the scribe's comment. The only way you could have made me laugh any more is if you tied in the word "pedantic".

Unless you were there with him and his dad's friend, you'd have no way of confirming that he wasn't lying. Or that he hadn't hallucinated. Or that you hadn't imagined or dreamed being there with him. Or that the universe wasn't created moments ago, and all of these memories are false.

Source: http://users.rider.edu/~suler/zenstory/twowords.html

I was secretly hoping for "I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of God's existence, which this margin is too narrow to contain."

...but said proof was actually based on an error; a real proof for God's existence wouldn't come for centuries after much more advanced theological tools were discovered and refined.

That said, it's hardly surprising that something so simple and innocent on the surface took a whiles to figure out.

he was so excited he forgot to write it =)

Striking how similar the concerns are from one age to another. I've often spent a long day tracking a bug down, fixing it, and pushing it out to production, and thought, "Now I've written the whole thing: for Christ's sake give me a drink."

My first thought was that this is the middle-ages equivalent to comments I sometimes leave in code.

    /* So this is where it gets dumb. */

    // Really dumb one-time override for this asset

That's what I figured, too. No wonder this article is so appropriate for this site, it echoes the mundane pains of today's code-scribes.

Coding is excessive drudgery, it crooks your back, it dims your sight, it twists your stomach and sides.

In post-apocalyptic science fiction novel A Canticle for Leibowitz, monks of the fictional Albertian Order of Leibowitz preserve the surviving remnants of man's scientific knowledge until the day the outside world is again ready for it. Many of the "manuscripts" they reproduce over the centuries are mundane blueprints they don't understand, carefully reproduced with blue ink backgrounds and gold inlays.

Heh. Reminds me of The Name of the Rose. This kind of thing is endlessly interesting to me.

Edit: I see this comes from Lapham's Quarterly, which is far and away my favorite magazine and an incredible resource to anyone remotely interested in ideas and history:

http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/

I am guessing I am not the only one to find how much this parallels some of the comments we leave in code due to venting/frustration or for other random reasons. Perhaps in another 1000 years someone will be going through ancient source code to find similar comments.

In another 1000 years, your hard drives will be unreadable.

You imply that conventional hard drives are the only storage mechanism that exists. It's a valid point, but there are ways to keep data around. The monks of 500-1000 years ago were writing books that were meant to be kept for a long period of time, so they were already thinking past their own lifetime (even a monk's comment in the article mentions that).

My hard drives of less then a decade ago are already unreadable, but my code is still around.

Now I'm imagining an artisanal service that prints out all of your code- or at least the ones your take pride in the most- then illuminates it for you, before binding it. Now that's a coder's heirloom.

It would be majestic if it weren't so absurd. Who's written anything worthy of that treatment? I think this is why literate programming interests me. Almost none of the code written today is worthy of being a real cultural artifact, or even a family heirloom.

It would be fun to simultaneously confuse future archeologists and preserve code in hardcopy for their edification.

I agree it would be fun, and I probably spend too much time worrying about future archeologists, I just think it would be nice if we had some code that was worthy of the honor. Practicality seems to demand that code be functional first and beautiful a very distant second, despite all the talking and blogging to the contrary.

There must be some code worthy of this, though ... isn't there anything open-source-ish known for its beautiful code?

TeX, maybe? Additionally, there would be a certain delight in handwriting an illuminated manuscript of code that is meant for typesetting ... :)

I would say that a Lisp64 implementation could attain that. Elegance of original thought leading to elegance to implementation.

Who's written anything worthy of that treatment?

Almost - not who but _why.

MINIX has already had a fair amount of its code already in print. Then again, it was a teaching tool in the first place so that was by necessity.

If the new version can be The Standard for real time OSes with simplicity and security as priorities, then it could also go in print.

http://www.minix3.org

But Google's will still work. :)

It turns out it's a hell of a job to go through and figure out what to delete. It's far cheaper to just buy more disks and continue expanding the storage system and never delete anything...

Johannes Trithemius(1)

Abbotus of Spondheim Abbey De Laude Scriptorum -`In Praise of Scribes' 1492

Praises why scratching ink on vellum by quill/point, is, among many other things, the better input device over this new Gutenberg press invention(~1436), improving both the entirety of the scrivener, as well as all of civilization.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Trithemius

(1) mnemonic I use, Tri: them-i-us

Favorite:

"St. Patrick of Armagh, deliver me from writing."

These are beautiful, the ancient equivalent of the F-bombs which glitter from within the Linux kernel comments.

All of these would be suitable as tweets. Manuscript margins are to Medieval Monks as Twitter is to Contemporary Socialites.

If you look at the page of the Talmud, it actually resembles an on-line forum, or more precisely some Wiki with discussions around some subject:

http://www.hebrewbooks.org/shas.aspx?mesechta=1&daf=3&format...

It's more of a printed version style, but even hand written editions which predate the printing press had a similar arrangement.

It's probably easier to follow in the Steinsaltz edition (I had been buying it for a while in the English translation as it came out, but it was like waiting for the fourth volume of TAOCP).

Probably depends on what you are used to. One of the best in typography and design was the Slavuta edition, but that printing press was shut down long ago, as known, and the Vilno edition became the widespread one ever since.

This particular scan is from Moznaim. It's a newly typeset edition, but like most today follows the Vilno one.

I was thinking more about reading it than seeing it. Steinsaltz is translated, but retains the traditional layout (and distinct typefaces, as for Rashi), so it can give a taste of what's there in the original. One doesn't have to agree with Steinsaltz to admire the translation effort.

Sure, but if you can read the original, good design still plays a big role.

There are methods of handwriting that allow you to avoid hand cramps. The Palmer method of handwriting, which was popular in America at the turn of the 20th century, emphasized using the whole arm and shoulder to make marks on the page. In order for this method to be effective your wrists must be limp in order for your arms to slide quickly across the page. Instead of consciously "drawing" letters, you build up and use muscle memory to create letters, in the same way you naturally build and use muscle memory when you throw a ball. If you master this method of handwriting, you can write at 60 words per minute, for hours at a time without your hand cramping. Unfortunately, the Palmer Method was abandoned when education reformers in the U.S found it too "difficult", because it requires months of training and practice to become proficient. It also required left-handed students to write with their right hand, because English runs from right to left and this method requires your other hand to manipulate the paper. As a result, generations of Americans have grown up using an inefficient, painful method of writing.

Of course, the manuscript writers needed to draw the letters in a calligraphic style, which necessitated precise wrist motions. So a writing method designed for brisk mark making wouldn't have helped them.

EDIT: I'm not saying that I support forcing left-handed people to write with their right hands. It may be true that the Palmer method (or any right-hand only method) has a history of teachers using corporal punishment to punish mistakes, but corporal punishment is of course not necessary to become proficient.

Eksith, you're right that "drawing" the letters doesn't have anything to do with the speed at which letters are made. The "drawing" comment was made about why many people's cursive handwriting is so poor. When students learn cursive now, too often they are simply copying letters from a book or blackboard ("drawing the letters"), instead of practicing the physical motion. So when students need to write cursive script quickly, they don't have enough time to render each letter correctly and consequently they develop their own methods muscle movements, which usually leads to sloppy handwriting. The same kind of thing can happen when you are taught to type. Correct touch typing teaches you to let your finger return to the home row after pressing a key before you reach for another key. If you aren't taught to do this, you will develop your own muscle movements that are suitable for typing some words, but lead to mistakes in others.

A common error is letting your finger hover near the letter you typed when the same letter is repeated in the word that you are typing. This seems like an "optimization", but it isn't, and causes lots of spelling errors because it can easily mess up your key press timing. Using your own "optimizations" might be able to type as quickly as a touch typist in short stretches, but it is far more likely that you will make more errors.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmer_Method

Try writing with your off hand when your coordination isn't fully developed. Even today, after some practice, my right handed writing is no better than a second grader's. Why put someone through that kind of frustration?

Frankly, left handed writers must be taught differently. http://www.musanim.com/mam/lefthand.htm shows some of the challenges. It's more than just switching a hand.

When I was around 3-4, there was a teacher's assistant at the Montessori school I went to that insisted I write with the right hand. Every time I took the pencil to my left hand, she would grab it from me and stick in in the right hand. I never understood why, until I realized she was trying to get me to start on a variation of the Palmer Method.

Almost 25 years later, I'm still writing with my right hand, but do almost everything else (except cutting with scissors, which was also forced on me) with the left.

The Palmer Method is difficult, pompous, superfluous with motion and overall an unpleasant experience to be imposed on under the best of circumstances.

  > Instead of consciously "drawing" letters, you build up and use muscle memory to create letters

You bloody write letters. No one "creates" letters unless it's on stone or wax tablet and no one "draws" it unless it's calligraphy. That's a ridiculous euphemism for forced muscle memory on a medium that requires no such effort to write clearly, efficiently and without pain.

Yes, I'm angry.

> Yes, I'm angry.

I'm angry that I have carpal tunnel syndrome. Maybe I'd be less angry if I'd been trained to write using the Palmer Method.

Not if you're left handed.

Edit: You have carpal tunnel likely because you're holding the pen/pencil incorrectly and exerting far too much pressure. Drummers have this problem too when they use the tiny muscles in their hand to do the job of the big muscles.

Check if you're holding your writing utensil correctly.

http://eksith.wordpress.com/2013/02/01/holding-a-pen-correct...

As a left handed person in China, I always get stairs when people see me writing with my left hand (like I was an alien?), and I have trouble eating at tightly packed circular tables.

Is it because your stairs won't fit in the table?

(Sorry, couldn't resist).

I don't get it. When everyone is eating at a circular table with little space between elbows, being the only lefty is bound to cause problems.

It was a stupid joke on the fact that he misspelt "stares".

i consciously draw letters.

and my old man was forced to write right handed.. i am not sure what they called the method where the teacher would crack your knuckles with a yard stick if you messed up, but that is how he was taught. most perfect, effortless bloody handwriting of anyone i knew. with either hand.

learning can be painful. not learning might be worse.

Your father was abused into better handwriting and I feel sorry for him. Similar or better results can be achieved with patience, a kind word and a good instructor.

Huge public works projects that served a helpful purpose involved the death of countless workers in the past (I.E. the Panama Canal). We're grateful the end product exists, but who would tolerate a lock or dam that consumes that many lives today?

Just because things "were", doesn't mean they should "still".

ah, i totally agree.. my anecdote was meant in support of your experience.

Coming from a family with a very high percentage of left-handers (about 7 out of 10 on my Mother's side)...I can sympathize. The older ones who went through forced "right handed training" struggle with a host of psychological issues as a result of this forced training (not to mention some physical scars as the use of the "sinful" hand was beat out of them). The long-term effects have never been well studied because when the practice was common, there were social pressures not to and now the practice has mostly stopped.

http://www.jneurosci.org/content/22/7/2816.full.pdf

http://wasioabbasi.wordpress.com/2011/08/08/never-force-left...

http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/7282/is-there-an...

This Palmer Method thing sounded interesting, so I looked into it a bit more, and it doesn't actually look that esoteric, and there are also lefties who can do it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfiC8c-f9wk

> I went to Catholic school in the 50's and learned penmanship by the Palmer Method. I am left handed, and to this day, people still say how beautiful my handwriting is....

But my favorite comment is this one:

> Just the sight of this nearly makes me vomit with nervous revulsion......the Palmer Method, Catholic school.....I started in a catholic school in 1960. I endured 6 years of shear hell on earth. Like Holocaust victims I will never forget.....and I will tell my story to all who will listen....catholic school...slapped in the face by nuns, public ridicule was the nuns trademark, told that my Protestant mother could not enter the gates of heaven,....I still have nightmares 50 years later

Finally, I do think that the idea of writing from your arm, shoulder, and back makes intuitive sense. There is a school of piano playing technique that encourages the same thing, and even good typing technique embraces this. Same for many sports.

Runs from left to right* for non-native Englishers

> Of course, the manuscript writers needed to draw the letters in a calligraphic style, which necessitated precise wrist motions. So a writing method designed for brisk mark making wouldn't have helped them.

I'm hardly an expert, but I took a calligraphy class in college, and the instructor was always getting on our case, telling us "write with your arm, not your wrist/hand"... you weren't supposed to rest your hand on the paper as one typically does when handwriting; rather, you were supposed to use arm/shoulder movements to move your hand, with your wrist kept relatively stiff.

The idea, as I understand it, was that your large arm/shoulder muscles tend to tire much less quickly, and using them makes it much easier to maintain consistent, smooth, controlled movements. Even when fresh, writing with your wrist/fingers tends to be rather different simply due to the highly restricted movement range and the smaller muscles.

You're right. Unfortunately, I can't change my comment because of the editing time limit.

Yeah, the edit time limit is often pretty annoying... [Comment before going to bed and didn't notice that typo that completely changes the meaning until the next morning? Too bad! >< ]

I guess there are reasons for it, but it'd be cool if HN, say, increased the edit time limit by 1 minute per 1 point of karma over 500 or something ...

I imagine these monks would be horrified at the rate that we produce frivolous text today.

We have notes like these scribbled all over our social networks. Some are entertaining, but I wonder how much of our "written" word will be deemed fit to preserve for reasons other than data analysis.

Lots of what they produced can be said to be frivolous too - just produced at a much slower rate.

I guess there's probably lots of various standards for "frivolous", but it's not like they were just firing off quick forum replies.

They might be horrified until they realize that copying a book is as easy as Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V. Then they'd be ecstatic.

But the cost (in human life, if not money) of re-transcription of the text was itself a filter for getting rid of the frivolous.

I have often thought of that - and considered writing a time travel story that included an ancient ending up in a modern grocery store or some such place and be paralyzed while meticulously reading each label (out loud).

One of these days...

Imagine a tool, that can write the biography of any person, simply by going through the truckload of data that we generate.

-- Dating/Relationship stuff from FB status -- Spending habits from credit card data/Mint/Amazon etc -- Professional/Career data from linkedin

etc etc

And so on. Granted, it would be boring for most people. But it is possible to do it. This is fascinating and disgusting, at the same time :(

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

Equally as likely to be uttered by a modern-day graduate student on the Nth draft of his presentation.

Reminds me of Samuel Barber's Hermit Songs (based on anonymous Irish poetry):

http://www.listeningarts.com/music/art_song/sounds_and_texts...

Anybody else see a similarity between that coding? I see git commit messages like those all the time.

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