
Oh, My Hand: Complaints Medieval Monks Scribbled in the Margins of Manuscripts - pg
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/03/21/monk-complaints-manuscripts/?utm_source=buffer&utm_campaign=Buffer&utm_content=buffer20f97&utm_medium=twitter
======
archon
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.

~~~
Zimahl
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](http://reddwarf.wikia.com/wiki/Seventh_Day_Advent_Hoppists)

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

------
will_brown
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).

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

~~~
will_brown
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

~~~
nether
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.

~~~
will_brown
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".

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

~~~
themstheones
...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.

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

------
sgrove
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."

~~~
pavel_lishin
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

~~~
Apocryphon
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.

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

------
cpeterso
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.

------
devindotcom
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/](http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/)

------
yareally
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.

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

~~~
Apocryphon
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.

~~~
fusiongyro
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.

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

~~~
fusiongyro
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.

~~~
tripzilch
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 ... :)

------
e3pi
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](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Trithemius)

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

------
vectorbunny
Favorite:

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

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

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

~~~
shmerl
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...](http://www.hebrewbooks.org/shas.aspx?mesechta=1&daf=3&format=pdf)

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

~~~
stan_rogers
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).

~~~
shmerl
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.

~~~
stan_rogers
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.

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

------
a_p
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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmer_Method)

~~~
eksith
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.

~~~
nessus42
> 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.

~~~
eksith
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...](http://eksith.wordpress.com/2013/02/01/holding-a-pen-correctly/)

~~~
seanmcdirmid
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.

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

(Sorry, couldn't resist).

~~~
seanmcdirmid
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.

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

------
jtsnow
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.

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

~~~
jordan0day
I guess there's probably lots of various standards for "frivolous", but it's
not like they were just firing off quick forum replies.

------
rickyconnolly
>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.

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

[http://www.listeningarts.com/music/art_song/sounds_and_texts...](http://www.listeningarts.com/music/art_song/sounds_and_texts/BarberTexts.htm)

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

