this monk in Deventer, Netherlands around the 1400s left a manuscript he was working on unatennded and open at night; a cat (presumably allowed in the library to scare away rats and mice) pissed on the parchment, making a section of the page unusable…
This can be seen below on the right along with a picture of a cat, and two pointing hands, plus an explanation :laugh_at:
“Hic non defectus est, sed cattus minxit desuper nocte quadam. Confundatur pessimus cattus qui minxit super librum istum in nocte Daventrie, et consimiliter omnes alii propter illum. Et cavendum valde ne permittantur libri aperti per noctem ubi cattie venire possunt.”
[Here is nothing missing, but a cat urinated on this during a certain night. Cursed be the pesty cat that urinated over this book during the night in Deventer and because of it many others [other cats] too. And beware well not to leave open books at night where cats can come.]
I did cheat a bit thought and cut and pasted it (and the translation) from one of the various versions of the original article reblogged worldwide which was published by the Dutch Professor.
Even if I had a higher resolution scan I would have struggled to read it at all as what little Latin I did learn 30 years ago I have largely forgotten (I have to use a cheat sheet even if writing in modern German and that only has half the cases!), plus there are also numerous abbreviations used in these scripts and grammatical variations.
Cattie is an unusual spelling of the plural unless the scribe was maybe directing his curse at both genders of cats (which is zoologically accurate as both males and females will scent mark items).
Scribes in those days were far closer to nature – this is from the medieval equivalent of a selfie by Hilderbert and Everwin, who copied books for in what is currently the Czech republic and had to endure mice robbing their food… Hilderbert is trying to pelt the rodent with a stone and has written in his book
„Pessime mus, saepius me provocas ad iram. Ut te deus perdat“ (Du böse Maus, schon oft hast Du mich zum Zorn gereizt. Gott soll dich verderben).[2].
Most wicked mouse, many times you provoke me to anger. May God cause you to perish!!
(This is why they let the cats in in the first place…)
