COMMINATORY INSCRIPTIONS IN BOOKS.
(Vol. viii., pp. 64. 153.)
Many inscriptions, comminatory or exhortatory, written in books and directed to readers, have been commemorated in "N. & Q." Towards the beginning of the present century, the most common epigram of the kind in the French public schools was the following elegant motto, with its accompanying illustration:
"Aspice Pierrot pendu,
Quota librum n'a pas rendu!"
Poor Pierrot is exhibited in a state of suspension, as hanging from the inverted letter L (Γ), which symbolises the fatal tree. Comminatory and exhortatory cautions not to soil, spoil, or tear books and MSS. occur so frequently in the records of monastic libraries, that a whole album could easily be filled with them. The coquettish bishop, Venantius Fortunatus, has a distich on the subject. Another learned Goth, Theud-wulf, or Theodulfus, Charlemagne's Missus dominicus,
recommends readers a proper ablution of their hands before turning the consecrated leaves:
"Utere me, lector, mentisque in sede locato;
Cumque librum petis hinc, sit tibi lota manus!"—Saith Library.
Less lenient are the imprecations commemorated by Don Martenne and Wanley. The one inscribed on the blank leaf of a Sacramentary of the ninth century is to the following effect:
"Si quis eum (librum) de monasterio aliquo ingenio non redditurus, abstraxerit, cum Juda proditore, Annâ et Caïphâ, portionem æternæ damnationis accipiat. Amen! Amen! Fiat! fiat!"—Voyage Littéraire, p. 67.
That is fierce and fiery, and in very earnest. A MS. of the Bodleian bears this other inscription, to the same import:
"Liber Sanctæ Mariæ de Ponte Roberti. Qui eum abstulerit aut vendiderit ... aut quamlibet ejus partem absciderit, sit anathema maranatha."
Canisius, in his Antiquæ Lectiones (I. ii. p. 3. 320.), transcribes another comminatory distich, copied from a MS. of the Saint Gall library:
"Auferat hunc librum nullus hinc, omne per ævum,
Cum Gallo partem quisquis habere cupit!"
Such recommendations are now no longer in use, and seem rather excessive. But whoever has witnessed the extreme carelessness, not to say improbity, of some of the readers admitted into the public continental libraries, who scruple not to soil, spoil, and even purloin the most precious and rare volumes, feels easily reconciled to the anathema maranatha of the ninth and tenth centuries.
P.S.—Excuse my French-English.
Philarète Chasles, Mazarinæus.
Paris, Palais de l'Institut.