It is interesting in how your personal habits and choices change over time. For the longest time, decades in fact, I never had more than one book on the go at the same time. I found that constricting, so I allowed myself two books, a novel and something else. Never two novels at the same time, still one of my rules. And most of my reading is done when I retire to the bed chamber late into the evening. I prop myself up with a couple of pillows, put a cushion on my lap and plunk the first book down and start to read. And sometimes I have a snack, last night it was a sliced-up Honeycrisp apple with some cheddar cheese. About ten years ago, I moved from two books to three. And two years ago, I graduated from three books to four – I do have a lot of books to get through. While the batting order changes, most often it is – novel, history, book culture, and art book. My analogy is – hors-d’oeuvres, appetizer, main course and dessert.
My current book culture item:
The Library: An Illustrated History; by Stuart A. P. Murray, introduction by Donald G. Davis, Jr.; foreword by Nicholas A. Basbanes; Skyhorse Publishing, New York, 2012.
From the blurb – This volume speaks to the book lover in all of us while offering a panoramic
view of the history of libraries across the centuries. I am about half way through and it is a terrific book – a very bright and educated author who knows how to write.
A short while ago, in the Chapter European Libraries of the Middle Ages, the author brought up the problem of book thefts. This led to a discussion on “chained libraries’ and then to the subject of “book curses”. Here is what he had to say:
Book curses are as old as writing or at least as old as libraries. For all the reputed propriety and patience required of their calling, librarians have historically wished the worst of punishments on book thieves, as if they were no better than murderers or blasphemers. Ancient librarians called down the wrath of the gods of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome upon thieves and vandals.
One ancient curse warned of the direst consequences if patrons even dared lend a borrowed book to someone else:
He who entrusts this book to others’ hands, may all the gods who are found in Babylon curse him!
One drastic, and still popular, curse invoked to protect an entire Spanish library warned:
Him that stealeth, or borroweth and returneth not, this book from its owner, let it
change into a serpent in his hand and rend him. Let him be struck with palsy, and
all his members blasted. Let him languish in pain crying out for mercy, and let
there be no surcease to his agony till he sing in dissolution, let bookworms gnaw
his entrails and let the flames of Hell consume him forever.
Other, more standard curses called for the perpetrator to be “frizzled in the pan”, “broken
on the wheel”, or, somewhat more mercifully, just hanged. And many a witty book curse
was in rhyme:
Steal not this book my honest friend
For fear the gallows should be your end
And when you die the Lord will say
And where’s the book you stole away?
When I finished reading this, I said to myself, we have a book in our library that has a great
curse in it. And this is when I thought book curses would make a fine musing topic.
The Geography of Witchcraft; by Montague Summers; Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. Ltd., London, 1927
Augustus Montague Summers (1880 – 1948) was an English author, clergyman, and teacher.
He was employed as a teacher of English and Latin while independently pursuing scholarly
work on the English drama of the 17th century. The latter earned him election to the Royal
Society of Literature in 1916.
Noted for his eccentric personality and interests, Summers became a well-known figure in London society as a result of the publication of his History of Witchcraft and Demonology in 1926. That work was followed by other studies on witchcraft, vampires, and werewolves, in all of which he professed to believe. Summers also produced a modern English translation, published in 1929, of the 15th-century witch hunter's manual, the Malleus Maleficarum.
This book has a full-page letter from Summers, pasted just inside the front cover.
The letter accompanied the book as it was forwarded to The New York Public Library. In the
letter he thanks the library for forwarding a copy of G. F. Black’s “Bibliography of Lycanthropy”.
Certainly, a book of interest to Montague Summers.
George Fraser Black (1865 – 1948) was a Scottish-born American librarian, historian and
linguist. He worked at the New York Public Library for more than three decades, and he was the author of several books about Scottish culture and anthroponymy, Romani people and witchcraft.
Black collected books about witchcraft, some of which were later acquired by Fairleigh Dickinson University, followed by Drew University. Among them is a copy of Malleus Maleficarum, co-authored by Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger.
He obviously collected books that were destined for the New York Public Library, as you can see from his rather unusual bookplate, pasted inside Summer’s book:
And he has the audacity to put a curse in Latin upon anyone who may purloin his book. To the gallows!!
A translation of the Latin curse:
If anyone steals (this book) he will be hanged by the neck in this manner.
Here is some of what Wikipedia has to say about book curses:
“A book curse was a widely employed method of discouraging the theft of manuscripts during the medieval period in Europe. The use of book curses dates back much further, to pre-Christian times, when the wrath of gods was invoked to protect books and scrolls.
Usually invoking threat of excommunication, or anathema, the more creative and dramatic detail the better. Generally located in the first or last page of a volume as part of the colophon, these curses were often considered the only defense in protection of highly coveted books and manuscripts. This was notably a time in which people believed in curses, which was critical to its effect, thus believing that, if a person stole or ripped out a page, they were destined to die an agonizing death. With the introduction of the printing press, these curses instead became bookplates which enabled users to declare ownership through a combination of visual, verbal, and textual resources. For the first time, warning, threatening, and cursing had become multimodal.”
Here are some of the curses that I found on the internet:
Whoever removes [the tablet], writes his name in the place of my name, may Ashur
and Ninlil, angered and grim, cast him down, erase his name, his seed, in the land.
Death from evil things: may the thief of this book die.
If this book you steal away,
What will you say
On Judgment Day?
This book belongs to none but me
For there’s my name inside to see.
To steal this book, if you should try,
It’s by the throat you’ll hang high.
And ravens then will gather ’bout
To find your eyes and pull them out.
And when you’re screaming “oh, oh, oh!”
Remember, you deserved this woe.
Whoever steals this Book of Prayer
May he be ripped apart by swine,
His heart be splintered, this I swear,
And his body dragged along the Rhine.