Charts & Graphs

Marginalized

Notes in manuscripts and colophons made by medieval scribes and copyists.

  • ~ New parchment, bad ink; I say nothing more.
  • ~ I am very cold.
  • ~ That’s a hard page and a weary work to read it.
  • ~ Let the reader’s voice honor the writer’s pen.
  • ~ This page has not been written very slowly.
  • ~ The parchment is hairy.
  • ~ The ink is thin.
  • ~ Thank God, it will soon be dark.
  • ~ Oh, my hand.
  • ~ Now I’ve written the whole thing: for Christ’s sake give me a drink.
  • ~ Writing is excessive drudgery. It crooks your back, it dims your sight, it twists your stomach and your sides.
  • ~ St. Patrick of Armagh, deliver me from writing.
  • ~ While I wrote I froze, and what I could not write by the beams of the sun I finished by candlelight.
  • ~ As the harbor is welcome to the sailor, so is the last line to the scribe.
  • ~ This is sad! O little book! A day will come in truth when someone over your page will say, “The hand that wrote it is no more.”