Medieval Copy Protection

An anonymous reader writes "In medieval times a 'book curse' was often included on the inside cover or on the last leaf of a manuscripts, warning away anyone who might do the book some harm. Here's a particularly pretty one from Yale's Beinecke MS 214: 'In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen. In the one thousand two hundred twenty-ninth year from the incarnation of our Lord, Peter, of all monks the least significant, gave this book to the [Benedictine monastery of the] most blessed martyr, St. Quentin. If anyone should steal it, let him know that on the Day of Judgment the most sainted martyr himself will be the accuser against him before the face of our Lord Jesus Christ.'"

Comments

Famously....

[mattdm]

The Book of Revelation ends like this:

[18] For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: [19] And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book. [20] He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.

Not copy-protection, but an "invariant section" definition as in the GFDL. The translation is medieval, but the original and therefore clearly the practice is much older. Since there was no government-provided copyright law with which to enforce this, threatening eternal damnation is pretty much the only resort available. (Right?)

(Sidenote: of course, this was written before that book was commonly bound into a single-volume manuscript, but that doesn't stop people from assuming that they were meant to apply to the entire bible in its current form.)

Up your Colophon

[sgarrigan]

Medieval scribes wrote book curses in the "colophon" at the end of the book; here are two favorites:

Whoever steals this book let him die the death; let him be frizzled in a pan; may the falling sickness rage within him; may he be broken on the wheel and be hanged.

For him that stealeth, or borroweth and returneth not, ... 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, & let there be no surcease until he sing in dissolution. Let bookworms gnaw his entrails. ... Let the flames of Hell consume him forever.
— San Pedro monastery, Barcelona

... and one a bit older (from Asurbanipal's library in Assyria 650 BCE):

Clay tablet of Ashurbanipal, King of the World, King of Assyria, who trusts in Ashur and Ninlil. Your lordship is without equal, Ashur, King of the Gods! Whoever removes [this tablet], writes his name in place of my name, may Ashur and Ninlil, angered and grim, cast him down, erase his name, his seed, in the land.