the Devil
I might as well confess up front that I am in league with the Devil. It’s not a big deal – a stint of social nihilism here, a stretch of marital sabotage there – and I’m afraid it goes with the job. Seek for long enough and you will find that most human pursuits have a patron saint; but, of all the arts in the world, only calligraphy has a patron demon. His name is Titivillus. And he is a malicious little bastard.
Imagine a medieval monastery – somewhere in the high Pyrenees, say, with a great arched gate and tall white stone walls. In one corner of the cloistered courtyard there is a tower. Up the spiral staircase, nearer to the light and away from the damp, is usually to be found a large, round room. This is the scriptorium. And here, seated on stools, bent over their desks, arranged in a horseshoe around the senior supervisor, the armarius, are the monks.
In their right hands they have quills, and in their left they hold their knives. They work in silence and the only sound is their breathing and the continual rasp of their nibs across vellum. Despite their elevation, the light is dim and the older brothers are squinting. But there is no question of burning a fire or even a candle because the safety of the rare and sacred manuscripts is far more important than the monks’ mere earthly comfort.
Every so often, one of the brothers will raise his hand to signal the armarius to bring him additional quills, another pot of ink or some more skins. The knife, a treasured possession, will be used to pin down the undulating page at the point of writing as well as to sharpen the pen (hence pen-knife); but now and then, and with a bite of his lip, a monk will also have to use it to scratch out a mistake.
These mistakes are what Titivillus lives for.
He is a short, low-ranking demon, with a pot belly and a puckered, petulant face. Most of the day, he skulks about the corners of the scriptorium, sometimes sitting on his swag bag, other times scratching at his pointed ears or picking his nose with his stubby fingers, but he is always watching, always alert. Best of all he likes those errata that neither monks nor proof-readers notice and that survive in the new manuscript unchecked, to be reproduced by the next generation of scribes; but slips of the pen so big that the calligrapher must start the entire page again are also welcome – because these set back the Work of God.
Every night, after it has become too dark for the monks to continue and they have left the scriptorium for vespers, Titivillus carefully collects all the mistakes into his sack and drags them down to Hell, there to present them to the Devil so that each sin can be registered in a book – against the name of the monk responsible – to be read out on Judgement Day.
These unsatisfactory (some would say unfair) arrangements continued for more or less a thousand years – until the Renaissance flared across Europe and the calligrapher’s lot began to turn from bad to worse. By the beginning of the fourteenth century, the monks found themselves being forced to work at a furious pace, on and on into the darkness in order to meet the ferocious demand for manuscript copies from the newly founded universities. Before long, sick of the blind rush, the brothers were desperately looking for ways to evade responsibility for the burgeoning number of flaws in their work and so save their ever-more imperilled souls.
Now Titivillus saw his chance.
He offered the holy scribes an eternal bargain: personal absolution from their sins in return for a secret guarantee that the number of mistakes would continue to increase dramatically. As the errors were already out of control, the monks gladly agreed.
Thus Titivillus became the patron demon of calligraphers: he kept their sins hidden and he rescued them from Hell.
Human endeavour, however, was having one of its periodic sprints, and by 1476 William Caxton (who learnt his filthy disgusting ways in Cologne) had set up his printing press in Westminster. All too soon, it looked as though Titivillus’s deal was worthless.
You might have thought that such a development was pretty much the end for the ugly little runt. You might have thought that one of Lucifer’s slicker lieutenants would have called Titivillus in for a personal assessment meeting and explained how, regrettably, some personnel were no longer required. But the Devil never fires his staff; he simply demotes them, drops their wages and forces them to carry on in ever-worsening conditions.
And so believe me, the pot-bellied little son of a bitch is still alive and well in twenty-first-century London, a maestro of distraction, kicking around my attic flat, sulkily intent on fucking things up just for the hell of it, whenever opportunity presents. Unfortunately for him, I don’t take on much biblical work. But what can he do? There aren’t that many calligraphers around these days and he has to take whatever he can get. Nevertheless, an eternal pact cannot be undone: he remains the Devil’s envoy and I remain confederate. Which suits me well. For should I make the occasional mistake, should I slip a little here and there, then absolution is surely only a formality.
Surely.
Some man unworthy to be possessor
Of old or new love, himself being false or weak,
Thought his pain and shame would be lesser,
If on womankind he might his anger wreak,
And thence a law did grow,
One should but one man know;
But are other creatures so?
Are sun, moon, or stars by law forbidden,
To smile where they list, or lend away their light?
Are birds divorced, or are they chidden
If they leave their mate, or lie abroad a-night?
Beasts do no jointures lose
Though they new lovers choose,
But we are made worse than those.
Who e’er rigged fair ship to lie in harbours,
And not to seek new lands, or not to deal withal?
Or built fair houses, set trees, and arbours,
Only to lock up, or else let them fall?
Good is not good, unless
A thousand it possess,
But doth waste with greediness.
Like so many people living through this great time in human history, I am not at all sure what is right and what is wrong. So if I appear a little slow to grasp the moral dimensions of what follows, I’m afraid I will have to ask you to bear with me. Apologies. It’s a difficult age.
Actually, I do not believe I was behaving all that badly when these withering atrocities first began. (And if it would now be helpful for me to admit that mine was a
