This
had me almost in a laughing fit in class today. An amusing reminder that
manuscript pages were not made of paper but lambskin. This is from a letter of
Peter the Venerable, abbot of the monastery of Cluny in France, to the prior of
the Carthusian order, circa AD 1136.
Mittite
et vos nobis si placet maius volumen epistolarum sancti patris Augustini quod
in ipso pene initio continet epistolas eiusdem ad sanctum Ieronimum et sancti
Ieronimi ad ipsum. Nam magmam partem nostrarum in quadam obedientia casu
comedit ursus.
"Send also to us, please, the
larger book of the letters of the holy father Augustine, the one that has near
the front his letters to St Jerome and St Jerome's letters to him. For, in a
certain sort of obedience, a bear ate most of ours."
