Tempted By
Titivillus
by Doug Jacquier
In much the
same way as there are Patron Saints (mine is St.
Jude, Hope of the Hopeless), there are also
Patron Demons, with one such being Titivillus,
the source of error making and tempter into
mischief of the mediaeval scribes who produced
copies of the Bible.
Working from
daylight to dusk, often in freezing temperatures,
they were tasked with making immaculate exact
copies and it was inevitable that there would be
the occasional mistake, like the Word of Gob, or
Sadam and Gomorrah, or the Virgin Merry.
Brother Anselm’s
visitations from Titivillus were more likely to
result in lewd scenes hidden in the background of
an illustration of the Wedding at Cana or jokes
scribbled in the margins about the Fish and Chip
Monk.
Occasionally
his devilish handiwork would be discovered by the
humourless Scottish senior scribe (known as the
Ayr Friar) and he would be required to say a
thousand Hail Mary’s backwards without a
mistake, but most slipped through unnoticed in a
world not yet defiled by printers and word
processors.
Until the
fateful day that his monastery was chosen to
present an example of their fine work to the Pope
in Rome and the Bishop travelled many weeks to
deliver the exquisite tome to His Holiness, one
that Brother Anselm had transcribed.
The explosion
could be heard around the Holy Roman Empire when
the Pope discovered that his favorite passage had
been transformed into ‘Yea, though I walk
through the valley of the shadow of death, I will
fear no weevil’.
'Tempted
by Titivillus' was first published by
McQueen's Quinterly. MacQueen’s
Quinterly: Fiction: Doug Jacquier: Tempted by
Titivillus (macqueensquinterly.com)
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