15th century portrait of a scribe, Photo: Jean Le Tavernier, via Atlas Obscura

Two days ago, thieves broke into a chapel in my local parish. They left with a chalice, two candlesticks, and a Bible. When I heard about it, I wondered if the Bible’s publishers still followed the Medieval tradition of protecting books with curses. Which makes perfect sense: as Sarah Laskow of Atlas Obscura points out, creating a book could take years; decades, even. Scribes would bend over copy tables illuminated only by natural light—candles being too big a risk to the books—and spend hours each day forming letters, by hand, careful never to make an error. To be a copyist, wrote one scribe, was painful: “It extinguishes the light from the eyes, it bends the back, it crushes the viscera and the ribs, it brings forth pain to the kidneys, and weariness to the whole body.”

Given…