itherto unknown occurrence?
Coming as it does at the close of a sacred book, it was doubtless
written for some important reason.

Among curious examples of the Explicit may be quoted the following:
"It is finished. Let it be finished, and let the writer go out for
a drink." A French monk adds: "Let a pretty girl be given to the
writer for his pains." Ludovico di Cherio, a famous illuminator
of the fifteenth century, has this note at the end of a book upon
which he had long been engaged: "Completed on the vigil of the
nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, on an empty stomach." (Whether
this refers to an imposed penance or fast, or whether Ludovico
considered that the offering of a meek and empty stomach would be
especially acceptable, the reader may determine.)

There is an amusing rhymed Explicit in an early fifteenth century
copy of Froissart:

"I, Raoul Tanquy, who never was drunk
(Or hardly more than judge or monk,)
On fourth of July finished this book,
Then to drink at the Tabouret myself took,
With Pylon and boon companions more
Who tripe with onions and garlic adore."

But if some of the monks complained or made sport of their work,
there were others to whom it was a divine inspiration, and whose
affection for their craft was almost fanatic, an anecdote being
related of one of them, who, when about to die, refused to be parted
from the book upon which he had bestowed much of his life's energy,
and who clutched it in his last agony so that even death should
not take it from him. The good Othlonus of Ratisbon congratulates
himself upon his own ability in a spirit of humility even while
he rejoices in his great skill; he says: "I think proper to add
an account of the great knowledge and capacity for writing which
was given me by the Lord in my childhood. When as yet a little
child, I was sent to school and quickly learned my letters, and
I began long before the time of learning, and without any order
from my master, to learn the art of writing. Undertaking this in a
furtive and unusual manner, and without any teacher, I got a habit
of holding my pen wrongly, nor were any of my teachers afterwards
able to correct me on that point." This very human touch comes down
to us through the ages to prove the continuity of educational
experience! The accounts of his monastic labours put us to the blush
when we think of such activity. "While in the monastery of Tegernsee
in Bavaria I wrote many books.... Be