Want to Protect Your Library? How About a Few Medieval Curses?

from Sarah Laskow, Atlas Obscura
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IN THE MIDDLE AGES, CREATING a book could take years. A scribe would bend over his copy table, illuminated only by natural light-- candles were 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 the extreme effort that went into creating books, scribes and book owners had a real incentive to protect their work. They used the only power they had: words. At the beginning or the end of books, scribes and book owners would write dramatic curses threatening thieves with pain and suffering if they were to steal or damage these treasures.
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The entire post can be read here.