[Placoderm]

Originally Posted by Nisgeis

I typoed that - meant 'Illuminated'. Speaking of typographical errors, the monks who did the original illuminations had a tough time of it. When the monasteries were established, they made money by selling copies of their charter, partly in the hope to 'educate' the masses and partly in an attempt to fund the monastery. They soon realised that instead of having one monk copy out the whole charter, they could produce more copies and sell more if they had multiple monks copying different pages. They further realised that if instead of selling the first copy they made, they made the copy into a template, they could get a second team of monks copying that template and double their output. To stop any of the templates getting too worn, a rule was passed that once a template had been copied, it should be sold on and the new copy be used as a template for the next copy, with the original placed in the archives for safe keeping.

This was a huge success financially and not only kept the monks occupied, it also provided a steady income for them and was the staple economy of the monastery for over two hundred years. One day, a monk who had been copying templates for many years asked the abbot if he could see the original charter of the monks, so that he might see if style of the document had changed over the many years it had been copied from copies. He was granted permission and went down to the library to look through the archives.

After two days, the monk had not yet come back up from the library and the abbot went down to check on him. He descended the stairs and with candle in hand approached a figure hunched over a desk, weeping. With tears in his eyes, the monk turned to face the abbot and said 'It says CELEBRATE!'.

LOL!!!