Titivillus

14th century illustration of Titivillus at a scribe's desk
Titivillus in a detail of Diego de la Cruz's Virgin of Mercy (c. 1485), Burgos, Abbey of Santa María la Real de Las Huelgas.[1][2]
Saint John the Evangelist on Patmos by Hieronymus Bosch, 1505. It is believed that the devil on the lower right corner of the scene, with a human face and an insect body, is Titivillus. It appears Titivillus tries to grab and steal Saint John's ink bottle using a rake-like tool.[3]

Titivillus is a demon said to introduce errors into the work of scribes. The first reference to Titivillus by name occurred in Tractatus de Penitentia, c. 1285, by Johannes Galensis (John of Wales).[a] Attribution has also been given to Caesarius of Heisterbach. Titivillus has also been described as collecting idle chat that occurs during church service, and mispronounced, mumbled or skipped words of the service, to take to Hell to be counted against the offenders.[citation needed]

He has been called the "patron demon of scribes", as Titivillus provides an easy excuse for the errors that are bound to creep into manuscripts as they are copied.[b]

Marc Drogin noted in his instructional manual, Medieval Calligraphy: Its History and Technique (1980), that "for the past half-century every edition of The Oxford English Dictionary has listed an incorrect page reference for, of all things, a footnote on the earliest mention of Titivillus."

Titivillus gained a broader role as a subversive figure of physical comedy, with satirical commentary on human vanities, in late medieval English pageants, such as the Iudicium that finishes the Towneley Cycle.[4] He plays an antagonistic role in the Medieval English play Mankind.

In an anonymous fifteenth-century English devotional treatise, Myroure of Oure Ladye, Titivillus introduced himself thus (I.xx.54): "I am a poure dyuel, and my name ys Tytyvyllus ... I muste eche day ... brynge my master a thousande pokes full of faylynges, and of neglygences in syllables and wordes."

  1. ^ Aragonés Estella, Esperanza (2006). "Visiones de tres diablos medievales". De Arte (5): 15. doi:10.18002/da.v0i5.1543. hdl:10612/1190.
  2. ^ Esquivias, Óscar: "Diabluras", Diario de Burgos, 15 de diciembre de 2014, p. 5.
  3. ^ Tolnay, Charles de. Hieronymus Bosch. Het volledige werk, 1984, pp. 35–36.
  4. ^ The numerous appearances of Titivillus in the Towneley Iudicium are noted in Hicks, James E. (1990). "Majesty and Comedy in the Towneley "Iudicium": The Contribution of Property to Spectacle". Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature. 44 (4): 211–228. doi:10.2307/1346789. JSTOR 1346789.


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