All in all, then, a well-thought out farewell to a no-doubt exemplary life. And the choice of a secure crevice to hide it in, rather than just leaving it to blow about on the mountainside, ensures that it’s not found until ‘longa ’ is appropriate. And if he’d simply climbed the mountain, hidden the note, then gone home to the nunnery or wherever he lived, ‘vita brevis ’ would have been nonsensical. Likewise, of course, if the doleful memo had been discovered the following morning, ‘longa ’ would not have been apposite. An ordinary hand-written message would not have been ‘ars ’, so his Latin text would have been irrelevant. Illuminated lettering – such as we find in masterpieces such as The Book of Kells – was not normally used for personal communication, but in this instance the author had no choice.
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