TITIVILLUS TALES

My name is Titivillus and I am a poor little devil. My daily task is to sit on the shoulders of scribes and copyists and induce them to make mistakes. Every evening I have to take a whole sack of such scrip to Lucifer for his approval. Here are some of my successes, achievements which have made me a popular little devil, especially with historians!

Many historians have told us what supermen the Normans were. They deserved to win.

How do we measure their cleverness?

  1. With only a handful of soldiers they could beat everyone
  2. They never got wounded or sick, never died in battle
  3. They drank wine, not beer
  4. They spoke French not English
  5. They alone knew how to build castles
  6. They surveyed the whole of England in six months. (That’s how long the Domesday surveys took!)
  7. They were always loyal to their King, because they were “feudal”
  8. They had short hair and no beards
  9. Their clerics could measure and also write Latin
    • They always told the truth
      • Is any of this likely to be the truth?

Of course it’s all rubbish, but as long as we teach schoolchildren such “facts” they will believe in “master races” and in supermen and that makes it easier to invent history. So I sit on a shoulder, unseen and whisper “remember the good old feudal system, lots of peasants and a few clever people controlling them”. Remember that superior people have short hair, no beards and drink wine. Remember, if you are a Norman-type you need not fear to make war or to exploit others using violence. The end will justify the means.

This is just the sort of moral and social advice we love to hear in Hell, we don’t want human-beings to live together in peace, to co-operate or to think. Thanks to “history” the world is falling apart rather nicely at present, so I can say that I have played my part in the great work of destruction.

My master was very pleased with me for seducing the monks and then, centuries later, doing the same for historians. Now he is very, very pleased with this contribution to the rubbishing of the English army under Harold and the message to posterity that “might is right” and that force and bloodshed are agents of “progress”. Even better the glorification of this victory and the cupiditas promoted by the interpretation itself continues to work mischief. I now have an entry of merit in the journal “Lucifer’s Witness”. Who’s a clever little devil then?

“Never, never let us doubt what nobody is sure about”. Besides it cost a lot of money to build the interpretation centre for the battle at Battle in the wrong place and we wouldn’t want to admit the mistake.

We call this “the Battle of Hastings” though it wasn’t fought at Hastings, was it?

Never let the truth stand in the way of a good story (it’s much too dangerous)

But then, the “Normans” didn’t land at Hastings either, did they? The only reliable sources say they landed at Pevensey.

Pevensey was a harbour, how else could they have unloaded their horses?

Why did the battle at Battle take so long to win? It should all have been over in an hour or so.

Only if it had taken place in the wrong place, the place they claim today. Don’t you just love the idea that a lot of monks wanted to build their monastery on the spot where thousands had been maimed and slaughtered – his Satanic Excellence loves this perversion of the (cursed) Faith. Pat on the back for me! (Ouch, that hurt)

As Albert Camus said, “again and again there comes a time in history when the man who dares to say that two and two make four is punished with death”.

Two and two making four is the enemy of the art of politics and “history” is a cornerstone of this art.

The antithesis of deceit and deception is ‘Occam’s Razor’ and, as Peter Oborne has shown, the “political class” rely on “history” to maintain their grasp on power, so Occam’s Razor is out of favour with some medieval historians. I, Titivillus, am sitting on their shoulders, whispering into their ears; “Make sure that you preach only that which is acceptable to your masters” !

I, Titivillus, am sitting on their shoulders, whispering into their ears; “Make sure that you preach only that which is acceptable to your masters” !

And so my contribution to the great work goes forwards, little by little, millions of mistakes and untruths and speculations, to my Master’s great delight, centuries of minute work by me, little Titivillus. “The inevitability of gradualness” – say it often enough and it becomes “the truth”; deny and discard any real evidence and then what is truth becomes heresy!

Historians lay the foundations for politicians and politicians never tell the truth. I, Titivillus, am the one who “guides” such deceptive academic studies. Politicians reward themselves, that is their aim, so they then cast favours to historians, as rewards, and I am rewarded by my Master!