"I'm a pour devil, and my name is Titivillus, I must each day, bring my master a thousand pokes full of failings and negligences in syllables and words." We have all suffered from the mischief of Titivillus, the Typo Monster. For every publication or finished document, there will always be one typographical error and it will remain hidden until well past the chance of correction. Every time it occurs it is like a little scar on our soul, regardless of its merits, we stop seeing the finished product except for the one egregious error, even if it is just a 'thhe' or a 'it's' when an 'its' was required. Thank you Typo Monster, your job is done here. Why not commemorate this life altering experience with the Typo Monster Life Experience Merit Badge? An 1.5" round embroidered patch just like the traditional merit badge. Can be discretely added to your work apron, book bag or fuzzy bathrobe. Titivillus (the Typo Monster) was a demon said to work on behalf of the Devil 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 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. He 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.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." The best modern study of Titivillus is a scholarly one: Margaret Jennings's article "Tutivillus: The Literary Career of the Recording Demon," in Studies in Philology 74, no. 5 (December 1977). These are 1.5" round, SEW ON patches.
