WEST CHESTER, Pa.–If you’re STD (sick to death) of people who splatter their “writing” with SFS (stupid fucking shorthand), you can thank Saint Cassian of Imola, the OPS (official patron saint) of shorthand.
Cassian, who lived in the fourth century CE (common era), was a schoolmaster at Imola in north-central Italy. He also moonlighted as the Bishop of Brescia, ICYDK, which sure beat moonlighting at the local donkey wash.
When Cassian was asked to offer a sacrifice to the Roman gods, he refused. The emperor, Julian the Apostate, was not ROFL. He was more like WTF, and he ordered Cassian to be put to death ASAP.
Apparently the Christian-eating lions were OTL that day, so Julian gave the job to Cassian’s students, who gratefully accepted FTW because Cassian was something of an MOP (mean old prick), who forced them to memorize SLF (shitloads full) of Latin shorthand such as ETB (Et tu, Brute?) and STGM (Sic Transit Gloria Mundi).
The students bound Cassian to a stake and OMG! tortured him to death by stabbing him with their pointed iron styli, the devices they used to mark wooden or wax writing tablets. At first Cassian laughed at their efforts. “AYDY, you SNERT?” he asked, but then one student stabbed him in the eye and it was GO (game over) for Cassian. (IMHO the local monks’ choir was chanting “Another Brick in the Wall” while all this was going down.)
FYI: There are at least two references in modern literature to St. Cassian, ISYN (I shit you not). In A Confederacy of Dunces, Ignatius Reilly informs one of his professors that “St. Cassian of Imola was stabbed to death by his students with their styli.” In The Living, Bethel College had a Cassianus Lounge in the faculty offices area. TAFNF (that’s all for now, folks).
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