Coincidence, Convention or Copycat Crime? A Curious Case of the Twelfth Century

One of the worst things that can befall an academic—and I hope it has never happened to our honorand—is to lose the sole copy of one's current research. The result is at best a delay and at worst the abandonment of the project (I have known two cases of the latter). If the loss is the result of theft, our sense of outrage knows no bounds; fortunately, such events are rare. It is remarkable, therefore, to observe two occurrences of the theft of unique copies of work-in-progress within a few years of each other, in the middle of the twelfth century. Neither case, as far as we know, was ever solved—but both had happy endings.