Welcume, loveli folke! Heere is thyn wey to dresse as a ladye reverant and faire. The medieval period was not a monolith, and neither were the people who lived during it. Spanning from the fall of ...

It’s not uncommon for Medieval manuscripts to be bound in animal skins. The hides of deer and goats were used, as were those of boars. But a new analysis of 16 manuscripts held in a French abbey has ...

An international team of archaeologists, bioinformatic specialists, and historians has discovered that many medieval books were bound using seal skin. In their paper published in the journal Royal ...

Science is helping researchers judge books by their covers — and revealing surprising beneficiaries of medieval trading routes in the process. Dozens of rare, fur-covered volumes from 12th and 13th ...

A specimen of Erignathus barbatus. Credit: Ansgar Walk / Wikimedia Commons Left, Romanesque binding from Clairvaux covered with a chemise with hairs on (Médiathèque du Grand Troyes, ms. 35, ca.

In medieval Europe, some handcrafted books were bound with skin from an unexpected source: seals. A new analysis of ancient DNA found in medieval books from European abbeys reveals that these seals ...

Strange “hairy” covers of books in medieval Europe were made from seal skin obtained from Viking descendants, a new study has found. It is rare to find medieval manuscripts in their original bindings, ...