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 ...

Researchers investigated 12th- and 13th-century manuscripts from an abbey in France that were clad in furry outer covers. Matthew Collins In medieval Europe, scribes often wrapped their books in a ...

Books with furry covers are indicative of medieval monks’ role in international trade, researchers said. Lévêque, et al (2025) Royal Society Open Science At the end of the ninth century, a group of ...

The Lough Kinale Book Shrine was discovered in an Irish lake in 1986. National Museum of Ireland In the early Middle Ages, Irish monks transported an important collection of texts to continental ...

Newly displayed 1,300-year-old doodles suggest that medieval monastic life wasn’t all about solemn chants and holy scripture. Now on view at the National Museum of Ireland, Kildare Street, the ...

Usually, when people hear the term “illuminated manuscript,” they think of enormous, leather-bound books, produced painstakingly by the hands of medieval European monks, and filled to the brim with ...

The best location for a monastery was one that was close to water and wood. Many monastic chroniclers mention this. Orderic Vitalis, born in England near Shrewsbury in 1075 and sent to the Norman ...

Legend says that a single man completed the largest medieval book ever made in one night, with the help of the devil, to avoid being walled up alive. Modern paleography confirms part of the story and ...