Animal skins used to make historic manuscripts have revealed the 3,500-year history of the sheep pox virus (SPPV). By recovering viral DNA from parchment, researchers traced the pathogen across Bronze ...

A new analysis of teeth and parchment suggests that the devastating sheep pox virus has been infecting livestock for 3,700 years ...

Holy manuscripts preserved the genome of a plague that wiped out up to 90% of Europe’s historical sheep herds.

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 ...

As a specialist in medieval French literature, Henry Ravenhall has examined hundreds of manuscripts from the Middle Ages. Every time he does, he sits quietly in a special library viewing room and ...

Call it the Villon epiphany. François Villon was a 15th-century French poet. His work has been passed down in many hand-scribed manuscripts, but none of them are originals in the author's hand. On an ...

From tattoos to video games to Game of Thrones, medieval iconography has long inspired fascination, imitation and veneration. Now, thousands of original medieval manuscript and early modern images are ...

While nowadays you might have some chicken soup to fight a cold, a new project unearthing manuscripts up to 1,000 years old reveals the bizarre medical remedies recommended by those in the medieval ...

Designing English: Graphics on the Medieval Page at the University of Oxford’s Bodleian Libraries examines the how the creation of early English books, from their hand-written language to the bindings ...

Ancient manuscripts have proven to be biological time capsules for uncovering the 3500-year history of the sheeppox virus.

Cats had a bad reputation in the middle ages. Their presumed links with paganism and witchcraft meant they were often treated with suspicion. But despite their association with the supernatural, ...

Yearning princesses locked away in castles, heroic knights, hawkish Vikings — fragments of medieval European stories have permeated nearly every aspect of contemporary culture, from Taylor Swift songs ...