An interdisciplinary team of researchers has documented the widespread use of seal skins in Romanesque bookbindings of manuscripts produced between the 12th and 13th centuries in Cistercian monasteries in France, the United Kingdom, and Belgium. The study, led by Élodie Lévêque and published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, combines archaeology, protein analysis, and […]
Manuscripts
Posted inCulture, Middle Ages
Intriguing Details Revealed About the Mysterious Medieval Manuscript Containing the Only Surviving Version of “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”
Two years ago, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) literature professor Arthur Bahr experienced one of the most memorable moments of his academic career. At the British Library, he had the privilege of examining firsthand the Pearl manuscript, a unique medieval volume dating back to the 14th century that preserves the only known copies of four […]
Posted inGeography, Middle Ages
Cosmas Indicopleustes, a Greek traveler and geographer, is the sole known medieval author who believed that the Earth was flat
Syrian Greek merchant Cosmas Indicopleustes, born in the 6th century, penned a controversial work ‘Christian Topography’. He rejected the Greek concept of a spherical earth and provided firsthand descriptions from his travels, including maritime trade and Arabian flora and fauna, influencing Western depictions of the region.
Posted inModern Era
The enigmatic 512 Manuscript describing an ancient Mediterranean civilization in pre-Hispanic Brazil
Like a Lovecraft tale, the Rare Works section of the National Library of Brazil jealously guards a strange ten-page document baptized with the suggestive name of Manuscript 512. It narrates an eighteenth-century expedition during which the ruins of an ancient city were discovered that seemed to have developed a classical civilization in the Mediterranean style. […]
