To “doodle” means to draw or scrawl aimlessly, and the history of the word goes back to the early 20th century. Scribbling haphazard words, squiggly lines and mini-drawings, however, is a much older ...

For centuries, the image of a monk hunched over a desk, painstakingly copying manuscripts by candlelight, has dominated our perception of scholarship in the Middle Ages. But what about the women? A ...

My personal favorite is this. At the top of a page of angular medieval text – full of theological extrapolations and religious devotion – is a cartoon of a deadpan dog. “It’s amazing to think that ...

A team at the University of Bergen in Norway have determined that a minimum of 1.1% of medieval manuscripts from around 800 to 1626 CE were copied by female scribes, with a probable total exceeding ...

A medieval composite pen made out of animal bone and a copper alloy was found in an 11th-century settlement in Ireland. The tool's secular setting is a rare find, as literacy in Ireland was generally ...