Medieval Monks Used Surprising Material as Book Covers
- Editor OGN Daily
- 7 hours ago
- 1 min read
Analysis from volumes kept in a Cistercian monastery in France reveal an extensive medieval trade network that went well beyond local sourcing.
‘Hairy” medieval book covers previously thought to be made from deer or boar skin are in fact made of sealskin, researchers have found. This was “surprising” to researchers because of the monastery's inland location in north east France. The protective covers of the 12th- and 13th-century tomes from the Cistercian monastery, Clairvaux Abbey, were actually made using seals believed to be from Scandinavia, Scotland and potentially Iceland or Greenland, hinting at extensive medieval trade networks.
“I was like, ‘that’s not possible. There must be a mistake,’” said Élodie Lévêque, of Panthéon-Sorbonne University in Paris, on finding out that the samples had come back from testing as sealskin. “I sent it again, and it of course came back as sealskin again.”
“Contrary to the prevailing assumption that books were crafted from locally sourced materials, it appears that the Cistercians were deeply embedded in a global trading network,” researchers revealed in their study published in Royal Society Open Science.
The findings support the “notion of a robust medieval trade network that went well beyond local sourcing, linking the Cistercians to wider economic circuits that included fur trade with the Norse.”