A trove of books written by medieval-era French monks were bound with bizarre “hairy” covers from far-away animals — shedding ...

The material on the covers of books from a French abbey was too hairy to have come from calves or other local mammals.

French monks used animal skins to bind and cover their books. One group of books covers didn't look at all like the others.

Medieval codices were written on pieces of parchment made of animal skin, that were bound together ... But there is no obvious correlation between the actual contents of the books and the use of ...

A study of 16 Medieval manuscripts in Clairvaux Abbey in France found they were bound in a surprising material: sealskin.

An international team of archaeologists, bioinformatic specialists, and historians has discovered that many medieval books ...

Historians were surprised when analyses revealed Catholic monks used pinniped hides for the protective outer layer on some manuscripts, rather than skins from the local boars and deer ...

The books hail from Clairvaux Abbey, founded in 1115 by Cistercian monks in northern France, and its daughter monasteries. Some tomes are nearly 900 years old. Researchers had thought they were ...

The monks curated a vast manuscript and book collection at the Library of Clairvaux Abbey, a site in Champagne, France, founded in 1115. The group of 12th- and 13th-century works expanded to more than ...

Strange “hairy” covers of books in medieval Europe were made from seal ... might have contributed to a detachment from the animal’s true identity, making it difficult for contemporaries ...

Now after years of painstaking collaborative work with the university’s Cultural Heritage Imaging Laboratory (CHIL), ...