Biomolecular analysis shows that unusual book coverings are made of sealskin, hinting at far-flung trade networks.

Sitting in the British Library, he was allowed to page through the Pearl-Manuscript, a singular bound volume from the 1300s containing the earliest versions of the masterly medieval poem "Pearl ...

Although his secret alphabet hasn't survived ... this period (but none from the Voynich manuscript). The longest was a 21-line cipher from late-medieval northern Italy that obscured a recipe ...