Researchers have discovered a set of children's doodles in the margins of a medieval manuscript. The discovery sheds new light on the knowledge and education of children in the Middle Ages and their similarities to children of today.
A report recently published in the journal Cogent Arts & Humanities, described the remarkable 14th-century book from a Franciscan convent in Naples, which contains the doodles spotted in the margins. They are the work of mischievous little kids, and very similar to what children do nowadays.
According to Deborah Thorpe, an author of the study, the drawings were discovered by chance while researching an unrelated project. As an expert of the medieval manuscripts from the University of York in Canada, she believes that the drawings depict a human, a cow or horse and some kind of demon or devil.
“I was looking through a database of medieval manuscripts online and I found images of these beautiful doodles in the margins and to me they looked like they were done by children. I thought ‘this is really interesting, has anyone written anything about this?’' she said in a statement.
A child’s drawing of a person found in the manuscript. LJS 361, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania Libraries folio 23r.