See the library reading list for this module (Canterbury) Learning outcomes Death, Art, and Memory in Medieval England (Oxford, 2001) Horrox, Rosemary (1994): The Black Death (Manchester, 1994) The Cult of the Saints (Chicago, 1982)Ĭamille, Michael (1992). Medieval Death: Ritual and Representation (London, 1996)īrown, Peter (1982). Reassessment Instrument: 100% coursework Indicative readingīinski, Paul (2004). Total study hours: 300 Method of assessment Together, we will examine these sources from different disciplinary perspectives in attempt to determine how the study of medieval death and contemporary anxieties about the afterlife can inform us about how people lived in the Middle Ages. Our primary sources will be set within the context of literary, visual, documentary and liturgical evidence. It will begin by examining how ideas about death and the dead were expressed in works of art from Late Antiquity until the arrival of the Black Death in 1348. The work that Stinson will be presenting was funded by grants from the Digital Research and Curation Center at Johns Hopkins University and the Council on Library and Information Resources.This module explores the place of death within medieval European culture, focusing especially on the visual and material evidence of relics, tombs, architecture, wall paintings, and illuminated manuscripts. Stinson is one of three researchers asked to participate in the society's New Scholars Program for 2009. Stinson will be presenting the findings of his early research in this area at the annual meeting of the Bibliographical Society of America in New York City on Jan. On a larger scale, Stinson says, this research 'will also allow us to trace the trade route of parchments' throughout the medieval world – a scholarly achievement that would provide a wealth of data on the evolution of the book industry during the Middle Ages.

Stinson hopes this DNA comparison will enable him to identify genetic similarities that would indicate the general time and locale where a book was written. Stinson can then determine what degree of relationship there is between the animals whose skins were used in manuscripts of unknown origin and those used in the baseline manuscripts. Once Stinson has created a baseline of DNA markers with known dates and localities, he can take samples from manuscripts of unknown origin. Each manuscript can provide a wealth of genetic data, Stinson explains, because a typical medieval parchment book includes the skins of more than 100 animals. Stinson says genetic testing could resolve these issues by creating a baseline using the DNA of parchment found in the relatively small number of manuscripts that can be reliably dated and localized. 'Dating and localizing manuscripts have historically presented persistent problems,' Stinson says, 'because they have largely been based on the handwriting and dialect of the scribes who created the manuscripts – techniques that have proven unreliable for a number of reasons.'

Many medieval manuscripts were written on parchment made from animal skin, and NC State Assistant Professor of English Timothy Stinson is working to perfect techniques for extracting and analyzing the DNA contained in these skins with the long-term goal of creating a genetic database that can be used to determine when and where a manuscript was written.

Black death medieval manuscripts