Medieval manuscripts have preserved much more than the words written on their pages. Scientists examining the animal skins used to make books such as the 1,000-year-old York Gospels have discovered DNA from sheeppox, revealing that the devastating livestock disease was circulating across medieval Europe.
The findings come from an international study led by University College Dublin that reconstructed more than 3,500 years of the evolution of sheeppox virus, or SPPV. By analysing ancient DNA preserved in parchment and archaeological animal remains, researchers were able to trace the disease from Bronze Age pastoral communities in Eurasia through the Middle Ages and into the modern era.
āThe recording of ancient DNA of pathogens has completely changed our understanding of infectious disease in the past, and here we show that parchment can also preserve animal pathogen DNA,ā said Louis LāHĆ“te, PhD candidate at UCD and lead author of the study. āIt is possible that archives and libraries around the world also contain the genetic traces of disease outbreaks in animals in the past. These genomes help us understand how these pathogens evolved and how they impacted past societies – such as sheeppox virus, which we show has been affecting Eurasian sheep herds for at least three and a half millennia.ā
Disease hidden inside medieval manuscripts
Cambridge, Trinity College, MS B.10.5, fol. 62v, the Epistles of St Paul, Ireland/Northumbria, 700ā800 CE. Reproduced with kind permission of the Master and Fellows of Trinity College Cambridge
Parchment was normally produced from the skins of animals such as sheep, goats and cattle. That means every page can potentially preserve biological information about the animal from which it was made, including traces of disease.
The researchers detected sheeppox virus in parchment and paper manuscripts from Britain, France, Austria and the Upper Rhine region. The parchment examples dated from the early eighth century through the fourteenth century.
Among the most important was the York Gospels, probably produced at Canterbury around 990ā1020. Three folios tested positive for sheeppox virus DNA: two from the original manuscript and another from a later medieval document that had been added to the volume.
The researchers also detected the virus in the Corpus Glossary, made around AD 800 and regarded as one of the earliest English dictionaries, as well as in a copy of the Epistles of St Paul dating to around AD 700. Four positive folios were also found in a Speculum historiale manuscript associated with the controversial Vinland Map.
Detail from Cambridge, Trinity College, MS B.10.5, fol. 62v, the Epistles of St Paul, Ireland/Northumbria, 700ā800 CE. Reproduced with kind permission of the Master and Fellows of Trinity College Cambridge
The study, which is published in Science Advances, describes this as the first known recovery of pathogen genomes from medieval parchment and paper, raising the possibility that surviving books and documents could become important sources for studying the history of animal disease.
āParchment making has been considered a vanishing craft, but we are beginning to understand just how much of the past it has retained,ā said Dr Kevin G. Daly, Associate Professor at UCD School of Agriculture and Food Science and the studyās supervising author. āThis project shows that parchments not only preserve our cultural history for hundreds of years, but also the landscape of disease in our livestock in the medieval period. This kind of exciting, surprising discovery is only possible when researchers from a range of disciplines come together to share their expertise and data – a generosity and trust that collaborative science depends on.ā
A disease medieval farmers already knew
Sheep and shepherds in a pen – British Library MS Additional 42130 f.163v
Sheeppox is a highly contagious viral disease that can spread rapidly through a flock. It can sharply reduce wool, meat and milk production and can be fatal, particularly among young animals.
Written evidence suggests medieval people were familiar with diseases that closely resemble sheeppox. Agricultural treatises and accounting documents from England, France and Spain increasingly refer to deadly outbreaks described as āpockesā or āvariolaā in sheep from the thirteenth through sixteenth centuries.
The genetic evidence now pushes the history of the disease in medieval Europe considerably further back. The study found a notable concentration of positive samples dating from around AD 700 to 1450, the same broad period in which many of the manuscripts analysed were produced.
Researchers suggest that sheeppox may therefore have been a recurring problem for medieval European livestock owners. The study notes that the particularly high number of medieval genomes associated with animal-skin documents suggests infection among sheep was a frequent challenge for European societies.
There is another puzzle in the findings. Of the positive parchment samples, ten were identified as calfskin, four as goatskin and only three as sheepskin. That could indicate rare cross-species infections, but researchers also suggest the virus may have been transferred during parchment manufacture. Skins were commonly soaked in water-and-lime baths, creating opportunities for biological material from one animal to contaminate another. The virus can also survive outside the body for extended periods, particularly in shed scabs.
Interestingly, the parchment pages carrying sheeppox DNA generally show no visible signs of lesions. Medieval parchment makers may have avoided visibly affected parts of an animalās skin, or the scraping process used to prepare parchment may simply have removed physical evidence of infection.
A 3,700-year history
The medieval manuscripts form only part of a much longer story. The earliest genetic traces of sheeppox identified by the study came from sheep teeth recovered at Late Bronze Age settlements in Kazakhstan and Russia. One specimen from Myrzhik in Kazakhstan dates to roughly 1875ā1645 BC, while another from Rublevo-VI in Russia dates to about 1336ā1130 BC.
These settlements depended heavily on livestock, particularly sheep raised for meat and fibre, meaning outbreaks of disease could have had serious consequences for both food supplies and wider economic activity.
By comparing ancient and modern genomes, the researchers estimate that major capripoxvirus lineages, which include sheeppox, goatpox and lumpy skin disease virus, diverged thousands of years ago, broadly during the period in which domesticated livestock populations were expanding and moving across Eurasia.
Despite this long history, the study found that the sheeppox genome itself remained relatively stable over the last several millennia.
āPeople around the world are still fighting against this pathogen – there is currently an outbreak of sheeppox in Greece, causing much economic damage,ā said Louis LāHĆ“te. āAncient genomes can help us understand how these pathogens affecting us today evolved. We find that unlike the smallpox virus, the sheeppox virus genome was very stable over the last few millennia.ā
Extremely happy to share our new study on Sheeppox virus (SPPV) !
We notably found many genomes in Medieval parchmentsš¦ š
A short thread about it :
share.google/JqVOTB2lvxcO…
The researchers argue that the findings demonstrate the potential of manuscripts to preserve an unexpected biological record alongside their written contents. Medieval parchment, long studied for its texts, decoration and craftsmanship, may also contain evidence of the diseases that affected the animals, farms and economies behind its production.
Top Image: The York Gospels, fols. 22vā23r, showing St Matthew and the opening of his Gospel. DNA analysis of the manuscript’s parchment has revealed traces of sheeppox virus.
Medieval manuscripts have preserved much more than the words written on their pages. Scientists examining the animal skins used to make books such as the 1,000-year-old York Gospels have discovered DNA from sheeppox, revealing that the devastating livestock disease was circulating across medieval Europe.
The findings come from an international study led by University College Dublin that reconstructed more than 3,500 years of the evolution of sheeppox virus, or SPPV. By analysing ancient DNA preserved in parchment and archaeological animal remains, researchers were able to trace the disease from Bronze Age pastoral communities in Eurasia through the Middle Ages and into the modern era.
āThe recording of ancient DNA of pathogens has completely changed our understanding of infectious disease in the past, and here we show that parchment can also preserve animal pathogen DNA,ā said Louis LāHĆ“te, PhD candidate at UCD and lead author of the study. āIt is possible that archives and libraries around the world also contain the genetic traces of disease outbreaks in animals in the past. These genomes help us understand how these pathogens evolved and how they impacted past societies – such as sheeppox virus, which we show has been affecting Eurasian sheep herds for at least three and a half millennia.ā
Disease hidden inside medieval manuscripts
Parchment was normally produced from the skins of animals such as sheep, goats and cattle. That means every page can potentially preserve biological information about the animal from which it was made, including traces of disease.
The researchers detected sheeppox virus in parchment and paper manuscripts from Britain, France, Austria and the Upper Rhine region. The parchment examples dated from the early eighth century through the fourteenth century.
Among the most important was the York Gospels, probably produced at Canterbury around 990ā1020. Three folios tested positive for sheeppox virus DNA: two from the original manuscript and another from a later medieval document that had been added to the volume.
The researchers also detected the virus in the Corpus Glossary, made around AD 800 and regarded as one of the earliest English dictionaries, as well as in a copy of the Epistles of St Paul dating to around AD 700. Four positive folios were also found in a Speculum historiale manuscript associated with the controversial Vinland Map.
The study, which is published in Science Advances, describes this as the first known recovery of pathogen genomes from medieval parchment and paper, raising the possibility that surviving books and documents could become important sources for studying the history of animal disease.
āParchment making has been considered a vanishing craft, but we are beginning to understand just how much of the past it has retained,ā said Dr Kevin G. Daly, Associate Professor at UCD School of Agriculture and Food Science and the studyās supervising author. āThis project shows that parchments not only preserve our cultural history for hundreds of years, but also the landscape of disease in our livestock in the medieval period. This kind of exciting, surprising discovery is only possible when researchers from a range of disciplines come together to share their expertise and data – a generosity and trust that collaborative science depends on.ā
A disease medieval farmers already knew
Sheeppox is a highly contagious viral disease that can spread rapidly through a flock. It can sharply reduce wool, meat and milk production and can be fatal, particularly among young animals.
Written evidence suggests medieval people were familiar with diseases that closely resemble sheeppox. Agricultural treatises and accounting documents from England, France and Spain increasingly refer to deadly outbreaks described as āpockesā or āvariolaā in sheep from the thirteenth through sixteenth centuries.
The genetic evidence now pushes the history of the disease in medieval Europe considerably further back. The study found a notable concentration of positive samples dating from around AD 700 to 1450, the same broad period in which many of the manuscripts analysed were produced.
Researchers suggest that sheeppox may therefore have been a recurring problem for medieval European livestock owners. The study notes that the particularly high number of medieval genomes associated with animal-skin documents suggests infection among sheep was a frequent challenge for European societies.
There is another puzzle in the findings. Of the positive parchment samples, ten were identified as calfskin, four as goatskin and only three as sheepskin. That could indicate rare cross-species infections, but researchers also suggest the virus may have been transferred during parchment manufacture. Skins were commonly soaked in water-and-lime baths, creating opportunities for biological material from one animal to contaminate another. The virus can also survive outside the body for extended periods, particularly in shed scabs.
Interestingly, the parchment pages carrying sheeppox DNA generally show no visible signs of lesions. Medieval parchment makers may have avoided visibly affected parts of an animalās skin, or the scraping process used to prepare parchment may simply have removed physical evidence of infection.
A 3,700-year history
The medieval manuscripts form only part of a much longer story. The earliest genetic traces of sheeppox identified by the study came from sheep teeth recovered at Late Bronze Age settlements in Kazakhstan and Russia. One specimen from Myrzhik in Kazakhstan dates to roughly 1875ā1645 BC, while another from Rublevo-VI in Russia dates to about 1336ā1130 BC.
These settlements depended heavily on livestock, particularly sheep raised for meat and fibre, meaning outbreaks of disease could have had serious consequences for both food supplies and wider economic activity.
By comparing ancient and modern genomes, the researchers estimate that major capripoxvirus lineages, which include sheeppox, goatpox and lumpy skin disease virus, diverged thousands of years ago, broadly during the period in which domesticated livestock populations were expanding and moving across Eurasia.
Despite this long history, the study found that the sheeppox genome itself remained relatively stable over the last several millennia.
āPeople around the world are still fighting against this pathogen – there is currently an outbreak of sheeppox in Greece, causing much economic damage,ā said Louis LāHĆ“te. āAncient genomes can help us understand how these pathogens affecting us today evolved. We find that unlike the smallpox virus, the sheeppox virus genome was very stable over the last few millennia.ā
The researchers argue that the findings demonstrate the potential of manuscripts to preserve an unexpected biological record alongside their written contents. Medieval parchment, long studied for its texts, decoration and craftsmanship, may also contain evidence of the diseases that affected the animals, farms and economies behind its production.
The article, “3,500 years of sheeppox virus evolution inferred from archaeological and
codicological genomes,” by Louis LāHĆ“te, Luisa SacristĆ”n, RĆ³isĆn Ferguson, Alex Siekmann, Leland Rogers, Barbara Richter, Herbert Weis`senbƶck, Jenny Lorke, Lara Artemis, Ćlodie LĆ©vĆŖque, Richard Hark, Patricia Engel, Mary Teresa Josephine Webber, Madison Bennett, Kristine Rose-Beers, Emma Nichols, Marta Munoz Alegre, Max RamsĆøe, Sarah Fiddyment, Laura C. ViƱas-Caron, Dimitry V. Papin, Ian C. Light-Maka, Felix M. Key, Jonas Albarnaz, Tim Downing, Jonathan Pekar, Philippe Lemey, Daniel Bradley, JiÅĆ VnouÄek, Cheryl A. Makarewicz, Joanna Story, Matthew Collins, Matthew D. Teasdale, Annelise Binois-Roman, SĆ©bastien Calvignac-Spencer and Kevin G Daly, is published in Science Advances. Click here to read it.
Top Image: The York Gospels, fols. 22vā23r, showing St Matthew and the opening of his Gospel. DNA analysis of the manuscript’s parchment has revealed traces of sheeppox virus.
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