Schoenberg Lectures
A reminder that the next lecture in the Schoenberg Institute's Fall 2026 Online Lecture Series takes place this Friday. All are welcome to attend!
The Skin Keeps the Score: DNA Analysis of Medieval Manor Court Rolls
Timothy Stinson, North Carolina State University
Friday, October 16, 2026, 12:00 - 1:30 pm EDT
The field of biocodicology, or the study of books and documents through analysis of the biological information stored within them, is still nascent. Yet it is already transforming both what we can learn from manuscripts and the questions we pose of them. This talk reports on the work of an interdisciplinary team at North Carolina State University comprising humanists, geneticists, and bioinformatics specialists. The first part of the talk will cover the development and validation of a new non-destructive sampling technique that employs cytology brushes to collect samples from parchment for genetic analysis. Building on this foundation, we tested close to 100 manuscripts spanning 700 to 1700 CE, the results of which were recently published in Manuscript Studies. The second part of the talk will turn to the next phase of our research: the DNA analysis of medieval manor court rolls held across three partner institutions. These manuscripts are potentially of great value because the skins were sourced from local herds and document events such as livestock epidemics, famines, and agricultural crises that may be genetically detectable in the parchment itself, thus allowing researchers to corroborate genetic evidence from livestock and pathogens with textual records.
More information about the lecture and a link to register are available here
And next up in December....
Using Handwritten Text Recognition for Rich and Abundant Historical Source Collections: The Case of Medieval Italian Financial Records
Laura Morreale, Independent Scholar & 2026-2027 SIMS Visiting Research Fellow
Friday, December 4, 2026, 12:00 - 1:30 pm EDT
On October 2, 1466, Alamanno di Medici bailed out Salvestro da Palazzuolo from jail, where he had been imprisoned by the Otto di Guardia, the policing arm of the Florentine state. Although we do not know what Salvestro did to land himself in jail, his infraction—whatever it may have been—came at the cost of one fiorino largho, a rather hefty sum. Record of his imprisonment, the cost to free him, and an assertion that Salvestro would ultimately pay Alamanno back all appear in the Medici’s household leger, now held at University of Pennsylvania’s Kislak Center.
This small anecdote and the world of Florentine justice, economy, and social interaction that it evokes fills but four lines of the ledger’s nearly 250 folios, each of which contain up to 50 lines of accounting. The recorded expenditures reveal much more than one story of crime and punishment – here we see the day-to-day realities of child-rearing as the wet-nurse is paid, the math (abacco) teacher compensated, and clothing purchases made for Alamanno’s children. Familiar characters such as Mariotto the miller or Caterina the maid reappear in Alamanno’s payments to them over the years, and Alamanno’s wife Lena stars in her role as an important household actor as she pays the flour tax, purchases flax, or buys firewood.
The richness of these historical sources is hard to overstate, yet the many household ledgers that survive from the late Middle Ages remain largely untapped, in part because the manuscripts can be difficult to decipher and the writing lacks a narrative structure. However, historians are now reaching for new computer-based tools, including handwritten text recognition (HTR) programs, to transcribe these documents for easier access and analysis. Following a month-long fellowship at SIMS working with these materials, Laura Morreale will describe how to train HTR models to read difficult sources like the Italian financial records and will outline the costs, potential benefits, and risks of undertaking computer-based transcription for historical research.
More information about the lecture and a link to register are available here
To follow the Schoenberg Institute's other programs, sign up for the newsletter here.