What were people 700 years ago doing with their books? Well, much the same thing that students like yourselves do today: doodling! In a fascinating recent article by CNN, Dr Erik Kwakkel, a book historian at Leiden University in Holland, shows off the doodles, drawings, and occasional fingerprints left behind by medieval monks who worked as scribes, laboriously copying out by hand the texts of entire books, and by apparently bored students sitting in class 7 centuries ago, as evinced by a doodled drawing of a teacher's face, clearly identifiable by the teacher's hat the figure wears. While I wouldn't recommend doodling teacher caricatures in your textbooks, I certainly am grateful to the students and scribes of the medieval period who left us with such unique and rare glimpses into their private thoughts and lives.
Interested in learning more about the medieval period? The Media Center has a number of engaging books to fill you in on all aspects of medieval life, from castles to warriors to surviving the plague, including information on the Middle Ages outside of Europe in parts of the world like India, China, Africa, and the Americas.