Doodles in a book written by a 14th-century Franciscan monk in Naples were added in centuries later by two children, according to an academic at the University of York.
Deborah Thorpe, a research fellow at York whose findings are published in the Cogent Arts and Humanities journal, believes that the lively drawings of strange animals in the margins are the work of at least two children, presumably bored by the dense Latin text.
The book, now in the library of the University of Pennsylvania, includes astronomy and astrology tables, sermons, columns of biblical dates and tables for working out any day of the week between 1204 and 1512 – all thoroughly dull to the children into whose hands the manuscript fell a few centuries later.
Several pages have been embellished with ink drawings of spaceman-like creatures with spiky horns, big heads and long, spindly legs, which may have been intended as demons.
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