The Secrets of Medieval Europe's Large-Scale Publishing of Fine Books Revealed

The mystery of how the medieval world made some of its finest books has at last been solved—after 700 years. New research is revealing the trade secrets of Europe's very first large-scale commercial publishing industry.

Several generations before the widespread introduction of paper into Christian Europe, the continent's craftsmen discovered a way of transforming animal skins into wafer-thin sheets for use as pages in medieval books.