Tea at Trianon: 1,300 Years of History Preserved in Ancient Parchments

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, June 9, 2026

1,300 Years of History Preserved in Ancient Parchments

From Archaeology News:

The study appeared in the journal Manuscript Studies. Researchers examined 91 parchment manuscripts preserved at Duke University’s David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library. The collection included religious texts, scrolls, legal records, fragments, and manuscripts written in several languages. The documents came from England, different parts of Europe, the Middle East, and northeastern Africa.
For more than a thousand years, parchment served as the main writing material across Europe and much of the Mediterranean region. Unlike paper, parchment came from animal hides, usually sheep, goats, or cattle. Millions of parchment documents still survive in libraries and museums today. Researchers involved in the study describe those collections as a large biological archive preserved across centuries.
Scientists faced a major obstacle for years. Traditional ancient DNA studies often require researchers to cut, scrape, or drill into material samples. Archivists and conservation experts rarely allow such methods on rare manuscripts because even small damage matters when dealing with cultural heritage objects.
The team used a different technique. Researchers gently rubbed the parchment with small cytology brushes, the same type often used in medical testing. The brushes collected tiny traces of cells from the surface without leaving visible damage.
After sampling, scientists extracted DNA from the brushes and analyzed the material with next-generation sequencing technology. These sequencing methods work well with old and fragmented DNA, which often survives in poor condition inside ancient material. (Read more.)