25-01-2026, 05:32 PM
It's a great idea, but...
I had lunch with the Beinecke curator a few days ago, and I'm sorry to report that such testing is exceedingly unlikely to happen any time soon, for all sorts of reasons, the main one being that the odds of finding something actionable are quite low compared to the cost and risk (yes, I know, but any kind of testing carries risks that must be assessed in comparison to the possibility of useful findings).
And given the very small number of individuals from the fifteenth century whose names and locales are known, it is also exceedingly unlikely that such testing would result in a name, even if a DNA sample could 1) be located on the manuscript and 2) be successfully identified with a fifteenth-century origin, as opposed to a modern reader. There are 600 years' worth of epithelial cells on the manuscript - untangling the dates they were shed is something that would be extremely difficult to manage.
More broadly, I think it is also extremely unlikely that we will ever have a name to attach to the origins of the manuscript. We may be able, someday, to narrow down a more specific place of origin, and perhaps a community, but a name? I doubt it. There is really no reason to assume that the manuscript must have been written by someone(s) whose name(s) are known to us.
I had lunch with the Beinecke curator a few days ago, and I'm sorry to report that such testing is exceedingly unlikely to happen any time soon, for all sorts of reasons, the main one being that the odds of finding something actionable are quite low compared to the cost and risk (yes, I know, but any kind of testing carries risks that must be assessed in comparison to the possibility of useful findings).
And given the very small number of individuals from the fifteenth century whose names and locales are known, it is also exceedingly unlikely that such testing would result in a name, even if a DNA sample could 1) be located on the manuscript and 2) be successfully identified with a fifteenth-century origin, as opposed to a modern reader. There are 600 years' worth of epithelial cells on the manuscript - untangling the dates they were shed is something that would be extremely difficult to manage.
More broadly, I think it is also extremely unlikely that we will ever have a name to attach to the origins of the manuscript. We may be able, someday, to narrow down a more specific place of origin, and perhaps a community, but a name? I doubt it. There is really no reason to assume that the manuscript must have been written by someone(s) whose name(s) are known to us.
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