In the margins
Doodles discovered in a medieval religious manuscript were probably the work of young children who were supposed to be studying.

The drawings depict a horse or cow, a human figure and possible images of the devil and were made in blank spaces on the pages of a fourteenth-century book originally from a Franciscan convent in Naples.

They have been analysed by Dr Deborah Thorpe, an expert on historical manuscripts at the University of York, with the aid of child psychologists who suggested their creators were aged between four and six.

The book, which is held at the University of Pennsylvania, is a collection of sermons written in Latin and astronomical and astrological tables.

An inscription shows it was written in 1327 by a scribe at the St Domenico convent. Dr Thorpe calculates that the drawings were added between 100 and 200 years later.