Early Books and Manuscripts

The Beinecke Library is one of the most significant sources for history in North America and contains a rich collection of materials from the classical world to the Renaissance.

  • The sailor's guide

    January 1, 2023

    Medieval and early modern navigators of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea had no telescopes to help them guide their ships into port. But they had maps: specifically, portolan charts, which showed where to dock and how to avoid dangers. Portolans were used for at least 500 years. The earliest surviving portolan is the Carte Pisane, a fragment dating from the end of the thirteenth century. The Beinecke Library has a significant collection of portolan charts, dating from 1403 to 1789.

  • The world as they knew it: New Beinecke exhibition charts rise of maps

    September 1, 2022

    Yale boasts one of the most significant map collections in North America, including the continent’s largest single assemblage of portolans — navigation charts that seafarers used to find ports. Ten of the Beinecke Library’s portolans, which comprise the exhibit’s centerpiece, are displayed in the two flat cases on either side of the building’s ground floor.

  • The World in Maps, 1400-1600 (Fine Books & Collections)

    July 14, 2022

    This exhibition presents many of the most historically significant manuscript maps from the late medieval and early modern period from the Beinecke Library’s vast collection of maps. It is focused on portolan charts - large, colorful charts that showed the shoreline of the Mediterranean, and were used by sailors to navigate from port to port

  • Wright Lab summer undergraduate researchers explore scientific treasures of Yale Beinecke Library

    July 14, 2022

    Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library (Beinecke) and the Medical Historical Library together house early editions of many milestones of achievements in physics, including those from Copernicus, du Châtelet, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, and other scientists from the 16th-18th centuries, with topics ranging from early materials science, astronomy and cosmology, physics, and mathematics.

  • Visiting Voynich (Manuscript Road Trip)

    April 24, 2022

    As we begin to make our way out of the COVID-19 pandemic, it isn’t only restaurants and theaters that are opening up. Libraries, too, are reopening to the public, and Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library is no exception. After several years of restricted access and closures, the Beinecke is now open for outside researchers, albeit with masks and proof of vaccination required. The Beinecke is one of my favorite places to visit, and when I heard that the Library would be welcoming outside researchers as of April 11, I made my plans right away, securing authorization to visit the campus and permission to spend April 22 with none other than MS 408, a.k.a. The Voynich Manuscript.

  • Interlaced geometric designs surrounding red and black text in the Syriac script.

    Hidden Gems

    April 18, 2022

    Hidden Gems Welcome to Hidden Gems , a series of short articles which highlight items in the Beinecke Library’s collection of rare books and manuscripts and...
  • An image of a manuscript page with a rubricated initial and black text in gothic script.

    Takamiya MS 98: An Excised Fragment of the Stafford Gower

    March 27, 2022

    Beinecke manuscript fragment Takamiya MS 98 once belonged to a 14th-century manuscript known as the Stafford Gower (Huntington Library MS EL 26 A 17), a copy of John Gower's Middle English poem "Confessio Amantis." It was excised and used as binding waste.

  • Hand colored print of Simon of Trent being tortured by Jews. From Hartmann Schedel's Chronicle.

    Simon of Trent in Print

    February 19, 2022

    Famous image of the torture of Simon of Trent by Jews from the Nuremberg Chronicle. Beinecke Library has very strong collection of printed materials relating to the cult of Simon of Trent and the accusation of ritual murder.

  • An image of a manuscript page with illuminated and rubricated initials and black text.

    Osborn fa38: An Early Copy of Petrus Comestor’s Historia scholastica

    January 18, 2022

    Petrus Comestor’s Historia scholastica, composed in Latin and completed in Paris in the 1170s, was one of the key texts for historical and scriptural education among schoolmen throughout the Middle Ages. The Beinecke Library is fortunate to possess an early copy of this important medieval text: Osborn fa38, which was produced in England at the priory of Rochester Cathedral.