Manuscripts to 1800

The Rare Book & Manuscript Library of the University of Pennsylvania holds approximately 800 western European manuscripts from the Middle Ages and Renaissance and continues to make new acquisitions for the collection. Religious manuscripts - such as Bibles, prayer books, liturgical books, canon law and church trial records, polemical works, sermons, theological treatises, and works on church history and administration - comprise the largest subject category. The collection also includes works in many other areas of human endeavor, such as philosophy, alchemy and history of science, commerce and foreign relations in 16th-century Italy, and Italian and French poetry of the 15th and 16th centuries.