Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

settlement.

The Vinland map is in Yale's Beinecke Library.

They kept it.

Yeah, they kept it.

Buonfiglio followed him in.

According to his affidavit, quote, I then spoke to Smiley and introduced myself.

I identified myself as a police detective working for Yale University and asked him if he was just at Beinecke Library, where he replied, yes.

Buonfiglio continued, I then showed Smiley the exacto knife blade that was wrapped in the white tissue and asked if the blade was his.

And it's very...

Closely related to what we've been talking about, Beinecke Library at Yale University owns a large manuscript world map by a German cartographer named Enricus Martellus that when it surfaced in Switzerland in the late 1950s was recognized as probably having been an important source for Waldseemüller in creating his 1507 world map.

And in my work on Waldseemuller, I came to more and more to realize that it would be important to understand just how close the relationship was between Martellus' world map at Yale and Waldseemuller's 1507 world map.

And this problem was rendered difficult by the fact that almost all of the text on Martellus' world map has faded to illegibility.

Hmm.

Also known as the Beinecke cipher manuscript.

I think it's Beinecke or Beinecke cipher manuscript.

The document was initially owned by a Holy Roman Emperor and was purchased by Wilford Voynich in 1912.

So Voynich didn't even make it.

It's incredible.

And also his prayer book, which I have held in my own hands and was probably the closest I've ever felt to St. Thomas More, is in New Haven, Connecticut at Yale's Beinecke Library.

And so that made it to America.

And here we are, Americans, telling our own country, England, and the world, here is the life of the leading citizen that we really need to study.

After tracking down the six pages, UK researchers looked for and eventually found a copy of Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ in which those specific six pages were missing.

That was in the collection of Beinecke Library at Yale University.

Which is all very cool.

Yeah.

Right now, this book isn't hidden in some dusty attic, or locked in a private collector's safe.

It lives at Yale University, specifically in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, catalogued formally as MS-408.

That number matters more than it sounds like it should, because it's the reason this manuscript is studied the way it is today.

It's not folklore anymore, it's not a rumour passed between conspiracy forums.

After Wilfred's death in 1930, the manuscript passed to his widow, Ethel Voynich, a writer and musician with her own unusual biography.

She held onto it for decades, occasionally allowing scholars to study it, but never parting with it.

the voynich manuscript name stuck the mythos grew articles appeared theories multiplied world war two code breakers took a crack at it and failed by the nineteen sixties ethel and then wilfrid's estate finally let go In 1969, the bizarre anonymous codex with the dealer's name attached found what seems to be its final institutional home, the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University.

There it was catalogued as MS 408, conserved, and, crucially, made systematically available to scholars.

...

I think it's the Beinecke, maybe is how you say it, the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library-

Yeah

... is phenomenal.

He saved everything.

And about 10 years ago, he donated 200 boxes of materials to Yale's Beinecke Library.

And it was like going to the candy store every day to look at those materials.

There are letters from movie stars, because Gary knew everyone.