The Beinecke Cipher Manuscript (also known as the Voynich Manuscript or, more formally, Beinecke MS 408) was produced in Central Europe at the end of the fifteenth or during the sixteenth century.
About the Cipher Manuscript
Written in an unidentified script by an unknown author, the manuscript and its meaning have been debated since its appearance on the rare book market in 1912 through the Polish-American antiquarian bookseller Wilfrid M. Voynich. Cryptographic approaches have failed to decipher the text, if it is indeed encoded, while scientific testing suggests material consistency with manuscripts produced in the fifteenth century.
While the text is undeciphered, the manuscript’s many illustrations hint at its content. Six distinct sections present plant specimens; astronomical and astrological drawings; balneological drawings depicting baths and bathing; cosmological medallions; pharmaceutical drawings of herbs and roots; and unillustrated text, possibly recipes, with star-like flowers marking each entry.
Provenance
For a manuscript of its age and travels, the Cipher manuscript’s history is relatively well known. The first confirmed owner of the codex is the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II (r. 1576–1612), who purchased it for 600 gold ducats and believed that it was the work of Roger Bacon. The association with Roger Bacon is pure speculation, and research has also cast serious doubt on suggested ownership by the English alchemist John Dee (1527–1608/9). More certainly, the manuscript instead entered the library of the pharmacist Jacobus Horčicky de Tepenec (c. 1575–1622) and by 1637 that of the alchemist Georgius Barschius (1585–1622). He bequeathed the manuscript to Johannes Marcus Marci of Cronland, who sent it to the great Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher (1601–1680) in 1666 along with a letter still preserved with the manuscript.
In 1912, Wilfrid M. Voynich purchased the manuscript from the Jesuit College at Frascati near Rome. After Voynich’s death, the manuscript passed to his wife, Ethel, who willed it to Anne Nill, their friend and assistant. Nill sold the volume to the New York bookseller H. P. Kraus in 1961 and he in turn gave the book to Beinecke Library eight years later. Since that time, the manuscript has only left the building once—for the exhibition “Decoding the Renaissance: 500 Years of Codes and Ciphers” at the Folger Shakespeare Library in 2014–15.
Access
Given the manuscript’s fragility, the large number of research requests, and the Beinecke Library’s responsibility to preserve the manuscript intact for future generations, the Library has restricted access to the original manuscript.
High-resolution images of the entire manuscript are available for research in our digital library. The image viewer will allow you to zoom in to each page and there is also an option to download all of the files. Facsimiles of the manuscript were published by the Beinecke and Yale University Press (2016) and by Siloe (2017)—both are available for consultation in our reading room.
A complete physical description and foliation, including missing leaves, can be found in the Voynich catalog record. Results of a chemical analysis of the manuscript’s inks and pigments may be found in this report (PDF).
Scholars requesting access to the original manuscript for their research should submit a proposal to the Library at beinecke.library@yale.edu. Proposals should contain a description of the project, explaining why access to the original is necessary, and should demonstrate the scholarly contribution which the research project will offer (e.g., plans for publication in a peer-reviewed journal or by a university press). Beinecke Library will make the manuscript available for research only in exceptional circumstances, and researchers are encouraged to consult the scans and other scholarship on the manuscript before submitting a proposal.
Although the Beinecke Library owns the Voynich manuscript, the Library does not systematically compile, evaluate, or publish research about it. Beinecke Library is unable to respond to individual theories about the manuscript due to the volume of proposals received.
Readers and researchers interested in the manuscript are encouraged to explore Beinecke’s holdings to understand the medieval and early modern contexts that produced and read it.
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Contact us
beinecke.library@yale.edu