Pennsylvania

See also the museum's Renaissance Connection website.

Educates visitors about the history of religion, using art and artifacts from a variety of cultures and time periods.

Our manuscript collection includes most of the kinds of books used between 1000 and 1500 A.D.: prayer books and poetry, Bibles and political propaganda, philosophical works and fantastic histories. Some manuscripts are elaborate and beautiful works of art; others are humble "owner-produced" books, copied out from a borrowed copy by someone who needed a particular text. Each one tells us something about a long-vanished age. Books have been photographed to look like three-dimensional objects instead of flat images. Individual leaves and cuttings are shown front and back to give as much information as possible about the leaf's original context. All texts should be legible in close-up view.