Included are 34 diplomatic documents from Italy (predominantly), France, Spain, England, and Czechoslovakia. Of particular note is an 1772 Papal indulgence from Olomouc, in the Czech Republic, and a 1781 letter addressed by Pope Pius VI to Scipione de' Ricci, bishop of Pistoia-Prato, in reply to the bishop's complaint about two nuns of the Monastery of Santa Caterina who are on the road to perdition and whose heresies and misdeeds border on the incredible.

Primarily fragments, these specimens were acquired to demonstrate the development of writing in the western world. A variety of scripts are represented, from Carolingian minuscule to the humanistic hands and the "cancelleresca."

The leaves come from the following works, listed here in chronological order: Carolingian compilation on the Psalms (France), glossarium (Eastern France), diurnal (Germany), Sacramentary (Germany), Beneventan psalter (Southern Italy), Augustinus (Italy), grammar of the Latin language (England), secular antiphoner (Central Italy), Isaiah (England), secular breviary (France), commentary on Aristotle's Physica (England), interpretations of Hebrew names (France), theological work (Italy), Venetian guild inventory (Italy), about the proper conduct of monks (the Netherlands), elegiac verses about nature and the fates (England), and commentary on First Corinthians (England).