The Baylot Manuscript in Translation: BnF FM4 15 Hardcover – March 24, 2026

This revised and expanded second edition of The Baylot Manuscript in Translation features full-color reproductions of all 77 folios of the original manuscript - BnF FM4 15, held at the Bibliothèque nationale de France - making the primary source directly accessible to readers for the first time. The translation has been thoroughly revised and corrected through systematic comparison with the original, with nearly 70 new annotations added to the original corpus of 296 endnotes, now converted to footnotes for ease of reference. New discoveries made during the editorial process - including previously unrecorded interlinear glosses, marginalia, and text absent from all prior transcriptions - are documented throughout. First published in 2020, The Baylot Manuscript in Translation made available in English for the first time one of the most significant early documents in the history of High Grade Freemasonry. Drafted between the early 1750s and the late 1760s and bearing a final date of 1768, this codex of over thirty unique ritual pieces across more than seventy folios was assembled by and/or for Martinès de Pasqually, founder of the influential Ordre des Chevaliers Maçons Élus Coëns de l'Univers - whose teachings would be carried forward by Jean-Baptiste Willermoz and Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, the Philosophe Inconnu. The manuscript is primarily a compendium of early Scottish or écossais grades that would later form the core of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, including grades found in no other known manuscript collection. Predating the Francken Manuscript by at least fifteen years, it preserves ritual forms already lost to standardization by the time the Rite of Perfection reached maturity. An essential resource for every serious student of the history of High Grade Freemasonry. Read more