Special Collections

Complementing HMML’s digital collections is the Special Collections at HMML and Saint John's University, which include more than 11,000 printed books and hundreds of manuscripts that support HMML’s global field work in Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Used for teaching and research, the Special Collections include five distinct collections with materials spanning the ancient to modern periods:

• Saint John's University. Rare Book and Manuscript Collection
• Arca Artium. Rare Book and Manuscript Collection
• Hill Museum & Manuscript Library. Rare Book and Manuscript Collection
• Malta Study Center Collection
• The Saint John’s Bible

Collection strengths include the history of the Benedictines, European history (canon law, Reformation, and Counter-Reformation texts), Biblical studies, liturgical studies, print history, manuscripts, and facsimiles highlighting early manuscript history. Consult Subject Areas, linked on this page, for collection highlights. Each collection contains both manuscripts and printed books. The Saint John’s collection includes c. 5,000 printed titles, Arca Artium holds c. 5,000, and the HMML collection contains an additional 600 printed titles. HMML Special Collections also includes The Saint John’s Bible, the first handcrafted Bible commissioned by a Benedictine abbey in more than five hundred years.

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Highlights

• Shakespeare second folio, the second edition of his collected works, from 1632
• Bibles including the first polyglot edition of a printed Bible text - the Genoa Psalter (1516) - and the first print edition of the Gospels in Arabic (1590/1591)
• 9th-century Carolingian fragments containing a Bible commentary by Smaragdus
• Books of Hours, including Bean Ms. 2, a little gem filled with drolleries and beautiful miniatures, and medieval antiphonaries - giant choir books for monastic singing
• Medieval Georgian-Syriac Palimpsest (HMML Ms. Frag 32) described in the HMML Palimpsest Project
• Kacmarcik Codex, a 14th-century Greek-Arabic manuscript of the Coptic Mass
• Global manuscript studies - manuscripts from Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, including over 55 Ethiopian manuscripts and scrolls and 30 Arabic-script manuscripts

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