The Armenian manuscript collections preserved at the Pontificio Collegio Armeno (PCA), including manuscripts originally from San Biagio della Pagnotta (PCA SB), are now fully cataloged and accessible through HMML Reading Room.

These collections represent an important witness to the history of Armenian religious, intellectual, and communal life in Rome. The Pontificio Collegio Armeno is an academic institute, aimed particularly at the formation of the Armenian Catholic clergy, and it was founded by Pope Leo XIII in Rome in 1883. The community church of San Biagio della Pagnotta (or San Biagio degli Armeni) originated before the 10th century, but it is first recorded in the year 1072. Together, these institutions have long served as sites in the cosmopolitan city of Rome where Armenian communities gathered to worship, educate clergy and scholars, preserve cultural memory, and transmit textual traditions. The manuscripts conserved in these institutions bear enduring testimony to those flourishing communities and to the broader historical presence of Armenians in Rome until this day.

The collections include a rich and varied corpus of Armenian manuscript traditions, among them illuminated Gospel books, liturgical manuscripts such as lectionaries, Psalters, Yaysmawurkʻ, illuminated Mashtotsʻ (ritual books from Roman and Polish traditions), Zhamagirkʻ, (books of hours), illuminated Sharaknotsʻ (hymnals), Kʻanonagirkʻ (collections of sermons and homilies), and Armenian church calendars. Also represented are historical writings, polemical and apologetic works, theological and philosophical writings translated from Italian or Latin texts, texts in Armeno-Turkish, a manuscript treating Jewish customs and practices, and other notable texts highlighting cross-cultural encounters. Together, these materials offer significant resources for the study of Armenian theology, liturgy, manuscript culture, interreligious encounter, and intellectual history. Among the notable holdings is the library of Yovhannēs Vardapet Kiwrghean Trabizonetsʻi, an important 19th-century scholarly collection preserved within the archive.

46 manuscripts from the Pontificio Collegio Armeno and 58 from San Biagio degli Armeni were cataloged by Nersēs Akinean in 1961. The remaining 64 manuscripts are currently being cataloged by Anna Sirinian of the University of Bologna, continuing the scholarly effort to document these important holdings in full. The completion and accessibility of this catalog through HMML marks a major step forward for the study of Armenian manuscripts and wider Armenian Christian history, making these materials available to scholars worldwide and further illuminating the global history of Armenian textual and religious culture. Work is ongoing on the archival (PCA ARCH) and foreign language (PCA FAL) manuscripts. View now