Stift Admont is a Benedictine monastery, located in the Enns river valley, at the foot of the Gesäuse National Park in the Austrian province of Styria. Founded in the 11th century, it has one of the largest and most significant manuscript and book collections in Central Europe. The most famous author from Stift Admont is Engelbert von Admont (ca. 1250-1331), whose works cover a wide range of subjects, including theology, philosophy, history, natural science, and music.

The collection is housed in the Baroque library, built in the 18th century. In 1865, nearly the entire monastery complex burned down, but somehow the library and its collections survived.

In 1967 and 1968, HMML microfilmed nearly 800 manuscripts--many with beautiful initials and decoration--from this library. Over 270 of these manuscripts have recently been digitized by the library at Admont. The HMML records contain links to these digital copies whenever available and HMML staff will continue to add links as more manuscripts from Admont become available. View now

The Issaf Nashashibi Center in East Jerusalem (Isʻāf al-Nashāshībī Center for Culture and Literature, project code DINL) was established in 1982.  Its research library houses a collection of manuscripts which were mostly donated by the al-Ḥusaynī family, one of the most prominent Palestinian Arab families in Jerusalem.

This collection includes primarily texts on Ḥanafī law and Sufism, but also renowned works on Islam, Qur’anic sciences, Arabic literature and grammar. Perhaps the richest feature of this collection – and the most unexplored so far – resides in the short treatises that distinguish the majority of the composite manuscripts, in all subjects, from theology to natural sciences. The manuscripts of this collection are mostly in Arabic, with a few titles in Persian and Ottoman Turkish. View now

HMML has surpassed the 13-million mark for full-resolution image files in Reading Room.  Each of these images shows a piece of our collective history (a page, a fragment, a binding), saved by many hands over hundreds of years and photographed by HMML staff and partners at hundreds of repositories around the world.  The original manuscripts, along with copies of the digital images, remain with the repository that holds them, where they are deeply valued as cultural heritage objects.

Each image in Reading Room has IIIF (International Image Interoperability Framework) links to support the sharing of these records across repositories.

55 volumes of the Parish Archives of the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Divine Grace, Żabbar, have been added to Reading Room. Records for baptisms, confirmations, marriages, deaths, and legati, 1616-1884. Records also include legati, legati of knights of the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, historical notes, and other records. Żabbar became a parish in 1615. The current church was built between 1641 and 1696. The parish also includes St. Mary’s Church, which served as the parish church during the French Occupation from 1798-1800. View now

395 manuscripts from the main manuscript collection of Erzbischöfliche Diözesan- und Dombibliothek (Cologne, Germany) have been added to Reading Room.  This older collection supplements 299 music manuscripts also held by the diocese, added to Reading Room last month.

The diocesan and cathedral library in Cologne is one of the oldest among those filmed by HMML. The roots of the library reach back to the 6th or 7th century, and its collecting started with the manuscripts owned by Archbishop Hildebald (died 818). Its medieval collection (HMML filmed approximately 370 of them) includes manuscripts and fragments dating back to the 6th century. The medieval manuscripts have been digitized under the auspices of the Codices Electronici Ecclesiae Coloniensis (CEEC), are available through the Worldwide Web, and are linked from the Reading Room records.  There are some manuscripts filmed by HMML that were not included in the Cathedral’s digitization program (project number 35347 was one of those), as well as a newly cataloged Turkish prayer book (project no. 35512). View now

19 volumes of the Parish Archives of the Cathedral of Gozo. Records of the baptisms, confirmations, marriages, and deaths dating from 1554-1893. Five volumes of modern indexes have been digitized, but not yet added. Records include the earliest volume of parish records in Gozo dating to 1554. The records can be accessed by using the portal maltaparisharchives.org to find the volumes. View now

11 manuscripts and one print book from the private library of Behnam Alkass Younan, (Qarah Qūsh, Iraq) have been added to Reading Room. These items were digitized in partnership with Centre Numérique des Manuscrits Orientaux (CNMO).

This newly public collection includes Bibles, liturgical texts, and prayerbooks in Syriac. View now

474 manuscripts from the Archdiocese of Aleppo, a division of the Syrian Orthodox Church, have been added to Reading Room. This collection, which was previously uncataloged and relatively inaccessible to scholars, contains Syriac Orthodox manuscripts, many of which were moved from Şanlıurfa, Turkey (ancient Edessa, known as the cradle of Syriac Christianity), in the early 20th century. 

The manuscripts include historical works, liturgical books, Bibles, hagiographies, apocryphal stories, and other religious literature. Among the gems of the collection are a unique manuscript of the Chronicle of Michael the Great (SOAA 00250 S) and early copies of the Arabian Nights stories of Sindbad the Sailor and the Ebony Horse in Arabic Garshuni (SOAA 00121 K and SOAA 00124 M). The materials are written in Syriac, Arabic Garshuni, Arabic, and Turkish Garshuni. Many are richly embellished, and 25 manuscripts include full-page decorations.

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406 manuscripts from the library of Benediktinerstift Lambach (Lambach Abbey) in Lambach, Austria, have been added to HMML Reading Room.  This monastery was founded in approximately 1040 and later given to the Benedictines in 1056.  From the 12th century, a scriptorium flourished at Lambach, and in the 15th and 16th centuries, numerous liturgical manuscripts were created there.  The monks also collected other manuscripts and prints, spurred by an interest in science and humanism.  The institution narrowly escaped closing in 1784 under the reforms of Kaiser Joseph II.  While still an important research collection, the library was forced to sell many manuscripts in the 20th century, and the manuscripts preserved by HMML date from the 11th to the 16th century.

This predominantly Latin and German collection showcases the many interests of the monastics who assembled it.  Texts include sermons, commentaries, correspondence, legal works, hagiographies, historical works, and poems. View now

299 music manuscripts from the Leibl collection of the Erzbischöfliche Diözesan- und Dombibliothek (Cologne, Germany) have been added to Reading Room.  This music collection was named for Carl Leibl (1784-1870), a musician, conductor, cathedral organist and cathedral music director in Cologne (1826-1863).

The Leibl collection consists of manuscript and early printed copies of music, primarily from the 19th century and chiefly liturgical. Many of the works are settings for the Mass or religious texts, as well as selections from cantatas or other larger religious works. Composers include Beethoven, Haydn, Mendelssohn, and Mozart, as well as Bernhard Breuer, Luigi Cherubini, Carl Ludwig Drobisch, George Frederic Handel, and Carl Leibl himself. Links have been added to the vHMML records to fuller descriptions of the materials in the RISM database. View now

51 manuscripts from the library of the Theresianische Akademie (Vienna, Austria) have been added to HMML Reading Room.  Founded in 1746 as an imperial academy by Empress Maria Theresa, this Jesuit institution closed temporarily in 1773 when Joseph II dissolved the religious order, transferring its original library elsewhere.  When it reopened in 1797, Imperial Councilor Josef Ritter von Sartori began accumulating a new library of largely medical, geographical, and ecclesiastical works, including the donation of his own volumes.  Acquisition of other private collections and closed monastery libraries, such as Mondsee, helped contribute to the library’s holdings.  The 51 Latin and German manuscripts included in Reading Room were microfilmed in 1979 on HMML's behalf by the microfilming office of the Austrian National Library.

Theresianische Akademie hosts an extremely important collection of fifteenth-century theological manuscripts, in addition to several medical and scientific manuscripts that include recipes and mathematical treatises. View now

549 manuscripts from the library at the monastery of Stift Göttweig (Steinaweg, Austria) have been added to vHMML. This Benedictine abbey was founded in 1083 by Bishop Altmann of Passau, and a school for the sons of nobility flourished there during the Middle Ages. A 12th-century manuscript catalogue lists 55 codices, of which 46 still survive. The 549 manuscripts photographed for HMML date largely from the 11th to the 17th century, with two dated to the 9th century or earlier.  Stift Göttweig also saw the first in-person meeting, in 1966, of Father Oliver Kapsner and Dr. Julian Plante, the team that would lead HMML’s microfilming efforts for the next decades.

This monastic collection includes commentaries, sermons, hagiographies, correspondence, Bibles (and one Qur’an), and scientific, historical, and legal works, among others.  Latin and German texts make up the majority of the collection, but it also contains manuscripts in Turkish, Arabic, Italian, Chinese, and Hebrew. View now

33 volumes of the Lettere consolari fonds of the Cathedral Archives, Mdina, have been added to vHMML Reading Room. The Lettere consolari contain the correspondence of the French chargé d’affaires du Roi of Malta dating from 1664-1807. 33 boxes of correspondence were digitized as part of the Malta Study Center's France and Malta in the Age of Revolution Project, 1775-1815. View now

821 manuscripts from the Vasyl Stefanyk National Scientific Library in L’viv, Ukraine, have been added to vHMML.  This Ukrainian national library was founded in 1940, assembling the holdings of many well-known Ukrainian and Polish organizations that operated in the region prior to 1939, such as the Central Archive of the Order of Saint Basil the Great, the collections of the Shevchenko Scientific Society and the Greek-Catholic Theological Academy, and the "Ossolineum" Institute collections. 

The digitized manuscripts from this largely Church Slavonic collection include Gospel books, liturgical books, commentaries, music, apocrypha, homilies, and other religious literature.  Some are lavishly decorated with headpieces, miniatures, woodcuts, and decorated initials.  The music collection is particularly rich, represented in more than 150 manuscripts.

231 manuscripts from the library at the monastery of Lilienfeld (Austria) have been added to vHMML. This Cistercian monastery was founded in 1202 by Duke Leopold VI of Austria, who was buried on its grounds.  In part because abbots counseled the rulers of Austria, the abbey grew wealthy and powerful, leading to the foundation of the monastery library in the 13th century.  In the 14th century, the scriptorium reached new heights under the auspices of Abbot Ulrich von Lilienfeld.  The collection survived looting during the 1683 Ottoman siege of Vienna, closure of the monastery for one year in 1789 that resulted in the loss of many valuable works of art, and a major fire in 1810.  Supposedly, the presence of a famed Russian Bible saved the building from occupation by Soviet soldiers in 1945. Microfilmed by HMML in 1966, the collection includes the famous Concordantia caritatis of Abbot Ulrich, with its rich array of typological illustrations of Bible stories (Codex 151; HMML 4527); illustrated and glossed Bibles; works by Albertus Magnus, Aristotle, Bernard of Clairvaux, and Christanus of Lilienfeld; as well as several liturgical books and monastic works. View now

Metadata for 205 volumes of the Archives of the Order of Malta, Series 17 of the National Library of Malta, Valletta, have been added to vHMML Reading Room. Series 17 "MIscellanea" includes three subseries: "General Miscellanea," "French Miscellanea," and "Addenda". The series contains documents once belonging to different offices and archives and related to the activities and administration of the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes, and Malta, the French Republican government in Malta, and the British colonial government in Malta. View now

363 manuscripts from the Stift Vorau. Bibliothek, a monastery in Vorau, Austria, have been added to vHMML.  This monastery of Augustinian Canons Regular was founded in 1163 by Markgraf Ottokar III.  It hosted a noted scriptorium throughout the Middle Ages, and despite its capture during World War II, the monastery has retained its manuscript collection of largely Latin and German manuscripts.  Initially microfilmed in 1967, the collection includes theological and secular works, such as religious commentaries, hagiographies, historical works, and poetry. View now

1,679 manuscripts from the Khalidi Library (Jerusalem) have been added to the vHMML Reading Room. This is the collection of the Khalidi family, established as a library open to the public in 1900. It includes extensive collections of Ḥanafī law and treatises on Sufism, grammar, and other topics, primarily in Arabic. View now

200 manuscripts from the Srpska pravoslavna crkva. Budimska eparhija. Biblioteka, located in Szentendre, Hungary, have been added to vHMML Reading Room. The diverse collection contains manuscripts in Church Slavonic, Greek, Russian, and Latin. It also includes liturgical, religious, and philosophical texts, several with illuminations and decoration. View now

14 manuscripts, 7 incunabula, and 1 post-incunabula from Mount Angel Abbey (Oregon) have been added to vHMML Reading Room. The manuscripts consist largely of 15th-century illuminated books of hours and one Armenian Bible, while the printed works include early printed Bibles and one early printed book of hours. The collection was added in partnership with Mount Angel Abbey, who had previously partnered with HMML in the 1980s to microfilm 32 manuscripts from their collection. View now