Hilandar Research Library

Manuscript descriptions from the complete 10-volume EMML print catalog are now represented and expanded upon in HMML Reading Room (vhmml.org), alongside digital images of the manuscripts.

The Ethiopian Manuscript Microfilm Library (EMML) contains photographs of more than 9,000 manuscripts microfilmed in Ethiopia from 1973 to 1994.

Cataloging of this collection began in Ethiopia under the direction of Dr. Sergew Hable Selassie and was continued at HMML by Dr. Getatchew Haile and Dr. William F. Macomber, who published a 10-volume print catalog describing 5,000 EMML manuscripts. In recent years, Ted Erho, Dr. Ralph Lee, and Dr. Jeremy R. Brown brought this catalog into the digital era.

Learn more: hmml.org/collections/news/new-update-cataloging-progress-on-the-ethiopian-manuscript-microfilm-library-emml

Pictured: a manuscript in the collection of Dabra Ṣeyon Māryām Monastery in Arsi Province, Ethiopia. View the full microfilm in HMML Reading Room (EMML 7602): vhmml.org/readingRoom/view/201129

https://associates.web.illinois.edu/2026/06/07/week-1-reflection-learning-settling-in-and-seeing-libraries-differently/

Lucy Tomova’s Week 1: Learning, Settling In, and Seeing Libraries Differently Getting here was a long journey. It took around 17 hours of travel, a couple of days of preparation beforehand, and months of application steps, visa arrangements, planning, and anticipation. But t…

https://associates.web.illinois.edu/2026/06/08/libraries-without-borders-or-when-slavonic-bulgarian-history-welcomes-you-across-the-ocean/

Elena Savova`s Week 1: Libraries Without Borders, or When Slavonic-Bulgarian History Welcomes You Across the Ocean The first week of the Mortenson Center Associates Program was inspiring, filled with emotion, new encounters, knowledge, and that special feeling that emerges when a professional experience gradual…

𝗨𝘀𝗲𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗥𝗲𝘂𝘀𝗲𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗠𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗲𝘃𝗮𝗹 𝗠𝗮𝗻𝘂𝘀𝗰𝗿𝗶𝗽𝘁 𝗕𝗼𝗼𝗸𝘀
𝗦𝗼𝘂𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗻 𝗜𝘁𝗮𝗹𝘆. 𝗟𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗻 𝗠𝗮𝗻𝘂𝘀𝗰𝗿𝗶𝗽𝘁𝘀
Edited by Angela Cossu and Elvira Zambardi

Info: https://bit.ly/49Mk7vq

Manuscript books have many lives. Once assembled, they scarsely remain unchanged. They can be read and re-read, annotated, supplemented, dismembered, restored and physically moved, even more than once. The volume ‘Uses and Reuses of Medieval Manuscript Books. Southern Italy. Latin Manuscripts’ investigates these multiple lives through an interdisciplinary approach that embraces codicology, paleography, philology, and art history. With a focus on book circulation in Latin Southern Italy, the volume brings together 14 contributions written in three languages. Through rich and diverse case studies, the authors offer a new perspective on the history of the book. Divided into three thematic sections (‘Uses and Reuses of Classical Texts, ‘Manuscripts en route’, ‘Material and Immaterial Reuses’), the book explores the ‘marginal’ traces left by readers, the philological reception of texts, material transformations, and the journeys of codices. The volume reconstructs through these lenses the influence of manuscripts on medieval intellectual activity and offers insights that extend from the specific context of southern Italy to broader geographical and diachronic scales.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction, Angela Cossu - Elvira Zambardi

I. Uses and Reuses of Classical Texts / Usi e riusi dei testi classici

Adriano Russo, Riuso dei libri e trasmissione dei classici: la tradizione della prima Deca in Italia centro-meridionale
Filomena Bernardo, L’Ovidius Neapolitanus: la storia di un manoscritto attraverso il suo (ri)uso come antigrafo
Caterina Pentericci, El Escorial Codex T. II. 8 and the beginning of Plautine Itala recension

II. Manuscripts en route / Manoscritti in viaggio

Andrea Puglia, Migrazioni di codici dall’Italia meridionale alla Toscana nordoccidentale tra XI e XII secolo. Prime ricerche
Valeria De Fraja – Francesco Siri, Dn 11, les craintes après les Vêpres siciliennes, et la bibliothèque de la cathédrale de Messine
Claudia D’Alberto, The ʻCronico del Re Giovanninoʼ in the Latin Barberini Fund of the Vatican Apostolic Library: Connections, Provenance and Reuses
Franco Benucci - Matteo Calzone, Da Padova a Parigi: usi e riusi d’un Giuseppe Flavio nel Medioevo meridionale

III. Material and Immaterial Reuses / Riusi materiali e immateriali

Jérémy Delmulle, Vittore, vescovo di Capua (541-554), lettore, annotatore e revisore di codici
Michele Campopiano, Storia e memoria nell’Italia meridionale. Rappresentazioni del passato e pratiche compilative: alcuni esempi e la loro influenza (secoli IX-XI)
Anna Gili, Lire la «　Pantegni　» entre le xiiie et le xive siècles : le témoignage du codex Napoli, Biblioteca Nazionale Vittorio Emanuele III, VIII.D.39 dans son contexte
Chiara De Angelis – Elvira Zambardi, Reuses of Reuses: The Case of Glossed Biblical Fragments at Montecassino
Chiara Paniccia, Nuovi materiali per la storia della miniatura (secc. XII-XV). Le pergamene reimpiegate dell’Archivio di Stato di Viterbo e della Biblioteca degli Ardenti

Closing words, Marilena Maniaci - Università di Cassino e del Lazio Meridionale

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András Kraft, Time in Byzantine Apocalyptica (De Gruyter, June 2026)

https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783112230114/html

Apocalyptic narratives construct histories of the future which pertain either to this-worldly political events or otherworldly post-mortem conditions. While visions of the afterlife generally describe a world in atemporal stagnation, political prophecies anticipate prospective events that are structured by chronological progression, temporal anomalies, and typological design. Despite the wide range of prospective outlooks, Byzantine apocalypses convey a coherent vision of temporal processes and qualities in anticipation of the Last Judgment. This book examines the notion of eschatological time as portrayed in Medieval Greek apocalyptic texts from the Byzantine millennium (c. 500 to 1500 CE). It is divided into three parts and explores the interrelated aspects of eschatological chronology, velocity, and typology. Methodologically, Byzantine apocalypses are read not merely as historical sources but as literary artefacts that employ specific compositional techniques (narratological, phenomenological, typological) in order to construct a variegated yet coherent meta-history of the end times.

Ancient Mesopotamian cuneiform texts reach new audiences through major digital archive

Researchers from Iraq, the United Kingdom, and Sweden have launched a new Arabic-language platform for one of the world’s largest collections of cuneiform texts. The project gives Arabic speakers wider access to ancient records written thousands of years ago across Mesopotamia...

More information: https://archaeologymag.com/2026/05/ancient-mesopotamian-cuneiform-digital-archive/

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Heidi C. Gearhart, Names to Remember: Medieval Artists in Word and Image, ca. 700–1200 (Penn State University Press, June 2026)

https://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-10135-4.html

Since its beginnings, art history has turned on the power of artists’ names. Exhibitions, galleries, and books revolve around them, and artists’ personas continue to captivate audiences. Medieval art, however, has long been cast as an exception—a world thought to lack known makers, where piety eclipsed personality and anonymous craftspeople served God rather than fame.

Names to Remember takes a new and nuanced look at this longstanding paradigm. Focusing on Europe from ca. 700 to ca. 1200, Heidi C. Gearhart uncovers a surprising abundance of names, stories, and images of artists and examines how they functioned within their cultural and material contexts. Drawing on inscriptions, saints’ lives, chronicles, and artworks, she shows that naming an artist was rarely a neutral act: it could invite contemplation, signal virtue, or shape social and spiritual identities.

By revealing how remembrance—and forgetting—helped define artistry itself, Names to Remember reimagines the place of the artist in medieval culture. Gearhart demonstrates how gender, status, and devotion determined whose names endured and whose were lost, offering a new understanding of authorship and artistic value in the Middle Ages. This study will engage art historians, medievalists, and scholars of gender and cultural memory seeking to understand how the very idea of the artist was formed.