While HMML actually began its microfilming in the Austrian abbey at Kremsmünster, it was in Italy that Father Oliver Kapsner first received support of this new undertaking. An early progress report gives credit to the Monastery of St. Scholastica in Subiaco (founded by Saint Benedict in the 6th century) for the launching of the microfilm project in November 1964. HMML was not able to film the manuscripts, but the monastery set up its own facilities and microfilmed over 300 manuscripts for the new project. An overview of the collection can be obtained through the Inventario dei manoscritti della biblioteca di Subiaco (Forlì: Casa Editrice Luigi Bordandini, 1891), a copy of which is available at HMML.

About the same time that microfilming began at Subiaco, HMML commissioned the library at Cava (founded in 1011) to microfilm its collection of 65 parchment manuscripts, many of them written in Beneventan script. These manuscripts are catalogued in Codices Cavenses (1935), by D. Leo Mattei-Cerasoli, O.S.B.

HMML has collected several other manuscripts from Italy on microfilm. Many of these are represented in Klaus Gamber’s Codices liturgici Latini antiquiores (1968-1988) Write to HMML to inquire about specific manuscript holdings.

HMML also has a large collection of Ethiopian manuscripts from the Vatican Library, in particular from the collections of the Borgiani Etiopici (over 30 mss.) and the Vaticani Etiopici (approximately 300 mss.). In addition to these, there are also several other manuscripts that HMML has purchased individually.