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COLLEGEVILLE, Minn. – The Rev. Columba Stewart, OSB, executive director of the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library (HMML), announced that HMML has met a $450,000 challenge grant from The National Endowment for the Humanities by raising $1.8 million in contributions and pledges for its Malta Study Center. The NEH awarded the 4:1 challenge grant in January 2004, requiring HMML to raise the matching funds in four year’s time. The 2.25 million-dollar endowment made possible by this NEH-challenge grant will establish a permanent curator and fund a full complement of activities including digital copying/microfilming, cataloguing, manuscript preservation, book acquisition, research fellowships and academic conferences.

Since it was established in 1973 in collaboration with the Honorary Consul General of Malta-St. Paul, Joseph S. Micallef, K.M., the Malta Study Center has served national and international researchers and students of the history of Western Europe, the Mediterranean and the island of Malta. The mission of the Center is to preserve and make accessible archival materials related to the history of the island of Malta and the Knights of Malta.

“The Malta Study Center has become an essential resource for graduate dissertations, scholarly monographs, and articles published in prominent and widely read publications such as National Geographic and Aramic World,” Stewart said. “The Center, with its expansive collection equal to none in the world, and its internationally- recognized curator, Theresa Vann, Ph.D., has confirmed its role as a cross-cultural resource of history’s development.”

According to Vann, HMML’s Malta Study Center is the only location outside of Malta where scholars have access to the archives of the Knights of Malta, as well as other major archival treasures of this island-nation, all under one roof. “The gathering of these materials at HMML makes research even more convenient than research in the various archives in Malta, where much of the material is either unavailable to scholars or available only on a limited basis.” Vann continued “These are the only sources for the complete central archives of an international military religious order, the Order of the Hospital, many crusader sources, printed music and unique inquisition records. The collections paint a complete picture of a complex, multi-cultural Mediterranean society and significantly contribute to our greater understanding and knowledge of the world’s major religious cultures. Many of these documents would have been lost had HMML had not begun systematic microfilming, because the Maltese climate is unforgiving to fragile manuscripts. HMML also assists in educating Maltese library and archival professionals in preserving, cataloguing and making their history accessible on-site.”

For more information about HMML’s Malta Study Center, please contact Theresa Vann, director of the Malta Study center 320-363-3993, or by e-mail at tvann@csbsju.edu. For further information about the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library or Vivarium, visit www.hmml.org.
 

COLLEGEVILLE, Minnesota -- The Rev. Columba Stewart, OSB, executive director of the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library (HMML), has announced that HMML has acquired two new books of critical importance for its already outstanding collection of rare books and manuscripts: one of the most significant Bibles of all time, and the first edition of a major Benedictine text.

The Ostrih Bible, sometimes known as the “Slavonic Gutenberg,” is the first complete printed Bible in Church Slavonic, the common liturgical language of Slavic Christianity. Printed in the Ukraine in 1581, this was in its day by far the largest Cyrillic printing project ever undertaken. Edited and printed under Orthodox auspices, the Ostrih Bible (sometimes called Ostrog after the Russian form of the place name) seems to have been deliberately designed for both Orthodox and Catholic readers, as its arrangements of the biblical books has features of both traditions. It has been suggested that the motivation for its publication was to unite Orthodox and Catholics in opposition to the inroads of Calvinism in the western Slavic world, giving the older religious traditions a Bible they could use in refuting the Protestant claim that they had neglected the Bible in favor of other religious texts.

The HMML copy was originally owned by the Orthodox Bishop of L’viv, Ukraine, Hedeon Balaban (bp. 1569-1607), and was only recently discovered in northern Romania by a European bookseller. This is an extremely rare book, with only a handful of copies in North America. HMML’s copy is in unusually good condition: most copies are very worn, and often are missing pages.

“With HMML launching a major, multi-site manuscript digitization project in Ukraine this fall, the acquisition of the Ostrih Bible is timely indeed,” Stewart said. “This will help place HMML on the map for those interested in the Christianity of the Slavic world.”

HMML has acquired a rare first print edition of The Dialogues of Pope Gregory the Great, the only source of information about the life and deeds of Saint Benedict. A copy of the first edition, printed in Strassburg in 1472-73, became available recently for the first time in decades. HMML’s handsome, pristine copy was rebound in the early nineteenth century by the noted Parisian binder Bozérian le Jeune. Well cared for by the distinguished collectors who have owned it over the last two hundred years, this extremely important monastic work has found its way to a good home, where it joins North America’s best collection of Benedictina, or works related to Benedictine monasticism. Until now, no copy is known to have remained in a monastic library.

“Our two principal areas of focus in rare books are Bibles and Benedictina,” said Stewart. “Other areas in which HMML has significant strengths are liturgy, typography, paleography, and, because of The Saint John’s Bible, calligraphy. Our collections in these areas support HMML’s holdings of manuscript images, making HMML a unique resource for the study of both handwritten and printed books.”

HMML was founded 40 years ago in response to the devastating loss of manuscripts and books during two World Wars. It is the only institution in the world exclusively dedicated to the photographic preservation and study of manuscripts, particularly in locations where war, theft or physical conditions pose a threat. Since its inception, HMML has built the largest collection of manuscript images in the world, having photographed almost 100,000 manuscripts totaling more than 30 million pages.

For more information about HMML and its rare book collections, please contact Father Columba Stewart, executive director of the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library, at 320-363-2217, or by e-mail at cstewart@csbsju.edu. For further information about the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library or Vivarium, visit www.hmml.org.

COLLEGEVILLE, Minnesota -- The Malta Study Center of the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library announces that it will resume manuscript preservation work in Malta. On 23 October 2007, Dr. Theresa M. Vann, The Joseph S. Micallef Curator of the Malta Study Center, will sign a contract with Mr. Charles Farrugia, Director of the National Archives of Malta, to digitize the Magna Curia Castellaniae collection held in the Banca Giuratale, Mdina. The Magna Curia Castellaniae is the archives of the central law court of the Knights of Malta. This court had jurisdiction over civil and criminal cases on the islands of Malta and Gozo. The archives consist of 1,411 volumes plus various registers and indexes, dating from 1543 until 1798. They are a tremendous source of information for the social and economic history of the Maltese people under the administration of the Knights of Malta.

The Knights of Malta, a religious military order also known as the Knights of the Hospital or the Knights of St. John, were founded in Jerusalem ca. 1107. Originally, the order ran a hospital for pilgrims to the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, but during the 12th century it also assumed responsibility for the defense of the crusader kingdoms in the east. After the fall of the last crusader kingdom in 1291, the Order moved its hospital and its central convent to Rhodes, and then to Malta, from where it defended Christian shipping from Muslim pirates. Napoleon took Malta from the Knights in 1798. The Order is still in existence today, but only as a hospitaller organization. The British took Malta in 1800, and installed a governor there in 1814. They separated the records of the Magna Curia Castellaniae from the rest of the archives of the Knights of Malta and kept them in the Courts of Justice. The historical legal archives were transferred to the Banca Giuratale by 1986.

The Malta Study Center of the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library has already microfilmed the Archives of the Knights of Malta, held in the National Library of Malta. The archives date back to the 12th century, and are an important source for the history of crusading warfare and Mediterranean culture. In 1988 the Library wanted to microfilm the Magna Curia Castellaniae as part of the project, but the archives were housed in a different place and the estimated costs were too high. “Now the time is right,” said Dr. Vann. “We have just successfully completed an NEH Challenge Grant to endow the Center, which means that we can budget for on-going preservation work. HMML has switched to digital technology, which is more economical and give faster results than microfilming. Malta has a very rich archival heritage, which comparatively few people outside the country know about. I hope that this is just the start, and that more opportunities will occur to both preserve and provide access to Malta’s history.”

The Hill Museum & Manuscript Library is also currently digitizing the archives of the Rome Priory of the Knights of Malta. HMML was founded 40 years ago in response to the devastating loss of manuscripts and books during two World Wars. It is the only institution in the world exclusively dedicated to the photographic preservation and study of manuscripts, particularly in locations where war, theft or physical conditions pose a threat. Since its inception, HMML has built the largest collection of manuscript images in the world, having photographed almost 100,000 manuscripts totaling more than 30 million pages.

For more information about HMML and its Malta Study Center, please contact Theresa Vann, Ph.D., The Joseph S. Micallef Curator of the Malta Study Center at the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library, at 320-363-3993, or by e-mail at tvann@csbsju.edu. For further information about the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library or Vivarium, visit www.hmml.org.