The Polonsky Foundation Greek Manuscripts Project: a Collaboration between the Universities of Cambridge and Heidelberg

A collaboration between the universities of Cambridge and Heidelberg, financed by the “The Polonsky Foundation”, allowed over 800 Greek manuscripts to be digitised and catalogued. This means that a significant part of Greek manuscript heritage was made both visible world-wide, and accessible for research purposes.

Heidelberg’s part of the project involved 423 Greek manuscripts, which are part of the Bibliotheca Palatina collection, as are the 848 German and 2.030 Latin manuscripts which had already been processed. 29 of the codices were returned to the UB Heidelberg at the beginning of the 19th century and had already been ditigised. The remaining Palatini graeci, just over 400 of them, have been kept since 1623 in the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. Up to now the only source of information about this collection has been a catalogue dating from the end of the 19th century.

Together with the compact cataloguing, the online provision of manuscripts that were previously difficult to access creates a complete and scientifically adequate working basis for interdisciplinary research. In combination with the cataloguing and digitisation projects for the other sub-collections, new insights have also been gained for research into the history and significance of the Bibliotheca Palatina.