MELA Notepad

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A Benedictine monk, the Rev. Columba Stewart of St. John’s Abbey and University (College­ville, Minn.)–executive director of the abbey’s Hill Museum & Manuscript Library, and a historian of the early monastic period–leads the museum’s ambitious and longstanding effort to find and digitize manuscripts held in monastic communities in the Middle East, Europe, and Africa. “Our primary focus is Christian traditions, because that’s our expertise,” Father Stewart says.

The work began in the 1960s, when a monk at St. John’s decided to microfilm manuscripts fading away in Austrian monasteries.

The project is currently active at more than 20 sites, but most of the museum’s current activity focuses in and around the Middle East, including Lebanon, Malta, Syria, Iraq, and Turkey. The museum also does intermittent work in Ethiopia.

slightly abridged & edited from the full article by Jennifer Howard
appearing in the Chronicle of Higher Education
29 November 2009