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Financial support from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation has allowed us to make one of the most wonderful manuscript collections in Switzerland available over the past 14 months. This collection consists of some 45 manuscripts, produced in the 12th century during the tenure of abbots Frowin and Berchthold in Engelberg, and still held at the same location. The virtual version of the collection is enhanced by the addition of three Frowin manuscripts now held by the Abbey Library of Einsiedeln (Cod. 166[413]; Cod. 240[641] and Cod. 360[77]), a leaf that now resides in Cleveland (Ohio, USA), which originally belonged to Abbey Library of Engelberg Cod. 20, and a manuscript which can now be found in Austria, at the Abbey Library of St. Paul in Lavanttal (Cod. 30-1).

e-codices is covering new territory with the reunification of three virtually joined manuscript parts on our website. One part of this manuscript, produced during the 7th and 8th centuries in France and containing letters and homilies by Augustine of Hippo, is currently found in the Bibliothèque nationale de France (lat. 11641); one part resides in the Bibliothèque de Genève (lat. 16), and the final part, a single leaf, is held by the Russian National Library in St. Petersburg (Lat. F.payr. I.1). For the first time, all known surviving parts of this early Augustinian manuscript, including the many marginal notes added by Florus of Lyon (+ c. 860) in his own hand, may be studied as a whole on e-codices.

The Berner Physiologus goes online as part of the most recent update. We hope that free access to this important Carolingian manuscript from the Berner Burgerbibliothek will eventually provide the necessary impetus for additional editing of the manuscript description on Wikipedia and for furnishing that description with better images. e-codices is proud to note that there are no fewer than 200 Wikipedia articles in no fewer than 20 languages that in some way refer to our site. There has been a Wikipedia entry in French on the above-named manuscript since 2006, and an entry in German since 2008. The English language version has offered a brief contribution, including sample images, since as far back as 2004: “The Bern Physiologus (Bern, Burgerbibliothek, Codex Bongarsianus 318) is a 9th century illuminated copy of the Latin translation of the Physiologus. It was probably produced at Reims about 825-850. It is believed to be a copy of a 5th century manuscript. Many of its miniatures are set, unframed, into the text block, which was a characteristic of late-antique manuscripts. It is one of the oldest extant illustrated copies of the Physiologus” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bern_Physiologus).

e-codices has also established a Photostream on flickr, a photo sharing website with Community elements. This image hosting website currently has over 50 million registered members and 80 million users. Through this social media campaign, e-codices hopes to reach manuscript enthusiasts from all over the world and encourage a variety of different interest groups to share the joys of manuscript culture.