As an e-resource, e-codices is a platform that now makes 2,000 manuscripts accessible online. But it is more than that. E-codices is a manuscript center that dedicates the large part of its work to cataloguing and to publishing manuscript descriptions, both new descriptions and those already printed. A large number of these descriptions (1,017) were made in the twenty-first century, and many of these (427) were first published on e-codices, and most of these were prepared expressly for e-codices. We would like to thank our editorial team, which at the moment consists of three persons: Dr. Marina Bernasconi Reusser, Dr. Brigitte Roux, and Laura Glöckler, our student assistant. Marina Bernasconi has been working for e-codices since November 2009, when e-codices had online only some 481 manuscripts from 19 libraries, and most of those manuscripts (309) were from the Abbey Library of St. Gallen. We asked Dr. Bernasconi what she thought the most satisfying moment of her work was: "When, after thorough controls, particularly that all links lead to the right place and that the texts have been correctly translated, we press the 'publish' button. Then, finally, the manuscript goes online, and we can breathe easy."

This unusually richly illuminated manuscript comes from a workshop related to the imperial court in Southern Italy and was produced between 1195 and 1197. Undoubtedly, the author himself corrected the text, a 1,700 – distich, three-book epic poem, which is only transmitted by this manuscript. The first two books describe the early history and conquest of Sicily by the Staufer; the third book contains an encomium to Emperor Henry IV and his wife Constance, the daughter and heiress of King Roger II of Sicily, themselves the parents of the Hohenstaufen Emperor Frederick II, who was born on December 26, 1194, in Jesi near Ancona.