CaNaMEI

logo canamei

The CaNaMEI Project: Rediscovering Ancient Ethiopian Manuscripts in Italian Libraries

The CaNaMEI Project (Catalogo Nazionale dei Manoscritti Etiopici in Italia) is a research initiative launched in 2019 by the University of Naples L’Orientale and supported by several academic institutions. Directed by Prof. Gianfrancesco Lusini and a team of scholars, the project focuses on Ethiopic and Amharic manuscripts preserved in Italian public and private collections, particularly those that remain understudied. Its main goal is to document, digitize, catalogue, and promote Ethiopia’s manuscript heritage in Italy.

CaNaMEI emphasizes both textual and material aspects of the manuscripts, producing various outputs such as printed catalogues, scholarly reports, and an open-access online database with descriptions and digital images. The project also supports manuscript preservation through restoration efforts.
Operating on three levels, CaNaMEI combines traditional academic research, digital humanities methodologies, and public engagement activities. It situates Ethiopian manuscript studies within broader Late Antique, Byzantine, and Eastern Christian contexts, while promoting accessibility, education, and cultural dissemination through conferences, workshops, and other outreach initiatives.

 

History of the project activities

2019-2020

The Museo Archeologico e d’Arte della Maremma (MAAM) in Grosseto, Tuscany, hosts a small collection on permanent loan from Archbishopric of Grosseto. The collection consists of two parchment codices; the more valuable in terms of antiquity, artistic and textual value, is undoubtedly a 15th- or early 16th-century illuminated codex containing the Four Gospels (MS MAAM 191). The codex provides an outstanding example of the art of calligraphy and illumination in medieval Ethiopia. In consultation with the relevant offices of the Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio, the manuscript was restored in 2020. This intervention was made possible by the financial support of the MIUR project Studi e Ricerche sulle culture dell’Asia e dell’Africa: tradizione e continuità, rivitalizzazione e divulgazione, headed by IPOCAN and ISMEO. The description of the codex and the restoration work were the subject of the first CaNaMEI Report (2020).

The Historical Archive of the Diocese of Savona-Noli hosts a large-sized illuminated codex, also dating back to the 15th–16th century and containing an archaic hagiographic collection known as the Acts of the Martyrs. The manuscript, a deluxe codex enriched by gorgeous ḥaräg ornaments opening many of the commemorative readings, also underwent conservation measures funded by the same MIUR project headed by IPOCAN and ISMEO. The manuscript was the subject of the third CaNaMEI Report (2022).

2021–2022

During the years 2021–2022 the research program focused first on collections located in and around Rome and subsequently expanded to other major collections throughout Italy. The Biblioteca Angelica includes one Ethiopian manuscript, MS Or. 27, containing a collection of mälkǝʾ hymns, that is poetic compositions in rhymed stanzas.

The Biblioteca Vallicelliana possesses nine oriental manuscripts in various languages, among which two Ethiopian manuscripts: a protective scroll (MS Inv. 2660) and a small composite codex containing prayers and other texts (MS R1).

The library of the Società Geografica Italiana, located at Villa Celimontana, preserves two parchment codices, a parchment scroll, and several notebooks and quires written by European missionaries in the second half of the nineteenth century. These include lexicons and grammatical treatises of Ethiopian languages compiled by Father Giusto d’Urbino, Father Léon des Avanchers, and Father Giovanni Stella.

The library of the Monumento Nazionale di Grottaferrata preserves sixteen Ethiopian manuscripts acquired in several stages during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, including psalters, protective scrolls, and an accordion book (sənsul).

The Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma preserves ten Ethiopian manuscripts acquired between the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including manuscripts formerly owned by the Lazarist missionary Giuseppe Sapeto and the prestigious Old Testament codex belonging to Emperor Menelik II and Empress Ṭaytu.

The project team also investigated and digitized the private Zanasi-Li Volsi collection, consisting of eight Ethiopian manuscripts. The materials were digitized in March 2021 and became the subject of the second CaNaMEI Report (2021).

Research activities were then extended to the Biblioteca Palatina in Parma, one of the richest Ethiopic collections in Italy, comprising forty-five manuscripts. Six research missions carried out between September 2021 and February 2023 resulted in the complete digitization of the collection using a Metis EDS Gamma planetary scanner. Three particularly valuable manuscripts—the Book of the Hours (MS Parm. 3838), the Shepherd of Hermas (MS Parm. 3842), and the Book of Enoch (MS Parm. 3843)—underwent conservation treatment funded by IPOCAN and ISMEO. The restored manuscripts were officially returned to the Biblioteca Palatina during a public conference held on 13 September 2022 and later became the subject of the fourth CaNaMEI Report (2023). A complete printed catalogue of the collection is currently in preparation for the Ministry of Culture’s Indici e Cataloghi delle Biblioteche Italiane series.

The library of the Department of Asian, African and Mediterranean Studies (DAAM) at the University of Naples L’Orientale also expanded its Ethiopic holdings through the donation of the Nastasi collection. The manuscripts have been documented and are awaiting digitization.

The project was presented internationally at the 21st International Conference of Ethiopian Studies (ICES21), held in Addis Ababa in September 2022.

2023–2024

The years 2023–2024 were devoted both to the dissemination of research results and to the publication of new cataloguing studies.

In April 2023 the conference Manoscritti etiopici in Italia: documentazione, catalogazione e restauro was held at ISMEO (Palazzo Baleani, Rome), bringing together specialists working on Ethiopian manuscript heritage.

The same year saw the publication of the fourth CaNaMEI Report, devoted to the restoration of three outstanding manuscripts from the Biblioteca Palatina in Parma.

In 2024 the fifth CaNaMEI Report was published, dedicated to the Ethiopian collection of the Biblioteca Forteguerriana in Pistoia. The collection, consisting of five codices formerly owned by Ferdinando Martini, Governor of the Colony of Eritrea (1897–1907), includes the prestigious Octateuch of Pistoia (MS Martini 2), an early fifteenth-century parchment codex containing the first eight books of the Old Testament. The manuscript stands out for its antiquity, size, and artistic and textual value and was the subject of a detailed historical, textual, and art-historical study.

Also in 2024, the closing conference of the three-year DAAM-funded research project, entitled I manoscritti etiopici in Italia: documentare, catalogare, conservare, brought together approximately twenty scholars from European academic institutions to discuss methodological issues concerning the cataloguing of Ethiopian and Eritrean manuscripts.

2025–2026

In the years 2025–2026 the CaNaMEI project further expanded its documentation activities through new research missions across Italy while continuing the publication and dissemination of its results.

In 2025 the sixth CaNaMEI Report was published, dedicated to the Ethiopian manuscripts of the Mosso collection preserved at the Castello d’Albertis (14 codices, MSS GCA-001 to GCA-014) and the Biblioteca Civica Berio (MSS Berio 1–2). The work involved full scientific cataloguing, digitization, and codicological and textual analysis, contributing to a clearer reconstruction of the history of the Genoese collections.

In the same year, members of the team participated in the 22nd International Conference of Ethiopian Studies (ICES22), hosted at Hawassa University, where they presented the most recent outcomes of the project.

In 2025 a research mission was carried out at the Museo del Risorgimento in Milan, aimed at the digitization, study, and cataloguing of Ethiopian MS 26233, containing a version of the 33 Miracles of Mary. Although extremely fragmentary, the manuscript preserves 38 folios with corresponding miniatures attributable to the early Gondarine style (early seventeenth century). The study of the remaining nine Ethiopian manuscripts preserved by the Museum was also initiated.

Further documentation, cataloguing, and digitization missions were carried out at the Biblioteca Civica “G. Tartarotti” and the Museo Storico Italiano della Guerra (MITAG) in Rovereto, the Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria di Torino (BNUTO), the Biblioteca Provinciale dei Cappuccini di Genova, the Biblioteca Civica Angelo Mai and the Biblioteca Diocesana of Bergamo, and the Biblioteca Universitaria di Pisa. These activities further expanded the national survey of Ethiopian manuscript collections preserved in Italian libraries and cultural institutions.

Finally, the project forms part of a successful multi-year collaboration with several Ethiopian universities aimed at training technical and scientific personnel in the cataloguing, digitization, restoration, and archiving of manuscripts written in Gǝʿǝz. Within this framework, a joint university training course, held partly in Addis Ababa and partly at the University of Naples L’Orientale, has been established to train eight specialists in the field. The one-year programme includes specific examinations to assess the achievement of training objectives and provides official certification upon successful completion.

In 2026, the database was expanded with five additional records describing the five manuscripts from the Ferdinando Martini Collection of the Forteguerriana Library in Pistoia. These manuscripts had already been described and catalogued several years before the launch of the CaNaMEI project by Gianfrancesco Lusini in The Ethiopic Manuscripts of the Martini Collection in the Forteguerriana Library of Pistoia, Aethiopica 5 (2002), 156–176.

Note. In May–June 2018, the five manuscripts were digitized by A. Brita, K. Helmholz, and S. Hummel as part of a collaborative project for the documentation and digitization of Ethiopian manuscript collections held in Italian libraries, directed by A. Bausi (University of Hamburg; since 2023, Sapienza University of Rome) and coordinated by A. Brita (University of Hamburg; since 2021, University of Florence). The project was carried out within the framework of the activities of the Hiob Ludolf Centre for Ethiopian and Eritrean Studies (HLCEES) and the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures (CSMC) at the University of Hamburg. It was funded by the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures (CSMC); by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) through project TP C05, “Parchment Saints” – The Making of Ethiopian Hagiographic Manuscripts: Matter and Devotion in Manuscript Practices of Medieval and Pre-Modern Ethiopia, within the Collaborative Research Centre (Sonderforschungsbereich 950) “Manuskriptkulturen in Asien, Afrika und Europa”, University of Hamburg (2015–2019); and by the European Research Council under the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013), Advanced Grant Agreement No. 338756, project TraCES – From Translation to Creation: Changes in Ethiopic Style and Lexicon from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages, University of Hamburg (2014–2019). Online access to the digitized images is provided through the Langzeitvorhaben im Akademienprogramm by means of the Akademie der Wissenschaften in Hamburg project Beta maṣāḥǝft: Die Manuscript Culture of Christian Ethiopia and Eritrea: A Multimedia Research Environment, hosted at the University of Hamburg (2016–2040) and directed by Alessandro Bausi and Eugenia Sokolinski.