Andrea Barbara Schmidt, professor of Near Eastern Christian Studies at the Oriental Institute of the Université Catholique de Louvain (Belgium), currently spends research time in Göttingen as a fellow of the Lichtenbergkolleg.  

The main focus of her work is the monumental world chronicle of Michael Syrus in its Armenian translation, which happens to exist in two different versions that have come down to us in multiple copies.

Hitherto no critical edition that is based on a thorough understanding of the substantial manuscript tradition exists. After obtaining photographs of nearly all of the 50 plus artefacts, professor Schmidt is now in a position to put a systematic editorial workflow in place.

As part of the preparatory work several visits to the Lagardehaus were undertaken in order to discuss the options and present the solutions that have been developed for the "Digital Edition of the Coptic Old Testament".

Now we are happy to announce that professor Schmidt finds our Virtual Manuscript Room technology suitable for suporting her work on Michael Syrus as well. As a result, our technical team assists her in taking first steps towards making full use of the software application.

We are looking forward to benefitting from future collaboration through lerning more about the specific challenges that the rich Armenian Christian literature poses. After all, the Armenian and Coptic Churches are sister churches and share lots of their literatures.