Libraries Housing Mathematical Treasures
The Metochion of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem
The door to the Metochion in Jerusalem.
The capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453 ending the Byzantine Empire forced the Eastern Orthodox Church to move valuable manuscripts to more secure cloisters in Palestine.
Thus the library of the Greek Patriarchate facing the main entrance of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem held important mathematical manuscripts for several centuries. Among its many treasures was the oldest surviving copy of Archimedes' The Method.
The "daughter-house" held the copy until toward the middle of the 18th century when it was returned to Constantinople and later discovered by the great Danish scholar J. Heiberg in 1906.
Today the palimsest is at the Walters Gallery in Baltimore.