Manuscripta Mediaevalia was set up to make the results of the cataloguing of manuscripts in the German-language area accessible online for all researchers, regardless of location and free of charge. Manuscripta Mediaevalia was created following the decision by the library committee of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation) to set up a decentralised digital research library and - to complement the scholarly cataloguing - to endeavour to make all medieval manuscripts accessible in a digitised form. The goal of the project is to provide international manuscript research with a new basis for work.

The permanent availability and maintenance of the information service of Manuscripta Mediaevalia was ensured in the year 2000 by the establishment of a central editorial office for electronic catalogues of medieval manuscripts located in the  Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (State Library of Berlin) - with subsidiaries in the  Bildarchiv Foto Marburg (Image Archive Foto Marburg) and in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Munich.

Currently Manuscripta Mediaevalia makes available data on a total of 39,000 primarily medieval manuscripts and fragments of manuscripts. In addition, the manuscript database offers direct access to 182 catalogues of the DFG, which can be browsed from the first to the last page. The descriptions of 24,300 codices can be selected directly by scrolling on the overview pages.