The Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore of Milan's collection of papyri (identified by the abbreviation P.Med = Papyri Mediolanenses) was built up during the course of the 20th century.

The first papyri arrived in the 1920s from the Jacovelli-Vita and Castelli donations as a result of the intervention of Aristide Calderini. The collection was later developed thanks to acquisitions made in 1968-1974, 1976 and 1979 (P.Med. Barelli) and in 1981, 1983 and 1990, the fruit of work done by Orsolina Montevecchi.

The papyri originally numbered 12, but those pieces were successively enriched with about 300 examples from the Castelli donation. Later purchases have added more than 600 papyri to the collection.

As a result, the entire collection now consists of roughly 1,000 papyri, all of Egyptian origin, mainly written in Greek, although a small number are also written in hieratic and Coptic. The Greek papyri contain some 40 biblical, liturgical, literary and semi-literary manuscripts, while all the others are documentary.

Most of the papyri have already been published in the Italian journal "Aegyptus", which specializes in Egyptology and Papyrology and was founded in 1920 by Aristide Calderini. The documentary papyri have been republished in the various editions of Sammelbuch Griechischer Urkunden aus Aegypten.

The papyri collection also boast other ancient works, all in Greek and of Egyptian origin, more specifically:

• a small collection of ostraca
• three wooden tablets written in Greek, one of which liturgical
• about 200 amphora stamps
• six Greek inscriptions

All the above material dates back to the Ptolemaic, Roman and Byzantine eras.