Venice, Carabinieri recover illuminated pages of a 14th-century antiphonary stolen in 1996

A full twenty-two years after they were stolen, two precious pages of an illuminated fourteenth-century codex, an antiphonary (i.e., a liturgical book in which the antiphons for masses were collected), which had been torn up in 1996 to be stolen, have been recovered. The fourteenth-century codex, consisting of more than three hundred pages, is kept in theState Archives of Venice, but it was formerly in St. Mark’s Basilica: it is a full-bodied volume, with wooden bindings, very difficult to transport, which is why the thieves had decided to dismember it. A large part of the credit for the operation goes to an official of the same Archives, who recognized the two pages among the lots that were about to be auctioned by a London house. The official’s report dates back to 2015 and immediately triggered an investigation: the Carabinieri of the Nucleus Tutela Patrimonio Culturale, making comparisons with the microfilms made on those very pages before the theft, found that the two pages were the ones actually present in the database of stolen cultural property, and the auction house, after ascertaining the illegitimate provenance of the sheets, immediately handed them over to the Italian authorities.

The two pages therefore returned to the State Archives in Venice. Satisfied was Mayor Luigi Brugnaro, who in a note declared, “To the Carabinieri, especially, today, to the Nucleo che Tutela il Patrimonio Culturale di Venezia and its commander, Major Christian Costantini, come my sincerest applause for having succeeded in recovering a treasure of such great artistic and economic value. With your commitment and sense of duty you have brought back to the City a piece of our history. That book, which was originally in St. Mark’s Basilica, is one of the symbols of our tradition both as Venetian citizens and as believers. We thank you for what you have done, and with you at our side, the cultural heritage of Venice is safe.”

Venice, Carabinieri recover illuminated pages of a 14th-century antiphonary stolen in 1996

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