A rare letter that reported on the voyages of Christopher Columbus has been returned to Italy after a Wilmington-based investigative unit had determined the artifact had been stolen and donated to the Library of Congress.
A ceremony in Rome today marked the return of the printed letter that dates from 1493.
The letter had been stolen on an unknown date from a library in Florence, Italy and was replaced with a forgery. The letter was donated to the U.S. Library of Congress in 2004.
No details on how the letter ended up in the library’s possession were revealed. However, the investigation is ongoing, according to Kimberlynn Reeves of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Delaware.
“This repatriation is the result of the joint efforts of this office, HSI special agents assigned who are assigned to investigate cultural property theft, the Department of Justice Office of International Affairs, the Library of Congress, and the Carabinieri Tutela Patrimonio Culturale in Rome,” said U.S. Attorney Charles M. Oberly, III. “I commend all parties for their efforts in producing this positive outcome – particularly given the historical significance of this document. Documents such as the ‘Plannck II’ Columbus Letter are of significant cultural value as they provide historical facts about critical events in world history, and we are humbled to return this historic document back to its home country.”
Christopher Columbus’s first transatlantic expedition left the harbor of Palos in Spain in three ships in August of 1492. Columbus returned to Spain in March 1493, concluding his epic voyage of discovery to the Americas.
Columbus’s report, in the form of a letter to his royal patrons Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, was written while still at sea in February 1493, and was reportedly dated when he arrived in Lisbon on March 4, 1493, where he stayed for approximately ten days before sailing home to Spain. The letter was instrumental in spreading the news throughout Europe about Columbus’s voyage.[2]
Soon after Columbus’s arrival in Spain, printed versions of the letter began to appear and were issued across Western Europe, in Spain, Italy, France, Switzerland, and the Netherlands.
Eleven editions were published in 1493 and six more editions were published between 1494 and 1497. They are, however, all quite rare today. Several of these editions survive in only a single copy, and there are believed to be no more than 80 surviving copies of all the various editions.
Two of the a editions of the Columbus Letter were published by Rome printer Stephan Plannck in 1493. The editions are referred to as the Plannck I and Plannck II editions, according to a release from the U.S. District Attorney for Delaweare’s office.
In 2012, special agents with the Department of Homeland Security Investigations (“HSI”) received information that a “Plannck II” edition Christopher Columbus Letter had been stolen from the Riccardiana Library, located in Florence, Italy, and replaced with a forgery. The original “Plannck II” Columbus Letter, according to a source was believed to be in the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
HSI notified Italian law enforcement about this development, and a joint American-Italian investigation commenced. HSI agents, specializing in cultural property theft and based in Wilmington, traveled to Florence, Italy to examine the suspected forgery.
Working closely with the Library’s staff, the letter was inspected by subject matter experts who concluded that this “Plannck II” Columbus Letter originally came from the Riccardiana Library.
The case was investigated by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations and Assistant United States Attorney Jamie M. McCall of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Delaware.
