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Spanish police have recovered a 17th-century manuscript that disappeared from Valencia’s College of the Major Art of Silk more than a century ago after discovering it for sale online for €71,900.
The manuscript is a copy of ordinances signed in 1479 by Ferdinand the Catholic that elevated velvet-making from a trade to an art, granting the velvet-makers privileges and social recognition.
Agents from the Heritage Group of the National Police Unit assigned to the Valencian Community found the document during routine monitoring of online sales of cultural goods, police said in a statement.
The seller told investigators he did not know the document’s origin and said his father acquired it in the 1970s. The archive confirmed the manuscript disappeared between 1907 and 1909 and was never officially sold.
The ordinances of the Gremi de Velluters, or velvet guild, were approved on 16 February 1479 and officially ratified on 13 October that year by Ferdinand the Catholic. The manuscript also includes statutes of the Brotherhood of San Jerónimo, founded in 1483.
The book is made on green vellum, bound in velvet of the same colour and decorated with bronze fittings. It contains 26 chapters from the 1479 ordinances and the Brotherhood statutes.
The manuscript will remain the property of its current owner, who has been in continuous possession of it as permitted by law, police said.
Before it is returned, it will be registered in the official Valencian heritage records and the owner must comply with conservation standards required by historical heritage legislation.
The document will remain on deposit in the Archive of the Kingdom of Valencia while technicians from the Department of Culture examine it.
The College of the Major Art of Silk holds what is considered Europe’s oldest guild archive, with documentation produced by the institution from the 15th century including records of masters, officials, apprentices and factory inspections.
The owner’s father microfilmed the book at an official service in 1992, although it was never registered as protected cultural heritage, police said.