the prophecies come home
Who knows if Nostradamus he could foresee it, perhaps amid the folds of his most cryptic theories and conjectures. The fact is that the famous French astrologer and seer who lived in the sixteenth century now finds himself at the center of an investigation worthy of a novel. Thriller atmospheres, but with a happy ending, and a journey through Europe, starting from a Roman library, crossing the markets of Paris and arriving in Germany. The protagonist is an autographed manuscript by Michel de Nostredame, better known as Nostradamus, in fact. An authentic book of prophecies, stolen from a library of Rome almost twenty years ago, flown abroad, risked in the plots of the antiques market and ended up in the catalog of a German auction house to be sold. The base price was over 12 thousand euros, but the value is much higher: «It can easily triple during the auction. A collector could even spend 50 thousand euros for such a highly prized volume, “explains an expert. The title page reads “Propheties of Michael Nostradamus”, written in Latin. It is not a print and dates back to the 16th century, when the writer, famous for having predicted an incredible number of events in the history of the world, lived.
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The operation
The intervention of the Carabinieri of the Cultural Heritage Protection unit, in agreement with the Ministry of Culture and coordinated by the prosecutor Francesco Marinaro, was decisive. Yesterday, the Nostradamus manuscript (about ten centimeters wide by fifteen sides, with about 500 pages) was transferred to the owner, returning to the Library of the Historical Studies Center of the general order of the Barnabites from which it had disappeared. Various people in charge have succeeded one another in this Center, so it was not possible to circumscribe the precise arc of the stealing. The volume was traced because in the catalog the ink stamp of the library of the Santissimi Blasi and Cairoli de Urbe appeared, another ecclesiastical body that in 1991 merged into the Center of the Barnabites. Being a cultural asset in all respects, in the face of the evidence of the stamp, the German authorities could not help but order the seizure, at the request of the Rome prosecutor’s office. Investigations revealed that the manuscript also ended up on the stall of a flea market in Paris. There, it was bought and then sold to the German auction house. After the request of the Roman investigators, made through letters rogatory, the manuscript had been transferred to Berlin.
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The tests
The experts of the German state archive analyzed the book and established that it is an original work: the same one that had been stolen. The disappearance from Rome was reported in 2007, but the time of the disappearance is not certain: it could be earlier. In Berlin, the manuscript was delivered to the Italian ambassador, Armando Varricchio, by the Minister of Culture, Claudia Roth. During the ceremony, the ambassador was also given a painting by Agostino Tassi and a miniature that is part of a sixteenth-century missal by Ludovico da Romagnano stolen from the archives of the Bishop’s Curia of Turin in 1990.
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