A manuscript with the works of Marcus Tulius Cicero has returned to the collection of the University Library in Wrocław. The valuable illuminated Latin manuscript from the mid-15th century was stolen between 1961 and 1977 and identified by library staff in 2021 in an offer from an antiquarian bookshop in New York. Deputy Minister of Culture and National Heritage Jarosław Sellin attended the handover ceremony.

“This is an opportunity to recall that over 600 objects have been returned to Polish museums over the past seven years. Each of them, even the smallest, is valuable to our heritage. However, there is still a lot of work ahead of us, as restitution is a process that will last for many years and which is not subject to the limitations”, said the deputy minister. 

Jarosław Sellin pointed out that Poland was exceptionally severely ravaged by the disaster of World War II, and the value of losses in the scope of material culture is estimated at almost PLN 52 billion. The number of all lost works of art and other collections valuable to Polish heritage is impossible to specify, as many pre-war collections lacked documentation.

A manuscript containing the works of Marcus Tullius Cicero “De Senectute”, “De Amicitia”, “Paradoxa Stoicorum” (“On Old Age”, “On Friendship”, “Paradoxes of the Stoics”) had been in the collection of the Municipal Library in Wrocław (Stadtbibliothek Breslau) since the beginning of the 20th century. After the war, it became part of the collection of the University Library in Wrocław, from where it was stolen between 1961 and 1977.

In 2021, the staff of the University Library in Wrocław identified the lost manuscript in the offerings of a New York antiquarian bookshop. The preserved documentation allowed a thorough comparative analysis of the lost and found manuscript. After studying it, the object’s previous owner, antiquarian Jonathan Hill, decided to return it to the collection of the University Library in Wrocław.

Arkadiusz Słomczyński