London
The Art Newspaper can reveal that an important twelfth-century manuscript in the British Library was looted from an Italian cathedral. The missal, from the chapter library of Benevento, was acquired by a UK army captain during World War II and bought by the British Museum library (as it then was) at Sotheby’s in 1947. Last month the Archbishop of Benevento, Seraphinus Sprovieri, told The Art Newspaper that he will now be submitting a claim to the newly established Spoliation Advisory Panel.
The missal was originally copied in the convent of St Peter, in Benevento, north east of Naples, around 800 years ago. The precious 290-folio volume has numerous decorated initials in south Italian style, with zoomorphic motifs and foliage.
On 8 September 1943, after the armistice of Cassibilie, German soldiers took control in Benevento. This immediately led to American air raids, and on the morning of 14 September bombs destroyed most of the magnificent Romanesque cathedral. The chapter library was in an adjacent building, in Piazza Orsini, and it too suffered serious damage from the raids. The most precious manuscripts and books were immediately transferred to the Pontificio Seminario Regionale “Pio XI”, in the Viale Atlantici. This exercise was carried out by priests and the current archbishop says that “no pillaging appears to have happened at that time.”
On 2 October 1943 the occupying German troops retreated, and for some days the town was virtually deserted, until the arrival of Allied forces. The Seminario was then commandeered for lodging the troops and providing medical facilities. The priests were obliged to leave and Archbishop Seraphinus Sprovieri suggests that the missal disappeared during this period. Its loss was noted immediately after the war, when the books and manuscripts were returned to the chapter library.
The British Library (originally part of the British Museum) was first shown the missal in 1946, when it was brought in by a Captain D.G. Ash from London, who reported that he had bought it in April 1944 from a bookdealer in Naples. The library’s deputy keeper wrote to Ash on 15 November 1946, suggesting that the missal might have been looted: “It is an offence to possess looted property; and if I were in your place I should consult your friend Mr J.G. Mann who I believe is connected with the organisation dealing with such matters. If the manuscript is not loot, you have been fortunate enough to obtain a manuscript which on account of its liturgical interest, an institution such as this would be happy to possess.”
On 23 June 1947 the missal was offered at Sotheby’s, described as the property of Ash and having been made “probably for the Benedictine Abbey of San Pietro (no longer in existence) in Southern Italy”—an origin that can be seen from a reference to San Pietro in the text. The missal was acquired for £420 by the London dealer Quaritch, acting on behalf of the British Museum. On 12 July the museum formally agreed to buy the manuscript for £441, and it was accessioned as Egerton Ms 3511.
There is no evidence in the surviving papers of any checks having been made to follow up earlier fears that the missal had been looted. No contacts seem to have been made with the Benevento chapter library, which would have been an obvious source of information. It also apparently escaped attention that the manuscript is noted as belonging to the chapter library in E.A. Loew’s standard book, The Beneventan Script, published in Oxford in 1914.
It was not until 1961 that French scholar Dom G. Benoit-Castelli confirmed that the missal in the British Museum had come from the chapter library. He informed the British Museum library, but it does not seem to have passed on this information to Benevento.
News that their missal was in London does not appear to have reached the archbishop until October 1976. It then took some time to establish that the manuscript was in the British Library, which had been separated from the British Museum five years earlier, and the archbishop had to put forward his claim through a chain of intermediaries—the Italian Ministry of Culture, the Italian Foreign Ministry, the Italian embassy in London and the Apostolic Delegation in London.
The formal claim was finally submitted on 7 April 1978 by Archbishop Raffaele Calabria.
British Library Director General Donovan Richnell had the matter investigated and then reported to his board. He admitted that in 1946 “the department were unable to identify it as the property of any institution, but suspected that it might have been looted from such in the recent war. They advised Captain Ash accordingly.” No comment was made about the decision to purchase it a year later, but Mr Richnell pointed out that “the Treasury Solicitor is of the opinion that the request from Benevento could properly be resisted.”
On 18 January 1979 Mr Richnell replied to the archbishop: “We are very sorry to have to tell you that the return of the missal to Benevento is not possible. The reasons are legal... Under English law, your chapter library unfortunately lost their title to the manuscript at the end of six years after the loss of the object.” Mr Richnell also pointed out that under the British Library Act of 1972, its powers to dispose of objects are circumscribed and “the missal comes within the category of objects the alienation of which is precluded.”
In recent years, attitudes towards works of art looted during World War II have changed considerably. The UK National Museum Directors’ Conference, which includes the British Library, issued a statement of principles in November 1998. This “recognised and deplored the wrongful taking of works of art that constituted one of the many horrors of the Holocaust and World War II.” The statement pledged to give “prompt and serious consideration to claims to title for specific works in their collections” and called for detailed research on items which had an unclear provenance for the 1933-45 period. The British Library is currently undertaking this research and a report is expected to be published this autumn.
In putting forward a new claim, Benevento will still face the two legal obstacles which were cited by the Treasury Solicitor in 1978.
However, last month, Arts Minister Alan Howarth, giving evidence to the House of Commons select committee on Culture, Media and Sport on 8 June (without any knowledge of the Benevento case), stressed that Britain should do the ethically right thing. When asked about the six-year statute of limitations, and whether something should be done about it in the case of war loot, he responded that “my personal desire would be to see a generous response to claims where they were proved to be substantiated... I would want to be as generous and decent as we possibly could.”
A British Library spokesperson commented: “We have no reason to believe that the legal position has changed since the 1970s in any way, but we are certainly sensitive to the claims of the chapter library. In the event of any renewed claim, we will, of course, also render all assistance in having the legal position reexamined. But it is for the government to consider any change that might be needed to existing legislation.”