Italian cathedral submits war-loot claim to British Library

An Italian cathedral has submitted a war-loot claim against the British Library for the return of an important 12th-century manuscript. The detailed claim, from the Archbishop of Benevento’s Metropolitan Chapter, is for a bound 290-folio missal which appears to have disappeared in 1943, after the cathedral was bombed by the Allies and subsequently occupied by British troops. Captain D.G. Ash, who sold the missal in 1947 at Sotheby’s where it was bought by the British Library, said that he had bought it from a Naples bookseller in 1944 (The Art Newspaper, No. 105, July-August 2000, p.1 and 5; No. 110, January 2001, p.9). Benevento’s formal legal claim, along with the British Library’s response, has now been submitted to the UK’s official Spoliation Advisory Panel, which meets later this month to decide how to deal with the case.