The thieves destroyed the fences of the west gate and broke the lock on the entrance. Once inside the Romanesque church of Santa María, built in the 12th century in the municipality of Sant Martí Sarroca (Alt Penedès), they removed the image of Christ made of ivory that presided over the main altar.
With all the time in the world working in their favor, they also forced the doors of the sacristy and took two processional crosses – one from the 14th century and the other from the 16th century – as well as two silver chalices and two reliquaries. It was 1981 and all these pieces of high historical value disappeared from the map. Until now.
More than 40 years after that robbery, the Mossos d'Esquadra received a tip from the Bishopric of Sant Feliu de Llobregat itself, which learned that a company specialized in buying and selling antiques had organized an auction in which would expose the Gothic cross from the 16th century.
This relevant piece, which was to be one of the star objects of the bidding that was going to be held on November 17, already participated in an exhibition of crosses in 1913 at the first Congress of Christian Art of Catalonia, an exhibition in which They gathered more than 200 crucifixes from Catalan churches.
When the investigators contacted the auction house, those responsible for the company could not prove its ownership or provide purchase documents, which allowed the Catalan police to recover the work. Once authenticated, they deposited it in the Bishopric on November 10.
Parallel to this operation, cyber patrol agents of the Mossos d'Esquadra detected a user who was selling ancient documents that were part of a private collection through websites specialized in the sale and purchase of antiques.
The Central Historical Heritage Unit managed to recover a total of 51 manuscripts, 28 of which were considered to be in the public domain. Among them was a theatrical text of high historical interest, entitled To the Virgin of Montserrat Act or Comedy composed by the very Reverend P.Valentín Céspedes, which has already been deposited in the library of the Abbey of Montserrat.
The play is written in verse and inspired by the legend of Brother Garí, a hermit from Montserrat who allegedly raped the daughter of Count Guifré el Pilós. The manuscript was copied from an original piece that was lost in the Monastery during the War of Independence in 1811.
It is a rare document, which is not cited in any of the bibliographical repertoires of the 17th and 18th centuries and which is of great interest for the history of Catalan theatre, since it is a topic related to legends specific to Catalonia, of which Not many witnesses have survived.
The investigation to find this work written by the Jesuit Father Valentín Céspedes began on November 11, 2022, when the agents located a profile on the Internet that offered for sale different ancient writings from medieval Catalan institutions and internal ecclesiastical texts, from City Councils. and administrations of a seigneurial and jurisdictional nature.
Some of them, with high historical value and coming from different documentary collections, had the appearance of having been extracted or looted. The user sold these books and manuscripts alleging in the description of the products that they could be documents from public archives.
With this information, on February 3, a police inspection was carried out at the seller's home to determine the authenticity and traceability of the scrolls. In a first observation, agents specializing in historical heritage detected that the texts contained elements that led to the suspicion that they were documents considered to be in the “public domain.”
Furthermore, the intervened elements were not in optimal conservation conditions and the measures applied to preserve them were non-existent. All of the inventory that the person under investigation had came from the inheritance of a relative who was an antiques collector and there was no purchase record that indicated its origin.
Of the 51 texts temporarily intervened, 23 were returned and the other 28 have been delivered to the archives from which they came or have been deposited in accredited libraries, where they will be integrated into their heritage collection, guaranteeing their preservation and ensuring the fulfillment of their social function. .
