Cultural Catastrophe!

St. James (Santiago) image in Codex Calixtinus (Wikipedia Commons)

After months of not writing, I had planned to begin adding materials to this blog as I prepare to once again walk the Camino Frances to Santiago de Compostela this coming autumn. I had not planned to begin by reporting a great crime against the human patrimony. One goal of my forthcoming pilgrimage was to view the Codex Calixtinus, one of the most important documents of medieval Europe, but alas that is not to be. Last weekend the document was stolen from the archive of the Cathedral.

On the Gocamino news group, I posted the following:
Whatever its status and history as the first European travel guide, loss of the Codex is a cultural tragedy. One of the most important extant collections of medieval music, the Codex Calixtinus is a key document for students of musicology. Other materials contained in the stolen document are equally important for scholars in various fields of medieval studies. This theft is at least on a par with the theft of a first folio of Shakespeare from Durham University (see the fascinating display currently on view at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC) or the art works taken from the Gardiner Museum in Boston as one of the great crimes against the human patrimony committed against an institution devoted to preservation of that heritage.

One must hope the Codex Calixtinus is returned to the cathedral archive quickly and undamaged, and that it is not broken into pages and then sold to unscrupulous dealers who then sell them to unethical collectors in a vast, and one hears hideously lucrative, market for purloined works of art. Once in that market documents tend to disappear forever. Should the document be irretrievably lost, there are at least good quality reproductions for scholars and pilgrims to see, though those can never convey the thrill of examining the original nor contain the possibility of discovery some new scholarly examination may uncover. Meanwhile the Cathedral needs to evaluate its security precautions, for its archive and treasury contain numerous other items of potentially great value in the illicit art market.

A frequent contributor to discussions of matters related to the pilgrimage to Santiago has posted an extensive commentary on the importance of the Codex Calixtinus to that pilgrimage at her blog Amawalker.