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Spanish National Police recover 12th Century Calixtine Codex in a garage in Milladoiro (Galicia)

Wednesday 04 July 2012

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Officers of the Spanish National Police Force recovered the Calixtine Codex on Wednesday in a garage in the town of Milladoiro in A Coruña. The original manuscript was found inside various plastic bags wrapped in newspaper and apparently still in good condition.

The work, of incalculable value, is being held by the Police while waiting to be examined by an expert in order to determine whether it has suffered any damage. The garage where the Codex was found, in the town of Milladoiro in A Coruña, belongs to the main suspect - an electrician arrested on Wednesday with his wife, son and another woman linked to the family. In the same garage were found another two copies of the Codex and two books that could have come from the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela and whose origin is now being investigated.

Besides the original Calixtine Codex, which was found on Wednesday lunchtime, the investigators had already carried out searches earlier in the morning and seized more than 1,200,000 euros, various antique religious books containing unique prayer texts and psalms from the Middle Ages (including the Book of Hours, whose disappearance was also reported by the Dean of the Cathedral) and eight copies of the Calixtine Codex.

Specialists from the Historical Heritage Brigade, part of the Specialised and Violent Crime Unit of the General Commissariat of the Judicial Police, have not let up their investigation since the Codex disappeared a year ago. Since then, exhaustive visual inspections have been carried out and almost fifty interviews conducted and statements taken from people linked to the investigation.

The main suspect and owner of the garage where the Codex was found is an electrician who worked at Santiago de Compostela Cathedral for over 25 years. During the searches carried out until 04:30 hours on Wednesday morning in various properties around Santiago, O Grove and Negreira, officers also found keys to several parts of the cathedral, numerous documents related to administrative and religious staff of the cathedral and correspondence from clerics.