In a restitution ceremony held this week in New York, the Manhattan District Attorney』s Office returned 17 stolen antiquities and rare books collectively valued at more than $1.5 million to Italy and the Vatican. According to a statement by D.A.』s office, the objects were recovered after 「multiple investigations into antiquities trafficking networks.」
The items include six rare Chinese-language books—largely on scientific subjects—written by Jesuit clerics in the 16th–17th centuries; they are among about 40 such books stolen from the Archives of the Society of Jesus in Vatican City sometime between 1999 and 2002.
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These books date from a period when Jesuit missionaries were at the forefront of the Catholic Church』s efforts to gain a foothold in Asia. Starting with Matteo Ricci in 1582, Jesuit emissaries to China embarked on a program of introducing Christianity alongside Western science and technology, translating treatises on astronomy, mathematics, cartography and other scientific topics, as well as gospel texts, from Latin into Chinese.
While the originals of these books were destined for China』s Imperial library, copies of them were sent back to Rome. The volumes in the Vatican archives were last inventoried in the 1990s; in 2022, following an unusual number of Chinese Jesuit texts appearing on the online auction market, the Jesuits conducted another inventory and discovered about 42 were were missing.
Investigators from the Manhattan D.A.』s Office Antiquities Trafficking Unit were able to trace the six books now being returned by researching past auctions, discovering that they were offered for sale on the antiquarian book market in London in 2000. After being purchased by a private collector, they were loaned to University of Notre Dame, where they were seized by the D.A.』s office in late 2025.
The other objects returned to Italy this week span time periods and cultures. They include a 1525 letter from Alfonso I d』Este, Duke of Ferrara, to Lodovico Ariosto, Governor of the Province of Garfagnana, seized from the Morgan Library, and—as reported by the New York Times today—several items seized from the Metropolitan Museum, among them two Greek ceramic drinking cups from about 500 BC, deemed to have been looted.
Since its founding in 2017, the Antiquities Trafficking Unit has convicted 18 individuals of cultural property-related crimes, recovered more than 6,200 antiquities valued at more than $485 million, and has returned more than 5,860 of them so far to 36 countries.