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THE LETTER AND COIN OF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS
Robert Hoge forwarded this Washington Post article about a stolen copy of a letter written by Christopher Columbus. While of
interest to bibliophiles in general, there is also a numismatic connection. -Editor
On his return voyage from the Caribbean in 1493, the Genoese explorer penned a letter to his Spanish sponsors, detailing his discoveries. Columbus, at the time, was still convinced that he had found "the Indies" and realms near "Cathay," or China. The original document has been lost, but a Latin translation was reprinted and spread around Europe. This specific version is known as the "Plannck II" letter, named after the Rome-based printer who reproduced it in 1493. This particular version of the letter had been housed in a library in Florence, Italy, before it was apparently stolen and replaced with a forgery in the 1950s. It resurfaced in the possession of a Swiss collector in 1990, who sold it to an American rare-books collector. It was eventually donated to the U.S. Library of Congress in 2004. Only in 2012 did the Carabinieri, or Italian military police, realize that the letter in Florence was a forgery. A subsequent American-Italian investigation led to the genuine document's handover this week. The irony of the missive finally making its way back from the New World, centuries after the first journey, was not lost on Rome. "It is interesting how 500 years after the letter was written it has made the same trip back and forth from America," Franceschini, the Italian culture minister, said. Robert writes: Few people probably realize the numismatic connection that Columbus included in his account for the monarchs. I published this, in a fairly obscure Canadian journal some years ago, citing how he referred to a gold portrait coin of "their majesties" Ferdinand and Isabella (you know, I don't quite understand why all subsequent generations seem to use this nickname for the famous queen, whose name was actually Elizabeth!) to show a native chief who his new masters now were! I'm kind of enthused about this find because I have studied the Columbus materials in the past, and was recently able to acquire one of the actual sort of gold coins to which Columbus alluded! (A castellano of the Reyes Catholicos, from the mint of Sevilla!)
Thanks! Here are images of Robert's coin. -Editor
 
To read the complete article, see:
Len Augsburger forwarded this link to a version of the story at the Chicago Tribune. It includes a video. Thanks. -Editor
To read the complete article, see:
Wayne Homren, Editor The Numismatic Bibliomania Society is a non-profit organization promoting numismatic literature. See our web site at coinbooks.org. To submit items for publication in The E-Sylum, write to the Editor at this address: whomren@gmail.com To subscribe go to: https://my.binhost.com/lists/listinfo/esylum All Rights Reserved. NBS Home Page Contact the NBS webmaster 
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