Manuscript to be returned to Peru

The Rosenbach Museum & Library in Philadelphia voluntarily transfers to the custody of the FBI a 16th-century manuscript for return to the Archivo General de la Nación del Perú, the Peruvian national archives.

This six-page document, dated June 28, 1599, is a contract for the formation of the first theatrical company in the Americas in Lima, Peru and had been in the Rosenbach’s collection for almost a century.

In 2017, Peru, the US Department of State, the FBI and the US Attorney’s Office began an investigation as to whether this manuscript had been wrongfully removed from a bound volume in the Peruvian national archives.

The manuscript had been purchased in the 1920s by its founder, Dr. A.S.W. Rosenbach.