Tag Archives: historic

Wow, this project takes a lot more time than I thought! Don’t let that discourage you from writing your letters though. If it was just writing a letter now and then that would be fine. But writing the letter, photographing it, creating the social media posts for it – all that takes time! That being said, I’m enjoying this adventure very much.

Today, as I do on Sundays, I take a break from sharing my daily letter with you and share with you a story about handwritten letters. Today’s story comes from BBC News Europe.

teachhub.com

It’s about a handwritten letter by Michelangelo that was stolen from the Vatican. Yep, a former Vatican employee pilfered several 500-year-old letters and is now demanding money, lots of money, for the safe return. A ransom note, made to the cardinal in charge of St. Peter’s Basilica, asked for €100,000 – or about $105,000.

The odd thing is these letters went missing nearly 20 years ago and the Vatican never reported them stolen. Either they didn’t know they were missing, which doesn’t bode well for their tidiness and security, or they kept it a secret which begs further questioning.

This is reportedly Michelangelo’s handwriting. Not the letter in question here – there does not seem to be a copy of that, but this seems to be a grocery list. Still very cool to see someone’s writing from 500 years ago. Credit: openculture.com

In any event, this is particularly interesting because there are very few letters in existence penned from the hand of the great renaissance artist. According to Il Messaggero newspaper in Italy he typically only signed his name and had one of his many assistants do the laborious tasks of putting words on paper.

Whoever you are, you are a thief. Just put the letters in an envelope and mail them back to the Vatican and be done with this.