On Tuesday, 23 January, at 18:00, the book Desaparecido. El azaroso viaje del ‘Liber Augustalis’  will be presented. The event will take place at the Sala Duc de Calàbria of the Historical Library of Valencia and will be attended by Cristina Tomás Martínez, director of the Libraries and Documentation Service of the UV; Teresa Ferrer Valls, director of PUV; and Francisco M. Gimeno Blay, author of the book.

On 26 November 1940, the Historical Library of the Universitat de València reported the disappearance of the ‘Liber Augustalis’ manuscript, the Constitutions of emperor Frederick II (1194-1250) for the Kingdom of Sicily. This codex had been part of the library of the kings of Aragon in Naples, where the exceptional calligrapher Pedro Hipólito Lunense copied it in the second half of the 15th century. A century later, the Dukes of Calabria donated it to the monastery of San Miguel de los Reyes in Valencia. In 1837, on the occasion of the Confiscation of Mendizábal, this valuable manuscript was taken into the custody of the Library of the Universitat de València, where it was kept until its disappearance. Now, eighty-three years later, its location has been found. An exhaustive study of the existing documentation has led to the conclusion that the manuscript currently conserved in the Library of the Palace of Peralada is none other than the one that disappeared from the Historical Library of the Universitat de València in 1940. Although it has not been possible to know the exact circumstances of its disappearance, the work has made it possible to reconstruct the eventful and fascinating journey made by the 'Liber Augustalis' over almost six centuries between Naples, Valencia and Peralada.