A letter from Catherine of Aragon pleading for help to preserve her marriage to England's King Henry VIII will be offered at auction in New York in December, Sotheby's said Tuesday.The letter is part of an extraordinary batch of 31 documents owned by a collector whose identity was not disclosed. Also up for auction is a handwritten document by Michelangelo Buonarroti in reference to an important commission for a church in Rome, and items from Beethoven, Chopin, Napoleon and Stalin, the auctioneer said.
Catherine, the first of Henry's six wives, wrote to her nephew, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, asking him to use his influence to persuade Pope Clement VII to resist Henry's attempts to invalidate the marriage. The letter is dated Feb. 8, 1534.
Clement's rebuff of Henry led the monarch to reject papal authority, leading to the creation of the Church of England.
The letter has not been seen in public since it was sold at auction in New York in 1987 for US$38,000. Sotheby's estimated the price at the coming sale at US$100,000 or more.
The sale is set for Dec. 11.
2 comments:
wonder how the history of england would have been changed if ole henry hadnt gone on to get the divorce and marry Anne Bolyn? each wife ultimately led to some sort of change in englands history..mary with the kid mary who killed all the protestants, the kid from jane which led to the deaths' of the uncles and jane gray..plus the child of anne, queen elizabeth who was one of the greatest rulers you guys ever had...can you imagine your history with out elizabeth the first.?...wow..
Amazing ain't it ... if only Hitler was killed as a kid .... or Casanova was gay .... or ...
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