When a precise replica of Henry VIII’s divorce petition was unveiled in Rome in June 2009, academics and clergy queued to inspect the signatures on the parchment. The 1530 letter asked Pope Clement VII to permit Henry’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon. It carries 81 wax seals from signatories representing about 70 per cent of the House of Lords of the time. The replica weighed 2.5 kilograms and cost €50,000, with 200 copies planned at a production rate of three a month. The original had reportedly remained lost in a Vatican archive drawer until the 1920s. What people waited for at the launch was neither ownership nor an audience with a celebrity. It was a brief, close view of material details—faded handwriting and an extravagant arrangement of seals—that made political pressure visible in the document itself.