The Voynich Ninja

Now that the proceedings of the Malta conference have been published, I started by reading Stefan Guzy's paper about Rudolf's acquisition of the Voynich: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. 

He provides some much-needed context for what a sum of 600 ducats would actually have meant, and he argues that this large sum for a single manuscript is unlikely.

* The budget for the acquisition of manuscripts for the imperial library was set at 200 ducats a year. Of course, the Voynich could have been purchased for a different collection altogether. Still, what this would mean is that the manuscript would have cost as much as all books and manuscripts the Imperial library purchased over three years combined. 

* The most likely candidate acquisition he found was one for 600 florins, which would have been if I understand correctly about 333 ducats. This purchase was for a barrel of rare books:

Quote:The most detailed account of what was bought in the 600 fl. deal comes from a later
journal entry of the Hofkammer’s clerk regarding the 24 fl. transport costs for this deal: ain väßl mitt
allerlai selzamen büchern (a small barrel with a couple of remarkable/rare books). Unlike today,
wooden barrels were used as a common way to transport books safely.

Note on Guzy's translation: "a couple of" in English has the connotation of a small amount. I am not sure if this is present in the German "allerlai", which to me feels more like "all manner of", implying a large variety. 

Either way, a barrel of rare books was purchased for 600 florins, which were worth about half as much as the 600 ducats from Marci's letter. 

* An example of a prestigious purchase of Herbaria is mentioned: four precious illuminated books for a total of 370 florins (About 200 ducats? So that would be 50 ducats per book).


This leaves us with two possible conclusions:

Either the details from the Marci letter are correct, and the emperor really spent three times the Imperial library's annual acquisition budget on a single manuscript. In this case, records of this highly unusual purchase have not yet been found.

Or the information in the Marci letter is incorrect. If Guzy's hunch about the 600 florins purchase is right, this would mean that Marci not only changed the currency to one that was twice as valuable, but also implied that only the single manuscript was bought for this amount instead of the actual barrel of rare books. Even if this barrel only contained five books, this would still mean that the "600 ducats" amount inflates the price tenfold.

So would you consider this enough evidence to assume that "600 ducats" was probably an incorrect price?

(Note: I do not know much about this matter and may have misunderstood things, will gladly be corrected).

(13-01-2023, 02:28 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.So would you consider this enough evidence to assume that "600 ducats" was probably an incorrect price?

Yes, that seems to me to be sufficient evidence. One must also consider that the VMS has no particularly "valuable" illustrations and the text is not readable. So, even in Rudolf's time, it was rather a cusiosity which might not have driven the price up. Rudolf was known for his preference for curious things (not only books) but he was also very broad in his acquisitions. He will hardly have spent an enormous sum on a single "book-artifact". As far as I know, he was chronically short of cash anyway. So he couldn't spend the money as he pleased.

Quote:His father left him the monetary system in deep disarray, and this grew through the lack of order, through Rudolf's excessive expenditures on the arts and sciences, on their representatives and his collections, and on his minions, but above all through the costs caused by the defense of the frontiers and later by the war against the Turks. From the beginning, the regular income was barely enough to pay the interest on the debts. R. was therefore dependent on the extraordinary taxes of the house countries and the empire.

The "600 ducats" story has always felt like a bit of oral lore to me ("so-and-so told me the emperor paid 600 - what was it, ducats? for this! and he couldn't even read it!"), more than an exact calculation where Marci had access to the original transaction and properly performed the currency conversion. If so, I suspect the most reliable part of the story would be the memorable number 600 rather than the currency unit or the exact circumstances under which this amount was paid.

Two points of clarification for casual readers:

1) 200 florins/yr was the budget for the Imperial Court Library in Vienna. Guzy suspects the manuscript was stored in Rudolph's personal Kunstkammer, which had a number of individual book-related transactions (such as the aforementioned herbaria) for hundreds or even thousands of florin. So, a price of 600 florins is completely plausible, but more likely for a batch of manuscripts than a single book.

2) If I understand correctly, "florins" here are southern German gulden (a silver coin in Rudolph's time), not the better-known Florentine florins (containing ~3.5g of gold). Gulden had long been a standard currency of the HRE, but the term itself was fairly generic and changed meaning several times. Various nations (including the HRE) issued ducats containing ~3.5g of gold, but the exchange rate of silver to gold fluctuated over time, so doing the actual conversion from thaler to gulden to ducats is not straightforward. (I'll defer to Guzy's expertise here.)

There is a great amount of additional context.

The sales record in question is the same as the one I pointed out here:
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Stefan Guzy contacted me shortly after that post, and I have been in regular contact with him since then.

The records in Rudolf's accounts refer to 500 Taler. As Nick pointed out after the talk, I already included that in my 2012 Mondragone presentation.

The new information comes from the family archives of Geizkofler, where the same sale is listed as 600 'Rheinische Gulden'. I have always understood these to be gold pieces, but I would like to check that.

Pending that, the common part is that both the Marci letter and this sales record refer to 600 gold pieces. However, they are not the same type of gold pieces, so there has to be a remaining doubt that this is _really_ the reference to the sale of the Voynich MS. However, this could easily have happened as the information was passed orally from an unknown person to Mnisowsky to Marci over several decades.

Ducats were worth a bit more than florins, and I am not sure where the ratio 600 / 333 comes from. If I recall correctly, Venetian ducats were about 10% more than a florin at the time. The Taler at Rudolf's time was 7/6 of a florin, so his 500 Taler was just short of 600 florins.

With respect to the budget of the Imperial library, this was "rediculously low", a thing that is not uncommon for libraries. I know of cases where librarians were forced to spend their budget not on buying books, but to keep the infrastructure from falling apart.
There is an excellent source on the book collections of Rudolf:
Richterová, A.: Alchemical Manuscripts in the collections of Rudolf II. In: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., pp. 249-291.
which also appears in Stefan's references.

I re-read my sources on ducats, gulden, and thaler, and I'm still not sure I'm understanding them correctly, but I think this is the main relevant history (if not, I invoke Cunningham's Law):

• The original "florin" was a 3.5g gold coin from Florence. Various other nations (starting with Venice) minted equivalent 3.5g gold coins that became common trade coins in the 13th-19th centuries, going by the name "ducat".
  
• The "Rheingulden" was initially a German version of this coin ("Gulden" deriving the word "gold"), but was debased over the next few centuries until it was worth less than the common trade ducat.
  
• The "Rheingulden" was eventually adopted as the "Reichsgulden", a standard national gold coin for the Holy Roman Empire. Confusingly, this was also called a "florin." A flurry of complicated value changes followed as the HRE tried to get everyone on the same standard.
  
• In the mid-1500s the HRE tried to turn the Reichsgulden into two equivalent coins, the gold "Gulden" and the silver "Guldiner" (Guldengroschen). But, economics being what it is, it was hard to keep the values equal, so after a few decades of confusion the HRE introduced the silver "Thaler" as the standard trade coin. After this the "Gulden"/"Florin"/"Reichsgulden"/"Rheinische Gulden"/"Goldgulden"/whatever stopped being widely circulated as an actual coin, but was retained as a notional currency unit for recording transactions (a bit like keeping your records in dollars even if you only ever actually pay for things in quarter coins). One Gulden was worth slightly less than one Thaler.
  
• The HRE also minted "Ducats" during this time, which were Florentine-style 3.5g gold coins (in theory worth correspondingly more than the notionally 2.5g gold Gulden by weight, except that I'm not sure the Gulden was actually still equivalent to 2.5g of gold at this point since its value was now defined relative to the value of a silver Thaler).
  

Over the next few centuries the conversion rates changed even further (I saw one source quoting 1 ducat = 4 thaler), and in 1690 the whole system switched to a "northern German Thaler" and a "southern German Gulden", both of which were now based on the value of the circulating silver Thaler coin, but neither of which was equivalent to their former definitions, nor to the actual worth of 1 silver Thaler coin.

So, it seems to me that the Karl Widemann transaction was most likely actually paid in silver Thaler, but was conceptualized as a transaction of 600 gold Gulden (florins) because that was the standard accounting unit at the time. For Marci to interpose "ducats" is not actually that much of a stretch, since that was the main gold coin of his day and similar coins were elsewhere circulating under the name "florin". Of course, another complication is that Marci's letter is actually in Latin and uses the phrase "600 ducatos," which should presumably be translated "ducats" but is colloquial Latin at best. So, I think Rene is probably correct in not overinterpreting what Marci meant beyond "600 gold coins."

There is quite a bit on this topic in Rudolf's account books.

Unfortunately, the transliteration of a very large part of it that used to be online has disappeared.
In the days of Rudolf, the silver Taler was worth 70 "Kreuzer" while the gold florin was 60 "Kreuzer".
Beside these, many transactions involved "Dukaten" (gold) or "Cronen" (gold), whose value was not constant. I just checked and found a nice example, where the Crone was worth 67 Kreuzer while the ducat was 84 Kreuzer.
In this case, 600 florins would indeed be a lot less than 600 ducats.
After 1620, the silver Taler was deliberately devaluated in order to hurt the rich nobility.

I include the above-mentioned example:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1595 Januar 27, Prag

  Waßmaßen der hofzalmaister die unlenngst Niclaßen Warkotsch zu seiner Moscowitischen
  legation an unndterschiedliche ortt zu verehren zuegestelte zwo große guldene ketten
  aus besondern formb mit irer Mt. daran hangenden bildtnußen p. 416 cronen sambt 10
  ducaten macherlohn, dann für zween beßwar, welche der Geizkhofler p. 600 fl. erkhaufft
  zum goldt einfaßen 7 cronen und 8 taler macherlohn, ferner umb 3 uhrn 385 fl. wider 450
  taler, weitter 300 taler und also in allem 2355 fl. 41 kr. in außgab einbrinngen und
  verreiten.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Summary:
Rudolf agrees to spend 416 Cronen plus 10 Dukaten plus 600 Florin plus 7 Cronen and 8 Taler plus
385 Florin plus 450 Taler plus 300 Taler, which is altogether 2355 Florin and 41 Kreuzer.
Nice math problem :-)

Off-topic:
When I was young, in Holland we had "Gulden", "Daalder" and "Rijksdaalder", where the first and third were actually minted in silver and worth 1 fl. and 2.5 fl. respectively. The daalder was not a physical coin, but worth 1.5 fl. As is well known, the Crone became the currency of the Czech republic, while the Taler lives on as the dollar.

Article (with slightly misleading headline) on Stefan Guzy's paper:   You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

I was thinking about this the other day when I read it.
Is it possible that the ducats mentioned were the ones in circulation at the time the letter was written, in which case it could have been a much more modest amount?
As an example, if I were to write today to a third party in the another country about an amount paid for a book 50  years earlier, I would probably write it in euros, the modern day amount, rather than pesetas. Or modern sterling rather than guineas if sending to the UK. After all, would Marci expect an Italian scholar to know the value of an amount 70 years earlier in another country?
How much was 600 ducats at the time and place the letter was written / delivered?

There is also a different angle to the story: what did Kircher understand by "600 ducatos"?
The Marci letter was fairly informal, a note between scholars. But it's one thing to be sent a mysterious book that the sendee claims is worth several year's salary, and one that is only worth a large yet still token amount amongst gentlemen.
You would assume that if he thought it was worth a number of year's salary then he would have given it a higher profile than he did, or even hand it over to the Jesuits in order not to be accused of hoarding.
There's also the question of receiving a book in the post that the sender reckons a Emperor paid 50K for - I don't know about Kircher, but it would give me pause for thought about how it came into Marci's possession and whether somebody important might want it back!

(14-01-2023, 03:58 PM)davidjackson Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.After all, would Marci expect an Italian scholar to know the value of an amount 70 years earlier in another country?

This is especially true with respect to the amount of 500 silver Talers, because the Taler was only worth a fraction of its original value by then.

On the second post related to worrying about the value of the item received, perhaps your thought is a modern one, but it appears that Marci countered any such worry in his letter.
He clearly states that he inherited it from someone who is no longer alive (as usual I suppose) and he is giving it to Kircher as a present.
On top of that, Kircher was quite used to receiving gifts to be added to his museum.