The Voynich Ninja

[Edit: Originally this was a post about Benedictus Aretius, but I managed to find examples of his ex libris rather quickly. I think it doesn't make sense to create many threads trying to look for people who could possibly have left their signature on the last page of MS, so I renamed the thread, and I will post information about other figures of interest here.]

I was trying to identify the possible authorship of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and would like to see if anyone has some more information about You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., Swiss theologian, natural philosopher and, among other things, a botanist. I wonder if it's possible to find out what his ex libris looked like. [Edit: found it, see posts below]

Some background for my question: If we take the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. squiggle as a signature, to me the first letter looks like an A, so I tried looking for all possible persons with names starting with A and trying to find examples of their signature and ex libris. I started at You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and followed various links and search requests and then stumbled upon a name new to me in this article: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..

It describes in some detail the collaboration of Leonhard Rauwolf and Caspar Bauhin on various herbaria, and then goes:

Quote:Bauhin also had his own herbarium, which he had presented to Conrad Gessner (see Gessner to Benedictus Aretius, 24 November 1565, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.).

One possible way of writing "Are" could be similar to the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. squiggle, so I looked up Benedictus Aretius (as far as I understand, he is primarily known as a Protestant reformer, but he was also a practicing botanist, judging by his works) and tried to find examples of his writing. Unfortunately, there is not much. There are images of three letters written by him on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.:

[attachment=9252]

The signature has no much resemblance to the f116v squiggle. It's interesting though that Aretius seemed to abbreviate the first name in favor of his (invented) last name. As far as I understand, he was born Matri, but swapped the Latin root for Greek becoming Aretius and used it as his name (kind of a personal brand, in modern terms). So it seems possible that he could use just "Aretius" in his ex libris. Also the signature differs substantially in all three letters, so it's possible that there was a separate version for marks of ownership.

Summing up, there was a person interested in botany and herbaria, contemporary to Leonhard Rauwolf (one of tentative past owners of VMS) and with a potential link to him via Conrad Gessner and Caspar Bauhin, with some known history of exchange of herbaria from Bauhin to Gessner. This is a very weak link, which makes the possibility of VMS somehow traveling from Aterius to Rauwolf not very likely, as far as I see it, but it would be nice to have a look at Aretius' ex libris or more writing, just to be sure.

According to You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Quote:He wrote his name and the year of acquisition in each of his books, alongside the mark of ownership.

So he should be very easy to exclude after checking any of the books from his collection, if they still exist.

Turns out most of the books he donated are scanned and available online, I've looked through a few of them, the result is anticlimactic so far, the ex libris is very much like his normal signature.

Just for the record, a collection of all Aretius ex libris I could find, there is not a single one that looks like the squiggle.

[attachment=9254]

Obviously, I had to look at Athanasius Kircher's signature. I couldn't find examples of his ex libris, but there are a few of his letters in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. Specific page numbers are You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. Here are the signatures compared to the squiggle. Again, surprisingly much variation in the signature, no good match for the squiggle overall, even though some elements may look similar in some signatures. If anyone knows where to find examples of Kircher's ex libris, would be great.

[attachment=9256]

It shows how both were fascinated with Greek. Kircher directly writes his name in Greek. As said above, Aretius is a Greek form of Marti (the Latin Mars is the Greek Ares). It's weird that a few of the signatures appear to have a macron above U, so that it looks like Aretinus (?)

(25-09-2024, 12:18 PM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It shows how both were fascinated with Greek. Kirchner directly writes his name in Greek. If I understand correctly, Aretius is a Greek form of Marti (the Latin Mars is the Greek Ares). It's weird that a few of the signatures appear to have a macron above U, so that it looks like Aretinus (?)

I think he's just writing "Aretij", on some of his published books (in Latin) he is named "Benedicti Aretii" on the cover and in some others I think I saw "Aretij" in print. Looks like he was in a lifelong search for a good enough alias 

Aretii is the genitive of Aretius, nothing strange.

But he is also writing Aretiūs, or something like that.

Wow, it never occurred to me that ex libris should be in some proper case. Noted, thanks! Is the genitive here for "belonging to"? What about letter signatures, are they usually in nominative, or depends on the kind of Truly yours/Best regards/etc used?

Which one of the samples looks like Aretiüs?

I don't have much to add to this thread, but I just want to say that I appreciate your approach. It would be a very common thing to do to see this squiggle and think "I just found X's signature! I will convince everyone that this is what it is until they believe me." Instead, you ask questions, gather the required evidence and draw the appropriate conclusions, even if they are not satisfying.