The Voynich Ninja

(14-03-2026, 06:00 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.But if he asked any Jesuits in Prague (directly of through any contact, Jesuit or not) about a "TepenecWhatever"from around 1600, they would have known that he was referring to Sinapius/Horciky, and would have known about that entry in Schmidl, and more.

Indeed, and that is what he did (archives director rather than Jesuit), and indeed he got a quote from that book in return. That is also how we knew about that source, when we were in the Clementinum.

(14-03-2026, 03:38 AM)kckluge Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.But that's the wonderful thing about conspiracy theories -- we can't prove that he didn't read it before 1920.

I don't think it is appropriate to label either of the competing hypotheses as a "conspiracy theory".  The popular meaning of that term is a conspiracy by a large number of people -- like all the scientists at NASA, all airline pilots, all academic Egyptologists, etc.  But in both hypotheses under discussion here the only "conspirator" would be Wilfrid -- so there is not even a "co-".  The are both "monospiracies"...

Quote:Which is why understanding the concept of burden of proof and who has it and why it's on the person making the positive assertion

I don't think one can always objectively identify which claim is "positive", or decide who has the burden of proof.  The Forged Signature hypothesis (F) is that the "signature" on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. was put there by Wilfrid.  Its opposite (G = notF) is that the signature is "genuine", to the extent that it was put there by someone else and was there when he got the book.  Which is the "positive" hypothesis, and why?  Why doesn't the burden of proof fall on those who believe G?

I prefer to think in the "Bayesian" way.  But first, we must understand that a probability is not a real thing, like a temperature or a longitude.  It is only a numerical expression of one's belief in some statement -- and therefore inherently personal.  There is no "the probability" of some fact, but only "my probability", and "your probability" and "Rene's probability", etc.

Now, offhand, each of us may assign some "prior" probability Pr(F) to hypothesis F, and therefore  1 - Pr(F) = Pr(G) to hypothesis G. 

Hypotheses F and G have a number of potential consequences -- statements whose probabilities depend on which of F or G is true.  For example, let M be the statement "Marci and/or Baresch mentioned Jacobus in their letters to Kircher", and N = notM be its opposite, "they did not mention Jacobus".    If the signature was forged by Wilfrid, then there would be no reason for anyone to think that Jacobus ever owned the book. Then M almost certainly would not happen; that is, the probability of M given F would be essentially zero, or Pr(M|F)=0.  Otherwise, if the signature was there in 1911, it surely was there in the 1600 too; in which case, before we looked at the letters, we should have given some probability, say 10%, that they would have believed that Jacobus had owned the book and would have mentioned that fact in the letters.  That is, we should set Pr(M|G) = 0.10. 

But then, after knowing that M did not happen, a rational person should lower his probability of G and raise that of F.  Probability theory gives a formula for this adjustment (Bayes's formula).  For example, suppose one started with no preference for either hypothesis -- that is, Pr(F) = Pr(G) = 0.50. Then, after observing that N is what happened, not M, Bayes's formula says that one should revise the probabilities to Pr(F|N) = ~0.53, Pr(G|N) = ~0.47.  That is, the fact that Marci and Baresch failed to mention Jacobus should raise one's probability of forgery by ~3% over the prior 50%.

However, if one started with Pr(F) = 0.01 and Pr(G) = 0.99, then after observing that N happened the same formula says that one should revise one's probabilities to  Pr(F|N) = ~0.011, Pr(G|N) = ~0.989.  That is, if one starts out 99% sure that the signature is genuine, the fact that Marci and Baresch failed to mention Jacobus should raise one's probability of forgery by a mere 0.1%.

A similar discussion applies to many other potential consequences, such as "Jacobus's signature was mentioned by the Jesuits in some catalog" (J), "Wilfrid wrote to Garland inquiring about a TepeneWhat" (L), "Wilfrid applied chemicals to f1r" (Q), "Wilfrid eventually mentioned Jacobus as a previous owner" (W), etc. One should choose conditional probabilities for these events -- Pr(J|F), Pr(J|G), Pr(L|F), Pr(L|G), etc -- then use Bayes's formula to recompute P(F|notJ and L and Q and notW and ...).

"Strong evidence" against G would be some consequence S that was observed but which had very low conditional probability Pr(S|G). That same fact, of course, would be strong evidence for F.  

It would be nice if there was strong evidence for F, because then even a skeptic who started with Pr(F) = 0.01 would be convinced -- that is, would get Pr(F|S) = 0.80 or whatever.  Same if there was strong evidence for G. 

So, rather than say "the burden of proof is on those who claim X", I would say "if you want to convince those skeptics who give X a very low prior probability, you had better present or point out some strong evidence for X".  (Although a big enough list of weak evidence may eventually convince them, too.)

But unfortunately we don't have any strong evidence, for or against either F or G.  

Consequence notW -- "Wilfrid never mentioned Jacobus as a previous owner" -- should be strong evidence for F, because everybody should assign Pr(notW|G) a value near zero.  But it seems that those who are quite certain about G also think that "Wilfrid never mentioning Jacobus as owner" is not strange at all -- that is, they set Pr(notW|G) to 50% or more...

(By the way, of course no sensible person would bother to do all that math, because all the numbers Pr(X) and Pr(Y|X) are rather arbitrary anyway.  Yet, if one decides only that they are "large" or "small" or "about 50-50", with enough consequences one may estimate that the result would be "high" or "low", even without doing the math.  Because if several of those probabilities are "low", the product of all those probabilities will be "very low".)

All the best, --stolfi

I got a private message expressing surprise at my statement that Barschius worked at Rudolph's court.

I see that I probably used the word "court" imprecisely.  


For several years of the Mailing List era all we knew about Barschius was what we had learned from the letters in the Carteggio, which is to say practically nothing.  We though he was just an obscure alchemist who was friend of Marci, but  had no connection to Rudolph, Dee, or even to Raphael.

Some of you may remember Rafal Prinke from the mailing list (not the Rafal of this forum and of the Rohonc codex).  He was a historian in real life, and did some digging, and found more about Barschius bio, which he reported at the Frascati conference.  As I recall, for some time Barschius had some government job and worked at the Prague Castle.  Isn't that detail in Rene's site? I suppose that my "at the court" was not quite the correct term.  

The Prague Castle is a HUGE place, probably bigger than most university campuses.  I suppose that Barschius never met Jacobus -- nor only because of the dates (IIRC), but also because of their very different connections to the court.  And I doubt that Rudolf II or his successor were ever aware of Barschius's existence.  

So I still don't think that "Barschius's book" or MS408 were ever in the royal library.   I don't see how such a highly valued book could have gone from there to Barschius's shelf, through Jacobus or in any other way.

By the way, IIRC all the references to Baresch we had at the time used either the Latinized name "Barschius" or the German(?) version "Baresch".  But he was Czech and his Czech name was Jiŕi Bareš.  It may have been Rafal who found that out, too.

Speaking of which, I know of no evidence for or against the claim that Wilfrid was unaware of Barschius until 1921 or even later.  However I suspect that Wilfrid had soon found the name of Marci's "good friend", either from the Carteggio letters (through his Jesuit friends) or from some other source; but if he did, he must have had the same view we had by 2000 -- that he was just an obscure alchemist with no connection to the court. 

If the "signature" on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. was there when he got the book, it makes sense that he would seek information about Jacobus rather than about Barschius.  What he needed was evidence (or at least a plausible story) for MS 408 being Rudolf's "600 ducats" book.  Then Jacobus would be the man of interest; the passage through Barschius was irrelevant.

If he decided to forge a "signature" of a previous owner to support that connection (the Forged Signature theory, FST), then his interest in Jacobus would have come out of a general investigation of people connected to the court of Rudolf II, who could have somehow taken the VMS out of the royal library. That investigation must have turned up Jacobus' name, and some information about him being a doctor who received a nobility title from Rudolf.  That information would have made Jacobus a prime candidate for the forgery.  When Wilfrid wrote those letters he may even had already obtained a copy of the "No//4" ex-libris.


All the best, --stolfi

(14-03-2026, 12:34 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(12-03-2026, 04:29 PM)proto57 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.OK... I just did a short search... took just a minute or two. And as often happens. I was stunned that, once I did do it, nobody, including myself, had thought to it this way. First I asked Google AI, "When was the name "tepenencz" first mentioned in any printed, published form in history. Did that version of the Horcicky name appear in print before 1910?" And I got the usual, and somewhat expected answer:

I wasn't going to respond, but this triggered a discussion.

This is misleading on so many levels... not even just the anachronistic use of internet resources.

Certainly there are old sources referring to Jacobus de Tepenec.

My biography of him: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. lists a whole bunch of them.

Jorge Stolfi spent time transcribing one of these, and he can comment how unlikely it is that Voynich read through that volume (it was only one of six volumes IIRC).

Wonderful that you do have some references there. I haven't read all your pages, or forgot you listed these. But the thing is... and it was not the intent of your biography of Sinapius, of course... but you don't point to the several reference books listing his biography which I listed the other day, which was my core point. My point is somewhat different... or entirely different, really, than yours: Various published biographies included Horcicky, and clearly pointed out that he was both Sinapius and Tepenenc. So the often repeated premise, seemingly stemming from Voynich's own words, that he didn't know that his "tspenencz" was Horcicky are somewhat undermined by the availability of these other sources. 

And I fully reject the implication that there is any "anachronistic" implications in my "use of internet sources". Voynich would not have needed them, of course... and my use of the internet only found that these sources were available to him. My doing so in NO way implies that he, too, would have needed the internet to find them. You have found, we all can find... books in libraries.

Quote:But the main point is: you searched for Tepenec because you knew his name from the entry in the Voynich MS.

You did exactly the same as what Voynich did after he found the name in the MS.

First of all, you are again relying on Voynich's own word as to when he "found the name", which I think many now realize is a poor foundation to start with. But when he "knew the name" also... unless your contention is that he really would not, and did not try an "e" instead of his "s" and "o" in his ridiculous inquiry to Prague. It would be obvious, simple common sense that he would have done so. Anyone would try similar letters, for a letter we could not quite make out. Besides, I think it looks far more like an "e" than it does an "s" or an "o".

But there is a more important consideration here, after (as Kluge admits) he would probably have had access to at least the 18th century Konfessa (sp?) in the BL, because Voynich admitted he was IN that library, looking for this very name! In his letter to Prague, he claims,

"... but although I have looked in every possible book in the British Museum and in the New York libraries I can find no reference to him."

With that, the only things which are left standing in the way of finding their copy of Horicicky's book, or one of the several, published references to his Tepenencz being Horcicky are: 1) Believing his word that he didn't find the name, and/or 2) he genuinely believed the second letter was an "s" or an "o", and 3) stupefyingly, and illogically, while trying so hard to find it, didn't simply try "Tepenencz".

It is like we are getting closer and closer to putting one of these sources in his hands, but still his word is taken as gospel. IMO, the facts here belie the truth: It is far more plausible he was lying, and fully well knew his "Tspenencz" was Horcicky. No internet needed.

Quote:You got a response from AI within a minute.

Voynich got a response in a few days by mail (from Garland) and a few more days also by mail (from Prague).

As above... so what? I have done years of research on many subjects, "in the old days", as have you. We didn't ever consider time a barrier... sending off actual 10 pound notes to the British Museum, or the BL, and waiting weeks to get our printed out information, and xeroxed copies back. Why do you contend this was any issue at all, for any researcher, like Voynich, in his days? It was what everyone did, it was normal. It was far slower than today, but effective.

And besides, even given the wait on the mail, it does not apply to the British Library at all, since Voynich was very close at his Shaftsbury location. A taxi ride away. He admits to going there... and looking for the name. There would have been no wait to find what he was looking for.

Quote:I don't think I ever claimed that Voynich could not possibly have known the name Tepenec.

What I did say is that he could not have obtained it from Bolton's book, as you have long suggested.

This is because in this book he is never called Tepenec. Only Horcicky and Sinapius.

I actually do not believe I ever claimed that Voynich would have gotten the name "Tepenec" (or variations) from Bolton. I have always known it is not in there. Like you, I have read it cover to cover several times, my own original First Edition and the ones on Archive, and have searched its pages hundreds of times for many words and names. If you can show me where I (accidentally) even implied this, please let me know, and I will correct it immediately.

However, you have, yes, claimed Voynich would not have known the name Tepenec. At least, not before the Prague and Garland letters. Isn't that the entire premise of our current discussion, in fact? Or are you now saying you do concede this point, that he knew, pre-1921, that Tepenenc was Horciciky? Sorry if I am confused by your statement, in light of your previous claims. But if you ARE now claiming that he (paraphrasing) "could have known the name Tepenec", and before those letters (if you are) I hope you realize just what a major ground-shift in Voynich studies this is.

Quote:Again, there is evidence that he read Bolton's book after 1920. There is no evidence that he did before he realised which Rudolf was meant in the Marci letter.

Well this is new to me. What "evidence that he read Bolton's book after 1920" is there? Other than any statement of Voynich's implying this, that is. That book was published in 1904, and would have been available to anyone. And as you know, Voynich claimed to "know it by heart", and he cited it often. Even, as you know, he copied down about 20 names from Bolton, and in order. 

I believe that he read it pretty soon after publication, although I have no direct evidence of when he read it. What evidence do you have that he did not, before 1920? Of course that is a very important bit of information, and it would be very helpful to many of us.

Rich.

(14-03-2026, 06:57 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

And as for the physical evidence of the letter having been attached to MS408: I am not conviced at all.  In fact, looking at the image of f0v at the Beinecke site, I would say that (1) the spacing of the marks is a bit different from the spacing of the seals on the letter, (2) the line connecting the marks has an incompatible position and tilt, (3) the paper lining we see now is not the one which was there when Wilfrid got the book, and (4) the "stains" do not look like stains but like holes on that paper sheet, like shaved-off air bubbles, that expose the tan material (vellum?) under it.  

I have asked several times on this forum for someone to confirm or refute these questions, but got no answer.  Is that Siloé fac-simile good enough to resolve (3) and (4)?

But, Jorge , you did get an answer from me regarding some key things the Siloe facsimile can indicate, which I'll repeat:

That [Marci Letter] is folded very strangely, as Rich has written about. But it is also folded strangely for the purpose of slipping it into the front cover. And there are absolutely no wax residues that would line up with the VMS. To make the two wax marks on the letter make contact with the vaguely wax-like marks on inside the front of the VMS, one has to completely unfold the letter and then place it at an awkward angle in the VMS and the letter would then extend outside the edges of the VMS. I have queried Lisa as to whether there are openings between the layers of the cover, where the letter could be inserted and she confirmed that there is not.  The letter  was NEVER attached to the VMS. It would have to have been simply "placed" inside the cover of the VMS and it is big enough and thick enough that it would have been unlikely to stay put there with any confidence or reliability.

(14-03-2026, 07:19 PM)asteckley Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(14-03-2026, 06:57 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.And as for the physical evidence of the letter having been attached to MS408: I am not conviced at all.  In fact, looking at the image of f0v at the Beinecke site, I would say that (1) the spacing of the marks is a bit different from the spacing of the seals on the letter, (2) the line connecting the marks has an incompatible position and tilt, (3) the paper lining we see now is not the one which was there when Wilfrid got the book, and (4) the "stains" do not look like stains but like holes on that paper sheet, like shaved-off air bubbles, that expose the tan material (vellum?) under it. 

Jorge , you did get an answer from me regarding some key things the Siloe facsimile can indicate

Indeed you did confirm (2).  And already a while ago. And no one protested...

All the best, --stolfi

(14-03-2026, 06:57 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I got a private message expressing surprise at my statement that Barschius worked at Rudolph's court.



I see that I probably used the word "court" imprecisely.  


For several years of the Mailing List era all we knew about Barschius was what we had learned from the letters in the Carteggio, which is to say practically nothing.  We though he was just an obscure alchemist who was friend of Marci, but  had no connection to Rudolph, Dee, or even to Raphael.



Some of you may remember Rafal Prinke from the mailing list (not the Rafal of this forum and of the Rohonc codex).  He was a historian in real life, and did some digging, and found more about Barschius bio, which he reported at the Frascati conference.  As I recall, for some time Barschius had some government job and worked at the Prague Castle.  Isn't that detail in Rene's site? I suppose that my "at the court" was not quite the correct term.  

You can find that information (and much more) at the biographies page that I already listed.
Court is the right term, but Rudolf's is entirely unlikely. 
In the vast amount of information that has been transcribed from Rudolf's court documentation, many hundreds of names have been found, and Barschius is not among them.

(14-03-2026, 06:57 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.[...]
 I suppose that Barschius never met Jacobus -- 
[...]  
And I doubt that 
[...]
So I still don't think that
[...]
I don't see how such a highly valued book could have gone
[...]
all the references to Baresch we had at the time 
[...]
However I suspect that Wilfrid had soon found the name of Marci's "good friend", either from the Carteggio letters (through his Jesuit friends) or from some other source; 
[...]
 it makes sense that he would seek information 
[...]
 his interest in Jacobus would have come out of a
[...]
That investigation must have turned up Jacobus' name, 
[...]
he may even had already obtained a copy of the 

Just on the first guess: Barschius was at the Clementinum round about the same time that Horcicky was reputed to be there, so they may have known each other but we simply don't know.

(14-03-2026, 11:42 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.You can find that information [about Baresch] at the biographies page that I already listed.

Thanks, René, but there are a few bits I I did not see there:

• Wasn't his "real" name Jiŕi Bareš ?  I recall this from the mailing list days or from the Frascati conference, but don't know whether it was a fact or someone's guess...
  
• Was his place of work at the Prague Castle, or somewhere else in Prague?  Ditto...
  
• How reliable is the "no record at Sapieza" bit? "There exists a complete list of diplomas, and he is not in it", or "His name is not in any of the lists of graduates that we could find"?
  
• Is it correct to say that Wilfrid himself never proposed Jacobus as a probable owner of the VMS before Barschius?  That this theory only came up in the mailing list days, when we discovered the signature and Wilfrid's photograph?
  

The fact that Barschius studied at the Sapienza provides another plausible history for the VMS: he picked it up at Rome, or along the way to/from there.  It would better explain the "North Italy" character of the illustrations.  (But that assuming that the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. "signature" is forged, of course.  Was Jacobus ever in Italy?)

All the best, --stolfi