The Voynich Ninja

We don't have a thread about one of the more important names in the manuscript's post-manufacture history yet, so here goes. These are some of my thoughts, feel free to add your own

Ever since I learned Baresch thought there was some connection between the mystery manuscript on his shelves and Egypt, I have wondered if perhaps he knew something. I mean, he must have gotten it from someone, and that someone must have told him something about its origin. Sure, this could have been a game of "telephone", where the origins of the manuscript are slightly altered with each owner, but I wonder if it is at all possible that Baresch had still gained some knowledge about its original circumstances.

Even if all he knew was something like "it was bought from x", this may have placed him in a better position than us to assess its contents. Apart from the fact that he lived much closer to the time of its manufacture than we do.

One thing is for certain: Baresch contacted the most famous Egyptologist of his time at least twice, and told him his thoughts on an Egyptian connection.
Some of Philip Neal's You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. on his translation of the letter also point in the direction that Baresch really believed that not only the images, but also the script was Egyptian:

Quote:The point is that Barschius assumes that the key to the problem is simply to identify the script.

Neal also notes:

Quote:It is of interest that seventeenth century herbalists could not identify the plants.

So well, I wonder what your opinions are about Baresch and his letter. Does anyone know if a scan of this letter exists somewhere?
Also, is anything else known about Baresch that might help us?

There was a tremendous interest in hieroglyphics (in the general sense) in those days, partly because there was fame to be had in decoding them, partly because they might reveal the location of treasures that hadn't yet been plundered, and partly because of the interest in using foreign alphabets as sources for cryptologic ideas.

Since many of hieroglyphics were known to be from Egypt, and other languages from that area were being discovered on a regular basis, it's natural for central Europeans to think in terms of Egypt any time they encountered a new "foreign" script and moreso if they saw (or thought they saw) any parallels to Mediterranean cultures.

Koen,
What JKP says is certainly valid, and is one way that historians could evaluate Baresch's comment  -  just as some think more weight, or less, should be given Marci's account of some distant memory of what he thought Mnishovsky said decades before.  (I find it interesting, btw, that Marci had evidently never thought to say this to Kircher before, though there had been a three-way link between Baresch, Marci and Kircher for decades.  Nor does Marci suggest the former owner had said anything similar in the forty years they had known each other).  However, Baresch and Marci did seem to think the script and language were ones that only Kircher was likely to know. 

JKP is also quite right about people having automatically associated the manuscript with the latest  "buzz".  The same habit sees Wilfrid Voynich supposing it must be about Science and Roger Bacon and ciphers - all of which were hot topics in his time.

On the other hand, the evidence has been given less weight than it should have been, objectively speaking.   Baresch is the first person undoubtedly to have owned it, though Horcicky very probably did - so as you say,  Baresch  is logically the last person in a position to know where it came from.

I've always been intrigued by the fact that Baresch only asked Kircher to identify the script; it seems to suggest that he believed he would be able to read it, so long as the 'ancient' script was identified. 

This is all the more interesting given that recent claim that the language has been identified as Old Czech, and the content announced as the "Book of Life".  I'm not sure which text of that title is meant, but one of them is Egyptian, and it's other name is the "Book of Gates". I don't do more than note the fact that one translation of the michiton.. inscription interprets it as: 'to me thou hast given many gates'.

And all that aside, there's no reason whatever that the thing couldn't have come from Egypt, whether or not from ancient Egyptian sources.  Throughout much of the medieval period, Egypt was a thriving, multicultural centre, a major entrepot, where Venetians, Genoese and others had their own warehouses, to and from which people travelled regularly until the 'shut-down' not too long before our manuscript was made.

 So I guess it's not the facts, but the idea of the text as ancient rather than, say, Hellenistic Egyptian which is difficult to imagine. WE have inherited a fair number of bits and pieces from Alexandria.

Quote: There was a tremendous interest in hieroglyphics (in the general sense) in those days, partly because there was fame to be had in decoding them, partly because they might reveal the location of treasures that hadn't yet been plundered, and partly because of the interest in using foreign alphabets as sources for cryptologic ideas.

Actually, people were far more interested in hieroglyphics because of the supposed wisdom locked up in them.
Remember, even at Kircher's time there was still a strong tendency to believe that humanity used to have absolute knowledge, which was taken from us after the Fall of Adam and Eve.
"Researchers" in the Middle Ages weren't interested in making new discoveries, but in unlocking the "wisdom of the ancients". All scientific argument was thus based on precedent.
Egyptian hieroglyphics were thus a mysterious ancient language that promised untold riches of divine knowledge.
At the same time, "hieroglyphics" tended to be a bit of a western European catch-all term for any strange writing not in any of the known scripts (Roman, Arabic, Hebrew basically), and "egyptian" a term for anything from "out there over the sea".

Anyway, what I found interesting was the term Marci, in his "donation letter" to Kircher, used for how the previous owner tried to read the book: He said he was trying to decipher the text, not read or understand. See my You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.:

Quote:

1. discifrando is not in my Latin dictionary. It appears to be a neologism from Italian (or Spanish) and its meaning is clear: deciphering. Marci has used a very specific word here: not translating, nor reading. A word that is not in classic Latin, he had to search his memory for the exact word he wanted.
   

In fact, I argue You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. that the book reached Kircher at the wrong moment in his life, and that he probably wasn't very interested in it.

Quote:He had no interest in opening a new investigation, into some not terribly old manuscript from eastern Europe that did not interest him and that was sent to him unsolicited. He had only a passing interest in herbs, the remainder of the content would not have been attractive to such a scholar who could quickly dismiss them as astrology or natural magic.

What in the Voynich Manuscript would have called out to Kircher? What siren could whisper her song to lure him to its rocks? None. Only the challenge to interpret the words, and Kircher was no cryptologist. He might have simply assumed the whole thing was written in some Slavic script in natural language, something that had never interested him throughout his life.

No, Kircher was busy and distracted. He was overseeing the final peak of the building of his intellectual reputation, whilst worrying about spiritual matters, a severe case of overwork that would result in his collapse of 1667. This manuscript might have fascinated Marci, but it could not attract Kircher.

(11-09-2016, 08:34 PM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.So well, I wonder what your opinions are about Baresch and his letter. Does anyone know if a scan of this letter exists somewhere?
Also, is anything else known about Baresch that might help us?

Links to the scans of the letter and its wrapper may be found You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. .

More about Barschius can be found using the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. .

The less speculative part is in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. .

Some more speculative parts are You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. .

The books owned by Barschius were inherited by Marci. Marci's books were inherited by one of his sons, and after that they have been lost. (Note that Marci's last will has been published but only in Latin and Czech).
Presumably, in the same way all letters from Kircher to Marci were lost.

The Czech national library doesn't have a copy of the German Herbarius (at least that I could find). They have another early printed herbal by Von Cube, but it has no notes or annotations from Barschius in it.

It would have been of interest to check the notebooks of Moretus around the time that he sent his earlier letter to Kircher (with the first contribution from Barschius) but that part is missing. There are three volumes, which do not include this particular time span (source: Georg Schuppener: Theodor Moretus (1602–1667) – ein Prager Jesuiten-Mathematiker. In: Cemus, Petronilla (Hrsg.): Bohemia Jesuitica 1556–2006. Bd. 2. Prag/Würzburg 2010 (Nakladatelství Karolinum/Echter Verlag), S. 661–675).

Thanks, Rene! I had somehow missed the scans last time I looked, very nice to see them.

Koen,
Harking back to your first point - the historiographic problem of how much weight should be given Baresch's comments, I agree that in purely objective terms it should have been given much more weight and detailed investigation than it was: simply because it is a first-hand and direct comment and relates directly to the provenance and content of what is *in* the manuscript, as distinct from where and when it was manufactured.

It is not too difficult to explain why earlier writers should have placed so much more emphasis on what a modern historian would probably place lower down the scale of relative value - that late, indirect report of a rumour (for as Neal says, Mnishovsky couldn't have witnessed what he purports happening).  It was the glamour of association with an emperor and a important Franciscan.  Simple as that.

If Marci's note had said that decades ago his brother-in-law had said that the local blacksmith had bought the manuscript from a travelling peddlar for 2 ducats and that "Mr. Jones" wrote it, I doubt anyone would have made the sentence any basis for an entire, fabricated history as Wilfrid did.

So now times have moved on, I think you are quite right to re-visit this matter, and I won't pretend I haven't constantly encountered matter in the manuscript which made me add increasing weight to Baresch's seemingly hypothetical description.  So best of luck.

Todays vain hunt for Bacher in the thread about Mnischowsky revived the Baresch-related discourse - and search attempts.

While Koen discovered a reference to Baresch's master thesis, my raw search yielded one reference to an alchemical book co-authored by one Baresch: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , don't know if it'ss new to the Voynich research.

Among other things, this reference reveals an alternative form of the man's surname: "Barcius".

As far as I understand, the author has doubts whether the author of the cited book is Georg Baresch (as we now know thx to Koen there was another Bartschius called Michael).

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (no full text, unfortunately) seems to consider M. Barcius as a "lawyer from Frankfurt".

(20-07-2017, 12:16 AM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.While Koen discovered a reference to Baresch's master thesis, my raw search yielded one reference to an alchemical  book co-authored by one Baresch: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , don't know if it'ss new to the Voynich research.

Among other things, this reference reveals an alternative form of the man's surname: "Barcius".

As far as I understand, the author has doubts whether the author of the cited book is Georg Baresch (as we now know thx to Koen there was another Bartschius called Michael).

The author doubts indeed that this Barcius is 'our' Barschius.

Two paragraphs below that, there is reference to a MS of Jakub Dobrzensky de Nigro Ponte.
He was one of the foremost pupils of Marci, and published at least one work of Marci posthumously.
Inevitably, he must have known about the Voynich MS.
The MS he wrote is mentioned to be preserved in the Strahov monastery.
I was there a couple of times. I asked to see it and I was told that it was lost....