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+--- Thread: I am not convinced by the provenance history of the VMS (/thread-6031.html)
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RE: I am not convinced by the provenance history of the VMS - anejati - 20-08-2026
The 1666 Marci letter was literally found inside the manuscript when it was opened by Voynich.
We know the letter was sent along with the book, and it makes reference to previous correspondence from Marci about the book as well. The only part of the story that one could reasonably doubt is the Baresch connection. It's possible that Baresch was talking about a different book. But since it's likely that Baresch did own the VMS, and Baresch talks about "a riddle of the sphinx", not multiple riddles, it's reasonable to conclude it was the same book. We can't say for sure though, as very little is known about Baresch.
As for the nymphs, there's a pretty straightforward explanation. Neither Baresch nor Marci were necessarily trying to give an accurate description of the book, they were trying to pique the interest of Kircher, an otherwise extremely busy man, to have a look at deciphering the book. This is the reason for them claiming it's probably medical. They wanted to create the impression of a book containing vital knowledge which it was almost Kircher's duty (as a priest and a man of science) to decipher. It's also why they generally took a very flattering tone towards Kircher. In that era correspondence tended to carry more emotion, but still. This is quite obvious by reading the letters.
RE: I am not convinced by the provenance history of the VMS - Koen G - 20-08-2026
Because of the presence of the Marci letter and Tepenecz signature, we can be confident about the manuscript's Prague period and the fact that it was sent to Kircher. These aspects are so clear, that only conspiracy theorists tend to doubt them.
Everything before Tepenecz is unproven and becomes increasingly uncertain the further you move back in time. For example, we have no evidence that Rudolf ever saw the MS or even personally knew about it. Maybe it existed in the spheres around the court without ever having been in his official collections. Or maybe he loved it and read it every day. We don't know.
But we do have good evidence that Tepenecz owned it, and that Baresch/Marci corresponded with Kircher and eventually sent it to him.
Why not mention the ladies? Google the title page of Kircher's Oedipus Aegyptiacus. They had no problem with nude breasts and the allegorical use of female figures. There are ways Baresch could have mentioned them without raising suspicion. Why he didn't provide a full catalogue description and focused on the plants, we don't know.
Maybe because the vast majority of the imagery is about plants? Maybe because he was convinced that the plants are the most important and useful part of the book? Maybe because he knew that Kircher received lots of these requests, and he thought this angle might grab his attention? We can only speculate.
Edit: anejati, I hadn't seen your reply before writing mine, I see I repeat some of your points. So, well said
RE: I am not convinced by the provenance history of the VMS - Jorge_Stolfi - 20-08-2026
(19-08-2026, 09:55 PM)JustAnotherTheory Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.As the title suggests, I'm not convinced by our current understanding of the VMS provenance timeline. I've had this feeling for a while now, but hadn't dared to share it.
I used to be mildly skeptical about the Standard Provenance of the VMS (defined as the Beinecke MS 408 manuscript) as it is described in Rene's site. Specifically, I never believed that Rudolph ever owned the VMS, and I was not quite convinced that Jacobus did. I thought it was possible that Jacobus's "signature" on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. had been written by someone else by mistake, or faked by Wilfrid in order to bolster his claim that the VMS was a Roger Bacon original.
But recently I have looked closely at that "signature", and now I think it is quite probably faked. I will post my arguments eventually.
More than that, now I give a significant probability -- say 20% -- that the VMS is not "Book B", the book that Baresch and Marci wrote to Kircher about. That is, that Book B was replaced by the VMS, and Marci's letter got associated to the latter, either by accident while it was in the Jesuit's possession, or intentionally by Wilfrid after he allegedly bought Book B from the Jesuits. I have discussed this in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
However, I don't think this is a strong objection:
Quote:None of the alleged previous owners of the VMS mentioned any of the peculiar aspects of the VMS. Baresch, Marci, Kircher talked about an unreadable manuscript with herbal and cosmological diagrams. But everybody failed to mention the hundreds of naked nymphs, though. One would think that this distinguishing feature of of the MS would be the first thing to mention in any correspondence. After all, no other MS exists with so many weird naked ladies.
Maybe not 300, but many medieval manuscripts have pictures of "naked ladies".
It is only to our modern post-Victorian horny minds that the "naked ladies" seem to be an important feature of the VMS. Baresch, Marci, and their contemporaries surely recognized that most of the "naked ladies" -- all those in the Zodiac section, and most of those in the Bio section -- were mere decoration. That is, one could erase those "naked ladies" without any impact on the information contents of the book.
Moreover, Kircher was a priest. Mentioning the "naked ladies" in a letter to him would have been awkward, to put it mildly.
Quote:Also, nobody mentioned the tubes and bathing scenes either. If I would describe the VMS to someone, especially an expert, there is no way I would leave those details out. Would you?
This is a slightly more significant objection. Some of the Bio section pages are clearly depicting spas. In fact it has been claimed that those pictures were "inspired" on the book You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., a 13th century catalog of dozens of spas and thermal springs in the volcanic park just West of Naples, the Campi Flegrei. That book, which seems to have been a "best seller" in the 1400s, shows many of "naked ladies" bathing in various tubs and pools (and, at least in some editions, also several "naked gentlemen" standing in the same crowded tubs as the "ladies"). Those few pages of the Bio section are the only ones where the "naked ladies" seem to be more than decoration.
Baresch's first letter to Kircher (1637) has been lost, so we don't know how he described the VMS then.
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. in his second letter to Kircher (1639) is the only description we have before Wilfrid's announcement. It does not say "spas" or "bathing", but says instead
Quote:pictures of herbs, of which there are a great many in the codex, and of varied images, stars and other things bearing the appearance of chemical symbolism
Chemical (rather "alchemical") symbolism at the time often had pictures of naked people, so maybe that last item is indeed referring to the Bio section.
The following is a good point:
Quote:Kircher's letter to Moretus in 1639 ... or they are talking about another MS. Not the Voynich MS.
Indeed there is absolutely no reason to think that the texts with unknown or encrypted writing mentioned in that letter (dated 12 March 1639, 39a in Rene's numbering) had anything to do with Book B. The date of Baresch's first letter to Kircher (1637), the date and contents of letter 39a from Kircher to Moretus, and the date and contents of the next letter by Baresch to Kircher (39b, dated 21 April 1639) are rather incompatible with that claim. In particular, the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.on Rene's site says "book filled with some sort of mysterious steganography", but the Latin text says "libellum", which means "booklet" not "book". Anyway Moretus surely did not send Book B to Kircher, and if he had sent only copies of some pages then Kircher would have not said "libellum". Thus the connection of letter 39a to the VMS is pure wishful thinking.
The following objection is rather weak too:
Quote:[None of Baresch, Marci, Kircher] mentions that the personal herbalist of the mighty Holy Roman Emperor himself, Rudolf II, visibly signed the manuscript on the front page.
We have nothing from Kircher about Book B.
If that signature was there when Baresch had the book, he probably noticed it. Baresch (1585--1662) had for some time a job at the Prague Court, so he probably knew who was the "Jacobj à Tepenecz" (1575--1622). We don't know whether he mentioned it to Kircher in his first (lost) letter. Why didn't he mention it to Kircher in his second letter? Maybe he had mentioned it in the first letter,maybe he did not think it was important, maybe the way he or Jacobus obtained the book was not quite "clean"...
One obvious problem with Raphael's claim (that Book B was a Bacon original once bought by Rudolph) was the question of how such a precious book could have passed from the Imperial library to Baresch's dusty shelf. If Marci had recognized the signature on f1r, I expect that he would have mentioned it when he reported Raphael's claim, since it would have provided an answer to that question.
So probably Marci did not noticed the signature on f1r, or did not recognize the name.
Quote:If you agree that 99 percent of manuscripts from the middle ages are lost today, then it is vastly more probable that these people are talking about another, lost MS, rather than the Voynich manuscript.
There is that point, and also the fact that the signature on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. was extremely convenient to Wilfrid. Raphael was still a young student when Rudolf spent "600 ducats" on a bunch of books, so he only learned of that purchase much later. From that fact, and from the wording in Marci's letter, it is almost certain that he had never seen Rudolf's "Bacon original".
The VMS is definitely not a Bacon original, and there is not a stamp or annotation on it that indicates it ever was in Rudolf's library. Without that signature on f1r, any prospective buyer would have concluded that Raphael's claim was just a wild guess based entirely on hearsay. That signature is the only clue that (distantly) connects the VMS to Rudolf's court.
All the best, --stolfi
RE: I am not convinced by the provenance history of the VMS - Jorge_Stolfi - 20-08-2026
(20-08-2026, 09:35 AM)anejati Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The 1666 Marci letter was literally found inside the manuscript when it was opened by Voynich.
(20-08-2026, 10:24 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Because of the presence of the Marci letter ... we can be confident about ... the fact that it was sent to Kircher.
AFAIK there is no evidence that the letter was inside or attached to the VMS when Wilfrid acquired it. In fact there is no mention of the letter anywhere before Wilfrid's announcement.
The only possible mention of the VMS between 1665 and 1912 is a very short entry of an "anonymous 15th century MS" in a list of books compiled by the Jesuits sometime before 1912. That item can be identified as the VMS only if one assumes that the VMS must be on that list.
But that entry does not mention any attached letter.
Quote:These aspects are so clear, that only conspiracy theorists tend to doubt them.
A conspiracy is just an agreement by two or more people to do something in secret. The popular term "conspiracy theory" means a claim of a conspiracy by thousands of people, like all airline pilots or all scientists at NASA. Such claims are ridiculous because such a large conspiracy would be hard to set up and impossible to hide.
But conspiracies do happen. Even conspiracies involving dozens of people. Ask Julius Caesar...
The various claims that the standard VMS history is wrong and/or the actual history may involve some kind of fraud would require conspiracy by very few people; say, Wilfrid and a couple of Jesuits. (And in fact we know that they did conspire -- to arrange the illegal sale and keep it secret.) Or the fraud may have been committed by Wilfrid alone (that is, it would not be a conspiracy at all). Or the claim may require only accidental errors rather than fraud; like the letter getting separated from the original book and getting attached to the VMS by mistake.
Quote:[Marci and Baresch] were trying to pique the interest of Kircher, an otherwise extremely busy man, to have a look at deciphering the book. This is the reason for them claiming it's probably medical. They wanted to create the impression of a book containing vital knowledge which it was almost Kircher's duty (as a priest and a man of science) to decipher.
That is a weird conspiracy theory
. Marci had no intention of piquing the interest of Kircher; he sent the book because he knew that Kircher had asked for it. As for Baresch, he said it was probably medical because it obviously looks (and is) medical. And that is apparently why Baresch was so interested in it.All the best, --stolfi
RE: I am not convinced by the provenance history of the VMS - JustAnotherTheory - 23-08-2026
Thanks @Jorge_Stolfi. Those are interesting insights you shared. I find myself now creeping towards the suspicion that the VMS might not actually be a real 15th Century manuscript. If we cannot say for sure, that these people are actually talking about the VMS, with reasonable certainty, then either:
- The provenance of the VMS as we understand it today is false, or
- There might be some foul play involved in its creation, or
- There might be some foul play involved in the creation of some of the letters, or
- A combination of the above.
Voynich famously said:
- "When the time comes, I will prove to the world that the black magic of the Middle Ages consisted in discoveries far in advance of 20th-century science."
What was he referring to here? Did he see something in the VMS that alludes to "discoveries far in advance of 20th-century science" ? What on earth could he be talking about here?
Unless, he himself is somehow involved in creating the VMS and "hiding" some 20th century secrets in there. Some people have mentioned that the VMS containers look like 19th century microscopes. Did he put them there himself, then claimed the MS has advanced knowledge buried within it?
Why else, would someone make such a weird claim, especially a manuscript dealer who is expert in medieval history?
The more I think about the different aspects surrounding the VMS, the more something feels fishy to me.
RE: I am not convinced by the provenance history of the VMS - Oscroft - 23-08-2026
(8 hours ago)JustAnotherTheory Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Voynich famously said:
What was he referring to here? Did he see something in the VMS that alludes to "discoveries far in advance of 20th-century science" ? What on earth could he be talking about here?
- "When the time comes, I will prove to the world that the black magic of the Middle Ages consisted in discoveries far in advance of 20th-century science."
Might he possibly have been exuding bovine-sourced fertiliser to big up his own importance? Has anyone ever done that before?
RE: I am not convinced by the provenance history of the VMS - JustAnotherTheory - 23-08-2026
(6 hours ago)Oscroft Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Might he possibly have been exuding bovine-sourced fertiliser to big up his own importance? Has anyone ever done that before?
If that's the case, the bovine specimen was rather large, as such a claim does not seem to have any root in reality (unless, that is, if he has knowledge of something we don't).
RE: I am not convinced by the provenance history of the VMS - Jorge_Stolfi - 23-08-2026
(8 hours ago)JustAnotherTheory Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Voynich famously said:
What was he referring to here? Did he see something in the VMS that alludes to "discoveries far in advance of 20th-century science" ? What on earth could he be talking about here?
- "When the time comes, I will prove to the world that the black magic of the Middle Ages consisted in discoveries far in advance of 20th-century science."
What was the context of that claim? If he was referring to the VMS, he may have been thinking of Newbold's 1921 intrepretations of f68v3 as "spiral galaxy". Wasn't there also a claim that some other figure was a microscope image of a cell or of living tissue?
All the best, --stolfi
RE: I am not convinced by the provenance history of the VMS - Oscroft - 23-08-2026
(1 hour ago)JustAnotherTheory Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.(6 hours ago)Oscroft Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Might he possibly have been exuding bovine-sourced fertiliser to big up his own importance? Has anyone ever done that before?
If that's the case, the bovine specimen was rather large, as such a claim does not seem to have any root in reality (unless, that is, if he has knowledge of something we don't).
Does nobody ever lie where you live? We shouldn't just believe everything anyone tells us, you know!
Maybe Voynich just has a mysterious encrypted document that he has no understanding of, and he's inventing big boasts about what he's going to tell the world he's found once he cracks it? Maybe to see if he'll get big offers for it, or maybe just an ego thing?
Occam's razor doesn't always get the right answer, but it's a good tool to start shaving with.
RE: I am not convinced by the provenance history of the VMS - rikforto - 23-08-2026
My understanding is that a number of extremely normal and almost certainly genuine manuscripts would not hold up to the kind of scrutiny of the provenance history the VMS has received---gaps, exaggerations, and outright lies are normal in provenance accounts and it would be strange if the VMS's provenance was airtight and perfectly consistent given when it was surfaced and sold. I would go as far as to say that not all of Voynich's sales pitches have held up lend a certain credibility to his involvement because had he forged it, he might not have been so hapless describing it!
Now, I hasten to say this is not ironclad proof it is genuine by any means, but it does reframe the questions that are being asked about the provenance