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+--- Thread: On the character of Wilfrid Voynich (/thread-5041.html)
RE: On the character of Wilfrid Voynich - Jorge_Stolfi - 14-11-2025
(14-11-2025, 07:55 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I am not sure where he acquired church property that the church did not want to sell.
Maybe I misunderstood the story, but I understood that the Jesuits were worried about reactions to the sale internal to the Church.
Not sure if it is relevant, but there has always been quite a bit of internal political tension between the Jesuits and other branches of the Church. I suppose that the latter would have exploited the sale in that strife, had they known about it. Even because the books (predictably) ended up in the US, violating Italian law.
All the best, --stolfi
RE: On the character of Wilfrid Voynich - ReneZ - 14-11-2025
(14-11-2025, 08:36 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.(14-11-2025, 07:55 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I am not sure where he acquired church property that the church did not want to sell.
Maybe I misunderstood the story, but I understood that the Jesuits were worried about reactions to the sale internal to the Church.
Not sure if it is relevant, but there has always been quite a bit of internal political tension between the Jesuits and other branches of the Church. I suppose that the latter would have exploited the sale in that strife, had they known about it. Even because the books (predictably) ended up in the US, violating Italian law.
The situation of the Jesuits in Italy at that time is hard to describe. While they were catholics, they were seen as a 'different type' of catholics, and viewed with extreme suspicion. I really don't know the full story and some of our Italian list members may be able to explain this better. I have seen some newspaper articles from that time, showing how popular opinion in Rome was much against the Jesuits. They were seen as rich and successful and having 'too much influence'.
The real battle was with the government of the newly united Italian state.
It was this government that confiscated all Jesuit properties, like the entire building (palace) that hosted their main college and main library with everything inside it.
It was 40 years later that they decided to sell some of the books, voluntarily, and weighing the risk/profit situation when selecting the buyer.
RE: On the character of Wilfrid Voynich - Jorge_Stolfi - 14-11-2025
(14-11-2025, 09:08 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The situation of the Jesuits in Italy at that time is hard to describe. While they were catholics, they were seen as a 'different type' of catholics, and viewed with extreme suspicion.
Maybe it did not go so far as seeing them as sort of heretics, but there was strong dispute between them and other orders for control of the Church and its politics. Much of the resentment seems to have been because, being more educated and open-minded than the other orders, they usually got more access and influence to kings and nobles than the other orders, disproportionately to their numbers. And often espoused views that were more open than the rest of the Church was ready to accept.
For instance, when Jesuit Matteo Ricci started his quest to convert China to Christianity, he thought the task would be easier if the Church accepted the Confucian cult of the ancestors as a mere cultural tradition, not a religion. And he even wrote a pamplet arguing that point.
But the Dominicans, the most powerful rival order at the time, strongly disagreed. In their view, the cult of the ancestors was paganism, and the Church should declare it so, forbidding converts to engage in it. The dispute went on internally for decades, and in the end the Dominican view prevailed.
More recently, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., and even from their Jesuit superiors, when they publicly stated that Darwin's theory of evolution was not incompatible with the Bible. It took many decades for the Church, grudgingly, to accept that view too.
All the best, --stolfi
RE: On the character of Wilfrid Voynich - asteckley - 15-11-2025
(12-11-2025, 04:23 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.She takes very strong issue with Orioli's description of Voynich, and quotes how Voynich's wife descibed him as having the head and shoulders of a 'Norwegian god'.
Small correction -- Sowerby did not quote his wife describing him in that way. Sowerby herself described him that way and felt that Ethel Voynich must have been thinking of her husband when she used that phrase in one of her books.
RE: On the character of Wilfrid Voynich - ReneZ - 10-02-2026
Here's a bit of trivia that I ran into today. I add it here for lack of a better place.
End-1921 - beginning 1922, Wilfrid approached the rather famous classicist and archeologist Francis W. Kelsey of the University of Michigan. He offered him a 12th century greek biblical MS for sale. This was the only Greek MS that Wilfrid had obtained from the Jesuits, by St. John Chrysostom. He asked $ 3000 for this MS, but while Kelsey and two other professors were very interested in obtaining it, it was outside their budget.
So, Kelsey travelled to Detroit, with the MS, to plead with management, and he succeeded to obtain a $ 15,000 budget for this, and other manuscripts.
As there was an upcoming Sotheby auction of additional bibliocal manuscripts in London, they decided to let Voynich act as their agent in this auction, aided by Voynich's very capable London employee Herbert Garland.
They laid down a set of rules for price ranges within which they could bid, and in the end, Voynich and Garland managed to obtain 47 Greek manuscripts and one in Latin. This formed the nucleus of the Michigan New Testament MS collection.
RE: On the character of Wilfrid Voynich - kckluge - 10-02-2026
(10-02-2026, 01:03 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Here's a bit of trivia that I ran into today. I add it here for lack of a better place.
End-1921 - beginning 1922, Wilfrid approached the rather famous classicist and archeologist Francis W. Kelsey of the University of Michigan. He offered him a 12th century greek biblical MS for sale. This was the only Greek MS that Wilfrid had obtained from the Jesuits, by St. John Chrysostom. He asked $ 3000 for this MS, but while Kelsey and two other professors were very interested in obtaining it, it was outside their budget.
So, Kelsey travelled to Detroit, with the MS, to plead with management, and he succeeded to obtain a $ 15,000 budget for this, and other manuscripts.
As there was an upcoming Sotheby auction of additional bibliocal manuscripts in London, they decided to let Voynich act as their agent in this auction, aided by Voynich's very capable London employee Herbert Garland.
They laid down a set of rules for price ranges within which they could bid, and in the end, Voynich and Garland managed to obtain 47 Greek manuscripts and one in Latin. This formed the nucleus of the Michigan New Testament MS collection.
For those interested, the story is told in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
RE: On the character of Wilfrid Voynich - ReneZ - 11-02-2026
Thanks!
Unfortunately, the Google Books link does not work for me.
My source was:
M.M. Parvis and A.P. Wikgren: New Testament manuscript studies : the materials and the making of a critical apparatus, Chicago 1950, pp.126-127
This is online here: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
but it may also not be visible to everyone.
(Just having an archive.org login worked for me).