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+--- Thread: Voynich buys some Jesuit manuscripts (/thread-2618.html)
RE: Voynich buys some Jesuit manuscripts - ReneZ - 20-09-2023
Hi Marco,
I agree, and I also agree that it is subjective.
What surprised me a lot, while reading about this part of history, is that the Jesuits have been regarded with extreme suspicion, especially in Italy. This seems to persist to the present time.
RE: Voynich buys some Jesuit manuscripts - ReneZ - 21-09-2023
(19-09-2023, 09:09 PM)LisaFaginDavis Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.By the same token, Voynich was not at all unusual in obfuscating the source of the VMS or any other manuscript. It was not at all uncommon for dealers during that period to refuse to say where they had acquired something.
I do not doubt for a second that this is correct, but ELV's letter, to be opened after her death, already shows that this is quite an extreme case.
RE: Voynich buys some Jesuit manuscripts - Bernd - 22-09-2023
(20-09-2023, 02:57 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.What surprised me a lot, while reading about this part of history, is that the Jesuits have been regarded with extreme suspicion, especially in Italy. This seems to persist to the present time.Well Jesuits have always been regarded as a highly organized world-wide network, influential and wealthy. They held significant economic and political power and of course this frequently lead to scrutiny by authorities, be it state or church, right down to suppression in most of Europe in the 18th century. As so often, mostly for political and financial reasons, not religious ones.
Also don't forget there was a culture war between secularists and traditionalists raging in Risorgimento Italy since the mid- 19th century. Especially the elitist Jesuits were perceived as enemies of modern secular society and this led to a climate of anti-catholicism and especially anti-jesuitism in Italy that lasted at least until the church recognized the Italian kingdom in the Lateran treaty of 1929.
Quote:Anti-Jesuitism in Italy, 1843–1848Borutta, M. (2012). Anti-Catholicism and the Culture War in Risorgimento Italy. The Risorgimento Revisited, 191–213.
In the beginning, the Risorgimento seemed to live in harmony with Catholicism. [...] Many members of the clergy supported the project of national unification. The abbé Vincenzo Gioberti’s Del primato morale e civile degli italiani (1843), a neo-Guelph vision of an Italian confederation under the presidency of the pope, was the most popular text of the Risorgimento. [...] Then, however, Gioberti’s Primato was criticised by prominent Jesuits like Luigi Taparelli d’Azeglio, and the nation became ‘the subject of a vigorous debate within Catholic intellectual circles [ ... ] about the respective roles of
Church and nation as the principal source of political sovereignty’. In this debate, Gioberti depicted the Jesuits as the most dangerous enemies of the Italian nation and Catholic religion. In the second edition of his Primato (1845), he described the Society of Jesus as a source of evil that negated bourgeois values and male virtues, incarnated the antithesis of friendship, marriage, family and fatherland, and destroyed the human species. [...] Outside the Church, Gioberti’s anti-Jesuit campaign had already been joined by journalists, novelists and cartoonists who depicted the Fathers as enemies of progress, civil society, nation and mankind. [...] After a series of anti-Jesuit manifestations and riots during the revolution of 1848–49, the Society of Jesus was expelled from most parts of Italy and formally banned from the kingdom of Sardinia. The anti-Jesuit law, extended to Italy in 1866 and to Rome in 1873, violated important principles of the Piedmontese constitution (religious freedom, inviolability of property). It was, however, both emancipatory and repressive at the same time. The banishment was also legitimated with ideals of individual freedom: it was depicted as a ‘liberation’ of the Jesuits from their strict obedience.
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One could argue the Jesuits became victim to their own success.
I also agree the VM probably was not overly interesting to Jesuit scientists. The question is rather why they chose to keep it at all. Simply because it was part of Kircher's belongings?
RE: Voynich buys some Jesuit manuscripts - LisaFaginDavis - 23-12-2025
Just wanted to let you all know that the APUG handlist of manuscripts (mostly) acquired by the Vatican in 1903 has been digitized!
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Here's the catalogue record:
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The manuscript that is tentatively identifed as the VMS is on f. 17r, under "Miscellanea", three entries from the bottom. As Rene notes on his page devoted to this catalogue, the annotation at the far right is the de Ricci Census reference to the VMS, Census II:1846.
Do we know who wrote those annotations?
RE: Voynich buys some Jesuit manuscripts - Jorge_Stolfi - 23-12-2025
(22-09-2023, 02:30 PM)Bernd Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The question is rather why they chose to keep it at all. Simply because it was part of Kircher's belongings?
AFAIK the Jesuits were not fanatical book-burners, like other Orders may have been. They treasured books, even when they totally disagreed with their contents for religious reasons. Is this correct?
All the best, --stolfi
RE: Voynich buys some Jesuit manuscripts - ReneZ - 24-12-2025
That is great news. This copy is a lot clearer than the one in the Vatican, which is also only B/W.
Many of the annotations are from the hand of José Ruysschaert himself, as identified by staff in the Vatican.
I have some comments on this document here: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , which I will now obviously have to update.
On one of the first pages, in the right top margin, there is a reference to a Jesuit: (Felice) Grossi Gondi, who probably wrote the comment above it.
RE: Voynich buys some Jesuit manuscripts - LisaFaginDavis - 24-12-2025
I figured it was Ruysschaert, just wanted to confirm. Thank you!
RE: Voynich buys some Jesuit manuscripts - ReneZ - 25-12-2025
The entire list appears to be in several hands. I strongly suspect that one of them is in fact Joseph Strickland, by comparing with the surviving letters he sent to Voynich. Strickland returned to the Mondragone from Florence in 1911, and spent quite some time in Castelgandolfo in that year.
RE: Voynich buys some Jesuit manuscripts - ReneZ - 02-02-2026
(02-02-2026, 10:29 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Why did the Jesuits decide to sell those 30 books to Wiflrid? Did they really need that money that badly? Merely telling him that those books existed would have been a huge risk. Besides, the sale was obviously a serious violation of Italian law, that regarded those books as property of the Italian government. The government could have excused them for keeping the collection secret ("sorry, Eccelenza, we were a bit busy for the last 70 years and we forgot to tell you about it"). Not so for selling valuable cultural Government property to a foreign dealer.
The question "why?" may be secondary, because they definitely did.
Apparently they needed the money badly enough to do it.
If you really want to know the details about this sale, it is best to read the paper by Francesca Potenza, which is in Italian, which I know you can read, and online at academia.edu (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). If you don't have access there, let me know and I can send it. (Not sure if your unicamp E-mail is still valid)
For the whole situation about the various state confiscations of libraries of religious orders, how it was implemented, how the implementation failed, see You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. This is a printed book, also in Italian, and undoubtedly not yet available online.
The author used government documents from the period in question.
RE: Voynich buys some Jesuit manuscripts - Rafal - 02-02-2026
Quote:Did they really need that money that badly?
Even if they didn't need the money badly, they probably prefered selling the stuff to having it confiscated at some moment.
And I suppose some of them would prefer to burn the manuscripts than give them away to the state.
Relationships between the Catholic Church and new united, secular Italian state were really bad and hostile at that time.
Read the stuff like: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. to get the historical context.
When a potential buyer appeared they used the occasion.