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+--- Thread: The 600 ducat question (/thread-157.html)
The 600 ducat question - ReneZ - 25-01-2016
Did Rudolf II really buy the Voynich MS for 600 ducats? Would that not have been an unrealistic price?
We don't know the answer yet, but we can see some of his other acquisitions, showing that the price would not have been unrealistic, as has sometimes been suggested. (This only works for those who can read German).
Here, he pays 600 Taler to Jacopo Strada for some books:
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(Note that the silver Taler was worth a little more than a gold florin, and a little less than a gold ducat).
From other references, this seems to concern 6 printed books.
Here is a contract with Sambucus for 2500 ducats for a collection of Latin and Greek classics:
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This concerns 500 books. There was some haggling about the price: 5 or 6 ducats a piece. Not so funny: Sambucus died before being paid and his widow is asking for the money afterwards. A nice list of debts after Rudolf's death:
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But I digress.
Here some herbal books of Clusius. He is not sure what is their usefulness, but still pays 200 Taler.
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1350 Taler to the Dutch trader Emanuel Sweerts for flower bulbs (making up 700 Taler) and a book:
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There's a curious book (but only 150 florins):
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My favourite: 500 Taler to Carolus Widemann for books. These are almost certainly paracelsan and/or alchemical works. Several are still preserved in the Vossius collection in Leiden (NL):
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On a side note, here's a list of people receiving a monthly stipend of some 20 florins. Who can spot Jacobus de Tepenec?
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RE: The 600 ducat question - EllieV - 31-01-2016
(25-01-2016, 05:27 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.[/url]
On a side note, here's a list of people receiving a monthly stipend of some 20 florins. Who can spot Jacobus de Tepenec?
[url=http://documenta.rudolphina.org/Regesten/A1612-02-00-02757.xml]http://documenta.rudolphina.org/Regesten/A1612-02-00-02757.xml
Jacob Hortschizkhy, vom 1.6.1608 monatlichen 20 fl
That is a wild spelling of the name
RE: The 600 ducat question - Diane - 08-02-2016
I've never been able to work up much enthusiasm for a near postscript written about a distant (supposed) memory, by a man in the last stages of senile dementia, about a single comment which - as he thinks - was made decades earlier by someone who couldn't have witnessed the supposed purchase.
However, if one accepts that as accurate then surely we're back to England and the thirteenth century again - since that information came from exactly the same source/s, is contained in the same rumour and so on.
But I admit to being fairly indifferent to theories about the manuscript's travels after 1438.
D.
RE: The 600 ducat question - ReneZ - 08-02-2016
What really happened remains uncertain, but one can at least differentiate between what's right and what's wrong.
That 600 ducats would have been an impossible amount is clearly wrong, as the records tell us.
That Marci was in the last stages of senile dementia in August 1665 is at best unproven, and almost certainly wrong. By January 1667 this was a different story.
That Dr.Raphael could not have witnessed the sale is also not correct, if it happened late in Rudolf's reign. In any case it is not relevant, as he certainly had access to, and great interest in Rudolf's manuscripts. He writes this clearly in his 1630 letter to Ferdinand II:
hab viel mühe und zeit in diesem allem von iugendt
auf, wohl über die dreissig iahr zugebracht, emssig [?]
in allen authoribus so ie fürkhummen nachgeschlagen, auch viel in manuscriptis, in charakteribus
et Cifris Rudolphi Imperatoris gelesen, viel desgleichen auch in Bibliothecis Monasteriorum
insonderheit dess Abtn von Brumau und Crembsmünster befunden, aber solche fundamenta und rationes
potentissimas, wie Sendivogius hatt, nie gehört weder gelesen.
RE: The 600 ducat question - Diane - 08-02-2016
Rene,
Yes he had a great interest in manuscripts, because he was a lawyer, part of whose job was to hunt them up.
He also had a private interest in alchemy, and this was believed to be an alchemical text.
But to be honest, it's a matter of indifference to me, and I'd rather focus on the manuscript's contents. - but Pratyēka tyācyā svata: Cyā karaṇyāsāṭhī.
RE: The 600 ducat question - david - 13-02-2016
Has anyone ever managed to work out a realistic assumption of the purchasing worth of 600 ducats at that moment in time?
RE: The 600 ducat question - Helmut Winkler - 13-02-2016
With varying currencies and prices in the 16th c. It is difficult to give realistic examples, but I would say that around 1600 you would have got a very big house in one of the leading cities (Prague, Nuremberg, Vienna) of the area.
RE: The 600 ducat question - ReneZ - 13-02-2016
Rudolf regularly ordered paper and parchment, and paid amounts of:
250 florins in 1596
350 florins in 1599
170 florins in 1602
500 florins in 1608
So, 600 ducats also buys you (if you're an emperor) very roughly a decade of such supplies.
RE: The 600 ducat question - Diane - 13-02-2016
David,
the point has been talked about pretty often as far back as it became an issue for anyone. Since at least the 1990s.
The general consensus seemed to me to be (when I went back reading up on it) that the price was ridiculous for that time, given the look of our manuscript, the sort of price that manuscripts even of first quality then fetched, and the extant records of Rudolf's purchases: not just their cost, but the sort of things he liked to buy.
I recall one person saying that his library consisted chiefly of the latest printed books about alchemy and new science, though here my reference is even vaguer than Mnishovsky's was.
So on balance, my view came to be that Mnishovsky was hoping to finagle it for himself, by suggesting that it actually belonged among Rudolf's collection (over which he had, as it were, testamentary/executive authority) and that failing that, he might wangle 600 ducats as price of the redemption.
Reading all the associated Kircher letters that Rene and others hunted up - for which our gratitude is earned - it looks as if no-body ever believed the idea, and to contemporary eyes the thing looked so ratty that not even Kircher wanted it at first, and talked of it as if it had been some student's abbreviated work. The term 'libellum' is still used specifically to mean a text which is highly abbreviated in both form and content.
Caveat emptor, I think, about buying the story. You'd think if he'd heard of it, Baresch would have mentioned it to encourage Kircher; if Marci had believed it, he'd have done the same. If Kircher had believed it, he might have been quicker to work on it. If anyone else had believed it, they might have said something in their letters to Kircher such as "I hope you're getting on with the Emperor's book" - because if anything excited Kircher more than himself, it was rubbing shoulders (as it were) with Personages.
So no, I'm not buying.
RE: The 600 ducat question - ReneZ - 19-02-2016
It is obviously of great interest to trace the MS back further in time. It's one way of learning more about where it came from.
It is legitimate to ask whether the evidence presented by Marci is accurate. One may just decide to call it doubtful and reject it, or one may try to find out more about these events.
People who doubted it, presented several reasons for doubt:
- Marci misremembered
- Raphael could not have known
- The price is way too high
The reason I started this thread was to show that the third bullet is not justified, by using historical records.
Rudolf had a great interest for many things (though being a statesman wasn't really one of them). His interest in books of different types is evident from many sources.
- The catalogue of his "Kunstkammer" (a private museum, in a way) includes around 250 books
- Many more were sent to the library in Vienna (for example the 500 classics he acquired from Sambucus).
- The Swedes took many of his other books as war booty, and some of them ended up in Leiden.
On that last part, see this page of Philip Neal's web site:
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These are mostly alchemical, and include at least one from Carolus Widemann, who sold some books to Rudolf for 500 Taler (at the time of the sale equivalent to approx. 600 florins).
So, we have a statement in a letter saying Rudolf bought it. We can't be certain that it is true, but there is no objective reason to say that it is not true.
The points whether Raphael 'could have known' and Marci 'remembered correctly' have not been addressed in great detail , but the primary object of doubt in this respect is the amount paid, not the fact itself.
What the records show is that, even if the amount was misremembered or deliberately exaggerated, it is still in the range of prices that Rudolf was paying for books.
People objecting that Rudolf acquired the MS have also used the argument that it does not appear in his "Kunstkammer" catalogue. This argument is invalid since, as shown above, there are many hundreds of books known to have been owned by Rudolf that do not appear in this catalogue. That includes all his alchemical MSs (the ones Raphael was talking about).
What this all means is unfortunately not that much. Even when it is completely credible that Rudolf bought it (and it certainly was in the hands of one of his courtiers around or after the time of his death), the book could have really come from anywhere. Rudolf was acquiring artefacts from all over his empire and outside.
That's why it is still of great interest to find out the seller.