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+--- Thread: The 1665/6 Marci Letter: A fake? (/thread-3137.html)
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RE: The 1665/6 Marci Letter: A fake? - ReneZ - 04-04-2020
Many thanks to @arca_libraria for these comments.
Yes, I have seen and handled the MS several times, and Rich has also seen it, in 2014, though it was inside a protected cage.
With respect to your comments, I would perhaps add that, in my opinion, the provenance of the Voynich MS isn't all that bad. Certainly, there are many manuscripts for which we have a much more complete provenance, but there are others for which we have much less.
Interestingly, the argument of Rich is that the provenance information we have has either been faked (as per the Marci letter), or it actually refers to another manuscript, namely the now lost mysterious book that was once owned by Barschius and later by Marci. This means that it is actually agreed that the provenance isn't all that bad.
There are more things to consider about the Marci letter, and its recipient Kircher.
Clearly, Kircher kept the letter with (inside?) the MS which, at the time, probably still had its binding of wooden boards covered by leather. He did not file it with his other correspondence, which we can conclude from the fact that it is not listed in the index of the carteggio.
The same must have happened with the first letter sent to Kircher, by Th. Moretus. This is now lost and does not appear in the index. That's a pity because it would be of great interest to read it.
It has occasionally been suggested in literature about the Voynich MS that Kircher was greatly interested in the MS, but I am not at all sure of that. If he was, he would probably have been the only Jesuit who was. As interesting as the MS may be today (at least to some :-) ), for the society of Jesus it had little to offer. Their interests were in religion and teaching.
When the MS was rebound by the Jesuits, the Marci letter was still kept inside it, but in which form is hard to tell. The shape of the letter strongly suggests that it would have been glued on top of the inside cover, folded to fit the size of the book, but was that the original binding or this later Jesuit binding?
The wax seal marks that can now be seen on the parchment wrapper (inside) are a bit of a mystery.
Voynich removed the paper pastedowns. From the many books from the same collection that are now preserved in the Vatican, we can see what it would have looked like when Voynich bought it. There would have been filler material under the pastedown. There should have been a bibliographical description and a P.Beckx sticker apart from the Marci letter.
RE: The 1665/6 Marci Letter: A fake? - -JKP- - 04-04-2020
There is such a wealth of information on Rene's site. Here is one of the links to binding-related info:
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RE: The 1665/6 Marci Letter: A fake? - davidjackson - 04-04-2020
OK, without being rude, ReneZ here develops theories based upon the physical evidence he has seen and handled.
Everything else in this thread is a hypothesis that is based the posters opinion of third party evidence.
Let's stick to concrete evidence people, instead of building castles in the air.
Thread locked before it become contentious.