[split] Comparing the Voynich with the works of Fontana

[MarcoP]

Hi Antonio,
I don't know about the VMS, but I think that Fontana was a rationalistic scientist and engineer (of course within the limits of his time). In my opinion, his cipher mostly has the goal of causing interest and admiration in his audience, as so many of his theatrical inventions.

See also what Anthony Grafton writes in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.:

Fontana was interested in [...] forms of magic, like astrology and the ars notoria, which he described in detail in a strange encyclopedic work. For the most part, however, he took pride in applying his own technical skills to analyzing natural phenomena and creating artificial ones. [...] Fontana insisted that he was no magus. When witnesses at Padua exclaimed that a torpedo he had designed must run by diabolic power, he refuted them with contempt: the device was purely mechanical, as befitted a maker who was also a master of both medieval Archimedean statics and optics and of Renaissance engineering craft.