The 1665/6 Marci Letter: A fake?

[arca_libraria]

There are 11 red flags, and the Voynich arguably hits on 10 of them. The Marci letter, I think, 3 or 4:

1)  Elicits multiple, widely contrary expert opinions
2)  Has poor, contrary and/or missing  versions of provenance.
3)  Contains anachronistic content
4)  Owner/seller lies about provenance
5)  Contains incorrect uses of iconography
6)  Improper tools, methods, and/or materials used
7)  It looks "too new”
8)  There is a reluctance to produce, and/or test, original
9)  Copy of illustrations from books and catalogs
10) Financial or other incentive is offered for positive opinion
11) Claimed disappearance of original

There have already been a lot of excellent counter arguments to the reasons you’ve put forward for the Marci letter possibly being a fake. I’m not going to add any more objections to your arguments against the Marci letter’s authenticity, but I want to challenge your suggestion that the VMS may hit up to 10 of your red flags because I think all that this list reveals is that you’re not sufficiently trained in working with historic manuscripts and documents to be making such judgements and applying them to something like the VMS.

1) Elicits multiple, widely contrary expert opinions - welcome to manuscript studies, it’s really hard, takes decades of training and people disagree all the time. The disagreements about the VMS are nothing special in manuscript studies.
2) Has poor, contrary and/or missing  versions of provenance - this is absolutely normal in manuscript studies; some manuscripts may only have gaps of a few decades, others may have gaps of over a millennium. A key part of palaeography training is learning to identify marks, symbols, and letterforms that can help you to date and locate a manuscript in the absence of a helpful note saying when and where it was written and all the places it has been since then. Researchers also use things like bindings, quire marks, library catalogues, letters and lots of other details to try to understand where a manuscript has been throughout its history, and sometimes the question cannot be answered. This problem extends to many other medieval manuscripts (and medieval and ancient artefacts more generally) and is not restricted to the VMS.
3)  Contains anachronistic content - you need to define the anachronism, but to my eyes, there is nothing obviously anachronistic in the VMS.
4)  Owner/seller lies about provenance - this does happen sometimes, it’s particularly common for items looted from places like Syria, Egypt and Iraq, or for items that were confiscated from Jewish families during the Second World War. Even if it turned out that there were lies about where the VMS has been since it was made, it is still a manuscript written on 15th C parchment that looks like a product of the 15th century.
5)  Contains incorrect uses of iconography - you need a strong foundation in the history of art to make judgements about the incorrect use of iconography. The VMS is definitely weird, but nothing strikes me as ‘incorrect’.
6)  Improper tools, methods, and/or materials used - the carbon dating tells us that the VMS was written on 15th C parchment, the production techniques and mise-en-page are standard for a European codex of this period, and the only way to safely test the pigments would be with various spectroscopy techniques.
7)  It looks "too new” - the VMS doesn’t look too new. It has filthy pages near the beginning and the end, and mild to moderate staining and damage throughout the rest of the leaves. 
8)  There is a reluctance to produce, and/or test, original - both of these are false in relation to the VMS. The Beinecke will produce the manuscript to anyone with the credentials and a suitable research question, which is how it works for virtually every other medieval manuscript in major public collections around the world. Lisa Fagin Davis who is an expert palaeographer and belongs to this forum has seen it (at least?) a couple of times, and I believe René Zandbergen and Nick Pelling have seen it as well. You would have a much harder time seeing something like the Book of Kells (Trinity College, Dublin) or the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry (Chantilly, Musée Condée, MS 65) both of which have heavy restrictions on who can see them and for how long and no one is using those restrictions to argue that they are fakes. The Beinecke has already consented to one round of testing, how else would we know the carbon dating results? I am sure if a suitably equipped team approached them about doing non-invasive tests such as spectroscopy they would consider it. It is not unusual for museums and libraries to refuse tests which would damage their collection by taking tiny pigment samples: in the 21st century it is more unusual to find a museum or library that will permit invasive tests like that.
9)  Copy of illustrations from books and catalogs - I’m not sure I understand how this objection might relate to the VMS specifically, but to no other medieval manuscript. Medieval manuscript art borrowed from, was inspired by, and occasionally reduplicated almost perfectly other pre-existing manuscripts. Some medieval artists also invented things. One of the ways we can attempt to understand the VMS is to look at art and iconography from all over the world and see whether we can see any visual influences or similarities. I’m aware of a few forgery cases where the forger copied illustrations, and there’s a whole universe of forgery and fake provenance among the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, but in the case of the VMS if you want to make an argument that the illustrations are copied from somewhere else, you need to present people with the original sources and see if they agree.
10) Financial or other incentive is offered for positive opinion:
Step 1 - Become interested in VMS.
Step 2 - Write positive thing about VMS.
Step 3 - ???
Step 4 -  PROFIT!!!
11) Claimed disappearance of original - the VMS is in the Beinecke where it is available to view by appointment subject to the standard manuscript research checks that all libraries undertake when you ask to see their stuff. I’m sure the poor Beinecke Librarians wish they could make it disappear, but alas, it remains available.