Raison d'etre of the Voynich?

[Mark Knowles]

one could easily end up demonstrating that the Voynich manuscript could not exist.

In fact on the basis of all the evidence, we now have external to the Voynich manuscript from before the time of Emperor Rudolf et al, the Voynich manuscript should not exist. And yet it does exist.

In this respect it is like the Antikythera mechanism that should not exist on the basis of what we know from all other historical evidence.

This is a fact which makes so much reasoning about the Voynich difficult as we have no really good precedents for it as a whole. But it didn't emerge out of a void, it is a physical part of history and therefore must fit within history.