Voynich buys some Jesuit manuscripts

[ReneZ]

Undoubtedly, the MS would have stood out, but some of the main reasons why it is famous today would not apply in those days. Nowadays, we know it is not just 'some foreign language that we cannot read', but in those days it would probably be classified as that.

And what is still true nowadays was also true then: there are so many perfectly readable books that have not been studied adequately, and these would get the priority. (Paraphrasing Lynn Thorndike).

My tentative explanation is that the MS is highly interesting, but only to a very small subset of people. Among medievalists, Lisa is an example of such a small subset.

A somewhat related anecdote: when Stefan Guzy found out that Widemann lived in the house that formerly belonged to Rauwolf (both were medical doctors in Augsburg), and he found some older references to lending 600 florins between members in these families, he contacted a modern expert on Rauwolf. His reaction to seeing the Voynich MS image was, that this is not the sort of thing that Rauwolf would have been interested in.

Now one should never quickly discard such a professional opinion, but then I thought to myself: I am a space engineer. I should not have been interested in this...