Expert Opinion

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The fundamental question is why anything is falsified at all. Profit comes first here.

There is also the possibility of the ego trip "I am the only one who has something like this". But that would be eliminated by the sale.

So why would someone forge a notebook at such great expense and effort and not even sell it in the end?

Why mention the name "Tepenec" and then blur it again, even though it is the only thing that might have any value at all? "Well-known personality".

Is it a particularly stupid or particularly clever forger?

Just inviting experts to examine the book when it is still hot off the press is a risk.

So why forge it?

Well all good points, Aga, and ones that I have long wondered about. These questions have actually impacted my hypothesis in various ways, by causing me to see how and if they fit the scenario I began with, and have actually altered it to some degree. So the below if OF COURSE my opinions on them, and purely speculative, and subject to change. But FYI I will give my viewpoints on them:

1) Yes, profit: We know Wilfrid wanted to profit by it, from various bits of evidence it seems he was hoping for between $100,000 and about $160,000. That is, in today's (US) dollars, about $3 to $5 million.

2) "I am the only one who has something like this"- yes that would go away if he sold it, as you say, but still he would be known... and still is... for having "found" it. And I do think this would have been a tremendous motivation for him. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., his fame at the earlier sale of the 150 incunabula to the British Library was already old news by 1910 or so, while the celebrity of his wife was rapidly growing. To pull off such a "coup" as finding a rare and exciting book such as this would rocket him to fame... again. And, that is inarguable, it did.

3) "Why mention the name "Tepenec" and then blur it again, even though it is the only thing that might have any value at all?" I speculate a reason for this: I do believe he first created the manuscript to appear to be from the Court of Rudolf II, and so "signed" it with the Tepenenz "signature". But such an herbal would have been worth about 1,000 pounds (looking through his own catalogs at the time). A combination of considerations caused him to decide to change the authorship and origin to Roger Bacon, which he felt would be far more valuable (see my hypothesis). And so, now, he didn't want that signature, and tried to remove it. But he could not... he just made a blotty mess. This problem could then be easily fixed by the 1665/66 Marci letter, which explained, indirectly, why that signature would be on there. But for many reasons I feel, and others feel, that that signature is a fake: For one thing it was never seen by Marci/Baresch/Kinner/Kircher, for surely, when discussing the manuscript, one of them would have pointed out this all important clue.... if they were actually looking at, and describing, the Voynich. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

4) "So why would someone forge a notebook at such great expense and effort and not even sell it in the end?" Well first of all, this idea of a "great expense" is one I long took issue with, even if genuine, as I also once believed. And of course I have pointed out that Wilfrid plausibly had access to a vast amount of materials from the 1908 purchase of the Libreria Franceshini, so the few sheets of parchment would have cost him nothing extra. Ink is cheap to make, and the time would not have been (per experiments by me, Rugg and others) all that time consuming: Maybe two months of spare time? As for not selling it, well he did want to, we know that. That it didn't sell was due to circumstances beyond his control. I think a major problem was that nobody could decide what it was! That problem, amply described all over the internet. No, he wanted to sell it for a great deal of money, he just never could.

5) "Just inviting experts to examine the book when it is still hot off the press is a risk." Well of course this is always a risk, for any forger, first of all. I've heard it said, many times to me in fact, something along the lines of, "It would have been a great risk to his career, and he would not have made that risk, therefore it is not a forgery". But all forgers take this risk, and he had a tremendous amount of wealth to gain from it. But as for "inviting experts" (and again, it is interesting to me to see others, not familiar with my work or research, to ask the very same questions I've asked of myself. This is, to me, another great value in publicly discussing these things, to share my perspective, and the perspectives of others on the same issues): Two things: 1) Wilfrid was very selective about the experts he both queried, and who he allowed access to the Voynich. I believe he quietly sent the ms. out to selected audiences to get feedback... possibly including Joseph Baer in Frankfort about 1910. Even though I think Ethel and Anne believed it authentic, they, too, were careful who would get to see the ms., first considering whether or not that person would report favorably on their hoped-for Roger Bacon attribution. I found reference to this in the letters of Anne Nill, in which the question was occasionally posed: Will this one or that one agree with us, or hurt the attribution? And Wilfred even did this with Newbold, offering him over $10,000, should Newbold's "Roger Bacon" attribution "stick", and a successful sale was made because of it. 2) Wilfred had a "habit" which I saw several times, relating not only to the Voynich, but also to other of his holdings. It went like this: Write to an expert on the subject, and drop just enough hints to steer that person in the direction (I suspect) he desired. Then, when the the expert responded as hoped, Wilfrid would cite that expert as though the whole "discovery" was independently arrived at by said expert. A great example is his query about the "signature": You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. Anyway, a reader commented on something I had not noticed (I can't find the comment at the moment), something to the effect of, "... Wilfrid was asking for information about this supposedly unidentified person, then why did he say he was from Bohemia?"

As I said he did this in other places. Among them are a case I have not written about, in which he asked a map expert about a map, and "Could it be XXX?" The expert replied, "Yes it could be XXX". And then, Wilfrid quoted that expert in his own catalog, while trying to sell the map! And I think poor Newbold was also a victim of this, running wild like a loose cannon on Voynich's deck, after being steered toward advanced optics and a possible Roger Bacon. But that is also just a theory... You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. I think he was pointed in that direction, then went off and running to his doom... with visions of fame and $10,000 clouding his normally reputable judgment.

Anyway, those are my (speculative) explanations for the issues you have brought up. Your mileage may vary.

Rich.