03-05-2024, 07:27 AM
The events related to the creation of the MS are now 600 years ago. We know essentially nothing about the where, and who was involved. Finding any evidence about that is extremely difficult both due to the long time that has passed since, and the fact that there is no initial lead to narrow down the search.
Events related to the presence of the MS in Prague roughly span a time of 350-400 years ago. That is already a bit closer to us. In addition, many more records were kept, people used to exchange correspondence, and we have a relatively precise place to start looking. This is much more promising, and it has led to quite a bit of good evidence. In addition, there is a large amount of additional information surrounding the events and the people involved, that allow for different speculative reconstructions, so any further discoveries may extend our knowledge here. The key information in the archives of the Geizkofler family in Ludwigsburg, Germany, was only found in 2019 or so. It was found by going there and leafing through record books, because it is not online.
Now events related to the sale of the MS to Wilfrid are just over 100 years ago, and here we are in a very comfortable situation of finding out what happened, at least relatively speaking. I have been looking into this from before the year 2000, and this was triggered primarily by my wondering whether the pair of items (MS and Marci letter) could have been a fake by Voynich. The other thing that spurred me on was the remark by Mgr. Ruysschaert that he had 'seen something'.
This has been on-going for 25 years now, and everything I present on my web site related to these events is the result of this research. It would not have gotten to the point where it is now without the help from professional researchers in this field.
The single most critical item (which already appears as a short remark in ELV's letter, but is now known in great detail) is that Voynich did not just acquire the Voynich MS, but this was just one of a selection of 30+ valuable illuminated manuscripts.
This changes the perspective completely.
That Voynich faked it remains a story based entirely on a large compilation of "he could have done this" and "he could have done that". No evidence.
For example: he could have carried a contraption into the hidden library of the Jesuits and started copying signatures from one of their letters onto a blank piece of old paper, without the Jesuits objecting. (*)
I don't need to provide evidence that he could not have (but I already made it clear further above how likely it is). We are back at one of my earliest comments in this thread, namely that nobody will get convicted just on the basis that he 'could have commited the crime', with zero evidence.
I am not trying to convince you, Rich, but anyone who is seriously interested in this question has a whole lot of homework (=reading) to do.
- - - -
Note (*): fortunately, we now know that this whole thing is superflous, as the hypothetical faker could create an entire letter using many new words in the original scribe's handwriting, just by eyeballing the original.
Events related to the presence of the MS in Prague roughly span a time of 350-400 years ago. That is already a bit closer to us. In addition, many more records were kept, people used to exchange correspondence, and we have a relatively precise place to start looking. This is much more promising, and it has led to quite a bit of good evidence. In addition, there is a large amount of additional information surrounding the events and the people involved, that allow for different speculative reconstructions, so any further discoveries may extend our knowledge here. The key information in the archives of the Geizkofler family in Ludwigsburg, Germany, was only found in 2019 or so. It was found by going there and leafing through record books, because it is not online.
Now events related to the sale of the MS to Wilfrid are just over 100 years ago, and here we are in a very comfortable situation of finding out what happened, at least relatively speaking. I have been looking into this from before the year 2000, and this was triggered primarily by my wondering whether the pair of items (MS and Marci letter) could have been a fake by Voynich. The other thing that spurred me on was the remark by Mgr. Ruysschaert that he had 'seen something'.
This has been on-going for 25 years now, and everything I present on my web site related to these events is the result of this research. It would not have gotten to the point where it is now without the help from professional researchers in this field.
The single most critical item (which already appears as a short remark in ELV's letter, but is now known in great detail) is that Voynich did not just acquire the Voynich MS, but this was just one of a selection of 30+ valuable illuminated manuscripts.
This changes the perspective completely.
That Voynich faked it remains a story based entirely on a large compilation of "he could have done this" and "he could have done that". No evidence.
For example: he could have carried a contraption into the hidden library of the Jesuits and started copying signatures from one of their letters onto a blank piece of old paper, without the Jesuits objecting. (*)
I don't need to provide evidence that he could not have (but I already made it clear further above how likely it is). We are back at one of my earliest comments in this thread, namely that nobody will get convicted just on the basis that he 'could have commited the crime', with zero evidence.
I am not trying to convince you, Rich, but anyone who is seriously interested in this question has a whole lot of homework (=reading) to do.
- - - -
Note (*): fortunately, we now know that this whole thing is superflous, as the hypothetical faker could create an entire letter using many new words in the original scribe's handwriting, just by eyeballing the original.