23-08-2025, 07:51 AM
My personal take here: I'm very much open to the idea that the VMS was created in furtherance of some kind of fraud, but even in this context, it would stand out as a singular artifact.
First, the weight of evidence favors the VMS being an authentic 15th-century artifact and not a 20th-century forgery by Wilfrid Voynich, so if we're going to entertain the fraud hypothesis, it has to be treated as a 15th-century fraud. For instance, as Koen and Marco convincingly presented at VMD, the marginalia handwriting and radiocarbon dating of the parchment both independently point to the early 15th century. That would be quite the coincidence if the VMS were really the product of Voynich cannibalizing old bits of parchment he had collected, especially considering that Voynich was marketing the VMS as a 13th-century creation of Roger Bacon's.
From the Donation of Constantine to the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., many well-known medieval forgeries were meant to be read: that is, that the whole reason to create a forged document in the first place was to increase one's claim to power and land through a falsified trail of charters, proclamations, and so on. Even the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., which seems to have been a 15th-century text concocted You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., is a legitimate ciphertext that's also partially in plaintext. In this context, the VMS is singularly inscrutable.
And if the VMS is a forgery of some kind, it's also uniquely long. Lengths for the VMS vary depending on the transliteration, but it's on the order of 35,000-40,000 tokens long, spanning more than 200 pages. The Libro del Tesoro is less than 27 pages long. The Privilegium Maius's five core forgeries add up to fewer than 4,000 words. The Donation of Constantine is less than 3,000 words long. There is a scale and length to the VMS that is commonplace for actual medieval books and, as far as I'm aware, exceedingly rare among known medieval forgeries. As such, I'm inclined to think that if the VMS were really meant to be a forgery, it'd be shorter than it is.
Of course, the VMS's length could also be argued as being a sign of the VMS's creators putting in the extra effort to convince a mark. It also suggests to me that consistent with Rugg, Timm, and Schinner's ideas, the medieval fraud hypothesis for the VMS would favor rapidly made gibberish over a ciphertext. Why go through all the trouble of making a complex cipher if you could sell the book just as easily with it saying nothing at all?
First, the weight of evidence favors the VMS being an authentic 15th-century artifact and not a 20th-century forgery by Wilfrid Voynich, so if we're going to entertain the fraud hypothesis, it has to be treated as a 15th-century fraud. For instance, as Koen and Marco convincingly presented at VMD, the marginalia handwriting and radiocarbon dating of the parchment both independently point to the early 15th century. That would be quite the coincidence if the VMS were really the product of Voynich cannibalizing old bits of parchment he had collected, especially considering that Voynich was marketing the VMS as a 13th-century creation of Roger Bacon's.
From the Donation of Constantine to the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., many well-known medieval forgeries were meant to be read: that is, that the whole reason to create a forged document in the first place was to increase one's claim to power and land through a falsified trail of charters, proclamations, and so on. Even the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., which seems to have been a 15th-century text concocted You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., is a legitimate ciphertext that's also partially in plaintext. In this context, the VMS is singularly inscrutable.
And if the VMS is a forgery of some kind, it's also uniquely long. Lengths for the VMS vary depending on the transliteration, but it's on the order of 35,000-40,000 tokens long, spanning more than 200 pages. The Libro del Tesoro is less than 27 pages long. The Privilegium Maius's five core forgeries add up to fewer than 4,000 words. The Donation of Constantine is less than 3,000 words long. There is a scale and length to the VMS that is commonplace for actual medieval books and, as far as I'm aware, exceedingly rare among known medieval forgeries. As such, I'm inclined to think that if the VMS were really meant to be a forgery, it'd be shorter than it is.
Of course, the VMS's length could also be argued as being a sign of the VMS's creators putting in the extra effort to convince a mark. It also suggests to me that consistent with Rugg, Timm, and Schinner's ideas, the medieval fraud hypothesis for the VMS would favor rapidly made gibberish over a ciphertext. Why go through all the trouble of making a complex cipher if you could sell the book just as easily with it saying nothing at all?
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