Why the Voynich Manuscript Text Hasn't Been Deciphered – and Why It Never Will

[Jorge_Stolfi]

Although the manuscript is already six centuries old, scientific attempts to decipher it only began in modern times.

Barschius was at least a bit obsessed about the VMS, enough to write to Kircher for help.  He must have spent a lot of time trying to "decipher" it.

Marci, considered a bona fide Scientist, apparently tried to do so after he inherited the book.  It has been claimed that the three-column letter table on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is in his handwriting.  But he may not have spent much time on it, considering that his eyesight was failing and had to let his secretary write his letters.   I guess that Marci showed the book to Raphael Mnishowski because of the latter's fame as an expert cryptographer.   

Kircher possibly tried too, but as a very busy man he must have spent even less time on it than Marci.   

After that the VMS probably sat gathering dust and mites on Kircher's library shelves for a century or so.  But considering that Petr Beckx chose it as one of the books that deserved to be saved from confiscation, it is possible that he and/or other Jesuit Professors at the Collegio Romano also puzzled on it, even before 1860.  (The Jesuits, like Kircher, were the scholars of the Church, and thus interested in all sorts of "scientific" stuff.)

All the best, --jorge