Father Joseph Strickland

[ReneZ]

The transcription of the letters from the Strickland brothers has now been added  You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. .

Hi Rene,

In the J. Strickland letter from June 26, 1912 he writes : "F. Spinetti thinks it is better to send the 1000 books you have put by for him to the house in Florence so that he may see them before sending them to Rome, when he comes here at the end of next week."

Frascati is next to Rome (in Rome today). It doesn't make sense to bring the books from Rome (or various villa locations around Rome) to Florence to be sent to Rome again. If the books were in Frascati or anywhere near Rome - this would have been on their way to Vatican. It seems Voynich was bringing the books from somewhere else. Unless bringing the books from Rome to Florence and back to Rome was part of the cover-up.

---

... Or maybe he traded 1000 books for few manuscripts that were waiting in Rome?

Hi Ellie,

the 1000 books seem to be something that Voynich was sending (selling / trading ? ) to the Jesuits, otherwise it makes not much sense, as you say.
We are of course reminded of the comment by Orioli, that Voynich cheated some monasteries out of valuable books by trading against modern 'trash', but we can't be entirely sure what was the role of these books. Maybe they were part of the deal.

What we can be certain of, is that the Jesuits were fully aware of the value of their 15th C (and earlier) MSs, that they were in the process of selling to the Vatican.

Fr. Spinetti is also mentioned here:

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.