06-11-2025, 11:38 AM
(06-11-2025, 10:42 AM)ReneZ wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.[Voynich] was boasting a Bacon origin as from 1912. Then, as late as 1915 he was arguing that the Rudolf in the letter was Rudolf I, who was a contemporary of Bacon, who died in 1291, and _NOT_ Rudolf II. So yes, he read the name Bacon and the name Rudolf in the letter before that, but he only started to dig into that part of history after he realised it was Rudolf II of Prague, not Rudolf I. Apparently, that happened around 1918-1919.
Thanks for the clarification, Rene. But does that rule out this alternative history?
1. (1911) Voynich gets hold of the Marci letter, somehow, somewhere. (He lied man times about that, so we can't tell, can we?) All he can see in the letter is "Bacon", the rest being obfuscated by the glare of imagined gold.
2. But the book mentioned in the letter (book A) is not available. Or, to his great disappointment, the book attached to the letter (book C) turns out to be a camel owner's manual in Tiffinagh, with a few drawings of plants that are good or bad camel food, crude diagrams for camel breeding, or something like that.
3. Still in 1911-1912 he (or someone in his behalf) searches Kircher's Carteggio and other likely places, in the hope of finding the missing book A. Or hoping that book A was not book C, and the latter was attached to the letter by mistake after Kircher's death.
4. In that early search, he gets copies of Baresch's letters. But no book A.
5. Still, he decides to use Marci's letter to sell some "Bacon" book to some gullible millionaire. Somehow he gets (or, less likely, forges) another manuscript (book B, the one at BL now) that looks like 13th century and fits the description in Marci's and Baresch's letters. And attaches Marci's letter to it. His initial story is that the book was bought by Rudolf the First, almost directly from Bacon.
6. Prospective buyers are not convinced that the book he is offering is the book mentioned by Marci. And besides tell him that the "Rudolf" of Marci's letter could not be Rudolf I but must be Rudolf II.
7. Thus, by 1918-1919, Voynich starts looking for evidence that would support an alternative story, where the book is bought by Rudolf II instead.
And from then on it is as I wrote before.
So, what evidence is there that breaks this alternative theory?
All the best, --stolfi