The Modern Forgery Hypothesis

[proto57]

As for what I would consider rising to "serious problems", for the 1665/66 Marci letter, I would list that bad Latin;

In 2002, Margaret Garber successfully defended a PhD thesis about Marci's philospohical writings. In the committee was Joseph Smolka, who has studied Marci's life, and published about him continually since the 1960's. The title of the thesis is:

Garber, M.: Optics and alchemy in the philosophical writings of Marcus Marci in post-Rudolphine Prague 1612-1670, dissertation submitted for the degree Doctor of Philosophy, San Diego, 2002.

In this thesis she literally writes that "Marci did not write in the most efficient of manners".
His Latin was cumbersome.

This is a feature of Marci's writing. The opposite of evidence that this letter is not genuine.

But Rene, isn't it your contention that some "scribe" of unknown identity wrote the 1665/66 letter for Marci? And this supposedly done because Marci was too old and ill to write it himself? And that this, to explain the "vexing" Latin, and different "look" of that letter?

But now you are using, instead of this "scribe" to explain this, Ms. Garber's assertion that, "Marci did not write in the most efficient of manners" as the reason it is poorly written, and by Marci again?

Which is it? It can't be both badly written because Marci wrote that way; AND badly written because this supposed "scribe" wrote that way.

And if you have changed your mind, and now Marci DID actually write it, in his usual bad Latin (to explain Mr. Ernst's, Phil's, and the observations of others that the Latin is poor in it), why is it so different than the other letters? In style and quality? Do you contend that it was his age and sickness which caused this change in his writing style? Then why are the signature and part of the date a practical overlay of an earlier letter (while seeming to add a little line changing a "5" to a "6")?

   

If that is the new version.. that he actually DID write this letter... then it brings into sharper focus the problem of the different paper, because a scribe can't be used to explain it (as was done already in this very thread). We would be back to only Marci having multiple paper brands as an (unknown) defense.

And in any case, why did Marci choose paper that seems to have weird fold lines that don't allow it to be folded into either a letter, or an envelope, as virtually all of the other 2,000 letters of the Carteggio? 

I disagree with all these varied versions of the defense of that letter, for the reasons you well know. But I also point out, as I have before, several of those defenses contradict each other, as they seem to do, now, again.

Again, I think there is a far simpler explanation for the bad Latin, the impossible folds, the different paper, the odd cutting, the impossible seal alignment, and Voynich "not noticing" a letter to one of the greatest figures in the history of science for many years: It's not real.