The Modern Forgery Hypothesis

[ReneZ]

But Rene, isn't it your contention that some "scribe" of unknown identity wrote the 1665/66 letter for Marci?

This is actually an easily verifiable fact. I think I already pointed to it before, but just for completeness:

This is Marci's own handwriting, which he used in his first 30+ letters, now in Kircher's correspondence:
   

This is the handwriting of the letter now in the Beinecke:
   

This is the handwriting of Marci's last letter, again in Kircher's correspondence:
   

Not only are the last two clearly different from Marci's handwriting, they are also the same hand.

This alone is sufficient to demonstrate that the Beinecke letter is genuine.

Since Marci dictated the letter, it would still be his Latin. Philip Neal commented that it was a bit cumbersome, but because it was also grammatical, he could translate it correctly. The point was to figure out whose statement it was that the MS was believed to be from Bacon.

Anyway, this question about the 'difficult' Latin is so subjective that it cannot play any role at all, either way.
Just like the different watermarks, which means nothing, or the multiple folds, which rather point to a long history than to a forgery.

The handwriting tells us all we need. If one really wants to believe that this is a forgery, then one automatically has to believe
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