The Modern Forgery Hypothesis

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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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I think you may have missed my point, Rene. Well, maybe not entirely, when you wrote,

Since Marci dictated the letter, it would still be his Latin.

Well, yes the script is different, no argument there, and that was not my point of course. I just see this as an increasingly complex and convoluted attempts to "explain away" several of the many problems with that letter. The story is getting more and more complicated, as we learn more... first, it was different script, so a "scribe" was invented to explain this... the bad Latin, the different writing. But now, with Mr. Ernsts obviously learned and detailed descriptions, with more specifics, of exactly what the many problems with the Latin are... with examples... I think you have painted yourself in a corner with this line of excuses for the Letter. To explain:

So your contention is that this was still written by an unknown "scribe", but that Marci's poor Latin... as described by Margaret Garber in 2002, as you described previously in this thread, was also copied and reflected by that "scribe":

In this thesis [M. Garber] literally writes that "Marci did not write in the most efficient of manners".

But there are very serious problems with your speculation here, because we would have to believe that this imagined "scribe" would also have had to copy many unspoken errors in the Latin, such as the improper diacritical marks. As Ernst pointed out, in the example I copied to this thread a few days ago,

2) “â nullo”, “â se descripta “, “à te” ([5, 7], β). Both the circumflex and the grave accent were used, primarily in printed Latin, to distinguish adverbs and prepositions. In Latin – unlike French – the circumflex was a deictic typographical device to distinguish the ablative case from the nominative: “vitâ functus”, “primâ fronte”, “hâc arte” (letter by Wolfgang Trefler as printed 1754 in the HISTORIA REI LITTERARIÆ ORDINIS S. BENEDICTI, I, 492-496), “nonâ die” (Oliver Legipont, ibid.). The grave was used a) to distinguish adverbs, b) to distinguish prepositions: “citrà”, “adolphvm à glavbvrg” (Tithemius, Polygraphia 1550, ed. Glauburg). In the “Marci-letter”, all three “a” designate the preposition “by” or “from”, and not an ablative. Even if the circumflex in “â nullo” were considered a smudgy grave accent, the one in “â se” is not. Only “à te” is correct. Writers and printers of Latin texts were just as precise about diacritics as writers of modern French are because the diacritics carry as much meaning as the words they are attached to. The Marci-letter has two wrong diacritics and one correct one above the same letter within the space of 29 words.

So for this type of error to have somehow been transmitted from Marci's bad Latin, to the imagined "scribe", then committed to paper again... how, exactly? How do you imagine this "scribe" knew Marci was thinking of the wrong diacritical marks, and dutifully wrote them down for him, that (wrong) way?

And this is not alone in Thomas Ernst's observations for they type of thing that would clearly NOT be so passed down by the "scribe". Perhaps one could still argue that certain incorrect Latin phrasing and grammar (which he also describes), and the invented words (although how would that scribe know how Marci would want these invented words spelled, and without correcting him about them?), and the inexplicable repetitions, and so on... I would argue those, because I would imagine a scribe would be somewhat learned in Latin, and like any editor or secretary might make corrections before transcribing an error-filled Marci letter. But let's, for the sake of argument, accept that premise:

Again, if I did accept that the scribe transcribed Marci's other errors, I cannot accept it at all logical, remotely reasonable to accept that this "scribe" ALSO copied Marci's bad diacritical markings, even if he somehow saw them committed to paper by Marci, and the "scribe" was actually only copying some draft of Marci's. He would have fixed those, of course. And then, even if one were to accept him doing even that, then why did he pick a scribe who wrote in a similar style to Marci's, but badly, and just a bit off? What would possibly be the purpose of this?

No, all the defenses of this letter are highly illogical to me, and compounding into increasingly illogical excuses for it, as more is learned, and when critically examined. Far, far simpler is that this letter is a fake, which explains the different hand writing, seemingly mimicking, roughly, Marci's original; the poor Latin; the different paper; the impossible fold lines; the perplexing seal positioning; not "finding" it for years, and more.

As a related "aside", I would like to, and intend to, read the paper by M.Garber, to determine in exactly what ways she felt Marci's Latin was not "efficient". Would/did she note the same sort of errors that we see in the 1665/66 Marci letter? The ones Thomas Ernst uncovered? Or, was his "inefficient" Latin of a different sort entirely? I mean, using a blanket verdict of "inefficient Latin" to explain away the poor Latin of the Marci letter, BTW as transcribe by the imagined "scribe", is convenient, but is it accurate? People want to know.

A good analogy of the Marci letter defenses have been like the crime where the accused says they never knew the victim, and they were nowhere near the crime. They are told, "We have a picture of you with the victim". "Oh yes, I forgot, I did know him, but I was not near the crime scene". They are then told, "Someone saw you near there". "Oh yes, I was actually there, I forgot, but I didn't do the crime". "Yes, but, we found your DNA on the body". "OH yes, I forgot, I hugged the victim before they were killed, but I didn't do it". "But, his blood is on your body". "Oh yes, I forgot, I tried to save him, and got blood on me".

The defenses of this very poor letter similarly get increasingly impossible, as we learn more about it. It was once, "Marci wrote it, but he was old and sick". People pointed out that the handwriting was too unlike Marci's, and the imagined "scribe" was introduced to the story, to explain that... Now, he was old and sick and needed a scribe. Now it is pointed out the ways and specifics of just how and in what ways the Latin is wrong, and somehow the scribe transmitted the poor Latin from Marci to the paper, somehow copying bad diacritics, and other easily correctable errors, to the paper, in Marci's name.

I think, rather, it would be simple common sense to accept that all the problems are explained far more simply, and logically, that this letter is fake. And, as I pointed out before, if it is fake or real does not affect the Voynich being fake or real. If the Voynich turned out to be genuine 1420, it is STILL perfectly reasonable that this pathetic letter was faked by Voynich (or by someone, for him) to push Bacon. And I don't think this is the hill to die on... so why continue to defend it?

As I also said, I think it is because, even accepting 1420 Genuine, if that letter is fake, almost the entire backstory of the Voynich, carefully crafted over more than thirty years, Marci, Kinner, Baresch, Kircher, the Reuniciation of Italy, the Vatican, and pages and pages of all this... well, about 90%... evaporates with that letter. It HAS to be real in order to buttress all that. If, for instance, the Voynich was found on one of those piles in the Libreria Franceshini in 1910, and Voynich thought it was "close enough" to use the scant references in the Carteggio as provenance, then the investigation into the real backstory of the manuscript would have to start from scratch, and decades of work would be erased.

TLDR: If the scribe copied Marci's bad Latin, which I doubt any scribe would, why would he also know of, and copy, his improper and illogical spelling and error filled diacritics? It makes zero sense. A far more likely explanation is that the letter is a fake.