06-01-2026, 03:40 AM
(This post was last modified: 06-01-2026, 03:42 AM by Jorge_Stolfi.)
(05-01-2026, 11:47 PM)ReneZ wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.[It is absurd] that Voynich would be allowed to 'borrow' the entire Kircher correspondence and take it outside for some time. Forum rules prevent me from properly expressing the likelihood of that. Let's say: no chance on Earth.
I totally agree.
Quote: [It is absurd] that anyone would be able to write a letter, copying 'free hand' the handwriting of another letter so accurately. The opportunity for that is already missing. (On a side note, the need of some contraption to then copy the signature seems superfluous but that is not for this list).
Indeed.
Quote:[It is absurd] that Voynich would have had any access to the non-sellable material inside the Villa Torlonia (not Mondragone). Even the visit of the Vatican librarian, who was even a Jesuit, was hidden from the rector of the institution.
Hm, here I don't follow. If we assume that Wilfrid was morally capable of forgery or other fraud, the mere fact that access to the Carteggio was restricted by the Jesuits does not mean that he did not get to peruse it. Priests are not saints...
Even if he did not have access to the Carteggio himself, he may have been told about the letters from Barschius and Marci by people who did have access to the collection. Like his good friend Strickland, perhaps?
Both Rich's theory (IIUC) and my Book Switch theory only require that Wilfrid got to know the contents of those letters. Not the physical letters themselves.
Maybe by 1911 Marci's letter was part of the Carteggio (where, by logic, it should have been), and Wilfrid had to use "special means" to get it out of there, so that he could attach it to the VMS in order to bolster the "Bacon" claim. Can we rule this out?
Do you know why access to the Carteggio was so restricted?
Quote:[It is absurd] that all this complicated, time-consuming effort was worth it for a completely innocuous letter. (Which, by the way, he then ignored for several years, and pretended it was for a different Rudolf than the one he supposedly intended to write about).
Well, Marci's letter was the only thing that suggested that the VMS could possibly be a Roger Bacon original. Without that letter attached, the VMS would not be worth 200 dollars, much less 200'000.
There may be several reasons for the delay in making that letter public. For one thing, a good con artist would rather let the buyer "discover" evidence of provenance, than point it out himself. The former makes the buyer totally trust the evidence, even if it is defective...
Thanks, and all the best --stolfi