The Modern Forgery Hypothesis

[Jorge_Stolfi]

But the interesting thing to remember, if it was not the Villa Mondragone, would be that Wilfrid lied about the provenance not just two, but at least three times: "Castle in Southern Europe", "Austrian Castle", and now, "Villa Mondragone". And conversely, never told the truth about it, not once.

I did not realize this point before.

While I still think the Standard Provenance Theory (SPT) is the most likely, at least going back to Barchius, my hunch that there was some serious foul play by Wilfrid is getting stronger.

I don't think he would go as far as forging the VMS, or even Marci's letter.  The risk of being caught was too great and the consequences would be very serious.  But I think he would be quite capable of any or all of these, in any order:

• Forging then almost but not quite completely erasng Jacobus's signature on f1r, after obtaining a photo of one of his ex-libris
  
• Bribing the Jesuits to sell him some books from Kircher's library and having the VMS (which he believed to be worth millions) included in the lot, listed only as "uh, also another manuscript, boring, not worth specifying, ignore it"
  
• Bribing the Jesuits to pilfer Marci's letter from the Carteggio and then claiming that it was attached to the VMS when he  bought it
  
• Substituting another manuscript for Baresch's book ("BookA"), because the latter turned out to be definitely not Bacon's.
  
• Removing from BL MS 408 any pages that would have shown it was not Bacon's and/or not BookA.
  

While Wilfrid may never had access to the Carteggio, or to the VMS before the sale, it seems quite possible that his Jesuit friends could have told him about "this interesting letter from Marci that mentions a Bacon original which would have been owned by Rudolf".  And they could then have scanned the Carteggio, at his request, to locate and copy the letters from Marci's "good friend" that were implied by Marci's letter.

The weakness of the SPT is that it relies entirely on Wilfrid's claim that Marci's letter was attached to BL MS 408 when he bought it.  But there is no evidence for that claim, and the way Wilfrid handled the letter is suspicious.  The paper lining of the cover, where the letter could have been attached to, was removed by him and seems to be lost.  

Shouldn't that letter have been filed in the Carteggio?  

If that undescribed MS in the list of his purchase was the BL MS 408, why wasn't the letter mentioned there?

If we assume that Marci's letter may not have been attached to BL MS 408, then there is no evidence that Wilfrid bough that book from the Jesuits, much less that it came from Kircher's library.   

Even if we accept Jacobus's signature as genuine, that is not evidence that BL MS 408  is BookA.  On the contrary, it is a bit strange that neither Marci nor Barschius mentioned Jacobus as a previous owner, even though his ex-libris should have been quite legible then. And it is a bit strange that Barschius did not cross out Jacobus's name and write his on instead.

Anyway, to me it does not make any difference whether BL MS 408 is BookA or not, much less whether it was owned by Jacobus or Rudolf.  That is not why I think MS 408 is interesting...

All the best, --stolfi