The Modern Forgery Hypothesis

[Jorge_Stolfi]

(Continuing)

I cannot tell from the images, but Marci's letter seems to be too well preserved for something that had supposedly been attached to the inner cover of MS 408 for 400 years -- first in the PUG library and then in that secret hiding place.  MS 408 looks as one would expect from a book with that history.  Does the letter, too?  Was the water damage to MS408 all pre-Kircher?

I am satisfied that the Vatican and the Italian government did not know about the secret book collection, and that it was kept locked and off-limits to most people.  But several Jesuits obviously knew about it, and must have had access to it.   Enough access to decide that some of those books could be sold, and to choose which ones.  Strickland must have been one of those people, yes?  

Then there is that mysterious entry ("BookX") in the list of "30 books" sold to Wilfrid by the Jesuits, the only one with no listed title or description.  It is identified with the VMS only because of the assumption that the VMS must have been one of those "30 books".   Actually there are two claims there: that BooX = BookA (the one which was sent to Kircher by Marci) and BookX = MS 408. If that assumption is put into question, then there is no reason to assume that either of these is true.

But let's suppose that indeed BookX = BookA.  Why didn't the description of BookX mention Marci's letter, or use the information therein to better describe the book? Surely, the Jesuit who compiled that list must have opened BookX, and seen the letter if it was attached to it.   And if he saw the letter -- a letter that had been sent by a famous scholar to an important Jesuit -- why didn't he remove the letter and add it to that archive of the so-precious Jesuit documents?

When Wilfrid revealed that he had possession of Marci's letter, and claimed that it had been attached to MS 408, the Satanic Italian government would have at least suspected that the Jesuits had been hiding Kircher's correspondence and the former PUG library.  Would they be satisfied with Wilfrid's vague claims about that "castle in Austria"?

And what about those PUG books that were sent to the Netherlands to escape confiscation.  Were they all returned to Rome and merged with that secret stash?  When was that?  Could BookA have been among them?  If so, could it have been sold or stolen while it was in the Netherlands?

Here is an alternative timeline that does involves neither a modern forgery nor my own "book switch" theory, but may better explain the actions of Wilfrid and others:

1. Several years before 1911, Wilfrid gets wind that the Jesuits are hiding, somewhere in Rome, a huge stash of books from the former PUG, including many books that may be worth five- or six-figure amounts.
   
2. Smelling a big opportunity, Wilfrid tries to get friends with some Jesuit who had access to those books and could help him get them; and succeeds with Father Strickland, possibly others.
   
3. Strickland or others tells his new "friend" Wilfrid about some of the books and documents in that collection.  In particular, about a letter claiming that one of the books from the Kircher library was a Bacon Original bought by an Emperor Rudolf for an absurd amount of gold.
   
4. With the opportunity now being in the seven figures, Wiflrid does what he can and cannot do to convince the Jesuits to sell him that BookA
   
5. The sale would have to include Marci's letter, because Wilfrid would need it to "prove" the Bacon origin to the evential Rich Banker
   
6. The sale is finally arranged. As usual, he would buy a whole lot of books, for a fixed price per book, in order to pretend that none of them was of particular interest or value.  BookA was to be included "by mere chance".  With Marci's cover letter "accidentally" left inside.
   
7. When the Jesuits listed BookA in the sale records, they intentionally omitted any detail that could identify it as such.  Including the cover letter.
   
8. Both the Jesuits and Wilfrid kept the deal secret because they knew that legally the books belonged to the Italian government and therefore the sale was highly illegal.  The secret included the existence and sale of Marci's letter. And the Jesuits also feared the reaction of the Vatican and their adversaries within the Church.
   
9. In 1929 Mussolini's treaty with the Pope presumably removes the risk of confiscation.
   
10. Then Wilfrid finally dares to make the letter public.  But he still pretends that the book was bought from the Mondragone high school or some other place, whose custodians allegedly did not know the book's importance and had not even noticed the attached letter.
    

OK, so what are the holes in this scenario?

All the best, --stolfi

PS.  The 1929 treaty gave the Catholic Church a number of privileges.  For instance, until very recently the Italian government paid a stipend to every Catholic priest in Italy.  I suppose that the tacit counterpart would have been the support of the Fascist regime by the Church, who had (and still has) huge influence among the people.