The Modern Forgery Hypothesis

[LisaFaginDavis]

I have made the case for authenticity numerous times elsewhere in this forum, but there are some new folks in this thread who may not have seen my previous posts. 

I have handled the Voynich Manuscript more than a dozen times. Over the course of the last 35 years, I have handled hundreds of other manuscripts, if not thousands. There is absolutely NOTHING about the materiality of the Voynich Manuscript that could possibly make anyone suspicious about its authenticity. 

1) parchment is authentic 15th-century parchment. Yes, I know, that's doesn't prove anything: Voynich could have found piles of old, unused parchment...possible but unlikely.
2) inks and pigments do not have any of the chemical signatures one would expect in a modern forgery (such as, for example, traces of arsenic in the green pigment). I know the counter-argument: Voynich was a chemist and could have make the inks and pigments using authentic medieval recipes. Sure, that's possible. Here's my rebuttal: Why would he bother? The spectrometric x-ray-based testing done by McCrone in 2009 did not exist until the 1980s. Why would Voynich go to the trouble of crafting "authentic" ink and pigments when there was literally no way any of his clients could possibly have known the difference? And yes, I know that the McCrone findings include a few otherwise-insignificant outliers that they weren't able to easily explain, but none of these outliers raise suspicions about authenticity.
3) sewing structure: The flax cords and threads that bind the manuscript are authenticly medieval in style (with the exception, of course, of the threads added by Kraus' book conservator, which are clearly modern white thin thread, quite distinct from the original cords and thread). The sewing structure is a Gothic binding structure. The wormholes at the beginning and end tell us the manuscript had once been bound between wooden boards. The style of the limp-vellum covers is that used by the Jesuits in their nineteenth-century rebinding campaign. Again, how and why would someone fake all of that evidence, especially since, again, Voynich's clients wouldn't have known the difference? 
4) Provenance evidence: There is no doubt that the evidence of the manuscript's history is largely circumstantial. Here's my rebuttal: So is the provenance for just about every single medieval manuscript in North America. The fact that the provenance is uncertain is not suspicious. If Voynich were trying to make a convincing fake, the smartest thing to do would have been to create a more convincing provenance, instead of making contradictory statements about his source. And what about that? Why would he make up so many different stories? Because he was an early twentieth-century rare-book dealer, and they were all cagey about provenance and their sources. Again, this neither surprises me nor makes me suspicious. It would have been more suspicious if he had laid out a crystal-clear chain of ownership.
5) Earlier provenance: The Marci letter's wax stains line up perfectly with the wax stains inside the front cover. I know the counter-argument: What about the folding pattern? Indeed, that is a currently-unresolved question. The next time I am with the manuscript, I'll work with my own facsimile of the letter (from the Siloe edition) to see if I can resolve this. Stay tuned. And there are many reasons that could explain the letter being overlooked by the Jesuits - the manuscript was likely stored in one of the library collections for hundreds of years. If no one was looking at it, which seems likely, how would they have found the letter?
6) More provenance: There is significant provenance evidence on f. 1r. The Tepenecz signature is authentic and matches several of the signatures identified by Rene on his website. The Tepenecz inventory number "19" is not otherwise used in Tepenecz books. How would Voynich have known to use that number? Why would he then erase the signture only to pour sulfuric acid ("liver of sulfur," the likely reagent he used) all over it to make it visible, only to leave a permanent stain that then made the signature invisible again? Light-based techniques for reading faded oak-gall ink on parchment had not yet been invented, so why go to the trouble when no one would be able to read it? 
7) More provenance: My own research identified the alphabets in the right-hand margin of f. 1r as having been written by Marci himself. Why would Voynich fake a second piece of provenance on f. 1r using Marci's handwriting, when it doesn't match the handwriting in the Marci letter? Rene identified that letter as actually having been written by Marci's secretary. The hand on f. 1r is Marci himself, not his secretary, identified in earlier letter he wrote himself. Again, why go to the trouble? Also, that ink has a different chemical profile in the McCrone report - recent XRF testing (not public yet) identified a zinc signature in those alphabets that marks it as NOT a medieval iron gall ink. Why would Voynich use a 17th-c. ink recipe to forge those alphabets and then ersae them, when tests to authenticate or debunk the ink wouldn't exist for another 80 years?
8) Five scribes: Why would Voynich bother?
9) Evidence of misbinding (my own forthcoming work): Why would Voynich bother?
10) Later additions: Why add later-style quire numbers and even-later-style folio numbers? Why add the inscriptions on 17r and 116v?
11) Its uniqueness: Some argue that the very fact of its uniqueness and our thus-far inability to decipher it MUST mean its a fake. The argument falls apart as soon as you consider the numbers: only 5-10% of medieval manuscripts still exist today, and a tiny fraction of those have been catalogued, and an even tinier fraction have been digitized. There is a lot that doesn't exist anymore and there's alot out there still that is not known or studied. It may turn out to indeed be unique, but I don't find that a convincing argument for concluding it's a fake. 

And on and on. 

It is one thing to forge a single document or painting, when all you are worrying about is the substrate and the inks/pigments. To forge an entire book, there are simply too many ways to go wrong: substrate, ink, pigments, sewing thread, binding, and provenance, must all be convincing and unassailable. There is absolutely nothing about any of those physical components that lends credence to the "modern forgery hypothesis." There's a reason why the Vinland Map was a forged map on a single sheet of authentic parchment, not a bound manuscript (the manuscript it is associated with was never suspect). There's a reason why the Spanish Forger painted on medieval parchment or wooden panels...when he tried to forge an entire manuscript (recently acquired by Harvard as an example of a forgery), the fake was so obvious that no one but an amateur collector could have been fooled by it. I saw it a few weeks ago - it is a laughable attempt. 

I know that there are those among you who will now respond point-by-point to make your increasingly-complicated case. Until there is convincing scientific evidence identifying the manuscript as anything other than an authentic early fifteenth-century manuscript, you won't convince me. The case for forgery requires a truly implausible series of events. With each piece of the forgery argument, the improbabilities multiply. It is simply not plausible.

What IS plausible is that the manuscript was created by an unknown community for an unknown purpose in the early 1400s, likely in Central Europe or Italy (based on the script, illustrative style, clothing, and zodiac). We don't really know where it was for the first few centuries, although the month names are a nice clue that it was in Western Europe at one point. In the 1600s, it appears in Prague (possibly - but not definitively) sold to Emperor Rudolf by Carl Widemann from Augsburg in 1599. In Prague, it passes to Tepenecz, Baresch, and Marci before being sent to Kircher in Rome in 1665. It stays with the Jesuits in various collections in Rome until Voynich buys it in 1912 and brings it to London and then to America. After he dies, it passes to Ethel, and from Ethel to Anne. Anne sells it to Kraus in 1961. Kraus spends a few years trying to sell it, but in the end gives up and donates it to Yale in 1968. The end.