The Book Switch Theory

[Jorge_Stolfi]

 @Jorge_Stolfi I'd be interested to hear more about your comment "There are several big holes and suspicious details in the latter", presumably relating to the official story of how Wilfrid got MS 408? 

See the discussion on this thread.

Elsewhere I have observed that every antique bookseller (or, more generally, any dealer of antiquities) must have, let's say', rather elastic moral standards.  Because his revenue depends on finding books that he can buy cheap and sell for a lot more; but he cannot count on such opportunities happening with any regularity.

The survival of a honest bookseller is thus much more uncertain than that of a farmer, hunter, or carpenter. He could go months or years without a profitable trade. To fill the barren gap between the legitimate chance findings of precious books, he must regularly either (1) try to convince some gullible rich guy that a book that he knows is worthless is "probably" a treasury, or (2) try to convince someone that the books they inherited, some of which he knows are worth thousands of dollars, are "in fact" worthless, and "generously" offer only a couple hundred for them.  

We know that Wilfrid regularly did (2), and there are reports that he even boasted about it.   As for (1), every expert must have told him that the VMS could not possibly be a Bacon original; to me, his persistence on that claim was dishonest.  And he definitely kept lying about how he acquired it, long after the excuse for those lies had ceased to exist.  

And I also cannot believe that he was honest when he "explained" that he did not mention Marci's letter for many years after his alleged purchase of the book "because he did not consider it important".  That letter was the only thing that suggested a connection to Rudolf II and to Roger Bacon.  Without it, the VMS would have been just a bizarre medieval book of unknown date and provenance.

A bookseller who is dishonest enough to engage in (1) can easily tell lies and tamper with the book, or with the evidence of its provenance, in order to pursue that goal.  In my evaluation, Wilfrid would be quite capable -- operationally, technically, and morally -- of forging Jacobus "signature", removing "inconvenient" pages from the VMS, re-binding it with a "Jesuit" cover, acquiring Marci's letter by questionable means and attaching it to the book, and more.  


And he had very strong motivation$ to do that.

He knew that there was little risk of being caught at those "little tricks"; and, even if that happened, he trusted that he could talk and lie his way out of trouble.  

"Oh, yes, you are right, indeed I got the letter only in 1920.   But it definitely was attached to the book when I saw it before that 1911 purchase.  It got detached by accident while the Jesuits packaged those books, and it took that long for them to locate the letter again and send it to me.  I did not mention it because the Italian government bla bla..."

"So you say that Jacobus' "signature" is definitely not in his hand?  I never said it was.  If some people who saw my photos consider it evidence that Rudolf II owned the book, that is their conclusion, not mine.  At the time, I did not even know who that Tepenecz guy could be. I suppose that the name and the "#19" were scribbled by the Clementinum librarian who handled his books after his death."

"Well, yes, the binding glue is recent, as your new chemical test shows. Indeed I had the book re-bound in 1912, because the original cover was all moldy and crumbling.  It would have made the book hard to sell.  Fortunately I had those other books that the Jesuits had re-bound at the same time in the 1800s, and I used one of their covers. So the cover is effectively legitimate. No, I did not keep the old one -- the binder surely threw it away. I did not mention that small cosmetic intervention because, you know, people would have been unduly suspicious ..."

"You say that you have proof that this book is not the one that Marci sent to Kircher?  Darn.  Some Jesuit librarian must have found the letter lost among random papers, and thought that it must refer to this book that they had, and put them together.  I was fooled. Oh well."

By the way, while I believe that Wilfrid is unlikely to have forged Marci's letter, can we be sure that it was the copy sent to Kircher? Could it be a copy that Marci's secretary made and kept for his own archives, and that Wlfrid found by chance in 1905, and prompted him to try to get that book (or something that could pass for it)?

All the best, --stolfi