The Book Switch Theory

[Jorge_Stolfi]

I guess 'SPT' is an abbreviation referring to the 'normal' storyline, i.e. no fake items and no fake signatures.

Yes, sorry, the "Standard Provenance Theory".

I am quite unsure which details it struggles to explain

Like why the Jesuits decided to sell books to Wilfrid, why he kept Marci's letter hidden for years, why the VMS is not clearly described in the records of the sale, ...

A key point of my alternative story above is that Wilfrid's goal was to acquire MS 408, specifically; and the other books were only included in the sale to serve as a cover, to deflect the attention of any onlookers away from that book.

Wilfrid learns that, in that stash, there is a letter saying that Marci sent to Kircher a Bacon original.

Does this refer to the Marci letter, and do you mean that this used to be part of the Carteggio?Because it never did.

That is indeed a point I am still confused about. Why wasn't  Marci's letter included in the Carteggio? Because it ended up in a different building, together with the books?   When was the Carteggio compiled?

Anyone who picked up MS408 would have opened the cover. If the letter was there all the time, why didn't the Jesuit librarians remove it and file it with other letters?  

My alternative timeline above does not explain this point either.  But, unlike the SPT, it does not require the letter to have been in any specific place before 1920 or so.  It only requires that Wilfrid became aware of its contents (even if he had no physical access to it) before everything else.  He would have proposed the deal to the Jesuits only after that, specifically to acquire that "Bacon book" mentioned in the letter.

In fact, can we be sure that the letter at Yale is the one that was sent to Kircher?   Could it be instead a copy that Marci's secretary made for his archive, which remained in Prague and was obtained by Wilfrid got through a completely different route?  (Back in the typewriter age, secretaries routinely made a carbon copy of every business letter, for that same purpose.)

the official Jesuit bibliographer [struggled] to update the complete bibliography of all Jesuit works, right during the time when much material is in hiding (1880's and 1890's). ... In the end, his work, completed before 1911, does not include the Kircher carteggio, even though it includes lesser collections of material. He was not aware of its existence. This is how thoroughly this was hidden.

I don't dispute that.  (Although perhaps he was aware of the Carteggio, but omitted it from his catalog because he understood the need to hide it?) 

[The Corvinus books] (and a few others) were much more valuable than the weird Voynich MS. It may be tempting or even natural to think of the Voynich MS as the prize of this collection, but it really was not.

I am pretty sure that the Jesuits themselves never thought of MS 408 (if they indeed ever held it) as anything more than a weird and ugly curiosity -- until Wilfrid came to them all excited and determined to get it.  Even then, they quite probably knew it was not a Bacon book.  But if that americano wanted it so much, they would not try to change his mind...

The significance of any individual letter in the Kircher carteggio is zero in [the context of the collection's fortunes]

Indeed, and I don't think that the Jesuits paid any special attention to the letter either (if they indeed ever held it).  It was valuable only to Wilfrid; and, even then, only after he realized that the book would be worthless without the letter.

All the best, --stolfi