The Book Switch Theory

[Jorge_Stolfi]

Only when you have "forgery" on your mind, you will point out differences and call it fake.

Well, I do have forgery on my mind (not about the book or letter, but about that "signature").  Because I believe that Wilfrid had the necessary ability, opportunity, and moral elasticity -- and especially a strong motivation to forge it, if it was not there already.

The signature looks fine, and there is nothing wrong with the number.

I strongly disagree.  We can barely read the letters.  The handwriting looks similar to that of one of Jacobus's ex-libris, but what remains after Wilfrid's "enhancement" is not enough to distinguish a legitimate signature from a forgery of the same -- even a crude one.   It does not look like his manu propria signature at all, shown on Rene's page. The spelling "Jacobi" (Latin genitive, with "i") and the shape of the "J" look like the two ex-libris kept at Strahov, but different from the "Jacobj" of the Clementinum sample; while the "Tepenece" looks like the "Tepenecz" of the latter.

As for the number, both books at Strahov have an "N" crossed once and a period after the number (German influence?), while the Clementinum one has "No" (from Latin "Numero"?) crossed  twice and no period after the number.

And the sample from Charles University is in Czech, in a different handwriting still...

And the Clementinum and Strahov would be the first places where one would look for books once owned by Jacobus.  And both are easily accessible to "scholars".  And it does not seem at all impossible that Wilfrid somehow obtained book #19 from the Strahov batch, or somehow knew that #19 would never be found, so it was a safe number to use... 

Just like the fact that the earth is round is, technically, disputed.

Come on, it is absolutely not the same situation at all.  There are trillions of facts that prove that the Earth is round.  Whereas the theory that Jacobus ever owned the VMS is supported only by the prior assumption that it is unlikely that Wilfrid would have forged that "signature" (because of scruples, inability, whatever).

As to what people should have said but didn't say: how are we to know the complex network of personal motivations at play?

  

But Marci and Barschius were greatly puzzled by the book's origin, and the fact that Jacobus was the owner before Barschius would have been an important clue for that question.  And the Jesuit librarians who were supposed to identify the book in their catalogs should have noticed the signature (and the letter!) and recorded it in the entry for that otherwise unidentifiable book.

All the best, --stolfi