The Book Switch Theory

[Jorge_Stolfi]

The part: 

Miscellanea | c.m.s.XV

was written by Jesuits in 1911/1912. The entries in this list are all short, essentially autor+titles+material+century.
It can be shown that these are summaries of the paper slips that were attached to the books by a Jesuit bibliographer, working in the Collegium Romanum.

But  "c.m.s.XV" could describe any 15th century anonymous manuscript on vellum.  From 20 pages to 800 pages, in-folio or in-octavo, with or without figures, in any language...  

...and maybe even a book apparently written in cipher.

His identity is uncertain, but he was definitely highly knowledgeable. ... the 15th century would have been this librarian's guess.

But if that book was MS 408, what would he have based that guess on?  Not the Voynichese script, of course.  The month names?  But isn't that script hard to date?  The dresses in the Zodiac section?  Would he have been an expert on that too?

All guesswork that will not lead anywhere.

But "that entry refers to MS 408" is only a guess, too...

Census 1846 

Was written in the right margin by Ruysschaert, sometime before 1959. It appears a bit longer in his 1959 catalogue, and refers to De Ricci's 1937 Census of manuscripts Vol.II page 1846.
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. for a nearby page.

OK, so that "1846" is not a year but a page on a 1937 census of manuscripts in the US and Canada.  Thus it does not provide any evidence relevant to our question.

Which brings back the question: is there any evidence whatsoever that MS 408 was ever held by the Jesuits, anywhere, anytime?  

Marci's letter (which I still believe is genuine) says that he was going to send the book to Kircher, but AFAIK we don't even know whether Kircher received it, or the letter.

AFAIK Strickland and the other Jesuits involved in the sale to Wilfrid never talked about it afterwards.  Is that so?

Once you commented that part of the Jesuit's book and letter holdings was shipped to the Netherlands for some time, to protect them from confiscation.  Could you please elaborate on that?  When was that material returned to Rome?

Thanks agan, and all the best -- stolfi

PS:

Ughhh. A long and detailed response lost by an unfortunate key press and no 'editor saved draft'.

I lost count of the times that happened to me.  But there are two tricks that may help:

• After an accidental deletion, the CTRL-Z key does work sometimes, but you need to type it at least twice for it to work.
  
• If you lose a long "quick edit" because you pressed "Post" instead of "Save changes", try the "back" button on your browser.  My browser (Chromium) will restore the typed text too.
  
• If you accidentally closed the tab while typing the message, try the "Restore closed tabs" in the browser's menu.  Ditto.