The Book Switch Theory

[Jorge_Stolfi]

There are some 1915 and 1918 newspaper reports where the letter is called a 'flyleaf' and some of the names in the letter are quoted.

If indeed those newspapers cite Marci, Barschius, Kircher, or Raphael, that would indeed be evidence that Voynich at least knew the contents of the letter by 1917.   But anyway I already think that it is quite likely that he knew about the letter and its contents well before the 1911 sale.

There is a photo in the Beinecke libary that was taken before the chemicals were applied, in which vague traces of parts of the signature can be seen. 

 

Do we know the date of that photo?

3. Is there any other example of Hořčický's signature (post 1608 after his enoblement with the de Tepenec title) that actually matches the form found in the VMS?

Yes, one in a book preserved in the Czech National Library

That is the one labeled "Clementinum" on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., right?  Indeed the VMS "signature" looks very similar to that one, and the numbering style too is the same -- the abbreviation "No" crossed twice, and no period after the number.  

But if anyone went looking for Sinapius's ex-libris, that is precisely the one that would have been the easiest to find...

And strangely the signature and number style on the VMS, supposedly #19, match quite well those of that #4 at the Clementinum, but are very different from those of the two Strahov samples, #7 and #18 -- which should have been "signed" between those other two.   How comes?

Stolfi will remember that we manually searched through these cards in 1999 (or 2000?) but did not find this one.

Yes, of course I remember you searching that catalog!  (The Czech National Library, for those who don't know, was located in the former Clementinum building.) Which eventually led to me having to copy Jacobus's biography by hand from that Schmidl's History of Jesuits in Bohemia.

One [true signature] was found before all others, and is shown on this page:
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. under "Additional Signature".

 

... which does not match at all the VMS "signature", or any of the "signatures" on those other ex-libris ...

All the best, --stolfi