By the way, is there anyone here who advocates for the validity of the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. signature and who would be interested in finding evidence that actually supports that claim? (By the validity of the signature, I mean that it is indeed the signature of the Jacobus Hořčický associated with the court of Rudolph II.)
I ask because I would genuinely like to see a stronger case made for it, and I believe I can suggest a proper way to approach this—one that follows the standards of good research rather than simple advocacy for a favored theory.
The misalignments we see between the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. signature and the known signatures of Hořčický need to be shown to be neither unexpected nor uncommon. To do that, one could randomly select a few other historical figures (or at least one such figure) who also received the ennobling title “de Tepenecz” (or a similar honor) and who left behind some number of ex libris signatures. Samples of their signatures could then be compiled. The goal would be to show that other individuals likewise exhibited a range of variation in how they formed their signatures, including a comparable degree of anomaly in sequence numbers and dates.
Such a demonstration would help establish that there is nothing unusual about the case of Hořčický and would lend much greater credibility to the claim that he is indeed the signer of the VMS.
However, no one appears to have carried out this exercise. Without such a demonstration, the problems involving signature variants, sequence numbers, and dates continue to undermine the claim—especially since Hořčický did not enter the picture on his own, but rather as a result of Wilfrid Voynich searching for a suitable candidate.
I ask because I would genuinely like to see a stronger case made for it, and I believe I can suggest a proper way to approach this—one that follows the standards of good research rather than simple advocacy for a favored theory.
The misalignments we see between the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. signature and the known signatures of Hořčický need to be shown to be neither unexpected nor uncommon. To do that, one could randomly select a few other historical figures (or at least one such figure) who also received the ennobling title “de Tepenecz” (or a similar honor) and who left behind some number of ex libris signatures. Samples of their signatures could then be compiled. The goal would be to show that other individuals likewise exhibited a range of variation in how they formed their signatures, including a comparable degree of anomaly in sequence numbers and dates.
Such a demonstration would help establish that there is nothing unusual about the case of Hořčický and would lend much greater credibility to the claim that he is indeed the signer of the VMS.
However, no one appears to have carried out this exercise. Without such a demonstration, the problems involving signature variants, sequence numbers, and dates continue to undermine the claim—especially since Hořčický did not enter the picture on his own, but rather as a result of Wilfrid Voynich searching for a suitable candidate.