The Book Switch Theory

[kckluge]

At least, knowing this, now, the official claim "he could not and would not have known" will no longer be claimed, right?

Gosh, Rich, I guess I'll just have to grit my teeth and concede as gracefully as possible that if Voynich had access to Google Books in the 1890's or early 'aughts he would have had no problem making the connection between Sinapius and Tepenc.

Meanwhile, in the absence of a letter from Voynich to someone saying, "My latest copy of Communications of the Association for the History of Germans in the Sudetenland just showed up, and I can't wait to read it cover-to-cover," color me skeptical.

Your sarcasm aside, the counter-point you are attempting make is totally unfounded. While the systems of cataloging that would have been in place in 1910 to 1912 would obviously have far less capable, by magnitudes, than the are today, they were nonetheless quite efficient and extensive to a really remarkable level. You know that, though, or should.

I've done much research spanning the old card catalog days, and bridging to the new. The existence of these books, containing the three versions of Horcicky's name... Horcicky/Sinapius/Tepenenc, would have been easily findable. 

I am, as you surmise, very familiar with doing library research in the pre-internet days. Which means I am also very familiar with the challenges involved in locating material in periodicals back in the day. And in my case, "back in the day" was a lot more recent than back in Voynich's day. The issue isn't "Could Voynich have found a card catalog listing for bound volumes of _Mitteilungen Verein für Geschichte der Deutschen in den Sudetenländern_ or _Alterhümer und Denkwürdigkeiten Bömens_?" The issue is how he would have known to look at those specific pages in those specific issues for information on Sinapius. What printed index(es) including those periodicals available at the time had entries pointing to those items? Were those periodicals even indexed anywhere?

But let's let that pass. Let's focus on _Konfessy Katholicka_. Let's make the following (I'm more than willing to grant) perfectly reasonable assumptions:

* the 1782 edition of _Konffessý katholická_ currently in the British Library was there at the period of the supposed forging, and

* the card catalog listed the author as "Horčický z Tepence, Jakub, 1575-1622", as the current on-line catalog does, and

* Voynich either spoke Czech or could have easily found someone who did.

Granting those assumptions, then yes, Voynich could in principle have found out that Rudolph ennobled Sinapius and granted him the Tepence estate. He also could have found the "Tepenecz" form of the spelling on the page showing the "INSIGNIA NOBILIS D. IACOBI HORCZIcky à Tepenecz".

Thing is, every reference to him in that book using "Tepence" is always as "Jakub Horcicky z Tepence" (or, in the above case the Latin form "Iacobi Horczicky a Tepenecz"). So what he could not have gotten from that was the idea of forging Sinapius' ex libris on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. using the form "Jacobi à Tepenecz" without the Horcicky.

But I will add that your point here is yet another example of needing to vary a standard of understanding, like Koen said, "sliders", for, in this case, Voynich's abilities. This needs to be done all the time to protect the Paradigm: Voynich was smart, he was stupid; he was extremely knowledgeable, but he was ignorant; he was a liar, we can't trust him, and then, "Voynich said, so we KNOW..."; Voynich was an honest man; but he was a cheat, and made illegal sales; the 'signature' was JUST visible enough to guess "tspenencz", but not enough to guess "tepenencz"; and so on, up and down, depending on what is needed to protect the paradigm.

Speaking of "sliders"...so Voynich is so meticulous and devious that he roots through all the volumes of the Carteggio to find the handful of letters that reference the whatever-manuscript, then cunningly forged the Marci letter to plant a clue for others to follow to falsely link his forgery to them -- but then he idiotically forgot to take out pages with 17th century microscopes when he decided to make it a Bacon mss?