-KJP-, Koen et.al.
These are the grey areas for me: let's begin with Rene's summary of his reasons for taking the alleged comment of Mnishovsky at face value.
Rene says:
Quote:As concerns Marci, the Voynich MS was something that had deeply interested him ... since many decades.
Now, I don't know that this is a reasonable assumption at all. It is certainly true that Georg Baresch had it in his (Baresch's) possession for decades and spent a great deal of time and effort trying to understand it. He not only approached Kircher but, on his own testimony, German botanists who at that time were ranked among the most informed and able in Europe. But Marci's letters to Kircher - such as we have - don't show a "deep interest" but only a deep interest in his friend, who hopes by study of the ms to benefit medicine. I don't believe it can reasonably be said that Marci himself had any direct interest in it: if we believe that letter, he never meant to keep it or work on it, but to give it to Kircher. That is, give the whole manuscript to Kircher - and Kircher (as is well known) was not inclined towards sharing.
But Baresch never suggested that the manuscript had been seen by the emperor Rudolf II, let alone owned by him and being of the previous generation - and actually living in Prague - it seems extraordinary to me that he would not have mentioned any imperial connection because everyone knew that Kircher was a thorough snob and the merest whiff of imperial connection would have intrigued him.
More than this - Jacub (Tepenecz) may have treated the emperor but didn't live at court; he had an independent practice and having been raised by the Jesuits - perhaps an orphan - he continued to regard that community as his family by default and left most of his possessions to branches of that community (unless newer information has recently come to light.
So that's another resounding absence of corroboration. Why didn't Baresch, or even Marci, say anything remotely like "and the Jesuit community/library/other close friends of Tepenecz/Baresch/Mari" confirm the truth of the imperial connection?
Nor does Kinner... nor do any of those who tried to encourage Kircher to work on the mss between when Baresch wrote and when Kinner wrote (nor even later) EVER refer to Rudolf, or to the 'imperial physician's manuscript' or anything that might be taken as acknowledgement or confirmation of the alleged assertion by Mnishovsky?
Here, I'd also add that despite the years during which members of the JVL including Rene, hunted determinedly through Prague and Vatican archives, no one found the slightest hint of anything which could equate with such a purchase.
Then Rene says
Quote:All details in the Marci letter that could be verified have turned out to be correct: his inheritance of books from the previous owner of the MS,
This is a small point, but the assertion that Baresch "owned" the manuscript is unsupported by any evidence or testimony. Baresch himself never claims to own it, only that it has lain on his shelves for an indefinite period.
Nor does Marci say Baresch owned it - his phrasing could be taken to imply quite the opposite - that it had been left to Marci and only left by *him* with Baresch. What he actually says is:
Quote:This book was left to me by a close friend in his will and ever since I first owned it I have destined it for you my dearest Athanasius, persuaded as I am that it can be read by none if not by you.
The then possessor of the book once sent you letters seeking your judgment about a part of it which he wrote down and sent to you, being convinced that the rest of it could be read by you.
It's a small point, really, and either way doesn't impact on the central question here: why has the Mnishovsky rumour being given so much greater weight than it deserves? It can have no bearing on our efforts to discover what the manuscript is about, but only bias expectations that it ought to be about the sort of things that interested Rudolf. But what we need to know is what sort of things interested a person in early fifteenth century Italy, England or France.
Basically, even IF Marci had correctly recalled the name of the person from whom he'd heard that rumour, decades before, AND even if he had accurately recalled the gist of that rumour (things we are entitled to doubt given Marci's condition and the length of time involved) still it is a distant memory of a distant allegation by someone who (as Neal pointed out) couldn't possibly have witnessed any such transaction. Nor did Marci (or even, apparently, Mnishovsky) ever actually say that Rudolf bought the manuscript. The story (as Marci remembered it so much later) was only that Rudolf gave 600 ducats to the (entirely anonymous and faceless) person who brought the manuscript to Prague.
As I've pointed out, we find in other contexts that 600 ducats is an amount given to travellers passing through Prague.. I won't repeat that here.
But basically, on all counts, the only suggestion of any link to Rudolf is one late memory, by a man suffering from a condition which affected his memory, of a comment made decades before by someone who was certainly no first hand witness, and whose comment was so little regarded, even then, that not even Marci mentions it in what we have of his correspondence with Kircher between the time Baresch sent the copy and the time Marci sent Kircher the manuscript.
I think the evidence does not support the weight given the 'Mnishovsky rumour" and can see no reasonable explanation for why it should continue to be treated as anything more than a bit of hearsay - a curious and doubtful footnote.
Let me make one thing quite clear - the point here is that Voynich research is replete with confident assertions which do not bear close scrutiny. The real problem, as I see it, is an over-attachment to unexamined assertions, the construction of dearly-held theories upon them, and then sadly often, a highly personal attack on any historian trying to do what historians do.. that is, re-examine the bases of old ideas, to see whether and how those older notions may have led the study astray.
In this case, we saw years' worth of investigation into Rudolf, his library, his circle of acquaintences, the subjects which interested him etc.etc. - all matters of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries - total waste of time given that (as was already known) the manuscript presents as a late thirteenth-to-fifteenth century MS and was most likely made somewhere between England and northern Italy.