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The Modern Forgery Hypothesis
- The Modern Forgery Hypothesis
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RE: The Modern Forgery Hypothesis
Jorge_Stolfi > 06-01-2026, 03:40 AM
(05-01-2026, 11:47 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.[It is absurd] that Voynich would be allowed to 'borrow' the entire Kircher correspondence and take it outside for some time. Forum rules prevent me from properly expressing the likelihood of that. Let's say: no chance on Earth.
I totally agree.
Quote: [It is absurd] that anyone would be able to write a letter, copying 'free hand' the handwriting of another letter so accurately. The opportunity for that is already missing. (On a side note, the need of some contraption to then copy the signature seems superfluous but that is not for this list).
Indeed.
Quote:[It is absurd] that Voynich would have had any access to the non-sellable material inside the Villa Torlonia (not Mondragone). Even the visit of the Vatican librarian, who was even a Jesuit, was hidden from the rector of the institution.
Hm, here I don't follow. If we assume that Wilfrid was morally capable of forgery or other fraud, the mere fact that access to the Carteggio was restricted by the Jesuits does not mean that he did not get to peruse it. Priests are not saints...
Even if he did not have access to the Carteggio himself, he may have been told about the letters from Barschius and Marci by people who did have access to the collection. Like his good friend Strickland, perhaps?
Both Rich's theory (IIUC) and my Book Switch theory only require that Wilfrid got to know the contents of those letters. Not the physical letters themselves.
Maybe by 1911 Marci's letter was part of the Carteggio (where, by logic, it should have been), and Wilfrid had to use "special means" to get it out of there, so that he could attach it to the VMS in order to bolster the "Bacon" claim. Can we rule this out?
Do you know why access to the Carteggio was so restricted?
Quote:[It is absurd] that all this complicated, time-consuming effort was worth it for a completely innocuous letter. (Which, by the way, he then ignored for several years, and pretended it was for a different Rudolf than the one he supposedly intended to write about).
Well, Marci's letter was the only thing that suggested that the VMS could possibly be a Roger Bacon original. Without that letter attached, the VMS would not be worth 200 dollars, much less 200'000.
There may be several reasons for the delay in making that letter public. For one thing, a good con artist would rather let the buyer "discover" evidence of provenance, than point it out himself. The former makes the buyer totally trust the evidence, even if it is defective...
Thanks, and all the best --stolfi -
RE: The Modern Forgery Hypothesis
ReneZ > 06-01-2026, 07:17 AM
(06-01-2026, 03:40 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Hm, here I don't follow. If we assume that Wilfrid was morally capable of forgery or other fraud, the mere fact that access to the Carteggio was restricted by the Jesuits does not mean that he did not get to peruse it. Priests are not saints...
There is a lot of documented evidence that makes it clear that nobody 'outside' knew what was hidden inside the Villa Torlonia. This evidence is not generally known, and to be able to argue about it means reading up on a lot. Note that the carteggio is just 14 out of (at least) 2000 volumes that they were hiding there.
To copy the handwriting of the Carteggio letter written by Marci's scribe (even as we agree that this would be an almost superhuman feat) would have required looking directly at this letter for a longer time.
The official bibliographer of the Society of Jesus, who was tasked by Petrus Beckx himself to update and extend the voluminous catalogue of all Jesuit writings, DID NOT KNOW that the Carteggio of Kircher existed in the Villa Torlonia. Or if he had this information, he was clearly forbidden to add it to this catalogue.
The threat of continued confiscation was very real. The few hundred 'plain old' classics like Ceasar and Cicero were perhaps the least of their worries, but the writings of their founders and famous historical Jesuits needed to be protected.
The Jesuits could have made a lot more money by selling more of their classics to Voynich, but they considered it was too dangerous. The Vatican paid a lot less, but it was safer. After that, the Vatican were themselves worried that the state might find out that they bought these books which the state considered their property.
The Jesuits were at risk to lose a lot.
In 1896, while all this material was hidden in Castel Gandolfo, Franz Ehrle, the same Vatican library prefect who later bought the Jesuit books, warned the Jesuits of the impending danger of further confistations, and the Jesuits moved large collections of books out of the German College in Rome to a hiding place in Holland, pretending (again) it was part of the private library of the Father General.
As I already wrote before, people coming in and out the Villa Torlonia were registered in the diary. Voynich does not appear in there. The best evidence we have is that he never entered it.
How could he choose the books that he would buy?
Maybe he didn't.
We know from correspondence that he had a standing order of $100 for every single book that he could get.
Maybe Strickland just brought him the few that appeared interesting or valuable.
I can even imagine that Voynich never knew the exact location of the hiding place, but I don't know that and it doesn't matter. He told De Marinis that the books came from the library of Henry Benedict Stuart in Frascati, and he told his wife in secrecy that they came from the Jesuits in Frascati. -
RE: The Modern Forgery Hypothesis
proto57 > 06-01-2026, 03:17 PM
(05-01-2026, 09:14 PM)ioannestritemius Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If the two "corner stones" which support the authenticity of the VMS, the letters Baresch 1639 and Marci 16650819, could be proven to be forgeries – along with a whole stash of other letters in the Kircher-correspondence, such as the Martinitz-, Liechtenstein- and Schega- exchanges – what would be the best venue to present such evidence? Paper-analysis not necessary. Letter-texts themselves suffice.
I don't personally believe the letters of the Carteggio are forgeries, although I have recently seen the case for this (by you?). Of course "I've been told" many things in the last couple of decades which have turned out to be totally unfounded, so "never say never".
But the thing is it does not matter if they are forged or not, because they actually, on careful, critical examination, to not only NOT serve as any reliable provenance, but in fact, their content and nature work against the Voynich being the manuscript being discussed by Baresch, Marci, Kinner, and Kircher.
Briefly, because the purpose of those letters was to describe to Kircher some manuscript these men owned, or saw, so that Kircher could help them identify it. Therefore it is illogical that they would not have included, in those descriptions, the most defining and obvious characteristics the Voynich exhibits. Among these are the same ones we first describe it with, today, such as nude women in colored baths; the Zodiac, and its missing signs; and most strikingly, the "signature" on the very first page! I've read the excuse that these were "men of the cloth", and would not have mentioned naked ladies out of propriety or something. Obviously not. They would have described them, or, at least, alluded to them tangentially. I outline all my reasoning in: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., for anyone interested.
To me, it is clear that they were describing some other manuscript, which I call The Baresch Manuscript. The characteristics they DO mention, "stars", "chemical symbolism", "unknown script", and "plants unknown to the Germans" would easily describe dozens of other manuscripts, in many languages and scripts. And there is another fact, one hard to describe but obvious once you "see" it, in that of all the scripts these 17th century men would have considered "unknown" to them, virtually all of them would have been known to the World by 1912. So "what are the odds" that these men happened to see the (virtually) one script which remained unknown to modern times? It beggars the imagination. It is far-fetched. Rather, a forger who may have seen those references, or heard of them, would feel it necessary, or useful to match that description, to come up with an "unknown script" to match it. Voila: Voynichese. I try to explain this in "You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.". But this is a huge area of research I work on from time to time, in trying to learn all the scripts these men probably did not know, and the many manuscripts written in each, in order to try and determine what that manuscript they actually saw may have been.
Quote:An addendum: hermeneutics dictate that a text should be about something. The VMS is, or rather was. In June 1921, two months after his joint presentation with Newbold, Voynich followed up with the sales pitch in Citizen Kane's "Hearst's International", at the time the most widely distributed American monthly: "Mr. Voynich [...] holds the Bacon manuscript at a value of over one hundred thousand dollars, and he is eager that the manuscript should fall only into the hands of a purchaser who will consider it a public trust." That equals about $2,000,000 in modern currency.
Yes that is one of the pillars of Genuine that fell years ago, along with others that have gone crickets. It was, believe it or not, a common argument that, paraphrasing, "Why would Wilfrid have forged the Voynich when he never tried to sell it?". Well, he never got around to selling it, and never openly tried, but from various sources we know he very much wanted and hoped for a huge fortune for the thing.
Rich -
RE: The Modern Forgery Hypothesis
proto57 > 06-01-2026, 03:34 PM
(05-01-2026, 07:30 PM)Rafal Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Quote:Hi Rafal: A few points about what you wrote ...
It would be nice for me if you check my solution of Rohonc Codex once. Just please remember that the type of solution I propose (logographic writing) means that the solution may be not only just right or wrong but also let's say 80% right.
It's not the case that once you get values for letters then you can read any word. You get the meaning of each word in standalone process from the context and other clues. So some words may be right while other may be wrong. As you may guess the most unsure are hapax legomena, words that appear only once and you cannot see them in different contexts.
I promise I will take a look at your solution of the Rohonc Codex as soon as possible. I am interested in seeing it.
Quote:As for Voynich Manuscript I believe that we cannot say that fake is just a fake. If I understand your position correctly you claim that it is 20th century fake of Wilfrid Voynich. And I am close to opinion that it is a fake of some anonymous 15th century German charlatan and his team. Such opinions aren't compatible, they involve accepting and not accepting different things as "truth".
You know it is a funny thing about that... thinking it may be an old fake/hoax/forgery, but not a modern one. The number of people who do believe this possible is surprising. I only just recently discovered a close friend in Germany feels this the most probable answer... I didn't know that. But the thing is, really, that means they have actually accepted maybe 80% or 90% of my hypothesis, that relating to content, and only rejected the timing.
Personally- and don't tell anyone this- but I think the reason can be mostly be summed up in that indefensible and undefinable sense that "It just looks fake". Old or new, it does not look very real. Maybe that does not describe your feelings, but I suspect it happens a lot. People are told it is "just like" this or that other Medieval manuscript, but its really like, "It does? No, it looks like a load of...".
Quote:Sorry if I sounded impolite at moments. It wasn't my intention and English is not my native language.
No problem as to the tone of your comments to me, I didn't think they were all that bad. Believe me, I've had some pretty awful things said to me, and about me, you need thick armor to challenge cherished beliefs, and directly to the believers! But I think it is important, because as I often say, people should know the whole story so they can make up their own minds. Whether or not they agree with me. I've seen people spend decades on this problem, and a few friends die during that time. Life it precious, we should at least go into it with open eyes, so we can decide how to spend it.
This is always why I separate what I find out that is factual, and make it very clear what is my opinions only, based on those facts. I never want to mislead anyone. I don't think that it is fair to mislead people, or hide information what would help them make a truly informed decision, and so pointing out when others do these things is a major influence on my efforts. -
RE: The Modern Forgery Hypothesis
proto57 > 06-01-2026, 04:20 PM
(04-01-2026, 03:39 PM)proto57 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.1) I believe the "resources needed" came from You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., a vast repository of over 500,000 items, from scrap to treasures.
2) I do not think it would take all that great an ability at calligraphy to recreate the Voynich characters, or, for that matter, better ones, as I and others have done experiments in trying to do so, and seen many manage it- and anyway, in 1910, most educated people were well versed in using pens and quills. Virtually everyone wrote with them! It was part of every child's schooling, and from a young age.
3) Yes the illustrations are bad, I agree, many agree, but I would ask "Why is that a sign of genuine"? In any case, I think the abilities and style of the Voynich illustrations, while bad, do fit the look and methods of Voynich's pretty darned well:
4) "Why would he leave out all references to popular esoteric knowlede?" Not sure what you mean here? First of all, I and others do see possible references to many fields of "esoteric knowledge", such as Astrology, astronomy, magic wheels, possible tincture baths and cures, and much more. Very little abjectly drawn alchemical imagery, but some, perhaps. And so much more, whether you consider the Voynich genuine or not. But maybe I misunderstood you?
5) "Seriously, the level of genius and stupidity required not to add a single hieroglygh precludes any possibility of this being a forgery from 1910." I admit you've stumped me with this one, and maybe it is because I (again?) misunderstood, sorry. But first of all, "Why?" WOULD a forger, in 1910, choose to include hieroglyphics a book which was intended to look 15th or 17th century, and possibly as an herbal or medicinal? Or maybe you don't mean "Egyptian hieroglyphs"? But on the contrary, I think it would have been a very poor choice to include them, in this case, if that is what you meant.
Rich
(05-01-2026, 10:16 PM)Legit Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.In response to your "Modern Voynich Myths", individually you make good arguments for the forgery being possible. However the high number of these issues make it more and more unlikely to be forged. There is still no proof that it is a forgery even if there is evidence that Voynich lied about it's origin. There's no 'smoking gun'.
Also the entire claim seems self contradictory
The thing is, Legit, most of your below points do not relate to my hypothesis. I don't make many of these claims. Before I explain why, I apologize to others who hear this all the time... but if one disagrees with me, they ought to know the "me" they are disagreeing with. Many assume, for one reason or another... that I claim many things that I do not, and then, they argue those! Now I know it is innocent for the most part (not always!), as it is here. But my the bare bones of my hypothesis can be found here, and this link is also on the first page of my blog: "You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.". But to your points:
Quote:
- he was trying to sell the VM as a manuscript with a connection to Bacon in the 13th century, forged it himself but never thought to include anything that directly ties it to Bacon or features to place it in the 13th century. He even includes features that make the VM seem more recent, not older like the crossbow on Sagittarius.
No, I in no way believe he was trying to make a Roger Bacon Manuscript, but rather, a "Jacobus Horcicky" manuscript, maybe owned and possibly created by that man, and to look as though it was created in the Court of Rudolf II as that court was understood by him, through reading "You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.", by Bolton. I think it possible he removed pages and rebound the Vms when he decided to "shoot for Bacon", maybe after getting bad feedback on the first version. We all agree it is not at all Baconesque. But back in the day, it almost worked. You can see some of my reasoning in the above linked "Hypothesis", but there my blog has much of the reasoning behind this, and the evidence for it.
Quote:
- as he wrote it he included a huge number of features, showing extensive knowledge of a very niche part of the medieval period with a very complex internal structure, tying it to the 15th c but (in your claim) one day forgot himself and added a microscope, an armadillo, sunflower, cells, and a spiral galaxy.
No, again, not "my claim" at all! Those modern items would have been put there, as per my hypothesis, to reflect what Voynich believed would be fantastic, cutting edge and colorful references to the new ages of the (proto) sciences, in the early 17th century. For instance, many items from the "New World" were all the rage in Europe, and the best collections had stuffed armadillos, sunflowers, and so on. Advanced optics were just invented, and the solar system and the universe was just beginning to be explored. As for the spiral galaxy, I think there is much we can learn from the suggestions that is what we see here, and what was known at the time of Voynich and Newbold. Interesting story, with parallels to the Voynich content, I think: "You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.".
Quote:
- in 1910 Egyptology was at a height in popularity, a hieroglyph would increase its value to undiscerning buyers. No overt religious, occult, mystical symbols. While forging he didn't think to add anything to excite any specific group that he wished to sell to. Except maybe the wealthy armadillo enthusiasts
I admit I am still not understanding you here. The armadillo and sunflower did have a purpose, as per my hypothesis... but including any Egyptian content would have little to do with the 17th century Court of Rudolf II, and would have been a real give away that it was a forgery. No matter how popular in 1910 (although I think you may be thinking of the Egyptian craze that ensued after Carter's 1922 discovery of Tut's Tomb), it had nothing to do with Horcicky or Rudolf II.
Quote:
- he chooses to invent - astrology information from an imaginary astrologer who hates using rulers - it simply stands out from other manuscripts of the period as poor illustration quality.
Not sure what you mean by "hates using rulers", but we agree it is all of very poor quality. Everything in the Voynich is evokative of something we think might be something real, but then just bad enough to not be that thing.
Quote:
- granted the penmanship is only decent, but he decided to fast track the color and scribble it in - unlike the quality of practically every other medieval manuscript. Coloring within the lines is a skill anyone would have and most medieval manuscripts are very precise with coloring as books were very expensive to create in the 13th century. It would be a certain artistic choice to badly color this. It's really hard to reconcile deliberately making a forgery bad, yet to sell for a high price. Wouldn't this be a red flag to investors?
Here you almost seem to be making my point, so I don't understand you. Yes it is little like most other Medieval manuscripts, and badly done. What should this actually tell you?
Quote:
- he wrote it for botanists who like low quality imaginary plants, astrologers who hate constellations, herbalists who hate identifiable herbs, medievalists who can't read the text, 13th century works collectors who prefer 15th century detail
I think he wrote if for popular consumption, for a popular mindset, which was actually not all that discerning. The aforementioned book by Bolton, about the Court of Rudolf II, was a very popular book, and with many historical errors, it was still colorful, sensational, exciting to readers. I don't think he wrote this "for" botanists, nor would he aim to write if for "haters" of these things. You sort of lost me on that. I think it is just a poorly illustrated forgery, which has always gotten far more credit than it deserves, for exactly the reasons you relate here.
Quote:
- he has a vast repository of 500,000 some treasures, but instead of copying real plants, spends his time inventing new ones.
- he spent ages designing creative unique layouts and an indecipherable code and then spent 15 minutes per page creating it. All that work, then to put no effort to make it look like it fits along other manuscripts of the time
- forge the VM. But also, the plan is to also forge a lot of documents from different eras to support the sale of the forged manuscript.
- risk his reputation selling a forgery while holding repository of 500,000 documents with some treasures.
Well a few things here, but my little typy fingers are getting beat up by now, so I'll answer in a bloc: He would have invented new ones, and written in an indecipherable script, for "insulation" against detection, and to try and match the scant references in the Letters; and you say it looks nothing like other manuscripts at the time... which, I don't think you realize it when you point these things out, you are supporting forgery, not genuine; and I don't believe he forged any other "document" other than the Voynich manuscript and the 1665/66 Marci letter; and yes, he had and sold many rare and valuable items from the 500,000 item pile of the Libreria. In fact, I think I am alone in believing that all his reputation for seeking out and finding rare collections all over Europe was only slightly true... that the Libreria, even before he bought it, was the source for many of his famous finds, including the 150 items of rare and some unknown incunabula he sold to the British Library.
Quote: A forgery would be made to fit within existing collections. Such an obscure, ugly, and poor quality document could not possibly serve this purpose.
Again, you seem to make my point here. If this work, you feel (as I feel) does not "fit within existing collections", then how does that observation support genuine? You are describing an effect, a result, of making a poor forgery, not a genuine item. Would you or I do it better? Not sure I could, but I would hope it would have been better than this, so people in 2025 didn't say what you just did.
Rich -
RE: The Modern Forgery Hypothesis
Jorge_Stolfi > 06-01-2026, 06:02 PM
(06-01-2026, 07:17 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.There is a lot of documented evidence that makes it clear that nobody 'outside' knew what was hidden inside the Villa Torlonia.
Well, that kind of claim is impossible to prove, isn't it? You mean that "no one outside was supposed to know", perhaps?
Quote:To copy the handwriting of the Carteggio letter written by Marci's scribe
That may be Rich's claim. It is not something that I consider plausible enough to worry about.
Quote:The threat of continued confiscation was very real. After that, the Vatican were themselves worried that the state might find out that they bought these books which the state considered their property.
I can believe that. (Although, didn't that danger cease to exist at some point? perhaps with Mussolini's treaty of Laterano, in the 1920s?)
However, Wilfrid knew, by 1911 of earlier, that those "confiscatable" books existed, right? And that the books he bought in 1911 came from that collection? Wasn't that the accepted excuse for his lies about the "Castle in Austria": that he had promised the Jesuits that he would keep the existence of that collection secret?
Even if he had no physical access to them himself, and did not even know where they were being kept, he could get information on the contents of those books -- including how Barschius and Marci had described the "mysterious book" -- through Strickland and other Jesuit contacts. No?
I can think of the following scenario: some time before 1911, while perusing that collection, Strickland finds Marci's cover letter -- either attached to the VMS, or to some other book, or in the Carteggio, or behind a desk, whatever. He reads Raphael's claim that some book that Marci sent to Kircher was a Bacon original. Eventually he tells his friend Wilfrid about it. Wilfrid thinks he struck gold, becomes determined to find and acquire that book. He eventually convinces the Jesuits to sell him a bunch of books from that collection, including the letter and/or the VMS.
Is this scenario impossible?
(There are many possibilities for what happened after that. In one, for instance, Wilfrid buys the book but not the cover letter, but convinces some very very good friend to discreetly "borrow" it, so that he can stick it to the VMS. I think this is rather unlikely, but it does not seem to be impossible. Is it?)
Quote:In 1896, ... the Jesuits moved large collections of books out of the German College in Rome to a hiding place in Holland, pretending (again) it was part of the private library of the Father General.
That is new for me. When were those books returned to Rome? Could the VMS and/or Marci's cover letter have been part of that transfer? Is there a catalog of those books?
Quote:How could he choose the books that he would buy?
As I wrote before, when investigating the possibility of malfeasance by Wilfrid, we must disregard completely everything that he said or wrote, and every piece of material evidence that he could have forged, adulterated, planted, mislabeled, etc. And, to be safe, do the the same for anyone who may have been his accomplice. Such as Strickland...
All the best, --stolfi -
RE: The Modern Forgery Hypothesis
Legit > 06-01-2026, 10:01 PM
(06-01-2026, 02:58 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(05-01-2026, 10:16 PM)Legit Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.one day forgot himself and added a microscope, an armadillo, sunflower, cells, and a spiral galaxy.
This is not an argument. Those were highly strained interpretations by people who were trying to prove specific origin theories (American native lore, or a super-genius centuries ahead of its time). The C14 dating made it obvious that those interpretations were just old-fashioned NI hallucinations (NI = Natural Intelligence).
I completely agree and yet these are still brought up and listed as "evidence". I find it very difficult to talk about these because of the high level of credulity they require. In my opinion they belong with the kinds of theories that find mobile phones in carvings on the St. Peter’s Cathedral and a light bulb in reliefs at the Temple of Hathor at Dendera. -
RE: The Modern Forgery Hypothesis
ReneZ > 07-01-2026, 01:15 AM
(06-01-2026, 06:02 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.As I wrote before, when investigating the possibility of malfeasance by Wilfrid, we must disregard completely everything that he said or wrote, and every piece of material evidence that he could have forged, adulterated, planted, mislabeled, etc. And, to be safe, do the the same for anyone who may have been his accomplice. Such as Strickland...
When assuming the malfeasance of Wilfrid, one has to do that. This is when it becomes a conspiracy theory.
When investigating his malfeasance, one has to judge each aspect.
Example: was the Marci letter a good piece of evidence for the Roger Bacon origin of the Voynich MS, worth of all the complications and risk in creating it?
Given that he really wanted the letter to refer to Rudolf I, contemporary of Roger Bacon, and not Rudolf II, my opinion on that is quite clear: he found this letter in the book. Easy explanation. Fits everything we know.
Others may have different opinions... But I would suggest letting it sink in for a while.
Other example to wonder and ponder about:
The evidence that Marci sent the book to Kircher, beside the Marci letter (which would not have existed if it is a fake), is one line in a letter from an unimportant Bohemian named Kinner, referring to 'our common friend Dominus Marcus', asking about an explanation of 'that arcane book'. How does that connect with a 28 years earlier letter, in another volume, from a completely unknown guy describing a book on his bookshelf in Prague? Which does not mention Marci? The most common themes throughout the Kircher correspondence are books and languages and riddles.
For us, with hindsight this connection is possible, because we know the MS exists, we know what it looks like, and we know that Marci sent it to Prague. All of that would not have existed.
(It is hard to remove this from one's memory.)
In short: in order to create a fake Marci letter, with all the verifiable facts in it, one really should have had the letter in the first place. -
RE: The Modern Forgery Hypothesis
Jorge_Stolfi > 07-01-2026, 05:11 AM
(07-01-2026, 01:15 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.in order to create a fake Marci letter, with all the verifiable facts in it, one really should have had the letter in the first place.
Again, I am satisfied that the letter is genuine and the VMS is an authentic 15th century manuscript (with various later interventions). Not because I think that Wilfrid would have had scruples about forging anything, but because forging either would require a lot more work than he could afford, and the risks would be much greater; and he did not need to go to either extreme.
Quote:
(06-01-2026, 06:02 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.As I wrote before, when investigating the possibility of malfeasance by Wilfrid, we must disregard completely everything that he said or wrote
When assuming the malfeasance of Wilfrid, one has to do that. When investigating his malfeasance, one has to judge each aspect.
Sorry, I don't follow. When investigating whether someone may have committed fraud, one must assume that he did, and check whether that hypothesis is compatible with the evidence. And then it would be foolish to assume that the suspect told the truth about X or Y.
Quote:This is when it becomes a conspiracy theory.
A conspiracy is a secret agreement between two or more parties. Could be to hide the office birthday party from the subject, could be to assassinate Julius Caesar. Conspiracies for criminal purpose happen all the time.
The popular meaning of "conspiracy theory" is a claim of a vast conspiracy by hundreds or thousands of people. (Which sometimes do happen too.)
Suspecting that one person may have engaged in fraud, or even that two people may have conspired to do so, is not a "conspiracy theory" in this common sense.
Quote:[Did Wilfrid forge the Marci letter?], my opinion on that is quite clear: he found this letter in the book. Easy explanation. Fits everything we know.
From "the letter is not a forgery" it does not follow that "Wilfrid found the letter in the book".
"Everything we know" only says that he had possession of the letter a few years after 1911. There is no record of the whereabouts of the letter before Wilfrid showed it to the public. Nor any record of how and when he obtained it. None. If we accept it as genuine (which, again, I do!), we may only say that it probably was sent to Kircher shortly after the date on the signature.
(But can we confirm that the letter at Beinecke was indeed sent to Kircher, and is not --say -- a copy kept by Marci's secretary?)
Quote:The evidence that Marci sent the book to Kircher, beside the Marci letter[], is one line in a letter from an unimportant Bohemian named Kinner, referring to 'our common friend Dominus Marcus', asking about an explanation of 'that arcane book'.
Agreed: Marci's cover letter is evidence that Marci intended to send Kircher the book ("Book A") that he inherited from Barchius; and the Kinner letter is evidence that Marci did send some "arcane book" to Kircher. I am happy to assume that the latter was Book A. (And that cows in Scotland are black on both sides.
)
But there is no good evidence that Book A is the same as MS 408. That is only a guess, based on Wilfrid's statement that the letter was attached to MS 408, and a partial similarity of the latter to the vague descriptions of Book A by Baresch and Marci.
Even if Wilfrid was telling the truth, the letter could have become detached from Book A and got attached to MS 408 by the mistake of some Jesuit librarian, before Wilfrid got both.
And if we are assuming that Wilfrid was intentionally falsifying the provenance of MS 408, we just have no idea of when and how he got the cover letter and the book, and where they were before. In particular, we have no reason to assume that the letter was ever attached to MS 408, or that Wilfrid obtained both in the same transaction.
And, under that assumption, the similarity between Book A and MS 408 would not be an unlikely coincidence: Wilfrid would have chosen MS408 to be the "Bacon book" specifically by that criterion.
Here seems to be the root of our disagreement. You seem to give 99.9% probability to the thesis that Wilfrid was being honest about everything except the "Castle in Austria" story. I give it 80% probability, at best.
Maybe it is all the time I spent watching that scamfest that is the crypto plague. Maybe it is some cases of academic fraud that I have run into. Maybe I am giving too much weight to the way Wilfrid cheated people out of valuable books, and boasted about it...
All the best, --stolfi -
RE: The Modern Forgery Hypothesis
Legit > 07-01-2026, 11:47 AM
(06-01-2026, 04:20 PM)proto57 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Again, you seem to make my point here. If this work, you feel (as I feel) does not "fit within existing collections", then how does that observation support genuine? You are describing an effect, a result, of making a poor forgery, not a genuine item. Would you or I do it better? Not sure I could, but I would hope it would have been better than this, so people in 2025 didn't say what you just did.
Rich
I should clarify as a work from that period it's very good - that has content that places it in the 15th century and is C14 dated to the 15th century. By poor quality, I'm referring to the skill of the illustrator as an artwork. The shaky hand line work and bad coloring is what makes this a poor document.
However until we have evidence otherwise, it's reasonable to accept it's what it appears to be - genuine as the default position.
I've read your blog post: The Modern Forgery Hypothesis. Here is a quote.
"As for this “Magellan Map”, Wilfrid had said he found it in the binding of a 1536 book. I contend that map may be a fake, and that Voynich was aware it was a fake, and that this demonstrates that he had some connection to the world of forgery- at least, to the very active industry in manuscript map forgeries which existed at the time."
This speculation about the Map is claimed to demonstrate a connection - another speculation connecting Voynich to a "forgery factory". If you want to show a connection to other known forgeries, you could have a list of attributes that these forgeries had which were used to identify them as forgeries forming a kind of "forgery fingerprint" which then would need to be correlated to some features of the VM. This would add much needed weight to your arguments.
The speculation on top of speculation makes it hard to accept it to be anything other than a fictional story. While we're speculating we should definitely implicate Voynichs wife Ethel who continued to try to sell the VM after his death, and their secretary Anne Nill who succeeded in selling it. Perhaps the encoded text is Polish or Russian since Ethel spoke and translated both of these languages.
Ethels claim that Voynich confessed it's true origin to be the Jesuits at Frascati could be used to speculate that she was complicit in the conspiracy to forge and sell the VM. The claim for the Jesuit origin comes not from Ethel herself but from a letter (presumably written by Ethel) to Anne Nill. Why would Ethel reveal this only in a letter to Anne? Perhaps Anne Nill forged that letter from Ethel. After all, she was the one who was successful in selling the VM. Perhaps there was a love triangle. The possibilities are endless.