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On the character of Wilfrid Voynich

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• On the character of Wilfrid Voynich

• RE: On the character of Wilfrid Voynich

  Jorge_Stolfi > 14-11-2025, 08:36 PM

  (14-11-2025, 07:55 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I am not sure where he acquired church property that the church did not want to sell.

  
  Maybe I misunderstood the story, but I understood that the Jesuits were worried about reactions to the sale internal to the Church.
  
  Not sure if it is relevant, but there has always been quite a bit of internal political tension between the Jesuits and other branches of the Church.  I suppose that the latter would have exploited the sale in that strife, had they known about it.  Even because the books (predictably) ended up in the US, violating Italian law.
  
  All the best, --stolfi

• RE: On the character of Wilfrid Voynich

  ReneZ > 14-11-2025, 09:08 PM

  (14-11-2025, 08:36 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

  (14-11-2025, 07:55 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I am not sure where he acquired church property that the church did not want to sell.

  
  Maybe I misunderstood the story, but I understood that the Jesuits were worried about reactions to the sale internal to the Church.
  
  Not sure if it is relevant, but there has always been quite a bit of internal political tension between the Jesuits and other branches of the Church.  I suppose that the latter would have exploited the sale in that strife, had they known about it.  Even because the books (predictably) ended up in the US, violating Italian law.

  
  The situation of the Jesuits in Italy at that time is hard to describe. While they were catholics, they were seen as a 'different type' of catholics, and viewed with extreme suspicion. I really don't know the full story and some of our Italian list members may be able to explain this better. I have seen some newspaper articles from that time, showing how popular opinion in Rome was much against the Jesuits. They were seen as rich and successful and having 'too much influence'.
  
  The real battle was with the government of the newly united Italian state.
  It was this government that confiscated all Jesuit properties, like the entire building (palace) that hosted their main college and main library with everything inside it.
  
  It was 40 years later that they decided to sell some of the books, voluntarily, and weighing the risk/profit situation when selecting the buyer.

• RE: On the character of Wilfrid Voynich

  Jorge_Stolfi > 14-11-2025, 09:48 PM

  (14-11-2025, 09:08 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The situation of the Jesuits in Italy at that time is hard to describe. While they were catholics, they were seen as a 'different type' of catholics, and viewed with extreme suspicion.

  
  Maybe it did not go so far as seeing them as sort of heretics, but there was strong dispute between them and other orders for control of the Church and its politics.  Much of the resentment seems to have been because, being more educated and open-minded than the other orders, they usually got more access and influence to kings and nobles than the other orders, disproportionately to their numbers.  And often espoused views that were more open than the rest of the Church was ready to accept.
  
  For instance, when Jesuit Matteo Ricci started his quest to convert China to Christianity, he thought the task would be easier if the Church accepted the Confucian cult of the ancestors as a mere cultural tradition, not a religion.  And he even wrote a pamplet arguing that point.  
  
  But the Dominicans, the most powerful rival order at the time, strongly disagreed.  In their view, the cult of the ancestors was paganism, and the Church should declare it so, forbidding converts to engage in it.  The dispute went on internally for decades, and in the end the Dominican view prevailed. 
  
  More recently, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., and even from their Jesuit superiors, when they publicly stated that Darwin's theory of evolution was not incompatible with the Bible.  It took many decades for the Church, grudgingly, to accept that view too.
  
  All the best, --stolfi

• RE: On the character of Wilfrid Voynich

  asteckley > 15-11-2025, 12:36 AM

  (12-11-2025, 04:23 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.She takes very strong issue with Orioli's description of Voynich, and quotes how Voynich's wife descibed him as having the head and shoulders of a 'Norwegian god'.

  
  Small correction -- Sowerby did not quote his wife describing him in that way. Sowerby herself described him that way and felt that Ethel Voynich must have been thinking of her husband when she used that phrase in one of her books.
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