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One may occasionally find statements in publications about the Voynich MS that are either incorrect or outdated. These tend to propagate from one source to another. The present page provides a checklist.
Anyone preparing a publication about the Voynich MS is strongly recommended to run through this checklist.
Of course, in all cases, there is evidence to support the arguments. The present checklist is roughly sorted by the reliability of this evidence.
History, and the humanities in general, rarely deal with facts or proof, in the way that these concepts are known in (for example) mathematics. In principle it is possible to doubt everything. Evidence consists of (historical) records, and their reliability is to some extent subjective. This is understood by the author of this page, and hopefully also by the reader. A typical example of such a situation is the question whether the MS was owned by Rudolf II of Bohemia, which is also addressed briefly further down on this page.
Following is a list of the most important points. There are a number of additional, relatively minor points.
At birth, his given name was "Michał", but he adopted the first name "Wilfrid" after he moved to the UK. This point is explained in great detail on a dedicated page. The evidence consists of numerous official documents citing his name.
The year of this letter has initially been found hard to read, and publications variously give "1665 or 1666", or the other way round. The correct reading is 1665, and the evidence is presented here.
It is correct that the parchment of the Voynich MS was forensically dated to the beginning of the 15th century. I was personally involved in the entire process, from planning to the publication of the results, as part of an Austrian television documentary. One may also read occasionally that it was determined forensically that the ink had been applied immediately after the parchment was created.
Now this is NOT correct!
The correct statement, made by manuscript curators and conservators is, that parchment would typically be used shortly after it was prepared, so the Voynich MS was most probably penned shortly after the dating of the parchment. I was present when this statement was made.
The earliest occasion where the incorrect statement was published was an Austrian newspaper published the day after the press conference in Vienna, in which the forensic results were first made public. Unfortunately, a statement to this effect was made by a representative of ORF, who had not been directly involved in the activity, and I hesitated to correct him on the spot. This is how this falsehood spread. I can only hope that this page may help to remove it.
There are several mysteries surrounding the event of Voynich's acquisition of the manucript.
As an introductory remark, he did not acquire this manuscript just by itself. Instead, it was one among a group of approximately 30 manuscripts that he acquired in secrecy. This is rarely mentioned in Voynich MS related publications, even though he already said so in his (not very reliable) first presentation of the MS, and it is also stated in the more reliable letter written by his widow ELV (1). This has been confirmed by significant additional research, which is presented among others on this page, reconstructing this group of manuscripts.
Voynich himself always maintained that he had discovered these manuscripts in chests forgotten by their owners, with different details about the location of these chests. However, that is not the truth, and in fact he was not allowed to tell the truth. Instead, he was invited to acquire some old manuscripts from the Society of Jesus, that had been kept in an unknown hiding place for about 40 years. He had to promise absolute secrecy about this deal.
Again, the letter written by ELV hints at this, and again, it could only be confirmed after significant additional research, which is presented among others on this page, analysing the events.
The year 1903 is written on an important document related to the sale of the group of manuscripts (including the Voynich MS) to Wilfrid Voynich. This was first described in Clemens (2016) (2), where it was clarified that this was not the year where the sale actually took place, which was 1912, but it was the year in which the sale was planned.
Two publications from the first half of 2024 cite this year as if this was the year of the sale, which is incorrect. The sale of manuscripts to the Vatican took place in June 1912, and Voynich had purchased at least some of the manuscripts a bit earlier, possibly in April of the same year.
A later study related to this document could further clarify the meaning of this year. All relevant details are provided here.
Over time, it gradually became clear that Voynich acquired the manuscript(s) from the Jesuits. Kraus had announced in the 1960's that according to information he obtained, the Voynich MS had been stored in Villa Mondragone near Frascati (for which see below). In literature, one occasionally finds the remark that the sale was made because the Villa was in a bad shape and/or needed restorations. However, there was no evidence backing up this argument.
The recent work by Francesca Potenza has finally provided the missing evidence (3). A much larger collection of manuscripts was sold by the Jesuits because indeed they had general financial difficulties. These can be ascribed to their much reduced income after their schools and colleges had been forced to close after the confiscations in 1873. There is no reason to assume that this concerned Villa Mondragone in particular. The larger group was sold to the Vatican for 50,000 Lire, and the sale of the smaller group of manuscripts to Voynich undoubtedly provided them with significantly more, though no details are available about the amount.
Generally, one is likely to read that, after Voynich's death in 1930, the Voynich MS was inherited by ELV, and after her death in 1960, it passed to Anne Nill, who sold it to the antiquarian book dealer Hans P. Kraus.
The truth is, however, a bit more complicated, and was uncovered by Farley Katz and presented in 2022.
The brief summary is, that Voynich left a 60 percent interest in the manuscript to ELV and 40 percent to Anne Nill. When ELV died she left her interest in the Voynich MS to Winifred Gaye, a dear friend whom she viewed as her daughter. In 1961, before the estate was distributed, Anne, acting as executrix of the estate and on her own behalf, sold the manuscript to Kraus for $24,500. Significant further details may be found in the above-mentioned publication.
As an introductory remark, Voynich never said that he acquired (or discovered) the manuscript at Villa Mondragone. He was always very vague about it, first claiming that he found it in an Austrian castle, and later in a castle in 'Southern Europe'. Villa Mondragone was mentioned by H.P. Kraus, who owned the Voynich MS from 1961 onwards. However, his evidence for this is unclear (4). At the same time, this information has never been much in doubt, and it is found in all literature, including public information about Villa Mondragone (5).
The approximately 30 manuscripts that Voynich acquired were a small selection of over 200 manuscripts that the Society of Jesus was planning to sell to the Vatican Library. The above-mentioned research by Francesca Potenza has demonstrated beyond any doubt that this entire collection was hidden in Villa Torlonia in Castel Gandolfo. They were inspected in that Villa by the Vatican library prefect and they were transported from that Villa to the Vatican Library.
There are records of visitors to this Villa, and these include the above-mentioned prefect, and Voynich's confirmed intermediary, the Jesuit Joseph Strickland, but not Voynich himself. The secrecy that surrounded these events, which is amply documented, also makes such a visit by Voynich entirely unlikely.
It remains theoretically possible that Strickland would have taken the 30+ manuscripts sold to Voynich to his home base: Villa Mondragone, and handed them over to Voynich there, but this is quite unlikely, as Voynich also does not appear in that Villa's records, and this could have been done in a more neutral place. In any case, the Voynich MS was not hidden there, which is the point being made here.
Voynich argued in his above-mentioned 1921 presentation that the Voynich MS was from Roger Bacon, and it would have been sold to Rudolf II of Prague by John Dee. Only circumstantial evidence for this claim was presented, showing that this was indeed a possibility.
In early literature, the name of Dee appears as the seller with various (undeserved) degrees of likelihood. The circumstantial evidence has been examined critically by Prinke, and documented in Zandbergen and Prinke (2011), showing that Dee as the seller is extremely unlikely. This also takes into account that the MS is certainly not a Bacon autograph, which was the main reason why Voynich proposed Dee as the seller, and that Rudolf acquired books and other items in great numbers from at least a hundred different people (6).
Fortunately, in modern literature, Dee no longer tends to appear as the likely seller.
At the same time, there is no good reason to doubt that Rudolf did buy it at some point. This is plainly stated in the 1665 letter mentioned above, and there is no particular reason to doubt this evidence. That does not make it a fact, of course.
Occasionally, one finds a statement in older literature, that Rudolf acquired the MS in 1586. The origin of this number is the fact that John Dee had one meeting with Rudolf in that year, so it is just a reference to the (no longer believed) hypothesis that it was Dee who sold the MS to Rudolf, for which see above.
While it was long true that the seller of the MS to Rudolf was completely unknown, this is no longer the case. New research initiated by myself and completed by Stefan Guzy has brought to light records of a sale that well fits the descriptions in the Marci letter (7):
The seller in question would be Karl Widemann of Augsburg, a well-known collecter of manuscripts. The intermediary was Zacharias Geizkofler and the sale took place in March 1599. It is recorded both in the Austrian state archives and in the Geizkofler family archives in Ludwigsburg, Germany.
It is clear that this does not make Widemann the certain seller. This is not solid proof. However, it makes him a good candidate so it is no longer accurate to say that the seller is completely unknown.
People reading this page may be reminded of a list of 'myths' that Rich Santacoloma has posted on his blog, and which addresses a few of the same points. He uses the word "myth" in the sense of a generally believed story, that is, in reality, not true. The list may be found >>here. Let us just briefly go through its items (8).
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