hi All,

while I'm afraid there will be no (easy) answer to this, maaaaybe someone has a clue to another source that is more detailed?

because wikipedia says it. the only source reachable is a book containing a short part about the "life & times" of W.M.V., a narration of Anne Nill about some peculiarities of W.'s use of the english language, and that he claimed "to speak 18 languages, all of them equally badly". yeah, you know.. fishing in the dark here, but if someone can show me some light, thank you.

the other source is probably an obituary in The Times (paywalled), but I guess similarly, ah, dubious.

best

gert

Hi All,

as I saw the post about the NSA paper here, maybe the FBI predecessor file on the V. couple, which is also declassified, may be of interest:

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I have no idea if this is complete, the reproductions are bad. have to "investigate" later.

best

gert

It's universally agreed that Roger Bacon had nothing to do with the VMS for obvious reasons, but what's less clear is why that was ever supposed in the first place. The theory's origin can be traced to Mnisovsky via Marci's letter to Kircher:

"Dr. Raphael, tutor in the Bohemian language to Ferdinand III, then King of Bohemia, told me said book had belonged to the emperor Rudolf and that he presented to the bearer who brought him the book 600 ducats. He believed the author was Roger Bacon.”

It's also generally agreed that there's nothing in the contents of the MS itself to suggest a Baconian origin. All the 20th century scholarship on the subject was clearly a post-hoc contrivance predicated on this letter. Had there been no such letter it's entirely likely that no one would have ever thought to mention Bacon. 

What I'm curious to know is why did Mnisovsky assume it to be the work of Bacon in the first place? If we accept that there's nothing to indicate Bacon in the VMS itself, then we must assume that the theory arose for other reasons. I believe the most likely alternative is that he was either told this by somebody else and was merely passing on the information to Marci, or that he himself made the assumption based on circumstances of the MS's arrival in Rudolf's court. Either way, I find myself returning the same individual: John Dee. At the time, Dee had the world's largest known collection of Bacon's works at his home library in Mortlake, and held him as a personal hero. Dee was an associate of Edward Kelly who himself had a working relationship with Karl Wideman. I know positing Dee as the seller has long been out fashion, and that's not the point I'm trying to make. Dee may not have been the seller, but I cannot think of a simpler, more compelling, explanation for the origin of the Bacon theory as other than having something to do with Dee.  

Dee may not have ever touched the VMS in his life for this to still be true. It's entirely plausible that it was sold to Wideman via Kelly sometime after Dee's departure from the continent. He could have easily claimed that it came from Dee's Bacon collection which would have been perfectly consistent with his well documented charlatanism. Regardless of whether or not the VMS was in the possession of Dee, I'd like to know if there is a more compelling source of the Bacon theory other than stemming from the world's most prolific Bacon devotee who happened to be in the right place and right time for such a idea to catch on? For if not stemming from Dee in some way, why not claim a Czech or German author? Or a scholar from anywhere but England for that matter? 

Hi everyone,
as I was browsing the newly restored Folio browser function (thank you for that, David!) I noticed something about folios 46v and 47r.
At first I supposed the faint lines could be transfers from the opposite page, as the general shape seems very similar.
But when I flipped the 47r image of these lines to compare it to the 46v drawing, I realized it is actually not an exact match. Could these be erased lines?
I wonder if anyone has looked into this or has an opinion about it.
Could the artist have begun drawing the 46v plant on 47r and then changed his mind? Or are these just ink transfers?

In 2018 it was reported in this article in the New Yorker You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.   how in 2011 the team of P.G. Righetti from the University of Milan did a proteomics study of an ancient Bible (which came from China, and had been attributed by some to Marco Polo). Now, to quote the New Yorker :

Quote:After running the samples through a mass spectrometer, Righetti and his team identified eight biomolecules from the Bible, which had been thought to be made from fetal lambskin. But the proteins belonged to cows, proving that the parchment was vellum—made from vealskin—and indicating, along with evidence from the text, that it was probably made in southern France sometime before 1250.

I thought some of you would like to see what the NSA has declassified from correspondence to analysis.... It's is a lot to go through.
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A new paper by G. Cheshire just appeared:

"The Algorithmic Method for Translating MS408 (Voynich). Gerard E. Cheshire, June 2019".

It translates portfolio 53 (right) using a host of romance languages.

I got it through academia.edu and I suspect there will be a link at his "science survey" site.

It also mentions a paper I had not yet seen:

3. Consonants & Vowels, Castles & Volcanoes: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

I don't know if that link is safe.

Gladyseva pinned some good images.

Has anyone seen the following images before? They look like some reimagining of the 9-rosettes foldout.
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(edit: I split these posts since they may be worth their own thread - Nablator found the origin, see post below)

Alisa Gladyseva: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Unfortunately, there is not really a preview.

Since the main discussion is going on in the off-topic section, I thought it might be worthwhile to make a separate thread for discussion of the VM values.
Once again I'd like to thank everyone who helped me out, many interventions were required for me to get to this point. I would be so hopeless without you guys.
I redid everything using Rene's ZL2a file (more spaces) as recommended by Nablator. From this I isolated five sections:

1. Herbal A 
   
2. Herbal B
   
3. Q13
   
4. Small plants (with labels removed, so only the paragraphs)
   
5. Q20