L. Rauwolf

[RenegadeHealer]

The most likely candidate to have obscured the manuscript's provenance before Widemann is actually Widemann himself. First, he had the opportunity, in contrast to the later scenarios where a larger number of people had knowledge of relevant events. Second, he had a financial motive: The value of a manuscript depended significantly on its previous owners or author(s), meaning Widemann had an incentive to tell the most enticing story to his potential customer. I think Rauwolf might have been a reasonably convincing (=valuabe) background story, so there would probably be no need to make up another explanation, such as possibly one involving Kelly and England that might have led Mnišovský to his theory. The only somewhat realistic scenario I can come up with where Widemann omits the connection to Rauwolf is one where he obtained the manuscript in a not exactly clean way, i. e. he simply kept it after the Rauwolfs' death and sold it as soon as no heirs claimed it, this would fit the timeline reasonably well. But this is pure conjecture and certainly less plausible than a number of theories of pre-Widemann ownership that do not involve Rauwolf at all.

This makes a lot of sense.

Antiques and collectables have never been a hobby of mine, but I have known people who are into this. There’s an old saw in the world of antiquing: A problem with an artifact’s provenance means it’s either fake, or, if genuine, it’s not yours to sell. And unsurprisingly, a problem with a piece’s provenance greatly lowers its sale value. And pawn value. And ability to even be put on the block at any respectable auction house.