Comments on: The latest date for the Voynich Manuscript…

By: nickpelling

nickpelling — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 12:11:42 +0000

Mark: Clegg was almost certainly relying on a jumble of William Romaine Newbold and Robert Brumbaugh, both of them utterly wrong. Romantic historical accounts can persist for decades (if not centuries) if they somehow sound as though they ought to be right!

By: mark scorfield

mark scorfield — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 22:01:38 +0000

Hmm..i think clegg was implying that the last part was written by john dee using a thirteenth century cipher to try and ascribe the work as bacon’s in order to sell it. Dee was an avid collector of bacons work. i have twittered brian clegg to ask about his source for that part in his book – never know he may respond.

By: nickpelling

nickpelling — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 19:31:05 +0000

Mark: Sadly, most anagrams of the truth are just plain false, this hopeful looking sequence from Clegg included. It’s true that there’s a fleeting attribution to Roger Bacon and a reasonably solid link to Emperor Rudolph, but everything else claimed here is almost certainly JPW (“Just Plain Wrong”). Sorry!

By: mark scorfield

mark scorfield — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 18:47:41 +0000

Brian Clegg states :

“the emperor had been told that the manuscript must be bacons work because it appeared to be cryptically autographed by bacon. on the last page are three lines of text in a different hand from the book. they seem to provide an incomplete key to the code used in the main text. although this key is itself enciphered it uses a simple form of code already well known in the thirteenth century, so in theory this addition could have been bacons work. it seemed on decoding that the first few words read ‘To me, Roger Bacon’ – though to discover this the reader would also have to unscramble an anagram. The man who brought this inscription to the emperors attention is said to be the same man who sold it to him, a man who believed bacon to be much more than the caricature of the legend.that man was john dee”

(Clegg,B.,2003,The First Scientist: A Life of Roger Bacon,London,Constable and Robinson,pp 178)

By: Rene Zandbergen

Rene Zandbergen — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 07:32:19 +0000

Hi Nick,

for the ‘secundus’ I do more get the impression that the ‘nine’ on f16v is complete,
i.e. it does not extend beyond the bottom of the page…

But I wouldn’t put a lot of money on it either way…

Cheers, Rene

By: nickpelling

nickpelling — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 21:20:27 +0000

Hi Rene,

Actually, I’d say that the first ‘p’ in the top of f116v is much more like the ‘p’-shape in the bottom left margin of f66r than the ‘p’ in ‘primus’. Make of that what you will!

It’s nice to have confirmation about the ‘tertius’ descender, but I think it would be incorrect to infer binding order – all that tells us is that the two pages have remained adjacent, which is a very much weaker observation.

Is your objection to my suggested ‘secundus’ overlap because it goes between (current) quires, or because you think the two are in different inks? It’s certainly in the right place (when I checked).

Cheers, ….Nick Pelling….

By: Rene Zandbergen

Rene Zandbergen — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 18:59:50 +0000

On the quire numbers:

the ‘p’ in ‘primus’ has the same open top as the first ‘p’ in the top margin of f116v,
although it lacks the serif to the left.

The descender of ‘tertius’ definitely extends to the underlying page, making it certain that
it was written when the MS was bound. The ink has the same colour, as I could
observe again last week.

I don’t think, however, that the descender of ‘secundus’ on another page, as
shown above, is real.

Cheers, Rene