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Reading Comprehension?

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12 April 2019

I just got a heads-up that D.N. O’Donovan is talking about me on her blog again. Once again, the information is misleading. I don’t see that I have much choice but respond to the two points she brings up over and over…

Point 1) The VMS Column Text Timeline

First, O’Donovan wrote this:

“My point was merely that the ‘gap’ is shorter than JKP thought: not 1400s to 1665/6, but only 1400s to the time Jakub owned it. It passed about 60 years later to Jesuit ownership, by Marcus Marci’s letter of gift (1665/6) to Athanasius Kircher, S.J., who was then a professor at the ‘Roman College’ – from whose collection it is known to have come when Wilfrid Voynich bought it.”

If O’Donovan had actually read my column-text blog all the way to the bottom, she would have seen that I included a timeline with the approximate date on or after which Jacobi de Tepenecz’s name was added to folio 1r of the VMS. It makes no sense to keep saying that I neglected to consider de Tepenecz in the VMS provenance. Even though the blog was about the Column Text and not about Jacobi, I included him on the timeline:

timeline of column text

Plus, I don’t think it’s wrong to consider this a shadowy area of the Voynich Manuscript’s provenance.

We do not know if Jacobi added the name to the manuscript. It is not the same handwriting as his apparent legal signature (the difference is quite striking). Some of his other books have been annotated by another hand.

Jacobi was a wealthy man. Perhaps he asked an aide to catalog his books. Maybe someone cataloged them after his death. We don’t even know if Rudolph II actually owned the book.

I think these are intriguing questions, but they are in no way settled yet, so I don’t think I was out of line in saying there is “a substantial gap in our knowledge of the VMS” that encompasses the time it may have been in Jacobi’s hands.

Point 2) Did the Jesuits Steal the VMS?

The second point, that O’Donovan has brought up several times, is someone’s “theory” (as she calls it) about whether the Jesuits stole the Voynich manuscript.

I don’t know whose theory she’s talking about, but she likes to bring it up in the same breath she is talking about me.

For the record, I have never said the Jesuits stole the VMS. In fact, in the blog where O’Donovan accused me of “slandering” “poor” Jakub (she meant libeling, but we’ll let that slide), the majority of the blog was about legal ways the Jesuits might have acquired the VMS.

Nevertheless, we can’t ignore the fact that Rudolph II died owing money to Jakub (and a lot of other people) and the VMS might have been in Jacobi’s possession without necessarily belonging to him. Plus, there is evidence that some of the emperor’s assets were stolen after he died. If we are to be good historians, we must consider the POSSIBILITY that someone (including Jakub) might have stolen the VMS from the emperor (if it did, in fact, pass through Rudolph II’s court).

I never said this happened. I only said it’s possible, and it was only one of many possibilities I discussed, so there’s no need for O’Donovan to keep implying that I am promoting myths and theories.


J.K. Petersen

© Copyright 2019 J.K. Petersen, All Rights Reserved

Hello to Voynich Enthusiasts

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Welcome to the Voynich Portal

Sometimes following a trail in the Voynich manuscript is like flying over uncharted territory, looking for a local landing strip. From a distance, it might look like a good spot to set down but when you get closer you discover it’s not what you thought it was and you have to pull back on the stick and try again.

Every aspect of the document plays this trick on you. At first, the text looks like it might be easy to decode. The same goes for identifying the plants, the zodiacs, the star wheels, the map, the apparent recipe section. “It can’t be that hard to figure this out,” has surely passed through the minds of many VM researchers, aficionados who then find themselves still perplexed and searching for basic answers five or even ten years later.

 

How I Was Sucked into the Matrix

I can’t remember exactly how I stumbled onto the Voynich Manuscript (Beinecke 408). I only remember it was around Christmas 2008 (addendum: after writing this, Iooked up the first file I downloaded related to the VMS and discovered it was spring 2007) that I was googling something unrelated and either came across a reference to herbs or to cryptography in general. Further searches for information on medicinal and culinary herbs and spices brought me to Edith Sherwood’s site with her plant IDs and theories about the origin of the VMS. Since I love puzzles, it didn’t take long to get hooked.

(Addendum, I devoted much time to studying the plants and text in 2007 and 2008 and then got very busy and reluctantly had to put it aside for while.)

I kept intending to study it but couldn’t find a moment free until somewhere around 2010, in my not-so-spare time, I created masses of scattered notes all over my hard drive. I truly didn’t have time to explore the Voynich but still, with five minutes here and five minutes there, managed to accumulate a surprising number of notes.

Such Good Intentions, So Little Time

I intended from the beginning to share my notes, especially those on the plants, with anyone who might be interested but, again, was short of time. Saving a note to yourself that encapsulates a myriad of thoughts, and expanding it out into a paragraph that others can comprehend are two different things and it wasn’t until 2013 that I finally set up a blog to share my observations with the Internet community.

Even with a place to upload the information, it was a daunting task to simply FIND my notes which were not confined to anything as sensible as a Voynich directory (or drive). I saved them wherever, whenever, assuming I would have time to consolidate them later.

That day has not yet come, but I have managed to upload a tiny portion of the notes in the spirit of getting started and if I win a lottery, then I will have the time to make the rest of it presentable (and comprehensible) as well.

In the meantime, I offer the Voynich Portal and hope it might elucidate or at least entertain those of you who love puzzles and mysteries as much as I.

 

J.K. Petersen