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:

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

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