Re: another Horcicky's MS

["Gabriel Landini" <G.Landini@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Rafal,

In your page you mentioned:
> It seems more probable that Rudolf II (if he indeed owned VMS at
> all) gave VMS to Pontanus - the pastor of all Prague and known
> collector of manuscripts - than to the much less important
> Sinapius. As the latter had at least one MS from Pontanus's
> library, they were certainly in contact and probably discussed
> topics of scientific nature. It is thus possible that Pontanus
> gave VMS to Sinapius. The chronology further supports this
> hypothesis: Pontanus died in 1616 while Sinapius in 1622, so he
> may have owned VMS during that time (or part of it, or may have
> received it from Pontanus between 1608 and 1616).


If the ms was inherited by Jacobus, one could narrow it down to between 1616 and 1618  because he left the country in 1618 and (we can suppose that) the ms. remained in Prague.


> Thus it is still unknown how VMS passed from Horcický to Baresch.
> Interestingly, there are also no manuscripts identified as owned
> by Marci, who inherited Baresch's library which may have included
> the whole of Sinapius's library.

Well, one can only speculate here. Perhaps just before leaving Prague in 1618,  or if Jacobus left in a hurry, Baresch may have been left "in charge" of the  belongings?
Perhaps Marci did not "sign" any of the ms. he received (as he did not sign the vms).

Something that bothers me is whether the Jacobus signature has been erased  with time or was it a deliberate "erasure"?
Is there any way of knowing? In the Kircher correspondence site one can see that the degree of natural persistence of the inks varies considerably between different letters.

Another one, how did Missowsky knew about the vms. When was he in the  court? He was born in 1580... so I presume that if he was at Rudolf's court, he  must have been very young (is it 20 yrs old too young to be at the court?). That  would leave 12 years (until Rudolf's abdication) to have come across the vms.
But of course, perhaps many people knew about the ms. and he got the  information from somebody else.

Cheers,
Gabriel