Re: Jacobus' signature

[Rene Zandbergen <rene@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Rafal wrote:

> My original remark that the existence of another MS signed by 
> Jacobus z Tepence convinced me that the one on VMS was genuine
> did not intend to question the VMS history from Baresch on.
> My point was that Voynich's "special light" and "chemicals"
> applied to see the signature were not really convincing.
> I am not sure, but has anyone else actually seen 
> that signature? I mean, those who inspected it or wrote
> about it?

Oddly enough, I don't remember if one can see anything on the
MS itself, but there are certainly a number of copies of the page
in the Beinecke which show it quite clearly. In fact, I ordered
a photocopy of one of the best ones, and when it arrived (promptly,
by the way), it turned out that the copier settings had been such
to optimise the contrast in the main body of the page and all
the marginal stuff had disappeared.
Brumbaugh has seen the same signature, and his son even reported
having read the word 'Prag' beneath it (not confirmed by anyone
and Brumbaugh's son's whereabouts are not known - I once asked
R. Babcock). Brumbaugh also writes about the year 1*30 (where
* is illegible) in the upper margin of the page. This cannot
originate from Jacobus. Then there are alphabet tables in the
right margin which are partly visible in both the Yale and the
Marshall copies.

> > [me:] Marci once inherited the alchemical library of the otherwise 
> > completely unknown Georg Baresch. This is a detail contained
> > in the Prague civil records. It is just not credible that the
> > forger could have known this.

>  Is there any reference to that source? It should contain at least
> some hint on who the elusive Georg Baresch was. If the inheritance
> was recorded in the municipal (rather than civil - there were
> no civil records at that time and they would not contain
> such information anyway) records of Prague, then it can be nothing
> else than Baresch's will. A copy of it could be a real treasure
> of information!

Well, I used 'civil' as a generic term for lack of a more precise
one. The inheritance by Marci was also reported by Brumbaugh 
in the same book (the reference is on my web site, but I cannot look
up the precise details such as page number or literal quote now, and
will be away for the rest of the week - maybe remind me next week
to look it up). There was a note sent from some Prague 'records
instance' to Voynich making this statement, which Brumbaugh saw.
It is one of the things I could not find in the Beinecke material
(while it was quite high on my wish list :-( ). It wasn't in the
box which had most of the historical stuff in (letters related to
the Mondragone, the other letters from Prague) and there were
two more huge boxes with general correspondence of which I could
only browse a few names known to me.

This was also one of the things we did not get very far on in 
Prague last February. Next time...
               
                   Rafal