VMs: Voynich & Baresch, boring(?) historical detals

[Rene Zandbergen <r_zandbergen@xxxxxxxxx>]

Dear all,

Brumbaugh (The Most Mysterious Manuscript) writes
(p.135-136):

> In looking through cartons of material in the
Beinecke
> Library files, I came across what seems an
unaddressed
> and undated carbon of a translation of a note from
Prague
> to Voynich. [...]
> This was apparently in response to an inquiry about
the
> identity of the owner who had the manuscript between
the
> death of de Tepenecz and its acquisition by Marci.
> This was the owner about whom Marci wrote, that he
was
> determined to solve it. The note says that Marci
probably
> inherited the manuscript from George Barschius, an
alchemist,
> since "Marci inherited Barschius' alchemical
library."

Brumbaugh tried to follow this up in Prague, but could
not find 
out more.

Claudio Antonini of the Voynich mailing list found the
carbon
during his visit to the Beinecke, and wrote to me:

> I think that what Brumbaugh did was reverse the
position
> of 'Prague' and 'Voynich' in his statement, by
mistake. If
> you think about it, how could Voynich have a carbon
of a
> letter written in Prague? It would be more natural
to have
> a carbon of a copy that HE (Voynich) wrote TO
somebody in
> Prague, not the other way around. Nobody is going to
mail
> carbons. For clarification I put the dates below,
and you
> can see that the following scenario makes sense:

> March -1921 Mr. Khicman performs searches in Prague
> Mar-16-1921 Mr. Khicman writes (or sends?) letter
from Prague
> Apr-11-1921 Letter received in NY
> May-27-1921 Carbon of letter from Voynich to Prague,
>   thanking for letter of Apr-11 [...]
>   It says, in full, the following:
>>    "... I have come to the conclusion that Marci
received
>>    it about 1644. Now I have no definite
information but
>>    it is possible that Marci got the Ms. at the
same time
>>    that he inherited the alchemical library of
Georgius
>>    Barschius, some time after 1622. I can find
nothing
>>    here about Georgius Barschius. Perhaps Bohemian
archives
>>    contain something about him and his connection
with
>>    Marcus Marci and what connection, if any existed
between
>>    Horcicky and Barschius."
>
> Voynich asks for more information about this topic,
and no
> response to this request is recorded.

So, Voynich knew about Georg Baresch, but he wasn't
sure about
him. He certainly did not mention him in his
publication
about the MS.
Until recently, the only place where Baresch was know
to be
mentioned was the Kircher correspondence, and Voynich
could
theoretically have seen this in the Mondragone, but
this did
(obviously) not mention Marci's inheritance of GB's
alchemical
library.
The above is clearly derived from Marci's book
'Philosophia
Vetus Restituta'. (Note, that, since it was written in
1662
and Marci discussed with Baresch 40 years before, B
must have
died after 1622).


Cheers, Rene


__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Games - play chess, backgammon, pool and more
http://games.yahoo.com/