Re: VMs: Fw: Edward Kelley and the VMS

[Rene Zandbergen <r_zandbergen@xxxxxxxxx>]

Dear all,

 "Jan" <hurychj@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> > > Is there any hard evidence connecting the VM
> > > to Kelly or at least his offering 
> > > any manuscript to Rudolph?

Jacques Guy wrote:

> > None. Dee and Kelly just happened to have been
> > in Prague at about the time the Voynich might
> > have been, in someone's library.

I will get back to that below...

Jim G. wrote:

> No disagreement here.  There's no hard evidence
> linking Kelly to the VMs. [snip]

> ...  there are a few little things that raise
> one's eyebrow when looking toward Kelly and
> Dee, including Kelly's penchant for producing
> fraudulent documents, 

It is said about him but this is legendary. Anyway,
since I don't particularly believe in his chanelling
information from angels, I would agree that he was
involved in 'fooling' people.

> Kelly's flogging fake alchemical processes to
> Rudolf, 

yes, though not mainly to Rudolf.
Altogehter, he got millions from Rosenberg (I
can't quite remember which one of the two
brothers or in which denomination :-( ).

> I seem to recall that a Dee expert claims to
> have identified the penmanship of the VMs page
> numbers as Dee's...

Yes, and this is the most serious connection.
Even though I have seen good arguments against
it (see Rafal's web pages), the problem is that
the identification comes from a respected 
academic, and is accepted by the Beinecke and
included in their description of the MS.
While I tend to agree with Rafal, I don't know
how I could convince anyone that Watson (the
name of the expert) was wrong?

But back to 'being at the right place at
the right time'. There are more people that
fit that criterium. I may pick out three:

Ogier Ghislain de Busbecq: he was a person of very
diverse talents. His letters include observations on
plants, customs, religions, languages, and much
besides. He evidently undertook all kinds of
commission for Rudolf in Paris, from the recommending
of personnel to dealing in clocks and Hermetic
literature. Rudolf was especially favourably disposed
to him: Busbecq's letters to Prague from 1582 to 1586
demonstrate their close contact. (No I haven't
seen those letters, but wouldn't they be 
interesting?).

Johannes Sambucus: He was deeply interested in
medicine - his own training had been medical - and
botany (he prepared an edition of Dioscorides); while
from the annotations in his copy of Copernicus' De
Revolutionibus it appears that he accepted the
Copernican astronomy. 
His library became one of the most notable of the age.
Sambucus' famous holding of classical MSs was bought
by Rudolf.

Richard Strein von Schwarzenau, seems to have been an
intimate of the Emperor (remains survive of a
holograph correspondence between them) and he held a
position at the Prague court; he was also an
antiquarian. He was no less a bibliophile who bought
books for Rudolf and amassed a large library of his
own which itself passed to the Habsburgs on his death.

So, here we have three people known to have sold
books to Rudolf and with the right type of 
interest. Kelly really comes second (fourth) to
all of these as concerns being in the right place
at the right time.

Cheers, Rene


	
		
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