Newly found archival material has revealed that Rauwolf owned a small collection of books, Guzy adds. “I assume that he probably inherited some books from him (it also seems that both families were somehow related).” “ lived in the Augsburg house of the well known botanist Dr Leonard Rauwolf, and he started selling books to the emperor immediately after the death of Rauwolf and his widow, who both had no children,” Guzy says. The 600 gold coins mentioned in Marci’s letter was also an extremely expensive price for a single book, so it would make sense for the Voynich Manuscript to have been sold as part of a small collection.īut if Widemann was the manuscript’s owner before Rudolf, how did it come into his possession? One intriguing option stands out. “Even if a deal was made with ducats or thaler, florins were usually used for the final transaction.”Ī spread from the Voynich Manuscript Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut “Almost all of the emperor’s money transactions were made in guilders (florin), usually Rhenisch guilders, with only very few in thaler or ducats so I believe that the information in the letter was just meant to be ‘gold coins,’ which both florin and ducats are,” Guzy says. A further record refers to the collection as “remarkable/rare books” and that they were transported in a small barrel, Guzy writes in his research paper, published in the proceedings of the first International Conference on the Voynich Manuscript 2022. We’re hoping the facsimile will give people a sense of the size of the book and the way its structures fit together. The records revealed that in 1599, the physician Carl Widemann sold a collection of manuscripts to Rudolf for 500 silver thaler, an amount cited in another record by its equivalent in gold, 600 florin-another type of gold coin. Our website provides wonderful high-resolution images of the Voynich, but it doesn’t provide a sense of the book as a physical object, Clemens said. Luckily, out of almost 7,000 journal entries, including 126 book transactions, only one case involved a book sale for 600 gold coins. The letter from Johann Marcus Marci to Athanasius Kircher, found with the Voynich Manuscript Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut It’s such an unassuming volume, she said. Wilson Director of Scientific Research at IPCH, recalled being surprised by the manuscript’s small size (10 inches high and 7 inches wide) and unadorned cover. “If there was any transaction involving 600 gold coins, then the chance was pretty high that this acquisition was the one mentioned in the Marci letter.” One theory holds that the Voynich Manuscript is a field book dropped by an alien while visiting Earth.
“My idea was to compile all book-related transactions by analysing the imperial account books of the Hofkammer (Imperial Chamber) in Vienna and Prague, where all ingoing and outgoing letters were registered,” Guzy says. Now, after scouring imperial account journals kept by Rudolf’s court, Stefan Guzy of the University of the Arts Bremen, Germany, has identified records that could shed further light on the manuscript’s sale to the emperor, tracing its ownership back a little further. But as the manuscript was created in the early 15th century, this leaves around 150 years of ownership unknown. Thanks to a 17th-century letter written by the royal doctor Johannes Marcus Marci, scholars can trace its ownership back to the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II, who bought it from an unnamed seller for 600 ducats, or gold coins, sometime between 15. To add to the mystery, little is known about the Voynich Manuscript’s origins. Famous for its unique, still undeciphered script, and its unusual illustrations, this book is often referred to as the world’s most mysterious manuscript. A researcher studying centuries-old account records may have identified an early owner of the Voynich Manuscript.
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