This Bizarre Manuscript Was Purchased By A Polish Book Dealer In 1912, And Experts Still Can’t Seem To Figure Out What It’s About
In 1912, a Polish book dealer named Wilfrid Voynich purchased a manuscript dating back to the early 15th century.
It consisted of roughly 240 pages filled with strange, handwritten text in an unknown language and various illustrations of people, imaginary plants, symbols, and other bizarre images. The book has been dubbed the Voynich Manuscript, and to this day, experts can’t seem to figure out what it’s about.
So, who was Voynich, and how did he get his hands on the manuscript in the first place? Voynich was born on November 12, 1865, in a town called Telšiai, which is now a part of Lithuania. He studied at the universities of Warsaw, St. Petersburg, and Moscow, earning a degree in chemistry from the latter.
The Russian police arrested him in 1885 for trying to free members of a revolutionary movement. Voynich was then sent to a work camp in Siberia, but he escaped in 1890. By the end of the year, he was living in London.
He continued to support anti-czarist organizations until the death of a fellow revolutionary in 1895. That’s when he shifted his focus to selling rare and antique books. In 1898, he opened his first bookstore in London’s Soho Square.
He got married and became a citizen of Britain in 1904. Then, in 1912, a religious group from Ghislieri College in Italy held an auction of books from their library. Voynich secured several volumes, including the manuscript.
Two years later, he opened a second bookstore in New York. For years, he tried to decode the text in the manuscript, but he died in 1930, leaving it unsolved. After his death, the manuscript was passed to his wife, who gave it to a close friend, Anne Nill, upon her death in 1960.
The following year, Nill sold the book to Hans P. Kraus, an antique book dealer. Kraus eventually donated the book to Yale University in 1969, where it has been housed in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library ever since.
Since its rediscovery in 1912, many scholars have attempted to decipher the manuscript, but they were all unsuccessful. The thick manuscript contains some pages that fold out into complicated diagrams.
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It was written in an unknown language that is now referred to as “Voynichese.” Drawings of people bathing and mythical creatures like dragons are scattered among illustrations of astrological symbols and fictitious plants.
Over the years, there have been numerous speculations about what the Voynich Manuscript might mean. One expert stated that it was a women’s health manual. Others believe that Voynich created it as a hoax. Some theories suggest that the manuscript might’ve come from an entirely different world.
A physicist named Andreas Schinner analyzed the manuscript, attempting to unlock its secrets. His examinations led him to the conclusion that the text was just a random string of letters and had no meaning, supporting the idea that it was created as a hoax.
However, other studies claim that it was written in a new language that had never been discovered before. Alternatively, the language was also likened to a version of Latin, Hebrew, or Turkish.
In 2020, Yale University uploaded the entire manuscript to its online digital library, allowing anyone in the world to access it. Hopefully, the widespread availability to the public will lead to the mystery of the Voynich Manuscript being solved.
So far, the only new information about the document was gleaned in 2023. A researcher named Stefan Guzy managed to trace the ownership of the Voynich Manuscript back.
After analyzing imperial accounts of all book-related transactions, he found a letter from Johannes Marcus Marci, a 17th-century royal doctor who received the manuscript from the alchemist Georg Baresch.
Before that, it had once belonged to Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II. The emperor had bought the manuscript from the physician Carl Widemann for 600 gold coins between 1576 and 1612.
Widemann sold books to the emperor that he had inherited from botanist Leonard Rauwolf. And that’s where the trail ends. The identity of the original creator and owner of the book is still unclear. Perhaps we may never know.
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