The Voynich Manuscript
EDITED BY RICHARD CLEMENS

“I will prove to the world that the black magic of the Middle Ages consisted in discoveries far in advance of twentieth-century science,” proclaimed Wilfred Voynich to The New York Times in 1916.

This exiled Polish antiquarian book dealer had imported a mysterious vellum codex, which he claimed to have bought from a Jesuit library smuggled out of Rome when the order was suppressed in 1773. Alchemical in content, with an undecipherable text in an unknown language, beautiful coloured illustrations of astrological configurations and imaginary, non-existent plants, not to mention mysterious naked blonde women ritually bathing in vats of green liquid, it was an exquisite and intriguing puzzle.

Voynich claimed it had been compiled by the thirteenth-century Franciscan friar Roger Bacon, who was known to have been so deeply immersed in occult lore that his spiritual ­superiors had put him under house detention in Paris and forbidden him from any further meddling with the dark arts. Helpfully – and possibly too conveniently – the codex contained an explanatory letter in Latin dated 1665 from the Prague scientist J. M. Marci to the Rome-based Jesuit scientist Athanasius Kircher.