The manuscript and its story
What the Voynich is, and the journey it made across the world
An illustrated book of about 240 pages, in a script no one can read: what it is, who it has been attributed to, and the chain of hands and cities that carried it to Yale.
This section tells the manuscript's documented history. Its origin is the subject of our research, presented in the Overview and the Hypotheses.
What it is
The Voynich Manuscript (Beinecke MS 408) is a vellum codex of about 240 pages, dense with illustrations — unidentifiable plants, astronomical diagrams, female figures in basins, recipes — and a text in an unknown alphabet, so-called 'Voynichese'. The vellum is radiocarbon-dated between 1404 and 1438; several hands can be recognised.
No proposed solution has yet gained unanimous scholarly consensus, and the author — or, given the several hands, the authors — remains unknown. Our research places its origin in the Germanic language islands of the eastern Alps (Carnia, Cadore, Venetian Prealps): the Hypotheses section and the Overview document the method. The name 'Codex Mondragonis' recalls Villa Mondragone, near Frascati, where Wilfrid Voynich acquired it in 1912.
The manuscript's journey
The manuscript's journey
Move the pawn along the stops: who held it, who carried it from one city to the next, and why. Green marks documented stops, amber the disputed tradition.
Northern Italy
c. 1404–1438 · DocumentedKeeper: Unknown author(s) — several hands on the same vellum
How and why it moved: Point of origin. The calfskin vellum is radiocarbon-dated 1404–1438; the style points to early-Renaissance Italy.
Evidence: Radiocarbon dating (Univ. of Arizona, 2009); stylistic analysis.
Who it has been attributed to
Every attribution is a historical hypothesis, not proof. The vellum's dating (1404–1438) acts as a filter: it rules out anyone who lived too early or too late.
Impossible
Proposed by: Raphael Mnishovsky (relayed by Marci); later Wilfrid Voynich
Claim. The 13th-c. friar wrote the enciphered text.
Status. Discredited: Bacon died in 1292, the vellum is from 1404–1438. Chronologically impossible.
Unlikely
Proposed by: Wilfrid Voynich (inference); later the 'hoax for Rudolf' theory
Claim. Dee sold it to Rudolf, or Kelley forged it for the emperor.
Status. Very unlikely: both far too late for a vellum that predates them by over a century. Dee's diaries are silent.
Antonio Averlino 'Filarete'
SpeculativeProposed by: Nick Pelling (2006)
Claim. A north-Italian Renaissance author enciphered technical knowledge.
Status. Not disproven but unsupported: consistent with the dating and Italian style, but no document backs it. Speculative.
Unlikely
Proposed by: Voynich and later commentators
Claim. The man whose name is on f1r would be its author.
Status. Weak: the name indicates ownership, not authorship; and Sinapius (d. 1622) is anyway too late for the vellum.
Meaningless text / Cardan grille
ContestedProposed by: Gordon Rugg (2003); Andreas Schinner (2007)
Claim. The text would carry no meaning: pseudo-language generated to fool a buyer.
Status. Contested: the Cardan grille dates to ~1550, over a century later. Recent statistical studies find natural-language structure (Zipf, long-range correlations).
Faces and documents
Hover for captions. Public-domain portraits; folio 1r is Beinecke MS 408.
