A 15th-century illuminated manuscript written in a language no one has been able to decipher, with illustrations of unidentified plants and unknown constellations. This is its story through the centuries.
From its creation in medieval Europe to its current home at Yale, a journey of over six hundred years through empires, alchemists, and cryptographers
The vellum (calfskin parchment) on which the manuscript is written was manufactured somewhere in Central Europe, possibly Germany or northern Italy. Stylistic analysis suggests that the text and illustrations were created at the same time. The codex contains six apparent sections: herbarium, astronomy, cosmology, pharmacy, biology, and recipes.
A 2020 study of the calligraphy identifies at least five different scribes who contributed to the manuscript. All participated in the herbarium section, but a single scribe was responsible for the entire astronomical and astrological section.
According to traditional theory, the celebrated English mathematician, astronomer, and occultist John Dee John Dee (1527–1608): mathematician, astronomer, astrologer and advisor to Queen Elizabeth I of England. He lived in Prague and Bohemia in the 1580s. may have brought the manuscript to Prague. His son wrote that his father possessed “a book that contained nothing but hieroglyphs” to which he devoted much time without being able to decipher it.
Recent research on
Stefan Guzy
Stefan Guzy, Bremen University of the Arts.
Their research in the imperial accounting journals identified the transaction in 2022.
reveal that the doctor and alchemist
Carl Widemann
Carl Widemann: doctor and bookseller in Augsburg.
He lived in the house of the botanist Leonhard Rauwolf, a possible previous owner of the manuscript.
He sold a collection of manuscripts to the emperor
Rodolfo II
Rodolfo II (1552–1612): Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.
Passionate collector of curiosities, art and mysterious objects.
for 600 gold coins — the only transaction of that amount among 7,000 imperial records.
The pharmacist and chemist at the court of Rudolf II,
Jacobus Hořčický
Jacobus Hořčický from Tepenec (m. 1622): Born into a humble family,
educated by Jesuits, he became a successful chemist and imperial pharmacist.
, he signs the manuscript.
His name, visible only under ultraviolet light on folio 1r,
uses the noble form "de Tepenecz," granted after curing the emperor of a serious illness.
He is the first confirmed owner of the codex.
Upon his death, Hořčický bequeathed all his belongings to the Jesuits of Prague and Mělník. However, unlike other books with their bookplates, the Voynich Manuscript does not contain a Jesuit ownership note. The manuscript appears to have escaped the order's control, passing through paths still unknown.
The alchemist and scribe Georg Baresch Georg Baresch (m. c. 1662): alchemist of Prague. He spent years trying to decipher the manuscript, eventually becoming completely frustrated. He possesses the manuscript. Frustrated by his inability to decipher it, he sends transcribed portions to the Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher in Rome, seeking help, but without success.
Multispectral images revealed in 2024 show that Johannes Marcus Marci Johannes Marcus Marci from Cronland (1595–1667): Physician and scientist from Prague, rector of Charles University. Close friend of Baresch for 40 years. He wrote columns of Latin alphabet letters next to «Voynichese» characters in the right margin of the first page — the first documented attempt at decipherment by comparing alphabets.
After inheriting the codex from his friend Baresch, Marci sends it to Athanasius Kircher Athanasius Kircher (1602–1680): Jesuit scholar, "the last man who knew everything." Famous for his attempts to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs. in Rome, accompanied by a crucial letter. In it, he mentions that Rudolf II bought the manuscript for 600 ducats and that it was believed to be the work of Roger Bacon. This letter would be rediscovered by Voynich in 1912 within the codex itself.
The manuscript remained in the hands of the Society of Jesus for almost 250 years, passing from the library of the Collegium Romanum to the Villa Mondragone in Frascati, near Rome. In 1873, after the confiscation of Jesuit properties by the Italian government, part of the collection was discreetly sold. The Voynich Manuscript lay dormant in forgotten chests.
The Polish-British antiquarian and bibliophile Wilfrid M. Voynich Wilfrid Michael Voynich (1865–1930): Polish-British antique dealer, Former revolutionary and husband of the novelist Ethel Lilian Voynich. He bought the manuscript from the Jesuits in Italy. He acquires the manuscript at a secret sale at the Jesuit College near Rome. He finds Marci's letter to Kircher folded between its pages and immediately understands that he possesses something extraordinary. He never publicly reveals the exact location of the purchase.
The manuscript is presented to the public at the Art Institute of Chicago. Voynich begins sending photocopies to various academic authorities and cryptographers, sparking international interest.
The philosopher and cryptographer William R. Newbold William Romaine Newbold (1865–1926): Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania. His "decryption" was later refuted. He claimed to have deciphered the manuscript using microscopy and transposition. He presented it as "The Roger Bacon Cipher Manuscript" at the College of Physicians in Philadelphia in 1921. His method would be severely criticized and ultimately discarded.
Wilfrid Voynich died without having managed to sell or decipher the manuscript. His wife Ethel Voynich Ethel Lilian Voynich (1864–1960): Irish-British novelist, author of "The Gadfly." She kept the manuscript in a bank safe for 30 years. He inherits the codex and keeps it in a bank safe for three decades, along with a letter that was only to be opened after his death.
A team of US military codebreakers, led by William F. Friedman William F. Friedman (1891–1969): Considered the father of American cryptology, he deciphered the Japanese PURPLE code during WWII. , They attempt to decipher the manuscript. These are the same experts who broke the Axis codes during the war. They fail completely, but Friedman theorizes that it could be a primitive artificial language.
Elizebeth Friedman
Elizebeth Smith Friedman (1892–1980): Pioneering cryptographer, wife of William Friedman. She deciphered codes used by smugglers and Nazi spies.
,
legendary cryptographer and wife of William Friedman, publishes
«The Most Mysterious Manuscript — Still Mysterious»,
formally concluding one of the most rigorous investigations into the manuscript.
After Ethel Voynich's death in 1960, her secretary Anne Nill he inherits the manuscript and sells it to the antiquarian. Hans P. Kraus Hans Peter Kraus (1907–1988): One of the most important rare book dealers of the 20th century. He was unable to find a buyer for the manuscript. for $24,500. Unable to sell it, Kraus donated it in 1969 to the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University, where it was cataloged as MS 408.
Professor Robert Brumbaugh claims to have deciphered some plant labels and star maps using numerical substitution. He proposes that the manuscript was created by John Dee or Edward Kelley as an elaborate hoax to sell to Emperor Rudolf II.
Leo Levitov He publishes a theory claiming that the manuscript is a liturgical manual of the Cathar heresy, written in a pidgin language of West Germanic dialects. The theory is refuted both linguistically and historically.
Andreas Schinner publishes a statistical study whose results are compatible with the hypothesis that the text is a mechanically generated fraud although he acknowledges that this only applies to certain types of natural languages.
The University of Arizona performs radiocarbon dating of the parchment: 1404–1438 d.C. with 95% confidence. This result definitively rules out Roger Bacon (13th century) as the author and confirms its origin in the 15th century. However, the ink could still be from a later period.
May 11 marks the 100th anniversary of the discovery of the Voynich manuscript by the Villa Mondragone in Frascati. The Beinecke Library has fully digitized the codex, making it one of the most visited pages on its website.
Marcelo Montemurro (Universidad de Manchester) and Damián Zanette (Bariloche Atomic Center) publishes a study demonstrating statistical patterns consistent with real language. The words show semantic structures that would be unlikely in a randomly generated text.
El profesor Stephen Bax Stephen Bax (1960–2017): Linguist at the University of Bedfordshire. His approach sought proper names alongside relevant illustrations. A study from the University of Bedfordshire proposes a «bottom-up» methodology: identifying and translating proper names associated with the illustrations. It offers tentative translations of 14 characters and 10 words, suggesting that the text is a nature treatise in a natural language, not a code.
Professor Greg Kondrak of the University of Alberta applies natural language processing algorithms.
He discovers that the manuscript may use alphagrams and that more than 80% of the words correspond to a Hebrew dictionary. The academic community receives the results with skepticism.
The University of Bristol announces that Dr. Gerard Cheshire has «deciphered» the manuscript in just two weeks, identifying it as proto-Romance with its own script. The article is published in Romance Studies, but other specialists strongly reject his findings: when his substitutions are applied, the result is inconsistent.
Luke Lindemann and Claire Bowen They publish an entropy analysis that reveals that the «Voynichese» language is more similar to tonal languages written in Latin script or to languages with limited syllabic inventories, ruling out many previous hypotheses about its nature.
Se celebra la primera Conferencia Internacional sobre el Manuscrito Voynich, donde Stefan Guzy presenta su investigación sobre la venta del manuscrito a Rodolfo II y la identificación de Carl Widemann como posible vendedor. También se publica la primera edición facsímil completa del códice.
Lisa Fagin Davis Lisa Fagin Davis:Executive Director of the Medieval Academy of America. She identified the hidden columns of Marci using multispectral imaging. , Director of the Medieval Academy of America studies multispectral images from the Lazarus Project and discovers three columns of hidden letters on the first page: two of the Roman alphabet and one of Voynichese characters, attributed to the hand of Johannes Marcus Marci (c. 1640).
Keagan Brewer and Michelle L. Lewis They publish in Social History of Medicine a novel theory that connects the manuscript with the culture of censorship and encryption of "women's secrets" in medieval medicine, linking it to Dr. Johannes Hartlieb (c. 1410–1468) and the gynecology of the time.
Garry J. Shaw publishes «Cryptic: From Voynich to the Angel Diaries» (Yale University Press), where he reveals a disturbing experiment: volunteers who wrote pages of gibberish produced texts with characteristics similar to the Voynichese manuscript —self-citation, mixing of long and short words, and adaptation to the available space. The biggest enigma remains: does the manuscript contain a real message, or is it a masterpiece of medieval absurdity?
Enrique M. Crespo Enrique M. Crespo publishes the website «Translations of the most complex document known» (Own development), where he reveals some translated paragraphs from the document: Some pages are translated and published, beginning step by step revealing the actual content of the document — he begins to unveil the content to the world and publishes content adapted to current language. The biggest enigma is now open: In the coming months, we will publish all the different paragraphs and finally the methodology used.