Wilfrid Voynich and his “discovery” of the Voynich MS. Introductory note As everybody knows, the Voynich MS was named after the antiquarian book seller Wilfrid Voynich. We also read that he discovered the manuscript in 1912, but reality is a little bit different. Still, if Voynich had not been there, at the right place and the right time, this manuscript would have disappeared into the Vatican library and it would not have become as famous as it is now. In the following 15 minutes we will see what happened, and also find out that Wilfrid Voynich is almost as mysterious as the book that has been named after him. I could easily spend two hours talking about this, but I have been told that this is not allowed. What happened with the Manuscript The manuscript was once owned by emperor Rudolf II of Habsburg, who died in 1611. At that time it used to have a nice cover of wooden boards covered with leather. Probably in this form it was sent to the Roman Jesuit Athanasius Kircher, as we know from a letter from 1665 that has been preserved with the manuscript. When Kircher died, his book collection was incorporated into the main library of the Society of Jesus in Rome: the library of the Collegium Romanum. In 1773 the society of Jesus was banned and the library was partially looted. 40 years later, the ban was lifted, and the library opened again. However, in June 1873 another ban of the Society of Jesus was announced, and in October of that year all their possessions would be confiscated by the newly formed Italian government. The Jesuits did not like this, so they invented several ways to hide their most valuable books. The Voynich MS was one of them. Not long before this, a very large number of manuscripts had been rebound with a plain parchment cover. There is a written record that this was done because of the book worms in all the books, but it also helped to make the books look less valuable and less interesting. Two important collections of manuscripts were taken outside Rome, to a villa in Castel Gandolfo that was owned by a great friend of the Jesuits, the very wealthy prince Alessandro di Torlonia. Since the government had officially allowed that personal belongings of the Jesuits would not be confiscated, all these books got a little sticker saying that they were from the private library of P.Beckx, who was the head of the Society of Jesus. The government still considered all Jesuit books to be officially their property, and they had even confiscated the entire palace of the Collegium Romanum that included the library. They renamed it into the