Reading through the revised (2006) edition of David Hockney’s “Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the lost techniques of the Old Masters“, I was a little surprised to come across (p. 235) a brief mention of the Voynich Manuscript.
In his section on “Secrecy” textual sources, Hockney quotes the introductory passage from William Romaine Newbold’s (1928) “The Cipher of Roger Bacon” where Newbold asserts that during the years 1237-1257, Roger Bacon “made what he regarded as scientific discoveries of the utmost importance, and it is extremely probable that the telescope and the microscope, in some form, were among them.”
Rereading Newbold’s wishful twaddle out of its normal context, I found myself suddenly feeling rather sad for him: “The solitary scholar who succeeds in lifting a corner of the veil has, [Bacon] believed, been admitted by God to His confidence, and is thereby placed under the most solemn obligation conceivable to make no use of his knowledge which God would not approve.” For me, this conjured up a vision of Newbold feverishly peering at the craquelure of the Voynichese handwriting, desperately trying to get closer to pure knowledge, hoping almost to commune with God Himself: but with the fatal flaw that he was relying on the dark and twisted mirror of the Voynich Manuscript as the means to carry him there.
Overall, Hockney’s book is interesting (if flaky in places), though I completely commend him for what he is trying to do: but I’ll leave a full review of it for another day entirely…