The Voynich Manuscript - Research in Action

PCU research is centred on areas that help our communities. Sometimes this may involve finding practical solutions to real problems. And sometimes it may involve something that pushes the boundaries of our core disciplines and opens up insight into the mysteries of the world around us.

Uncovering a Medieval Manuscript

Dr Stefano Cavagnetto has uncovered just such a project as he is engaging on a three year journey in cooperation with the Italian Cultural Institute in Prague.

Centered around the mysteries of a medieval manuscript closely connected to Prague and Italy, he will lead a series of public lectures and seminars about the mysterious Voynich Manuscript.

PCU will also engage with secondary schools in Prague to introduce the Voynich Manuscript to the wider community. And in the context of the School of Business, Dr Cavagnetto will work with students and lecturers, in class and in special seminars, to further knowledge and expanding expertise in the economics of cultural projects and business cases for preserving and renewing our historical heritage.

Longtime followers of Prague City University will recognise the connection to our keynote international conference in 2013 called the Secret of Ciphers.

Participants in the project

Stefano Cavagnetto
Director of PCU Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies (CRIS) & Dean of PCU School of Business
- project curator and consultant for the historic part of the project
Marisa Milella
- curator, art historian and iconographic consultant
Athansios Alexandrides
-curator and technical / IT consultant

Public Lecture

Register here for the first in a series of free public lectures to be held on Tuesday December 7 at the Italian Cultural Institute in Prague from 18:00 till 19:30 in the conference room of the Italian Cultural Institute

Stefano and Marisa, in the first of the three meetings dedicated to this mysterious artifact, will illustrate the environment that saw it 'appear' at the court of Rudolf II and the intricate history that has characterized it up to the present day.

This event is in Italian with simultaneous translation into Czech.

What is the Voynich Manuscript?

The following is a translation of the webpage for the first public lecture:

The Voynich Manuscript is certainly one of the most fascinating and mysterious medieval manuscripts that ever existed and unites Prague with Italy. Its name derives from the name of the Polish-Lithuanian antiquarian and bibliophile Wilfred Voynich, who found it three centuries later, in 1912, in the Jesuit library of Villa Mondragone in Frascati. The code is now kept at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Yale University, in the United States.

The manuscript has no title, the author is not known and the time of origin is approximately placed at the beginning of the 15th century. The code is written in an 'unknown language', which no one has been able to decipher to date. It contains disturbing watercolor illustrations, symbols, animals and plants, celestial spheres and undressed female figures.

The history of the manuscript is shrouded in mystery and unfolds between Prague and Italy. It appears for the first time in the chronicles in Prague, in the 1600s, where Emperor Rudolf II of Habsburg would have bought it at a very high price. After being kept in Prague for more than half a century, the code was sent to Rome by the famous multifaceted Jesuit scientist and crypto analyst Athanasius Kircher for a more in-depth study and deciphering, but from that moment its traces have been lost, and they are not known. the conclusions reached by the eminent Jesuit scholar.

The text has been subjected to studies by paleographers, linguists, philologists, archaeologists, botanists, biologists, mathematicians, computer scientists, crypto-analysts who have produced a vast bibliography. But no scholar has managed to provide a plausible and shared interpretation, or even to prove in an incontrovertible way whether the code is written in an unknown language, in a cryptographic system, or if it is a period forgery.