Secret script of Simon Tadeas Budek

[reeds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Jim Reeds)]

--- Forwarded mail from Rene Zandbergen <rene@xxxxxxxxxx>

Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2000 09:14:08 +0000
From: Rene Zandbergen <rene@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: voynich@xxxxxxxx
Subject: Secret script of Simon Tadeas Budek

Dear all,

the following quote is from a message in the alchemy forum
(http://levity.com/alchemy/frm1250.html), dated 30 June, 1996:

> A prime Czech alchemist was Simon Tadeas Budek the Emperor's
> searcher for metal and gem. He abandoned handwriting for a secret
> script. This tractate is in Vienna today. Simon Tadeas Budek got
> his noble title "from Lesin and  Falkenberk" from Emperor Rudolf II.

While the sentence is not very clear, I cannot help being very
curious about what exactly is the secret script meant above.
Does anyone know what this 'tractate' could be?
I couldn't find it in Adam McLean's MS database (Austria) but may
have overlooked it...

Cheers, Rene

[ message/rfc822 ] :

X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000
Message-ID: <3951D435.2ECDDDE7@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2000 08:54:14 +0000
From: Rene Zandbergen <rene@xxxxxxxxxx>
X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.61 [en] (X11; I; SunOS 5.5.1 sun4m)
X-Accept-Language: en
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: rafalp@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: praha pages
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Hi!

> > To my understanding, some piecemeal information about his spendings
> > have survived.

> Yes, doing archival research requires a lot of time. But there
> should be published inventories etc. to narrow the possibilities
> and know what to expect in advance. I will have to see what
> can be found without going to Prague (a wonderful place, isn't it?).

Lubos Antonin made a point of saying that he thought if anything like
that existed, it would probably have been found. 
I'm not sure...

> > [...] I asked Adam McLean, who asked both Lubos Antonin
> > and Vladimir Filipenko, with the same result. 

> You mean Vladimir Karpenko -
Oops, yes.

> I believe Baresch (or Bares with s-hacek) should not be
> called an "alchemist". He was probably just a scholar like
> the others involved and may have been a burgher in Prague
> or a Jesuit.

Well, the note found by Brumbaugh in Yale specifically says that Marci
inherited Barschius' alchemical library, and Marci writes to Kircher
in 1640 that Baresch is 'rerum chymicarum peritissimus'.
(see http://www.voynich.nu/letters.html . In fact, if you can suggest
improvements to the Latin translation of the Baresch letter, or in fact
the translation of the relevant bit in the early Marci letter, it would
be much appreciated)
The Baresch letter does not use any of the usual respectful formulas
employed by Kircher's Jesuit correspondents, so I doubt that Baresch
was a Jesuit. Marci also refers to him as D[omi]nus (in yet another
letter for which I have no transcription). 

I presume you know that you can see the letters as JPEG files,
if you register at the IMSS site. (Also if you don't, but
follow some of our "secret" shortcut links. Don't tell anyone,
but Stolfi has made an index page with an organisation
much better than the original site, using some clever scripts). 
 
> > My personal guess is that Baresch was one of the protestants
> > who helped put Tepenec in goal in Melnik and looted his place.
> > But this is pure supposition.

> I do not think so. After White Mountain he would have been dead
> or at least expelled from Bohemia - like Comenius and so many
> others.

I see.
Would it have been possible to be religiously neutral  in those
days? 

> Horcicky returned to Melnik and recovered his fortune
> - which he left to the Jesuit College of St. Clement. Thus my
> guess would be that (besides 50,000 ducats and his tenure of
> Melnik) he also left his library to the college (that should 
> be rather obvious).

If he still had it.... I agree. But it leaves a gap in our 
knowedge. 

> That history of Jesuits in Bohemia by Schmidt
> should certainly be checked in detail.

We did our best but this was 4 or 5 massive volumes :-/
And we only had 3 hours or so.

> > And even today I saw a very curious reference to one Simon
> > Tadeas Budek in the archived alchemy forum messages.

> I don't remember it

it says:

> A prime Czech alchemist was Simon Tadeas Budek the Emperor's searcher for
> metal and gem. He abandoned handwriting for a secret script. This tractate
> is in Vienna today. Simon Tadeas Budek got his noble title "from Lesin and 
> Falkenberk" from Emperor Rudolf II.

A confused sentence, but highly intriguing..

>> Marcela Budikova (whom we met in Prague) and
> Is she interested in doing archival research? 

Actually, she lives in Brno and is fully occupied completing her medical
studies. She has seen a copy of Vavra's original article about Horcicky
and I think also another source (something with Melnik in the title)
but hasn't had the time to transcribe anything. Unfortunately, she
doesn't speak German. (Her boyfriend, who is Slovak, also doesn't speak
English, but does have some knowledge of both Dutch and Portuguese. Can
you image the Babel during our Prague visit?)
Actually, during one afternoon we were also in the company of a friend
of Michal Pober called Denisa Kera. She has been involved in locating
the former house of Simon Hajek. However, she didn't really offer to
do any continued research and I didn't really dare to ask. She seemed
interested at the time and she now also has a copy of the Voynich CDROM
(as do Michal and Lubos).

> > (Let me know if you have not heard of the Waller collection,
> > because then I have some really interesting info for you :-))

> No, I haven't! I am all excited!

For a first impression (but there isn't very much), have a look at:
http://www.imss.fi.it/~scottian/eintrod.html
A 30,000-volume MS collection which has hardly  been indexed or even
browsed by anyone could be called a treasure trove, right?
I got the book mentioned in the first paragraph from the library:
 
M. Beretta, A History of Non-Printed Science, Stockholm. Almkvist &
Wiksell, 1993

One of the most intriguing items discussed in this was a 'librum
amicorum' of Stolcius v. Stolzenberg. This is reported to include
contributions from many of his alchemist friends. (I'm of course
hoping that our friend Baresch is among them - a long shot)
The page shown in the book was done by Cornelis Drebbel and has his
self-portrait in colour - very artistically done.

> They had tons of books and MSS from central Europe in Sweden,
> collected during the wars in the 17th and 18th c. Much of 
> that was returned to Bohemia and Poland (including the original
> manuscript of _De revolutionibus..._ in Copernicus's hand) after
> the treaty of Riga and later.

The timing is important. The letter from Prague to Voynich (in my
Praha pages) dates from 1922. I just found the old mail from Mats Rendel 
again, and it says:

> Thank you for your mail.  I have never even heard about the letters
> you mention, so this is completely new to me and, of course, very
> interesting. Time allowing, I will  make a trip to Uppsala in the
> autumn and see what I will find out. I know that the University Library
> in Uppsala owns some works by Kircher, but I know very little about
> their collections of letters. Much archival material from
> this period  has been lost, mainly due to the fire that destroyed the
> Royal Castle in Stockholm in 1697 and a similar disaster in Uppsala in
> 1702  that destroyed the university and its library. Unfortunately
> much of the booty from the wars was kept in those two places, and was
> consequently lost.

Depressing, isn't it?

Cheers, Rene


---End of forwarded mail from Rene Zandbergen <rene@xxxxxxxxxx>

-- 
Jim Reeds, AT&T Labs - Research
Shannon Laboratory, Room C229, Building 103
180 Park Avenue, Florham Park, NJ 07932-0971, USA

reeds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, phone: +1 973 360 8414, fax: +1 973 360 8178

Dear all,

the following quote is from a message in the alchemy forum
(http://levity.com/alchemy/frm1250.html), dated 30 June, 1996:

> A prime Czech alchemist was Simon Tadeas Budek the Emperor's
> searcher for metal and gem. He abandoned handwriting for a secret
> script. This tractate is in Vienna today. Simon Tadeas Budek got
> his noble title "from Lesin and  Falkenberk" from Emperor Rudolf II.

While the sentence is not very clear, I cannot help being very
curious about what exactly is the secret script meant above.
Does anyone know what this 'tractate' could be?
I couldn't find it in Adam McLean's MS database (Austria) but may
have overlooked it...

Cheers, Rene