The Voynich Manuscript

The most mysterious book in history

Detail from the Voynich Manuscript (Wikimedia Commons)

In 1912, Polish book collector Wilfrid Voynich bought thirty volumes from the Jesuit Collegio Mondragone in Italy. They were Church property and so the College didn’t really have the right to sell them, but it was hard up for funds, and besides, nobody had looked at the books for at least a century. Still, when he wrote about the books nine years later, Voynich was…