The Friar and the Cipher (20 page)

Even in death, however, Bacon refused to be silent, and one year later he produced one of his most influential works. (It had probably been written in 1624.) Entitled
The New Atlantis
, it was a utopian fable that combined a bit of Shakespeare, a bit of Thomas More, a dash of Plato (whom Bacon also supposedly hated), and, once more, a healthy dollop of Roger Bacon.

The story, such as it was, involved a group of travelers who were becalmed and threatened with starvation somewhere in the South Pacific off the coast of Peru (a fairly exotic locale in 1627). They came upon a mysterious, heretofore unknown island that was home to a reclusive civilization living in peace, tranquility, and with religious and ethnic tolerance. (Many of the plot elements of
The New Atlantis
are remarkably reminiscent of James Hilton's classic 1933 novel,
Lost Horizon
.)

The central institution of this civilization—and the raison d'être of the story—was the “House of Salomon,” essentially a vast experimental laboratory run by a group of monklike wise men who were reclusive even from the ordinary residents of the island. The House of Salomon was a paean to applied science, producing wonders of every sort. There were caves and tunnels deep under the earth to study refrigeration, preservation, and the making of metallic alloys, and towers half a mile high to investigate wind, lightning, and other natural phenomena (although not astronomical bodies). Experiments had produced medicinal plants, superior flora (by grafting) and fauna (by cross-breeding), and water infused with minerals to prolong life. Food was plentiful and nutritious and creature comforts abundant and available to all.

There were also a number of mechanical inventions that were similar to those enunciated by Roger Bacon in his letter of 1248. The House of Salomon had produced both telescopes and microscopes (rudimentary prototypes of which were by then available in Europe), prisms, crystals, advanced weapons, superior gunpowder, motorized cars, flying machines, and submarines.

Although there had been a number of works like
The New Atlantis
published in the years before, the idea of an institution devoted to the advancement of science had never been presented quite this way, and it fascinated English intellectuals. The House of Salomon became the model of a number of clubs that sprang up in London, Oxford, and Cambridge.

In 1645, one of these clubs began weekly meetings in London, its purpose to explore science in the Baconian tradition. Each of the ten members was charged a shilling to help defray the costs of materials needed for their experiments. One of the members later wrote,

We barred all Discourses of Divinity, of State-Affairs, and of News . . . confining ourselves to Philosophical Inquiries . . . such as . . . Physick [medicine], Anatomy, Geometry, Astronomy, Navigation, Staticks, Mechanicks, and Natural Experiments. We there discoursed the Circulation of the Blood, the Valves in the Veins, the Copernican Hypothesis, the Nature of Comets, the new Stars, the Attendants on Jupiter, the Oval shape of Saturn, the inequalities and Selenography of the Moon . . . the Grinding of Glasses [lenses], the Weight of Air, the Impossibility of Vacuities and Nature's abhorrence thereof.

Of the ten original members, it was the one who was forced to miss the first meeting who was to be the most important: Robert Boyle, considered the father of modern chemistry. Eventually, Boyle and a number of his fellows would receive a charter from the newly restored Charles II and found the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge. Its membership would soon include some of the greatest names in the history of science—Boyle, Robert Hooke, Christopher Wren, Edmund Halley, and, of course, Isaac Newton. From the first, the Royal Society was a group dedicated to the type of scientific inquiry about which Francis Bacon had been so fervent, although hypothesis and deduction were employed every bit as much as (if not more than) Bacon's beloved induction. Still, as Joseph Glanvill, one of the Royal Society's earliest members, noted, “Salomon's House in the
NEW ATLANTIS
was a Prophetick Sceam of the
ROYAL SOCIETY
.” Thomas Sprat, who wrote in 1667 of the founding of the society, said, “There should have been no preface to my account of the Royal Society but some of [Bacon's] writings.” Boyle himself added that Bacon was “the first among the moderns who handled the doctrine of heat like an experimental philosopher.”

Frontispiece from Sprat's
History of the Royal Society,
London 1667, with Francis Bacon sitting to the left of a bust of Charles II
BEINECKE RARE BOOK AND MANUSCRIPT LIBRARY, YALE UNIVERSITY

LYNN THORNDIKE DISMISSED FRANCIS BACON'S WORK
by comparing it unfavorably with that of someone else about whom he had nothing good to say. “It was a relatively easy thing to criticize the past and present state of learning, and to advocate a new program using ‘experimental science.' Roger Bacon had done it three and a half centuries before.”

Francis Bacon was certainly an easy man to dislike. His ego may well have outstripped his talents, his science was imperfect, and some of his blunders today look laughable. (He rejected Copernican astronomy with the same off-hand disdain as every other theory that he thought beneath his methods.) More than that, he was often forced to rely on the very techniques he denounced—he regularly formed hypotheses and employed deduction whenever it suited him—and proposed experiments that had already been performed. Additionally, he never attempted to reconcile inconsistencies in his theory.

But all of this misses the point, much as Thorndike missed the point with Roger Bacon. Francis Bacon was insatiably curious and willing—in fact, eager—to challenge any piece of evidence that he deemed spurious or obtained by incorrect method. That he drew freely on the work of others without acknowledgment is undeniable, but, in the end, how much did that really matter? Originality does not always determine effectiveness. Would Bacon's contribution to the advancement of human knowledge have been somehow greater for the presence of footnotes?

It is not always the most admirable of characters who change history. For all his smugness, superiority, and passing off others' ideas as his own, Francis Bacon succeeded in achieving that which Roger Bacon tried so desperately but failed to attain. Be it as a result of timing, luck, or simply the ability to couch ideas as his contemporaries needed to hear them, Francis Bacon—deserving or not—became the spirit of a new scientific revolution. He was the fulcrum upon which the balance of science and theology would pivot and that allowed others about whom there is no ambiguity—Boyle, Hooke, Newton, Halley—to tip that balance permanently. It was Bacon's methodology as much as any other single factor that was responsible for finally discrediting scholasticism as a basis of science, so that, after centuries of elephantine progress, Thomas Aquinas could now be relegated to theology only, never again to be taken seriously in the pursuits of science.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The Trail of the
Cipher Manuscript

•   •   •

THE CIPHER MANUSCRIPT ACQUIRED BY EMPEROR RUDOLPH
for six hundred ducats was a not-particularly-grand volume of something over two hundred pages. The cover was vellum but flimsy and blank, making the book look more like someone's personal journal than a finished publication. The writing, which looked like Latin but wasn't, varied between a more open script and a smaller, more delicate hand; similarly, the illustrations were sometimes broadly drawn, sometimes finely detailed, as though two different scribes had been employed to copy the work.

Although the writing was mysterious, it was the illustrations that were the manuscript's chief attraction. The entire first sixty pages or so were obviously dedicated to botany, with a specimen drawn on every page, but no actual medieval or renaissance garden had ever held plants like these. They were voluptuous, fantastic; the root systems defied classification; in one illustration the last tendrils turned into faces. The pictures were obviously integral to the text and almost contemporary in style. They were all muted watercolors with none of the rich cobalt blues and gold leafing of a typical illustrated manuscript.

After the plants came an astrological section with large, fold-out pages, clearly the heart of the work. Here were Mars and Taurus and other recognizable astrological figures ringed by stars and spheres as were commonplace in the sixteenth century, but the similarity ended there: inside the rings were rough drawings of rotund naked women bathing in fountains and barrels, wearing expressions of coy surprise, as if the water was too cold. There were also intricately drawn maps of no immediately recognizable area.

Following the astrological section, the manuscript reverted to the strange exotic plants, with the significant addition that this time the little naked women were
inside
the plants, sometimes a string of them in the leaves, which seemed to equate them with the plants, leaving the overall impression of fertility. Some of the plants and women were labeled with the same cipher-word. There was one more difference: if one looked very closely, one could see that some of the women were actually men.

The last section had no drawings at all. It seemed to be a glossary or index, perhaps a dictionary of terms, like a pharmaceutical guide.

The manuscript could not have more perfectly suited the emperor's tastes or excited his interest. Not only had John Dee introduced Rudolph to Roger Bacon's work, he had communicated his own obsession with the thirteenth-century scientist to the monarch. He had spoken to Rudolph of Roger Bacon's encyclopedic knowledge, of his commitment to learning all that could be known of science, of the mysteries he had discovered and hidden in cipher. He discoursed on optics and mathematics and talked knowledgeably of submarines, flying machines, burning lenses, talking heads, and gunpowder. He told Rudolph of Bacon's interest in medicine and health and of Dee's own search for the philosopher's stone, which would unlock the secrets of the universe and eternal life. Eternal life was a topic very near to Rudolph's heart—he was keen to experience it himself. So, naturally, when a manuscript turned up in a strange language that no one could read except for a three-line cipher at the end attributing the work to Roger Bacon, Rudolph bought it. He paid handsomely for it, too—the equivalent of $100,000 today.

Was this, perhaps, the missing section of the great
Scriptum Principali
that Bacon had begun but supposedly never finished? Was this what he had worked on secretly all those years while imprisoned by the Franciscans, when a man known for the volume of his output had apparently and unaccountably shut down? That might account for the complexity of the cipher—in case of discovery, his jailers would not have been able to read the work, and that would, at least, limit additional charges of heresy. On the other hand, although Bacon had written on health and longevity, he was neither a botanist nor a physician. Erotic drawings of foliage and little naked women had never appeared in one of his manuscripts before. Then again, who knew what fifteen years of imprisonment on bread and water would do to a person?

It is not known what Rudolph initially did with his new purchase, but sometime between 1608 and 1616 it came into the possession of his chief botanist, Jacobus Horcicky de Tepenec, also known as Sinapius.

There are two versions to the story of Horcicky's life, one decidedly more romantic than the other. The more prosaic account has Jacobus born poor, of peasant ancestry, in southern Bohemia in 1575. His family gave him to the Jesuits as a menial in exchange for board, but his obvious intellectual abilities brought him quickly to the attention of the rector, who arranged to have him attend the local school in 1590.

Jacobus did very well at his studies and was particularly drawn to the school apothecary, an experienced druggist who concocted and sold various potions for the aid of the sick. Since much of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century medicine was based on herbal remedies, Horcicky's interest inevitably drew him to the study of plants. He graduated at the top of his class, and the Jesuits were so impressed with his performance that they sent him on to the university at Prague for training in Aristotelian philosophy.

In Prague, Jacobus followed the scholarly tradition of Latinizing his name and became Sinapius. He apparently tried to study Aristotle but didn't have the knack for it and instead persuaded his teachers to let him work in the university gardens and set up a laboratory for extracting medicines and other herbal remedies. He became a skilled botanist and chemist. He struck pay dirt when he extracted the essence of flowers and invented toilet water, which he marketed under the label “Aqua Sinapii.” At a time when few bathed regularly, Aqua Sinapii was extremely popular and made its inventor a large fortune. He became so rich that Rudolph, hearing of his success, borrowed money from him, signing over the prosperous district of Melnick in return. In 1607, Rudolph brought him to court as chief apothecary and head of the imperial gardens. The next year, one of Horcicky's potions was credited with saving Rudolph's life. In gratitude, Rudolph made him noble, giving him the title “de Tepenec.”

Jacobus Horcicky de Tepenec
COURTESY RAFAL PRINKE

In the second, more romantic version of Horcicky's life, Jacobus was born in Prague, the son of a famous apothecary, Christian Horcicky. Christian owned the “City Pharmacy,” the most successful venture of its kind in all of Bohemia. In this account, Jacobus came by his profession naturally, growing up amid the bottles of elixirs and turpentine, the wooden crates of myrrh, saffron, ginger, and wormwood, and the jars of crabs' eyes, asses' hooves, and dried toads that were the sixteenth- and -seventeenth-century pharmaceutical stock in trade. The City Pharmacy sold everything from cosmetics to sealing wax and was so well known that as a young man Jacobus was assigned to oversee the planting of the imperial gardens, where he was able to examine exotic foliage from all over the world. Father and son together invented the Aqua Sinapii that made the family fortune, Sinapii again being the Latinized form of Horcicky, which incidentally meant “mustard” in Bohemia.

Jacobus had a pretty sister, Sofie, and a good friend, Lieutenant Maximillian Swoboda, an officer in the imperial cavalry. Sofie and Swoboda were in love and engaged to be married. Unfortunately, Sofie was also desired by one Carlo Malombra, an Italian refugee working as an apprentice in the Horcicky laboratory. Malombra, diminutive and squat, with one leg shorter than the other, had been a medical student at the University of Padua but had been forced to flee when accused of poisoning an enemy with a particularly toxic potion known as “Aqua Toffnina.” Malombra resented his lowly position in Bohemia with the Horcicky family and dreamed of marrying the daughter of the house.

To get rid of Swoboda, Malombra poisoned the oats in the royal stable and framed his rival for the crime. Two of Rudolph's favorite horses were found dead one morning, and the only clue was a silver spur marked with an
S,
which had conveniently been left at the scene. Lieutenant Swoboda was accordingly arrested for the heinous deed and thrown into jail pending trial. The Horcicky family was in an uproar, and Sofie swooned, but not before proclaiming her fiancé's innocence. Jacobus went to court to testify on behalf of his friend.

The matter was resolved by an eyewitness account. Dr. Michael Maier, a philosopher, alchemist, and general favorite at court, happened to be passing through the royal gardens at two o'clock in the morning on the night in question, on his way to the Jewish cemetery for some specimens of human skull he needed for a particular experiment. Along his route he noticed someone dressed as a peasant and carrying a basket, going into the royal stables; this person was much shorter than Lieutenant Swoboda and walked with a limp. The vice chancellor put two and two together and freed Swoboda, who was then promoted to captain of the Royal Dragoons. He and Sofie were married, and Jacobus was made director of all of the imperial botanical gardens for his part in uncovering the plot. Malombra was arrested, made a full confession under torture, and was sentenced to sit in a small room in the tower of a castle, surrounded by food liberally laced with Aqua Toffnina.

The signature
Jacobus de Tepenec
appears on the first page of the Voynich manuscript, although it is now too faded to be seen, even with a magnifying glass. (It was discovered quite by accident when the photographer hired by Wilfrid Voynich to make copies of the manuscript spilled a developing solution on the page and the signature and inscription appeared.) Since Jacobus would not have used the designation “de Tepenec” until he had been raised to the nobility, this means that the manuscript did not come into his possession until after 1608.

An experienced botanist like Jacobus would have been the obvious choice to examine Rudolph's new possession. The many drawings of exotic, fantastic plants would have fallen into his area of expertise. If the plants could be identified, perhaps the names would provide a clue to the cipher.

But de Tepenec's signature implies ownership. It is unlikely that Rudolph would have voluntarily parted with so expensive a purchase, particularly one that, when decoded, promised to reveal the great secret of life. But in 1611, Rudolph was summarily deposed by the Bohemian Assembly. He had spent his declining years as a recluse, withdrawing further and further from his people and the everyday operations of government. He never left his castle and spent hours closeted with astrologers and alchemists. When he did rouse himself to rule, his actions were invariably unpopular. In 1609, he had tried to curtail the activities of his Protestant subjects and withdraw the hard-won privilege of toleration under which members of different sects were allowed to practice their various religions. Even Catholic Bohemians turned against him for this, and he was forced to reverse his decision and guarantee religious toleration instead. In April 1611, his people gave up on him entirely and crowned his brother Matthias emperor in his place. Matthias chose not to rule from Prague, as Rudolph had, but from Vienna. Rudolph died the following January and, with his brother absent in Austria, many of his treasures were looted. It is probably at this time that Jacobus took possession of the cipher manuscript, if only to protect it from thieves or damage.

There is no indication that Jacobus was able to identify any of the plants or break the code. Nor is it clear how long he owned this curiosity. Very soon, de Tepenec, rich and influential as he was, would be imprisoned and then banished from his estate in Melnick, just outside Prague. In the six short years following Rudolph's death, the political climate in Bohemia would become so combustible that the merest spark would ignite the entire region into flames. In 1619, all of Europe watched as one misguided prince awkwardly struck the match.

ALTHOUGH OFFICIALLY A HAPSBURG POSSESSION,
and therefore nominally Catholic, the kingdom of Bohemia was actually an uneasy mix of Catholics, Lutherans, Calvinists, and Ultraquists, descendants of the fifteenth-century reformers (or heretics, depending on your point of view) John Hus and Jerome of Prague. No two groups worked together consistently, although in a pinch the Lutherans would side with the Catholics against the hated Calvinists. At the time Matthias took over, each of these religions was still tolerated and allowed to maintain churches. Matthias tried to reimpose Catholicism as the principal faith, but he was too far away to be effective and had to rely on deputies. Besides, Matthias was old and childless. It was only a matter of time before a new emperor would have to be crowned.

In 1618, Matthias's rule was challenged by a dispute arising over whether the Protestants would be allowed to build a church in a primarily Catholic village. A meeting of deputy governors ended dramatically with Matthias's two Catholic representatives being tossed out the window of a castle. “We will see if your Mary can help you!” one of the Protestants called out after the bodies. Then: “By God, his Mary has helped!” as the victims landed safely in a big pile of refuse. The miracle notwithstanding, the Protestants took over Prague. The nearby township of Melnick, where Jacobus de Tepenec was district administrator, a heavily Ultraquist community, followed suit. They arrested the Catholic Tepenec and threw him into prison.