Johannes Marcus Marci

Johannes Marcus Marci (1595-1667) was a Bohemian scholar born in the city of Lanškroun, present-day German Kronland. His real name was Jan Marek Marci, in Latin Johannes Marcus Marci .

Semblance

Marci began studies as a Jesuit but abandoned the religious path to study medicine, teaching at the Caroline University in Prague.

In 1638 he made a trip to Rome where he met the Jesuit Athanasius Kircher, beginning a friendship that lasted for the next twenty-five years.

On the death of his friend Baresch (Georgius Barschius), responsible for the library of Emperor Rudolph II, he received the Voynich Manuscript that he tried to translate in vain for much of his life.

As Baresch had done previously (although without receiving a response to his two requests), he wrote a letter to Kircher - signed in Prague in August 1665 or 1666 - with the intention of the German scholar demonstrating his great skills as a translator of dead languages, which was accompanied by the aforementioned Voynich Manuscript: there is no news that Kircher has obtained any type of results nor that he has returned it to Marci.

This letter is preserved, which was found next to the Voynich Manuscript, in which he mentioned in passing that Rafael Missowsky was tutor to Prince Ferdinand III of Bohemia, and that the manuscript had been given to the emperor "by a stranger" in exchange for 600 ducats, as well as that he thought it could have been written by the English friar Roger Bacon.

He is the author of various technical works, for example 'De proportione motus su regulate sphygmica ad celeritatem et tarditatum pulsum' (Prague, 1639) or 'De proportione motus figurarum rectilinearum et circuli quadrtura ex motu' (Prague, 1648).

Eponymy

• The lunar crater Marci bears this name in his memory.
• The asteroid (3791) Marci also commemorates its name.

Sources

• The Voynich Manuscript: An Elegant Enigma. D' Empire (1978). Aegean Park Press (1980), ISBN: 0-89412-038-7
• The Queen's Conjuror. Benjamin Wollet (2002), Flamingo, London, ISBN: 0-00-655202-1