Friar and the Cipher: Roger Bacon and the Unsolved Mystery of the Most Unusual Manuscript in the World

This book's highlight is the story of a mysterious book discovered in 1912 and named for its owner, Wilfrid Voynich. The manuscript has a coded text enhanced by hundreds of illustrations depicting exotic plants, astronomical phenomena and strange "strings of tiny naked women cavorting in a variety of fountains, waterfalls, and pools." Various experts have attributed the manuscript to Bacon—but as it has kept its secrets from some of the world's greatest cryptanalysts, including some in the CIA and England's MI-8, as well as the largest supercomputers in the world, the attribution remains speculative. But these efforts make a compelling story for readers of the history of science and of code breaking.

The historical detective story the authors tell. The authors wrap the provenance of the Voynich manuscript, as it is called, around a biography of Roger Bacon, an English scholar of the 1200s. The Goldstones dynamically render the medieval time, describing the intellectual ferment - especially the implications of Aristotle's findings for Catholic doctrine - in which Bacon lived. In engaging, entertaining fashion, the Goldstones offer history readers an intriguing mystery.
The Voynich Manuscript has puzzled scholars for a century. A small six inches by nine inches, but over two hundred pages long, with odd illustrations of plants, astrological diagrams, and naked women, it is written in so indecipherable a language and contains so complicated a code that mathematicians, book collectors, linguists, and historians alike have yet to solve the mysteries contained within.

CONTENTS
Prologue
CHAPTER ONE Turmoil and Opportunity: Roger Bacon's England
CHAPTER TWO Logic and Mysticism: Aristotle, Plato, and Christianity
CHAPTER THREE Logic and Theology: The Evolution of Scholasticism
CHAPTER FOUR Dogma, Drink, and Dissent: The University of Paris
CHAPTER FIVE Rebels in Gray Robes: Oxford
CHAPTER SIX Science Goes Mainstream: The Rise of Albertus Magnus
CHAPTER SEVEN The Dumb Ox: Thomas Aquinas
CHAPTER EIGHT The Miraculous Doctor: Roger Bacon at Oxford
CHAPTER NINE Autocracy in the Order of St. Francis
CHAPTER TEN Theology Becomes a Science: The Logic of Thomas Aquinas
CHAPTER ELEVEN The Great Work
CHAPTER TWELVE Seeing the Future: The Scientia Experimentalis of Roger Bacon
CHAPTER THIRTEEN Knowledge Suppressed: The Conservatives Respond
CHAPTER FOURTEEN Enigmas and Espionage: The Strange Journey of Dr. Dee
CHAPTER FIFTEEN Brilliant Braggart: Francis Bacon
CHAPTER SIXTEEN The Trail of the Cipher Manuscript
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN The Making of the Most Mysterious Manuscript in the World
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN MS 408
CHAPTER NINETEEN The Unfinished Legacy of Roger Bacon
BIBLIOGRAPHIC NOTES
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUTTHE AUTHORS
ALSO BY LAWRENCE AND NANCY GOLDSTONE

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