The Friar and the Cipher: Roger Bacon and the Unsolved Mystery of the Most Unusu

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		The Friar and the Cipher: Roger Bacon and the Unsolved Mystery of the Most Unusu
		The Friar and the Cipher: Roger Bacon and the Unsolved Mystery of the Most Unusu

基本信息·出版社：Broadway Books
·页码：336 页
·出版日期：2006年02月
·ISBN：0767914724
·条形码：9780767914727
·装帧：平装
·正文语种：英语
·外文书名：修道士与密码

内容简介 The Voynich Manuscript, a mysterious tome discovered in 1912 by the English book dealer Wilfrid Michael Voynich, 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. However, in The Friar and the Cipher, the acclaimed bibliophiles and historians Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone describe, in fascinating detail, the theory that Roger Bacon, the noted thirteenth-century, pre-Copernican astronomer, was its author and that the perplexing alphabet was written in his hand. Along the way, they explain the many proposed solutions that scholars have put forth and the myriad attempts at labeling the manuscript's content, from Latin or Greek shorthand to Arabic numerals to ancient Ukrainian to a recipe for the elixir of life to good old-fashioned gibberish. As we journey across centuries, languages, and countries, we meet a cast of impassioned characters and case-crackers, including, of course, Bacon, whose own personal scientific contributions, Voynich author or not, were literally and figuratively astronomical.

The Friar and the Cipher is a wonderfully entertaining and historically wide-ranging book that is one part The Code Book, one part Possession, and one part The Da Vinci Code and will appeal to bibliophiles and laypeople alike.
作者简介

Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone are a husband-and-wife writing team and authors of Out of the Flames, a Booksense 76 Selection. They have also written three books on their book-collecting pursuits: Used and Rare, Slightly Chipped, and Warmly Inscribed.

编辑推荐 From Publishers Weekly
The Goldstones, bibliophiles and authors of Out of the Flames and other books, offer a witty biography of controversial 13th-century Dominican friar Roger Bacon, whose Opus Majus "presented a way of thinking, of approaching science, that is virtually unsurpassed in the thousand years since its creation." According to the Goldstones, by challenging the accepted view of the Bible as the source of literal truth, it opened a schism between religion and science. The Church's response, recounted here, was filled with political intrigue, heroes and villains, and enough twists and turns to keep readers immersed. But 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. B&w illus.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist
In 1919, the discovery of the phrase "To me, Roger Bacon" in a centuries-old manuscript startled the antiquarian book trade. The world of cryptography also took notice, for the manuscript was in a still-unsolved cipher. Therein lies the historical detective story that the Goldstones tell. Essentially, 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. Regarding Bacon as a pioneer of empiricism in science, the authors' contrast him with logician Thomas Aquinas, champion of biblical revelation as the way to truth. Were Bacon's ideas too hot, hence the cipher? Leaving the question open, the Goldstones then relate a rather rambunctious chain of possession that links John Dee, the Elizabethan magus who might have found the manuscript, with its present owner, Yale University. In engaging, entertaining fashion, the Goldstones offer history readers an intriguing mystery. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

Praise for Out of the Flames

"I guarantee you won't read a more entertaining story this season – part biography, part history, part mystery, and part plea for justice."
– Peter Kurth, Salon

“Breezily entertaining…[Out of the Flames] gives Servetus the recognition he deserves as a martyr to the cause of free expression.”
– The Miami Herald

“Engaging….Enthusiasm counts for a lot in collecting, and the Goldstones have brought their share of passion to the exercise.”
– The Washington Post Book World

“Though once an influence on Voltaire, Jefferson, and Emerson, Servetus has received little attention in recent decades. This fascinating study should remedy that neglect.”
– Booklist

“The Goldstones offer both a portrait of an important but neglected Renaissance humanist and a testimony to the power of books to shape minds and hearts.”
– Publishers Weekly

“Out of the Flames is a fast-paced intellectual history that not only gives a fascinating lesson on the book trade but also skillfully navigates the crosscurrents of theology, politics, and science to give a portrait of an age when battles were waged as fiercely with books as they were with swords. A compelling literary mystery unfolds with impressive scholarship and sharp storytelling.”
– Ross King, author of Brunelleschi’s Dome

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Review

Praise for Out of the Flames

"I guarantee you won't read a more entertaining story this season – part biography, part history, part mystery, and part plea for justice."
– Peter Kurth, Salon

“Breezily entertaining…[Out of the Flames] gives Servetus the recognition he deserves as a martyr to the cause of free expression.”
– The Miami Herald

“Engaging….Enthusiasm counts for a lot in collecting, and the Goldstones have brought their share of passion to the exercise.”
– The Washington Post Book World

“Though once an influence on Voltaire, Jefferson, and Emerson, Servetus has received little attention in recent decades. This fascinating study should remedy that neglect.”
– Booklist

“The Goldstones offer both a portrait of an important but neglected Renaissance humanist and a testimony to the power of books to shape minds and hearts.”
– Publishers Weekly

“Out of the Flames is a fast-paced intellectual history that not only gives a fascinating lesson on the book trade but also skillfully navigates the crosscurrents of theology, politics, and science to give a portrait of an age when battles were waged as fiercely with books as they were with swords. A compelling literary mystery unfolds with impressive scholarship and sharp storytelling.”
– Ross King, author of Brunelleschi’s Dome

文摘 CHAPTER ONE


Turmoil and Opportunity:
Roger Bacon's England


ROGER BACON WAS BORN IN SOMERSET, in southwest England, about one hundred miles west of London. There are no surviving records of his birth—the evidence for the date comes from Bacon himself. In a work known to have been written in 1268 he said: "I have labored much in sciences and languages, and I have up to now devoted forty years to them." What he apparently meant by this was that he had started what today would be the equivalent of an undergraduate arts course in 1228. Since the average thirteenth-century boy started college at about fourteen, this puts the year of his birth at 1214. He lived to be eighty, so his lifetime spanned nearly the whole of the thirteenth century.
Bacon came from a family of wealthy minor nobles. His father held no title and was probably a product of the new and burgeoning merchant class, men who worked their way into higher society by accumulating cash, which was then used to purchase land and a manor house. The most successful of these could buy castles and conduct themselves as genuine nobility, knighting their sons, but Bacon's family did not seem to fall into this category. He had at least one older brother, to whom he refers in his writings, but neither was ever granted a title by the king.

Bacon remained throughout his life a product of the England of his childhood, an England in the midst of great change and rife with civil unrest that would soon erupt into full-scale war. The year after Bacon was born, the hapless King John was forced to sign Magna Carta and thus introduce the first glimmer of representative government into Europe. It was the very weakness of John and, later, his son Henry that created a vacuum into which political, social, educational, and, most significantly, scientific innovation rushed in. The most basic assumptions were challenged, the most fundamental truths rejected. So unfortunate was Joh
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