Voynich and Padua | Vat. lat. 3020: From Bologna 1406 to Padua 1407 With the Same Owner—Then Back Under a New One in 1429

A provenance chain becomes much stronger when the same owner appears on both sides of a move.

Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 3020 gives us exactly that.

The manuscript was copied in 1384 by a transalpine hand. On folio 156v, Francesco di Paolo Negri of Mantua records his possession in Bologna in November 1406. Less than a year later, a Paduan customs note dated 13 October 1407 still identifies Francesco as the possessor.

Then, twenty-two years later, a second Paduan note records a different possessor:

M° Guido conduxit in Paduam 29 maii 1429.

The same physical codex therefore gives us three unusually useful states:

Bologna, November 1406: Francesco Negri possesses the book;
Padua, 13 October 1407: the same Francesco still possesses it when the book enters the Padua customs system;
Padua, 29 May 1429: Magister Guido is now the possessor who brings it into Padua.

Vat. lat. 3020 is a near-perfect control for separating acquisition, same-owner movement and later ownership change.

Quick Read

Vat. lat. 3020 is a paper manuscript copied in 1384 by a transalpine hand.
Its main text is John Buridan’s logic.
Francesco di Paolo Negri of Mantua records possession of the manuscript in Bologna in November 1406.
A Paduan entry note dated 13 October 1407 shows that Francesco is still the possessor when the same book reaches Padua.
This is much stronger than simply finding the same title in two cities: the physical object and the named possessor remain continuous.
A second Paduan note dated 29 May 1429 records possession by a different master, Guido.
The manuscript therefore changed hands between 1407 and 1429.
The second conduxit in Paduam note also implies a new Padua-entry event, although it does not by itself reconstruct every movement between 1407 and 1429.
The object is not medical and has no direct Voynich content relevance.
Its importance is provenance mechanics: named owner + dated location + later named owner in the same physical codex.

Comparator Firewall

Vat. lat. 3020 is not evidence that the Voynich Manuscript was owned by Francesco Negri, moved from Bologna to Padua, or later passed to a Magister Guido.

Its job is methodological: it demonstrates what a strong same-object provenance sequence looks like when owner, city and date converge more than once.

The Manuscript Begins With a Transalpine Hand

The first layer already complicates geography.

The codex was written in 1384 by a hand described in recent scholarship as transalpine.

Its text is John Buridan’s Logica, a work belonging to the northern European scholastic world.

Then the manuscript appears in Bologna.

This is an excellent reminder that script formation, intellectual ancestry, place of copying and later ownership can all point in different directions.

The manuscript is already a traveller before Padua enters the record.

November 1406: Francesco Negri Owns the Book in Bologna

Folio 156v contains a possession note identifying Francesco di Paolo Negri of Mantua.

The note is dated Bologna, November 1406.

This gives us a strong ownership-state receipt:

physical object + named possessor + city + month + year.

That is already much stronger than saying the manuscript was “probably in Bologna” because of script, decoration or intellectual affiliation.

The object tells us where one possessor had it.

13 October 1407: The Same Owner Arrives in Padua With the Same Book

Less than a year later, a Padua customs note appears on folio 1r.

The note is dated 13 October 1407.

Recent scholarship explicitly states that Francesco Negri is still the possessor.

This continuity matters enormously.

Many provenance routes connect a city to a later city but cannot prove the same person carried the object.

Here we can do better.

1406 Bologna: Francesco possesses the book.
1407 Padua: Francesco still possesses the book.

The simplest and strongest reading is that Francesco moved with the same physical manuscript from Bologna into the Padua university environment.

We do not need an invented intermediary.

The owner continuity supplies the bridge.

Why This Is Better Than a Generic Bologna→Padua Route

Bologna and Padua were both major university centres.

Students and masters moved between them.

Books obviously moved too.

But “obviously” is not provenance.

Vat. lat. 3020 upgrades the route from general historical plausibility to object-specific evidence.

Route class: Bologna↔Padua scholarly mobility. Object receipt: Francesco Negri’s Vat. lat. 3020, Bologna 1406 → Padua 1407.

That is the difference the Voynich series has been trying to enforce from the beginning.

1407 Is Inside the Voynich Material Window

The 13 October 1407 Padua event falls inside the 1404–1438 radiocarbon interval associated with the Voynich parchment.

This does not connect the objects.

It tells us something independently useful about the manuscript world of the exact period:

a scholarly book could be in Bologna one year;
the same named possessor could bring it into Padua the next;
the Paduan administrative system could record the entry directly in the codex.

That gives the Padua hypothesis a real, dated, object-level transfer model.

Then the Chain Opens

After 1407, Francesco’s direct relationship to the manuscript eventually disappears from the surviving notes.

We do not know, from the two cited entries alone, exactly when he sold, gave, loaned or otherwise relinquished it.

This is where a careful provenance graph should insert an open interval rather than narrative glue.

Something changes between 1407 and 1429.

We know because the next named possessor is different.

29 May 1429: Magister Guido Brings the Book Into Padua

The second Padua note is explicit:

M° Guido conduxit in paduam 29 maii 1429.

By 1429, a master named Guido possesses the manuscript.

The same object is again being brought into Padua.

The new note tells us at least two things:

the book is no longer in Francesco Negri’s possession;
the manuscript has another Padua-entry event under a new carrier/possessor.

What it does not tell us is whether the book had been outside Padua continuously since an earlier departure, whether Guido acquired it shortly before 1429, or exactly who handed it to him.

The object fixes the endpoints.

The hand-off remains to be found.

This Is the Ownership-Change Receipt We Needed

Several earlier posts in this series prove that books could enter Padua repeatedly under different people.

Vat. lat. 3020 adds something particularly clean.

Because Francesco is named before and after the Bologna→Padua move, we can distinguish:

same-owner movement from 1406 to 1407;
later ownership change by 1429.

This lets us separate two processes that are often collapsed:

moving a book is not the same thing as transferring title to it.

Why This Matters to Voynich’s Missing Fifteenth-Century Hand-Off

For Voynich, we do not yet know the first secure fifteenth-century owner after production.

That means two different unknowns are hidden together:

where the manuscript moved;
when and how ownership changed.

Vat. lat. 3020 shows why those should be searched independently.

A manuscript can move with its owner and remain under the same title.

Later, the same object can change owner and move again.

A provenance chain that only tracks cities will miss ownership transitions.

A chain that only tracks owners will miss movement events.

The Better Provenance Data Model

This manuscript suggests that every historical state should be written with separate fields:

object identity;
date;
city;
named possessor;
carrier;
relation type;
evidence type;
confidence.

Then the 1406→1407 edge can be typed as:

same owner, new city, documented physical movement.

The 1407→1429 interval can be typed as:

ownership changed sometime before the next documented Padua entry; exact hand-off unknown.

That is much more honest than a smooth arrow.

What Vat. lat. 3020 Adds

A 1384 manuscript copied by a transalpine hand.
A named possessor, Francesco di Paolo Negri.
A Bologna possession state in November 1406.
A Padua entry state under the same possessor on 13 October 1407.
A second named possessor, Magister Guido, by 29 May 1429.
A second Padua-entry event under the later possessor.
A clean distinction between same-owner movement and later ownership transfer.
A model for preserving an unknown hand-off rather than inventing it.

What It Does Not Add

No Voynich owner.
No Voynich Bologna→Padua route.
No proof that Voynich moved with one owner before changing hands.
No exact date or mechanism for the Francesco→Guido transfer.
No reason to connect Buridan’s logic to Voynich content.

The Same-Owner Movement Test

Find manuscripts with a named possessor before a move.
Confirm the same possessor after the move.
Record the movement as a custody-continuity event rather than a transfer.
Identify the first later note naming a different possessor.
Search for sale, gift, inheritance or loan evidence in the interval.
Do not infer the transfer mechanism from the fact of owner change alone.
Apply the same separation to every future Voynich provenance claim.

Evidence Ledger

Known

Vat. lat. 3020 was copied in 1384; Francesco di Paolo Negri possesses it in Bologna in November 1406; he remains possessor when it enters Padua on 13 October 1407; Magister Guido possesses and brings it into Padua on 29 May 1429.

Strongly supported

The same physical book moved from Bologna to Padua under Francesco’s continuing possession, and ownership changed before the 1429 Padua entry.

Plausible

Guido acquired the book after it had left Francesco’s hands and subsequently carried it back into Padua.

Open

The exact transfer date, transfer mechanism, intermediary custody and full later route.

Unsupported

Any relationship between Francesco Negri, Magister Guido and Beinecke MS 408.

Research Sources

The Final Idea

Vat. lat. 3020 gives us something rare.

The book moves, and the owner does not change.

Then later the owner changes, and the book moves again.

Those are different historical operations.

The missing Voynich hand-off will only become visible when we stop treating “where the book went” and “who the book belonged to” as the same question.