TheCodeBreakers
wonted success." Bars there were, but Kircher, who never shrank from
bragging of what he thought were his successes, did not burst through
them, for his silence on this point is eloquent.
Marci wrote that the manuscript had been bought for 600 ducats by
the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II. More of a scholar than a ruler,
Rudolf founded observatories for Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler,
established a botanical garden, and set up an alchemical laboratory to
which he invited numberless scientists. The presence of the manuscript
at his court in Prague was later proved by the discovery in a margin of
the autograph of Johannes de Tepenecz, a Bohemian scientist who was a
favorite of Rudolf.
Marci also reported the belief that the author of the manuscript was
Roger Bacon, the English Franciscan friar who lived from about 1214 to
1294. Bacon had speculated, centuries before they became reality, on the
annaabi.ee 
