What on earth, you may reasonably ask, is a Voynich “metatheory”? I use the term for a specific kind of Voynich Manuscript theory that seeks to explain more or less all its puzzling features by pointing to a single – usually surprising and/or counterintuitive – lateral step away from what we know (or, rather, what we think we know).
Because of the complexity of the manuscript, ‘normal’ Voynich theories tend to be a patchwork of simple explanations and tangled saving hypotheses (i.e. to try to explain why the simple explanations didn’t actually work): by way of contrast, metatheories instead assert that something really fundamental we tend to take for granted is wrong, and that all our confusions have arisen merely as a result of our treating the manuscript as entirely the wrong category of object.
In short, a theory tries to account for the difficulties we observe fairly directly, while a metatheory tries to explain away more or less the whole constellation of difficulties by pointing to (what it asserts is) a basic flaw in our mindset.
For example, Gordon Rugg’s hoax metatheory asserts that the Voynich Manuscript ‘could be’ or ‘is’ (depending on which journalist he’s talking to) a 16th century hoax (technically, a simulacrum) that was constructed at speed using sets of ingeniously-arranged tables and grilles: and hence that the entire statistical edifice of oddly-language-like textual behaviours that taxes Voynich researchers so greatly is no more than an incidental by-product of the hoax’s cleverly-structured meaninglessness. (It’s just a shame that the radiocarbon date for the manuscript’s vellum turned out to be a century earlier, or else he wouldn’t now look like a bit of a fool. Still, I did tell him so at the time. *sigh*)
Another long-running Voynich Manuscript metatheory is Richard SantaColoma’s 2012 proposal (having previously proposed various similar hoax theories) that Wilfrid Voynich himself created the Voynich Manuscript as a sort of fake or a hoax. Rich continues to write about this, and even gave a presentation called “Is the Voynich Manuscript a Modern Forgery? (And why it matters)” at the recent (2017) Symposium on Cryptologic History in Maryland. Here’s what he looks like:
As always with the Voynich Manuscript, broadly the same thing has been suggested numerous times before, e.g. Michael Barlow’s (1986) Cryptologia article “The Voynich Manuscript – by Voynich?”. But what has distinguished Rich’s presentation is his readiness to fight his corner against all-comers, even though the physical evidence, the historical evidence, the codicological evidence and indeed the palaeographic evidence each separately seems to weigh quite strongly against it. Oh, and the fact that Voynich spent so much time trying to get people to prove it was by Roger Bacon.
Anyway, given that so few people now seem to understand the actual nature of Rich’s hoax claims (and why refuting them matters), I thought a post was a little overdue. So here it is.
Not Probably, But Possibly
As mentioned above, the radiocarbon dating of the vellum points specifically to the early 15th century: to which Rich responds that there is some evidence that some forgers have sometimes used caches of unused old vellum as the support medium for their forgeries. So his argument runs: because some forgers have done this on some occasions, it could have been the case here too. And so the radiocarbon dating – though obviously opposing simple forgeries – cannot be used to absolutely disprove the suggestion that the person who (putatively) hoaxed the Voynich Manuscript.
Similarly, even though the codicological evidence directly implies that the Voynich Manuscript has been rebound and overpainted (leaving bifolios mis-coloured and out of context), Rich’s position is that this implies Wilfrid Voynich must have been not just a hoaxer, but a highly sophisticated hoaxer, deliberately shuffling the vellum bifolios and overpainting them to simulate what might have happened over time to such a document (had it been genuine). And, naturally, the more codicological details that you add to this list, the more sophisticated a hoaxer Wilfrid Voynich must surely have been, he would argue. Even though increasing the sophistication and complexity like this makes the hoax less probable, it remains a possibility: and the smaller the possibility, the more wondrous a deception it surely was.
The palaeographic evidence to do with the ultra-rare numbering system used to number the quires is a strange one: this specific (and rather cumbersome and impractical) system seems only to have been used for a few years during the mid-15th century in no more than a few parts of what is now Switzerland. Rich’s response here is that because Wilfrid Voynich was an antiquarian bookseller roaming Europe looking for rare books and manuscripts, he would surely have been well-placed to see such a system in action in the kind of rare manuscripts he regularly saw. Again, even if there is no evidence that Voynich himself actually bought a separate manuscript where this rare numbering system appears, this is a historical possibility that we cannot use to disprove Rich’s basic claim, despite its low intrinsic probability.
Despite the mathematical fact that multiplying two small probabilities together makes a much smaller net probability, Rich’s overall position as far as these contraindicating evidences goes is simply this: that if his proposal that Wilfrid Voynich faked/hoaxes the manuscript is correct, then the final probability that all these other things happened is actually 100%, however unlikely each may seem to an historian.
Some may say that this is a lot like explaining away the chocolate bar missing from the kitchen table as having been taken by hungry aliens who beamed it up to their mothership to eat it: but that’s perhaps a little too glibly sarcastic. Rather, I think the real situation is that Rich defends the possibility that Voynich faked/hoaxed his manuscript so avidly because he thinks that the weight of secondary explanations it yields balances out its net improbability, i.e. that the explanation’s high utility is in inverse proportion to its likelihood.
Document X
In my opinion, however, the place where Rich’s argumental train struggles to stay in contact with its logical rails is in its relationship with a complex of 17th century letters to and from Athanasius Kircher, that famously describe a document strikingly similar to the Voynich Manuscript.
In recent years, this set of letters has been documented and dissected in depth, from which prolonged study there now seems no doubt whatsoever that they are all referring to a single mysterious document (let us call this “Document X“) that was owned by Georg Baresch, passed to Johannes Marcus Marci after Baresch’s death, and then passed by Marci to Athanasius Kircher.
Rich SantaColoma firstly points out that we have no direct proof that Document X is the Voynich Manuscript, and that we should therefore be wary of assuming that the two are the same object. He further contends that in his opinion, the Voynich Manuscript was instead faked/hoaxed by Voynich specifically to make it resemble the description of (the presumably now long-lost) Document X.
For this to be true, it would seem that Wilfrid Voynich must have been aware of the contents of some or all of these letters in 1914 or before, so that he could design his hoax/fake to resemble their description of Document X.
However, even though Kircher’s thick volumes of letters were well-known during his lifetime (e.g. De Sepi’s 1678 description of Kircher’s museum in Rome), they were not listed in later Jesuit sources (such as Sommervogel and De Backer (1893)). Furthermore, the modern rediscovery of Kircher’s correspondence came about long after the Voynich Manuscript appeared on the world stage: until John Fletcher took on the mammoth task of reading and judiciously summarizing the more-than-2000 letters in the 1940s, there had been no more than passing mention of them at all since the 17th century.
For Wilfrid Voynich to have even seen these volumes would therefore have been highly surprising: and what is more, for him to have had sufficient time (and good enough Latin) to work his way through them enough to draw out the strands of the sub-network of letters around the Voynich Manuscript nearly a century before anyone else did is basically impossible.
Apologies to Rich SantaColoma, but there is therefore no way whatsoever that Wilfrid Voynich himself could have built up a description of Document X that would have been good enough to work as a template for him to use when (supposedly) forging/hoaxing the Voynich Manuscript.
Saving Hypotheses Aplenty
If that’s a bust, what other alternatives still remain open? Alas, the problem with imaginative historical interpolation is that there are almost always numerous ways to construct saving hypotheses to paper over the cracks in any wonky explanation’s wall, no matter how wide those cracks may be.
For example, it is possible that an entirely unknown group of people (let’s say, one or more 18th or 19th century Jesuit students) had access to Document X, and from that built up an entirely separate set of descriptions of it: and that it was this separate set of descriptions that Wilfrid Voynich had access to, which he used as the basis for his hoax/fake.
However, the way that the 1665 Marci letter (the one that Voynich said he found tucked into the manuscript) ties in so neatly with the rest of the 17th century Kircher correspondence then becomes very hard to reconcile. And so you would be left with the awkward conclusion that this unknown group of people must also have had access to Marci’s letter. In fact, I think you would be forced to conclude that this letter originally accompanied Document X, but that even though Document X was lost, the still-extant accompanying letter was inserted by Wilfrid Voynich into his faked-up version of Document X.
But this is starting to sound too unlikely even for Rich SantaColoma’s subtle taste for the barely possible. :-/
If you don’t like that, then another possibility could be that Wilfrid Voynich was shown (or saw) Document X itself (including Marci’s letter), but then created his own fake Document X while stealing Marci’s letter to attach to his own version… but this is all veering into the realms of the historically fantastical, and I don’t want to do Rich’s work for him. 😉
And So The Moral Of The Story Is…
In my opinion, what Rich SantaColoma offers up doesn’t really fall in the category of History, but is rather a kind of Debating Society take on historical certainty – for unless you can prove to him to his satisfaction that his argued scenario is impossible by his own criteria, he feels happy to announce that he has won the debate.
Moreover, because Rich seems to believe that the proposal that Wilfrid Voynich himself faked/hoaxed the Voynich Manuscript is itself enough to resolve all otherwise-difficult-to-explain issue, this is something against which he is happy to balance a homeopathically low level of probability, one lower than just about anybody else would consider acceptable.
Yet it seems to me from this that whereas most Voynich theories are based on some kind of psychological projection on the part of the theorist, there is something quite different going on here. Despite the sustained effort Rich has put into sustaining the dwindlingly small possibility side of his Wilfrid-Voynich-hoaxed-it-himself theory, there seems to be a thoroughly irrational component to the other half of his equation. That is to say: what exactly about the Voynich Manuscript would any modern hoax theory throw any light on? What would it explain about the manuscript’s strange text and hard-to-pin-down diagrams? How does the notion that it is a hoax help explain the intricacies of its patterns? If Voynich created it, how did he create it? But all such questions seem to trail off into an awkward silence.
Regardless, all the while Rich’s absolute-disproof-avoiding way of going about this is merely his idiosyncratic opinion, it is (of course) of no wider importance whatsoever: as always, people are free to hold whatever opinions they like, however odd or curious they may be. Given that we’re living in a postmodern world where even Stephen Bax is feted as a Voynich expert, rhyme and reason of the sort I happen to value would seem to be rare commodities indeed: so perhaps I’m simply a Victorian dad peering at Instagram and wondering why all the children depicted aren’t working up chimneys.
But if I were to be asked – as indeed sometimes happens – whether I think there is any merit in Rich’s suggestion of a modern hoax by Wilfrid Voynich, I would have to say: I haven’t seen any sign of it yet, and if I’d have held my breath waiting for it, I’d be long dead by now. Oh well.
Rich. There is, of course, one of those who do not read manuscript. I’ve already written to him several times. He knows it. So he started the new theory. That the handwriting is forgery. I am sorry.
I find that a common feature of…”interesting”…conspiracy theories is that they involve plotters who alternate at stunning speed between being astonishingly clever and brilliant and mind-bendingly careless and moronic. In the case of Rich’s theory, we are left with the residue of all those (at the time supposedly utterly compelling) comparisons to items consistent with the dating implied by his New Atlantis prop theory which Voynich was supposedly foolish enough to forget to remove when he decided to make it a faux Bacon mss. (after, mind you, simulating all those codicological manipulations). My arguments regarding how he represents some of the mss composition date vs C-14 dating studies he cites were given exhaustively on the mailing list — his statement at https://proto57.wordpress.com/2015/05/08/modern-voynich-myths/ that “When C14 tested in the 1970’s, several works were found to be made as many as 153 years after material creation” is objectively a gross misrepresentation of the results of the study he points to there for reasons I explained in exhausting depth — he is interpreting ambiguous peaks caused by kinks in the C-14 calibration curve as potential earlier dates for the vellum and treating those theoretical possibilities [*could have (abstractly, implausibly) been made as many as*] as certainties [*were found to be made as many as*) despite the massive relative amount of really old vellum lying around that would imply — people do not endless accumulate stocks of consumables rather than use the existing supply.
I appreciate the clarity of your post, Nick. Also had a good laugh at the image of Voynich destroying a genuine and valuable manuscript in order to make his own fake full of chubby naked ladies.
I don’t see Rich’s approach as greatly different from the majority.
His effort to persuade others that an idea built from untested preliminary assumptions IS the truth differs from the majority of Voynich storylines only in style of expression and the object of its narrative.
Rich follows the usual pattern of Voynich studies since 1912. He asserts something to be so, apparently without much care taken to so much as identify his own basic assumptions, let alone subject them to scrutiny before adoption.
He then hunts only for evidence which will lend that narrative an appearance of ‘plausibility’ to persons who, likewise, have not paused to examine the story’ fundamental premises.
Then, when challenged, his reaction is to begin to hunt for something which will excuse a perceived disparity between the testimony offered by the primary source and the scheme he wishes to be deemed (or voted) as ‘consensual truth’.
I really cannot see that Rich’s approach differs from many others, except in the smaller number of its adherents. I will say that he has overall been less vitriolic and less inclined to use personal attacks than have others when one mentions facts opposing his narrative (flaws historical, iconographic, palaeographic or cultural).
The best advice I think anyone could offer those who think one should first form a theory and then try to prove it (or at least to thoroughly smash any opposition) is this:
Be slow and careful about establishing the foundations.
Do not erect on that foundation any structure of greater weight than it can bear.
Do not hope to join two structural beams without secure connections.
If the house falls down, it should fall on you first – and long before others are invited to join you.
‘Maintaining the premises’ is only part of the work, and the last one at that.
signed
Yoda.
🙂
I hope this is relevant and of interest to you and your readers.
https://www.academia.edu/35034685/Ut_hkskdkxt_Early_Medieval_Cryptography_Textual_Errors_and_Scribal_Agency_Speculum_forthcoming_?auto=download&campaign=weekly_digest
Ut hkskdkxt: Early Medieval Cryptography, Textual Errors, and Scribal Agency Benjamin A. Saltzman University of Chicago Forthcoming, Speculum (2018)
If solving a riddle involves returning the obscured referent to a state of clarity, then what are we to do when we encounter in the margin of Aldhelm of Malmesbury’s Aenigma 100 a scribe’s solution that looks like this: ut hkskdkxt? Such playful cryptography was quite common in early medieval manuscripts, particularly in the context of didactic texts and riddles, but there is something peculiar about this example (and several of the others that surround it in Cambridge, University Library, Gg. 5. 35): it contains an error, a slip that has made it all but impossible for modern editors and…
Wouldn’t it be a good starting point for a theory to reject uncertain assumptions?
Unfortunately this is not what Richard SantaColoma is doing. Instead he is adding his own uncertain assumptions. Like many others SantaColoma just interprets something into the Voynich manuscript and argues that nobody was able to prove him wrong. The problem is therefore that he didn’t understand that it is on him to present proof for his theory.
Nick: Clearly while his hypothesis is possible the point is, as you mention, that it seems highly improbable.
However I wonder still, even after you have raised this point, if your energies and great analytic skill would be better applied pushing Voynich research forward rather than tackling outlandish theories.
I realise that it was important to address Gerard’s theory and it is difficult to evaluate which theories merit discussion and which don’t.
2 Perry D. Edwards
=Wouldn’t it be a good starting point for a theory to reject uncertain assumptions?=
1) I’m afraid if we reject uncertainties then nothing remains in case of VMS…
I’ve read somewhere the article named “10 properties VMS should *not* have” or smth like that. Nice article, but after reading it I suddenly understood why VMS is still undeciphered. Because if we take set of all theoretically possible solutions and start to remove subsets from it which “are uncertain”, “obviously wrong”, “don’t use stats”, “suggest hoax”, “suggest existing language”, “suggest invented language”, etc then we end up with empty set of solutions.
And it’s very nice that there are people who are capable of exploring different theories. At least they show us that some direction is completely wrong (sometimes they are not capable of admitting this, but that’s question of personalities). At most we will have the solution. Miraculously. Somehow. Some time.
2) Good starting point… For VMS even bad starting point is satisfactory:)
farmerjohn: if we reject uncertainties, we know nothing outside a few parts of mathematics. In the real world (and in the world of history in general), great uncertainty is the only place where we can ever start, and if we’re lucky / persistent / smart we eventually manage to move to a lower level of uncertainty. 🙂
Mark: I’ve put off writing the post for five years, it’s not as if it has been at the top of my list of things to do. 😉
Perry,
I’m afraid you’ve hit a nerve and I hope Nick will forgive my replying.
“it is on him to present proof for his theory” sounds like a lazy attiude to this study. Surely if you want to know whether or not the storyline being offered you is helpful to the study of this manuscript, you should be asking and answering any questions you have, yourself.
I don’t accept Santacoloma’s storyline either. Not because he has ‘failed to persuade me’ but because I’m in a position to recognise in the primary source’s imagery the reflection of certain ideas and depiction of certain objects unknown to western scholars until after Wilfrid died.
For a similar reason, though less emphatically, I reject Pelling’s version of the ‘fake book’ tale, too. Not because that bit of fictional narrative was spun unconvincingly but because the primary source prevents its being true.
I do not disagree with Rugg’s version of the ‘fake book’ idea. Not because he has ‘managed to persuade’ but because I know too little to have any chance of recognising or correcting his errors. I’m not ‘persuaded’ nor ‘unpersuaded’ – I’m just leaving that to people who know something about cryptology and text-generation. I do know the pictures aren’t fake.
Nick: Fair enough. I didn’t want to be confrontational. It just sometimes feels like not much new/distinctive research is being done.
My research may be erroneous or may not be, but it has given me an awful lot to follow up. So many theories feel like a rehash of other theories or variations on a theme. In my own case whether my theory is right or wrong I think I can say it is distinctive, particularly in terms of its initial approach. Whilst it certainly borrows something from your own research it had deviated, wisely or unwisely, significantly from that.
I think it would be nice to see theories which are quite distinctive and may be employing a uinque approach whilst not entering the realms of absurdity.
Note that I am NOT suggesting that your present line of enquiry in regard to astronomical block paradigms is lacking in value at all, but outside of that it doesn’t feel like much is going on. It feels like there are a lot of different angles to explore.
@farmerjohn: It makes a difference if a theory is based on observations or assumptions. In the first case you would say something like the manuscript must be fake since a radiocarbon test dates the vellum or ink into modern times. In the second case you are just saying it was not possible to disproof my assumtion that maybe the manuscript is fake.
Diane: I haven’t got a version of the fake book tale. What I presented in the post were examples of the kind of monstrous saving hypotheses you would be forced to accept if you pursue the idea to its logical conclusion.
Mark: there’s actually a lot going on, but I don’t have time to write it all up.
Nick: One thing that I don’t have time do, but as I mentioned, someone, not necessarily you, could do is track down where and also when herbal manuscript represent roots as animals. A very cursory look seems to indicate that this is a feature of Northern Italian or maybe just Italian manuscripts and possibly 15th century. (I will regard the drawing of Mandrake as an exception.) I may seem somewhat obsessed by geographical considerations, but I feel being able to narrow the broad geography even if a little mixed, for example Southern Germany/Northern Italy, is of great value. This renders theories of a completely different geographical basis appear less plausible though not necessarily impossible. So the more geographical markers we can bring to bear the better in my opinion.
Nick: We do not even need to be very strict about it. For example we might find that if a herbal manuscript has roots represented as animals is most likely to be of Northern Italian origin. However, as a hypothetical, there might be 1 Belgian herbal manuscript with roots represented that way. So with geographical markers we do not need to be strict, high probabilities are still useful especially when combined with probabilities derived from other geographical markers.
Mark, I have a great deal of research on the herbs that I haven’t posted yet, including timelines and examples that show commonalities for aspects that haven’t been discussed yet.
I also have a great deal of research on the paleography (the plants and text are my primary interests). But, as Nick pointed out, finding the time to write it up (properly and with appropriate arguments) is incredibly difficult.
Information that is easy to post and describe has already been presented by numerous researchers. What remains is topics that take a greater commitment of time to research and describe in a way that it is comprehensible to a lay audience. We are all “beginners” and “experts” in different disciplines, thus a lot of background information, and sometimes a lot of diagrams, have to be included to bridge those gaps.
I was somewhat rushed in composing my previous comment, so apologies for convoluted sentence structure…
I’ve met Rich; Rich is a nice guy; I admire the effort he has put into digging into primary sources. Criticism of a theory is not criticism of its proponent. I hope Rich realizes that and takes it that way.
The zeroth order problem I have with Rich’s current theory is this: given the manner in which he presents and defends it, it is unfalsifiable (the alternately brilliant/careless forger issue is a symptom of this). That doesn’t somehow mean it’s automatically *wrong*, mind you. What it does mean, however, is that there is little point in engaging with the theory itself.
Now, the “MS 408 is a 15th century document” family of hypotheses *is* falsifiable. That makes engaging with specific claims he makes in that regard of some value. Take, as an example, his list of the scattered dates put forward for the mss. pre-C14 dating by different people. Something (I think) Diane and I are in vehement agreement on is that there is limited utility in knowing *that* Person A claims X without knowing *why* Person A claims X. So (to pick a simple example) Strong’s claim for the date of the mss. is useless because it is rooted in his bogus decipherment. Dates rooted (sic) in supposed identifications of Western Hemisphere plants stand or fall on how sound those identifications are/were.
Those two paragraphs (I think) explain a lot of the dynamic of how critics of Rich’s arguments engage with him. It’s not missing the forest for the trees — it’s recognizing the futility of dealing with the forest rather than individual trees at all.
Karl
How far does a theory according to current knowledge and technology still hold? Everyone should think about it themselves and ask themselves, is that even possible?
The book itself gives many hints where I can not ignore, just so that a theory has continued. Sometimes you have to throw something away, even though it took a lot of effort to carry it together.
If you stick to facts and follow a theory without losing the thread, you will come to an end.
J. K. Petersen: A summary of your research findings or a write up of what you see as your most important research discoveries/conclusions would be sufficient at this time. You can point out to the reader that a justification of your conclusions will be published at a later date and so unfortunately a supporting argument cannot be provided. It seems to me that it is better to publish it in this form than not at all.
To-day marks 69 years with ‘many ups & downs’ for you Mr.Unknown Somerton Man, in your long wait to retrieve your God given name, and to earn your rightful place in His grand scheme. Not that you seem to have lived a productive or useful life above ground as you would no doubt concede; though your mortal sins are not for us to judge too harshly, lest we be judged in kind. A little more patience and all the waiting should be over Heaven willing, perhaps even sooner than some might like to think, so if you can hang in there for a bit, we should be able to put things right for you old chap.
Coming back to the more general topic of ‘meta-theories’ as defined here, and not specifically about the ‘modern fake’ theory, I fully agree that they tend to have numerous common aspects. Even though they are different. Let’s look at three or four of them:
– it’s a modern fake by W.Voynich
– it’s not European (more specifically not German), but rather Asian
– it’s meso-american
– it’s late 16th Century, meaningless, generated mechanically.
The first generic point is that they don’t explain anything that cannot already be explained satisfactorily. They don’t add anything.
(Having said that, the Cardan Grille theory at least attempts to explain the text properties that are not yet properly explained. However, it does not really work – only at first sight.)
At the same time, they are ‘attractive’, or ‘cool’. They might appeal to the media and to general opinion of people who lack the necessary background information about the MS to see their faults.
They also tend to ‘inject’ certain observations about the MS that cannot be explained by the ‘standard’ history, but only by the meta-theory. These observations are not ‘real’. They are not shared by the ‘academia’ (e.g. Beinecke, historians of art or science). Some examples:
– one of the circular drawings represents a microscopic creature
– the bathing ladies have mongolian traits
– many plants and animals in the MS are uniquely new-world species
As also correctly pointed out by Nick, all meta-theories are in contradiction with some or all of the strongest factual evidence that exists about the MS: the carbon dating and the references in letters.
For the meso-american and cardan-grille theories, the Marci letter is not an issue, but for the other two it is, so both need to deal with it.
One does it by arguing that it is also a modern fake, and the other that it was written while Marci had lost his memory. Both are untenable, but that doesn’t bother them.
Three of the four meta-theories are at variance with the carbon dating, but for the cardan grille that isn’t actually necessary. There is no particular reason why this could not have been done much earlier, since the method is not really an application of a cardan grille, and could also have been done by rotating cipher disks. I may some day write it up.
I only see one very major difference between these various meta-theories. This is that the meso-american theory tends to get the least attention of all in the various fora, but it is also the one that should be taken more seriously than the others.
The authors of this theory do not interact in the fora of the amateur community, but present it at conferences and are writing (or have already published) a book about it. They are arguing with professionals. These professionals do not care about any of the other meta-theories, again with the possible exception of Gordon Rugg’s Cardan Grille.
Rene: there is no obvious shortage of meso-american Voynich theories, sure, but I’m not sure I’d be comfortable classifying them as meta-theories – most seem to start by reading EVA k/t (which almost never appear as the last letter in a word) as Nahuatl’s distinctive ‘tl’ consonantal cluster (which almost always appears as the last letters in a word), and then go downhill from there, grabbing saving hypotheses aplenty as they go.
Rene,
I agree with your lucid explanation of these meta-theories, but I don’t really understand why the meso-american theory should be taken more seriously than the others.
If we take the carbon dating seriously, as I do, then any new-world theory is ruled out in the first place.
Dear Charlotte,
I did not mean ‘more seriously’ in the sense that it has a higher likelihood of being correct. In fact, this is not for me to decide, not for anyone else contributing here. (Although we can all have our opinion).
What I mean is that all the other ones basically only exist inside the bubble of the amateur community. The meso-american theory is much more present outside it.
The scientific / historical community is not reading any of the blogs, I am fairly sure.
Rene: …apart from Cipher Mysteries, of course. 😉
Nick – about fake books. Perhaps my memory deceives me, in which case I apologise. I had associated with you an idea that the manuscript had been faked in some way to make it appear a foreign book when it was not.
Rene:
While I fully appreciate your reasons for calling all theories save your preferred storyline a ‘metatheory’ perhaps a little more precision would be helpful.
Allow me..
1. “it’s a modern fake by W.Voynich” – this is an all-embracing metatheory, that we know is a metatheory because Nick says so in the post above.
2. “it’s late 16th Century, meaningless, generated mechanically.” Again, this is an all-embracing metatheory that can’t be bothered distinguishing between written and pictorial text, or discussions of vellum, hands and ink. We know it’s a metatheory because Nick says so, above, and because in other posts he has clearly and carefully explained for both experts and the cryptologically-impaired precisely why Rugg’s metatheory is flawed and his text-generation no key to the manuscript – not provenance, not interpretation… not anything.
3. it’s meso-american. What you mean by ‘it’ here? I do not think the Nahuatl argument was that the vellum wasn’t made somewhere in western Europe, nor the inks and pigments, but that the written text recorded the Nahuatl language in Romanised characters, and the pictures recorded the lives and practices of the Aztecs (or someone). Since we do have books with such a provenance and character, the proponents’ reasoning or evaluation of text and pictures may be mistaken (I’m sure they are) but you’re mistaken in calling this a ‘metatheory’. I guess the reason for mentioning it is just to ensure that your reference to all and any evidence, argument or position that disputes your preferred “it’s German” notion will be defined by implication as unworthy of attention. I suppose insinuation and implication are the only sensible weapons to use, since the evidence is solid and no-one in their right minds, I think, is trying to argue that the Voynich text is written in German… or are they?
Anyway, let’s break that other thing down; it’s a mess as it is:
4 “It’s not European (more specifically not German) but rather Asian”
Before I accept your assertion that there are some people who say ‘It’s not European’ – let alone swallow your insinuation that any opinion save ‘It’s German’ qualifies as metatheory, I would like a better idea of just what you mean by “IT” – do you mean the vellum, or the hand, or the inks, pigments, written text, first enunciation of the content in the written text, enciphering of the written text (if enciphered)… or what?
I could say the Book of Job isn’t European and be right, even if I were looking at a copy of it written in Latin and made for a crown prince of Scandinavia.
Which reminds me.. how do you define EUROPEAN? Obviously this is critical to our knowing just how much of a ‘metatheory’ you’re talking about. So do you count a work written in Arabic, in Muslim Spain, a ‘European’ work? How about one written in Ireland by a Jew? A Karaite in the Crimea … would they be ‘European?’ What about a Syrian brought back in the retinue of some French knight. Would something he wrote be ‘European’? Would it be a ‘metatheory’ if one believed the content in the manuscript to have come from elsewhere, but the fifteenth century manufacture to have occurred in mainland Europe? If you consider that a ‘metatheory’… well we have an awful lot of three dimensional, properly provenanced ‘metatheories’ in the British LIbrary.
.. not German…
Disputing your theory-of-preference is not equivalent to creating a metatheory. For definition of a metatheory, read the post above.
.. Asian…
Aldrovandi had a Ming bowl. Pegolotti happily wrote instructions for how to walk overland to China… Asian traders appear pictured in a certain Occitan manuscript.. Letters from China, and from the rulers of China are in the Vatican archives to this day. Mongols occupied central Europe for a while. Indian pepper was making the journey to as far as England – and brought by Radhanites – by the tenth century.
Are you suggesting there was some sort of customs barrier which prevented any of those thousands of people bringing other things into Europe? Marco Polo’s story was transcribed in Europe, too.
“It’s not German”. What isn’t German? The folio dimensions? The finish for the vellum? The hands? The written part of the text? The pictorial text?
What of the scholars who gave it as their considered opinion that the work was not German. (btw, who before 2000 ever asserted that it was ‘German’ and where did they set out the technical and historical evidence that led to that conclusion?)
4(iii) It’s not European… but Asian.
So you realise that Asia starts at the Bosphorus? What exactly do you mean by ‘Asian’ and why do you imagine that no material from an Asian source could have come without permission into ‘Europe’ – when in fact the Asian Mongols occupied central Europe and Pegolotti described the overland route even for Latins, who were taking it.
Are you defining the manuscript in terms of its content (pictorial? linguistic?) or its materials? the hands? styles of drawing? page layout? ,,,what?
… Do you think that if the vellum were made somewhere in mainland Europe, it could record nothing but pure expressions of some parochial European culture?
If an accurate map of the Chinese coast is included in a twelfth century work produced by a north African Muslim in Sicily under Frederick II, would that count as ‘European’ and ‘German’ ?
Or would it count as ‘Asian’ if the map showed a fairly good image of the emperor of China? (As the Vms does, by the way).
Taking advantage of Nick’s post to slip in a plug for your German theory by insinuation and association is quite clever in an odd sort of way, but for intelligent readers it doesn’t do your cause much good. An awful lot seem to be especially sharp. I know; some write to me to criticise my grammar. 🙂
It worth noting that 2 of Rene’s examples relate to the question of dating i.e. time.
And the other 2 relate to the question of geographical location i.e. space.
As far as the question of space goes this fits with my point about isolating a set of geographical markers. As anyone who knows my analysis will appreciate I think pinning down the geography associated with the manuscript is very important.
Thank you, dear Rene! I’m not so familiar with the bubble, neither inside nor outside, you must know.
Diane: even if I’m not so familiar with the bubble, I recognize that you really don’t miss the slightest opportunity to reject the idea of a German origin of the VMs with astonishing vehemence.
For a better understanding of your point, I’d like to ask you some questions.
1. Do you read German medieval manuscripts from the different German speaking regions in their origin and would you be able to transcribe them correctly?
2. Where in the VM is a map showing “a fairly good image of the emperor of China”? This is really intriguing me because I have never seen such an image. Could you please give me the number of the folio? Thank you!
Charlotte: When you talk about a German origin, the Germanic world is and I imagine was quite large at this time, so that sounds fairly non-specific. Are you thinking of a Southern German/Swiss German origin? Why do you think a Germanic origin is more plausible than a Northern Italian origin?
What do we have in the VM?
1. In some places we have German text. (Even the dialect is known to me).
2. Building, architecturally typical Central Europe
3. A castle, swallowtail, typical southern Europe (alpenrand)
4. Crowns. (Persons known, Central Europe) third crown known to me book year 1375. 2 crowns visible outside St.Stephansdom Vienna.
5. Clothing (Central Europe)
6. plants, 80% alpine plants, (medicine classic Central Europe)
Now should I include in America or Asia in my consideration?
Even if I bring my Fatasie to the attack, hard to believe.
And that’s just a small part of the reasons.
The way I interpret Nick’s definition of meta-theories is that it is not so much *what* they say, but rather *how* they are argued and defended.
One key element seems to be a preference of very shaky evidence that is in favour of the theory, over much more solid evidence that is against it.
I have been mildly reprimanded (implicitly) for not sticking my neck out, by not having a theory. I can live with that.
E.g. South Tyrol was – and is still – a German speaking region but (nowadays) belongs to (Northern) Italy. As to the Late Middle Ages ‘German’ and ‘Italian’ should only be used with respect to language, not geographically.
Thomas: Italian is derived from the Tuscan dialect, I believe, and so probably wouldn’t have been widely spoken in much of the area associated with modern Italy, at that time.
The use of the word “Northern” is necessarily vague; one could of course ask how far North is Northern?
Italy as country in its own right did not exist until centuries later.
So my use of the words “Northern Italy” was naturally intended as an approximate, but not precisely defined, area.
There is this thing with theories (I can’t recall atm if Rich calls his a theory or a hypothesis). Ironically, since around 1912 a theory cannot be proven anymore, it can only turn to become accepted, if enough of the predictions it suggests can be proven right.
I know too little about the greater contemporary knowledge of Kircher’s correspondence around that period, but a thought experiment about “the letter” seems possible: given that Kircher was widely regarded the sole authority on all matters “hieroglyphic” it is an acceptable thought that numerous people sent similar requests to him. So one could simply choose a circle of people known to have been in communication with Kircher in the right timeframe, and “give it a shot into the blue”. The chance supporting earlier correspondence to appear later on is not too small, and if not, no harm done. My ignorance could actually help in conducting such a test, had I the means & time at my disposal.
IMHO the argument that the earlier correspondence must have been known to a potential forger to be able to fake that letter is not a very strong one (it simply doesn’t disprove anything, see above).
A few peculiarities about the letter have been pointed out, one of which IMHO sticks out the most is the omission of the “friends” name, something which seems very uncommon for long term, long distance communication of that era (this has been noted by a historian, hence an expert, not my humble self).
And it still bugs me why it took Voynich such a long time to notice the letter tucked in the manuscript he obviously showed great interest in from the beginning.
It is funny as there is a lot of talk about the Kircher letter(s), but I can’t see that my theory or that of many others, though not all, would be any different if the letter referred to the Voynich or not. I can see its potential value with regard to the “hoax” theory and so of course in the specific context of this post. but in general there seems an excessive focus on it/them. I sense that they are spoke about so much as there a few agreed certainties when it comes to the Voynich and it is nice to have something, whatever it is, that is solid to hold on to. However I feel they are a bit like the biography of Wilfred Voynich. Now Wilfred Voynich’s life may be interesting, but it is not something I intended to study in a hurry as it unlikely to have any impact on my research. Similarly I must also confess I know very little about the Kircher letters as I haven’t taken the time to learn about them.
Mark: it’s OK not to know the ins and outs of the Kircher correspondence archives, as long as you know enough to be sure that they disprove all but the most outlandish (and improbable) modern hoax theory.
voynichbombe: the problem is that later letters refer to that letter. So it would have been very hard to construct a letter that slots into an existing network of letters (including dates, don’t forget) without knowing that that network exists.
Rene: it’s not my interpretation, but new words rarely end up meaning precisely what the originator intended. :-/
Diane: it is entirely true that I put forward the idea that the Voynich’s cipher system may well have been designed in such a way to make its covertext resemble an unknown language – but that is a matter of steganography rather than a hoax or a fake.
Similarly, I also put forward the proposal that its Herbal B pages might be machine drawings obfuscated to resemble plants. But that too is a matter of visual steganography rather than of hoaxing or fakers.
Quite a different category, in the end.
Is there any study on artificially designed scripts in medieval manuscripts? The only examples of such scripts I’m aware of are two of the alphabets in Mandevilles Travels.
I have a book, which title is “The Man Who Broke Purple” ‘The Life of William F. Friedman, Who Deciphered the Japanese Code in World War II” by Ronald Clark
A very interesting book. However, the deciphering was being done by his Friedman’s wife Elizabeth (Smith).
bd
Most recently, I’ve been reading a book about the purification of uranium (mostly being done in Saint Louis Missouri). Which ‘purification’ efforts eventually expanded to the extent of neighborhoods surrounding two dumpsites and the airport’s parking lot and runways. 50-gallon metal drums stacked two drums high under the Airport parking lot and runways.
Another very interesting ‘dumpsite’ is a huge boulder-covered mound — upon which visitors can walk the stairs to the top of the mound — to a historic museum.
Uh-hunh …. I don’t think so. Not me anyway. Not long after my birth, I was subjected to irradiation ‘therapy’ in the hope of closing my cleft soft palate. Then, when I was about three years old I had surgery to correct my crossed vision (lazy eye). Then when I was about ten years old I had CO-60 treatment, so long ago, I’ve forgotten the purpose of that experiment.
Nick,
Thanks for the correction. Point noted.
voynichbombe,
some of the points you raise are interesting questions by themselves. To answer them, or to see how they fit with one’s theory, one has to address both the pro’s and con’s, and not just look for an argument how they fit one’s own (meta-)theory.
It is indeed necessary to know a lot about the details of the Kircher correspondence to fully appreciate its importance.
At the same time, one also cannot take Voynich’s word for anything. At which time he really first saw the Marci letter, and whether his 1921 presentation was entirely accurate at this point, remains unclear.
About pro’s and con’s: while it seems odd that Kircher did not mention Barschius’ name, this would be equally odd if it was a fake, and the faker knew the name. (Rich’s theory relies on the fact that he did). So, if one looks at both sides, it is clear that this is not an argument in favour of either option.
Same with the multiple folds in the Marci letter. These could have been made on the blank paper before the letter was written, or on the completed letter after it was written. There is no way of telling. Just looking at one option is not valid. (Actually, the second is far more logical, but that remains a bit subjective).
In April 1996 I devised my own “Voynich faked it” theory, based on a spy novel. In summary: the real Wilfrid Voynich died in the Russian prison camp. The person that came to the UK was a Russian spy taking his name. The Voynich MS was a Russian product, with the aim to divert the attention of the UK and US crytpographic experts. When he got rich, Anne Nill was annother russian plant put at his side to keep him under control.
While I never took this seriously (of course), at the same time I decided it should be possible to figure out one way or the other what really happened. That was one of the things that drove me to research the history of the MS, in particular also the occasion of its ‘discovery’.
The nice corollary of this is that in 2012 (16 years later), Rafal Prinke made a presentation at the Villa Mondragone in which he showed:
– the time that Voynich disappeared from the Russian prison camp
– the time he arrived in London.
– the fact that ships needed more time than this to make the trip from Shanghai to Hamburg or London
So, what stronger evidence could there be for my spy theory? If I only looked at ‘supporting evidence’, this would have settled it.
There is an aura of secrecy in correspondence about the VMS (or what we believe to be correspondence about the VMS), but given the political climate, constant wars, charges of heresy, and the instability that always surrounds a “change in guard” (such as the transition to a new Holy Roman Emperor), it’s not surprising that details are scarce and names were not liberally dropped.
Also, if the Emperor Rudolf II did own the manuscript, and Jacob Synapius did perhaps pilfer it after the emperor’s death, it’s quite possible someone told someone to keep quiet about it.
Expanding on my thoughts about geographical markers. I think potentially marker frequency analysis could have some value.
So, for example, take the castle with swallow tall battlements, one could ask what the approximate frequency of castles of that kind would have been at the time period the manuscript dates from by geographical location by taking a crude look at castles we know of from that period with a sufficiently large sample. Then one could answer what the approximate probability that a castle with swallow tail battlements from that time period chosen at random would be in a given area.
Then combining that frequently map with the frequency maps produced by other markers would give one an overall frequency map with most likely an even higher frequency concentration and so an even more precise idea of likely geographical origin/influences.
Obviously this could be applied with other variables than geographical coordinates though other than time it is not immediately obvious to me what those other variables may be.
Mark: it’s just not a very fruitful way of proceeding, because any drawing is as likely to have been copied from a secondary source rather than from life, if not more so.
Another frequency thought. We could ask questions like: what is the probability the author was a merchant or a peasant or a politician or a cleric or ….? based on typical known authorship of other contemporary herbal manuscripts.
I am sure there are other interesting frequency questions that could be asked. Unfortunately answering these questions to the best of one’s ability requires constructing and analysing sufficently large samples of manuscripts etc. for certain properties which does need some time effort and dedication.
Nick: Good point.
First question how do you know that “any drawing is as likely to have been copied from a secondary source”?
Are you aware of any secondary source the drawing might have been copied from?
Obviously the castle was just an example of where frequency analysis could be relevant, but I would there are many others.
Secondly it doesn’t necessarily matter even if it was based on a secondary source. Supposing a drawing was copied from a secondary source one could ask what is the likely probability that the drawing in the secondary source was in a given location. Then there is the question of how far the copier would be from the place of origin of the secondary source i.e. how far the secondary source was likely to have drifted.
I should also point out that your own analysis implies that the drawing was made from life.
I do think it fair to point out in terms of frequency analysis that the Voynich manuscript is an extreme outlier in one sense given that it is an absolutely unique cipher manuscript. One could argue that it is probably an outlier in other respects such that frequency analysis of other properties would not be valuable. However I would argue that there is no strong reason to believe that it being an outlier in being a cipher manuscript would necessarily correlate with it being an outlier in other respects, though it might be in some instances.
Mark: I suspect it correlates more closely with the idea that we really have no direct idea what the rationale and need behind it were. As such, we should continue to exercise caution and restraint with our conclusions, however limited we think they are. :-/
Mark: the general source of the zodiac roundels I have explored in a number of posts, and there’s still a lot more to work through there just yet. Similarly, the ultimate source of the T-O shape + wolkenband combination seems to be BNF 565, though there seems a strong likelihood that one or more other manuscripts acted as intermediaries there. The nine-rosettes page is still a mystery as far as its sources go, however.
Nick and ants. So first. They are not rosettes.
Eliška of Rosenberg writes : (cola) , kola – Czech language). English language – circle.
Nick, look at whal’s written in the circle. Over the castle. I’ll show you what the word means. ( oqm ). Substitution = žít, Czech language.
English language ( oqm ) žít = ! lives !
Then the text continues. And there is the name of the castle.
And Eliška writes that she lives the castle. 🙂
Nick – as point of interest. The ‘T-O’ shape in Latin art is used to represent the three continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa in scheme, as a plane.
Later some illuminators tried to add a bit of three-dimensionality to the continents, but it was still a planar view and is the reason for that myth that the Europeans thought the world flat.
A ‘T-O’ look to an orb is seen, for a little while, but not in BNF fr.565 which shows a typical, and established form which mean ‘sphere’, whether as royal orb, floating ball, terrestrial- or celestial sphere.
Anyone who saw it would have ‘got it’ at the time and the orb with the curved centre line can be seen in astronomical works from a much earlier period –
in both Europe and in Islam we find it in manuscripts. For the latter in the twelfth century see eg. a copy of al-Biruni’s book al-Tafhim … (I taken that as example because it can be found easily (Plate 10 opp. p.415). in a book that I’d strongly recommend to any Voynich researcher wishing to offer opinions about the content of the manuscript’s images…
M.J.L. Young et.al.(eds.). Religion, Learning and Science in the ‘Abbasid Period (CUP 1990).
The text also includes a wonderful concentration of myth-busting material, otherwise scattered in separate papers and so forth.
At random…
“The scope of this [Islamic astronomical] literature has only become known during the past few decades .. Very little of the Islamic material was transmitted to Europe in the medieval period … and thus the traditional image of the Muslims as the torchbearers of classical astronomy to Europe is to be abandoned.” (p.274)
I hasten to add that the point being made by that author is *not* that classical astronomy wasn’t preserved and enhanced in medieval Islam – only that so very little of the Islamic astronomical learning reached the west, that it cannot have been the chief driving force behind the much-later European acquisition of classical works on astronomy.
About the sphere+cloudband combination. I’d be interested to know more of your saying that this originates with BNF fr.565. I expect it’s an end-result of someone’s assiduous hunt for earlier examples in Latin and non-Latin art (not just manuscript art) but finding absolutely nothing similar any earlier.
Is it possible to read that research?
Mark: If you follow this advice, (unfortunately only in German) you will find interesting.
1. Why it is a dragon and not a scopion.
2. Why the crossbowman and the dragon come from the same region.
3. Where swallowtail, gunner and dragon share the same place.
4. that the German dialect coincides with the place.
5. and that it is with great badness to a pharmacist book.
And finally, it fits somehow to the rosette
https://www.wien.gv.at/wiki/index.php?title=Singerstra%C3%9Fe_4
Diane: as far as the T-O / wolkenband combination goes, if you have a better concrete example to work with than BNF MS Franc. 565, I’d be interested to work with that too. Alas, none of your posts on the subject seems to have yet brought forth such a thing.
Peter, the VMS Scorpius-symbol is not a dragon-scorpio, it’s a lizard-scorpio. The dragon-scorpios were mostly from England and northern Europe. The lizard-scorpios were mostly from central Europe and France (I’ve posted a map of them). This is a generalization, but mostly holds true.
There were also a few turtle-scorpios (as in Hildegard von Bingen’s zodiac symbols). I’m guessing the turtle-scorpios might be modeled after the mythical tarask, which was part turtle.
If you look at a page-full of the Scorpius symbols, you get a sense of which is which. There is (or was) an actual lizard in Europe referred to as “scorpio” (I don’t know if it still exists, many reptiles and amphibians have gone extinct). In fact, when the colonists settled in North America, they quickly named one of the eastern North American lizards “scorpio”… maybe it resembled the one they knew in Europe or maybe they were using the word more generically to mean lizard, since they weren’t yet familiar with New World species.
Actually, only the two star signs, the Latin scorpion and the Greek serpent bearer overlap. No star sign without the other’s star.
The snake, Old German Lindworm, today referred to as a dragon, snake also a medical sign.
Lindwurm also mollusk or reptile. See Wicki
http://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/de/bbb/0088/11v
http://artsnataliia.weebly.com/my-art-blog/calendar-project-2017-horoscopes
http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=lansdowne_ms_383_f002r
On this link you can see the reason why the book ends so suddenly.
It was the Pleiades who made his life hell. 🙂
http://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/de/bbb/0088/4v/0/Sequence-27
Let’s look at meta-theories that are really ‘meta’. Let’s call the first theory ‘valid and genuine’. The idealized version of this theory is that the VMs was created within the range of the parchment dates and that it contains written information, in either a natural or encrypted form that can be reliably translated, interpreted and read by the researcher. That has yet to happen because of numerous difficulties, but genuine and valid is still the expectation.
In consideration of the difficulties found in the VMs, a century of proposed solutions that have failed, and a thorough investigation into the creation of forged historical documents and art objects, Mr. SantaColoma has proposed an alternative meta-theory, suggesting that the VMs is a ‘hoax’. In order to resolve the internal difficulties of the VMs, this investigation proposes an interpretation which is essentially the opposite of valid and genuine. The creation of the VMs is modern, its provenance is false and the intrigues of language are essentially moot.
This is a case of thesis versus antithesis. Can the ‘genuine and valid’ theory withstand the challenge of the ‘hoax’ theory? Can the ‘hoax’ theory replace the ‘genuine and valid’ theory? Or is there a alternative, a third meta-theory – something in the area of a potential synthesis?
A third meta-theory should help to resolve the problem of difficulties in the VMs. The general nature of these difficulties seems to relate to inconsistencies and ambiguities. And these qualities are anathema to the ‘genuine and valid’ interpretation and they are also the bane of forgery. Yet there are so many of them, these inconsistencies and ambiguities, in the VMs. Is there a potential meta-theorem where inconsistency and ambiguity might have value?
A general assumption of the genuine and valid paradigm is that the VMs is expository. As in any normal text, information is conveyed to the reader. If the author has something to say, s/he just says it. One expects straight-forward statements of fact and opinion in a general form such as x + y = z. But what if that is not the case? What if the VMs is not expository, but something of a contrary type that might be called ‘inquisitory’. Something that would make demands on the reader’s current knowledge, rather than attempt to expand it. Something that would follow the general form such as x + what? = z. Of course the reader needs to know ‘x’ and ‘z’ to begin with, and that has also been a persistent difficulty.
Now look at the investigation of cosmic correspondence from an inquisitory perspective. The VMs f68v cosmic representation plus what(?) equals the Oresme cosmic illustration of BNF fr. 565? The answer is: a scallop-shell patterned cloud band. Finding and joining the parts is a challenge created by the intentional use of ambiguity, in this case through separation of the elaborate cloud band (removed to the Central Rosette), and its replacement by a basic, nebuly line, cloud band.
The nature of the third meta-theorem is that the VMs is a puzzle created by intentional visual ambiguity, verified by the objective evaluation of traditional placement, and the primary proof is found in the dual interpretation on VMs White Aries. The trick in this puzzle is to see both sides of an optical illusion and to know what is seen.
I’ve always thought the Voynich critter like the ‘scorpion’ in Chartres’ north portal (west façade; archivolts) – though it’s such an obvious place to look for comparisons I’m sure others have often mentioned it.
Nick,
I agree, the problem is to find better comparisons for the detail in f.68v.
The reason for finding close comparisons is to narrow the hunt for where and when the manuscript’s content entered the Latin horizon (or, if you like, when it was first composed).
For that, what has to be matched is style as well as form, and by reference to all one knows already about imagery in this ms.
So if no exact comparison can be found (and the detail in BNF fr.565 is not a match), then at least finding close comparison for the style of drawing and each of the two chief components (orb-like sphere and surrounding liminal border) is the best means to narrow that search… I should think.
I’m looking at same time(s), place(s) and/or milieu.
Oh dear – sounds like Omar Khayam.
.. a loaf of bread, a jug of wine and a friend in the wilderness.
🙂
But even if Rich’s suggestion were correct, this still wouldn’t actually *explain* why the illustrations are as they are, or why the text is as it is. Or have I missed something?
D. if you mean the one with the dog-like face (long snout) rather than the one with the man face, yes, the tail is fairly similar, although it has three sets of legs rather than two. I’ve seen one on another church façade (French) that also has a curled tail, which has four legs.
What’s interesting about the lizard-Scorpios on the French churches (especially in northeast France, is that they precede the zodiacs in manuscripts, at least as far as we know (there might be some in private collections that are earlier than those generally known).
SirHubert: yes, that is essentially the irrational belief at the heart of his hoax theory – the idea that a hoax explanation magically explains all the awkward and difficult stuff away.
Diane: my interest is in uncovering the concrete way that ideas flowed into the Voynich Manuscript’s curious container – in my opinion, their ultimate origin in cave paintings or wherever is not really germane to this kind of task.
By the way, you should always look at both sides of Wiki, the English and the German. The differences in information are enormous.
Here is a sample:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tatzelwurm
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tatzelwurm_(Fabeltier)
Nick,
We have no way to know what ‘ideas’ are in the written part of the text, and without establishing accurately what the sense and intention of the Vms images I should think hunting for copies of Oresme is more a Christmas holiday than anything else.
To treat trivial, stylistic and clear cultural distinctions between two images is obviously not a great way to provenance the problematic one, as I’m sure you’ll see if you think about it. The reason we know that a sixteenth century Spanish picture of a solider is not a tenth-century North African picture of a soldier depends on paying attention to detail. To say ‘it’s a man with a spear’ in both cases, ignoring differences in form and content which are our signals to where when and by whom a picture was made, and the sort of significance it would have borne in that time, place and milieu.
You seem to think that the clear differences between form, style, content and context between the centre of the diagram in f.68v and the lavish image in the BNF manuscript are insignificant.. but by that reasoning ( ‘a sun is a sun is a sun’) you would see as reasonable comparisons the sun as drawn in nineteenth century Africa; in twelfth century Baghdad; in fourteenth century Paris and in eighth-century Caergybi.
Of course I’m not suggesting you may never have a break from researching the Vms; but mapping stemmae for Oresme’s text is a task entirely different and to suppose otherwise on the basis of a poorly defined ‘likeness’ between the detail in f.68v and that in the BNF would be a pity.
In the hopes that the Oresme-story’s path may intersect again with the Vms, perhaps you might keep an open for the signpost: ‘Imago Mundi… 11thC’. From my side, the matter is already written up, and I’ve mentioned in a recent post that there is a direct link between a manuscript copy of the French translation of Imago Mundi (on the one hand) and the work of John Gower (on the other) – and also that that manuscript links to the Duc de Berry, in whom Ellie has long been very interested – even before coming to the study of the Vms.
I do hope we’ll meet somewhere near crossroads before long.
Cheers.
Diane: what I’m trying to do is to understand the textual and diagrammatic contents of the Oresme text in combination with the specific drawings (not just the T-O + wolkenband page) that seems to have surfaced in the Voynich Manuscript’s ‘astronomical’ section, with the idea that doing so may reveal an entirely separate angle for us to collectively pursue. If this seems too tangible and empirical for your tastes, all I can say is that it makes sense to me: and so I disagree with just about every sentence of your comment.
Nick: “I suspect it correlates more closely with the idea that we really have no direct idea what the rationale and need behind it were.” – Don’t what I can say to that except obviously that is a creative use of the word “correlate” and the implication seems to be that we cannot really say anything about the Voynich. Caution and restraint are always a good idea as you say, but the application of this kind of approach given a sufficiently large sample looks to me to be of potential use. I will say of course I am no expert on historiography and the place of statistical approaches to historical questions.
It seems reasonable to assume there are some patterns and that the Voynich did not emerge from a parallel universe with no connection to our world, so there ought to be meaningful correlations. The fact that frequencies and probabilities are not certainties is one advantage of this approach as it is less rigid.
Where possible, and it often isn’t, I prefer objective statistics rather than subjective theories.
Your theory, whether right or wrong, as to what the source text for the Zodiac sections is one thing. However I think one can conveniently sidestep the question of origin whether the source text was Ramses II little book of Zodiac drawings or Nicole Oresme’s book. I suppose my question is the distribution of the design features amongst all contemporary, rather than source, documents to the manuscript.
As you well know I have my own idea what the rationale behind the 9 rosette foldout is. However I am perfectly happy to countenance the possibility that the overall design style was borrowed from another document; by that I mean the 9 circle 3×3 design and possibly the causeway design features, but not the contents. Though like the contents my suspicion is that the design style is largely original. Even though I have my own theory bringing more evidence to bear on more general questions adds value I think. And I have plenty of general questions I would love answers to.
As I mentioned before I am somewhat uncomfortable with the idea that everything had an exact source as it removes the element of imagination by our highly inventive author, but certainly one would expect aspects to be similar to those in other documents. Essentially it seems you are implying the author just compiled work from other texts without his/her own input.
I think one possible problem with the Block Paradigm/large crib approach is that it assumes there is a direct match with no element of creativity between the Voynich and the matching text. What point is there in enciphering something readily available elsewhere? You could then move towards the idea that the Manuscript is a copy of an earlier enciphered now lost manuscript.
To imagine that the 9 nine rosette foldout is a reproduction of another document seems far fetched to me. I can see that your line of thinking is quite different from what it once was and that is a good thing as formulating new ideas is what keeps pushing things forward. It does however make it difficult to appreciate what your current analysis precisely is.
Fair enough. 🙂
Nick,
To be honest, I got so bored re-reading the long blah from me (above, December 4, 2017 at 2:12 am) that I couldn’t finish it.
Also I just had a sort of wet-fish slapping moment – turned an ordinary sort of corner and dang… there I was dumped right in the court of France, 12thC.
Hadn’t expected that AT ALL.
(.. see post just up about ‘zodiac issues and others)
Mark: I have never proposed that everything in the Voynich manuscript has a direct source, but rather that in the few places that this seems to be a possibility, deciding not to pursue those leads (however slender) would surely be a triumph of ideological pigheadedness over common sense.
Nick: I am certainly not trying to deter you from persuing any leads whatsoever and I am sure you are doing valuable work in that regard. My point was that statistical approaches might provide us with a useful summary of the information out there. I don’t know how much data there is out there to work with, but I find the idea of getting a clear geographically sense from aggregate data of the origin of the Voynich very valuable. I would love to know what we can say about the authors of these kinds of herbal manuscripts; statistically what background did they typical come from and so on.
Nick: It reminds me of criminal profiling. Typically one hears on these true crime tv programmes things like:
Most likely male
Most likely 25-35
Most likely white
etc.
This doesn’t exclude the possibility that the criminal may not fit one of these bands, but it does give an overview of what one should broadly speaking be looking for.
Mark: I don’t know if any such horizontal study has been done or published – most tend to be narrow vertical studies (i.e. looking at a single manuscript), with a few heroic exceptions such as Minta Collins’ book, which tends to receive an unjustified amount of sniffiness.
Mark: one other point that I should make is that I’m not expecting to find a block paradigm match with a section of a well-copied manuscript. However, there are plenty of not-well-copied mss out there – and our ability to find those electronically is many times higher than it was in the mid-fifteenth century non-electronically.
Mark K wrote: “I don’t know how much data there is out there to work with, but I find the idea of getting a clear geographically sense from aggregate data of the origin of the Voynich very valuable.”
Mark, I don’t like mentioning (or posting links to) my blog on someone else’s blog, but in this case it’s almost impossible to respond to your comment without doing so.
I’ve posted a series of blogs on the zodiac-symbols and other aspects of the VMS that include maps. The maps pinpoint where each of the sources originated. Green arrows are for locations that are definitely known, buff ones for those for which the general region is thought to be known (by historians and bibliographers).
The whole purpose of the maps is to temporally and geographically locate probable VMS sources (and eventually, as the data accumulates, perhaps identify the source of the VMS itself). I put a lot of work into searching for examples and their sources (one has to go through many academic publications to find the dates and locations when the holding repository says nothing about it).
I haven’t had time to upload the whole series, but if you look at the posted maps side-by-side there are already some important temporal and geographical patterns. There is also a significant degree of consistency. Certain “styles” (such as crossbowmen as zodiac symbols) fade in and fade out, and there is a high degree of correspondence between when certain styles for Virgo, for example, coincide with the VMS styles for Sagittarius and Scorpio. Some of these patterns are explicitly pointed out in the commentary accompanying individual maps and others become apparent if you look at them all together (I have been assuming a certain amount of common sense on the part of the viewer—that it should be obvious that the maps need to be evaluated in relation to one another to see the bigger picture).
When I gather data, I look very hard for examples all over the world, so no assumptions were made about where I might find them. For the zodiac symbols, I looked at Tibetan, Chinese, Malaysian, Indian, African, Persian, and other documents even when I doubted there would be anything of relevance. I don’t care where the VMS was made, I only care about following the trail as honestly as possible, so the maps are not centered on Europe by design, the data shaped the maps.
I’m doing the same kind of research on the paleography. It’s needle-in-a-haystack work, long-term, and very challenging, but patterns are emerging from this as well.
J. K. Petersen: I have seen some of your website and noticed that you are doing interesting work, although I was not aware that you are doing the work you describe here.
I posted a comment against your Garden of Este post suggesting my very different interpretation.
My email address is [email protected]
Drop me an email as I think this will be easier and I will reply with some relevant info.
JKP
I’m not sure that you realise how little it assists your reputation to produce little diagrams and maps made of imagery which other people in this study found as a result of their own work, published even before your fairly recent arrival, and which others recognise as having been images offered in the course of detailed and entirely original exposition.
Now, I recognised several images in your map that have been part of Rene Zandbergen’s site for years – and might even have been discovered first by him. I see others which were first produced and discussed by Darren WOrley. Others again after the exhaustive searches by Don Hoffman – not to mention your presuming to take pictures from my own research – which was not just ‘controversial’ when I published my analysis of the archer and traced the origin of the standing figure to the region of Tiberius. No-one who has been involved in his study for as much as five years won’t realise that you have co-opted the results of others work, and by the simple means of saying nothing about your sources, tried to pretend that credit not only for the little diagrams but for everything in them, should be given you. In the end, you would earn more respect by granting it to others who broke new ground and added to our common knowledge.
J. K. Petersen: Did you discover where there were herbal manuscripts with plant roots represented as animals during the time period from which the manuscript dates?
Could you tell me what we know about the typical professions of the authors of this kind of manuscript?
Roughly what percentage of the authors of this kind of manuscript were men and what percentage were women?
Can you email me your distribution maps?
Diane,
We are all studying the same manuscript, so we are all going to run across the same sources eventually. As far as I am aware I am the only one who has been mapping the zodiac symbols and presenting them in this specific pictorial way for the purpose of geolocating (“triangulating”, if you like) their origins, along with their temporal associations.
As far as your research on the archer is concerned, what are you worried about? I didn’t copy anything you did, I did my own research, and my conclusions more than likely aren’t the same as yours since we disagree on almost everything. There is room for varying points of view. In fact, it’s better if problems are attacked from different angles. Scientists are still testing and retesting Einstein’s century-old theories.
Stop insinuating that I am stealing other people’s work. I am not. I believe that I am presenting a good percentage of new information, offered in original ways, that are of interest to other researchers.
If you truly believe only one person is allowed to discover an image and is not allowed to present it in a new and unique way, then there is a problem and it isn’t mine.
JKP, I have no idea which “several images” have been at my site for years, but please be assured that I have no complaints at all in that direction. Quite to the contrary, I appreciate your many interesting blog entries.
(It goes without saying that that applies to the present log too 🙂 ).
Diane,
your cheeky allegation of JKP having ‘stolen’ images from other peoples work (i.e. yours) is really far from any decent scholarly behaviour!
On your own blog you’re using images from public sources, and simultaneously you accuse others of doing the same? Absolutely no one needs your permission for publishing images as long as you’re not the holder of the copyright.
Btw, I’m not surprised that you don’t answer my questions about your expertise in medieval German manuscripts, and that hidden little Chinese emperor. So I take your silence for the answer.
Well, I guess I will go ahead, and one item at a time, I WILL be explaining EVERY ITEM in that rough draft, the so-called “Voynich” manuscript. I won’t be posting that ‘stuff’ on your sites (Nick and Rene — nor Diane’s). You all seem to enjoy the argumentation which evolves from contradicting each other’s ‘stuff’.
Long before I ever came across your blog, Nick, I had been visiting the monasteries up and down the West Coast of California. I started when I was 10 years old. Keep in mind that all of the California monasteries were established by the Pope in Rome.
Good luck with your contrary discussions.
bd
My objection is not to JKP’s using other’s work, but failing to make clear to his readers what, if anything, of what he was ‘geolocating’ was his own discovery.
If we are going to take specific issues, I may as well speak for myself, although my objection to such ‘sins of omission’ is an objection in principle, regardless of whose work has been mined.
Nobody involved in Voynich studies – from 1912-2013 had ever thought to conceptually track and map the figure of the Voynich archer to its origins, and then to date and track its emergence in Latin art.
I do not think it unfair to claim that work – which had never been done – as my own work. It involved a lot more than flicking through pictures on the internet: it involved historical, technical, archaeological and other academic papers (including, for example, technical scientific papers on the chemical composition of certain types of glass used in Opus Francigenum). My conclusions were that the type for the ‘standing archer’ had come into Latin Europe from prototypes of the 4th-6thC which existed in Palestine, and particularly the figure from Beth Alpha and S.Maryam. The former was more likely because … well, technical things to do with the red glass used in Opus Francigenum.
In other words, my bringing mention of the Beth Alpha archer into the context of Voynich studies was not casual, but as a result of fairly hefty research, conducted over a fair time, and then the results donated to ‘Voynicheros’ – in return for which I expected only that if the work were re-used, I should be acknowledged and the work credited.
It isn’t much, really to ask in return.
Now – JKP has incorporated the Beth Alpha image on his map… and is asserting that since “we’re all studying the same manuscript, we’re all going to run into the same sources eventually”.
You must forgive me if I suspect that the sources JKP “ran into” were my blogposts. Rene seems to have had a similar difficulty admitting that something in a diagram of his did not reflect any original research, discovery or knowledge of his own: it just ‘lifted’ mine.
Amateurs do not realise that such ‘sins by omission’ can adversely affect the scholar whose work they re-use without permission or acknowledgement. Apart from anything else, I should have the right to publish the fruit of my own work in other media, and in journals and so on, without someone coming across Rene’s little diagram, or JKP’s and a doubt arising as to who has imitated whom.
An amateur can make the excuse that they might one day have ‘run into’ the same matter; a scholar knows that this is not how we elucidate historical, iconographical or material questions.
Thanks for your patience, Nick. None of this comments on your post, and it’s good of you to allow the comments.
Diane, I don’t know how many zodiac or archer blogs you’ve done. I’ve seen almost none of your early blogs, I’ve only paid attention to some of the more recent ones. I don’t search for blogs on the Web, I search for primary resources like manuscripts, mosaics, sculptures, and paintings. Nick’s blog is the only one I visit regularly.
I found the Beth Alpha mosaic on my own. ANYONE who searches for the word zodiac on the Web sees it. It gets prominent search placement. I looked into the history of astrology long before I knew about the VMS so I was already familiar with historic astrology.
It is inevitable, even necessary, that the Beth Alpha mosaic be included in my blog about the history of zodiacs and the individual zodiac-symbol blogs because zodiacs originated with the Chaldeans, in the same region of the world where the astrological mosaics were unearthed.
For you to think that you have exclusive rights to talk about specific images from zodiac history is a little strange, and using Pelling’s blog to complain about it is unprofessional.
For some reason I decided to look for a good definition of ‘internet troll’.
The term seems to have gone out of fashion a bit, or else the net is flooded by automatic copies of minor news, like: ‘scientists have discovered a way to detect trolls with 80% accuracy’.
Anyway.
It turned out that this is rather on topic for Nick’s original post.
Troll type nr. 2 in the following link looks like a good profile for our meta-theorist.
Other types are also easy to recognise.
https://www.lifewire.com/types-of-internet-trolls-3485894
Rene: only five types of troll? *sigh* 🙁
Hi Nick, actually, the link has ten, but it seems a bit arbitrary.
Anyway, the type nr. 1 (The Insult Troll) includes:
“These types of trolls will often pick on everyone and anyone – calling them names, accusing them of certain things, doing anything they can to get a negative emotional response from them – just because they can.”
Rene: I must have lost the will to read any more after five.
To @nickpelling and anyone else who would like to look at some manuscripts.
I know of two more manuscript images with diagrammatic comparanda that I think you might be interested in. In the light of this discussion thread I would like to say that I’m not trying to have a theory or a hypothesis or anything like that 🙂 . I have seen that Nick is interested in a particular image and has asked for additional comparanda. I know of two manuscripts that he has not yet mentioned(?) and might wish to consider for his collection – Nick, my apologies if you already know of these items.
Manuscript 1: BL Harley 334, of particular interest: a diagram of the creation on f. 34v that has proportional similarities with the inverted TO-map discussed elsewhere, but not quite the same elements (I think it is water/earth, day/night); f. 11r, f. 29r, and f. 40v have inverted TO ‘elemental maps’ similar to those discussed elsewhere on this site; f. 57r has an interesting illustration of mermaids and fish; f. 73v has a volkenband/star illustration. There are also enough interestingly crenellated castle illustrations to start a whole new Voynich-conspiracy-theory splinter faction.
Images here http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Harley_MS_334
Manuscript 2. BL Harley 4431. Interesting illustrations: ff. 95v seq. multiple illustrations of heavenly apparations surrounded by wolkenband nimbi; f. 183r ladies! bathing!; f. 189v astral diagram, stars, wolkenband (clothed) women.
Digitised on the BL’s website here: http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Harley_MS_4431
Harley 334 has one of my favorite medieval images of gravity (37v) where hands on four sides of the globe are dropping rocks that metaphorically travel to the center of the earth.
It sometimes reminds me of the drawing of the “plummeting stone” on f116v. The context of 116v doesn’t seem right for a cosmology drawing (it seems more likely that it would be a kidney than a gravitational-force stone if the text turns out to be a charm), but I always try to consider what the page might have looked like if the drawings were done separately from the text/marginalia. The marginalia might have been added at some later date and worked into the available space, which means the roundish object with dots could be almost anything.
Hi Nick! Thanks for the mention. I appreciate that this field is open to much opinion, and that still, the Voynich might be many things… and accept that many will disagree with my Modern Hoax Theory (or 1910 Voynich Theory, as I official named it). But I wanted to comment and correct some misunderstandings about it, here, so that at least those who are reading this have a better foundation as to what I am suggesting.
“In short, a theory tries to account for the difficulties we observe fairly directly, while a metatheory tries to explain away more or less the whole constellation of difficulties by pointing to (what it asserts is) a basic flaw in our mindset.”
That part is accurate. I’ve seen a tremendous reluctance of the “mindset”… I’d call it the “Genuine Paradigm”… to properly understand the anomolies in the Voynich, and how they relate to frequent damning traits of known forgeries. It is a “flaw” which has kept the Voynich the mystery it still is to many. When that mindset changes… as it has, for some, the difficulties vaporize.
“Similarly, even though the codicological evidence directly implies that the Voynich Manuscript has been rebound and overpainted (leaving bifolios mis-coloured and out of context), Rich’s position is that this implies Wilfrid Voynich must have been not just a hoaxer, but a highly sophisticated hoaxer, deliberately shuffling the vellum bifolios and overpainting them to simulate what might have happened over time to such a document (had it been genuine). And, naturally, the more codicological details that you add to this list, the more sophisticated a hoaxer Wilfrid Voynich must surely have been, he would argue.”
No I would not argue that. I do not believe he was at all sophisticated. Rather, any opinion which sees sophistication in this work is incorrect, and being read into it. The rudeness of the images, the hodge-podge of influences of sources seen, are all a result of a low standards and ability. There are countless examples of this lack of sophistication, cited by many others long before me. One key example of an error (if we choose to acknowledge it, as I do, as an error to begin with) in “simulating” what might “happen over time”, is the marginalia. The last page marginalia is added to imply later interest, but in a very unsophisticated way, simply written in the same ink as the bulk of the text. Oops. And that the marginalia is all unreadable is damning: A sophisticated forger would have been better at faking content and styles, and so not needed, as this forger did, to make that marginalia enigmatic also.
But I consider the Voynich a very crude and amateurish forgery, not at all sophisticated, and for many reasons beside the example given above, and any opinions it is a sophisticated work are merely attempts to rationalize it as genuine: To make a forged round peg fit into a square genuine hole.
“The palaeographic evidence to do with the ultra-rare numbering system used to number the quires is a strange one… … Rich’s response here is that because Wilfrid Voynich was an antiquarian bookseller roaming Europe looking for rare books and manuscripts, he would surely have been well-placed to see such a system”
No, that is not my response. I believe the quire numbers are original 15th century numbers, and probably existed on the medium when found. See my Three Quire Theory: https://proto57.wordpress.com/2015/08/04/the-three-quire-theory/
“For Wilfrid Voynich to have even seen these volumes [letters of the Kircher Carteggio] would therefore have been highly surprising: and what is more, for him to have had sufficient time (and good enough Latin) to work his way through them enough to draw out the strands of the sub-network of letters around the Voynich Manuscript nearly a century before anyone else did is basically impossible.”
Partly correct… but it would not have been necessary for Voynich himself to see the Carteggio. But the letters were actually in the Villa Mondragone, where he claims to have purchased the manuscript in the first place. And it was an active Jesuit college, so I think it hard to imagine that decades of Jesuit professors, and students, were unaware that the stunning resources of their esteemed Kircher were not in thier possession. And then, Strickland, Voynich’s friend, was in charge of the place.. even having been a student there, himself, along with (at least one of his… if I have that right) brothers. It actually becomes a stretch to imagine that knowledge of the letters would not be known to the Jesuits, although not published publicly; and if so, that any mention of manuscripts not shared with Strickland’s friend and famous book collector, always on the hunt for them. Don’t we all give tips to friends? And there are more connections between the Villa Mondragone and Voynich, but you get my point here… it is not as simple a situation as you dismiss the notion with.
“Apologies to Rich SantaColoma, but there is therefore no way whatsoever that Wilfrid Voynich himself could have built up a description of Document X that would have been good enough to work as a template for him to use when (supposedly) forging/hoaxing the Voynich Manuscript.”
Well the descriptions in the letters are actually a pretty poor match to the VMs anyway. The Voynich only roughly matches them to begin with… “plants unknown to the Germans; stars; possible chemical symbolism; unknown script”. Those letters would describe a great many works these men were privvy to, and leave out so much they should have, arguably would have, used, since they were presumably very interested in having Kircher solve it for them: Naked women, Zodiac, constellations, strange animals… not to mention that it was signed by De Tepenencz. So yes it very roughly matches a very selective, and poor selection at that, of what would have first jumped out at a 17th century observer of the work… but for some reason I don’t think it deserves, others believe it a good description, and for that, if so, yes he very well could have been informed of it, considering the letters were in the Villa, and the value of the letters to the Jesuits, and his friend running the place.
“However, the way that the 1665 Marci letter (the one that Voynich said he found tucked into the manuscript) ties in so neatly with the rest of the 17th century Kircher correspondence then becomes very hard to reconcile. And so you would be left with the awkward conclusion that this unknown group of people must also have had access to Marci’s letter. In fact, I think you would be forced to conclude that this letter originally accompanied Document X, but that even though Document X was lost, the still-extant accompanying letter was inserted by Wilfrid Voynich into his faked-up version of Document X.”
I don’t find it “hard to reconcile”, because although I don’t think it at all unlikely that the letter (if genuine) could easily have been inserted in the wrong (genuine or fake) manuscript. I can cite many instances of this, even among Voynich’s works, and those of his associates. Letters are often “inserted” into the wrong book, either by innocent mistake, or to falsly imply a greater provenance in order to enhance trust, and therefore, value.
But you would also have to trust that the Marci letter is genuine. For me, the raft of problems with it fail that level of trust: https://proto57.wordpress.com/2015/09/11/the-1665-marci-letter-a-forgery/
“… for unless you can prove to him to his satisfaction that his argued scenario is impossible by his own criteria, he feels happy to announce that he has won the debate.”
Absolutely not. I have never claimed to have “won” any debate. I only urge people to properly understand my points and position, so that they can make up their own mind. So any “debate”, such as the one I’m entering into here, is not to convince, but to clarify and correct my own views, findings and opinions.
“That is to say: what exactly about the Voynich Manuscript would any modern hoax theory throw any light on? What would it explain about the manuscript’s strange text and hard-to-pin-down diagrams? How does the notion that it is a hoax help explain the intricacies of its patterns? If Voynich created it, how did he create it? But all such questions seem to trail off into an awkward silence.”
Rather than “silence”, awkward or otherwise, I have given my opinion on all you mention, and much more, many times, as I do here: If anything, I’m accused of being too wordy! And I always answer questions from my critics, when posed to me, directly or not. As for the very things you cite here are actually evidence of forgery, not genuine. Forgeries cause difficulties in “pinning down” meanings and origins; enigmatic intricacies, and so on. Genuine works are usually easy to pin down, because they are… well, “right”.
As for how he created it: My theory supposes he obtained the blank calfskin when he aquired the vast resources of the Libreria Franceschini in 1908, then he drew and painted on it, to roughly correspond with a work mentioned in the Carteggio, but to look as though it came from the hand of Horcicky while in the Court of Rudolf II. There you go! Question answered.
“But if I were to be asked – as indeed sometimes happens – whether I think there is any merit in Rich’s suggestion of a modern hoax by Wilfrid Voynich, I would have to say: I haven’t seen any sign of it yet, and if I’d have held my breath waiting for it, I’d be long dead by now. Oh well.”
I absolutely respect your opinion on this, and do not expect it to change (and please don’t die!). I feel the same way about your Averlino theory, too, as you know, and I doubt I would ever be convinced of it being close to possibly correct (while I admire and cite many of your empirical observations). But that’s what makes the world go ’round, no? It would be boring if we all agreed.
And Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year!
Here are some answers to the various comments on the post (and thank you for your interest):
Hi, Karl (you’re a nice guy, too, and thanks!):
“I find that a common feature of…”interesting”…conspiracy theories is that they involve plotters who alternate at stunning speed between being astonishingly clever and brilliant and mind-bendingly careless and moronic.”
First of all, I’m not sure how my Modern Forgery Theory is a “conspiracy”, as I only believe one person was “in on it”.
But as for needing a range of clever, brilliant to careless and moronic: No I don’t see this as being necessary. As I wrote in response to Nick, I think any idea that this rises to any level of sophistication is an opinion bred from attempts to rationalize it as genuine. As a fake, it is simply a poor one… somewhat “careless” is closest to your list, perhaps… with many errors which others refuse to acknowledge as such. Furthermore, I think this idea is also driven by an inability for some to realize they are capable of being fooled. Nobody likes being fooled. So then all that they believe the Voynich to be must be so great, and meaningful, and real; and then, it would take a very smart person to pull it off if it were all a fake. It is a matter of pride. No, I don’t think most of what people (endlessly) see in the Voynich was there to begin with. It is just a very poor, clumsy fake, wearing the “Emperor’s New Clothes”, so to speak.
“… his statement at https://proto57.wordpress.com/2015/05/08/modern-voynich-myths/ that “When C14 tested in the 1970’s, several works were found to be made as many as 153 years after material creation” is objectively a gross misrepresentation of the results of the study he points to there for reasons I explained in exhausting depth — he is interpreting ambiguous peaks caused by kinks in the C-14 calibration curve as potential earlier dates for the vellum…”
First of all, the rough age established by the University of Arizona (early 15th century) for the Voynich I do not argue with. But to your point: You are referring to my post which is linked to the “Myths” page, about the 1972 tests: https://proto57.wordpress.com/2011/05/13/c14-dating-of-parchment-testing-the-test-in-72/
The “peaks” have only been deemed “ambiguous” because the vellum samples used had inked dates written on them, and the dating was used to drive the choice of data. Likewise, the 60 year range in dates for the Voynich samples was reduced (“combined” into) to the “neat, digestible package” of 1404 to 1438, by using “assumptions” that the Voynich was made in a shorter time than 60 years, and that it used materials made in a shorter time than 60 years. My point is this (and often missed): This is the tail wagging the dog. We don’t, or shouldn’t, first decide what we want our data to tell us; and then cherry pick that data which fits our pre-conceptions. And this is admitted it was done! No, it does not change the major thrust of my claims either way, but it does in a subtle way: What was claimed to be a carefully assembled and chosen, and recent, selection of new calfskin; may very well be a random pile of scraps accumulated in some repository over decades. The data supports it, until modified to fit a preconception of genuine.
But as I said, this is not a pillar of my theory, so whether or not you are correct in dismissing my analysis of these tests, or their implications, is moot: Even if the calfskin was all created on the same summer afternoon in 1420, from sheep who were all dispatched that same morning, does not at all affect the theory.
“… despite the massive relative amount of really old vellum lying around that would imply — people do not endless accumulate stocks of consumables rather than use the existing supply.”
I’m sorry, but this is an erroneous assumption. First of all, it does not have to be a “massive relative amount”, in the case of the Voynich, so I reject that as an implication. But it is very plausible in this case, as Wilfrid was probably one of those most likely to have a sufficient amount, after his Libreria purchase in 1908: https://proto57.wordpress.com/2011/02/26/something-sheepy-in-the-state-of-denmar/
Hi Koen:
“Also had a good laugh at the image of Voynich destroying a genuine and valuable manuscript in order to make his own fake full of chubby naked ladies.”
So you know, and I’m not sure if you are referring to my theory, but I never claimed anything of value was destroyed. The pile of blank calfskin used, of the low quality used, would have had a very small value… while the resulting work, Voynich had valued at $100,000 and beyond… “chubby naked ladies” notwithstanding.
Hi Diane:
“Rich follows the usual pattern of Voynich studies since 1912. He asserts something to be so, apparently without much care taken to so much as identify his own basic assumptions, let alone subject them to scrutiny before adoption. He then hunts only for evidence which will lend that narrative an appearance of ‘plausibility’ to persons who, likewise, have not paused to examine the story’ fundamental premises.” and, ” … those who think one should first form a theory and then try to prove it.”
Well what can I say? I’ll try: Far from beginning with a premise, or an assertion, I have traversed many different major and minor ideas to “get where I am”. Whether one considers me correct or not, I mean (and either is fine, of course), I have followed what information I have uncovered and learned, and been tempered by my critics and supporters alike. As for “scrutiny before adoption”… if you can find another Voynich theorist who has weathered more scrutiny, on a larger stage, from more critics! And Diane, you know I look at all “evidence”… which again, got me where I am, and caused me to retreat from long-held theories, myself, several times.
Hi Perry:
“Like many others SantaColoma just interprets something into the Voynich manuscript and argues that nobody was able to prove him wrong. The problem is therefore that he didn’t understand that it is on him to present proof for his theory.”
Well it is true that no one can prove my theory wrong, but also, I accept I cannot prove anyone else’s theory wrong. But why you would think I “don’t understand” the need to prove my theory, I am not sure… because I am not claiming any proof, and never have. I am presenting a theory, a hypothesis, what have you.
Hi Rene (you knew I would get to you, no?!):
“At the same time, they are ‘attractive’, or ‘cool’. They might appeal to the media and to general opinion of people who lack the necessary background information about the MS to see their faults.”
Well on the contrary, Rene, it is I who constantly advocate for full disclosure of source material… and as you know, when found by myself, share it all. I almost heatedly pursue the ability of others to obtain the “necessary background” to form their own opinions, as you know, and don’t believe in censorship of ideas. It is a foundational principle of the voynich.net, of course. Many of the perceived “faults” of my theory, and those of others, are thought faults precisely because people are kept ignorant of the problems with the given story-line for the Voynich, in print and on the web. It is why I wrote my “myths” page, to counter that effect.
And I advocate for the release of the carbon dating report, which has not been done; and the multi-spectral imaging, too, among many other things. But in a broader, more dangerous sense, it is only through the pervasive projection of personal opinions as known, proven facts, that keeps people in the dark, and believing many myths about the Voynich. Faults? I consider it my part time job to point out the faults of the Paradigm, while my work and findings are an open book.
“one of the circular drawings represents a microscopic creature”
Many, not “one”, of the drawings have seemed to depict microscopic things, both by me, and many long before me. This is only one of many anachronistic anomalies to “genuine old”, and should not be dismissed.
“… all meta-theories are in contradiction with some or all of the strongest factual evidence that exists about the MS: the carbon dating and the references in letters.”
I can’t speak for others, but the claim that the carbon dating is in contradiction to my theory is a false one. Forgeries are often written on, and made from, older materials. As for the “references in the letters”, it is a very, very low standard of comparison which would allow anyone to be convinced these letters describe the Voynich. You can chose to do so, but I believe that a higher standard is necessary here.
“Same with the multiple folds in the Marci letter. These could have been made on the blank paper before the letter was written, or on the completed letter after it was written. There is no way of telling. Just looking at one option is not valid. (Actually, the second is far more logical, but that remains a bit subjective).”
Well I’ll be! Yes they “… could have been made on the blank paper before the letter was written, or on the completed letter after it was written.” And what does that tell you? This problem with the folds is a huge one: The folds in the other letters of the Carteggio are not like this; they are meant to fold the letter they are in, into a self contained envelope (as was the practice at the time). The seal tells us this is what the folds are MEANT to imply, but they do not work this way, and so should not have been “… made on the blank paper before the letter was written, or on the completed letter after it was written.” (number 5): https://proto57.wordpress.com/2015/09/11/the-1665-marci-letter-a-forgery/ Those folds are not correct, not made for the real or practical purpose they imply.
“I devised my own “Voynich faked it” theory, based on a spy novel. In summary: the real Wilfrid Voynich died in the Russian prison camp.”
Cool.
“I have been mildly reprimanded (implicitly) for not sticking my neck out, by not having a theory. I can live with that.”
But Rene, you do have a theory, and you vigorously and persistently defend it. But of course, by denying genuine/old/European/cipher herbal is not a theory, you are disingenuously projecting that it is established and factual, and at the same time, withdraw it from criticism. No, it is in the mix, as much as any other theory, as nobody knows what the Voynich is.
“This is that the meso-american theory tends to get the least attention of all in the various fora, but it is also the one that should be taken more seriously than the others.”
I take them very seriously, as I believe that Meso-American influences ARE in the Voynich… along with many others.
“It turned out that this is rather on topic for Nick’s original post.
Troll type nr. 2 in the following link looks like a good profile for our meta-theorist.
Other types are also easy to recognise.
https://www.lifewire.com/types-of-internet-trolls-3485894”
Well that was just plain mean, and unnecessary. Was that in the “Christmas Spirit”, Rene? It is true I am a debater, and enjoy debate, but it is in direct proportion to the erroneous claims about my thought process, ideas, claims and theories.
At any rate, although there are many points I’d love to debate and comment on, I think I’ll leave it for now. But I want to say I do appreciate the discussion, when honest and open, as much of the above is. I’d also like to say that the general impression I come away with… a subtlety that might be missed by many, who have not been “on the scene” as long as I have, is that, although the bulk of the above is in disagreement with my forgery theories, that still, much of what is being discussed is accepting and referring to things which were not known, or incorrectly known, before I started my work on this. That is, whether anyone is aware of it or not, this post, and the included comments, rather than setting back the idea that the Voynich may be a forgery, has shown that the “bar has moved” substantially, and it actually has come out of the shadows, and is realized for what it is: A reasonable, valid, plausible theory, to be considered with the others… whether after that, they are deemed correct or not, is not the point.
Rich: if you genuinely believe the quire numbers were originally added in the 15th century to blank sheets of vellum (for not even a microscopic trace of erased writing has been found despite repeated close examination by a long string of observers, myself included), then the quality of your historical reasoning would seem to be in inverse proportion to your prolixity.
That aside, a very Merry Christmas to you. 🙂
I’m not sure what you mean, Nick… I thought you believed the quire numbers were original, also. In fact it was from your observations that I originally thought they were authentic. And I don’t think anything was erased…
And of course quire numbers were sometimes applied to blank quires.
In what part are we disagreeing (never thought you would hear me say that, right?)?
Rich, be assured that the troll reference had nothing to do with you.
Merry Christmas!
Rich SantaColoma wrote: “I believe the quire numbers are original 15th century numbers, and probably existed on the medium when found.”
In the middle ages it was not common for books to be purchased or received in bound condition. If they were bound, they were considered “used” books.
The person who purchased them typically received raw sheets which he or she then took to the bookbinder. The bookbinder’s apprentice added the numbers and then the book was organized, bound, and trimmed (or trimmed and bound, depending on the amount of trimming needed and the style of book). Books were a luxury and those who purchased them usually had the resources to bind them.
Binding was not mechanized—it was done by hand. Sometimes later hands added contents and indexes (or added numbers to the contents) because even these were often left out of the originals, and the foliation was often in the same later hand as the numbers added to the contents.
Certain people were designated as foliators. Many of the Vatican, St. Gall, and Lorsch manuscripts were foliated by the same hands. Often the catalog numbers are in a different hand from the foliation (often the same hand as the catalog numbers on other manuscripts), so there is evidence of division of labor.
The VMS quire numbers are in a late 14th-century or early-to-mid-15th-century hand. The folio numbers are in a mid-14th-century to early 17th-century hand (probably earlier rather than later).
–
There is evidence of narrative discontinuity in the way the Voynich Manuscript is currently bound, in several sections, which means whoever added the quire numbers may have been guessing how it was supposed to be assembled. Either that, or whoever added the content ignored existing quire numbers (which seems less likely—ignoring the numbers would call attention to it and a forger doesn’t want to leave obvious blunders).
–
The printing press changed the book market in many ways, including the binding process.
The practice of binding books before selling them was uncommon until paper became more widespread and the printing press made books less expensive and available to a wider audience, a new market in which the potential buyer didn’t necessarily have the resources (or inclination) to have books individually bound.
Many of the folio numbers of 13th-century and 14th-century manuscripts are in pencil. Pencils didn’t exist and even those who had access to crude pieces of graphite did not use them to number quires and folios. They used gall ink. The foliation is often in numeral styles that didn’t exist in the century that the manuscripts were written. Clearly many of the numbers were added later, sometimes centuries later.
Quire numbers are uncommon (one has to search hard to find them), and folio numbers are usually in hands later than those used to write the text. Even if the quire numbers were on the VMS parchment before the content was added, the folio numbers are unlikely to be later than early 17th century. There is paleographic evidence to support this.
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There’s really nothing that stands out about the quire numbers or the foliation that seems inauthentic. It would be difficult to convincingly forge so many different hands (quire numbers, folio numbers, two sets of marginalia hands, and several hands for the main text) and to know the correct style to use for each time period. Even the main text, as odd as it may seem, has all the earmarks of someone familiar with 15th-century Gothic cursive.
Rich: why do you think quire numbers would ever be applied to blank quires? Why on earth would the order of blank pages be important? And why would someone want to bind together such unusual-shaped wide folios – just in case someone would want them that way four centuries later?
J.K. Petersen: Perhaps Ethel Lilian Boole (Mdm. Voynich) could indeed be a someone familiar with the writing style that you speak of and even the capability of replicating it in gobbledigook for a good historical joke. She was afterall a much better linguist than her quite capable hubby and being Irish by birth, the blarney stone repartease (sic) was probably never too far from her touch. only musing of course, but I am rather impressed with her left handed, reverse cursive, rather neat handwriting style, especially letters such as her ‘gallows’ style F for foxtrot.
I really doubt that considerations for explanations as to ‘why’ can be used in fair or worthy argument to support a case against forgery & utterance for VM at this point in time, as it’s not likely that an acceptable answer will come to light until we aquire more scientifically based absolutes. We are now at last able to ask the same question on things like the Shroud of Turin and Stonehenge for instance and be fairly certain that viable explanations derived from scientific research are within an acceptable range of credibility. The difference is that science has not helped get those other necessary answers such as how and what in relation to the so called Voynich Manuscript. If and when this eventuates, we’ll have reached a point where it will either be due for an appropriate name change, or to suffer the eternal indignity of being the Voynich fake medieval manuscript.
John Sanders,
an acceptable answer has long come to light. This is not changed by the fact that some people refuse to see this light.
On a more philosophical note, I tend to agree that in many cases, the question ‘why’ is not the most appropriate one. Not because the question is irrelevant, but because it is very often not possible to provide a satisfactory answer.
In this particular case, the question is related to Voynich’s possible motive for creating a fake MS.
Did Voynich have such a motive?
Really, this is an interesting question, and one that the ‘forgery’ theory cannot answer adequately. It quickly brings up major contradictions.
Such contradictions are typical for false theories.
Just an example: it is argued that Wilfrid Voynich created the MS on the basis of seeing the Barschius letter. Yet at the same time it is argued that the Barschius letter cannot refer to the Voynich MS as it is an incorrect or inadequate description of it.
Rich: have you also looked at the quire number on Q13?
Merry Christmas to you all ! Have fun on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve !
Beady-eyed wonder-r
U no hoo has divulged my full name (almost) — I forgive him . Have a happy new year sandy.
bd
And you too dear bd. There’ll be a little stuffed stocking placed in your honour beneath our little tree. It’s only an’ol imitation dougas fir but fair’nuf fer we prominantly non Christian Yiet trash. Chuc Mung Noen & Nam Moi Nuoc Ngoai.
@ Rene
Is there any indication from the monk of the pastor who gave the book to Voynich? I do not know, but it is said that it was property of the Vatican. Since the Vatican painstakingly documented everything, there would not be a record there? I know too little about the history of the VM’s path.
Peter, all you have to do is type “voynich.nu vatican catalog” into the search engine (Google, DuckDuckGo) and you can read all the history René has painstakingly assembled on his site. Or you can go directly there:
http://www.voynich.nu/history.html
Hi Nick: This is getting closer to our misunderstanding here:
“Rich: why do you think quire numbers would ever be applied to blank quires?”
Blank quires WERE numbered. They were often bound blank, then numbered, before being written on. This was not always the practice, but it was done. In fact, the next step after being bound would be for them to be pricked or lined, but sometimes they were lined before being bound. The fact that the Voynich is not lined further implies that the materials used were in some unfinished state…
Now don’t get me wrong, and to make it clear: Whether or not the quire numbers are original are not a necessary point to support or reject my theory. I only point it out because I was under the impression you and others thought them real, and so I point out “that’s fine”. It’s fine either way, my theory is inclusive of genuine quire numbers, or false ones, or simply added later and real. It of course does not matter… but it is also an interesting point for learning how this was made, and there are other damning implications to the nature of those numbers (I’ll add that to another comment, it is a tangent to this).
“Why on earth would the order of blank pages be important?”
It wasn’t, if you mean again, “why would quires be numbered”? What was important was having numbered building blocks to be used to write on. Could and was it done after being written on? Yes, it was, also. But again, blank quires were numbered. Does it matter if they were numbered, to my theory? No, so it is of side interest only.
“And why would someone want to bind together such unusual-shaped wide folios – just in case someone would want them that way four centuries later?”
Well I’m not sure why you think them “unusual-shaped wide folios”. You mean the largest leaves, used for the foldouts, in the Voynich? Those sizes “happen” to make full sized folios, which I suspect were cut down to make most pages of the Voynich, which of course are smaller. Recycling. The foldout pages are simply those pages not cut down, and so used as foldouts. Just a theory, but one which would explain the anachronistic foldouts which are considered highly unusual, even by the Beinecke.
“Rich: have you also looked at the quire number on Q13?”
I can, what do you mean?
About the issue as to whether or not the quire numbers are original… again, it is moot to my theory, but a matter of interest for tangential reasons: Learning how the Voynich may have been assembled. And for the information here, I have deferred to your work on the subject, as seen in your book. I respect that work.
But I now see that there are some additional points about this issue, which I found on you page: http://ciphermysteries.com/the-voynich-manuscript/voynich-quire-numbers
“Furthermore, there is very persuasive codicological evidence that before the quire numbers were added, the VMs had already had the order of its pages scrambled and had been incorrectly rebound by someone who didn’t understand its contents”
“2. The Voynich Manuscript’s Unusual Quire Numbers
Crucially, the VMs’ quire numbers may yet give us an insight into its very early provenance. These are of a form that has yet to be matched in any other document, a curiously awkward hybrid of Roman and Arabic numbers…”.
“Even though the original quire number writer was thinking in Latin ordinals (primus, secundus, etc), what s/he was actually writing was an ugly mixture of Arabic numerals and late medieval -9 Latin abbreviations… etc.”
“…four hands…”
“To my eyes, Quire Hand #2 looks (from the even ink flow across the ‘m’) to have been written with a fine metal nib [!!!!!!] by a later owner (aping the original numbering scheme and handwriting): while Quire Hand #4 also looks to have been added later (though by someone with no grasp of how the numbering scheme worked).”
“However, the big historical mystery is why no match to this unusual quire numbering style has been found in any other document. Can it really be that this cipher manuscript has had an entirely unique quire numbering style added to it, or might there actually be examples of similar numbering (perhaps not even used for quire numbering) in other documents, perhaps even by one or other of the same hands that appear here?”
“All suggestions welcomed (both for documents to examine and for sources to refer to)!”
OK I see that you have delved into this issue in more detail, and have given your opinions on problems with the quire numbers, as quoted above. So here is my “suggestion”:
When one sees such a mess of problems with content: anachronistic, the tools used (metal nibs?), a mix of styles and eras and “hands”, all at once, then I can only say that this is a frequent sickness of forgeries. Such observations as you have made, I mean, practically scream “forgery!”.
So again it matters little if the numbers are real, or part real, or contemporary to the calf skin or not… a Voynich forger could have cut up old full sized folios, which were found blank and bound and unlined but numbered into quires, or those numbers could have been added. Your observations are steering me to added now, but again, I defer to your judgement on this. I only suggest, as you welcome us to to, that the problems you observe point to forgery as the best explanation for those problems.
Rich: you say “When one sees such a mess of problems with content […] then I can only say that this is a frequent sickness of forgeries“. Sorry, but you are in no position to start running probabilistic arguments past me, when everything else you have proposed swims against the tide of probability. In the specific case of the Voynich Manuscript’s quire numbers, this is not content but commentary – and a messy commentary level speaks at least as strongly of a tangled set of ownership behaviours than of anything else: jumping from there to a forgery is still quite the leap of faith. While we can stick to actual facts, I think we’ll all be better off.
So: what you now seem to be claiming is (a) that, back in the mid-fifteenth century, the unusual quire numbers were added to blank quires (which is something I’ve never heard of being done, but perhaps you have evidence for at least one instance of this having been done by someone somewhere); and (b) that the later (hoaxed/forged/whatever) contents were added over the top of the quire numbers.
At this point, you’re entering the realm of layering (and hence codicology), so I feel able to make some kind of factual contribution that we might even be able to agree on. The issue about quire 13 is that its quire number appears to me to be layered on top of the drawing on that page, an arrangement which you contend must have instead been layered in reverse to the way it seemed.
Now, while I don’t currently have a microscopic close-up of the Q13 quire number, it’s certainly something that I might be able to arrange, particularly as it would be an empirical test of your specific claim (as well as something I have a particular interest in). If the Q13 quire number does indeed go over the drawing, is that the end of your theory?
Nick: Rich does say “Whether or not the quire numbers are original are not a necessary point to support or reject my theory.”
So if I understand him correctly, as far as his understanding of his argument goes this issue of quire numbers is not significant either way.
Don’t get me wrong his position does seem to stretch credulity, however I just thought it worth mentioning this as it seems to be certainly, in Rich’s mind, a side issue. I suppose it is probably best to address the meat or core of the argument as he sees it unless the quire numbers being added after the contents creates a different problem for his argument.
As it side issue it is frustrating that inevitably probabilistic questions remain crucial to the arguments we deal with. And we in practice largely rely of hunches as to what the probabilities we are. Whether this is the likelihood that quire numbers were before the writing of the manuscript or after. Whether this is the probability that the 9 rosette foldout is a map of not. Whether Antonio Averlino’s description of his book of secrets is such a close fit to a description of the Voynich that they are one and the same or whether there are many books of that period which would equally well fit a description of the Voynich.
I suppose in theory we could provide a statistical approach based on manuscripts of that period for which we can tell if the quire numbers were added after or before. So we can determine the frequency of one or the other and thereby determine the probabilty that any manuscript from the period picked at random is likely to have had its quire numbers added after or before. With the question of the map/non-map this becomes harder though there is scope for looking at the probabilities that any given feature fits with being a map or not; still there remains the question of if some features are more important than others and therefore demand a greater weighting. I think this becomes harder still when considering Averlino; I guess similarly one could subdivide the question into different properties of his book of secrets, but then we are faced with whether we can treat these properties as independent. Also again this requires a large and arduous survey of manuscripts of that period. So this is all very unsatisfactory. Nevertheless despite the effort involved there is a place very broadly for the use of statistical surveys to determine the frequencies and therefore probabilities of certain properties related broadly speaking to the Voynich.
Mark: what Rich is doing (in a very David Irving way) is trying to muddy the waters enough to prevent any actual interrogation of his theory. But all the while he is being specific about the codicology, this won’t work, because the layering is testable.
If the quire numbers (barring Q19 and Q20) are from the 15th century and yet the rest of the drawing is not (as he proposes), then this strongly implies that the drawing on Q13 should go on top of the quire number. If the Q13 quire number goes over the drawing and the quire number is original, then Rich’s proposed explanation is incorrect, because the drawing layer predated the quire number layer.
So it does rather cut to the heart of Rich’s claims, whether or not this is convenient.
Mark: as Rich demonstrates, probabilistic arguments would have to be stacked up to the ceiling before a true believer would take any notice of them. Yet the reason that codicology is such a powerful tool is that it is a kind of forensic examination, that lets us unpack the logical ordering of the layers. Whether or not the quire numbers were added after the text is a matter not of probability but of close examination, and that is something we can settle definitively.
Nick: Point taken. You are certainly more familiar with his research than I am and will almost certainly ever be.
All the ants.
Nice Christmas Holidays. 🙂
A pair of voracious flour weevils, Antonio, better known as Filarete throughout bugdom literary circles, and Gregory a virtually unknown Ada-mite Patriarch, were disturbed one cold Christmas eve in an upstate New York antequarian dodgy bookseller’s kitchen, munching their way nonchalantly through one of the special festive creations to be offered to geeky invited guests on the morrow. In some consideration of the coming Noelian celebrations, the culprits were thus offered one chance each for redemption. Should they be able to respond positively to a not so difficult book quiz they could go free; the alternative being a grizzly end to their filthy habits. The loaded question of course was, who was responsible for Bowdlerising of the Voynich Manifest, to which each promptly replied with the half expected “Not I Sir”, followed the the totally unanticipated, “It was most likely to have been Mdm. Edith, Master Wilfred’s old lady”. Just as the pastry chef was about to deliver his boot heel to the denying, accusing contestants for their treachery, a buzz from overhead interrupted the executioners blow, giving time for the evil pair to scurry back into the inner sanctuary of their large flour bin. The buzzing sound announced the timely arrival of a huge ugly gadfly, that had flown in from the horse paddock outside the open kitchen window. It quickly settled on the bald head of the cook and delivered a stinging bite to its intended target area, causing the cook to upend his prize festive pudding mix and screaming as if hit by the bolt fired from a medievil Sagitarian crossbow. As the giant stinging behemothe turned to effect it’s own escape, it made the following announcement in a loud, clear buzzing declaration that could be heard throughout all of Christendom and beyond. “I alone am the author of your crummy old bloody Voynich dizzzaster so there; and please to have a very merry Youtide y’zzzzall and a happy prosperouzzzz New Yearzzzz…… There’s no motto to this silly story perse, although the lesson might well be, if old Irish Ethel Boole wasn’t behind the manuscript, then my money would be on the lesser of the two weevils, Gregory of Kunwald who settled there with his flock of hippies, closeby the half ruined Lititz Castle Nth. Bohemia about 1456. He was a follower of Petr Celchiki.
Nick, ants, absent minded professors, Rene, JKP, Peter, Di, bdid1dr., Mark, Thomas, evowed Voynichagonists, unapologetic hoaxter metatherists, and fellow VM minows. Another year has slipped by with little to show in our respective efforts for a VM resolution. Our insistance that we personally are on the right track whilst the views of wacky hypothesists, be fit only for scorn, has deepened if anything, insuring yet another entertaining year ahead…. I trust that Christmas cheer might be enjoyed with families, puting the past year’s differences aside for the while at least, in true spirit of the season. My best to all who have cause to celebrate the birth of Christ our Saviour and others who might prefer to please themselves with simple indulgence instead. Good luck to all for 2019.
John Sanders: Brilliantly said!
Mark: Thanks for your kind accreditation. We don’t have too much to do with the xmas celibration where I live, so we misplaced persons (by choice), NB ‘do the best we can with what we’ve got’ for the yuletide season…VIsconti Sforza has provided a clue which you might find interesting regarding those seemingly misplaced five pipes protruding from the centre left Rosette. Without needing to elaborate, I’ll just give general reference to Wiki anors. The Sforza tarot card symbols and accompanying explanations of ‘five of pipes, wands, swans, staves etc.’ to see what you might make of it all. I’m certainly not into that tarot genre, however the mere mention of circa. 1430 to 1470 period of inception and the specific regional settings ie. Milan etc. piqued my interest. Numerous other card symbols like the Crayfish, the chalice, fountain, spotted dogs and vine plants that bare similarities with our common VM depictions are also quite interesting.
i have only had a Voynich publication for a few days and was drawn to the thistle pies on f.34v. A definition of Thistle pie led me to see the complete crude meaning of the plant drawing. I would have thought this would indicate, not Roger Bacon,
but a much lower origin, and the definition could indicate the language coded and maybe the country of origin.
Brian Edwards: Ah, memories are made of this, that and Roger Bacon..or was it Francis.