It’s that time of year when a Voynich researcher’s mind turns to life’s most important questions. Such as whether it is possible to use Father Christmas to decrypt the Voynich Manuscript.
For a start, it’s entirely possible that there is Christmas-related imagery hidden in plain sight in the Voynich Manuscript, but we’ve just been too distracted by the details to notice them:
Before I go any further, I should say that I do know full well that what we now think of as ‘Santa Claus’ was in fact a 19th century faux-historical mash-up of loads of other stuff, and that he originally wore green clothes (not red). But I would – as spin doctors now tell us all the time – say that, wouldn’t I?
All the same, it’s probably safe to say that we would have zero luck using a 19th century cultural crossover to decrypt a 15th century object. However, we might have more luck with the layer that preceded him – by which I mean St. Nicholas.
This might be interesting because the zodiac roundel drawings in the Voynich Manuscript’s ‘zodiac’ section bear a strong resemblance to the zodiac roundel drawings found in early fifteenth century Alsace calendars (specifically 1420-1430, it’s all in the sleeves and the necklines). Hence I think there’s a reasonably good chance that what we’re looking at there is some kind of calendar – and the most important details written on calendars were feast days celebrating local saints.
If this section is indeed some kind of calendar (and it’s still speculation, remember), there’s a decent chance it was arranged not by zodiac degree but by month. But what day did the year start on in the 15th century?
Back then, this was not universally 1st January, not at all. In fact, as Rafal Prinke pointed out in 2001 (I quoted him in 2009), the Venetian year instead started on 1st March, while the Florentine year started on 25th March. The reason this is relevant is that the first zodiac sign depicted on a Voynich zodiac roundel is Pisces, which (though it astrologically / zodiacally starts in late February) was typically associated with March. (We are sufficiently certain of the folio order that we can be sure Pisces came first.)
So let’s make today’s educated guess: that the Voynich ‘zodiac’ section is actually a calendar of feast days that starts on 1st March. (It might even be some kind of wonky Cisioianus, nobody knows.) Does that give us a Father Christmas attack on the Voynich Manuscript?
Well… it might do. On the page for (according to our guess) December (it has a Sagittarius crossbowman roundel drawing in the centre), there are thirty ‘labels’ (attached to the thirty ‘nymphs’). And one of these labels might just be saying St. Nicholas, right?
As an aside: to my eyes, there are plenty of annoying (or at least slightly unsettling) details on this page:
- It seems that the labels were added in a different ink and by a different quill
- It seems that most (but not all) of the nymphs’ breasts were added by that same different hand
- Some of the nymph outlines were also updated with that same quill
- There’s a particularly badly drawn barrel outline added behind the top-left nymph just outside the largest ring
- There’s green paint contact transfer from the facing page BUT that would seem to imply that the now-missing folio immediately afterwards (Capricorn and Aquarius) was not there when the green paint was added. Which would seem to imply that the green paint (at the very least) was added some time (probably a century or more?) after the initial composition phase(s).
But, getting back to Cisioianus (feast day mnemonics), a German 15th century Latin version for December run as follows:
- December Barba Nico Concep et alma Lucia
- Sanctus abinde Thomas modo Nat Steph Jo Pu Thome Sil.
We can decode this syllable by syllable to reveal the list of feast days that the mnemonic was trying to help people memorize (with a little help from Grotefend’s 1891 “Zeitrechnung des deutschen Mittelalters“, p.35):
- De-
- cem-
- ber
- Bar- – Feast of St Barbara
- ba
- Ni- – Feast of St Nicholas
- co
- Con- Feast of the Immaculate Conception
- cep
- Et
- Al-
- ma
- Lu- – Feast of St Lucy
- Ci-
- a
- Sanc-
- tus
- Ab-
- in
- de
- Thom- – Feast of St Thome Ap
- as
- mo-
- do
- Nat – Nativ. Domini
- Steph – Feast of St Stephen
- Jo
- Pu
- Tho- – Feast of St Thome Asp (St Thomas a Becket)
- me
- Sil – Feast of St Sylvester
What immediate emerges is that if we’re looking for St. Nicholas in the 15th century, his feast day was actually on December 6th, neatly sandwiched between St Barbara (December 4th) and the Feast of the Immaculate Conception (December 8th).
Hence if the text on this page is some kind of Cisioianus mnemonic for December, we might hope to find labels in a sequence that looks vaguely like “Bar Ba Ni Co Con“. Now, I personally can’t see anything there that quite fits this pattern at all. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t there. 😉
But, sadly, this is just about as far as St Nicholas’ Christmas sleigh can carry us into the speculative world of Voynich research. Happy Christmas to you all! 🙂
Nick, I admire your venturing into the tanglewood of comparative studies of medieval Latin Europe’s liturgical calendars.
I recall that one Voynich writer, in about 2011 or so(?), tried to make a case for the ‘ladies’ being saints, though of course this present a major problem in that no precedent exists for christian saints’ being dressed so very carelessly as are some in the Voynich calendar.
However, if one label reads ‘Nicholas’ others should do, too and since this might be interesting to check, here’s a list of some/the ‘Nicholas’ figures and their feast-days in the Latin calendar prior to the 1960s shake-up.
———-
Dec. 6th. The St.Nicholas who cared for children and others (d. ca. 350 AD), and whose relics were brought to Bari in 1087.
May 15th. Nicholas, termed ‘the Mystic’ ( d. 925 AD).
July 24th. Nicholas Hermannson (c.1391), a poet, royal tutor, educated in Paris. A reformer. Reputedly canonised (that is, declared a saint) in 1414, but no proof of the process now exists so he is described as ‘Blessed’ not ‘Saint’. The ‘o’ in his surname has an umlaut.
October 1st. Nicholas of Forca Palena (d.1449) – died too late for the Vms’ date-range (1449) but I add his feast, just in case.
October 11th. Nicholas, a Franciscan friar, executed in 1227 with others of his community for having travelled to Ceuta and there attempted, contrary to the religious laws then applying in that town, to convert Muslims to Christianity.
That list, which I have from a book published in 1980 is just a starting point. Whether there is, or will ever be, a definitive comparative study of the calendars I don’t know. I tried, at one stage, to compile a comparative table for the years 1300-1420, across the Irish, English, Welsh, Scots, Flemish, Catalan, Occitan and various regions of eastern Christianity and found that these not only change by region, but may alter between one year and another, and within that the list is affected by whether a given ‘feast-day’ co-incides with a Sunday, or major fixed celebration.. in short, a tanglewood.
Anyone doubting it – try to find out which saint was celebrated on December 6th., 1250 in churches around Dublin, Ceuta and Norwich 🙂
I admire, sincerely, anyone who tries.
1) Let’s say for a moment that the VMS text is some kind of cipher.
2) And let’s also assume that some of the wheels (or maybe all of the wheels) have saints around them.
I think this is doubtful (that all the wheels have saints around them), but it doesn’t hurt to consider a variety of scenarios, so let’s say at least some wheels have nymphs-as-saints around them.
.
It isn’t necessary to figure out which saint was celebrated on specific days in specific countries. It is only necessary to work out how the cipher works in relation to two or three of them (or to anything in any section of the manuscript that might be encoded in the same way).
Then you read the names of the saints using whatever system was used to generate the text. You don’t have to guess them all in advance or even very many of them. You don’t have to be an expert in calendars, other than the basics. You only have to figure out enough text (from some part of the manuscript) to extrapolate to the rest of the text (or to a section that is ciphered in the same way).
.
We don’t know if the VMS is some kind of cipher. It’s most certainly not a 1-to1 substitution cipher.
We don’t know if there are saints around some of the wheels.
We do know that text from ciphered manuscripts can usually be deciphered if sections of it can be decoded and there is at least a modicum of systematic or conceptual similarity between the different parts.
If it’s not a cipher, then parts of it might still encode information in some way that can be extrapolated to other portions of the manuscript. If it is filler text then there might never be a way to prove what is around the wheels, because filler text could quite possibly be combined with filler imagery… something that is vaguely meaningful but not quite.
Most things speak for the bishop of Myra.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Nicholas
As one sees Santa Klaus today, one owes a Coca Cola advertisement around 1950.
JKP: I tried to take a topical approach to the VMs not to solve it, but to make visible the kind of hypotheses and evidence that are “in play” right now, i.e. the things you’d need to try to have a reasonable go at solving it as a multidimensional historical puzzle, rather than just as a linguistic or cryptanalytical challenge.
Diane: if (as the post tried to make clear) you can start with reasonable guesses as to date and place, maybe it’s not quite such a daunting challenge. Say, Venice 1400-1450, Milan 1400-1450, or Florence 1400-1450. There’s also the issue of the patriarchino vs liturgical calendar in Venice, but the basic idea is sound.
But I still think that the biggest crib of the lot will turn out to be not St Nicholas, but the Leo crowned nymph: http://ciphermysteries.com/2015/06/29/the-voynich-manuscripts-three-crowns
In the 15th century, there were four Feasts for St Mark (not just 25th April) in Venice, so perhaps it would take a bit of digging through Marin Sanudo’s Diarii to figure out if any of them fell in August.
@ Saint Nick
You write ” I tried to take a topical approach to the VMs not to solve it “.
Have the armadillos been replaced by reindeer in the new era ? That’s a question where it’s worth clarifying.
I’m very much in favor of looking at it as a “multidimensional historical puzzle” and I like the way you phrased it.
Nostradamus: I like where you’re going with this question. I just wish I was able to answer it. 😉
Nick,
I understand what you mean about “reasonable guesses as to date and place” but it depends on whether you mean … d&p for manufacture … or d&p for composition of the content.
Many past ideas which you accept as reasonably well proven, I find ill-founded and based more on inference than on evidence.
But I should hate the imposition of a monoculture to succeed in the manuscript’s study. Don-ning uniform is not enough to make true what is untrue. All it can do is delay genuine advance. Pluralism in conversation is my own preference – with milk and a little sugar, thanks. 🙂
Diane: my point was more that throwing up your hands when faced by difficult research areas is not my preferred option. Better to make solid guesses and explore the limits of the inferences you can make from them than to walk away.
Look at what George Smith did on his lunch hour. The Voynich is a lot easier.
xplor: Gilgamesh, eh? I think we have a quite different kettle of fishy problems. 😐
The Voynich manuscript was written by a man.
Gwaegeol: …but did he have a white beard and a flying sleigh? :-p
Why does Christmas have something to do with the VM manuscript?
You can recognize it by the calendar.
December is missing !
Simply too much stress ! No holidays…..no calendar month.
Now you could ask, why is January and February missing ?
Very simple, now the gifts are exchanged, that gives more work than in December.
I saw the kettle and the fish was dead.
Who is working on the dead regional languages ?
I count 16 in Italy
Nick, your mention of taking inferences co-incides with something I’ve been thinking about rather a lot, lately, in connection with the Vms and am sort-of coming to the view that since inference-taking is so natural to any human being, its value is highly debatable whenever the material being considered hasn’t some firm anchor in verifiable and relevant data. Otherwise, it’s so easy for the chain of thought to slip into the ‘narrative fiction’ mode.
This is the basic stuff of intelligence tests. e.g. after a series of images containing an ‘odd man out’ item, you are shown side by side an apple, an apricot, and an avocado. Some will then infer that the ‘odd one out’ is the avocado because they think it a vegetable but the other two are fruits; others may say the apple is the odd one and support that by saying the two have ‘stones’ or because the other two are summer fruits. But this arrangement is actually a random selection, and since there is no ‘group’ intended, the conclusions are erroneous because the initial inference – that there must again be an ‘odd-one-out’ – was wrong.
I think an awful lot that has been said, and is still said, about the Vms’ story and content is of the ‘wrong initial inference’ sort, but I’d be interested to know what you think. (I like Nostradamus’ thought – ‘St. Nick’ 🙂 )
Hope 2020 is good for all your readers, and you.
Diane: WOW; Still Hell West and Crooked with a university education to boot eh?. Nick the fruiterer to do the cherry picking right? and there’s always ‘Old Nick’ himself for the devils advocado guacamole. 2020 could be a great one for those who make their resolution to get with the VM 1910 (or thereabiuts) program..
Diane: narrative fiction is indeed the downfall of many Voynich theories, a tempting virtual cherry the human mind can barely resist placing atop any cake it bakes.
Yet at the same time, given that so few Voynich theorists seem to understand the difference between “genuinely explaining” and “explaining away” the evidence, the level of historical argumentation being put forward is woefully low. And the associated questions of what could, should, mustn’t and can never be considered “verifiable and relevant” evidence are things that almost all fail to hold in mind in any useful way.
So it’s not really a great picture from any angle you look at it. 🙁
Nick – surely it isn’t so bad with the cryptologists and linguists – or is it? None start by refusing to learn anything about the subject, or become indignant if it’s suggested they should acquire the basic (and not so basic) tools. Or have some Voynicheros imagined they could pull it all out of their own heads?
I’ve never seen the work of treating the Vms images as an historical exercise, but of course the historical, technical and other ancillary studies are an essential part of the work, since it’s no good trying to explain a tenth-century picture if everything in one’s head is twenty-first century thinking.
Maybe 2020 is the year when the fog will clear, the ground-hog day effect vanish, and the ‘burners of books’ repent. I’ll raise a glass to that.
Diane: my opinion is that the Voynich Manuscript presents a linked constellation of problems – cryptological, historical, linguistic, codicological, palaeographic, iconological, etc – but in a way that makes fools of people trying too hard to solve it from just a single angle.
I’ll happily drink to more joined-up thinking in 2020. 🙂
Maybe I missed the point, but:
1) December has 31 days (A quick goolge suggests it had 30 briefly about 700BC, then 29 until the Julian Calendar which made 31)
2) 24 – Nat – perhaps this is meant to be 25
3) I thought St Stephen (25) is on the 26th Dec….
4) St Thomas (Becket) is 29th
So is there a day missing somewhere in there?
George: thanks very much, that was indeed a miscopyfication on my part (Lucia should have been three syllables, bah), which I’ll fix when I turn my PC on later.
Good to know that I’m human after all. 😉
All fixed now, thank goodness. A single misplaced syllable skewed the rest of the month out. 🙂
Late as usual, but just googled voynich plus liturgical calendar and this post came up. I’ve got a paper to write on the imagery that is so complicated I don’t know if I’ll ever finish it, but it incorporates some of G. Koen’s work on Christian and Ovidian imagery, and my own on narrative themes, quintessence, alchemy, stigmata and the trinity. But without solving the text, should I bother, as it’s just one more interpretation, though I would argue well-grounded in context, and internally consistent? (And that crown as Barbara of Cilli’s fits right in, I would posit, as does some of the “shape” imagery also indicating Holy Roman Empire and perhaps even the Council of Constance). Regardless, since I’m now mostly convinced of a Christian – possibly Franciscan – element, I was looking at what methods of encryption a monkish scribe might use at that period. Apparently, Franciscan scribes did use their own codes but I have yet to see an example. Still, it occurred to me that some kind of volvelle based on a liturgical calendar would be consistent, and I happened upon some of them in the Duc DeBerry’s Book of Hours.
I imagine you’ve got a copy, so if you get a chance, take a look. The set-up reminds me of 57v, with the angled start/finish line for the astrological sign. Also, you’ll notice the sequences of moon shapes on the outside half-ring,, sometimes with gaps, i.e c-c, cc, c-c c, c c-c cc, etc., or if upside down, maybe the “sh” as a sequence. Plus the second layer includes a “d iii a i r” sequence, amongst other letters of the alphabet, that seems familiar! The inner circle is numbered 1 – 30, and so the sequences might indicate particular numbers that don’t bear any relation to “c”, for instance, having an immutable value.
So it occurred to me that even I, with no cryptographic knowledge, and I’m terrible with statistics, could quite easily use something like this to create an idiosyncratic code, particularly with a made-up script. The reader would need to know the year, and the horoscope sign/s, and the appropriate liturgical calendar would do the rest.
Do let me know if you’ve already considered this in the past, and if not, take a look! Long shot, but what isn’t? I’d sure appreciate your opinion on whether to rule it out or not!
Barbara Curtis: I’d completely forgotten this post, what festive fun I had writing it! 🙂
Anyway: to me, the Voynich Manuscript is a mountain with many different sides, so I can’t see anything to stop anyone from trying to climb it in their own way. You do you, that’s great.
The Cistercians had a special number code, as ably described in David King’s excellent (if insanely expensive) book “The Cipher of the Monks”. Which apparently the Nazis considered reviving (it says on this bit of paper here). But I don’t recall any specific Franciscan ciphers; and the closest I ever got there was wondering whether the Voynich’s claimed link to (the Franciscan monk) Roger Bacon might have somehow implied a link to a Franciscan monastery having owned the Voynich (i.e. prior to the Protestant Reformation):
* http://ciphermysteries.com/2016/01/07/franciscan-monasteries-in-switzerland-1450-1610
I have also posted numerous times on whether the Voynich’s astrological diagrams might in some way be encoding abbreviated feast names or mnemonics, along the lines of Cisioianus. Yet I have to concede this approach never quite reached Base Camp:
* http://ciphermysteries.com/2009/12/17/voynich-cisioianus-cipher-crib
* http://ciphermysteries.com/2009/12/18/pre-1450-german-voynich-possibility
* http://ciphermysteries.com/2017/08/05/brevarts-volkskalender-b-family-manuscripts
* https://ciphermysteries.com/2017/08/07/volkskalender-manuscripts-cisiojanus-feast-day-mnemonics
* https://ciphermysteries.com/2017/08/10/cisiojanus-july-voynich-crib
* https://ciphermysteries.com/2018/11/29/a-voynich-manuscript-pincer-attack-on-cancer
etc etc
Barbara Curtis: thanks for the timely reminder to wish our Coptic friends all the best for their Christmas. Maybe a tad late for luck in the New Year as well but, what the heck, why not? Merry Xmas and a Happy and prosperous New Year if it be appropriate in the Coptic calendar.
Barbara.
I feel for you trying to make a paper like that you describe. The most difficult part won’t be stitching together the various themes and items you describe but getting some non-Voynich-related specialist to pass the essay as one in accord with all else that is known of iconographic tradition and convention for the period, and region, and community to whom you ascribe first enunciation of these images.
So long as you stay within the ‘Voynich bubble’ you should be fine. But once you move beyond it, and try to argue that case in terms of the past six hundred years’ studies in cultural expression (including art), then you may find you’re expected to produce many more examples, and well informed commentary on such things as ‘the illustrative tradition and Ovid in western Christian Europe, 1000-1500’.. for a start.
However, I can suggest you begin with northern Italy. I’m preparing a paper/blogpost now in which I cite the Holkham Dante as example of a ms from a suitable time and place in which we see systematic disproportion in human figures.
Within the specific environment of Voynich conversations, the atmosphere can be very relaxed; all you need do is say nothing the majority will find difficult to believe. Beyond it, however, standards and strictures can be much higher, unless you find a publisher who won’t ask anyone but a ‘Voynichero’ to do the pre-print assessment for you, or skip the whole assessment stage – as some do.
Barbara. Don’t listen and don’t read what scientist Diana advises you. She’s been in “Bubble for a long time.” And so it stagnates for 10 years. Work independently and you can certainly do more than a lot of “Voynicheros”. Who are also in the bubble. Use your brain. And your good eyes. The manuscript has nothing to do with Italy. And so does scientist Diana. He advises very badly. (example: when it is written in the manuscript about Charles IV, for example. It should be very clear to every scientist and “Voynicheros” that it will be written about the land of the “Czech Crown” (Czech Kingdom).
The capital of the Holy Roman Empire was Prague. This is in the Czech Republic.
So you’re in Italy. It is bad. There were many excellent scientists of that time in Prague.
The manuscript is written in the Czech language. As it is written in his text. So find out how it was written in the Middle Ages. The manuscript also says: encrypted by Jewish code. Find out and destroy the “Kabbalistic system of gematria”. This is a system where each letter has its own numeric value.
Once you learn that, then you have a chance to decipher the text of the manuscript.
ps. Maybe a rabbi could help you. Do you know any rabbi?
I wish you good luck.
I’ll show you how to spell the word cipher. “ccq82o”. (šifro). 🙂 331827.