While searching for the early 15th century German source images from which some images in the Voynich Manuscript were copied, we have so far found two manuscripts of the Welcher Gast (one from Eichstätt (1420), and one from Heilsbronn) that contain some eerily Voynichian motifs – a bird, a fish, and a child. But are there other manuscripts from Eichstätt and Heilsbronn dating to this period? I’ll start with Eichstätt…
Eichstätt manuscripts
If you don’t happen to know much about the town of Eichstätt, its two claims to fame are (1) that it holds the relics of St Walpurga (an 8th Century abbess of Heidenheim in Bavaria), whose feast is still celebrated today as Walpurgisnacht (1st May), and (2) that it held three phases of witch trials between 1532 and 1723. Oddly, St Walpurga’s name was invoked in the Middle Ages as protection against “plague, rabies and whooping cough, as well as against witchcraft”, which were often the subject of charms and amulets. According to Wikipedia, St Walpurga’s tomb miraculously oozes oil, which Benedictine nuns place in vials and sell to pilgrims. Nice.
As far as 15th century Eichstätt manuscripts go, undoubtedly the most famous one is Konrad Kyeser’s Bellifortis (1405). This contains a long series of drawings of instruments of war (some real, some planned, some historical, many just plain imagined), that Kyeser (who was from Eichstätt) produced for Ruprecht III (Emperor Palatine and King of the Germans).
After a long career all over Europe, Kyeser had not long before then been unceremoniously ejected from the Imperial court in Prague: the scribes who illustrated his high-class manuscript had themselves also been ejected from the Imperial court’s scriptorium, but had temporarily moved to Eichstätt (the details are unclear). According to Lynn White Jr, the link between Prague and the Bellifortis was made by art historian Augustus von Eye in 1871.
However, I have to say I’m really struggling to find many other illustrated manuscripts from Eichstätt from the first half of the 15th century. In fact, so far I’ve found only one…
UB Eichstätt Cod. st 212
The entry for Heidelberg cod pal germ 330 (Heidelberg UB holds three other copies of the Welscher Gast, don’t mix them up!) notes that Wegener (p.10) stylistically dates the ms to between 1410 and 1420, and that he thought its illustrations were by the same artist who drew the illustrations for Eichstätt UB Cod. st 212, the Eichstätter Evangelienpostille (a copy of a short 14th century religious work on the apostles composed by Ulrich von Lilienfeld).
The Eichstatt UB catalogue entry for Cod st 212 similarly dates that to between 1410 and 1420 (again citing Wegener), and notes that it was owned by Heinrich Gottsperger in 1425, who in 1427/8 became the Prior of the Dominikanerkloster Eichstätt (156v: “Iste liber fuit reuerendi patris et fratris Henrici de Monte Dei“).
Also: Cod st 212 seems (according to “Reform und früher Humanismus in Eichstätt: Bischof von Eych (1445-1464)”, ed. Jurgen Dendorfer) to have later been in the library of Bischof Johann von Eych. There’s also a useful 1913 monograph on this specific manuscript.
For Heinrich Gottsperger / Heinrich Gotzberger, there are (according to Spicilegii Friburgensis Subsidia, p.393) two manuscripts copied by him in Cologne in 1404 (Madrid I. G. 443 s.16 (“sic Catal.”), and Vat. lat 964), and one written in Esslingen in 1429 (Munchen Clm 26885 f.140-f.163). There’s a paragraph summarizing his life in David Sheffler’s “Schools and Schooling in Late Medieval Germany: Regensburg, 1250-1500”, p.241, plus more in Chapter 2 (not available online).
Note that UB Eichstätt holds various other books owned by Frater Georg Schwarz of Dominikanerkloster Eichstätt (Cod st 683-687 and 689), but these (according to Maarten J. F. M. Hoenen’s (1994) “Die Handschriftensammlung des Dominikaners Georg Schwarz (+ nach 1484)” are nearly all from 1450 or later (apart from a part of Cod st 683, which dates to 1417). This is nice because also on fol.156v of Cod st 212 is the following (dating to 1489):
“Felix Rosa Ave Tripudans Ethereo Regno
Gloria Extas Omnium Rerum. Inclita Virgo Salve”
OK, so it’s not quite as funky as the acrostic dedication in Hypnerotomachia Poliphilii, but it was a nice surprise nonetheless. 🙂
There’s a nice discussion of this in the introductory chapter of the 1913 monograph I mentioned above. This book also (p.6) quotes the second of the two articles (from 1801?) by ex-Dominican librarian W. (Apollinar) Nittermayr / Nittermaier / Nidermaier “Necrologium Eystettense Fratrum Praedicatorum, Pars I”, Eichstatt Diozesanarchiv B 151 and “Necrologii Eichstadiani fratrum Praedicatorum Pars Altera”, Eichstatt Diozesanarchiv B 152 (neither of which I could find online, but see 1186). Ultimately this seems to be the source which lists “fr. Henricus Gatsberger” (alias Gotsberger) becoming prior in 1427.
So… Where Next, Then?
Well, that’s indeed the question. If you accept Wegener’s dating, Cod. st 212 was made before Fr. Gotsberger even got to Eichstätt: hence I would perhaps like to look at Nittermaier’s book to find the prior priors, to then see if I can find other manuscripts linked with them.
But… this is a loose and fine historical thread to be reaching out to find blindfold, and I’d like to do much better. The underlying problem is that even though the BSB holds so many illustrated manuscripts, it has (unless you know better?) no obvious finding aid oriented towards geographic origin (perhaps because this is known only for a minority of manuscripts?).
Specifically, what I’d actually like to be referring to here is some kind of study of Bavarian illustrated manuscripts from the first half of the 15th century, along the same lines as the many studies of scribal houses in Alsace. I’m fairly certain that such a synthetic study must have been done several times over, but I’ve had basically zero luck finding anything close.
And so I share the question with you (slightly reframed). What historical research trickery can I use to try to find illustrated manuscripts from the first half of the 15th century from around Eichstätt in a systematic way?
searching for the early 15th century German source images from which some images in the Voynich Manuscript were copied..
there’s your problem, Nick.
You don’t know which way the copying went, nor the direction in which it went, nor whether both the German and the French comparisons being mentioned all relate to some as yet identified line.
I know you won’t like this comment, but if the aim is to rightly interpret the manuscript, other comparisons which have been offered need to be considered and the questions asked rather than presumed already known.
People holding a German or central European theory have hunted so determinedly for examples from that region that it’s easy to forget the great absence of balance or range in their data, and the deliberate refusal to consider any but theory-supporting information.
Sorry – and don’t bother with the usual shot-gun response. I’ll take it as read.
Diane: you’re right, I don’t know. That’s why I’m looking at the historical evidence, to see if I can find more context. And if I can do that, then I can start trying to understand the causality etc.
So… what I’m trying to do here is The Legwork, for everyone else to then slather their miserable theories and bullshit explanations on top of.
If there’s an alternative way of moving forward, I can’t see it.
BSB München has a search tool, https://www.bsb-muenchen.de/recherche-und-service/suchen-und-finden/, as with all DB searches you have to juggle around a bit, the only other way I can think of are the registers of mss. catalogues, starting with Eichstätt itself (v. Manuscripta Medievalia). I don’t know of a study of E. mss., but a look into the bibliographies of the E. catalogues should help
D.N. O’Donovan: “there’s your problem, Nick.
You don’t know which way the copying went, nor the direction in which it went, nor whether both the German and the French comparisons being mentioned all relate to some as yet identified line.”
So you think he’ll have a better chance of figuring it out by NOT looking into it?
Helmut: I’ve been raking over the UB Eichstätt catalogues, but the main route in for the kind of manuscripts I’m interested in seems to have been via Frater Georg Schwarz, and I think I’ve close to exhausted that angle. 🙁
The BSB search engine looked promising at first, but 75% of the mss it flagged were by Raymond Lull, and the other 25% weren’t very interesting. 🙁
Have you tried reaching out to the manuscript department ([email protected]) directly? The BSB web catalog is pretty sort on information, but they very well might have more detailed catalogs (such as the paper kind) that they use internally. And they’re generally pretty responsive in my experience.