Hans Wegener’s drive-by guide to UB Heidelberg’s 15th Century German illustrated manuscripts…

17 thoughts on “Hans Wegener’s drive-by guide to UB Heidelberg’s 15th Century German illustrated manuscripts…”

1. J.K. Petersen on March 29, 2020 at 3:53 am said:

   Nick, the Alexander chicken-bubble is a diving bell.

   Quite a few manuscripts include this intriguing image (in various ways). I’ve also come across images of a guy underwater breathing through a straw. 🙂
2. Koen Gheuens on March 29, 2020 at 8:58 am said:

   Great post, Nick, I will definitely use this when my research takes me to these parts again.

   It really takes going through some Alsatian Mss yourself to appreciate how they handle their images.

   A small note on Jonah: when he goes in head first, he is indeed being swallowed by the whale. But when he is standing in the whale’s mouth, he is re-emerging. This is why he is usually shown praying (orans pose); it is his continuing faith in God that saved him.
3. nickpelling on March 29, 2020 at 9:28 am said:

   Koen: thanks for that note on Jonah, I included the images (of course) because of the nymph and the fish on f79v.

   What I gained from Hans Wegener’s book (and tried to get across in the post) was more of a high-level chronological view of 15th century German illustrated manuscripts – previously, I had tended to view manuscripts thematically, which obscured the bigger picture.

   Now I feel much more comfortable in saying that I strongly suspect that the Voynich’s zodiac roundel drawings were derived from an Alsace manuscript (probably a calendar), and that the source of a fair few of the other drawings was ultimately Bavarian manuscripts. But even so (and notwithstanding the radiocarbon dating), I would feel extraordinarily uncomfortable placing the creation of the Voynich Manuscript itself to the 1420s or even the 1430s – things like the elaborate albarelli in the pharma section still seem well out of scope for the illustrators I’ve seen.

   But maybe I need to look at lots more 15th century German illustrated manuscripts to broaden my mind yet further. 🙂
4. Koen Gheuens on March 29, 2020 at 2:16 pm said:

   I think it’s likely that the VM draws from a number of more-or-less contemporary manuscripts, probably a library. Manuscripts were often made as gifts for relatives or diplomatic connections, and copies ended up at different courts.

   So they don’t all have to be German. There is most definitely some Balneis in there, for example. My impression is that someone (without the confidence to draw from memory) hunted through whatever examples were available to him in order to compose the VM. It’s a bit similar to the way the Alsatian workshops used creative copying.
5. D.N.O'Donovan on March 29, 2020 at 2:35 pm said:

   Lovely images of fifteenth-century Germany, Nick. Everyone looks so warm and comfortable, and none but the dead, the dabbler and the allegorical figure are ever shown unshod in the post-1440 printed books.

   All the best in these troubled times to you Nick and to your readers.
6. nickpelling on March 29, 2020 at 3:31 pm said:

   Koen: there’s French too. So yes, we’re talking about a library containing manuscripts from all over Europe.

   Was this a monastic library? Personally, I don’t think so, though I do believe it travelled to Bohemia via at least one Swiss monastic library.

   As far as confidence goes, Mary D’Imperio wrote that she thought it was a manuscript drawn by someone primarily used to making technical drawings, and there’s certainly something of the jackdaw’s nest to its styling. 🙂
7. Koen Gheuens on March 29, 2020 at 4:46 pm said:

   I’m also not primarily thinking about a monastic library. Rather some wealthy person’s collection. Although I must say I have not yet studied the various types of medieval libraries and their typical extent and content.

   Are you aware of any efforts to link possible VM sources to known historical collections?
8. nickpelling on March 29, 2020 at 7:40 pm said:

   Koen: the only actual source book that has been specific enough to trace (and I tried) is Nicole Oresme’s Livre du Ciel et du Monde, but even that connection is still very far from certain.

   I suspect that the herbal page with two horse-like things in the roots will turn out to be a machine drawing that had been derived from Taccola’s winch drawing, but there were plenty of copies of that made during the 15th century, so that’s no use for library tracing.
9. Rene Zandbergen on March 30, 2020 at 8:08 am said:

   Years ago, I wondered about the Visconti library in Pavia. For one thing, it is generally believed that the Paris MS of the Tractatus de Herbis (the ‘Manfredus’ herbal MS 6823) was there in the 1420’s. This may have been a source of inspiration for the “oak and ivy” drawing in the Voynich MS.

   Now that’s several uncertainties already. For one, Toresella strongly doubts that the MS in the Visconti catalogue and the Paris MS are one and the same, and he has some good points. The main issue is that the Visconti catalogue describes the MS as “on paper”. However, the majority of this library ended up in Paris, so one can’t be sure either way.

   The Visconti library was open to visitors, so that’s also interesting. (Chaucer is one of the known visitors).

   I wanted to find out if this library also had a copy of the ‘Balneis’, which I would consider a good sign. However, the catalogues do not list any. I’m not too optimistic about this possibility anymore. Also, we don’t know how many other copies of the Tractatus existed and are now lost. If the Visconti MS was really on paper, where is it now?

   Two of the well-known Balneis MS’s were in the library of Alpfonso V of Aragon, in Naples, but that was after the time the Voynich MS was written. Who knows where they were before.
10. Josef Zlatoděj. prof. on March 30, 2020 at 1:02 pm said:

    Hi Nick.
    ….herbal page with two horse-like things in the roots….

    what party is it ? MS 408 ?

    Thank you.
11. nickpelling on March 30, 2020 at 1:51 pm said:

    http://ciphermysteries.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2018/10/voynich-horse-hoist-2.jpg
12. Josef Zlatoděj. prof. on March 30, 2020 at 9:20 pm said:

    Nick. unfortunately, there is not written about the machine. it says about love. and John II. of Rosenberg. and his birth. and the anniversary of his birth. that´s 5 May. the whole plant is the tree of life. with its fruits. children. important are numbers 4 and 6. sons and daughters. the flower symbolizes 5 May. number 3 symbolizes the birth of John, whon was born as 3 in the order of his father Oldřich II. of Rosenberg.
13. M R Knowles on August 4, 2020 at 7:12 pm said:

    Nick: Just wondering the extent to which we can say manuscripts circulated from region to region. Did Italian works/manuscripts often make their way to Germanic regions and vice-versa? So what I am wondering is the extent to which the market for texts in the early pre-printing era was international I.e. European or very much regional. More specifically can we say much about where someone viewed a manuscript on the basis of where the manuscript originated?
14. J.K. Petersen on August 5, 2020 at 12:40 am said:

    Mark Knowles: “Did Italian works/manuscripts often make their way to Germanic regions and vice-versa?”

    Yes. Northern Italy (Lombardy) was part of the Holy Roman Empire. Many Lombardic manuscripts are in Heidelberg and Munich repositories.
15. J.K. Petersen on August 5, 2020 at 12:42 am said:

    Also, university students traveled extensively. They would frequently earn their undergraduate degree at one university and their graduate degree at another. As an example, many medical students started in England and Germany and finished in France and southern Italy.
16. M R Knowles on August 5, 2020 at 2:40 pm said:

    JKP: Then the implications of that it seems to me are that we can say much less definitively about the place of origin of the Voynich. If we have imagery that is found in Italian, German or French manuscripts then it is quite possible that the author saw those manuscript, but not in the place of origin.

    It is often asserted that there are drawings similar to those in German manuscripts and therefore it must have links to Germanic regions, but it could be possible that the author was in Rome and just saw manuscripts from many other regions, but never left Rome.

    Now my own theory is one where the author was in Italy and German and French parts of Switzerland.

    Nevertheless do we see the same style of manuscript distributed throughout central Europe or do we see regional distinctions?

    If we can associate the sources with the geographical origins of the manuscript then we can say something about geographical origjns of the manuscript given what we know about the geographical origins of the sources. This often tends to be assumed to be the case by Voynich researchers, but is that a mistaken assumption?
17. J.K. Petersen on August 5, 2020 at 10:12 pm said:

    This is why I spent years tracing the origin and migration of the zodiac-figure symbols.

    I’ve written all this before in my blogs, but the VMS belongs to a specific subset that appears to have begun in northern France/Flanders in the early medieval period and migrated gradually to north-central Germany and the Alsace over a couple of centuries, and from there to other parts of Germany and Austria (Bavaria and Tyrol) and northern Italy.

    Unfortunately, this does not tell us whether the VMS creator saw old versions from France, middle versions from the Alsace or north-central Germany (the parts with Flemish influence), or newer versions from Bavaria and Italy, but at least it confirms that this zodiac tradition does exist, and that the VMS zodiac-figures are not out-liers, but have been influenced by a specific tradition.

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