Category Archives: Historical Ciphers

Back in 2012, I got (briefly) excited by the hypothesis that the marginalia on f116v of the Voynich Manuscript might well have been added in the library of a monastery not too far from Lake Constance, inbetween Switzerland and Southern Germany (and not too far from Rudolf II’s Imperial Court at Prague, where the manuscript appears to have ended up).

And then a few days later I got excited all over again by the follow-on hypothesis that this Swiss library may have been part of a Franciscan monastery. If the “bearer” who brought the Voynich Manuscript to Rudolf’s court (and to whom Rudolf paid the wondrous sum of 400 ducats) was himself/herself a Franciscan friar/nun, that might help explain its attribution to Franciscan monk Roger Bacon.

It’s a plausible story, sure, though not necessarily a highly probable one for the moment. But all the same, this might possibly give us a good idea for a brand new kind of haystack to rake through…

Franciscan Monasteries in Switzerland

St. Francis famously exhorted his followers to study in ways whereby “the spirit of prayer and devotion was not extinguished”: which makes it likely that just about every Franciscan monastery and friary we could consider would contain a library of some sort.

Indeed, some Swiss Franciscan monasteries had very famous libraries: Schaffhausen had a chained library (“Kettenbibliothek”, if you want to search for “Kettenbuch” in German). Here’s what the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana later looked like (a little later) with all its chained books:

Chaining books actually freed them, by making them available to more people to study: so it’s entirely possible that the Voynich Manuscript had a chained wooden cover for part of its pre-Rudolfine life. Here’s what an individual Kettenbuch from 1484 looks like:-

The Schaffhausen Ministerialbibliothek was (if I translate the nice German account of it here correctly) formed in 1540, manuscripts mainly from the Benedictine Allerheiligen (All Saints) monastery library, but also “eight manuscripts and six incunabula” from the Franciscan chained library (formed in 1509). Books (such as Erasmus’ Omnia Opera) were added from 1540 onwards.

How do we know this? Because of a library catalogue (“Chronik der Stadt und Landschaft Schaffhausen”) prepared by Johann Jakob Rüeger (1548-1606) in 1589, then updated in 1596, and apparently printed in 1884-1892 (it seems to have been partially converted into a database on ancestry.com, but I’m don’t have a subscription to that). You can see many individual pages in the extract of a modern book here (with a fair bit on the Schaffhausen Franciscan library on pp.45-47).

Here are some other Swiss Franciscan monasteries that had libraries:

* Fribourg Monastery. According to this page (with links to 13 digital copies of mss from there):-

The library contains about 35,000 volumes, 10,000 of which date from before 1900. The majority of the books can be accessed via a card catalog. The old library can be traced back to Guardian Friedrich von Amberg; 18 of his volumes have been preserved. During the monastery’s golden age in the 15th century, the superiors collected mainly sermon and study literature. The Franciscan Monastery was able to preserve its library on site; it contains 80 medieval and 100 post-medieval volumes of manuscripts (not catalogued), as well as 136 incunabula and 80 post-incunabula.

* Lindau island had a convent of the Third Order of St Francis: this survived the Protestant Reformation by converting to Protestantism.
* Konstanz
* Bellinzona
* Bremgarten (Aargau)
* Königfelden Abbey
* Wesemlin, Lucerne (has the Provinzarchiv der Schweizer Kapuziner, though presumably this was slightly later?)

…and doubtless a fair few others besides.

Clearly, this looks like it could be a substantial set of haystacks to be going through to find a single Voynichian needle. Is there anything out there that can help us?

A Swiss Needle Magnet?

It seems that there might be, in the form of the three-volume Handbuch der Historischen Buchbestände in der Schweitz that lists numerous ancient Swiss libraries, many of which have descriptions of historic catalogues of those libraries.

* Volume #1: Aargau Canton to Jura Canton
* Volume #2: “>Lucerne Canton to Thurgau Canton
* Volume #3: Uri Canton to Zürich Canton

Unfortunately, only volume #2 of this is currently online (I think, but please correct me if I’m wrong!); and many collections that might reasonably be listed are (according to the German Wikipedia page) absent. Moreover, lots of the interesting stuff is in journals such as Helvetia Franciscana that are not currently online, e.g.

* Schweizer, Christian: Kapuziner-Bibliotheken in der Deutschschweiz und Romandie–Bibliothekslandschaften eines Reform-Bettelordens seit dem 16. Jahrhundert in der Schweiz nördlich der Alpen. In: Helvetia Franciscana 30/1 (2001), S.63
* Mayer, Beda: Der Grundstock der Bibliothek des Klosters Wesemlin. In: Helvetia Franciscana 7 (1958), S.189
* Mayer, Bea: Kapuzinerkloster Freiburg, In: Die Kapuzinerklöster Vorderösterreichs. In: Helvetia Franciscana 12, 7. Heft (1976), S. 207-216.

…along with other journals such as Librarium which (thankfully) have been placed online, e.g.

* Kronenberger, Hildegard: Das Kapuzinerkloster Wesemlin in Luzern und seine Bibliothek. In: Librarium 9 (1966), S.2

And the bigger problem is this: because the Voynich Manuscript had without much doubt left its (probably monastic) library by (say) 1613 or so, what we actually would like is a list of pre-1613 Swiss Franciscan monastic inventories to have a look at, based on the small (but likely non-zero) likelihood that one of them might well list a reference to a book resembling the Voynich Manuscript. Yet this was (I think) not at all the challenge the Handbuch der Historischen Buchbestände in der Schweitz was set up to meet at all.

But… are there any of those old inventories from Franciscan monasteries still in existence all? Personally, my head’s still spinning from trying to take in all this stuff, to the point that I’m still a very long way from being able to tell. But perhaps Cipher Mysteries readers will fare better than me (even one would be nice)… good luck!

Contrary to what some Voynich people like to assert, the point of History is really not to allow a thousand speculative flowers to bloom. Rather, the idea is to work so closely with the available evidence that we can cull bad theories inconsistent with it. So for the Voynich Manuscript, where pseudohistorical theories run amok (typically blindfolded, and with a Japanese carving knife in each hand), the Voynich battle is only just beginning.

What I’m trying to say is this: because History is primarily the study of what actually happened, it is by nature a cruelly eliminative mistress – its heart is one of disproof, and that’s OK. Yet in the case of the Voynich Manuscript, the ongoing absence of incontestable evidence (let alone “smoking gun” proofs) has meant that her machete has rarely been employed in the Voynichian garden. By this measure, I’d say that there has been little done to date that would be worthy of the title “Voynich History” (understanding its post-Rudolfine provenance has, though often fascinating, so far been more of an exercise in historiography than in actual History).

Sorry, people, but this is going to have to change.

Radiocarbon Dating? *shrug*

You might reasonably have thought that the 2009 University of Arizona radiocarbon dating of the Voynich Manuscript’s vellum (to 1404-1438 with 95% statistical confidence) should surely have brought some kind of veridicality to the whole arena. Yet it has apparently achieved nothing: Rich SantaColoma merely shrugs forwards (asserting that if the vellum was used one or more centuries after it was manufactured, who cares? So what?), while Diane O’Donovan merely shrugs backwards (asserting that the date of its actual writing-down-ness is meaningless; and given that the origins of its contents ‘clearly’ lie centuries if not millennia earlier, who cares? So what?).

These two are good examples of the rampant denialism that currently passes for normality in the Voynich world. So, have any Voynich theories been modified as a result of the radiocarbon dating? My guess is that so far no, probably not even one has.

As for me: even though I have a technical criticism of one of the test’s four samples (the apparently-earliest radiocarbon dating sample was taken from one of the most contaminated parts of the manuscript, I strongly suspect affecting the very consistent results yielded by the other three), I’m far from a critic of radiocarbon dating. If we broaden slightly to the wider dating range implied by the three most consistent samples alone, that range does sit comfortably with other solid dating evidences I have pointed to over the last decade.

So I don’t see the radiocarbon dating as inherently problematic (beyond a technical quibble over its claimed precision). Yet it has made not a ripple: why?

“I Am Your Father”? Riiiight…

In the mixed up world of Voynich research, even though there is no “mainstream” central account of the Voynich Manuscript and its 15th century origins, people such as Rich SantaColoma and Diane O’Donovan invest much of their efforts into kicking back against figures they perceive as representing that mainstream (usually either me or Rene Zandbergen, whose fact-centred Voynich website I have nothing but praise for).

A lot of the time this comes across as a kind of rage against the Evil Empire: as if Rene Zandbergen and I are Darth Sidious and Darth Vader, darkly paternalistic forces looming over them all, conspiring against their Rebel Alliance’s plucky fight for historical freedom of expression. I guess this would also paint Rich and Diane as Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia, twin mystery researchers mysteriously separated at birth, but fighting on the same side: I doubt I’m even close to being the first person to note this.

But really: me? I’m certainly not their father, and I’m definitely not the mainstream. All I’ve done for the last fifteen-odd years is to try to date tiny features of the Voynich Manuscript by isolating them and locating them within their individual micro-histories. All of which has been worthy but boringly mundane; and about as far from constructing some kind of theory-zapping epistemological Death Star as you can get.

[Yes, I did put forward a theory about one possible author back in 2006: but if I had found other candidates that matched the dating evidence even half as well I’d have written about them too. All the dating evidence remains.]

The Voynich Mainstream

Whether or not it suits Voynich denialists, the things that actually form the Voynich mainstream are those historical dating observations that chime most solidly with the (I would suggest slightly wider-range) radiocarbon dating. This is because radiocarbon dating is almost never used in isolation: it is at its strongest when carefully combined with other kind of dating evidence. In the case of the Voynich Manuscript:

* The presence of 15th century marginalia in the zodiac section (the “zodiac hand”) suggests a latest date of 1500
* The presence of 15th century number forms in the quire numbers suggests a latest date of 1500
* The transitionary numbering style used for the quire numbers suggests a latest date of 1500
* The presence of parallel hatching suggests a earliest dating in Germany from 1425, in Florence from 1440, in Venice from 1450 or later: and a latest dating of about 1480 / 1490 everywhere
* The presence of Islamic-influenced geometric designs on the albarelli-like “barrels” in the zodiac section suggest a date range of 1450-1475
* The dot pattern on some of the ‘pharma’ glassware (i.e. f89r1 and f89r2) is strongly reminiscent of post-1450 Murano glass decoration, and (to the best of my knowledge) is found nowhere else until significantly later
* The baths in the balneo quire suggest a dating of not later than 1500, because that was when baths sharply fell from fashion in Europe because of their [incorrect, but persuasive] association with syphilis (Klebs, 1916)

So the Voynich mainstream is not so much a set of paternalistic individual theorists for the denialists to kick back against, but rather a constellation of specific ideas that point to dating ranges consistent with the radiocarbon dating. The reason I’m forever in the Voynich denialist firing line is that I happened to latch onto much of this group of ideas a number of years before the radiocarbon dating was carried out, and gave many of them an airing in my 2006 book.

Of course, based on what has happened over the last decade, nobody in Voynich Land will accept any of this from me without more evidence turning up. But regardless of whether I’m alive or dead or flying my TIE Advanced x1 through space, the ideas that make up the Voynich mainstream are now what they are.

Yet what kind of an Intellectual Historian would want to take any of this Voynich battle on board? Or has the Voynich Manuscript gone beyond the point where there is any real hope of its being reclaimed by mainstream historians as a genuinely interesting artefact?

It’s a hard thing to admit, but I think the Voynich Manuscript tells us much more about History – and specifically about historical proof – than History tells us about the Voynich Manuscript.

Even though we have accumulated so much micro-knowledge about the Voynich (by which I mean how its ‘language’ works, and even – to a certain extent – how it was made and owned), we still have almost no genuine macro-knowledge about it at all. For all the long list of suggestive details, our Voynich knowledge in toto is little more than a forensic desert (and not obviously different to that surrounding the Somerton Man), one that remains so wide that none may cross it and live.

For all Rene Zandbergen’s accumulated provenancing, for all his patient and informed historical nuancery, teasing single strands out of Kircher’s Republic of Letters and weaving them into what are little more than semi-threads, we still know essentially nothing about what Kircher knew of it, or thought of it. We don’t even know if he ever saw the dratted Manuscript, or if the pages (or copies of pages) sent to him by Baresch are still extant in some unknown Jesuit cryptographic archive somewhere. Or (if they are) whether or not they will give us even a flicker of assistance in decrypting Voynichese (based on past form, I suspect they would not).

And yet…

So far, so nothing: but here’s the rub. Even though I’ve long held as a basic research tenet the notion that historians are better equipped at disproving fallacious claims than genuinely proving things, why do you think it is that even after all this time, the Internet is still awash with Voynich claims and theories that make little more than facile, superficial sense?

Example #1: why is it that Stephen Bax’s utterly foolish and superficial nine-word theory has found itself promoted to hits #3, #4, and #5 on a Google search for “Voynich” (as of today)? Is it really the case that nobody has noticed that his attempts at reading Voynichese as a natural language fail to explain more than 99.9% of the text, which is almost the very definition of “unsystematic”? Is it really the case that nobody has noticed that you can “read” almost exactly the same number of words by interpreting Voynichese as English?

Example #2: why is that that Gordon Rugg’s shudderingly awful CompSci misreading of Voynichese as a “language” generated by Cardan grilles still has any faint lustre of validity at all? Why is it that I still – all these years on – run into people whose view of the Voynich is not only coloured by this kind of anti-historical claptrap, but also utterly delimited by its faux postmodern stupidity? When will we ever manage to draw a line under this idiocy?

Example #3: why is it that Rich SantaColoma can still get away with miscasting the Voynich Manuscript’s eponymous 20th century finder as its forger? Though he “plays the game well”, if you multiply out all the individual probabilities that he has to bracket out to keep his ball in the court of possibility, it’s hard to see how he can end up with a net likelihood of more than one in a million. All of which is good for his personal position (in that nobody has outright disproved his assertion that Wilfrid Voynich hoaxed his Roger Bacon manuscript), but lousy for the overall discourse, in that he continues to waste everyone else’s time by fighting against whatever they say wherever it happens to run counter to his blessèd sub-one-in-a-million shot.

…and need I honestly extend the same face-palm of logical despair to Guiseppe Bianchi’s recent Youtube video on the Voynich, however lamentable it may be? I sincerely hope not: because disproving it (and the legions of other disappointingly rubbish Voynich non-theories) would be a full-time job, and I already have three of those vying for my as-yet-uncloned time.

The poverty of disproof

Do you see the underlying pattern here? That if Voynich theorists are happy to retreat to the far unpainted corner of possibility (however dwindlingly small a scrap of floor their ill-formed theories leave them to stand on), absolute disproof becomes almost as hard as absolute proof. Moreover, such theorists are then able to take that absence of comprehensive disproof as confirmation that they were somehow on the right track all along – that the inability of others to sumo-wrestle them out of the dohyo justifies their faith in their own worthless position.

In fact, I have become utterly bored with people sending me their worthless non-theories to disprove, because I know that however I respond with, they will then conjure up a counter-example that proves that my disproof was not absolute: and so use the opportunity that yields them to cock a snook at my so-called expertise.

And so I’m left with an uncomfortable conclusion about the Voynich Manuscript and the poverty of disproof: that if it is almost impossible to disprove a mad theory all the while a given loopy theorist can keep dreaming up flimsily etheral counterexamples of possibility, then we’ve all kind of lost before we even begin. At that sad point, the entire discourse has broken down into some kind of demented two-handed game, where one side has an endless supply of imaginative jokers to place on the table.

Ultimately, we’ve now reached a net position where the core discourse about the Voynich Manuscript is so painfully broken that there is almost nothing that can be said about it that will not immediately be opposed by wobbly counterassertions moulded out of outrageously weak possibility.

Specifically, there is almost nothing I can sensibly write about the Voynich Manuscript that Stephen Bax, Gordon Rugg, Rich SantaColoma and Giuseppe Bianchi cannot immediately oppose (sometimes in the same way, or more likely in four wildly different ways), should they wish: which, to me, speaks of a kind of pervasive epistemological collapse. It is as though knowledge’s graph of usefulness plotted against time has historically peaked, and is now steadily declining: that instead of knowing more, we are losing any sense of equilibrium about the internal dynamics that make up good knowledge. The model of knowledge as a medium for slowly accumulating sensible judgments is giving way to a model of rapidly accumulating possibilities, all as bad as each other: and we are all the worse for it.

Right now, nobody seems to grasp that cipher mysteries sit at an oddly hypermodern frontier – and that if we are not careful, this could be the beginning of the end for all knowledge. But nobody seems to care.