Voynich tapas selection…

by ⋅ 5 Comments

Keeping with this week’s Spanish theme, here is a small selection of Voynich tapas to dip into the spicy sauce of your prejudices rich life experiences. Tasty!

(1) René Zandbergen’s recent Voynich talk seems to have gone off OK: here’s a brief mention of it by Hugh Deasy in a blog post.

(2) Here’s a novel (though only partially formed) Spanish Voynich theory presented in the form of a Youtube video: it suggests a link between the Voynich Manuscript and Juan Ponce de León (1474-1521), the soldier who famously went searching for the fountain of youth (though this was only said of him after his death). The irony, of course, is that Florida (to where he travelled) has come to be stuffed full of retirees doing much the same thing. Personally, I suspect he was more interested in gold than any claims of eternal youth: but never mind. Oh, and if you do choose to look at the webpage, don’t forget to turn the shouty rock music backing track off. 😮

(3) Here’s a Voynich theory that is even less well-formed than the above (yes, it’s possible). “Lord Trigon” suspects that the VMs is an elvish school book that fell up from Middle Earth through a well, in basically the same way that he/she once threw his/her own 5th grade maths book down a well (and said he/she’d lost it). Ah, bless.

(4) Finally, a big Cipher Mysteries Guten Tag! goes out to Michael Johne, who puts up brief German summaries of (usually) English-language Voynich news stories on his blog. At first, it was a little strange to see my own posts pop up there (a bit like having a multilingual stalker), but I’m starting to get used to it. I hope to read some of your own posts there soon, Michael!

Jewish Arabic Voynich theory

by ⋅ 26 Comments

Here’s another (sort of) “plaintext” Voynich Manuscript reading, that I first found back in 2006: having corresponded briefly with the Greek author (who wishes to remain anonymous) at the time, I then managed to completely forget about until a few days ago.

He claims that the Voynich Manuscript is a transliterated Arabic document written down “using a kind of [old-fashioned] Jewish script”, and that it contains incantations to fulfil “all kinds of human desires”, addressed to the goddess “Siit” as part of cult worship ultimately deriving from the Mesopotamians.

René will be pleased to hear that the author gives extensive equivalence tables showing how to map Voynichese letters onto Hebrew letters, as well as a pronunciation guide. (Though note that you will need to resize your browser window to be 1024-pixels wide in order for the left-hand “Gabelsberger Shorthand Symbol” column to line up).

There is also a long section on f116v (the “michiton oladabas” page), as well as comments on other pages:-

Cotton is depicted on page 17, and cannabis sativa on page 16; these are plants used to make fabrics, like the one on the right of cotton, which is flax. On page 11 it is, I think, a lemon tree.

He finishes up by noting that the first few lines of folio 56 (which he says depict an eggplant) read as follows (“aqith” = “eternal”), and comments that “I cite this passage for anyone who knows Arabic well to offer a tentative reading of the whole page“:-

s(tbqd bbk)n sTn rkran bn nbsMb.n bsl bn bn
bstbrn bsd bsdn tsl bn bn trn bsTn hstqSθ
sd brn bstbsd brn ten usten bsten bstkn
usT bsl bsl bst sl btsl bn stql ban
bs bsl bs bsaqdn aqiΘ
ntbs an abrn ten aqiΘ n

Is this the answer we have been looking for? Confidentially… I don’t really think so. As claimed plaintexts go, it appears to have quite a few, errrm, ‘problems‘, let’s say. But perhaps some Arabic-literate Cipher Mysteries reader reading the above will know how to make the Philosopher’s Stone, who knows? 🙂 

Incidentally, the author also refers to a (previously unknown?) VMs book by “Ethan Ashmole Jones” called “The Voynich Manuscript – Who Is Who of a Riddle”, published by Ellinika Grammata (I believe), though I couldn’t see a copy in WorldCat. Anyone seen this before or heard of Ethan Ashmole Jones? Sounds a bit like a pseudonym to me, but (as always) you never know! 😉

Regiomontanus and Filarete…

by ⋅ 17 Comments

While browsing through the Whipple Museum’s interesting webpages on Regiomontanus just now, I was struck by a behind-the-scenes connection that might possibly lead to the source of some of the Voynich Manuscript’s images…

In 1465, Antonio Averlino (better known as ‘Filarete’) left Milan with a letter of recommendation from his friend Filelfo in his pocket, with the intention of travelling to Istanbul to work as an architect there. I have argued (from his defaced 1445 dedication on his doors on St Peter’s Basilica, see Curse p.120) that he travelled from there to Rome – it is hardly unlikely, particularly given that Vasari believed Averlino died in Rome 1469. Note also that that Averlino may well have accompanied Domenic Dominici (the bishop of Brescia) who took the beautifully-illustarted copy (now known as Vat. Gr. 1291) of Ptolemy’s Handy Tables from Brescia to Rome in September 1465 – this is the codex which Rene Zandbergen has strongly argued was some kind of visual source for the Voynich Manuscript’s zodiac ‘nymphs’.

Now… today’s particularly intriguing observation is that the highly influential astronomer / astrologer Regiomontanus (1436-1476) lived in Rome until 1467: between 1461 and 1465, he worked for Cardinal Bessarion at his palace (which was effectively a de facto Academy / humanities research centre), where he built astrolabes, sundials, etc for his patron.

regiomontanus-small

What is relevant here is that Bessarion was born in Trebizond and was a sch0olfriend of Filelfo – and so it seems extremely likely to me that Bessarion would have been one of the key people Averlino would have planned to meet in Rome. It’s also important to note that Rome circa 1465 was not the sprawling metropolis it now is: a meeting would doubtless have been arranged.

So, if you accept that Averlino was in Rome 1465, and that he would have wanted to meet Bessarion, I think it is almost inevitable that he would have met Regiomontanus at some point. I have previously noted that Regiomontanus’ ephemerides (both in print and in manuscript, such as MS Prag 742) contained information connecting the stars with agriculture: and it is well-known that his tables also detailed appropriate positions of the moon for blood-letting. However, what is perhaps even more interesting for us is what he omitted from his tables (for that truly would be a secret), and which he apparently failed to complete before his relatively early death.

The data that was was missing was a special commentary (somewhat like a Director’s Cut?) on using astrology for medicine, for human births, and for foretelling the future. It seems seem extremely likely to me that this would have been based on the sign (and very possibly the degree) of the moon, and based on earlier (probably Arabic) works, probably via one of Pietro d’Abano’s manuscripts.

Could it be that the Voynich Manuscript’s zodiac pages, with their 30-item one-per-nymph datasets, encode the same data that Regiomontanus promised (but never delivered)? And might it have been that Regiomontanus got that per-degree data from Antonio Averlino in Rome around late 1465 – or might Averlino have instead got it then from Regiomontanus?

Of course, the spooky thing here is that this is basically what Steve Ekwall said was encoded in the zodiac nymphs. But you knew that already, right?

PS: did anyone ever find an online copy of Vatican MS 1906?

Cod. Pal. Germ. 597’s cipher…

by ⋅ 19 Comments

Yet another interesting comment from Rene Zandbergen yesterday (to my flying potions post) sparked off a furious flurry of bloggery here at Cipher Mystery Mansions. While browsing through a large set of online manuscripts digitized (and hosted) by the University of Heidelberg, he found Cod(ex) Pal(atinus) Germ(anicus) 597 – an alchemical manuscript where a large amount of it is written in cipher (which you can download as a 15MB PDF file). Rene writes:-

Now this is a clear example of a MS where cipher has been used to hide secrets. It leaves me with the question:

Why does the Voynich MS not look like this?

My tentative answer: the Voynich MS isn’t actually just a cipher MS. FWIW.

(–Actually, I have my own answer to this, but we’ll get to that in a minute.–)

It seems to me that (unless Augusto Buonafalce happens to know better) the literature on Cod. Pal. Germ. 597 is pretty thin: even the Karl Bartsch catalogue entry for it (marked 287 here) isn’t much use. The Ms also merits the briefest of mentions on p.355 of the 1994 book “Geschichte der deutschen Literatur von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart” (it’s in Google Books). None of which, however, addresses its cipher aspect… but I guess that’s my job. 🙂 So, let’s have a look at it…

The Ms commences on folio 2r with some crossed-out ciphertext above some commentary in a different hand. (Some later pages hold only a few lines of ciphertext, so it seems likely that this originally contained just the ciphertext.) And then on folio 4v, the ciphertext (interleaved with Latin and German plaintext) starts in earnest:-

cpg597_f4v

This is a basic-looking system comprising about 23 symbols, that shows every sign of being a simple (i.e. monoalphabetic) cipher consistent with its date (1426).  The cipherbet was designed not for convenience of writing (for there are numerous fiddly characters, including a blocked-in black square), but around an apparently improvised ‘personal shape alphabet’. This points not to a cipher professional (working, say, in a Chancellery) but rather to an amateur cryptographer designing his/her own ‘homebrewed’ system:-

cpg597_main_cipherbet

The letter shapes fall into three rough groups (as per the lines above):-

  • Abstract shapes / known shapes
  • Dots and containers
  • Semi-representative (aide-memoire?) shapes (hammers, spade, rake?)

But then, just as you’re getting the hang of that, a completely different monoalphabetic cipher appears (from folio 6v onwards). This looks to be a refinement of this first system… but this post is getting a bit too long, so I’ll defer discussing that to another day.

Is this a “cipher mystery”? Yes, but only a very temporary sense, for I find it terrifically hard to believe that this wasn’t picked up by one or more of the numerous 19th century German codebreaking historians and cracked in a trice (or perhaps even a millitrice). Tony Gaffney would surely munch such a light confection before breakfast. 🙂

Finally, to respond to Rene Z’s question: why does the Voynich Manuscript not look like this? I’d prefer to start by looking at what this does resemble: Giovanni Fontana’s lightly-enciphered books of secrets, which were also from very same period. This mixing of text and ciphertext also occurs in Buonaccorso Ghiberti’s copy of his famous grandfather’s Zibaldone, which has some sections in a simple cipher, most notably what Prager & Scaglia call the “secret hoist” (on folios 95r and 98r of BR 228, for which see “Brunelleschi: Studies of his Technology and Inventions”, pp.67-70). From the simplicity of that cipher (“use the previous letter in the alphabet”), I’d suggest that Buonaccorso probably copied this from an older document, one probably made in the 1430s or 1440s (Lorenzo Ghiberti died in 1455).

Remember that this was the century when paper began to become affordable, and when ordinary people began to develop their own ciphers: and although it has become fashionable to criticize the development of individualism in the early Renaissance, I think it is fair to say that the desire to keep secrets for personal / familial gain runs in close parallel with this. Ghiberti, Fontana and the author of Cod. Pal. Germ. 597 all seem vastly similar in this respect.

Returning to Rene’s initial question, then, I suspect the correct question to be asking should be: why does the Voynich Manuscript not look like any of those ciphered manuscripts?

My own answer is that it is probably because the VMs will turn out to be from circa 1460 (i.e. 20-30 years after all of the above), and its author seems to have benefitted from contact with the sophisticated code-makers in the Milanese Chancellery, who developed and refined ideas in their own cryptographic bubble. Really, the VMs is from a very specific time and place – far too clever to be early 15th century, but still strongly mindful of what earlier ciphers looked like.

Johannes Hartlieb and flying potions…

by ⋅ 6 Comments

Following my recent post on modern per-degree astrology, Rene Zandbergen very kindly left a comment here pointing to online scans of a 15th century German translation of some of Pietro d’Abano’s works on astrology. While idly flicking through that, I noticed (starting on folio 132r) a short book by Johannes Hartlieb on ‘Namenmantik’ (onomancy, using names to tell fortunes). Dating right to the middle of the 15th century, this shows circular volvelle-like things that remind my eye of Alberti’s speculum (his rotating code wheel):-

hartlieb_132r_cropped

Cod. Pal. germ. 832 Heidelberger Schicksalsbuch, folio 132r

Given that this kind of thing was in the air round that time, was it mere chance that Alberti happened to devise it first? It’s true that Hartlieb’s ones (like the one for Ptolemy above) probably didn’t rotate at all… but all the same, I do honestly think it wouldn’t have involved a vast leap of mid-Quattrocento imagination to make them do so.

But the mention of Hartlieb reminded me of another research strand I’ve been meaning to blog about – flying potions. You see, it was Hartlieb who first wrote (in 1456) about witches’ flying potions, in his puch aller verpoten kunst, ungelaubens und der zaubrey, i.e. on “forbidden arts, superstition and sorcery”.

Reading up again on this subject just now, I was somewhat disappointed to discover that Ioan Couliano’s colourful account of how the handles of broomsticks were used to administer the hallucinogenic unguent turns out to be only supported by a single (and fairly unreliable) source. Mainly, the ointment seems more likely to have been administered to the armpits and absorbed into the bloodstream from there. Still, it probably beats flying cattle class on a charter flight, right?

To me, the bizarre thing about the historical sequence is that in the early Middle Ages it was heretical to believe witches’ descriptions of flight (because they were clearly delusional), while during the Early Modern period it became heretical to disbelieve witches’ descriptions of flight (because they were clearly possessed by the Devil). So much for the continual march forward of knowledge! 😮

For much, much more on this fascinating subject, I heartily recommend Shantell Powell’s set of pages on flying potions. Enjoy!

Indus script & Markov models…

by ⋅ 3 Comments

According to this recent Wired article, Rajesh Rao, a computer scientist from the University of Washington, has run a Markov chain finder on the 1500-odd fragments of (the as-yet-undeciphered) Indus script – and has ‘discovered’ that it is “moderately ordered, just like spoken languages“.

Well, ain’t that something.

In a depressingly familiar echo of the ‘hoax’ debate over the Voynich Manuscript, the most important result is that it argues against Steve Farmer’s (2004) case that the Indus fragments were merely “political and religious symbols“, i.e. not a language at all, but just odd visual propaganda of some sort.

Language is a tricky, evolving, misunderstood, dynamic artefact that typically only has meaning within a very specific local context. The failure of linguists to “crack” the Indus fragments (all of which are very short) is no failure at all – we are massively disadvantaged by the passing millennia, and cannot easily trace the structure within the flow of ideas (the perennial intellectual historian hammer).

Having said that, what I read as Farmer’s basic idea – that researchers have for too long looked for a definitive script grammar as an indicator of advanced literacy – is an excellent point. And so the notion that Indus script analysts should perhaps be instead looking for some kind of arbitrary / non-formalized explanation (a confused model, rather than a complex one) is sensible. My opinion is that Farmer is overplaying his skeptical hand, and that the script is very probably communication (as opposed to mere decoration) – but is it written in something we would recognize as a language? Apparently not, I would say.

Incidentally, Indus script uses roughly 300-400 symbols (depending on how you count them), with the most frequent four symbols making up about 21% of the texts: inscriptions (many on potsherds, also known as ostraca) are all short, with an average length of only 4.6 symbols. All of which makes the script completely unlike known languages – but all the same, what is it?

Perhaps Rajesh Rao’s Markov models will reveal some kind of pointers towards its hidden structure, towards the truth – but as to Rao’s suggestion that they may well yield a “grammar”… I suspect not.

PS: Farmer cites Gabriel Landini & Rene Zandbergen’s paper (funny, that), though points out that Zipf’s Law is an ineffective tool for differentiating language-based texts from non-language-based texts. Just so you know…

Vellum reasoning chain…

by ⋅ 4 Comments

Rene Zandbergen recently commented that much of the codicological reasoning presented on my Voynich codicology page fails to satisfactorily differentiate between observation, hypothesis, reasoning, and fact. At the same time, Glen Claston has also set about trying to pin down key facts about the Voynich Manuscript’s codicology (though taking his own angle on the evidence): while I have also been thinking about alternative (and hopefully better!) ways to present this mass of information.

From my perspective, doing significantly better is a far harder challenge than it might first appear. Generally speaking, I’ve been working to ‘art history‘ standards of proof – but I think that what Rene is asking me to do is to raise my presentation to the level of scientific proof.

Here’s a first pass attempt, that examines merely part of the chain of codicological reasoning I put forward in 2006 (Curse, pp.54-56) to do with the stitched-up vellum flaws in the herbal section. I’ve marked observations in yellow, and inferences in green, with the arrows mapping out the chain of reasoning:-

vellum-flaw-evidence-chain

However, even this tiny fragment of codicological reasoning needs to be accompanied by extensive visual evidence to back it up. I did what I could in The Curse to present all my visual evidence in as clear a manner as I reasonably could, but without a great deal of parallel forensic evidence, this will always amount merely to probabilistic arguments, not scientific arguments.

In retrospect, given that science can only (except in certain remarkable situations) ever disprove, not prove, I think I did tolerably well to present my evidence so openly. But who (apart from Glen Claston) is out there actively trying to disprove my hypotheses? For all Rene’s desire to see a scientific presentation, where are all the Voynich scientists?

Glen Claston on the Voynich Manuscript…

by ⋅ 13 Comments

[Here’s a guest posting from my friend, the well-known Voynich contrarian Glen Claston. Though he originally intended it as a comment to my recent post on Voynich Manuscript Quire 8 [Q8], it actually deserved a whole post to itself. I’ve lightly edited it to house style, and added a couple of pictures.]

Nick asked me to look at the blog, and though I don’t plan to be a regular poster, he’s going on about things that matter a great deal, so we need to examine them very carefully.

The [“ij”] mark at the bottom of f57v is in line with two other erased marks on folios, as well as erased symbols in Q1 and Q2 that Nick and I discussed some time ago. The original author apparently used a symbol system instead of a standard system, and much of his work has been removed. Quirization and foliation are not the work of the original author. I plan to publish this in a book entitled “The Curse of the Curse of the Voynich”. 🙂

f42r-folio-number-closeup
Voynich Manuscript f42r folio number

Rene Zandbergen also brings up an interesting observation about f42r, that the crystals appear to be on top of the foliation. Yes, I’m certain that is the case, but I don’t reach the same conclusion that Rene does in this regard. In the image above, the foliation clearly overlaps the drawing lines and the color pigment, but at the same time, this entire region is a section exposed to water damage, which might explain Rene’s observation of the crystals overlapping the burned-in ink. IF the pigment includes mineral salts as many commonly do, this would explain Rene’s observations, as they would have re-crystalized over the existing material. It would require a rather closer inspection to see if this is the case.

If Rene’s observation holds, there is indeed something seriously wrong with the Voynich, since foliation before coloration has a very dramatic implication on known VMs construction, and I for one would have to throw out years of research and start anew, as would many. I recall that I had issues with Rene before on “retouching” because these darker patches fell into areas that were also affected by moisture. As it happens, I do apologize much belatedly to Rene for suggesting that just because some of these didn’t match, his identification of retouching in the astrological section was wrong, when it proved to be spot-on. It was my fault for generalizing, and to say that we all make mistakes is not a good enough excuse, I owe it to myself and to the VMs to be as precise as possible.

[Nick: as far as the paints go, I think the consensus now is more that different paints were added at different times, though I suspect the “light painter” / “heavy painter” binary division may well prove to be far too simplistic – because of the large number of paints present, I can quite conceive that these might have been added by four or five later “heavy painters”.]

As far as the rosettes section [Q14] goes, Nick is suggesting here that Q14 belongs to Q8, and though I wouldn’t exactly state that in the way Nick has suggested, I entirely agree. The rosettes is a part of the astronomical discussion, so it’s not in its right place. A large folio can get ripped out rather easily, and be placed back in the book in random order. It’s an hypothesis, but is it testable?

It turns out that the rosettes contains a record that helps us place some items in order. There are tears in the unused fold of the rosettes, damage beyond what normal foldouts have seen, and these tears hold information. The quire mark only works if the rosettes was bound in this torn seam, and the foliation only works if the binding of this foldout is in its current place. That says that the maker of the quire marks was not the maker of the original foliation, that the foliation was a product of at least one successive binding. There are two distinguishable hands in the foliation, two successive bindings after the quire mark binder. Two inks that I can identify in the foliation bindings, and places where quire marks were added that weren’t there originally.

rosette-folding

[Nick: GC is proposing that the nine rosettes fold-out f86 was originally attached to the rest of the manuscript along the (now badly damaged) crease highlighted green (above), rather than along the crease highlighted blue. The shape of the whole codex is highlighted in red.]

It’s a complicated picture that needs a degree of clarification, but there is no way around the idea that the manuscript went through at least three bindings. The big question is – does any of these bindings reflect the original order of construction? The answer is a resounding NO.

Again I go to the rosettes for history, and I need only look on the back of the rosettes to see that the discussion includes the four seasons and the four winds. All my research into parallel texts says that this is the meterological part of the astronomical discussion, and belongs firmly in the astronomical section. This also says that the rosettes on the reverse is a meteorological mappa mundi, and read in that venue of comprehension it’s imagery becomes meaningful and schematic to other VMs imagery. It helps that one page in the first astronomical section [in Quire 8] exhibits similar damage to that of the original rosettes page, and Nick is right that the pages in this section appear to be inverted.

I’ve been through the whole range of arguments over the years, and I weary of argument that doesn’t move me forward, but this is a discussion that needs to be moved forward on several fronts, and I will follow this discussion with interest.

What I am seeing is that the quire numbers were placed on probably the first binding, but I’ve always been of the opinion that the manuscript existed unbound during much of the author’s life. I now have much more information to back up that idea, and as you know, I was once of the opinion that it was the author that first quirized, which is something I can now disprove in abundance. Order changes and shuffling I can’t comment on, but there is evidence that the author himself made some major changes, and these changes were substantially reflected on the first binding but the manuscript was not in a permanently bound condition when the author left off/died.

Rene for one would understand that in making these decisions, I’m weighing intelligent choice against mishap, and using a set of parallel texts on these subjects to determine which is which. One doesn’t even require these options in viewing the interlacing of herbal-a and herbal-b herbals. One does however, need to know why the herbal-a herbal pages were separated from the herbal-a pharmaceuticals and additional information stuffed in between, much of this in a different script. Herbal-a herbals are congruent with herbal-a herbals in the pharmaceutical section, the latter sometimes drawn on the same bifolio/foldouts as the pharmaceuticals, and as Nick and I discussed recently, there is physical contact information that ties them together in a time-line of construction. These are connected in multiple ways to the same time line, and the intervening information is connected to a separate time line, and the construction is a progressive construction, so could this have been the act of binder and not the author? Could this intelligent construction occur passively, and not actively? There’s an argument in there somewhere.

Grant for a moment that I don’t think the book was bound during the author’s life, and I am certain it was not bound before the drawings/text/ paints were added (it’s damned hard to draw, paint, and write all the way into bound gutters on so many pages – common sense observation, eh?). What’s just as important is when quire marks ceased and foliation began. Dee used bifolio quire markings in his book of 1562, and though page numbering was becoming popular in printed documents by this time, Dee chose not to use it, choosing a manuscript format instead. It’s a generational thing, and I feel that the foliation is at least 17th century. The quirization has a problem with dating as Rene pointed out, that it could be someone older that didn’t use the modern format, or it could have been someone before the modern format became prominent. The rosettes’ gutter damage however, says that there was a good deal of time between the quire marks and the foliation, because they couldn’t possibly have happened at the same time, and the quire marks are apparently a good deal older than the foliation.

Make of this all what you will! — Glen Claston

Jens Sensfelder crossbow article…

by ⋅ 7 Comments

Elmar Vogt just posted a page with scans of René Zandbergen’s translation (from German to English) of Jens Sensfelder’s (2003) short article on the crossbowman in the Voynich Manuscript to his blog: but as I had the original HTML [though no pictures] lurking on my hard drive, I thought I ought to post it here as well (as they say in the Caribbean, is nice to be nice).

So here, for the benefit of infinitii and others, is Jens Sensfelder’s crossbow article. Enjoy!

German zodiac woodcuts…?

by ⋅ 7 Comments

My last post on Elmar Vogt’s new blog received a comment from infinitii, asking me for the source for the suggestion that the zodiac motifs may have been copied from a (possibly 14th century) German woodcut calendar. I had long forgotten the story’s origin, but a quick grep through the VMs mailing list archives (the ones before 2002 that aren’t yet on the web) turned up what seems to be the key thread.

Jorge Stolfi began (29Dec2000):-

In the meantime, I remembered I had seen something like the VMS Sagittarius somewhere in the astrological books. And I have found it on the Web – have a look at:

  http://www.englib.cornell.edu/mhh4/planets/jupiter.html

This is from an early (15th c.) German “Planets’ Children” blockbooks (the planets’ children theme was also found in some of the Books of Hours – eg. the most beautiful one of Duc de Berry). The crossbow man looks *very much* like the VMS Sagittarius to me. Also note that the actual Sagittarius in a small circle at the feet of Jupiter above is represented as a man – not a traditional centaur (even though he holds a standard bow).

I think this confirms the 15th c. German origin as stated by Panofsky (a great authority, after all) – at least until a better argument is put forward (I am not convinced by the humanist hand argument and still less by the other Italian origin arguments recently presented by Dana – people were coming to study in Italy from all over Europe and thus
were heavily influenced by Renaissance culture and art).

Rene Zandbergen then replied (30Dec2000) to the last two paragraphs:-

Yes, very ‘block book’ and very German. In Saxl’s ‘Verzeichniss’ other nice examples can be seen.

I’m not yet ready to decide. Is the theme German and the execution Italian? Or in the block book, where the execution is German, the theme of the planets’ children was widespread. The profusely illustrated but otherwise only moderately useful book ‘Alchemie & Mystik’ by Alexander Roob gives a lot of nice examples.

Jorge Stolfi continued (30Dec2000):-

What I meant is that the crossbow man really looks like the VMS Sagittarius and that I have not seen that sign represented by a man rather than a centaur elsewhere. Are there any examples of non-German non-centaur Sagittarius?

Rene Zandbergen responded (30Dec2000):-

He does indeed. I found out I have copies of some illustrations from the same block book (in German) but these are not including Sagittarius.

Certainly, there are German Sagitarii which _are_ centaurs, but that doesn’t really help. I’ll scan a few nice images from a book called ‘Flores Albumasaris’ printed in Augsburg around 1480. They’re woodcuts but allow a nice comparison with some of the VMs images. Sagittarius is a Centaur here.

Then there’s a brief lull, until Rafal Prinke continues the thread (09 Jan 2001) with a number of closely related art historical bombshells:-

I have received a very kind and informative reply from Prof. Ewa Sniezynska-Stolot of the Jagiellonian University in Cracow (my repeated apologies to the list I had not written to her earlier). Below is a translation/summary of her letter.

——————————–

I have inspected the VMS at Beinecke. The signs of the Zodiac do not present problems – they are simply not of the Arateia type but were modernized. As I wrote in my books, because of linguistic mistakes and changes in artistic styles, human figures were represented in contemporary garments (viz. Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius). Attributes were changed in the same way, eg. Sagittarius’ bow developed into a crossbow in the 15th c.

The genre scenes, eg. Aries eating a bush, suggest that the signs were redrawn from a calendar. Garments: the jopulas [?] of men with a belt suggest the 14th/15th c. but headdresses of men (Gemini, Sagittarius) definitively indicate the 15th c. This was common fashion in Europe at that time. The Sagittarius’ cap with fox tail points to Germany – but they were also worn in Poland. I believe that the manuscript can be dated
to mid-15th c. From the astrological iconography point of view, the Taurus at a well is somewhat strange – unless an image of donkeys was a basis for it and then it would refer
to Cancer – but that is certainly going too far.

In my opinion it is a notebook of a liberal arts student. Similar notebooks are Beinecke 225 and 226. The former belonged to Paul de Worczin who studied in Cracow in 1422
(according to the Beinecke catalogue Cracow is in Bohemia!). The latter is also from Cracow.

In our Institute we have a database with descriptions of most of existing medieval zodiacal iconography. I am now preparing a similar database of the iconography of
individual degrees of the Zodiac.

————————————–

Thus she confirms the opinion of Panofsky (and my own amateurish feeling) that the VMS should be dated to mid-15th Germany/Poland/Bohemia.

The suggestion that it is a student’s notebook is a bit of a revelation to me! Drawing naked ladies and fantastic pipelines during boring lectures is perhaps what they were doing from the dawn of time.

Prof. Sniezynska-Stolot has not addressed the VMS script but I hope to keep in contact with her. Maybe that was some kind of a medieval “beta-kappa” students’ corporation fun popular in Cracow and there are loads of similar manuscripts at the Jagiellonian Library?

Here’s a picture of a [modern] jopula (no, I didn’t know what it was either): basically, it’s a 14th/15th century outer garment made of four pieces plus sleeves, something like a doublet. Looks quite snug! 🙂

Rene Zandbergen picked up on the Sagittarius crossbowman’s hat’s fox tails (11Jan2001):-

Brumbaugh always made a point of stressing that this was a Florentine archer’s hat. Guess in whose opinion I put more trust.

Rafal Prinke then made a related calendaric aside (13Jan2001):

There were 3 styles of beginning the year in March:

1) Venetian – 1st March
2) Florentine and Pisan – 25th March (with a year’s difference)
3) Gallic – Easter Sunday (ie. not always in March)

The Venetian style was also used in Ruthenia (but not in Poland, which used exclusively Christmas and 1st January, along with Germany, Bohemia and Sweden). Russia changed to the Byzantine style in 1492 (1st September), also used in other Orthodox countries and in southern Italy.

The Florentine style was used in England, while the Gallic style – in France and the Netherlands.

So – if we accept the calendaric basis for the VMS Zodiac, it points either to Venice (and thus Northern Italy, which is the favoured hypothesis now) or pre-1492 Ruthenia, which might suggest further possibilities of a connection with Cyrillic, Greek, Georgian, Armenian or Turkish influences on the VMS script and content.

Incidentally, I should also flag this as a good example of how a single small thread in the VMs mailing circa 2000 typically contained more effort, historical research, genuine collaboration and reflective thought than entire months of postings there do now. People sometimes think that I’m perhaps being nostalgic or unrealistic when I talk of the decline of the list: but sadly it’s a very real phenomenon.