As previously mentioned, I’ve been grinding my way through the Cisiojanus entries for February (mainly from the Usuarium website). However, it turns out that there is far less variation than I supposed. For example, “Ig” (on the 1st February) appears in only a single missal (FR Noyon 1541, Missale Noviomense). And even though St Walburga is listed in some volkskalenders, I haven’t seen “Wal” appear in an single Cisiojanus mnemonic for February 25th. And finally, many of what I first thought were variants are actually nothing more than transcription errors.
Anyway, here’s my current list for February circa 1400-1450:
| 1 | Bri / Ig | St Brigid of Ireland (v) | |
| 2 | Pur | * | Purificatio Mariae |
| 3 | Bla | St Blaise (Blasius) | |
| 4 | Sus | ||
| 5 | Ag | St Agatha (v) | |
| 6 | Ath / At / Dor | St Dorothea (v) | |
| 7 | Fe | ||
| 8 | Bru | Bruno of Querfurt, Archbishop in Prussia | |
| 9 | O / Ap | St Apollonia (v) | |
| 10 | Sco | St Scholastica (v) | |
| 11 | Las / La | ||
| 12 | Ti / Sti | ||
| 13 | Ca | ||
| 14 | Val / Va | St Valentine (yes, that St Valentine) | |
| 15 | Ent / Lent | ||
| 16 | Lu / In / Ju | St Juliana of Nicomedia | |
| 17 | Li / Ly | ||
| 18 | Con | St Concordia | |
| 19 | Iun / Jun | ||
| 20 | Ge | ||
| 21 | Tu[n]c | ||
| 22 | Pet / Pe | * | Cathedra Petri (St Peter’s Chair) |
| 23 | Ru[m] / Tru[m] | * | [vigilia] |
| 24 | Mat / Ma | * | St Matthias, Apostle |
| 25 | Thi | St Walburga (v) | |
| 26 | Am | ||
| 27 | In | ||
| 28 | De / Te |
Note that the four starred days are the ones I’ve seen written in red on some (but not all) calendars: most have only one or two red days.
My original plan was to compare these mnemonic syllables with the labels for the Voynich Manuscript’s f70v2. However, this simply doesn’t seem to go anywhere. I’ve tried to line up ot/ok in labels with male saints vs female saints, or with virgin martyrs, but nothing seems to match.
I’ve also looked for (more traditional Art History) subject matches (e.g. St. Apollonia is associated with toothache, St Brigid with protection, blacksmithing, livestock, dairy, etc) in the “nymph” drawings, but so far have found zilch. [The outer ring ‘nymph’ at around 4 o’clock appears to have a beard and no breasts so I’d guess is male, but might he be St Peter? It’s not a very convincing argument, I cannot deny it.]
I’ve also been thinking about this with reference to the Volkskalender B family of manuscripts I discussed here many years ago. For example, BSB Cgm 28, or St Gallen Cod. Sang. 760, or Zurich Ms C. 54 [which has a Cisiojanus column], Pal. Germ. 291, and so on. But this too feels like it’s a busted flush: computus aside (calculating Easter), there’s really not a lot to work with there, calendar-wise.
What’s Left?
My “Attack the Fish!” post mentioned Fribourg Ms L. 309, which inspired commenter Peter Moesli to look beyond the calendar page in that manuscript. He found a health tip for February there: “Beware of the cold and do not wash your head or cut your hair“.
All I feel I currently have left is wondering whether this health tip is broadly the type of ‘secret’ we should be looking for as a possible text match for the rings of the zodiac pages. The Pisces page, for example, has three circular rings, which would amount to roughly 5/6 lines of text. So if these rings are where the actual ‘payload’ is located, it’s surely not a very big payload.
Bah.
IMHO, the “payload” is self-designated by ‘Stolfi’s markers,’ the patterned spacers that occur in certain bands of circular text. From the cosmos to the rosettes there are various examples. The most elaborate instances are found in the zodiac: two on White Aries and one in Cancer.
It seems to me that the separation of text segments is a very effective, very non-technical method to disguise hidden text. The initial payload might be strategic, rather than voluminous.
The contiguous connection of one of Stolfi’s markers and one of the blue-striped tub patterns on VMs White Aries is a matter for further interpretation.
The heraldic interpretation of the pattern you posted would be a seme of annulets. It could have historical interpretations, but it has no tinctures and is an uncommon pattern with no relevant confirmations as yet. It could also be used in some sort of canting interpretation as this technique is otherwise present in the VMs.
Nick,
As I’m sure you know, the various forms of ‘Cisiojanus’ calendar-mnemonic are not the only type attested in medieval western Europe, though it seems to have gradually displaced the earlier ones.
Your comments have aroused my interest in comparisons – such as with rosters of the Byzantine, Coptic, Syriac and other churches. One wonders if each of those mightn’t have developed their own mnemonic verses.
PS. Did you tested ‘March’? It is, after all, a reasonable start for the year for a variety of reasons, including (but not only) the month in which the Latins’ liturgical year might begin – depending on the year, Easter occurred somewhere between March 22nd – April 27th.
I think that you jumped too early to your conclusions.
First, one must assess the nature of the calendar of the Voynich, then looking for the right mnemonic abbreviations.
Probably I already mentioned this before, but the XV century was characterized by a growing interest, a mania actually, in esoteric stuff, from pagan myths to Jewish kabbalah. So one must not dismiss exotic calendars, especially since this one looks like a lunar calendar (all months are 30-days long, with maybe the exception of “Mars”, which could be 29 to 31 days).
Some calendars, in no particular order, you might like to investigate:
– Romulus’s calendar: a mythical calendar of 10 months, 30 to 31 days each, starting in March.
– Hebrew calendar: a lunar calendar of 12 months, 29 or 30 days each. It starts in March.
– Coptic calendar: 12 months of exactly 30 days. It starts in September. Coptic monks had their own church in Rome, Saint Stephen of the Abyssinian, and there was a community of Coptic monks at the time of the Voynich.
– Other known lunar calendars, that is Babylonian, Egyptian, and Islamic calendars.
– A mystical lunar calendar created by the Voynich author(s).
Also, the fact that the “days” are marked by stars could reflect the fact that the beginning of the day is at sunset, e.g. when Venus shows up.
The St.Gallen Codex 760 mainly mentions bad weather, rain and cold.
But at the bottom of page 27 is an interesting addendum by another possible person.
“In the sign Jonah was devoured by the fish and remained three days in March”
Was Jonah only spit out on the third day of March, or did the constellation continue into the third day of March?
I do not know.
Zurich 54.
But it is still written “Der (Feb). Hornig/Hornung has 28 days. The day has 10 hours and the night has 14 hours”.
OK. February has 28 days.
As some of Nick’s readers will know, I date first origin of the calendar diagrams’ tiers and figures (with stars on cords) to a good deal earlier than the central emblems or our present, early fifteenth-century, manuscript, so I’d suggest that we may find there is no very close connection between the star-holding figures and any cisiojanus mnemonic inscribed around this diagram. I mean that if Nick’s idea should proves valid, then the aim of inscribing a form of cisiojanus around the diagram might be simply to link this calendar-roster to that of the western liturgical year, in the way we still routinely ‘translate’ when speaking of calendars other than our own.
For people who were interested in antiquity, or people who travelled, or planned trade and travel into regions where other systems were used, a quick ‘crib’ to correspondences would surely be useful.
I might mention that within Europe itself there was far less uniformity in weights, measures and calendars than one might imagine, and the liturgical roster/calendar was the one normally referred to. Market days are described by the saint’s day, for example, and people routinely began correspondence by denoting the day in that way, as e.g. St. James’ Day in the year of our lord 1428′.
There’s a passage memorable for its humour in John Larner’s book about Italy in the age of Petrarch and Dante, and where Larner points out that in medieval Italy it was easier to know the saint’s day than the year. Larner translates to modern day-and-month, but you’ll realise that the constant factor for the medieval traveller would be the liturgical feast (i.e. the person or event celebrated by that day’s mass).
“So varied were the towns’ calculations on when the year began that a traveller leaving Lucca on 20 March 1300 and taking a day for his journey would arrive in Florence on 21st March 1299. From there, after a leisurely week’s trip, he would enter Pisa on 28 March 1301. If he then took ship from Naples, he would have to discover on what day Easter fell before knowing in what century he would arrive.”
John Larner, Italy in the Age of Dante and Petrarch 1216-1380 (p.3)
If we include the possibility that – if Nick’s identification of some form of cisiojanus’ being inscribed here – then to regard it as (perhaps) a means to correlate a non-Latin calendar with the Latins’ frees us of the need to argue that the star-holding figures are saints of the Latin calendar, a suggestion that must otherwise meet strong opposition. The alternative would also help explain why we find some months split, but I won’t go into that here.
I admit to feeling some doubt about the “one-star-per-day” proposal, and even more doubt about re-defining as February the diagram inscribed ‘Mars’ (March).
We have closely similar orthography attested c.1400, so that’s no problem. We also have instances, even in western Europe by 1350, of the fish as emblem for March, plus crab/lobster as emblem for July and, most tellingly in my view, of a crocodile for November, so the order and assignment of the Voynich diagrams’ emblems seems reasonable enough on the face of it.
I can well imagine that in the rings there is something about health with advice, or something similar about the month itself such as cold, wet, snow and other things.
I found the same sentences, word for word identical in the links above. And these are just 4 different books.
Otherwise, many are the same, but with different words.
@Nick, I have sent you an example in picture.
A belated acknowledgment of St Walburga’s day to you all! I was born in a town in which one of the best known landmarks is St Walburge’s church and its very tall spire- the highest of any parish church in England! I was surprised to find out that Walburge was actually Walburga! She/her in contemporary parlance, rather than he/him. I like Dianne’s idea this could be a time translation guide & also Peter’s that it could be health advice are both interesting! In Australia the time/seasonal translation guide is still relevant between Indigenous and European ideas of season and time and is often presented in a circular form.
Jo, Your comments are always a pleasure to read. Interesting and amiable.
I wouldn’t want to mislead you and I’m afraid I often express myself badly. I don’t actually think the Voynich calendar is meant as a series of diagrams to assist time-conversion. I meant that if Nick were correct in thinking a line of writing around the diagram is a form of ‘cisiojanus’ then that line of script might have been added as a way to correlate the diagrams’ information with the Latins’ annual roster, whose days were named for the mass of that day.
I think the calendar’s tiers are a guide to the stars visible in a given month, a guide to the ‘hours’ as periods of night-watch. There’s a lovely passage in one of the early Latin advocates of Egyptian-style monasticism where he records the original custom of singing the stars all through the night by singing the Psalter. The belief appears to have been that unless the stars (sailing stars in older Egyptian belief) were sung to keep them in place, they might fall. Mariners of the eastern seas did something of the same to as late as the fifteenth century but happily for western monasticism, an angel had appeared and decreed .. if I recall.. just twelve such night-watch ‘hours’. I doubt any medieval Latin would regard many of the very early Christians as other than heretical.
Thank you for the explanation @ Dianne – if the tiers were a guide to stars & night watches would this give some hints about geographies and vice versa…?
@ Nick – do you think there’s a sign of today’s Gregorian Glitch Day if the calendar (?) is is a cisiojanus?
@Nick/Jo
I think the problem is we are not looking up as much as ancient civilisations – we look down at mobile phones. We are not really mariners who sail the seas and spend long evenings in doldrums looking up at the sky hoping for wind assistance and praying to the gods for help.
Last year I was looking at Haversine which was probably in the back old school log tables back in the 1920s because we needed to calculate voyage distances around the earth by sea.
I remember a school friend had a diary written by some elderly relative. It contained pressed flowers and sketches of vines and flowers which might be described as Voynich-like in their interpretation of reality. But equally it could have been created by his dad who had been a POW in Japan and suffered terrible mental torments. It could represent a slow drift to insanity before suicide.
I was discussing leap years with my son today as he was troubled by the leap day being needed to adjust the calendar for the rotation of the Earth every 4 years. He thought it was a flawed system. I calculated it is flawed by about 12 minutes.
I wondered how ancient people used their calendars with seasons drifting and we look to Stonehenge for answers. People also look for certainty. We need to know Christmas day is one day not shifting around a calendar.
I suspect people looked at the stars for certainty. Pole stars to guide them. Astronomers/astrologer came along with their new certainties wrapped up in religious icons.
Jo,
Yes, I think so. I think the cords likely signify c[h]ords and that images in the ‘ladies’ folios reflect word associations which are natural in the Greek ( e.g. hora, horae, chora, chorae, kore etc.) Ruby Novacna was among those who picked up the Greek possibility and the only one who seriously applied herself to test whether the Voynichese text might be Greek. (I have no opinion on that). For a short time I had to cope with the recurring problem that when something new is introduced, it is quickly plagiarised by the same people who insist their followers ‘pay no attention’ and the poor lambs who obey soon imagine any who protest are wannabe’s trying to join their own bandwagon. However, most soon dropped away -too much real work needed- only Ruby still plugging away.
I expect that’s TMI but I’m keen on information being set in proper context. [smiley]
D.N.O´Donovan
What cords do you mean?