Bryce Beasley, alchemical herbals, and Voynich Herbal A…

I first asked the question of whether there might be a mapping between the alchemical herbal manuscript tradition and the Voynich Manuscript in a 2019 post, having not long previously put up a post trying to link to scans of alchemical herbals. The fact that the Voynich Manuscript’s Herbal A pages originally (as far as we can tell) contained 97 plants and also that the (yes, very badly named) alchemical herbals list of plants has 98 plants is a coincidence I pointed out that is somewhat suspicious (but far from conclusive).

Always useful here is Philip Neal’s page on alchemical herbals. And more recently, Marco Ponzi published the Latin text of the alchemical herbals (compiled from various individual herbal manuscripts, because of various textual inconsistencies and lacunae). Minta Collins’ Medieval Herbals: The Illustrated Traditions is always good to have handy (though more to do with herbals than alchemical herbals).

And even though the book where this all really started was Vera Segre Rutz’s (2000) Il giardino magico degli alchimisti, I’d also now happily add Bryce Beasley’s 2024 thesis “Fantastic Herbals and Where to Find Them: Contextualizing and expanding the Alchemical Herbal tradition” to the list of resources I’d strongly recommend everyone interested read, particularly because it is downloadable online, and in English rather than Italian.

Beasley vs Segre Rutz

The first thing to note is that Beasley builds solidly on Segre Rutz: and while he is critical of various aspects of Segre Rutz’s foundational work (e.g. he argues that the suggested link to alchemy [e.g. via lunaria and herba folio] was inherently weak, whatever Aldrovandi thought; and he isn’t at all convinced by Segre Rutz’s use of hermeticism as a framework), his thesis is a complementary text rather than a replacement. Whereas Segre Rutz characterises the alchemical herbal tradition as having seven direct manuscripts and seventeen indirect manuscipts, Beasley extends this to 38 (though this is still far short of Toresella’s claimed 70). Note that (according to Beasley p.14, footnote 30) Segre Rutz seemed unaware of Toresella’s 1996 article on alchemical herbals.

Beasley, more generally, sees the alchemical herbal plants as falling into Jerry Stannard’s (1977) “magiferous” plants category, halfway between “magical” (fantastical) and “mundane” (real-world). For me, I suspect that Stannard’s three pigeonholes may be a little too neat, and that a lot of medieval manuscript copying was often done without any critical appreciation of the subject of the text (e.g. whether it made sense or had been miscopied), rather than a purely imaginary / fantastical plant.

Beasley’s list of 14 new manuscripts that would need to be added to the stemma codicum:

• Burlington, The University of Vermont Libraries, Ms. 2 (1475-1525) – http://cdi.uvm.edu/book/uvmcdi-108431#page/1/mode/2up
• Cassego, Museo Contadino di Cassego, Ms. 95 (1598)
• Civita Vaticanae, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Ms. Palatino Latin 1078 (16th century) – https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Pal.lat.1078
• Civita Vaticanae, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Ms. Chig.F.VII.158 (15th century) – https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Chig.F.VII.158
• Firenze, Biblioteca Riccardiana, Ms. Ricc. 217 (2nd half 15th century) – http://teca.riccardiana.firenze.sbn.it/index.php/it/?view=show&myId=c2322fb2-de37-4c8c-afa7-9b189c1421fc
• Firenze, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Ms. Redi 165 (15th century)
• London, Natural History Museum Library & Archive, Mss. Her. (early 16th century)
• Lucca, Biblioteca Statale di Lucca, Ms. 196 (15th century)
• München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Ms. Cod.It. 149 (16th century) – https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/en/view/bsb00094611?page=,1
• Paris, Bibliothèque du Muséum national d’histoire naturelle, Ms. 326 (1487, Italy) – https://bibliotheques.mnhn.fr/EXPLOITATION/infodoc/digitalCollections/viewerpopup.aspx?seid=MNHN_MS326
• Paris, Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, Ms. 3369 (16th century) – https://portail.biblissima.fr/ark:/43093/mdata2dd6ccc38b17c6dfcaed56f293413d1cd0b268f7
• Philadelphia, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Ms. LJS 46 (early 16th century) – https://bibliophilly.library.upenn.edu/viewer.php?id=Oversize%20LJS%2046#page/12/mode/thumb
• Philadelphia, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Ms. LJS 419 (15th century) – https://bibliophilly.library.upenn.edu/viewer.php?id=Oversize%20LJS%20419#page/1/mode/thumb
• Udine, Biblioteca Civica Vincenzo Joppi, Ms. 1161 (15th century)

As an aside, Cipher Mysteries readers may possibly remember Ms. Chig. F.VII.158 from Alexandra Marracini’s work.

What next?

As is so often the case, even though Beasley’s thesis collects together a lot of useful information and makes it accessible, he doesn’t attempt to build up the tree of manuscripts and their (often hard to pin down) relationships. Hence, there as yet is no definitive (or even semi-definitive) ‘map’ of which herbal begat which other herbal etc: all we have is Segre Rutz’s tree for the seven direct tradition manuscripts (Beasley, p.40):

Here (as per Segre Rutz, p. XC):

• P1 = MS Lat: 17848
• P2 = MS Lat: 17844
• A = MS Aldini 211
• C = MS Canon. Misc. 408
• F = MS 18
• R = MS 106
• ms. 362 = Vicenza MS 362
• x, y, z = (missing manuscripts)

Beasley does point (p.66) to evidence that MS LJS 46 is “likely a descendant of” MS 106. Similarly, he does suggest that München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Ms. Cod. It. 149 may be “similar to Ms. Pal. Lat. 1078 and other manuscripts from the indirect sub-tradition” (p.60).

There are also lots of other nice details: for example, on Lucca MS 196 fol. 106r, a “left flower has a small note of a “bi” which likely is a note telling the painter to leave the flowers white or bianca in Italian”. (p.58)

What specifically set me thinking today was Beasley’s note on the Natural History Museum herbal (Mss. Her.) on p.56 that discusses the order of the alchemical plants, which I knew about but hadn’t really thought about for a few years:

The beginning 16 herbs perfectly copy the order of manuscripts Ms. 18, Ms. 106, Ms. Lat. 17848 and Ms. Aldini 211 and with a couple of exceptions Ms. Canon. Misc. 408, Ms. 17844 and Ms. 362.

And so my thought for the day is this: has anyone tried to form candidate mappings between pairs of Voynich Manuscript herbals pages (i.e. on the two sides of a folio) with pairs of adjacent numbered images in the alchemical herbal tradition? That is, it has always been easy to speculate about a single-page connection between (say) the snakes / worms in the roots of the plants on Voynich Manuscript f49r and alchemical herbal plant 74 (herba forus, which also has snakes / worms in some manuscripts): but it’s hard to go beyond mere speculation with any confidence. So my point is that in this example we should perhaps also be thinking about f49v (on the rear side of the same folio as f49r) and alchemical herbal plant 75 (the next one along) to see if there’s a connection there too.

So, let’s have a quick look. Voynich Manuscript f49v looks like this:

Alchemical herbal plant 75 is herba capalarices, which (in the manuscript used by Marco Ponzi) looks like this:

In this case there’s no obvious match, sure: but it would only take a single unexpected pair of images to be matched for us to smash through this wall. Well worth a further look? Yes, definitely. Definitely!