Category Archives: Historical Ciphers

As should be clear from the last few posts here, my Voynich research focus has recently turned to the wave of astronomical instruments that appeared in the German-speaking lands in the first half of the fifteenth century.

The person behind much of this wave would appear to be John of Gmunden (AKA Johannes von Gmunden, Johannes de Gamundia, etc) (c.1380 – 1442), but I’ll return to him in more detail in a separate post.

Even though I’ve been looking mostly at theorice planetarum of late, I’m also interested in the nocturlabe / nocturnal / sternuhr (‘star clock’), which similarly appeared in the 15th century. Even though the earliest known description of the astronomical mechanism behind this was written by Raymond Llull, the first actual nocturnals started to be built in the fifteenth century.

Hence I’ve long wondered whether the curiously-repetitive circular diagram on the Voynich Manuscript’s page f57v might actually be describing a nocturnal in some way. Yet the practical problem with pursuing this further was that I was lacking a good reference for the very early (fifteenth century) history of the nocturlabe.

Ernst Zinner’s Sternuhr History

This was exactly the point where Ernst Zinner’s (1956) Deutsche und niederländische astronomische Instrumente des 11.-18. Jahrhunderts landed heavily on my doorstep. (Though I bought it second-hand, it was actually from the Adler Planetarium, which was a nice coincidence).

Zinner outlines the history of the Sternuhr on pp. 164-166, but given that our focus here is the fifteenth century, I’ll only transcribe (and lightly HTMLize) p.164.

You’ll need to know that Zinner refers to manuscripts and objects by their index number in Zinner (1925) “Verzeichnis der astronomischen Handschriften des deutschen Kulturgebietes“: astronomy historians typically call these ‘Zinner numbers’ (e.g. “Zi 3593”).

Oh, and you’ll also need to know the names of the stars in Ursa Major (despite having an Astronomy O-Level, I only knew Dubhe):

• α – Dubhe
• β – Merak
• γ – Phecda
• δ – Megraz
• ε – Alioth
• ζ – Mizar
• η – Alkaid = Benetnasch = Benenaz = the star right on the end of the plough handle

Finally: Dubhe and Merak were known as the ‘runners’ (Cursores) or ‘brothers’ (Fratres), that point towards Polaris, the Pole Star.

First paragraph…

Die Sternuhr, auch Nachtuhr = horologium noctis = noctilabium = nocturnalis gennant, wurde in Frankreich erfunden [149 d S.8] und von Raimondo Lullo in seiner Arte de navegar 1295 beschreiben [Opera omnia, Mainz 1721]. Er verwendete den Polstern und die Fratres genannten Sterne des Großen Bären. Das Gerät wurder im Kreise des Schülers Johanns von Gmunden in Wien verwendet; denn die 1438 beendete Abschrift von Gmundens Arbeit über das Astrolab [253 Nr. 3593] enthält einen Hinweis auf die Sternuhr mit der Verwendung von Polaris und Dubhe. Die Sternuhr besteht aus einer runden Scheibe mit einem Loch in der Mitte, um das sich einige Scheiben und ein über die Scheibe hinausreichender Zeiger bewegen lassen. Durch das Loch wird der Polstern beobachtet und der Zieger auf die beiden Hinterräder des Großen Bären, bezeichnet als die Läufer (cursores) oder Brüder (fratres), oder auf den letzten Deichselstern Benenaz des Großen Bären oder auf andere helle Sterne eingestellt. Wenn das Datum bekannt ist, so läßt sich dann die gleichlange Stunde bestimmen. Um die Stunden in der Nacht abzählen zu können, wurden an der Stundenscheibe Zacken oder Zähne oder Knöpfe der Stunden angebracht. Die Sternuhr wurde gelegentlich auf der Rückseite eines Sonnenquadranten oder einer Sonnenuhr angebracht. Bereits die 1445 bis 1450 auszugsweise abgeschriebene Arbeit [253 Nr. 7464a] zeigt, daß die Sternuhr auf ihrer Rückseite einen Sonnenquadranten für 51° Polhöhe hatte, ebenso 253 Nr 7464 d, e von 1458 und 1512, Nr 7470 b von 1512, Nr. 7465 a von 1492 und 7464, wo das ganzDie Sternuhr, auch Nachtuhr = horologium noctis = noctilabium = nocturnalis gennant, wurde in Frankreich erfunden [149 d S.8] und von Raimondo Lullo in seiner Arte de navegar 1295 beschreiben [Opera omnia, Mainz 1721]. Er verwendete den Polstern und die Fratres genannten Sterne des Großen Bären. Das Gerät wurder im Kreise des Schülers Johanns von Gmunden in Wien verwendet; denn die 1438 beendete Abschrift von Gmundens Arbeit über das Astrolab [253 Nr. 3593] enthält einen Hinweis auf die Sternuhr mit der Verwendung von Polaris und Dubhe. Die Sternuhr besteht aus einer runden Scheibe mit einem Loch in der Mitte, um das sich einige Scheiben und ein über die Scheibe hinausreichender Zeiger bewegen lassen. Durch das Loch wird der Polstern beobachtet und der Zieger auf die beiden Hinterräder des Großen Bären, bezeichnet als die Läufer (cursores) oder Brüder (fratres), oder auf den letzten Deichselstern Benenaz des Großen Bären oder auf andere helle Sterne eingestellt. Wenn das Datum bekannt ist, so läßt sich dann die gleichlange Stunde bestimmen. Um die Stunden in der Nacht abzählen zu können, wurden an der Stundenscheibe Zacken oder Zähne oder Knöpfe der Stunden angebracht. Die Sternuhr wurde gelegentlich auf der Rückseite eines Sonnenquadranten oder einer Sonnenuhr angebracht. Bereits die 1445 bis 1450 auszugsweise abgeschriebene Arbeit [253 Nr. 7464a] zeigt, daß die Sternuhr auf ihrer Rückseite einen Sonnenquadranten für 51° Polhöhe hatte, ebenso 253 Nr 7464 d, e von 1458 und 1512, Nr 7470 b von 1512, Nr. 7465 a von 1492 und 7464, wo das ganze Instrument « spera » genannt ist wie in 7464 a.e Instrument « spera » genannt ist wie in 7464 a.

The star clock (also called night clock = horologium noctis = noctilabium = nocturnalis) was invented in France [Henri Michel. Du Prisme méridien au Siun-ki (Ciel et Terre 1950 S. 1-13) p.8] and described by Raymond Llull in his (1295) Arte de navegar [Opera omnia, Mainz 1721]. Llull used the ‘Fratres’ pair of stars in the Ursa Major constellation. The device was used in the circle of the student Johannes von Gmunden in Vienna; a 1438 copy of Gmunden’s work on the Astrolabe [Zi 3593] describes a star clock using Polaris and Dubhe. The star clock consists of a round disc with a hole in the middle around which both a number of discs and a pointer extending beyond [the edge of] the disc can be rotated. Through the [central] hole, the [Pole Star] is observed and the pointer is then set to the two rear stars of Ursa Major [known as the runners (‘Cursores’) or brothers (‘Fratres’)], or to Benenaz [Eta Ursae Majoris, the ‘plough handle’ star of the Ursa Major constellation] or other bright stars. If the date is known, this device helps determine the hour of the night. To read the hour off in the dark, teeth or buttons (one for each hour) were attached to the hour disc. Star clocks were occasionally attached to the backs of quadrants or sundials. Already in 1445 to 1450 the partially copied work Zi 7464a demonstrates that the star clock on its back had a sun quadrant set for 51° latitude, likewise:

• Zi 7464d [1458]
• Zi 7464e [1512]
• Zi 7470b [1512]
• Zi 7465a [1492] and
• Zi 7464, where the whole instrument is called a «spera», as in Zi 7464a.

Second paragraph…

Zuerst wurde Dubhe (α Ursa) als der Richtstern des Zeigers genannt. Dieser Stern oder die beiden äußeren Rädersterne werden angegeben auch in den Arbeiten 253 Nr. 7468 b, geschrieben nach 1452, 253 Nr. 7468 nach 1457, 253 Nr. 7467 von 1459, 253 Nr. 7464 von 1461, 253 Nr. 7468 c um 1466, 253 Nr. 7463 a nach 1475. In 253 Nr. 7468 b ist als Leitstern außer Dubhe auch Benenaz genannt und dazu die Örter von Polaris, Dubhe und Benenaz für 1438 angegeben. Benenaz wird auch genannt in Wilhelms Arbeit [253 Nr. 11716] über die Herstellung und Verwendung der Sternuhr um 1471. Da Wilhelm Schüler Peurbachs war, so gehört auch seine Arbeit zu den Wiener Arbeiten.

Dubhe (α Ursa) was the first star to be mentioned in connection with the nocturnal’s pointer. This star or the two outermost stars of Ursa Major are also given in:

• Zi 7468b [after 1452]
• Zi 7468 [after 1457]
• Zi 7467 [from 1459]
• Zi 7464 [from 1461]
• Zi 7468c [1466]
• Zi 7463a [after 1475].

In Zi 7468b, Benenaz is also mentioned as the guiding star in addition to Dubhe and the locations of Polaris, Dubhe and Benenaz for 1438 are given. Benenaz is also mentioned in Wilhelm’s work Zi 11716 [around 1471] on the construction and use of the star clock. Since Wilhelm was a student of Peurbach, his work also belongs to the Viennese circle.

Third paragraph…

In der um 1460 entstandenen Arbeit [253 Nr. 7472] warden die Sterne β (Kochab) und γ des Kleinen Bären und zwar mit ihrem Ort für 1460 angegeben. Nun bilden diese Sterne mit Polaris nicht eine gerade Linie, so daß ein Irrtum vorliegen dürfte. Vielleicht war Kochab, der später auch von Köbel erwähnt wurde, allein gemeint.

In Zi 7472 [written around 1460], the stars β (Kochab) and γ of Ursa Minor are given, with their location for 1460. However these two stars do not form a straight line with Polaris, so there may be an error. Perhaps Kochab, which was later mentioned by Köbel, was meant to be used on its own.

Fourth paragraph…

Die Sternuhr wird so verwendet, daß zuerst die gezackte Stundenscheibe mit 12 Uhr auf den Monatstag gelegt wird ; dann gibt der auf die Hinterräder eingestellte Zeiger die Stunde an (Tafel 57, 1).

To use the star clock, once the jagged hour disc is placed on the day of the month at 12 o’clock, the pointer set on the rear wheels should indicate the hour (plate 57, 1).

Guards, Guards!

This is all very interesting, and helps to give an overall timeline. The ‘guards’ I mentioned previously (that point to Polaris) are another name for the same cursores / fratres first mentioned by Llull. I also didn’t know that Dubhe is the official star of the State of Utah. 🙂

The next step here will be to look more closely at the specific early 15th century manuscripts listed by Zinner, to see how they fit together into the overall nocturlabe timeline.

It turns out that the timeline of theoricae planetarum I previously put forward was missing three important entries:

• Theorica planetarum [antiqua] (misattributed to Gerard of Cremona)
• Theorica planetarum of Campanus of Novara
• Jean de Lignieres’ abbreviation of Campanus of Novara’s theorica
• Petrus Philomena de Dacia (Peter Nightingale)’s Equatorium
• Theorica novelle
• Theoricae novae planetarum of Georg von Peurbach

In Emmanuel Poulle’s (1100+-page) work on astronomical instruments and equatoria used to calculate planetary movements (“Les Instruments de la Théorie des Planètes selon Ptolemée: Équatoires et Horlogerie Planétaire du XIIIe au XVIe siècle”, 2 Bde, Genf/Paris 1980 (Centre de Recherches d’Histoire et de Philologie V: Hautes Études Médiévales et Modernes 42)), he named the instrument modelled in the 15th century theorice novelle as the ‘Erfurt-Leipziger instrument’, after two of its manuscripts. [pp.375-416]

(And no, I haven’t got my own copy of Poulle, much as I’d like to.)

So the first question is this: what specifically differentiated this theorice novelle from, say, Campanus of Novara’s theorica planetarum?

Equatoria vs volvelles

Carrying out the computations necessary to draw up a horoscope was fiddly and boring: it required the person doing to have not only access to tables of planetary positions (typically the Alfonsine Tables), but also the spherical trigonometry skills to do a load of tricksy interpolation to determine the planetary positions at times between the entries in the Tables.

Clearly, what was needed was some kind of physical instrument – broadly along the lines of an astrolabe – to do all the heavy lifting / maths for you. The ‘theoric’ (Latin: theorica) in all these titles is in fact not just a theory about the planets, but also a physical model that physically manifests a theory about the planets, and is therefore able to perform work.

What was initially devised was an equatorium. This was (in the case of Campanus of Novara, at least) an astrolabe-like backplate with a circular hole (a mater) into which a series of plugin disc devices (one per planet) was inserted. These plugin plates physically modelled the Ptolemaic deferents, epicycles, and equants that had been used to (numerically) model planetary movements for over a millennium.

Campanus of Novara’s theorica planetarum described exactly this kind of bulky equatorium, while its updated versions (such as that of Jean de Lignieres) tried to simply its mechanisms a little, with the aim of producing something a little more lightweight. Or at least, not quite so heavyweight.

The oldest known extant equatorium is in Merton College, Oxford (Merton SC/OB/AST/2), and dates to about 1350. Here is a photo of its back:

Somewhat extraordinarily, there is also a pair of (pretty much) contemporaneous manuscripts that specifically described this equatorium, which you can read about in Seb Falk’s fascinating (2016) “A Merton College Equatorium: Text, Translation, Commentary“.

• Cambridge University Library, Ms. Gg.6.3, ff. 217v–220v (c. 1348)
• Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ms. Digby 57, ff. 130r–132v (c. 1376)

According to the text, the Merton College equatorium was based on the equatoria of Campanus of Novara, Jean de Lignieres, and also that of Profatius Judaeus. However, Falk cautions (p.2) that this last attribution is incorrect (though widespread). Its third (and indeed closest) equatorium was in fact described in a family of manuscripts known as the Semissa, described in F. S. Pedersen’s (1983) “Petri Philomenae de Dacia et Petri de S. Audomaro opera quadrivialia“, Copenhagen. (Pedersen’s 1979 dissertation solely on the Semissa is online here.)

What united these 13th/14th century theoric tracts was that they described how to build a big, fat, brass equatorium – the Big Science of the day.

By comparison, the theorice novelle manuscripts were – as I understand it – completely different: the instrument they described (and indeed manifested) was a set of paper or parchment volvelles, one volvelle per planet. This was lithe, modern, exciting, lightweight science – much more like a tech startup.

Manuscripts in the equatorium genre were widely copied and disseminated through Europe’s astronomical / astrological communities – they were ‘open source’, effectively. But what of the theorice novelle mss?

Theorice novelle manuscripts

Of the three known manuscripts in this genre, the main two are from Erfurt and Leipzig (hence Poulle’s name). Even now, these two mss languish undigitized (and close to completely unknown) in local museums:

• Angermuseum Erfurt, Cod. 3153, [1458]
• Historisches Museum Frankfurt/M., Cod. X 16027 [1458-1464]

No prizes for guessing, however, that the third one is Gotha Chart A 472 (my current favourite volvelle-heavy mysterious manuscript), dated by Zinner to 1461. Scans for this are online courtesy of Jena.

However, I suspect – admittedly without proof – that the attribution of Gotha Chart A 472 to Profatius Judaeus will prove to be just as specious as the widespread attribution to him of Peter Nightingale’s Semissa manuscript.

All the same, it will take a very much closer reading of all three manuscripts to be able to trace the origins of the theorice novelle more accurately. What we really need is to find someone who has been looking at this for some years…

Theorica novelle researchers

So here’s where it gets interesting. Post-doc Samuel Gessner of SYRTE (at the Observatoire de Paris) is/was due to give a talk in Paris on 18th June 2020:

Between astronomical diagrams and instruments: spatializing numerical data of astronomical tables
Astronomers have connected their computational methods with geometrical representations in various ways. The ways these connections were elaborated on are not universal, but historically contingent of the local astronomical practice. Parchment instruments to graphically determine (approximate) positions of the planets, i.e. the family of planetary “equatoria” instruments, saw renewed developments in the 15th century. We will start with a European case study about a particular type of instrument that emerged in manuscripts from Erfurt and Leipzig termed “Theorice novelle”. In discussing this material the talk proposes to look into possible connections between the representation of computed data in tables and corresponding diagrammatic representations on the “Theorice novelle” and similar instruments. More generally, it raises the question of how the use of tables was preparing the minds for experimenting with new types of instruments and whether this trait can be used to characterise a specific astronomical practice.

In 2019, Gessner described his research focus here:

I focus on the diverse mathematical cultures in medieval and early modern Europe and how they communicate by studying the role of mathematical instruments as conceived by both theoreticians and practitioners. Using artefacts of material culture as primary sources along side with textual documents has become my favourite approach. I currently participate in a research project on Alfonsine astronomy lead by Matthieu Husson, Paris. My longer term goal is to understand the material and mechanical realisations of Ptolemaic theory in models, equatoria and planetary clocks and their role in history of astronomy. I was a co-organiser of the Oberwolfach Workshop “Mathematical Instruments Between Material Artifacts and Ideal Machines”, December 2017.

Unsurprisingly, I’ll be emailing Samuel Gessner shortly, and will let you know what I find out…

It struck me increasingly hard as I reached the end of my last post that I didn’t really know the history of astronomical volvelles in manuscripts. That is, pretty much all the astronomical volvelles I’d actually seen images of were either in incunabula or were from the 16th century (printed books or otherwise). For example, while revisiting Regiomontanus recently, I noted that his 1476 printed Kalendario contained volvelles. But what about volvelles in 14th and 15th century manuscripts?

Looking for useful sources, I found Jessica Helfand’s (2006) “Reinventing the Wheel“: though probably unlikely to be of precise relevance to what I’m looking for, it does look like a fun read. But then I found Gianfranco Crupi…

Gianfranco Crupi

My search for the history of manuscript astronomical volvelles only began properly when I stumbled upon Gianfranco Crupi’s (2019) “Volvelles of knowledge. Origin and development of an instrument of scientific imagination (13th-17th centuries)” in the Italian Journal of Library, Archives, and Information Science (JLIS.it). I’d describe this as a well-illustrated whistlestop tour through the history of volvelles. (And would recommend it as a nice accessible read too. 🙂 )

Crupi cracks crisply onwards from Lull to Matthew Paris’ Chronica Majora to Wheels of Fortune to Alberti’s cipherdisk to Fontana to Trithemius to Della Porta; and then from Regiomontanus’ Kalendario with its remarkably beautiful front page…

…to Petrus Apianus and to the extraordinary Dess Menschen Circkel…

…and to Ottavio Pisani’s volvelles. As I mentioned, this is a nice little read. 🙂

As far as astronomical volvelles in manuscripts go, Crupi lists three articles:

• Bennett, Jim. 2011. “Early Modern Mathematical Instruments” Isis 102, 4:697−705.
• Gingerich, Owen. 1993. “Astronomical paper instruments with moving parts.” In Making instruments count: Essays on historical scientific instruments presented to Gerard L’Estrange Turner, edited by R. Anderson, J. Bennett, W. Ryan, 63−74. Aldershot: Variorum. (Abstract: “Discusses the development and decline of early printed books with moving parts, as teaching demonstrations or for actual calculations, chiefly of the 16th c.“)
• Kremer, Richard L. 2011. “Experimenting with paper instruments in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century astronomy: computing syzygies with isotemporal lines and salt dishes.” Journal for the History of Astronomy 42, 147:223−258.

Even though Bennett’s article is available online, it only discusses volvelles briefly, and not really in manuscripts at all. And much as I love everything by Owen Gingerich (am I the only person who read his “The Book Nobody Read”?), his 1993 article’s abstract indicates that the primary focus there was on volvelles in printed books, so it is probably not relevant here.

However, because Kremer’s footnotes are online, I was extremely excited to find out from them that he talks extensively about Gotha Chart. A 472 (yes, the same manuscript I mentioned a few days ago). And so it should be no surprise that article is definitely what I want to read next.

Can I therefore ask if any of my lovely Cipher Mysteries readers with institutional access would please be so kind as to send me a copy of Kremer’s JHA article (Sage Journals, accessible via Shibboleth or Open Athens) so that I can continue following this volvelle research strand onwards? Thanks! 🙂

While idly flicking through the splendid ex-library copy of Hellmut Lehmann-Haupt’s (1929) “Schwäbische Federzeichnungen” that landed on my doorstep this morning, my eye was drawn to Abb. 52, a drawing from Gotha Chart A 158 (and more on that another time). What is Gotha (and might it be home to Batma?), and how come it has so many wonderful 15th century German books?

Forschungsbibliothek Gotha

According to this page (containing descriptions of many Gotha mss):

The old German manuscripts of the FB Gotha [i.e. Forschungsbibliothek Gotha, now at Uni Erfurt] form one of the last large collections of medieval German-language manuscripts for which no modern scientific index has yet been made available. Its inventory shows the typical profile of a princely collection: it contains numerous literary and illustrated texts, including testimonies of classic Middle High German literature as well as unique pieces such as the verse novel “Reinfried von Braunschweig”. In addition, the entire spectrum of late medieval German literature is represented in Gotha.

The Gotha collection contains plenty of the German manuscripts we’ve been discussing: Der welsche Gast, Andreas Capellanus’ “De amore“, Macer floridus, Feuerwerkbuch von 1420, Ars moriendi, Astrologisch-medizinische Sammelhandschrift, Biblia pauperum, Sachsenspiegel, Minnereden, Parzival, Johannes Hartlieb’s Namenmantik, etc. As far as I can tell, few of these have yet been digitized: not many more have been properly studied.

Basically, Gotha is like the Mars of 15th century manuscripts – distant, little known, but with plenty to study. Time to send a probe down to its surface!

Gotha Chart. A 472

Cutting to the chase, one particular Gotha manuscript really caught my eye: Gotha Chart. A 472 [Handschriftencensus page] [Erfurt catalogue page].

This contains a series of circular volvelles described in Ernst Zinner (1956) “Astronomische Instrumente des 11.-18. Jh.s” (p.153). The catalogue description has the following to say (largely quoting Zinner):

17 disk-shaped diagrams of the instruments are described. These are the theoricae planetarum, first introduced by the astronomer Jakob ben Machir (Profatius Judaeus) around 1300: these are “discs of paper or parchment that rotate over the basic drawing. Threads run from the center point, adjusting the various movements of the planetary volvelles, so that the location marked on the epicyclic disc indicates the correct planet location. One volvelle was constructed for each planet ” [Zinner 1956, p.32]. Fol. 3r-8r have the titles: 3r Circulus orbis signorum, 4r Circulus anni, 5r Circulus Saturni, 5v Circulus Jouis, 6r Circulus Martis, 7r Circulus Veneris, 8r Circulus augum planetarum. 15r and 17v are diagrams without movable attachments. Pages 12r, 22r, 30r, 34r, 39r, 42r, 47r and 52r contain volvelles with multi-part, rotatable attachments, some of which have come loose (now included) though some have been lost. On 39v a thread is inserted into the center of the disc for line drawing; circular holes are in the center of the diagram.

To my eyes, the interesting thing about this is that the Voynich Manuscript’s Quire #9 (‘Q9’) has a super-wide hexfolio, which – if you virtually rebind it along the correct crease, as I discussed in Curse (2006) – contains seven full-page circular diagrams, starting with the Sun and Moon. And even though I have seen many 15th century manuscripts listing the seven ‘wanderers’ on consecutive pages, I had never yet found a 15th century manuscript with a set of full-size circular diagrams for those seven astrological planets.

Until now. So let’s just say I’m suddenly very interested.

The Voynich’s Seven Planets

For reference, here’s what the Voynich Manuscript’s seven planets look like:

In Curse (p.60), I labelled these:

Planet A, Sun, Moon, Planet B
Planet C, Planet D, Planet E

I also noted that the diagram for Planet B comprised 46 radiating lines, which I noted (p.61) matched Mercury’s goal year period of 46 years. But that was as far as I was able to pursue this back in 2006.

Might there be more to find here, possibly even a block paradigm match to be had?

Georg von Peurbach

Now, I also happen to know that Georg von Peurbach created similar epicycle-based volvelles in his Novae Theoricae Planetarum. There’s a really cool online page from the Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection showing these in action (albeit in a later printed book):

Though LJS 64 was printed in Padua between 1525 and 1575, Georg von Peurbach (1423-1461) wrote his original work back in the 15th century: he was Regiomontanus’ teacher and mentor.

As an aside, I’d previously read the English translation of Zinner’s chunky book on Regiomontanus (which I mentioned here in 2018, in my discussion of nocturnals and f57v): but before now I’d never really considered von Peurbach’s Novae Theoricae Planetarum.

Note that von Peurbach was giving lectures in Italy in 1448 to 1451, so would be a plausible candidate for someone who somehow bridged between German scientific culture and Northern Italian culture at just about the right time and place. So there’s a lot of lines criss-crossing here.

Might all these things be tied together by Gotha Chart. A 472?

Gotha Chart. A 472 Bibliography

The Handschriftencensus page lists three references, the main one of which (Zinner 1956) I have just ordered from America (but don’t expect to see for a fair while, to be honest):

• Ernst Zinner, Verzeichnis der astronomischen Handschriften des deutschen Kulturgebietes, München 1925, Nr. 9839.
• Ernst Zinner, Deutsche und niederländische astronomische Instrumente des 11.-18. Jahrhunderts, München 1956, S. 153.
• Oliver Schwarz, Cornelia Hopf und Hans Stein, Quellen zur Astronomie in der Forschungs- und Landesbibliothek Gotha unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Gothaer Sternwarten (Veröffentlichungen der Forschungs- und Landesbibliothek Gotha 36), Gotha 1998, S. 54. This is also online here.

Meanwhile, I’m also going to contact the curators at FB Gotha to see if they can tell me any more about Chart. A 472. As always, asking is free!

If, like me, you’ve been looking for a nice guide to illustrated manuscripts in the Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg’s Cod. Pal. Germ. collection for a while, you’re in for a bit of a treat here. 🙂

German librarian / book historian Hans Wegener’s (1927) “Beschreibendes Verzeichnis der deutschen Bilder-Handschriften des späten Mittelalters in der Heidelberger Universitäts-Bibliothek” (which you can download from UB Heidelberg here) runs through a (mostly) chronological series of illustrated manuscripts from the library, discussing each one’s writer(s) and (usually unnamed) illustrator(s).

(For reference, the para at the top of its p.10 was where Hans Wegener asserted that the illustrator of Cod. Pal. Germ. 530 also drew the pictures for Staatsbibliothek Eichstätt MS 212, as I mentioned in my last post.)

The easiest way to view all the illustrations is to use UB Heidelberg’s HeidICON tool (there’s a link on the left of each CPG page). There, you can jump straight to a grid of illustrations in that manuscript, i.e. clicking on a thumbnail brings up the full-size picture on the right-hand side.

I went through all the drawings from 1400 to about 1470, and have pasted in some of the most interesting drawings. Enjoy!

1300 to 1400 (for completists only)

Cod. Pal. Germ. 164 – Sächsisches Lehnrecht, Obersächsische Hs., Um 1320

Cod. Pal. Germ. 167 – Landrecht des Sachsenspiegels und des Schwabenspiegels. Niederdeutsche Hs. Hälfte XIV. Jahrh.

Cod. Pal. Germ. 341 – Sammlung kleinerer Gedichte. Oberdeutsche Hs. Mitte XIV. Jahrh.

Cod. Pal. Germ. 53 – Schwabenspiegel. Oberdeutsche Hs. Ende XIV. Jahrh.

1400 (Various)

Cod. Pal. Germ. 329 – Hugo von Montfort: Gedichte und Lieder. [Bayrische Hs. Um 1400.] (just initials)

Cod. Pal. Germ. 14 – H. von Mügeln: „Der meide kränz”. [Bayrische Hs, 1407.] (just initials)

Cod. Pal. Germ. 336 – Enenkels Weltchronik. [Bayrische Hs, Um 1410.]

Cod. Pal. Germ. 5 – Wahrsagebuch. [Mitteldeutsche, wohl rheinfränkische Hs, 1400-1420. (Just one drawing)

Cod. Pal. Germ. 330 – Thomasin von Zirklaere: Wälscher Gast. [Bayrische Hs, 1410-1420.]

I discussed cpg330 in this recent post, but it has other interesting images (note that HeidICON has no entries for this!):

Cod. Pal. Germ. 794 – Boner: Edelstein. [Bayrische Hs. 1410-1420]

Die elsässische Werkstatt von 1418.

Before Diebold Lauber’s famous workshop, there was another (unnamed) workshop in Alsace, usually referred to as the Werkstatt von 1418.

Cod. Pal. Germ. 27 – Otto von Passau: Vierundzwanzig Alte. [Elsässische Werkstatt von 1418. 1418.]

Cod. Pal. Germ. 144 – Heiligenleben. [Elsässische Werkstatt von 1418.] (Lots of saints being killed, if you like that kind of thing.)

Cod. Pal. Germ. 403 – Heinrich von Veldeke: Eneide. [Elsässische Werkstatt von 1418.]

Cod. Pal. Germ. 371 – Lanzelot. [Elsässische Werkstatt von 1418. 1420.] (only two images at the front)

Cod. Pal. Germ. 365 – Ortnit. [Elsässische Werkstatt von 1418. 1420.] (Only two drawings)

Cod. Pal. Germ. 323 – Rudolph von Ems: Wilhelm von Orlenz. [Elsässische Werkstatt von 1418. 1420]

Cod. Pal. Germ. 359 – Rosengarten und Lucidarius. [Elsässische Werkstatt von 1418. Um 1420.] (Not particularly interesting drawings)

Other Stuff

Cod. Pal. Germ. 432 – Speculum humanae salvationis. [Mittelrheinische Hs. 1420-1430.]

Cod. Pal. Germ. 471 – Hugo von Trimberg: Renner. [Bayrische Hs, 1431.]

Cod. Pal. Germ. 148 – Biblia pauperum [ Bayrische Hs, 1430-1440] und Brevier [Bayrische, wohl Eichstätter Hs, Um 1450]

Cod. Pal. Germ. 7 – Wahrsagebuch [Bayrische Hs, 1430-1440]

Die Werkstatt des Diebolt Lauber in Hagenau.

I have, of course, discussed Diebold Lauber’s workshop a good number of times before. And UB Heidelberg has plenty of Lauber mss!

Cod. Pal. Germ. 362 – Flore und Blancheflor [Werkstatt des Diebolt Lauber in Hagenau, 1430-1440]

Cod. Pal. Germ. 324 – Dietrich und seine Gesellen. [Werkstatt des Diebolt Lauber in Hagenau, Um 1440]

(The next five items form “Deutsche Bibel in 5 Bänden”.)

Cod. Pal. Germ. 19 – Die Bücher Mose, Josua und Richter [Werkstatt des Diebolt Lauber in Hagenau, Um 1440] (not very interesting drawings)

Cod. Pal. Germ. 20 – Bücher der Könige und Paralipomenon I und IL [Werkstatt des Diebolt Lauber in Hagenau, Um 1440] (also not very interesting drawings)

Cod. Pal. Germ. 21 – Die Bücher Esra, Nehemia, Tobias, Judith, Esther, Hiob, Psalter, Parabole Ecclesiastes, Cantica, Sapientia und Ecclesiasticus. [Werkstatt des Diebolt Lauber in Hagenau, Um 1440] (again, pretty dull)

Cod. Pal. Germ. 22 – Die Bücher jesaia, Jercmia, Baiiieli, Hesekiel, Daniel und die zwölf kleinen Propheten. [Werkstatt des Diebolt Lauber in Hagenau, Um 1440] (didn’t work for me at all)

Cod. Pal. Germ. 23 – Das Neue Testament [Werkstatt des Diebolt Lauber in Hagenau, Um 1440] (nope, the whole set failed to press my buttons)

Cod. Pal. Germ. 300 – Megenberg: Buch der Natur. [Werkstatt des Diebolt Lauber in Hagenau, 1440-1450]

Cpg300 contains an old pair of friends, but some other stuff too:

Cod. Pal. Germ. 149 – Sieben weise Meister und die Chronik des Martin von Polen. [Werkstatt des Diebolt Lauber in Hagenau, Um 1450]

Cod. Pal. Germ. 339 – Parzival. [Werkstatt des Diebolt Lauber in Hagenau, Um 1450]

Cod. Pal. Germ. 137 – Martin von Polen: Chronik. [Werkstatt des Diebolt Lauber in Hagenau, Um 1460] (dull as ditchwater, unless you really like grinding your way through endless unconvincing drawings of popes)

More Other Stuff

Cod. Pal. Germ. 311 – Megenberg: Buch der Natur [Mittelrhemische Hs, 1450-1460] (Has a nice catoblepas)

Cod. Pal. Germ. 438 – Gedieht von den zehn Geboten, der Bulie, der Beichte und den sieben Todsünden. [Mitteldeutsche Hs., 1450-1460]

Cod. Pal. Germ. 314 – Boner: Edelstein. [Augsburger Hs, Um 1445]

Cod. Pal. Germ. 322 – Otto von Passau: Vierundzwanzig Alte. [Oberrheinische Hs, 1457]

Cod. Pal. Germ. 644 – Medizinische Traktate [Oberdeutsche Hs, 1450-1460] (Thirty pictures of physicians looking at flasks of urine. Nice.)

Cod. Pal. Germ. 4 – Rudolf von Ems: Wilhelm von Orlens [Augsburger Hs, 1458]

Cod. Pal. Germ. 147 – Lanzelot [Mitteldeutsche Hs., Mitte XV. Jahrhundert]

Cod. Pal. Germ. 344 – Gedichte (“Von dem Eilenden Buoben”, Spruchgedicht von der Minne und dem Pfennig und Spruchgedicht vom Streite
zweier Frauen über Liebe und Leid der Minne) [Oberrheinische Hs, Um 1459]

Cod. Pal. Germ. 60 – Deutsche Bibel, Brief des Juden Samuel, Ars moriendi. Legende des hl. Patricius und die Legende des hl. Brandon. [Oberdeutsche Hs, Um 1460]

Cod. Pal. Germ. 86 – Boner: Edelstein. [Bayrische Hs, 1461]

Sal. VII. 114. Belial [Oberdeutsche Hs, Um 1460]

Cod. Pal. Germ. 346 – Tristan [Seeschwäbische Hs., Um 1460]

Cod. Pal. Germ. 463 – Jakob von Cessolis: Schachzabel [Oberschwäbische Hs., 1463]

Cod. Pal. Germ. 795 – Belial [Oberdeutsche, wohl Augsburger Hs, Um 1470]

Cod. Pal. Germ. 320 – Thomasin von Zirklaere: Walscher Gast [Schwäbische Hs, Um 1470]

Cod. Pal. Germ. 646 – Passion. [Oberdeutsche, wohl Augsburger Hs. 1470]

Cod. Pal. Germ. 76 – Ackermann von Böhmen [Schwäbische Hs. Um 1470]

Cod. Pal. Germ. 111 – Legende vom hl. Mauritius und Legende vom hl. Meinrat. [Schwäbische Hs., Um 1470]

Hans Wegener continues his book with CPG manuscripts from Ludwig Hennfflin’s Werkstatt, but this is now well out of our window of interest, so I’ll stop here. 🙂

While searching for the early 15th century German source images from which some images in the Voynich Manuscript were copied, we have so far found two manuscripts of the Welcher Gast (one from Eichstätt (1420), and one from Heilsbronn) that contain some eerily Voynichian motifs – a bird, a fish, and a child. But are there other manuscripts from Eichstätt and Heilsbronn dating to this period? I’ll start with Eichstätt…

Eichstätt manuscripts

If you don’t happen to know much about the town of Eichstätt, its two claims to fame are (1) that it holds the relics of St Walpurga (an 8th Century abbess of Heidenheim in Bavaria), whose feast is still celebrated today as Walpurgisnacht (1st May), and (2) that it held three phases of witch trials between 1532 and 1723. Oddly, St Walpurga’s name was invoked in the Middle Ages as protection against “plague, rabies and whooping cough, as well as against witchcraft”, which were often the subject of charms and amulets. According to Wikipedia, St Walpurga’s tomb miraculously oozes oil, which Benedictine nuns place in vials and sell to pilgrims. Nice.

As far as 15th century Eichstätt manuscripts go, undoubtedly the most famous one is Konrad Kyeser’s Bellifortis (1405). This contains a long series of drawings of instruments of war (some real, some planned, some historical, many just plain imagined), that Kyeser (who was from Eichstätt) produced for Ruprecht III (Emperor Palatine and King of the Germans).

After a long career all over Europe, Kyeser had not long before then been unceremoniously ejected from the Imperial court in Prague: the scribes who illustrated his high-class manuscript had themselves also been ejected from the Imperial court’s scriptorium, but had temporarily moved to Eichstätt (the details are unclear). According to Lynn White Jr, the link between Prague and the Bellifortis was made by art historian Augustus von Eye in 1871.

However, I have to say I’m really struggling to find many other illustrated manuscripts from Eichstätt from the first half of the 15th century. In fact, so far I’ve found only one…

UB Eichstätt Cod. st 212

The entry for Heidelberg cod pal germ 330 (Heidelberg UB holds three other copies of the Welscher Gast, don’t mix them up!) notes that Wegener (p.10) stylistically dates the ms to between 1410 and 1420, and that he thought its illustrations were by the same artist who drew the illustrations for Eichstätt UB Cod. st 212, the Eichstätter Evangelienpostille (a copy of a short 14th century religious work on the apostles composed by Ulrich von Lilienfeld).

The Eichstatt UB catalogue entry for Cod st 212 similarly dates that to between 1410 and 1420 (again citing Wegener), and notes that it was owned by Heinrich Gottsperger in 1425, who in 1427/8 became the Prior of the Dominikanerkloster Eichstätt (156v: “Iste liber fuit reuerendi patris et fratris Henrici de Monte Dei“).

Also: Cod st 212 seems (according to “Reform und früher Humanismus in Eichstätt: Bischof von Eych (1445-1464)”, ed. Jurgen Dendorfer) to have later been in the library of Bischof Johann von Eych. There’s also a useful 1913 monograph on this specific manuscript.

For Heinrich Gottsperger / Heinrich Gotzberger, there are (according to Spicilegii Friburgensis Subsidia, p.393) two manuscripts copied by him in Cologne in 1404 (Madrid I. G. 443 s.16 (“sic Catal.”), and Vat. lat 964), and one written in Esslingen in 1429 (Munchen Clm 26885 f.140-f.163). There’s a paragraph summarizing his life in David Sheffler’s “Schools and Schooling in Late Medieval Germany: Regensburg, 1250-1500”, p.241, plus more in Chapter 2 (not available online).

Note that UB Eichstätt holds various other books owned by Frater Georg Schwarz of Dominikanerkloster Eichstätt (Cod st 683-687 and 689), but these (according to Maarten J. F. M. Hoenen’s (1994) “Die Handschriftensammlung des Dominikaners Georg Schwarz (+ nach 1484)” are nearly all from 1450 or later (apart from a part of Cod st 683, which dates to 1417). This is nice because also on fol.156v of Cod st 212 is the following (dating to 1489):

“Felix Rosa Ave Tripudans Ethereo Regno
Gloria Extas Omnium Rerum. Inclita Virgo Salve”

OK, so it’s not quite as funky as the acrostic dedication in Hypnerotomachia Poliphilii, but it was a nice surprise nonetheless. 🙂

There’s a nice discussion of this in the introductory chapter of the 1913 monograph I mentioned above. This book also (p.6) quotes the second of the two articles (from 1801?) by ex-Dominican librarian W. (Apollinar) Nittermayr / Nittermaier / Nidermaier “Necrologium Eystettense Fratrum Praedicatorum, Pars I”, Eichstatt Diozesanarchiv B 151 and “Necrologii Eichstadiani fratrum Praedicatorum Pars Altera”, Eichstatt Diozesanarchiv B 152 (neither of which I could find online, but see 1186). Ultimately this seems to be the source which lists “fr. Henricus Gatsberger” (alias Gotsberger) becoming prior in 1427.

So… Where Next, Then?

Well, that’s indeed the question. If you accept Wegener’s dating, Cod. st 212 was made before Fr. Gotsberger even got to Eichstätt: hence I would perhaps like to look at Nittermaier’s book to find the prior priors, to then see if I can find other manuscripts linked with them.

But… this is a loose and fine historical thread to be reaching out to find blindfold, and I’d like to do much better. The underlying problem is that even though the BSB holds so many illustrated manuscripts, it has (unless you know better?) no obvious finding aid oriented towards geographic origin (perhaps because this is known only for a minority of manuscripts?).

Specifically, what I’d actually like to be referring to here is some kind of study of Bavarian illustrated manuscripts from the first half of the 15th century, along the same lines as the many studies of scribal houses in Alsace. I’m fairly certain that such a synthetic study must have been done several times over, but I’ve had basically zero luck finding anything close.

And so I share the question with you (slightly reframed). What historical research trickery can I use to try to find illustrated manuscripts from the first half of the 15th century from around Eichstätt in a systematic way?

A recent comment by Marco Ponzi on Voynich Ninja helpfully highlighted a 2019 comment there by Linda which pretty much everyone else had overlooked. She had previously suggested visual parallels between the Voynich Manuscript’s drawings and the ones in Erlangen-Nürnberg, Universitätsbibliothek MS B7, but when Marco (and then Koen Gheuens too) looked a little further, they found some unusually strong matches.

In my opinion, the first excellent match is Marco’s bird:

The second is Marco’s fish:

And the third is Koen’s child (from Heidelberg Cod. pal. germ. 330)

So what do we know about this manuscript?

A Welscher Gast mini-bibliography

The text of the Welscher Gast was written around 1215/1216 by Thomasin von Zerklaere (a cleric from Friuli), and is the first known code of conduct written in German. The ‘Italian Guest’ of the title is the Italian-speaking Thomasin himself, who apologizes for shortcomings in his German.

Given that numerous copies of the WG still survive today, it seems to have been a much-copied text. There is also, it has to be said, an ample secondary literature on the subject.

The great-granddaddy of this particular bibliographic tree was Heinrich Rückert, ed., Der walsche Gast des Thomasin von Zirclaria, Deutsche Neudrucke ; Reihe : Texte des Mittelalters (1852 ; rpt. Berlin : De Gruyter, 1965), which discussed twelve versions of the text.

This was then heartily supplanted by F. W. von Kries’ “Textkritische Studien zum Welschen Gast Thomasins von Zerclaere” in Quellen und Forschungen zur Sprach- und Kulturgeschichte der germanischen Volker, Neue Folge, 23 (147) (Berlin : De Gruyter, 1967), which expanded the study to twenty one mss, and included a partial stemma.

Books and articles since have discussed other WG mss and fragments unknown to Rückert and von Kries, such as those given the titles Si, F, and N. For more, you might check ARLIMA’s nice long list, though anyone thinking this is even 10% of the total set of WG articles is likely to be in for a bit of a shock.

Welscher Gast Manuscripts

For clickable links, the basic starting point here is the HandSchriftencensus Welscher Gast page, which lists twenty five manuscript copies.

Helpfully, Judith-A. Davidson’s “The Contamination of MS D of Der Welsche Gast” (Dresden, Sächs. Landesbibl. M 67), A Comparative Study of Text and Illustration Cycle, nicely lists these alongside their modern Sigles:

Parchment manuscripts

• A : Heidelberg, Universitätsbibl., Cod. pal. germ. 389.
• G : Gotha, Forschungsbibl., Membrana I 120.
• S : Stuttgart, Wùrttemberg. Landesbibl., Cod. poet. et philol. f. 1.
• E : New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, Glazier Ms. 54.
• H : East Berlin, Deutsche Staatsbibl., Hamilton Ms. 675.

Parchment fragments

• Gr : Formerly in Berlin, Preussische Staatsbibl., Ms. germ. 4° 978. (The MS, lost in 1945, was presumably destroyed by fire).
• Bü : Fürstliches Ysenburg-Büdingsch. Rentkammerarchiv.
• Pe : Budapest, National Szechenyi Library, Ms. Clmae 210 (formerly Cod. Misc. Hist. Hung, et Germ. Nr. 1559 f. lat). (The fragment was stolen, but had been published by R. M. Werner prior to the theft).
• Wo : Wolfenbüttel, Herzog-August-Bibl., 404 9 (6) Novi.
• Wa : Watzendorf bei Coburg, Evangelisches-Lutherisches Pfarramt.
• Erl : Erlangen, Universitätsbibl., Ms. B7.
• Ma : Berlin, Staatsbibl. Preussisch. Kulturbesitz, Ms. germ. f. 757.
• Si : Sibiu (Hermannstadt), Rumanian State Archive, GG 3/X Tomus A.

Paper manuscripts

• U : Munich, Bayerisch. Staatsbibl., Cgm 571.
• W : Wolfenbuttel, Herzog-August-Bibl., Ms. 37.19 Aug. 2°.
• a : Heidelberg, Universitätsbibl., Cod. pal. germ. 320.
• c : Heidelberg, Universitätsbibl., Cod. pal. germ. 338.
• K : Karlsruhe, Badisch. Landesbibl., St. Peter pap. 35.
• M : Munich, Bayerisch. Staatsbibl., Cgm 340.
• b : Heidelberg, Universitätsbibl., Cod. pal. germ. 330.
• D : Dresden, Sachs. Landesbibl., M. 67.
• N : Nürnberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Hs. 86035.
• F : Stift Schlierbach, Hs. 28. (Grubmüller, who identified the MS., used the sigle « C »).

Paper fragment

• Tü : Berlin, Staatsbibl. Preussisch. Kulturbesitz, Ms. germ. 2° 718.

Note that, according to Davidson (who I heavily rely on in the following), “The thirteen illustrated MSS are A, G, S, E, H, Gr, Bu, Erl, U, W, a, b and D.”

Messy Stemmas

Given that we’re specifically interested in the illustrations in the 15th century ‘Erl’ copy, what we’d really like to see now is a nice neat Lachmannian stemma, to point us at related manuscripts (and to help bracket out all the 12th and 13th century copies that are unlikely to be of interest). And here’s the stemma that Davidson gives, adapted from von Kries’ stemma (she had access to all his photographs and collations):

Yet I should caution that the whole reason for Davidson’s article is that there are problems taking too literal a view of the WG stemma. Her argument is that the D copy was “contaminated”, in that it suffers from “horizontal transmission” (von Kries also highlights that book 10 of H is similarly contaminated) between that original (left) half of the tree and the S** (right) half that branched off in the mid-13th century. Her modified sub-stemma looks like this, with an extra (lost) D* manuscript feeding in to D as well as the (lost) AD* copy:

Davidson also argues that the earliest description of the WG illustration tradition by Adolf von Oechelhäuser, “Der Bilderkreis zum Walschen Gaste des Thomasin von Zerclaere” [Heidelberg : Gustav Koester, 1890] got quite a lot of important stuff wrong. Which is important because she thinks that the illustration contamination of D there parallels the textual contamination of D.

All the same, the two obviously later manuscripts on the right hand side half of the tree to consider are b and N:

• b : Heidelberg, Universitätsbibl., Cod. pal. germ. 330.
• N : Nürnberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Hs. 86035. (which, annoyingly, has blank areas left for drawings that were never copied in)

Cod Pal germ 330 was made in Nordbayern (Eichstätt?) in 1420, according to the Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg description. Here are its birds:

Incidentally, the Erlangen bird page in context looks like this:

Initial Thoughts

Anyone who thinks using stemmae for tracing illustrations are innately easy should have a look at the Welscher Gast. The Welscher Gast digital project has patiently catalogued all the illustrations across all the known manuscripts (though I must admit I found the ways they cross-linked things more than a little confusing at times). However, the illustrations vary so enormously that it’s often hard to see (if you discount all the easy pages, like Euclid etc) how X’s illustrations relate to Y’s illustrations.

My thoughts are therefore that the German scribal copy shops putting together all these copies had so many drawings to make that they, exactly like the Alsace scribes we have discussed before, simply copied whatever material they had at hand to get the job done. (And what a sadly banal phrase that has now become, *sigh*.)

So, whereas I went into the Welscher Gast world wondering if there might be some kind of scribal transmission of the images to pick up on, I now think that – for the very most part – the WG simply wasn’t that kind of a beast. That is, its diagrams weren’t implicitly interesting: rather, they were window-dressing the text, because this was a text-centric gig, not an illustration-centric one.

Hence I confidently predict that the bird, the fish and the child were all taken from other 1420s German manuscripts done in these and similar copy shops, and which were happily reused when these kinds of copying commissions came in. But the Welscher Gast was probably a recipient of these images, not a source.