The Voynich Ninja

(26-02-2017, 02:26 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Haha! I just checked the following page and there it is... ad morsum serpentis. So, the critters are directly related to the use of the plant.

In medieval herbals, many, many plants are "prescribed" for snake bite or dog bite.

Exactly. I can't find a reference to scorpions, but Plantago as a cure for the bite of rabid dogs is mentioned here:
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(ad morsum canis rabiosi)

[Edited to add] Also the above mentioned You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., which features a four-legged reptile, prescribes Plantago for serpent byte, both in the marginal Italian (morso de serpe[n]te) and at the very beginning of the Latin main text ([a]d morsum s[er]penits).


Since we are discussing the critter as "the key", I think it is worth mentioning that in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. the animal seems to be eating from one of the leaves. Of course, this detail can be the source of many speculations. It would be interesting to see if there are parallels in medieval herbals (at the moment, I can't remember similar examples). Finding comparable images could help us understand what the animal means in this case.

Marco, I can remember occasionally seeing medieval images of critters eating plants but I can't remember off the top of my head if they were in herbal manuscripts or other kinds of manuscripts. There are many images of pigs eating acorns, but those are usually associated with month's labors (the task is to knock down the acorns in the fall to fatten up the pigs for slaughter).

Since the context is important to the understanding of the animal's relationship to the plant, I'll try to keep my eyes open in case I see them again (or have examples in my files), with preference for those where the plant is the main focal point.

If (and only if) the fact that the critter is eating the leaf is important, then "dragon's blood" is a bit problematic. In that case, I'd even prefer an explanation where the critter is not a dragon at all, but rather one of the previously mentioned leaf eaters.

However, if the leaf eating is not important or just some convention, then I'd stick with dragon's blood.

On that topic, there is also this plant from f 101v:



It's shaped like a scaled reptilian tail and has a red splash, which might indicate red resin ("blood").. However, the leaves are totally different. Might it be one of the other dragon's blood plants?

Could be, but I don't remember any of the plants producing resin from their roots - I may well be wrong.

That part is not necessarily a root. It's been drawn like a cut trunk from which new leaves emerge. Normally the roots should have been under it but here they have been drawn to the right, perhaps to be able to draw the shape within the available horizontal space.

It might seen a bit lame to invoke the argument of space constraints, but the roots on the right come up as high as the leaves so it can't be denied that the whole thing is squashed. ..

(26-02-2017, 11:51 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Marco, I can remember occasionally seeing medieval images of critters eating plants but I can't remember off the top of my head if they were in herbal manuscripts or other kinds of manuscripts. There are many images of pigs eating acorns, but those are usually associated with month's labors (the task is to knock down the acorns in the fall to fatten up the pigs for slaughter).

Since the context is important to the understanding of the animal's relationship to the plant, I'll try to keep my eyes open in case I see them again (or have examples in my files), with preference for those where the plant is the main focal point.

Hi JKP,
as you say, images of animals eating plants are fairly common, in particular in the month's labors cycles. They often appear also in zodiac illustrations of Aries, Taurus and Capricorn, and we see this in the Voynich zodiac too.
I think they are not very frequent in herbal illustrations.
 
I went through my Pinterest collection, and these are the examples I find relevant when compared with the “leaf-eating” posture of the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. animal. 
Top to bottom and left to right:

1.
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Lactuca leporina - Miscellanea medica Firenze, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Pluteo 73.16  Pseudo-Apuleius XIII Century
“hare Lettuce” - the hare seems to be eating the plant. 

2.
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Dragon - Alchemical herbal manuscript Trento ms 1591 : Burning-bush or False Dittany (Dictamnus albus), illustration

3.
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Dragon - Latin 17844, fol. 115v, Flore : verveine verbena
This manuscript (already mentioned above) includes several dragons with different shapes. This one is eating one of the lower leaves of verbena. 


The second row includes images that are rather different, but still possibly interesting for other reasons.

4.
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Miniature from a copy of Kitab al-hashaish, an Arabic translation of Dioscorides’s De Materia Medica.  Silene gallica (Catchfly) and a Gazelle. Iraq, Baghdad (?); 1224
The web page comment is as puzzled as we are “One could ask why Abdallah ibn al-Fadl has chosen to place beside it an animal that is presumably a gazelle, judging from the hooves and antlers. It has nothing to do with the plant and is also completely out of proportion with it”.

5.
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Italian Herbalpage #34 Herba capo canino - Hound's head plant
University of Vermont – Italian Herbal – 1500 ca?
In this illustration a Voynich-like “nymph” seems to have picked a leaf from the plant.

6.
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Biblioteca Bertoliana Vicenza alchemical herbal XV Century – Herba Bozor Minor et de novem una.
I think this is the ms that Rene has brought to the attention of the Voynich community and that has been mentioned by Touwaide in his Voynich paper because of its German color annotations (MS 362). I find the uncolored and jovial dragon to be somehow reminiscent of that in f25v. 


This evidence does seem to add much to what we have already discussed. The three dragons that appear in these illustrations seem to be illustrating plants that cure snake bite: nothing more specific than that, as far as I can tell.

I hope that other examples will show up.

Quote:The three dragons that appear in these illustrations seem to be illustrating plants that cure snake bite: nothing more specific than that, as far as I can tell.

Great stuff Marco. However, I would suggest that they aren't dragons being depicted, but snakes - what the English called wyrms. The second example cited specifically mentions serpientes - snakes.

(26-02-2017, 07:43 PM)davidjackson Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Quote:The three dragons that appear in these illustrations seem to be illustrating plants that cure snake bite: nothing more specific than that, as far as I can tell.

Great stuff Marco. However, I would suggest that they aren't dragons being depicted, but snakes - what the English called wyrms. The second example cited specifically mentions serpientes - snakes.

Hi David, as I wrote, I think the cure of snake bite is mentioned in all three pages (but some are hard to read). I agree that the Trento illustration can be described as a horned-snake with a prominent crest (but I am not sure this necessarily excludes it is a dragon). 
Do you think that also the BNF Latin 17844 and Bertoliana (Vicenza) illustrations of reptiles with 2 legs should be considered as snakes and not dragons? The BNF animal is winged too. How exactly can we tell a dragon from a snake?

And aren't wyrms dragons?
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Of course, comparing an imaginary animal with a real animal is not easy.
According to Isidore of Seville "The dragon is the largest serpent" ("draco major cunctorum serpentium"). So, all dragons are snakes (but of course not all snakes are dragons). 
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[Edited to add] I have checked the three ms:

Trento (as you already noted): "vale contra morsegadura de serpente" (Veneto dialect): helps against snake byte

BNF Lat 17844: line 6 "valet contra colubrum serpentem" helps against the coluber snake  

Vicenza Bertoliana: line 4 "ad sanandum morsuram serpentis" to heal the bite of a snake

All three manuscripts are about plants to be used to cure snake bite. It seems clear to me that at least two of the three are clearly dragons. Isn't a winged reptilian with two legs a dragon? Since a dragon is a kind of snake, it seems legitimate to use it to illustrate this plants (with some hyperbolic implications about the power of the plants in question).

Quote:So, all dragons are snakes (but of course not all snakes are dragons).

Exactly. Dragons were often used as allegoric serpents to denote the devil. They were also used in bestiary mythology as mortal enemies of elephants, as per your image posted.

Quote:The dragon is the enemy of the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., and hides near paths where elephants walk so that it can catch them with its tail and kill them by suffocation. It is because of the threat of the dragon that elephants give birth in the water.

The reason is biblical. Elephants were associated with Adam and Eve; the dragon with the devil who attacked them. (Elephants were also said by the bestiary tradition to need the mandrake to conceive).

Many "foreign" snakes were depicted with legs - boa (described as an Italian snake which chases cows and suckles them, hence the name from bovine); Syrens from Arabia had legs and wings to pursue their prey; etc. It's not uncommon at all in the bestiary tradition. Dragons always have a crest or crown in the bestiary tradition when denoting a demonic element, or otherwise are depicted in the elephantine tradition.