The Voynich Ninja

(20-05-2017, 09:00 PM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I'm almost certain that this is another author, because it says "D and P say....". Pliny?
It's from You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..

I don't think that can be a P. Maybe a C or G (Galenus)?
But you are clearly right about it being a second author "D et ? dicunt..." (plural).

It's the same as the paragraph sign, which I somehow thought was a P, though probably it's rather a C for Cap..

(20-05-2017, 10:24 PM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(20-05-2017, 09:45 PM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.On f.99v there is talk of one Petrus Magister Yspanius:

I'm not certain, but I think it may be a reference to You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. He did write on medicinal herbs.

Here is a link to a searchable Middle English translation of his You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. There's also an Italian translation online (and perhaps others).

It has to be Petrus Hispanus (later You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.), but the Thesaurus Pauperum seems to mention Valerian only once, "ad fistulam". Here Petrus uses Valeriana / Amantilla to cure "the bleeding of the woman" (ad fluxum mulieris).

The name "Amantilla" is also of some interest. If I understand correctly, in those days Valeriana was the more common name, and the description says that it was called Amantilla by the "Gauls".

Trying to answer a question by bi3mw, I stumbled about something that seems interesting.
The plant at the top of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is compared with another plant called "centumgalli" (genitive,  the nominative should be something like centumgallus).

This plant name is not frequent. A few references:

Piero Cantalupo You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (a Salernitan text by the author of Trotula).
Recipe 8 mentions "turiones mirte et mirice et centrumgalli" - sprouts of myrth, tamarix and wild sage.
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (dictionary of popular medicine in Bari)
cendragalle / centogallo o centrogalli

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is another collection of popular herbal names from Apulia.
Here the name is given as "cristagallo" or "controgallo"

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. by Luigi Anguillara has an entry about centrogalli:

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. quotes a recipe by Master Taddeo of Florence that included "Centrogalli, cioè seme di Schiarea / Sclarea".

A while ago, I had a look at the edition of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. The plant associated with Sagittarius is Centogallo i.e. Schiareya

As you can see, there are three main variants of the name: "centrogalli" (which appears Latinized in the earliest source by Trota); "centogalli" (which also appears in the Trinity); "controgallo".
Sometimes, the word is said to refer to the seeds of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.; in other cases (including the Trinity and Trota) it refers to the whole plant.

I believe that this is a vulgar Italian word, likely from the South of Italy. This could suggest that the text of this part of the Trinity ms was written there. Of course, an extensive search of peculiar words in the manuscript could tell much about its origin: I hope some scholar will give some attention to this work in the future.

Thanks, Marco. That would align well with our earlier impression that regions mentioned got more specific in the south of Italy. 

Surely, if a specialist study of this MS ever appeared it would move right to the top of my reading list.

Centum Galli/Centrumgalli (Salvia sclarea) is mentioned in MS. Arch. Selden. B. 35, but is labeled in most of the medieval herbals as Gallitricum (Kallitrixon) or Gallicrus (Galligrus).

Trinity O.42.48 includes this plant under the name of Gallitricus and draws it in a manner similar to the German and northern Italian (Lombardic?) herbals that are in U.K. and Italian repositories, and quite differently from the group that includes Morgan M.873 and Masson 116. Which is interesting in itself, as the two different pictorial approaches ended up in different regions away from where they were originally created.


I've identified a fairly high proportion of the plants in the first section of Trinity O.42.48 but the second section is quite challenging... a lot of old names, mostly southern. It takes donkey's years to look up each one, with only a small chance of actually finding it. Many of the old names fell out of use after the Linnaean system became more popular.

The Trinity manuscript is listed as "XIII / XIV Century, Southern Italy" in "Gardens on Vellum" by Maria Amalia D'Aronco - "Health and Healing from the Medieval Garden" 2008 Peter Dendle and Alain Touwaide ed.

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Diane has been writing a number of blog posts criticizing Marco's views on the plants in the "three names section". I tried to explain to her why I fully agree with Marco on this matter: the plant names don't make any linguistic sense, we can't recognize them, it's not realistic that for hundreds of plants a name is provided in precisely three languages: "commmon", Greek and Hebrew. The names don't show any resemblance between languages, while plant names are especially prone to borrowing (if they are traded, as Diane expects of the exotic plants). In short, the names in this section don't make any linguistic or practical sense and appear made up.

Additionally, many of these plants have magical elements in their image and/or text, which is consistent with the idea of mythical or made-up plants.

Back in the day I made a quick and rough transcription of the names for all the "exotic" plants I could find in this section. I shared this list with Diane, hoping she'd quickly see how absurd the naming scheme is. Unfortunately, this didn't work and she has selected a plant name she recognizes: the kaki, a.k.a. persimmon, incidentally my favorite fruit

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(top right)

The image is one of the more fanciful ones, with multicolored leaves shaped like serrated arrow heads. Unfortunately I discovered that my ability to read the text of this MS went from "a little bit" to "almost nothing" over the last two years. Can anyone see what the text is about?

Page 226r ?
In the 3 line is the german name ( Rubsrecht )
I think it's the ruprecht's herb. Ruprechtskraut