(14-06-2017, 07:38 AM)Helmut Winkler Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (14-06-2017, 01:14 AM)voynichbombe Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.> a "composite manuscript"
Does "bookbinders synthesis" meet "Buchbindersynthese"? I'm slightly uncertain. Something that would be noticeable, though.
This is correct. The 'Buchbinder' could have been the author or a later owner, of course
How does this square with the decorative motifs that recur in different sections?
(14-06-2017, 08:27 AM)nickpelling Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (14-06-2017, 07:38 AM)Helmut Winkler Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (14-06-2017, 01:14 AM)voynichbombe Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.> a "composite manuscript"
Does "bookbinders synthesis" meet "Buchbindersynthese"? I'm slightly uncertain. Something that would be noticeable, though.
This is correct. The 'Buchbinder' could have been the author or a later owner, of course
How does this square with the decorative motifs that recur in different sections?
That the VMs is a composite ms. does not necessarily mean it is by different authors, I am convinced there is only one author (and only one hand). I think there were notes by on author about different subjects which were bound together at some time. He used glyphes like the gallows again and again, whatever meaning they may have.
Manuscripts on secular, "scientific" subjects are very often Sammelhandschriften. They group various works of one author on various subjects, or different authors on the same subject. Or they even group fragments from various sources on seemingly unrelated subjects. It all depends on the available sources and the specific needs of the client.
I do agree that the VM is a Sammelhandscrift, and that its sources were diverse. As Nick has pointed out, for example, the human figures in the central zodiac emblems are cut from a different cloth than the standard nymphs. The plants are from a different source than the nymphy sections, and the astro diagrams must have been gained from yet another.
What makes the VM hard to interpret as a Sammelhandschrift is that the distinct ingredients have been topped with the same sauce: the script and certain stylistic aspects. Now when a collection of different works is copied (one or more times), any stylistic differences will obviously fade away. Though they can still be spotted by the keen eye.
There was no author who invented all the Voynich sections from scratch all by himself.
... There was no author who invented all the Voynich sections from scratch all by himself. ...
Well, the VMs is not an original work in the sense of the word, there must have been sources as in nearly all medieva works, but I feel sure it is not a copy in the sense of the word as well and I have done some thinking what the sources could have been for some time.
(14-06-2017, 01:00 PM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Manuscripts on secular, "scientific" subjects are very often Sammelhandschriften. They group various works of one author on various subjects, or different authors on the same subject. Or they even group fragments from various sources on seemingly unrelated subjects. It all depends on the available sources and the specific needs of the client.
I do agree that the VM is a Sammelhandscrift, and that its sources were diverse. As Nick has pointed out, for example, the human figures in the central zodiac emblems are cut from a different cloth than the standard nymphs. The plants are from a different source than the nymphy sections, and the astro diagrams must have been gained from yet another.
What makes the VM hard to interpret as a Sammelhandschrift is that the distinct ingredients have been topped with the same sauce: the script and certain stylistic aspects. Now when a collection of different works is copied (one or more times), any stylistic differences will obviously fade away. Though they can still be spotted by the keen eye.
There was no author who invented all the Voynich sections from scratch all by himself.
Koen,
I'm so delighted to see that an opinion I expressed on the old mailing list back in 2012, and which then evoked a massive eruption of flaming... namely, that the work was a composite work from a number of disparate sources... has now come to be articulated by so many others - including, unless I mis-remember - one or two of those who most virulently disputed the idea back then.
Great to see. And, of course, I haven't changed my mind either.
I do think the manuscript would have been completed, though there are signs of haste in the finishing... usually a sheet which had pigments added would be hung to dry before being laid by the next, or stacked into a quire or signature. Nick Pelling long ago pointed out the folios on which we see contact-transfer of pigment.
Perhaps it was originally without the 'heavy painting' though - what do you think?
Quote:Well, the VMs is not an original work in the sense of the word, there must have been sources as in nearly all medieva works, but I feel sure it is not a copy in the sense of the word as well and I have done some thinking what the sources could have been for some time.
Helmut, you have said exactly what I think, and I am sure many more think the same.
HOWEVER - the sources are
so disparate across space and time, that I sometimes feel the scribe would have had to have access to the library of Alexandra to collate them all*. Would any 15th century notable - I think we can assume the author would have been a highly educated, albeit not necessarily famous person - have had access to such a varied range of influences and manuscripts? Or are we to assume him to have been highly travelled?
*Or, as one notable Voynich researcher would interject, access to 20th century research mediums. I mention this only because it is a valid observation to my question.
David,
like most other researchers I have given most of my thinking to the Herbal section and I think you are overestimating widely the amount of sources needed. There are about a dozen possible sources, some of them quite obvious and depending on what our author used there could have been only two or three. You have to take into account that he quite likely took some of his material from sources which quoted other sources. There are several encyclopedias and handbooks available to 15th c. writers describing (medical) plants, these encyclopedias should have been accessible in all the better places of learning (my personal preference is Padova with its university for several reasons, I have a candidate for author as well). Just some examples of possibles, because these texts were widely known: Albertus Magnus, Avicenna, Simon of Genua and several others. I think the VMs author drew his plant (quite likely imo from nature) and wrote his text making excerpts from texts available to him in a library. I think that the Gallows are just abbreviations for his sources and the rest of the text gives aditiona information in an abbreviatrd form.
Please mind that in what I am stating here I am talking about the Herbal section only at present.
A good example for what gave me the idea are the Kräuterbücherdrucke of the late 15th c.. Hortus sanitatis, gart der gesundheit, the similarity to the Beinecke 408 text is remarkable
I also agree with Helmut, that this is a collection of information from a variety of sources, possibly drawn and painted by a single individual over time, though this is not the only potential explanation. And I'd say that a prime example of such borrowing from other sources can be seem in the comparison of VMs You are not allowed to view links.
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Login to view. with the Oresme illustration of the cosmos as referenced by E. Velinska, and discussed here previously. And even though the earth and stars are surrounded by only a plain nebuly line in the VMs representation, rather than the elaborate, scallop-shell patterned, blue and white cloud band of the original Oresme depiction, there is a clear similarity. And subsequently, the missing cloud band, absent from the VMs illustration was located by D. Hoffmann in the VMs central rosette. And even the internal structure of the VMs cloud band is quite similar to that of the Oresme example. So it seems obvious that there are external sources for what we find in the VMs.
But then there are problems. Why are things so strange and difficult to interpret and verify? Why are the violets inverted? Why aren't the plant identifications more straightforward. Why is the VMs representation of Oresme's ccosmos in two parts? Why is the purported cultural source of this manuscript fictitious? It seems to be the author's intention to create a world of strangeness and then use that creation as a place to hide normal, traditional, historical information such as the Oresme cosmos, which has been separated into two parts because it would be, or at least should be, all too obvious otherwise.
Standard medieval information regarding the Greek alphabet, the Roman and medieval number systems has been tucked away in the 17 symbol sequence of f57v. Visual interpretation is confirmed through an objective determination of placement. Each of the seventeen symbols can be assigned an interpretive equivalent in each of the three traditional numerical or alphabetic (possibly alphanumeric) sequences. Can this complex construction be dismissed as accidental?
The creator of the VMs has accumulated knowledge from various sources. However, rather than present this information in the standard form of simply stating facts in a straightforward manner, it appears that the reader is required to possess and use that standard medieval knowledge in order to discover the potential contents of the VMs. Does the reader know Oresme's cosmos? Or the historical origins of the red galero tradition? Or the design of a papelonny heraldic insignia? What progress can be expected?
There is a short but comprehensive overview of possible sources for the herbal part at
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I would like to mention that I find the term 'Klostermedizin' misleading