The Voynich Ninja

It might be handy for the "essentials" subforum to compile a list of plant manuscripts which are somehow relevant to the study of the VM. We might introduce several tags, depending on which properties we find useful. Some ideas:

- Figures blended in plant parts (like a face for a root etc)
- Figures accompany plant (we might make an exception here for snakes etc since those are more common?)
- Large plant drawings (one per page?)
- Text around image
- ...

And of course indicate the relation between various manuscripts. They could be grouped by tradition, and each individual manuscript can be tagged with the relevant features. If we add links to digitized versions, this should become a handy tool for experienced and new researchers alike, as well as a framework for adding any newly discovered manuscripts.

But first we should discuss the best way of handling this, since it's important that the main contributors stand behind the method. Which kinds of manuscripts should we include? Which tags will be the most informative and relevant? Also, which kinds of features should we exclude? For example, many manuscripts feature a man-shaped mandrake, but this is really a thing of its own rather than a remarkable Voynich-like feature which sets a specific manuscript apart.

I have more than 21,000 plants categorized and each one of the plant pages has cross-references to herbal manuscripts (and other sources of plant drawings) and to VMS plants that are similar.

There are dozens of herbals that are directly relevant.

If you could arrange for me to win a lottery I will gladly sit down and write up the lists and timelines.  Sigh.  

Koen, I have to run, but I glanced at my list of herbals that appear to have direct relevance to the VMS in one way or another and it looks like there are more than 50 of them that are particularly relevant.

This doesn't include ones that are less relevant or significantly dissimilar (like some of the eastern herbals).

I don't know if that helps give a sense of the scope of this project, but I thought I'd mention it. I'll try to give it another look this evening.

JKP: it can be a slow and steady community project. My main concern at the moment is to get the format right before we start. After that things should roll smoothly. 

Part of the challenge will be to focus on those manuscripts we really find important. But that's why I want community feedback first - which features are we looking for?

One of the things I've done is group them according to which ones are similarly drawn. I strongly suggest this be taken into consideration when building lists.


I realize it can be a slow, steady community project, but then everyone is out there re-locating the manuscripts and drawings that I've spent a decade finding, studying, and cataloging. MarcoP has also done a great deal of work in locating and evaluating plant drawings—I can see that from his posts on the forums.


So, we're kind of between a rock and a hard place... if we don't contribute our research, there's enormous replication of effort. If we do, it's very time-consuming for us to provide it in a form that's useful in someone else's format, and it's a lot to give up after laboring over it for years. I don't know where a sensible compromise lies. I don't know how Marco feels about this either.

In his You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., Prof. Stephen Bax wrote: "With the notable exception of Zandbergen, it is surprising how few scholars have seriously researched herbal manuscripts contemporary with the VM".

Since then, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. has been published. Touwaide largely confirms Rene Zanbergen's observations. I guess that referring to Rene's and Touwaide's works is the most reliable approach to the subject.

I am not an expert in this area, but these are some manuscripts that I think can help us understand what Touwaide calls "the Voynich herbal". I detail for each ms some of the relevant features:

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* Manfredus de Monte Imperiali You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., Southern Italy, first half of the XIV Century, Latin (the text is an expanded version of the "Tractatus de Herbis" / "Circa Instans"). Sherwood and Zandbergen independently pointed out the similarity of the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. This parallel was also discussed by Alain Touwaide in his 2015 paper "L'Erbario Voynich". The ms is a high quality scientific work. Text is neatly organized in two columns and the illustrations are of great artistic quality.
Relevant features: Touwaide comments on "meaningful similarities" between the illustrations of the BNF ms and those of the VMS;  the specific combination of the oak and ivy illustration

* MS 362 Biblioteca Civica Bertoliana Vicenza, Veneto, XV Century. Sergio Toresella compared the VMS with the Italian herbal tradition known asYou are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. Rene Zandbergen has pointed out that this particular copy features German colour annotations that in part match annotations in the VMS. Both Toresella's observations and the colour annotations in the Vicenza ms are mentioned by Touwaide. Like most other copies of the Alchemical Herbal, the ms features poor quality, highly schematic illustrations.
Relevant features: poor artistic quality, zoomorphic and anthropomorphic elements, German colour annotations

* You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (Veneto) and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (Pistoia), XV Century. Text in Italian. Both manuscripts are believed to be copies of the same lost original. The text derives from various sources, including the Alchemical Herbal and the Tractatus de Herbis and incorporating astrological elements. These manuscripts are of a popular nature, the illustrations are of a poor quality and the layout of the pages is often similar to that of the VMS. Also, a high number of fantastic details appears in the illustrations. The Vermont Herbal features colour annotations (in Italian).
Relevant features: poor artistic quality, page layout, zoomorphic and anthropomorphic elements

* You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., (this includes the "Pseudo-Apuleius" collection and many plants from unknown sources), Germany?, second half of the XIV Century, Latin - pointed out by Rene on this forum. Like the two Italian ms mentioned above, this ms appears to be a manual that might have been intended for actual medical use.
Relevant features: original illustrations and plants that cannot be easily traced to known traditions, recurring peculiarities of the illustrations (e.g. flat-top roots, animal-shaped roots), colour annotations

* You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., Southern France, XIV Century - originally pointed out by Ellie Velinska, I think. The text is derived from Tractatus de Herbis, translated and much shortened. The ms makes consistent use of additional figurative elements, both incorporated into plants and accompanying them: such elements are much more frequent than in the VMS, they appear in almost all of the illustrations. The ms is a luxury product, with extremely regular lay-out and professional calligraphy and illustrations.  
Relevant features: abundance of unique non-botanical details

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This short list makes clear that the VMS appears to be somehow related with several of the main medieval herbal traditions. Since these traditions are largely inter-connected, it is not easy to draw a boundary where things stop being relevant. Documenting  the Pseudo-Apuleius, the Tractatus de Herbis and the Alchemical Herbal basically means writing a history of Western herbal lore: it will not be easy to present all this in a reasonably simple way...

While it is not stated, I guess that this should really only concern illustrated herbals.

There are many hundreds, if one were to stop at, say, 1500. (That may still be a bit early for several reasons).

Apart from this date criterium, it seems hard to have any *a priori* reason to exclude particular manuscripts.
One could argue that books that predate the Voynich MS by more than 200 years could be left out of consideration, but I suspect not many people would want to do that, and in any case this eliminates only a relatively small fraction.

So, for lack of a good a priori exclusion criterium, it could be done based on some criterium after inspecting the book in question. This is also not easy, since this requires some expertise that may not be sufficiently present here. Many manuscripts are in any case not freely available on the net...


One could start by making lists based on available reference works.

So it seems that scope is a real problem. I wouldn't attempt to present a whole overview of all somewhat possibly related herbals though, since then, as you correctly remark, we're writing a monograph on the herbal tradition.

This is why I'd favor concrete properties, for example "one large plant drawing per page". Unless I'm mistaken, selecting properties like these will drastically limit the amount of manuscripts we must include, while at the same time being informative.

Perhaps instead if "most relevant herbals" I'd better say "Herbals which share rare properties with the VM"

@Koen: Should these shared properties be fixed once they have been defined, or should it be possible to add new properties afterwards ?

Ideally it's dynamic and adapting to our findings. Experience teaches that these things roll more smoothly when there are concrete guidelines beforehand, but these can always be adjusted when we notice that certain things don't work or are missing.

I like the way this worked in the Zodiac thread, I got constant feedback from the contributors and the thread is a reflection of that.