The Voynich Ninja

(14-04-2019, 08:06 PM)Paris Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Morten St. George

In this YouTube video from Gérard Caye, you can see how to prepare a pen nib.
(unfortunately, it's in french)

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It's not so easy to prepare.

If you watch other of his videos, you can notice how difficult it is to write correctly.

the video has little to do with how medieval scribes prepared their nibs

(15-04-2019, 03:29 PM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Okay, Morten. I'm through. You keep throwing my interpretations in with many different people's interpretations as though they are all the same. They are not.

Secondly, each of your arguments is based on supporting your theory, not trying to find out facts, so we will never go anywhere except in circles.

I don't have time for merry-go-rounds.

JP, I used the phrase "you guys" instead of "you" because I don't have the time to find and cite who said precisely what (nor do I think it important enough to be worth the effort), but I am pretty sure that you were one of the supporters of a Germanic slant on the marginalia or at least that you had referred to it.

As for going around in circles, that is precisely my view on all of VMS research for the past one hundred years. I've been  trying to open up a new avenue of research, one that might turn out to be more fruitful, but you are certainly welcome to retreat to the merry-go-round of unproductive themes found in other threads.

(15-04-2019, 07:18 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Your contention that they faked 15th-century handwriting in 1600 ...

That is exactly what I am contending, so in no way am I rejecting your conclusion that the marginalia is written in the handwriting style of the 15th century.



Someone here, maybe you, maybe someone else, claims that the first word is the German gas  or gaf. I presume one of those words means goose, whereupon one gets goose's milk.

For my part, I view the first word as a sharp truncation of the Latin word gallo, starting with omission of the down slash on the first el. I'm pretty sure it's gallo because I find that word in the Herball encyclopedia of 1597, a book with established connections to the VMS. In said botanical encyclopedia, the word gallo (meaning Frenchman) is used to refer to the Michel Nostradamus of France (called Gaul in Roman times).

Note the marker (,,) for the double el  just below and between the two words. Note that this marginalia continues on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. where the first two words include a double el (ll).

I'm quite sure that the author of this marginalia was a founding member of the Rose Cross, a secret society that became the literary arm of Protestant armies fighting a religious war against Roman Catholics. Deception was the name of the game.

If you want to unravel the secrets of the VMS, in this thread or in other threads, I'd recommend that you try to adopt the mentality of Sherlock Holmes, looking for clues with complete openness to anything and everything.

It's a long-ess Morten (or long-eff if the stem has been damaged by that scrapey area on the parchment).

The letter ell was never written like that. It never extended below the baseline and was not written with a straight hook across the top (unless there was also a loop).

Long-ess was the normal way to write ess for most of the 14th and 15th centuries and part of the 16th century.

Here is a long-ess and long-eff on the top right (long-eff is marked) and ell on the bottom right in handwriting that is in a similar style (Gothic) to the 116v text:

[attachment=2861]


It's appears from everything you've written about the text that you do not know how to read medieval writing.

Look at the three ell letters in the first and second lines. Note that they do not go below the baseline. Note that they have angled loops. They look nothing like the long-ess or long-eff in gas/gaf but they do look typical for the 15th century.

@ Morten St George

Someone here, maybe you, maybe someone else, claims that the first word is the German gas  or gaf. I presume one of those words means goose, whereupon one gets goose's milk.

There may be others as well, but I am claiming there is written geis mich, wich means goat milk. Even if there was  gas, it would mean goat as well and and the l in milch is not audible even in modern German. Leaving aside the palaeography, it makes sense. You can distort facts as much as you like to fit your theory, but I would like to see you milking a goose

(16-04-2019, 05:37 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It's a long-ess Morten (or long-eff if the stem has been damaged by that scrapey area on the parchment).

The letter ell was never written like that. It never extended below the baseline and was not written with a straight hook across the top (unless there was also a loop).

Long-ess was the normal way to write ess for most of the 14th and 15th centuries and part of the 16th century.

Here is a long-ess and long-eff on the top right (long-eff is marked) and ell on the bottom right in handwriting that is in a similar style (Gothic) to the 116v text:

It's appears from everything you've written about the text that you do not know how to read medieval writing.

Look at the three ell letters in the first and second lines. Note that they do not go below the baseline. Note that they have angled loops. They look nothing like the long-ess or long-eff in gas/gaf but they do look typical for the 15th century.

The first thing to understand is that someone writing circa 1600, even when trying to imitate 15th-century handwriting, would have been familiar with more possibilities than someone writing circa 1420.

To continue:



I forgot to mention in my last post that we find an isolated "o" just after "mich", that is, that's where we pick up the "o" of gallo.

It looks to me that the continuous downstroke does end at the base line, whereupon it veers off to the right, making it possible that the part below the baseline is nothing more than a mistake, ie. a failure to raise the quill while moving it away from the parchment. Do you see any of your long-ess's straying off to the right?

On the downstroke, note the difference between that el  and the ess  seen here:



Also note the curved top whereas your alleged s at the end of gas  has a top at right angle to the shaft, as seen here with the els in the Spanish hallar (silent h):



Moreover, I'll point out that during the Renaissance, the long-ess was usually used at the beginning or in the middle of words, being replaced with an "s" or a "z" at the end of words. The author of the marginalia, not to give away his 1600 date, uses an 8  for a ess  at word end, as seen here:



How do you wish to explain his use of a long-ess, and not a 8, at the end of your alleged gas?

Sorry, JP. Overall, you do not have a convincing argument.

Overall, Morten, your comments about the text are written from the point of view of someone with no experience in this area.

It was normal for the top of long-ess to vary from curved to sharp.

It was normal for many scribes to use more than one form for final-ess (besides, it might not be an ess, it might be portad rather than portas).


Your statements do not hold water. Your lack of palaeographic knowledge is very apparent.

(16-04-2019, 08:05 AM)Helmut Winkler Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.There may be others as well, but I am claiming there is written geis mich, wich means goat milk. Even if there was  gas, it would mean goat as well and and the l in milch is not audible even in modern German. Leaving aside the palaeography, it makes sense. You can distort facts as much as you like to fit your theory, but I would like to see you milking a goose

Helmut, I fully appreciate that you are eager to support your native language, but the overriding consideration is the fact that the rest of the marginalia points to a prophecy attributed to gallo Michel.

(16-04-2019, 02:43 PM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Your statements do not hold water. Your lack of palaeographic knowledge is very apparent.

JP, I compensate for lack of palaeographic knowledge with a lot of common sense. You now leave me forced to assume that you cannot imagine that any pious and devout monk from northern Italy would ever dare to deceive you by purposely truncating the word gallo. Thus, you are probably thinking that this monk must have been in a drunken stupor when he wrote that ess, which would explain why it bears so little resemblance to other esses of the epoch or even to another ess by that same author on the same page.

I'm starting to have doubts that the VMS is for you. It might be better for you to apply your talents only to normal manuscripts of medieval times. The very fact that the VMS is written in code immediately reveals an effort to deceive you or, at least, to keep something hidden from you, and the author of the marginalia apparently concurs with the motive of the original authors and continues with tactics of deception.

You are not alone in being unable to cope with deception. For example, some 85% of world scholars believe that a businessman, likely illiterate, wrote the Shakespearean plays because they cannot imagine that anyone would dare to put "by William Shakespeare" on the title page if it wasn't true, never mind that forgeries and the use of pen names were known from ancient times onward.

For the VMS, the deception extends beyond what lies within its pages to a handful of letters dated in the 17th century. In which Italian library catalog or inventory of books (including those of Kircher, of the Vatican, and of the Jesuits) do you find an unambiguous entry for the VMS? Experts have identified Latin, French, Spanish, and German words in the VMS. On which pages do you find Italian words?

Did you know that neither Voynich nor his wife ever stated that the VMS was acquired in Italy? Evidently, so I read, Italy was first mentioned by Voynich's assistant after the death of Mrs. Voynich, conveniently such a long time after the acquisition that no one in Italy could recall anything about it. Hardly compelling evidence, yet today the debate seems to center only on where in Italy the monks compiled the VMS. Was it Venice, Milan, the University of Padua, or some other city or town in northern Italy?

On another matter, I have found evidence of a link between the Knights Templar and the Arthurian legends. This implies that the Templar "treasure" (found under the ruins of Solomon's Temple circa 1120) was the same as the Cathar "treasure" (which escaped the siege of Montségur in 1244), which, in both cases, would be the prophecies encrypted into quire 20. I think you guys are making a big mistake classifying the VMS as just another medieval herbal.

(23-04-2019, 01:55 AM)Morten St. George Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(16-04-2019, 02:43 PM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Your statements do not hold water. Your lack of palaeographic knowledge is very apparent.

JP, I compensate for lack of palaeographic knowledge with a lot of common sense.
...

No, you compensate with imagination. It seems to work for you (at least in your own mind).

But your ideas do not knit together in a consistent and verifiable way.

This is not empiricism. This is storytelling.