The Voynich Ninja

I can only wonder if this completely illogical post was specifically intended just to trigger a response or not.

Quote:I've found something in Wikipedia that lends support to my theory that the Europe-related content of the VMS dates from the 13th century (when Cathars migrated to the Americas) rather than from the 15th century.

Quote:It is very uncommon for an illustration of the high medieval period to show Sun and Moon with faces;

(04-05-2019, 06:15 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I've seen many of them. I found these in less than five minutes, which means there are many more:

BNF Français 13096 c. 1313 sun and moon with faces
Fraz Ms 287 c. 1390 to c. 1400 sun and moon with faces
Hildegard von Bingen, sun and moon with faces
Lauber Studio mid-1400s sun and moon with faces
LJS 449 c. 1446, sun and moon with faces
Manzor A384, sun and moon with faces
De Sphaera, sun and moon with faces

I believe my own eyes long before I believe what people write in Wikipedia. Anyone can write or edit a Wiki article and sometimes they don't know what they are talking about.

Thanks JP. I was confident that you would find the exceptions to the rule. Wikipedia says "very uncommon", not "non-existent". As usual, you support your Made-in-Europe theory with recourse to the exceptions and rarely say something like "drawings like these VMS drawings were commonplace in Italy during the early 15th century". Indeed, it's unclear if any of your examples fall into that place and time.

Hildegard, I believe, lived in the 12th century and thus wouldn't be relevant here. So far, I only see a face emitting light which perhaps should not be taken as the Sun.

De Sphaera has Sun and Moon faces that resemble those seen in the VMS, but this work, from the early 13th century, predates the Cathar exodus. Moreover, Wikipedia says it derives from translations of Arabic works and that those translations were made in Toledo, a place to which I previously referred in this forum. Wikipedia adds that De Sphaera was a popular work so I imagine it may have influenced a few of the other face depictions.

Did the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans put human faces on their depictions of the Sun and Moon or did this custom begin with the Arabs?

I was wondering if you think Arabic could be the underlying language, or one of the underlying languages, of the VMS? I think so largely because two of my sources refer to translations from Arabic, and I also see a few instances of right to left reversals in the marginalia.

From what I can observe on Google images, European manuscripts of the high Middle Ages employed rulers or ruled lines to keep each line of text perfectly perpendicular to the edge of the page and equidistant from each other. Meanwhile, it looks like many Arabic manuscripts of that period were written freestyle, just like the VMS. How do you wish to explain that the VMS ignores hundreds of years of European custom on text layout?

(04-05-2019, 01:33 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I can only wonder if this completely illogical post was specifically intended just to trigger a response or not.

Quote:I've found something in Wikipedia that lends support to my theory that the Europe-related content of the VMS dates from the 13th century (when Cathars migrated to the Americas) rather than from the 15th century.

Quote:It is very uncommon for an illustration of the high medieval period to show Sun and Moon with faces;

For the second quote, I was merely citing Wikipedia where the phrase "high medieval period" was surely meant to refer to the period from circa 1200 (which would include the early 13th century) until the year 1497 when depictions of the Sun and Moon with faces exploded. I see nothing illogical about it.

Due to the detection of multiple hands in the VMS, some experts believe that the manuscript carbon-dated to circa 1420 is in fact a copy of writings made earlier, perhaps a lot earlier. Thus, it makes sense to determine where and when depictions of the sun and moon with faces were popular (they were apparently rare circa 1420) as the original creation of VMS content (depicting the sun and moon with faces) might correspond to the same time and place.

And, yes, I was hoping for a helpful response from JP and luckily he decided to give it.

(04-05-2019, 04:49 AM)Morten St. George Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I've found something in Wikipedia that lends support to my theory that the Europe-related content of the VMS dates from the 13th century (when Cathars migrated to the Americas) rather than from the 15th century. Specifically, I've found the following drawing that is dated circa 1200:



Let's now compare that with the following VMS drawings:



The first one (sun with rays) reminds of the ca. 1200 sun with rays. The second one (moon with stars) reminds me of the ca. 1200 moon with stars. And the third one (odd design) reminds me of the ca. 1200 odd-looking hat.

Of major relevance, however, is what Wikipedia has to say about the ca. 1200 drawing:

"It is very uncommon for an illustration of the high medieval period to show Sun and Moon with faces; this is a direct precedent of a convention that would become widespread only in the Renaissance period, some 300 years later (e.g. Nuremberg Chronicles, 1493)."

I take it that "very uncommon" implies that the monks of northern Italy were not busy churning out drawings of the Sun and Moon with faces during the period 1404 - 1438 (the radiocarbon range of the VMS). Note that the Sun and Moon with faces make repeated appearances in the VMS so, for the VMS authors, it clearly had some cultural or religious significance not otherwise seen in Europe during the early 15th century.

Conclusion: Authorship of the VMS in 15th-century Italy (or anywhere else in Europe) has now become even more incredulous.

So you just used the argument that since it is uncommon to use sun and moon faces until 1493 that it must be based on one from 1200. That would be a feeble argument even if JKP hadn't just proven you wrong by showing several contemporary precedents.. the style of the faces and the depictions of these celestial bodies do not match other than the ring around the sun.

Given that the late 15th century woodcuts match the vms more closely than your example, i would say that the vms suns and moons were based on later examples than the one you have chosen, some common precedent. There are many many depictions of creation, and as you yourself have said, many have been lost as well. 

You would have to find a more stylistic match than that one to convince me that is the very one that the vms drawings are based upon. 



The odd looking hat statement seems provocative. If it isnt, then your iconographic abilities should be called into question even moreso.

(04-05-2019, 01:33 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I can only wonder if this completely illogical post was specifically intended just to trigger a response or not.

I guess it worked.

(04-05-2019, 02:52 PM)Morten St. George Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.For the second quote, I was merely citing Wikipedia where the phrase "high medieval period" was surely meant to refer to the period from circa 1200 (which would include the early 13th century) until the year 1497 when depictions of the Sun and Moon with faces exploded.

The high medieval period is roughly 1000 - 1250.
The page is saying that the faces in the manuscript from around 1200 are very uncommon.

At least it is clear that this was a misunderstanding, and not intentional.

(04-05-2019, 03:59 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(04-05-2019, 02:52 PM)Morten St. George Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.For the second quote, I was merely citing Wikipedia where the phrase "high medieval period" was surely meant to refer to the period from circa 1200 (which would include the early 13th century) until the year 1497 when depictions of the Sun and Moon with faces exploded.

The high medieval period is roughly 1000 - 1250.
The page is saying that the faces in the manuscript from around 1200 are very uncommon.

At least it is clear that this was a misunderstanding, and not intentional.

Oh, I now see what you were talking about. Like me, the author of that Wikipedia article may have been an elderly person who is unfamiliar with contemporary arbitrary classifications of medieval time periods. I just checked a 20th-century edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica and can confirm that the word "high" makes no appearance in connection with the Middle Ages. Logically, the word "high" should relate to the highest numbers, ie. 1200-1500, so I did not notice any confusion. I guess somebody thought the term "middle middle ages" sounded a little awkward and decided on "high middle ages" instead. I was happy only using the terms "early" and "late".

(04-05-2019, 03:15 PM)Linda Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.So you just used the argument that since it is uncommon to use sun and moon faces until 1493 that it must be based on one from 1200. 

I think I was trying to suggest that all the depictions of the sun and moon (both together) both with human faces, including those of the VMS, may ultimately proceed from Arabic sources.

Such depictions of the sun and moon were apparently known during the Late Middle Ages if for no other reason than their appearance in De sphaera mundi (1230 CE), of which Wikipedia writes:

"Sacrobosco's De sphaera mundi was the most successful of several competing thirteenth-century textbooks on this topic. It was used in universities for hundreds of years and the manuscript copied many times before the invention of the printing press; hundreds of manuscript copies have survived."

My point is only that devout monks of northern Italy, between 1404 and 1438, were unlikely to have made drawings of Helios because of its connection to paganism. Instead, we see depictions of Helios mostly circa 1200 (the epoch of the Cathar rebellion) and after 1497 (the Renaissance).

My interest in this topic is more extensive due to the following vignette (and others) from publications of the VMS prophecies:



This particular drawing also points us to a book called Novus Atlas (1633, 1648) in which the VMS is cryptically linked to Mexico and to Peru where there was pre-Colombian worship of Helios (now called Inti) who is seen here above the king's left shoulder:



I have found accurate descriptions of a couple of VMS prophecies in Spanish chronicles concerning Viracocha Inca (who reigned from 1410 to 1438), leading to suspicions that the VMS itself (that is, its drawings of Helios) was the inspiration for Inca depictions of Inti.

No one has established that the VMS was made by monks.

No one has established that the VMS was made in northern Italy.

If you want to disagree with a specific theory, I suggest you name the person who is promoting the theory rather than acting like we all think the same way, because we don't.

(04-05-2019, 08:13 PM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.No one has established that the VMS was made by monks.

No one has established that the VMS was made in northern Italy.

If you want to disagree with a specific theory, I suggest you name the person who is promoting the theory rather than acting like we all think the same way, because we don't.

JP, These days, when trying to acquire knowledge on a new topic or to do fact checking, many people quickly turn to Wikipedia whose article on the VMS begins as follows:

"The Voynich manuscript is an illustrated codex hand-written in an unknown writing system. The vellum on which it is written has been carbon-dated to the early 15th century (1404–1438), and it may have been composed in Northern Italy during the Italian Renaissance."

Beyond Wikipedia, you'll find the same narrative scattered throughout VMS literature and in virtually all the YouTube documentaries on the VMS. In the forums, you'll even find debate on which town or monastery in northern Italy was the source of the VMS. And, so it seems, it is all based on no more than the VMS depiction of a castle that has never been found in Italy.

Of course, if you are going to accept creation in northern Italy during the early 15th century, you are pretty much forced to conclude that the monks did it. Who else at that time and place produced manuscripts, had access to vellum and had multiple scribes to do the writing?

I know that you did not create the northern Italy theory but likewise you never said that you made an effort to get Wikipedia to remove northern Italy from the second sentence and put it in a separate "speculations" section.

Moreover, I have yet to see your refutation of Prescott Currier's claim that the VMS has to be "a copying job". That means we only know when the copy was made (between 1404 and 1438). We do not know where that copy was made. Nor do we know when or where the original version was made. 

I repeatedly annoy you about northern Italy not out of malice but because I want to impress upon everyone that I view it as a major handicap to uncovering the true history of the VMS. Such myths may also be harmful for finding the correct approach to the decoding by inducing us to ignore languages and procedures from other places and other time periods.

The same applies to all that nonsense about Prague. My theories maintain that one the VMS decoders was the private tutor of Elizabeth who became Queen of Prague in 1619, so they could have easily acquired enough information about the place to fabricate a Prague history for the VMS followed by a false Italy history. I guess they figured that by linking the VMS to prestigious Catholics, the manuscript would gain some protection against destruction by the Inquisition. At that time, there was no guarantee that their side would win the newly-commencing Thirty Years War or other wars that they saw predicted.