The Voynich Ninja

Switzerland, 1427
BKS Cod. membr. 8 Speculum Humanae Salvationis

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. The seven liberal arts, among others. Year/dating 1400-1499.
There are only 5 images available, with a few woman's dresses and men/children.
The fourth image also has a cluster of stars similar to the stars used in the VMS starting on f67r1 and following in sucesive pages.   
[attachment=7082]

As far as I know, there are two basic types of stars and the VMs uses both. One is the basic, "French", asterisk star, where three short lines of gold paint or ink cross at their midpoints. The other type is drawn with intentional, interior volume. The star's rays consist of two lines, instead of just one, and the crossing point is a hexagon, or whatever. So, these stars are polygonal - made of polygons. Like your examples above.

Maybe, there should be a 'star focus thread' and provenance timeline about polygonal stars in the 1400s. Asterisk stars are everywhere. Question is whether available evidence is fine-grained enough to really demonstrate anything historical.

There is an example to be seen in the 'cosmic comparison' of the VMs cosmos with the cosmic illustrations from BNF Fr. 565 and Harley 334. The historical sources are asterisks and the VMs is polygonal. Likewise, a further comparison of the VMs cosmos shows that the artist has also altered the rest of the representation as much as possible, without changing the underlying, cosmic structure that is common to all three.

This highly simplified cosmic structure, based on an inverted T-O representation of Earth is rather uncommon. Yet, besides sharing a comparable cosmic structure, the two historical sources come close to sharing a common historical provenance. [BNF Fr. 565 from Paris c. 1410 and Harley 334 from Paris in second quarter of 1400s.

The green cloud band / cosmic boundary is clearly based on a nebuly line. Every artist has a different touch. You don't see a green one very often, but it does show that they come in all colors. Or else the artist had no blue paint.

(05-10-2019, 01:23 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.* I've found that the terms traditional or humanist seem to work reasonably well in describing the break in zodiac traditions that my research suggests occurred in northeast France/Flanders and which slowly migrated east and south to create the traditions that most closely resemble the VMS zodiac figures.

The group that splits off not only represents the archer as a two-legged creature rather than a centaur, but also represents Gemini as a human couple rather than as celestial brothers. So "humanist" seems like a comfortable working term for the present time even though this break in tradition happened in the early medieval period and is not in parallel with the "humanists" of the 16th century. If someone can think of a better term, I am open to suggestions.

I hope this is a good place to post this. If not, let me know where I should move it to. I'm quoting an old post from this thread but I saw a couple other threads that could be more appropriate (ReneZ's You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. Humanist handwriting in the MSYou are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. The first palaeographers to assert the Ms is in a humanist script) but their most recent posts are older.

Since I'm new here, I've been doing a good bit of exploring and I've noticed the term "humanist" in a few threads now, including this one, and I'm finding it a little confusing, there are so many things that could be meant by it but these seem to be the main ones:

1. Humanism, as in the overarching philosophy centered on human interest and values that started as Renaissance Humanism below, is considered to have entered the English language in the 16th century, and morphed out of the Roman reference to a liberal education below (there is actually much disagreement over the exact definition, which is a lot lengthier)
   
2. Humanities, the philosophy of education or modern university concept that began as a Roman reference to a liberal education
   
3. Renaissance Humanism, the intellectual worldview[font=sans-serif] movement centered on the nature and importance of humanity[/font] that was started in Italy in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries and was the original form of Humanism noted above but is very different
   
4. Religious Humanism or humanistic theology, practiced by groups like the Quakers, now rarely practiced (some modern humanists break humanism down as secular versus religious but that is a different variation)
   
5. Christian Humanism, a religious and theological variation of Renaissance Humanism, not Religious Humanism, that started in the 15th century
   
6. Secular Humanism, which includes Scientific Humanism, is the 20th century branch off of Humanism above that specifically rejects religion as unnecessary to the philosophy and it is probably the more commonly referred to variation currently; they prefer to be called Humanists specifically
   
7. Humanist Miniscule, a handwriting or style of script that was invented in secular circles in Italy early 15th century
   
8. Humanist Typefaces, also called Venetian, include the first Roman typefaces created during the 15th century by Venetian printers designed to [font=sans-serif]imitate the Humanist Miniscule handwriting found in the manuscripts of Renaissance Humanists; this includes current typefaces like Centaur and Hightower Text[/font]
   

Clear as mud, right?    There are more variations and the Wikipedia articles about it will give you a headache but probably also a better definition than mine above. Mine are very short and generalized definitions, broadly interpreted. That is to say, I'm being much briefer, uncharacteristically so, by comparison. 

One reason I'm posting this response, why it piqued my interest, beyond my confusion, is I actually consider myself to be a humanist, in the same way as Robert Burns, my favorite poet, is considered an early humanist, retrospectively. When I see the term used, I tend to think of item 1 above but here on the VM I think you mean item 3 or item 7 instead, including this thread.

(09-06-2023, 10:45 AM)merrimacga Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I'm finding it a little confusing, there are so many things that could be meant by it but these seem to be the main ones:

We are talking about Renaissance Humanism, because the VMs is dated to the first half of the 15th century. There was a renewal of interest for classical antiquity in all its aspects, one of the aspects being writing style, or what it was believed to be (they actually borrowed from Carolingian minuscule).