The Voynich Ninja

We know that marginalia written in a specific language were not necessarily written in a location were that language was spoken. An Italian person might be in Spain and write something in Italian. Or a Greek might be in Greece and write something in his second language.

But if we ignore this possibility and just for fun pretend that languages can only be written where they are spoken, then which path would the manuscript have traveled?

If I understand correctly, we know it was in Prague and afterwards went to Italy, but nothing else, right?

The month names are on something French-like, but I still don't know from where in France, some say north while others say south.

For the earliest marginalia, we have something German-liken although again an area is hard to assign. I think most people will look south instead of north.

So something like this, or can this be refined?

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I didn't want to commit to this yet. I've thought about it frequently, but I need to do much more research, but since you forced my hand.   ...

So... a tentative guess, very preliminary... origin of scribal/illustration skills, 116v text, zodiac-figures labels, Prague, Kircher.




This is very difficult because I still feel like there might be some Italian influence in the actual creation of the VMS, but since there may be several people involved, you can't really say where it originates because the people involved might be from different places.

Let's say it was done by a group of university students (as one possibility)... I think some of the illustration skills were learned in the Flanders/Anglo-Norman area, but I think the influences for the plants may have been Italian and the design of the text? It could be from anywhere, but maybe southern Bavaria or northern Italy.


So, a very tentative guess...

• Illustration influence - Flanders/Anglo-Norman areas or northern France, at some point was exposed to exemplars from somewhere around Bavaria?
  
• the illustrator may have traveled to Italy or southern Bavaria to go to school, maybe met schoolmates and was exposed to Italian exemplars for plants, and collaborated on this project (or maybe the whole family moved and resettled in the Tirol/Bavaria/northern Lombardy area)
  
• text maybe designed/invented (by a different person??) in the Lombardy/south Bavaria/Bohemia area
  
• 116v text added in Switzerland or one of the Swiss border areas where there are many dialects and mixed languages (north, east, west, south? not sure). I don't think the person's native language was German, but probably a Romance language (although Greek also frequently comes to mind). This person was MAYBE one of the collaborators (maybe, not sure yet, looking for confirmation)
  
• zodiac-figure labels added approximately Provençe or the part of France near the Swiss border
  
• column text on 1r maybe added in the early 16th century, maybe Italy or eastern Bavaria??? but it could have been added anywhere... many people wrote this way in the 16th century
  
• probably ended up in Rudolph's II court
  
• went through intermediary hands to Kircher in Rome
  

If it was university students (as one possibility), I would go so far as to say they may have been in the Paris area (undergraduate? zodiac-figures styles?) or the Trentino/Padua region (graduate school?) and maybe they saw the plant exemplars in a professor's library or a university library.

I'm almost certain there are multiple influences and some cross-cultural influences, but it was quite common for university students to do what they do now, get their undergraduate degree in one place and their graduate degree in another. That MIGHT explain the odd mix of Anglo-Norman/Flemish and Italian influences. If so, I think the Anglo-Norman/Flemish came first.


Most of this is simply opinion, but I do have more than a decade's collection of palaeographic evidence to support SOME of the above ideas. I just don't have enough yet to be completely sure.


I have another scenario that is moderately different from this, someone from eastern Europe migrating to northeast France, but I have much less evidence to support it and I'm not confident enough to map it yet. Parts of it have been mentioned in blogs.

Maybe we should look at history now.

What is shown in section 13 was first described in detail around 1400.
From 1430 it was studied at the University of Paris.
Author known: He came from Tyrol and later became director of the University of Paris.

At the same time it also appeared in Vienna. Why ? Who?

All clues, battlements, plants, clothing, culture, dialect, language zone and the small time window all point to the same place of origin.

I am simply too lazy to write, that is why my treatise on the place of origin is never finished. Nothing happens without a reason !

Economy 1400 Environment Tyrol
Apart from copper, iron and salt mining, there was the largest silver mine in Europe.
You can imagine there was a lot going on there. Historical reports show that the influx of people was enormous.
The collapse came around 1550, silver mining became more difficult and the Spanish discovered the large silver deposits in Peru.

One of the difficulties is knowing whether the person who designed the text is the same person who drew the illustrations. It could be two different people.

Also, the exemplars come from different places, so either the illustrator had access to a library or a social circle with a somewhat diverse collection or a lot of artistic architecture, or the person who created the drawings was someone who traveled and was exposed to different cultures.

The VMS is a size that was usually used for portable manuscripts (books of hours, physicians' handbooks, reference books).


I see a lot of different people in the manuscript:

Main portions

• illustrator (most of the manuscript)
  
• illustrator finisher or mentor (a few touches here and there)
  
• text designer (and possibly one of the scribes and maybe also the illustrator)
  
• additional scribes
  
• plant annotator (not the same person who wrote the 1r column text or the text on 116v, it's a different style of handwriting)
  
• at least two painters (the careful painter MIGHT be the same person who drew the plants, the sloppy painter might be a child or someone who didn't really want to do the job and didn't have the patience for this kind of task)
  
• the child-like scribbles (if this is a family project, maybe there was a young child, if it's not, then maybe some of the parchment was scavenged)
  

Difficult to categorize, either original or later...

• quire-number writer (very difficult to tell if this person was involved in the main manuscript or when the numbers were added, usually they are added sooner rather than later BUT there are some that get added at the binder's shop, after the manuscript is done, so this might belong in the following section)
  
• 116v writer - based on the paleography samples I've been collecting for years, I think Switzerland or the Swiss borderlands is quite possible, but probably the French or Italian sides rather than the German side (although St. Gall had a diverse population from all over, including England. It was multicultural even though it's on the German side.) This might be the same handwriting as 17v and this person MIGHT belong in the previous section if the writer had some involvement in the creation of the original manuscript and the main text.
  

Portions possibly added later

• ven mus mel writer (MAYBE the same person as 116v but I have doubts... the "m" is a completely different style)
  
• bits and pieces of added letters in the main text
  
• the folio numbers (I have been trying to narrow down the region and have collected a large number of palaeographic samples)
  
• zodiac-figure labels (I think this is someone from southeast France/Provençe or an area of France close to the Swiss border)
  
• the column text on 1r (an attempt at decipherment?)
  
• de Tepenecz name (Ex libris?)
  

So we are looking at more than a dozen contributors.


But... did they contribute in different geographical regions?

Or was there a magnet (like a university or like a patronage spot in the HRE capital?) that brought together a diverse group of people. Maybe the manuscript was created almost entirely in Prague (or Trento/Padua region), by people from all over Europe who came there for the same reason or different reasons?

Regarding child-like scribbles, I'm almost certain those are just pen tries. Recently I saw something very similar in one MS at e-codices. Unfortunately I did not take record.

I think one of them looks like a child's drawing, like a square-head (a very common way for a child to draw a person).

The part on the left looks like scribbled text, the part on the right like a drawing. Maybe it's not, but it could be:

What I noted for myself looking at those pen tries which I mentioned, I understood that it were such characters and shapes used for pen tries that would assume sharp change of the writing direction, twists of the quill. This may lead to strange pictures like the one to the right.

Of course, may be a child's drawing, but I think that's less probable.

I have collected many many pen tests.

Usually they wrote alphabets, or scribbled familiar words. Sometimes there are doodles, but most of them look like they were drawn by someone who simply liked to draw or sometimes they are recognizable as children's scribbles. Sometimes it looks like someone was learning to write the alphabet (repeating many of the letters).

This kind of pen test is common:

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Sometimes the folio is covered in letters and drawings:

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