The Voynich Ninja

(06-06-2019, 12:24 AM)Linda Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(28-08-2018, 01:56 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If we take out the parts where the ink is darker, we're left with something like this:

Am i not seeing some pics? I didn't see the one Koen posted that you are talking about either, is it somewhere else?

I am currently having trouble too, not just on this site. I think it could be a browser extension/update problem

I revoke everything I've posted to this thread before and replace it by this You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

In short, I think the picture was taken, directly or indirectly, from the chapter on sea monsters from a MS in the Cantimpré tradition. There are a number of creatures depicted in this way, with scales, a split tail and paws:

The long-necked long-tail Taurus, lizardy scorpion, and leg-tail cat* are also part of the Cantimpré tradition (BPL 14a), so that fits in, as well:

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(It's not the closest cat, but some portions of the body and the angle of the head are similar and it's the same MS as the long-necked Taurus.)


There are several long-eared, long-nosed mammalian creatures with fish-tails, but I like the ones Koen posted because they have scales (many of the fish-mammal hybrid drawings in that series of manuscripts are without scales).

I still think it is something that just looks like an animal somewhat.

(06-06-2019, 02:17 PM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.There are several long-eared, long-nosed mammalian creatures with fish-tails, but I like the ones Koen posted because they have scales (many of the fish-mammal hybrid drawings in that series of manuscripts are without scales).

Yeah, and it wasn't really fixed between manuscripts, copyists would blend properties or add their own twists (often the text does not match at all or only partially describes the physical traits of the animal). It does not require much deviation to get the permutation present in the VM.

This all comes down to the (to me) fascinating question which kind of Cantimpré(tradition) manuscript the VM could have sampled from. My impression is often that it is stylistically close to the German examples, but - given parallels and differences with Valenciennes 320 - sits on a different node of transmission than the particular German manuscripts I have viewed. The Czech line is further removed both stylistically and in terms of content. The same goes for the Maerlant line. So something between the French originals and the German copies remains plausible.

(06-06-2019, 09:48 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(06-06-2019, 02:17 PM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.There are several long-eared, long-nosed mammalian creatures with fish-tails, but I like the ones Koen posted because they have scales (many of the fish-mammal hybrid drawings in that series of manuscripts are without scales).

Yeah, and it wasn't really fixed between manuscripts, copyists would blend properties or add their own twists (often the text does not match at all or only partially describes the physical traits of the animal). It does not require much deviation to get the permutation present in the VM.

This all comes down to the (to me) fascinating question which kind of Cantimpré(tradition) manuscript the VM could have sampled from. My impression is often that it is stylistically close to the German examples, but - given parallels and differences with Valenciennes 320 - sits on a different node of transmission than the particular German manuscripts I have viewed. The Czech line is further removed both stylistically and in terms of content. The same goes for the Maerlant line. So something between the French originals and the German copies remains plausible.

Which would fit very well with the greater portion of zodiac look-alikes, which also especially cluster in Germany, Alsace, and parts of NE France and Flanders.

(06-06-2019, 11:42 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I revoke everything I've posted to this thread before and replace it by this You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

In short, I think the picture was taken, directly or indirectly, from the chapter on sea monsters from a MS in the Cantimpré tradition. There are a number of creatures depicted in this way, with scales, a split tail and paws:

Koen, do you know what the text on the kylions and karabo et al says or where i can find more info on translation?  Just looking for a bit of shortcut to such info if you have any.

These creatures are starting to grow on me due to having recently seen some interesting info on another topic, i am trying to see if it all rolls into itself.

When you say Cantimpre tradition, liber de rerum natura was an encyclopedia with topics taken from many sources, and as Nick mentioned in your blog comments, can lead to older text only info. I recall much of it being attributed to Aristotle, and I know that the shadefoot sciapod image (with two feet, interesting) in one of the examples came from Pliny and others, for instance, but i hadnt come across your creatures as yet.

Also i thought this one was interesting, it has an armadillo looking something along with something with a dog body with scales, and a human head...it is supposed to be a hermit crab. I see some coincidences with the kylions here too though, as well as with the vms creature, and just in general how descriptions of things translated from Greek to Arabic to Latin and then copied ad nauseum with little changes each time can make for some interesting visual telephone whisper results. Purple monkey dishwasher, so to speak.



Here is the google translated report from which this came, and an excerpt below re kylions.

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There are two examples of the same type which bear witness to the deformation of names during transmission: kylion and ludolachra . The kylion of Thomas de Cantimpré is probably the kilo of Michel Scot (520 to 16), which must correspond to the Greek καλλιώνυμος, that is to say the uranoscope ( Uranoscopus scaber Linné, 1758). We find in fact in Michel Scot the following detail: (520 to 16) [...] and multispaces inhabited by sinistro and splen in dextro, ut kili You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , and Thomas de Cantimpré (VI, 30), placing under the authority of Aristotle, writes: [ natura ] epar in dextro, splen vero posuerit in sinistro, in kylione tamen splen in dextro, epar vero posuit in sinistro You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. . It remains unclear how Thomas de Cantimpré came to name the animal kylion , if he read kili at Michel Scot. It would be necessary to have the state of the text of Michel Scot that the encyclopaedist had in front of him. As for the mysterious Ludolachra , it could be a deformation of the labrax (the wolf, Dicentrarchus labrax Linnaeus, 1758), of which Aristotle speaks when he mentions his four fins. The Latin translation of the Arab Aristotle (Arist., HA 489 b 28 MS) allows us to partially grasp how we arrived at the fabulous ludolachra : Animalia vero aquosa natabilia habent alas, sicut piscis. And ex eo is quod habet quartet alas, duas in facie and duas in dorso ejus, sicut piscis who vocatur harchea kidolatra You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. . Where Michel Scot writes harchea kidolatra , the Greek text carries χρύσοφρυς καὶ λάβραξ, "the bream and the wolf". The final latra may represent, after transposition by Arabic, the λάβραξ of the Greek text, and ki - or kido - the conjunction καὶ. As for the rest of the word, which is reminiscent of the Greek, it seems very distorted, so that one can not explain further how one arrived at Ludolachra . Again, the documentation of Thomas de Cantimpré and Michel Scot should be available.


And just for funsies here is Uranoscopus scaber

Hi Linda
My own interest in these creature is mainly in the illustrative tradition: where did these images come from? It is clear that the entire Cantimpré tradition (i.e. later Cantimpré manuscripts but also translations/adaptations like the Buch der Natur and others) can all be traced back to Valenciennes 320.

If you look at it starting from Valenciennes 320, you see that the images from this manuscript got spread far and wide. Somewhere along the way a few of them were used in the VM: the armadillo, the lobster, possibly also the mermaid, the bull, the large feline... all of the relevant types are found in the Cantimpré tradition. Stylistically the best matches are found especially in 15th century German/Alsatian circles. My fascination has been for a while to find out more about the exact source that was used for those VM images.

As you and Nick suggest, text may help in finding better sources. But this is not something I have researched yet (been spending most of my research time on TTR).

As I wrote in the blog post, Marco translated the Kylion as follows:

Quote:Kylion is a rather marvelous sea animal, as Aristoteles says, in which it is believed that either nature erred or changed its usual order. But it is not the case to believe that nature erred: indeed it designed everything well and all things were created in a right and appropriate way. In fact, while in all the animals on earth, small all large, it placed the liver at the right and the spleen at the left, in kylion it placed the spleen at the right and the liver at the left.

Now, the Karabo is from the Valenciennes MS and it has the "head down" feature people are often looking for, so it may be interesting to know what this text says as well. I'll attach it below (text from: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. )

[attachment=3003]

I had read the Marco translation, but forgot that you said you didnt have one for the Karabo, thanks for the update.

It could be that they saw many of them and compiled their own from memory.

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (behind a paywall) gives a somewhat different explantation for the kylion than the one Linda found. Aristotle mentioned that some fish have the liver and the spleen inverted, but not which ones. However, in the preceding sentence he mentioned the eel (enchelys in Greek). This word was garbled in various ways in the Latin translations via Arabic. In a different place in the Scotus translation of Aristotle, someone added a marginal note (quoted in the French paper) where he repeated that anatomical information but misunderstood it as saying that the "kili" (i.e. the eel) is one of those fish. Cantimpré then put this into his encyclopedia, further turning the word into "kylion", but not realizing that this was the same as the eel, and not knowing anything about it except for that one thing about its anatomy. 
As for the "karabo", according to the French paper that Linda found it's the rock lobster.
So it seems the illustrators had no idea what these animals actually looked like, and simply made up marine monsters based on the tradition of depicting hybrid terrestrial/marine creatures. Which of course could also be true about the Voynich animal.