The Voynich Ninja

Is the VMs large plant section a botanical bestiary?

Here is the story of the pelican from the first listing that popped up.

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From the medieval perspective, if you're buying that one, then the VMs example is no problem.

The VMs example is f46v. Identified from sources as costmary, Tanacetum balsamita. The plant has also been called the 'herb of the virgin' - with reference to the Virgin Mary.

The roots were a bit more of a problem. They look like wings. Interpretations tried to turn them into the double-headed eagle of the Holy Roman Empire, but the headless VMs illustration doesn't have one head, let alone two. It also doesn't have an eagle's legs, claws or tail. A better interpretation was recently proposed. The roots were the wings of Saint Michael. Though you can find an illustration of Saint Michael in almost any color, the red shoulders are a positive indicator. The structure of the "wings" with their tips upward is very hard to find in medieval illustrations of Saint Michael and has much more in common with wings as represented in medieval heraldry.

The association of Saint Michael and the Virgin Mary relates to his role as psychopomp, or the guide of souls and the combination is a subtle, yet clear reference to the Assumption in an era when Mariology was growing in significance.

I make no claim to the investigations that identified either part of this beastly combination. I do think that when things fit together, from a medieval perspective, that it should be acknowledged and not 'swept under the rug' as it seems. So here it is.

The VMs is a botanical bestiary - based on the one example. It is the one example where we can interpret the use of a biblical backstory for the illustration, very similar to the use of the example of the pelican. It is one example where there were 'zero' examples before with nothing beyond proposed botanical identifications. Even if this is the only example, it shows some of what the VMs artist can do and why VMs interpretation has been so problematic.

I have gotten so cautious over the years to entertain any "theories", but if I allow myself to go there, then this is probably it. I've also used the Bestiary before so show how this would make some sense, from a medieval point of view.

A bestiary is a book of real animals, real animals with imagined features and entirely imagined animals. The purpose of the work is to show how the world of beasts reflects the Word of God.

In the VM, we have real, partially imagined and apparently totally imagined plants. If only we had the text that should go with them :)

Two more concepts that could come into play somehow:
* The notion of a collection of "flowers" as a collection of beautiful, virtuous things. (crf "florilegium" and several book titles like the Liber Floridus). This could be reversed again, taking literal flowers as exemplifying these things.
* The thought of Mary as a Hortus Conclusus. I believe it has been pointed out that an abnormal amount of VM flowers have a blue colour, though I'm not certain if this has actually been researched. It would be interesting to compare them to the share of blue flowers in "regular" herbals.

I don't know but.... weren't the imaginary animals in bestiaries actually believed at the time to exist.

Don't forget that the 'artist'  who drew crocodiles and elephants had never seen any, and only knew about them from hear-say. Not all that different from dragons and mermaids.
(And dragons exist).

The comparison to the bestiary tradition certainly isn't perfect, and let's not forget that is is considerably older than the VM. But it does show, I believe, the kind of mindset that could have led to the creation of the VM plants.

In the bestiary, even animals they should have known, like bears, are said to engage in absurd behaviors. These surely all stem from folk beliefs, but they are reimagined in such a way that they represent moral or biblical truths. 

For many of the VM plants, our best efforts at interpreting them goes something like this: it's a viola, but the flowers are upside down. It's clearly x, but it's got a weird root. It would be y, but the flower is the wrong color. It would be z, but why are the leaves shaped like this?

So the resemblance to the bestiary tradition might be this: just like the bestiary "nudges" stories about animals to lay bare a higher truth behind them, the VM might try to do the same by "nudging" plant images. 

(By the way, I have no doubt that the main selling point of bestiaries was that people like dragons and such. But it would not have become one of the essential medieval genres without the moral/religious recuperation of the material).

When I read the views on the narwhal in the Middle Ages as an example, I agree with Rene.  Also the elephant, an animal with two tails?
I think there must be more.
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"The island where the inhabitants have big heads." Goes back to a mumps epidemic on a Greek island in ancient times.
Interesting how people were drawn in the Middle Ages.

It's all part of the perspective that is relevant to the era. The absence of valid information was filled in by misinformation and the pelican is a perfect example. The simple fact is that a pelican feeds its young by disgorging the fish it has caught. The version in the bestiary is pure misapprehension. And the same goes for so many other things. As the old story goes, medieval astronomy was built on three principles: geocentricity, perfect circles and constant speeds. And all three were wrong. So, it would seem that everything on the artistic side needs to be interpreted from a medieval perspective to the best of our ability. And it is a system that is based on a combination of factors, like the recognition of attributes, from a cosmic spindle to ecclesiastical and armorial heraldry, the use of heraldic canting and the ability to interpret a rebus based on medieval memes.

Koen mentioned the many VMs blue flowers. The color is found throughout. In part, this serves as a means of desensitization. If blue coloration is essential to the intended interpretation of some element in the illustrations, for example, the dress of VMs Virgo, because blue coloration makes the additional connection with the Virgin Mary, and that dress is the only blue image in the whole VMs, it's going to be a lot more obvious, compared with the use of blue paint on numerous pages. The same technique disguises the blue stripes on the tubs of VMs White Aries. Is color choice intentional or irrelevant?

Costmary, the herb of the virgin, and the wings of Saint Michael both function as attributes in the VMs system of interpretation. The fact that both interpretations are mutually compatible in the C-14 medieval era, means that this one proves itself, but what about all the other botanical drawings? Or is this the only one? How numerous are the VMs 'Easter eggs'?

Is the interpretation of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. just the solution to a puzzle? Or is it a clue?

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There are half a dozen early listings for Italy and another half dozen across Europe, from Malta to Lviv, which has an Armenian connection. Other interesting locations include Chur and Hildesheim. Do nine rosettes count as a reference to roses?

The VMs artist has already been shown to have provided other drawings with various potential religious interpretations. Such as: the hidden 'rho chi" the red galero, the Agnus Dei, pictorial reference to the life of Colette of Corbie, VMs Virgo with reference to the Virgin Mary, and the Moon, as Mary, inside the Wreath of the Virgin. The set of religious interpretations continues to grow.

References regarding Mariology

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An interesting detail mentions Colette of Corbie and the cult of Saint Anne dated 1406.

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Something not found in the Wikipwdia article.

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Another source:

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Note the significance of Colette of Corbie.

Continued investigations have revealed some historical details that seem interesting to me. Reading about Saint Anne leads to the development regarding the Holy Kinship - the children and grandchildren of Saint Anne by her three husbands.

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Taking a positive interpretation for the illustrated VMs representations of the nine Muses in a pool and the visual reference to the biographical story of Colette of Corbie with her ring and cross, there should be some historical connections between the two. Firstly, there are the connections to the Duchy of Burgundy.

There aren't many illustrations of the Muses before 1450. One source of four representations is the text of Christine de Pizan's Le Chemin de Long Estude. Two copies of this text were in the Burgundian library of Philip the Good. Philip and his wife, Isabel of Portugal, were patrons of Colette of Corbie, as was his mother, Margaet of Bavaria, wife of John the Fearless, earlier on.

Around 1420, when a different religious faction blocked Colette from establishing new foundations in Burgundy, she went to the Duchy of Bourbon. John I, Duke of Bourbon, had been captured by the English at Agincourt in 1415 and never made it back to France. His wife, Marie of Auvergne supported Colette's foundations in Moulins and Aigueperse. Marie of Auvergne was originally Marie de Berry, daughter of the famous bibliophile, Duke Jean de Berry. So, there is clearly another connection with the works of Christine de Pizan. There was a copy of Le Chemin (BNF Fr. 836) in Marie's library.

The fourth version of the Muses in Le Chemin is Harley 4431. The provenance for this manuscript is Paris, 1410-1414. This coincides with the production of BNF Fr 565 which has the cosmic illustration best matching the VMs cosmos. Harley 4431 has the Muses in a fountain with a pattern of arches that matches the arcaded pattern seen on part of the VMs illustration.

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Like Saint Anne, it turns out that Marie de Berry had been married three times. Colette's biography indicates that she had a dream of Saint Anne that reversed her opinion on the matter of Trinubium. Interesting?

In addition, regarding the Fieschi popes of VMs White Aries, it turns out that Innocent IV was the pope that approved the rule for the original founding of the Poor Clares in 1243. Colette of Corbie was a reformer of the Poor Clares between 1406 and 1447. Historical details help to inform the interpretation of VMs illustrations.