(09-06-2024, 03:11 PM)tavie Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (09-06-2024, 12:56 PM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Rene generally avoids stating theories, which means he is rarely criticised on the basis of those theories, which is convenient; if you rarely stick your head above the parapet then you are unlikely to get shot down.
I have a lot of respect for those few who have been studying Voynichese for many years and have somehow managed not to fall into the giant trap at the start of the Voynich labyrinth, and also somehow the sneakier traps lying after it. I would like - but without much hope - to be like them in the future! Many public theories so far seem to share the same trait of their supporting evidence being inversely proportionate to their owner's degree of certainty. Not joining them doesn't seem to me to signify cowardice.
If you say nothing then your voice is not worth having. Science progresses by people stating theories which are subsequently supported or overturned. Not stating theories is frequently the same as saying nothing. Following or stating a hypothesis is a bold and important part of the process.
And if you are a person cautious about stating hypotheses then when you do choose to state a hypothesis about the manuscript one would expect it to be a good one.
(09-06-2024, 03:17 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (09-06-2024, 03:11 PM)tavie Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Many public theories so far seem to share the same trait of their supporting evidence being inversely proportionate to their owner's degree of certainty. Not joining them doesn't seem to me to signify cowardice.
Exactly. As soon as someone becomes too convinced of their own theory, it feels to me like they are trying desperately to sell me some bogus product. Why dig a trench somewhere based on insufficient evidence?
But Rene's own theories when he states them like this one have scant amount of supporting evidence.
(09-06-2024, 05:04 PM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.And if you are a person cautious about stating hypotheses then when you do choose to state a hypothesis about the manuscript one would expect it to be a good one.
You seemed to be speaking of the kind of theory that would get its owner "criticised".
(09-06-2024, 07:20 PM)tavie Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (09-06-2024, 05:04 PM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.And if you are a person cautious about stating hypotheses then when you do choose to state a hypothesis about the manuscript one would expect it to be a good one.
You seemed to be speaking of the kind of theory that would get its owner "criticised".
If I understand your point I would say that criticism should not be considered a bad thing, theories need to be challenged. Criticism for criticisms sake is not necessarily a good thing. There has to be a basis for criticism and an underlying argument to any criticism.
In this context a bad theory seems to be one which has not been thought through with due time or seriousness and explored to a wide extent. I think a theory can be a good theory, but turn out to be incorrect on the basis of further evidence. Obviously some theories are much broader in their implications than others.
Some time ago I looked at an Ulrich as a person of interest. Ulrich Putsch.
Ulrich Putsch was the Bishop of Brixen (Bressanone) and in the service of Friedrich IV, the Duke of Tyrol. In 1426 he completed a translation of a compendium of Latin materials into German for homilitic and catechetic purposes: Das liecht der sel.
We are sure it is his work because the first page contains an acrostic identifying the translator. It is a substantial work consisting of no fewer than 637 sections all presented in the same format. There is a quotation from some ancient or notable source on some aspect of the natural sciences, and then there is a theological or moral parallel drawn from it. It describes natural phenomena and the moral and theological lessons that follow. It was intended to enable preachers to use examples from the natural world to illustrate theological and moral points in their sermons. The genre, the Lumen anime, was a widespread literature with many divergent branches. Putsch has rendered a version of one stream of such texts into German. It was a huge undertaking, and Putsch has applied himself to it with great dedication, but there are many shortcomings to the work.
For a start, many of the quotations cited are spurious, and second, the translation is not of great skill. It is doubtful that a contemporary reader could have made much sense of the German translation without reference to the Latin original - which is to say it largely fails as a translation. The main problem is the abundance of terminology from the natural sciences: the German renderings often only approximate and do not capture the original meanings. Putsch struggles to find a vernacular vocabulary to match the technical terminology of the scientific sources. The work - and the genre - are of interest because they imply that the natural world reveals Christian truths. Subsequent copies of the work were few and declined after a few decades without it being taken up following the arrival of printing.
Despite this, Ulrich Putsch emerges as a notable character in this milieu. He had a long and distinguished career. His dates are: 1350-1437. He was one of the most notable educated clergy of the Sud Tyrol over many decades. Assuredly, he was not a great scholar - he was more adept at Latin than at translating it into German - but he was a venerable intellectual in the service of Friedrick IV (called Frederick of the Empty Pockets.) He wrote minor devotional works in Latin. His ill-fated German translation of the compendious Lumen anime was his magnus opus. His motivations, it seems, were pastoral. He was dedicated to bringing both science and religion to the common people.
He conducted translations into the common tongue, German, and his Latin was the common medieval Latin, without the classical influences of Humanism.
A Swabian, he had been trained as a notary or scribe. It is possible his family owned an estate in Italy.
Aside from his literary output, his other achievements are impressive. He was a very effective civil administrator with an interest in engineering. He paved the streets of the towns under his administration, installed water pipes, drainage and irrigation, and fostered the expansion of castles and other infrastructure. A patron of the arts, he ordered reliquaries and paintings made, and the production of illuminated manuscripts. He had scribes and the means of book production at his disposal. He organised a rich collection of books for the bishopric.
His career was one of continuous promotion: He was a clerk and notary in 1407. In 1412 he held the title 'Secretarius' and in 1413 'Chancellor'. He undertook diplomatic missions in 1416 and 1423. He was made parish priest of Tisens (in the diocese of Trento) in 1411 and was a canon of Trento from 1412-1427. He was 'Collector' of various dioceses: Trento, Brixen, Chur and Constance. He was parish priest of Tyrol from 1412-1427, and of Pine, and was archdeacon of Vinschgau Valley, amongst other postings. He was a meticulous keeper of local church records.
I concluded that this biography does not fit the profile of our author. The Voynich author is more conspicuously a Humanist and Ulrich Putsch can be eliminated on those grounds, and he shows no deep interest in Ptolemaic cosmology.
I was just being on topic
(10-06-2024, 12:45 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I was just being on topic
I am sure Gerard Cheshire would say the same thing about his theory.
But it is hardly is an example of a rigourous scientific approach.
I believe the author of the Voynich Manuscript is Nicholas Kempf, a native of Strasbourg, not that well known in the contemporary world, but well known and respected in the 15th century. After obtaining masters degree at the Vienna University, and teaching for a few years, he entered a Carthusian monastery in Gaming, where he became a prior. Several of his classmates and students followed him there, and many became the leaders in various Carthusian monasteries in Slavic speaking lands.
For over 20 years, Kempf was prior at two different Slovenian Charterhouses, Jurklošter and Pleterje. He was a poet, writer, theologian, and Chrystian mystic. He wrote over 30 books, but only five of them have been preserved.
He was a strong proponent of the Basel Council and its reforms, even after the Germany re-established good relations with Roman popes by signing the Vienna Concordat. This is probably the reason why Kempf, which was most likely a proponent of the ideas promoted by the German religious movement Friends of God, centered in Strasbourg. The movement was focused on prophesy based on genuine mystical religious experience and symbolic interpretation of biblical writing, as well as the use of vernacular languages in liturgy.
My reasons for believing he is the author:
1. I believe the VM is written in Slovenian (Carniolan) language;
2. As a prior of Slovenian charterhouse, he would have know how to speak Slovenian and as teacher and theologian, he would have to prepare the books in vernacular for liturgy, as it was expected at the time:
3. If there were more than one scribe, he could have plenty monks on hand to help him;
4. He would have plenty of parchment on hand, obtaining it either from Charter house or from the Counts of Celje, the greatest patrons of Jurklošter and Pleterje charterhouses.
5. I believe the VM was a long-term project and could have been written between 1440 and 1460, since the monasteries could have had parchment on stock.
6. He was a humanistic writer and kept in touch with humanistic intellectuals at Vienna University, including some close to the imperial court of Frederic III;
7. He himself had a mystical religious experiences (which can explain the weird illustrations), since his greatest work is Mystical Theology;
8. Since the Floral part is the large part of the VM, I can relate him to the monk described in the Slovenian folk legend CVETNIK (the word is a play of words, like an acrostic: in the legend, it is a toponym of the Church, but since the word CVET (flower) was used for a poem, it could also mean 'a poet', or 'St. Nick'), a toponym for a chapel where Kampf most likely had a mystical religious experience in 1459.
9. In 1451, Kempf bought a land at Laško for the Carthusians where an open swimming pool was built for public baths (this might be related to the VM sketches of the pools);
10. The 'castle' in Cosmology looks like Jurklošter Charterhouse where Kempf was a prior for 20 years. The word above it says 'from where' in Slovenian; next to it is an early Carthusian symbol that looks like a map of the world:
12. The church with three towers looks like the Benedictine monastery Maria Laah Abbey near Kempf's home town;
14. Some illustrations show great similarities to the illustrations created in Carniola and Swabia;
15. Guzy proposed that the VM was most likely sold to Rudolf II by Carl Wiedeman who obtained a lot of books in the Gaming Charterhouse. The VM might have been one of them, since Kempf most likely kept it until his death in 1497.
16. His most likely kept in touch with his Slovenian contemporary Thomas of Celje who was secretary of Frideric III and introduced Humanism at his court. He also taught Friderick's son to speak Slovenian. It is also believed Thomas wrote Slovenian grammar book and a dictionary, which was lost. Could parts of the VM be his work?
These are just a few of my ideas about the possible author of the Voynich Manuscript.
Thoughts on the possibility of proper names on page f1r:
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Thoughts on a possible second "name" on page You are not allowed to view links.
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attachment=8721]
Voynich manuscript, page f1r, line 10: three interpretations of the glyphs, and the permitted "slots” in Zattera’s alphabet. Author’s analysis.
(10-06-2024, 10:00 PM)dfs346 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Thoughts on the possibility of proper names on page f1r:
After reading the full article on your block, I tried to analyze the word transliterated with EVA
ydaraishy with Slovenian alphabet and language. The Slovenian transliteration and transcription is the same, except that y should be separated, because it represents the verb je (y with dropped semivowel), which means 'he is'.
DARAISHY is equivalent to English past participle 'gift-giving', 'while he was giving gift'. The suffixes-shy and chy is no longer used in Slovenian language, but they were very common in the Middle Ages.
In the early Slovenian, like in Croatian, it was a common practice up until the invention of printing presses, to use the so-called 'word block'. This linguistic term is explained in an article by Croatian linguist DenisCrnković who defines the 'word block ' as one or more unaccented words (preposition, conjunctions or other particles attached to a stressed host word.
Many Voynich Manuscript words show this linguistic phenomena, particularly words that start with EVA y, k, ch, d.
Crnkovic's article also explains another feature of the early Slovenian/Croatian writing, which contemporary linguists have termed 'isocolic writing'. This linguistic term was formed by the eminent Slavicist, Ricchardo Picchio. He defines the isocolon as a medieval Slavic prose 'line' or phrase with a constant number of stresses, although the number of syllables usually varies. The isocolic lines may be written in different patterns. This style was particularly used in rhetorical speaking. Often, such isocola were separated by a longer space, to guide the performer's reading. The isocolic structures consist of parallel lines of equal or alternate number of stress units, which can be a single word, or a combination of words with only one stress. Neither the number of syllables nor the number of words affect the numeration of isocolic 'stresses'.
Assuming that the text in You are not allowed to view links.
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