Congratulations, Koen! I never expected to see anything so convincing.
Absolutely marvellous find!
Prior to Karlsruhe, the book was kept at the Minoritenkonvent in Vienna as Cod. 27
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It might be interesting to dig through documents still stored there but from a glimpse it looks like not much is there or at least not digitized.
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(07-01-2025, 10:31 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Anyway, here you go. To me, this is as close as I've ever gotten to proof that the VM makers used physical sources.
All the details are different. It's not even a coincidence because literally nothing is the same.
I never expected to see anything so unconvincing from you.
There's You are not allowed to view links.
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(08-01-2025, 09:42 AM)nablator Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.All the details are different. It's not even a coincidence because literally nothing is the same.
I never expected to see anything so unconvincing from you.
You don't get it. This MS was made in the 1450's, the VM was made earlier. The details
have to be different. It's impossible for them to be the same. The Karlsruhe MS is the umpteenth iteration of this set of images, while those in the VM were much closer to the source, whatever that is.
If there is anything you can be certain of, it's that a medieval copyist will update figures' dress and attributes. Attributes are part of the fashion. They were
expected to change those details. The old woman's stick and chain are different because copyists over the decades would
have to change these to whatever they thought their audience was most familiar with.
These manuscripts were part of popular, vulgarizing traditions. There must have been hundreds of them out there, all with different details. But the
sequence is what makes the tradition, the illustrative programme. And it is clear that the VM artists consulted a MS with this illustrative programme, which explains the sequence of Summer - Autumn - Uroscopy.
The doctor's scull caps stay the same: it's a long-standing, traditional marker of the profession. The hunched-over pose of the old woman stays the same. But the details are different.
Edit: Marco just posted that it's probably earlier, but the point remains. These image sequences were part of a vast network, and we expect details to be adjusted. Attributes are part of fashion.
I've always been a bit cautious about Ewa Sniezynska-Stolot's commentary on the VM, because I don't agree with her narrow geographical determination. But this quote is interesting in how to separate the traditional from the "updated" elements:
Quote:I have inspected the VMS at Beinecke. The signs of the Zodiac do not present problems – they are simply not of the Arateia type but were modernized. As I wrote in my books, because of linguistic mistakes and changes in artistic styles, human figures were represented in contemporary garments (viz. Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius). Attributes were changed in the same way, eg. Sagittarius’ bow developed into a crossbow in the 15th c.
(08-01-2025, 10:36 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (08-01-2025, 09:42 AM)nablator Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.All the details are different. It's not even a coincidence because literally nothing is the same.
I never expected to see anything so unconvincing from you.
You don't get it.
I am prepared to believe that there may be a connection between the illustrations that Koen points to here and the Voynich illustrations. I am also prepared to believe that any similarities are incidental. I have seen a lot of people for a long time find images in manuscripts which have some resemblance to an illustration in the Voynich manuscript and then state that they are linked. In some cases I find this more plausible than in others.
I think in some cases in the past Koen has found genuine parallels with images. In some cases in the past I think Koen and others have found false parallels with images.
In this instance I would have to see stronger evidence to be convinced that Koen has found a definite parallel here.
It's not only the details that are different... the resemblances are minimal. The poses are not the same. The old hunched woman in the VM (if she is old and hunched, again just imagination, a young dancing Mädchen is just as likely) is not hunched at all in the 1429 ms. The one who is reaching for a flower (fleur de lys?) in the VM, a strange attitude, is just holding it normally in the 1429 ms. The skull cap in the VM may or may not be a doctor/physician's cap. The flask/bottle is much smaller in the VM, not the type used for medieval urology.
No logic in using this sequence (or a similar one from an older manuscript) as a model for whatever the 4 directions mean in the VM.
Overall plausibility of a link 1/10. Better than most Voynich "theories" but totally unconvincing.
Let's see if we can increase that to a 2/10
Let's start with the old woman. I didn't see it either at first, but she is hunched. There's an optical illusion where her elbow and the rosary (?) appear to create an additional part of her dress. I colored the sky in the image below to make it clearer.
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The differences are there, but the
idea is the same and the execution of the idea is similar enough to say that they likely belong to the same tradition. Differences include:
- The style of the cane. No issue there: attributes are part of fashion and can be updated or adjusted to local familiarity.
- The color of the lips. The Rosettes sheet has no access to red paint, and you see them struggle here. They tried blue for the lips here but it looks weird.
- Pose of the elbow and the other arm. That's different indeed. I'm not saying the VM copied from this exact MS. Also, VM and limbs....
- The circular attribute is weird in the VM. It's like a bunch of overlapping circles. I suspect that if the actual source is ever found, it will show us how the VM ended up with something like that.
(08-01-2025, 10:31 AM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.There's You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. that mentions You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., where it is said that the book was written in 1429.
1429 is the date when the original text was written (Regimen Sanitatis by Heinrich von Laufenberg). The Berlin State Library copy Ms. germ. fol. 1191 was discussed in the past (it includes You are not allowed to view links.
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The doctor is an interesting one to talk about consistent illustrative programmes. Here's the one from the LOC hosted copy Marco just mentioned, vs. Karlsruhe vs. VM. It's really exciting because it shows us exactly which aspects of the tradition were in the VM copy: the pose is close to that of LOC, while the skull cap is maintained in Karlsruhe. So the VM source had the skull cap, but in the different pose.
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