The old woman in the rowing boat is quite special. Did they make her cane into an oar and put her on the river Styx?
(09-01-2025, 10:50 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The old woman in the rowing boat is quite special. Did they make her cane into an oar and put her on the river Styx?
Maybe the old lady is rowing into the realm of the dead herself, who knows
Seriously, I don't understand why she's in a boat. I haven't been able to find a comparable motif so far.
Definitely a "Four Seasons" illustration but none of the attributes / occupations are comparable.
It looks like February falls between December and January.
(09-01-2025, 11:13 PM)bi3mw Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (09-01-2025, 10:50 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The old woman in the rowing boat is quite special. Did they make her cane into an oar and put her on the river Styx?
Maybe the old lady is rowing into the realm of the dead herself, who knows Seriously, I don't understand why she's in a boat. I haven't been able to find a comparable motif so far.
The Tubingen diagram conflates occupations for the four seasons, the ages of man and the four elements. The elements are also represented by the background colour of each quadrant.
- blue, air, childhood, spring
- red, fire, youth, summer
- brown, earth, middle-age, autumn
- green, water, old-age, winter
The program is ambitious, and not all scenes are equally effective. The pinwheel in Spring is a nice detail linking childhood with air; other scenes are certainly more far-fetched. The diagram on the right (Liber Floridus) shows the same season/element couples.
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What the Tubingen diagram has in common with Heinrich Laufenberg's Regimen is the explicit identification of the four seasons with the four ages of man (actually of woman, in Laufenberg). Since there have been many discussions about f85r2 as either the four ages of man or the four seasons, it's interesting that both concepts can be illustrated at the same time, since they are basically interchangeable and equivalent with each other (homo microcosmus etc.). But of course we don't know if the images in the Voynich manuscript were used to illustrate different concepts. As Koen said a few times already, the finding can possibly add to our interpretation of the diagram (since we now have an illustrated text that we can read) but that is not the most valuable side of his findings.
Laufenberg's paragraphs are about the four seasons and the text describes the illustration meant to appear near to each paragraph. The described illustrations (faithfully executed in the Karlsruhe manuscript posted by Koen) are about women of different ages. These descriptions make clear that the illustrations were conceived by Laufenberg and are an integral part of the work. Transcription from You are not allowed to view links.
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Laufenberg Wrote:Das erste zite des Iares heisset das glentz
1897 Das dise zite sye in schöwe
Als ein Iunge Iumpfröwe
Die sich zieret in nuwe gewandt
Die blümly springent uff ze hant
Die brunnen geratent quellen
Die fögellin erschellen
Das ander teil des Iares heisset der sumer
1944 Ouch so seit der meister mir
Das die welte denn ist gelich
Einer frowen höfelich
Die da ist in vollem stat
Vnd sich kurlich gecleidet hat
Das dritte teil des Iares heisset der herbst
1970 Hie ist die welte gestalte
Recht als ein wip die abe nympt
Der farwe vnd schöne gar entrint
Ir cleider schöne sindt hin geleit
Vnd hett in lumpen sich gecleit
Das vierde teil des iares heisset der winter
2001 Dis zite leret der meister mich
Ist eyme alten wyp gelich
Die von alter dorret krume
Vnd ringet mit dem tode vmbe
Das leben / vnd ist überladen
Mit alter vnd mit synem schaden
Vnd ist nackent vnd bloß
One alle hilffe Sigeloß
ChatGPT translation Wrote:The first time of the year is called spring
1897 This time is in beauty,
Like a young maiden,
Who adorns herself in new garments.
The flowers bloom in her hands,
The fountains eagerly bubble,
The little birds resound.
The second part of the year is called summer
1944 So too the master tells me,
That the world is then like
A noblewoman of courtly grace,
Who is in her full bloom
And elegantly dressed.
The third part of the year is called autumn
1970 Here the world is shaped
Just like a woman who declines,
Loses color and beauty entirely.
Her fine clothes are laid aside,
And she has clad herself in rags.
The fourth part of the year is called winter
2001 This time, the master teaches me,
Is like an old woman,
Withered and bent with age,
Struggling against death
For life, burdened
By age and its harm,
Naked and bare,
Without help or protection.
Since Laufenberg's Regimen was written in 1429, this gives a very valuable provenance indication for the Voynich manuscript. It also suggests that the date of creation (at least for the f85r2 diagram) is close to the later dates in the Carbon-dating range (1404-1438 with 95% probability).
The woman with the cane and the rosary is the key to this comparison. How many versions of this illustration have been found (2 or 3?) and what is their provenance? After 1429 is as good as the Golden Fleece - after 1430.
The fourth person, the 'Man with no Attributes' is worthless. What is this person supposed to be doing?
The "date" of VMs creation is a problem, if the different sections were produced over an extended period of time.
Heinrich von Laufenberg
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Where it says:
"many of his original poems are marred by a laboured artificiality, acrostics and other metrical devices being quite common."
Just the kind of guy we're looking for!
(10-01-2025, 07:48 AM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Since Laufenberg's Regimen was written in 1429, this gives a very valuable provenance indication for the Voynich manuscript. It also suggests that the date of creation (at least for the f85r2 diagram) is close to the later dates in the Carbon-dating range (1404-1438 with 95% probability).
The "Handschriftencensus" already linked by @Bernd is the best resource I know for finding manuscripts in any (?) German dialect.
It gives You are not allowed to view links.
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and You are not allowed to view links.
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It is worth going through both lists.
The tantalising "Buch der Figuren" exists only in one copy, that is: existed, as it was burned in a fire of the municipal library (You are not allowed to view links.
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Quote:On 24 August, the Museum of Fine Arts was destroyed by fire, as was the Municipal Library housed in the Gothic former Dominican Chruch, with its unique collection of medieval manuscripts, rare Renaissance books and ancient Roman artifacts.
The earliest known copy of Regimen is indeed from 1429. As this is quite close to the end of the date range for the Voynich MS, both from the C-14 point of view and the clothing style, I see two possibilities.
1. It is indeed a copy of something close to the origin, and this then also puts a constraint on the location of the origin of the Voynich MS, or its author, as he//she must be from roughly the same area.
2. There may be other earlier sources. Certainly, for the text there were sources used by Laufenberg, but these may not necessarily be too relevant.
Some more details here:
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Google translate:
Quote:The chaplain and later dean Heinrich Laufenberg probably came from the city of Freiburg, where he was probably born around 1390. He is mentioned by name in 1411 as the copyist of Boner's ›Edelstein‹, where he describes himself in the colophon as Schriftriben hat Heinricus Disz buoch ... Er was von Friburg us Brisgow (formerly Strasbourg, City Library, Cod. B 94). He died on 31 March 1460 in the monastery Am Grünen Wörth in Strasbourg, which he had entered in 1445 and in whose possession his works remained. His works (with the exception of the ›Regimen‹) were handed down in only one manuscript, which was destroyed in the fire at the Strasbourg City Library in 1880. In addition to his second textbook, the ›Mirror of Human Salvation‹, this fate also affects his third textbook, the ›Book of Figures‹ (No. 85.7.1.), his collection of songs, rhyming couplets and prose texts. Some of these texts have survived to us at least in fragments, as researchers had already taken up their work before their destruction, such as Wackernagel (1864–1877) of the spiritual songs that he printed, or Engelhardt (1823) and Massmann (1832), who provided excerpts from the ›Book of Figures‹. The only text witness of the ›Book of Figures‹ was richly illustrated with 137 pen drawings, of which only one is available in print. Whether there was a text template and where it came from is still unknown (Konrad von Alzey can be considered refuted: Wachinger [1985a]; Nemes [2015] p. 12).
And more about Laufenberg's 1411 'appearance' showing that he is active at least from that date:
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Quote:ehem. Straßburg, Stadtbibliothek (Hs. verbrannt), Cod. B 94
Boner[url=http://d-nb.info/gnd/118661418][/url]
Edelstein (S3 [E])
[Freiburg i. Br. ?], 1411
Die 1870 verbrannte Hs. war im Boner-Teil nicht illustriert; ihm vermutlich vorgebunden waren Heinrich Laufenbergs 'Spiegel menschlichen Heils' und Egenolfs von Staufenberg 'Peter von Staufenberg'. Textlich bezeugt sind nurmehr die in die Ed. Pfeiffers aufgenommen Lesarten und der durch den Schreiber Heinrich Laufenberg auf Allerheiligen 1411 datierte paargereimte Kolophon der Boner-Abschrift (16 V., ed. Pfeiffer S. 233).
There is also the chance that parts of the VM were made later than the rest. If so, the large foldout (rosettes recto and verso) might be a good candidate. Especially the lack of various pigments is remarkable: why didn't anyone come in and paint the lips + cheeks red? Why aren't there any green details on the rosettes foldout when the color is used liberally in all other sections of the MS?
But yes... I have been very vocal about my preference for an early date. If the sequence has no precedent, then I will need to include early 1430's.
If you ask me, the most unusual thing about this find is the following. I'll try to explain. We've been looking for a matching tetradic sequence for decades. Medieval books are full of them: they loved groups of four. Four winds, directions, seasons, humors, elements... And much more. Still, nothing really worked for this, speculation aside. There were good ideas though, about the flower and the old woman especially, and thoughts of seasons and ages were justified. But we were missing the iconographic sequence. I tried hard to make sense of if but it never really worked.
Then a few days ago, I was idly browsing some Hausbuch-adjacent manuscripts looking for good bulls. The ladies with flowers drew my eye, but didn't seem too exceptional. Then, I saw the hunched old lady with cane and beads. This reminded me of the VM old lady. I went back to review the whole sequence but only saw ladies with flowers and canes. But then I turned a page forward, and there's a man with plain headgear looking at a yellow glass vessel.
I've gotten much more critical and pessimistic about matching VM images over the years, but this sent shivers down my spine. I knew it was something I had never seen before.
But now comes the weird thing: the doctor isn't part of a sequence at all! He just happens to appear after the four seasons in this particular tradition! The image of the medical practitioner simply introduces the section about the four temperaments.
So they are not a sequence, in the sense that they are originally not part of the same quartet. But they are a sequence in the sense that we literally expect them in a sequence in this manuscript tradition.
And then, researching depictions of doctors, I realized how ignorant I had been. Imagine if you showed a medieval person a stock image of a person in white with a stethoscope. Would they say: ah, a doctor? Of course not, they would be ignorant of the nature of the tool, the significance of the uniform, and the iconic function the stethoscope has in our society. For us, showing someone in certain clothing with a stethoscope or a syringe means: this person is a medical practitioner.
What I didn't realize before is that the urine sample being held up to the light had a similar function in medieval iconography as the stethoscope has to us. And the "learned person" style of hat has the same function as a doctor's uniform.
A medieval person would not ask: "what is this guy?"
They would ask: why is there a doctor in this diagram?
Similarly, the cane is a symbol of old age. The rosary (or paternoster, those are apparently different) was apparently also associated with the later stages of life. One's body could not do work anymore, so it was time to focus on the soul, and to prepare to meet one's maker. Care for the elderly was also associated with monastic institutions, which may have further strengthened the connection.
Anyway, what I was getting at is this: the makers of the Voynich diagram combined two figures from a seasons sequence with the stock image of a doctor immediately following that sequence in one specific manuscript tradition (that we know of). Why?