The Voynich Ninja

(12-01-2025, 08:47 PM)RobGea Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.her other hand is problematic because she holds a  barking dog's head ....
   

Quote:A miniature of the Liberal Arts from the Hortus deliciarum of Herrad of Landsberg (d. 1195), has at least part of a dog (Fig. 1). Lady Dialectica is dressed elegantly in courtly fashion, wearing a yellow hood and a green gown with enormous sleeves, her right hand pointing, her left hand holding a dog's head (caput canis) with bared teeth. The inscription reads: "Argumenta sino concurrere more canino" ("I allow arguments to clash - or to follow each other - in canine manner"). The art historian Ludwig Heinrich Heydenreich speaks of a hundeköpfige Schlange (a serpent with a dog's head) in the lady's hand (1392) - bad eyesight or wishful thinking? He expected to find, if not the whole, at least part of the more usual serpent. In 1979 Karl-August Wirth corrected the mistake in a thorough study of the iconography of the Artes liberales (73). He argued that more canino, like growling and barking (latratus), could be interpreted in malam partem as loud, aggressive, rude, and sophistical but also in bonam partem as symbolising the zealous and vigilant orator and preacher fighting valiantly for the truth in the duellum logicae.

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The harmless gesture is intended to redirect the attention to the other side of the illustration.

The Man without Attributes is the Man of Knowledge - the poet, philosopher, scientist of that era.

Considering that the basis of knowledge, characterized by the 'Four Elements Theory', was a complete fabrication. The Man of Knowledge is appropriately and ambiguously pointing at nothing.

(12-01-2025, 09:04 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.In Marco's image, without actually reading the text, ....

Here is a commentary on another edition of the manuscript, but unfortunately in French. Here is the link for those who can read it.

[attachment=9764]

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The machine translation into English:

[attachment=9766]

My French is rusty, but the fragment you selected seems to discuss a different kind of diagram. It says what to eat and how to dress in each season, without any references to the ages of a person (I think). The text appears to be very much focused on maintaining physical health, so I don't think there is much moralizing about the soul. Where the ages are mentioned, it is again about what to do to stay in good health.

I noticed that the doctor is presented as the first image in the actual text of the book (p.7), but I don't know where it was taken from the MS. It might be interesting if the uroscoping doctor was used as an introductory figure in other textual traditions.

[attachment=9765]

(12-01-2025, 11:00 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The text appears to be very much focused on maintaining physical health ....

Yes, I had the text translated into English ( see addendum in post #13 ). It's actually not about the four stages of life.

Thank you, Matthias! The chapter about the 4 ages starts at p.79 You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
The initial I posted is E (Entendu).

It seems to be purely medical, with no moralization.

What is going on in that O-intial you just linked? It's interesting...

To clarify: quadratic group (four ages), the only attribute is a ball, one of them is weirdly looking away from us. I might be misinterpreting the latter though, in which case it would be less interesting.

The division of the ages is interesting. I always thought that people in the Middle Ages didn't live very long on average.

Quote:First, you must know that physicians state there are four stages of life:

    Adolescence,
    Youth,
    Old age, and
    Senility.

For the first stage, they say it is hot and moist, during which the body grows. This stage lasts until about 25 or 30 years old.
The second stage is hot and dry, during which the body maintains its strength and vigor, lasting until 40 or 45 years old.
The third stage is cold and dry, lasting until 60 years old.
The fourth stage is cold and moist, due to the abundance of cold humors caused by a lack of natural heat, and it lasts until death. During this stage, the body continuously declines.

The machine translation of the entire text of this section into English:
[attachment=9774]

(12-01-2025, 11:00 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I noticed that the doctor is presented as the first image in the actual text of the book (p.7), but I don't know where it was taken from the MS. It might be interesting if the uroscoping doctor was used as an introductory figure in other textual traditions.

The doctor is from the very first page of Arsenal 2510, France, 1275-1300
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You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and the initial E for the ages of man are both from BL Sloane 2435, France, 13th Century.

(13-01-2025, 12:36 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.What is going on in that O-intial you just linked? It's interesting...

To clarify: quadratic group (four ages), the only attribute is a ball, one of them is weirdly looking away from us. I might be misinterpreting the latter though, in which case it would be less interesting.

That O-initial (like the doctor) is from Arsenal 2510 (f.27v).
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I understand the Voynich-wise interest of the figure looking away. I agree about your description of the illustration, but I have no idea of the reason for that pose.
Another interesting feature is that the illustrator apparently ignored the years that the text assigns to the four ages (0-25/30, 25/30-40/45, 40/45-60, >60): the young man is a child and the ~35 years old guy could be an adolescent, much shorter than the middle-aged man. Possibly heights were used to graphically illustrate the parabola of human life?

EDIT: I see I cross-posted with Matthias, sorry.

[attachment=9767]

According to Elizabeth Sears (The Ages of Man), "gesture" may serve as one of the attributes. She writes about the rather unwieldy Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal. Ms-1234 You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. :

Quote:The illustrations are lively, if of dubious quality, and several are accompanied
by verse inscriptions. Migratory, these verses appear in different contexts, both
alone and within schemata. The lines inscribed with the temperaments were
extracted from the Regimen sanitatis Salernitanum, a popular medical poem sup- |
posed to have been shaped by members of the school of Salerno in the twelfth
or thirteenth century.°° Those which accompany the ages of man normally
appear as the third, second, seventh, and sixth members of a set of seven verses
in diagrammatic “Trees of Wisdom,”’ to be discussed at a later point (figs. 82-
85). The artist represented the ages as half-length figures bearing attributes
and, in creating them, was influenced to some degree by the juxtaposed inscriptions:

Informans mores, in me flos promit odores.
Est michi sors munda, nature purior unda.
In dubio positus est homo decrepitus.
Hoc reor esse senum, sensum discernere plenum.

Adolescencia holds the flower which “gives forth its perfumes’; iuventus, inappropriately aligned with boyhood’s verse, carries a ball; senectus, ‘‘cast into
doubt,’’ bends over a stick; and wise senium extends a hand outwards. 
The ages, once again, are those named by Johannicius in his Isagoge, but no longer
interpreted in the light of their physical qualities.