So this is a stupid question but we know that the VMS was used heavily, due to paper fading, so that means that many people used it for practical purposes and were able to read it without many problems. So my question is: why did nobody continue to use this method of encipherment in any other manuscript?
Why are there no Voynichese in no other astrology MS from 1400 or 1500, or even 1600?
If the encipherment was so successful, I would think that whoever could read it, and use it every day, would also continue to use it later? Like in marginalia of existing astrology manuscripts, for personal annotation, or even to encode other mysteries and hidden knowledge?
But there are NO Voynichese in ANY manuscript, ANYWHERE.
Why??
1) not EVERY surviving manuscript in the entire world has been digitized for us to examine, much less catalogued to be findable in a database, so we can't say FOR SURE that no other examples exist. Only that they haven't been found.
2) only about 5-10% of all manuscripts produced in the Middle Ages have survived to the present day. So there MIGHT have been other examples, they just haven't survived.
3) In a soon-to-be-published article, Colin Layfield and I argue that the manuscript was likely not meant to be bound at all but was a loosely-stacked pile of unnested bifolia. If it hadn't been (mis)bound between wooden boards later in the fifteenth century, it would likely not have survived at all.
We have no way of knowing what we haven't seen or what doesn't survive. I think it's LIKELY that the Voynich is unique, but we just can't say for sure. There are other manuscripts that are just as unique in text, writing system, or artistry.
I think this is a very valid question.
What we can say for sure is that whatever 'Voynichese' is, it never gained enough traction to become common knowledge. Neither at the time the VM was created, nor was something even remotely similar re-invented in the following centuries.
To me, this is no proof but a very strong indication that Voynichese is unlikely to be useful in a broader context. Regardless if it is a cipher or transliteration of another language. If this system had a practical application, even if the knowledge was lost, a similar method would have been independently developed by now. This and the fact that we can't 'decipher' it most likely means that it either encodes no useful information, or in a way that is inefficient and/or impractical.
We have no idea if anyone ever 'used' the VM, it may very well be that people did what we did today with digital copies, and just desperately tried to make sense of it. It does become addictive.
(12-06-2026, 03:49 PM)Jimmy123 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.So this is a stupid question but we know that the VMS was used heavily, due to paper fading, so that means that many people used it for practical purposes and were able to read it without many problems.
Do we know that the VMS was
used heavily, or do we suspect that someone/many people riffled through the pages over the years? There are more reasons for doing so besides using the written content for some purpose. Perhaps it represents a couple hundred years of confused people scouring the pages in order to solve or understand it.
There are countless scenarios which could explain why there are no other voynichese manuscripts but most are a variation of:
1) There are no more, or the VMS was the only one to survive
2) There are more, but we haven't found one yet
3) The author only decided to make one VMS, or died before making another (and then noone copied it because why copy a useless book?)
4) The manuscript is not genuine in some way
This could be a deliberate decision of the author(s) to never use this cipher for anything else.
I've been pushing this idea a few times, and I'll repeat it again: the invention of a strange new alphabet for the cipher could be motivated by the desire to protect the identity of the author(s). Normal characters can be matched against the existing handwriting to attempt identifying the author. You can't identify the author if the whole text is written in an invented alphabet. I think it's possible that even the characters that are similar to the existing European numbers or abbreviations (y, l, etc) are written in the Voynich Manuscript in a specific peculiar way to suppress the normal writing habits.
If the above it true, then this can only work if the script is only used for the codex and never again and certainly doesn't appear in any plaintext documents.
(12-06-2026, 04:22 PM)LisaFaginDavis Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.1) not EVERY surviving manuscript in the entire world has been digitized for us to examine, much less catalogued to be findable in a database, so we can't say FOR SURE that no other examples exist. Only that they haven't been found.
2) only about 5-10% of all manuscripts produced in the Middle Ages have survived to the present day. So there MIGHT have been other examples, they just haven't survived.
3) In a soon-to-be-published article, Colin Layfield and I argue that the manuscript was likely not meant to be bound at all but was a loosely-stacked pile of unnested bifolia. If it hadn't been (mis)bound between wooden boards later in the fifteenth century, it would likely not have survived at all.
We have no way of knowing what we haven't seen or what doesn't survive. I think it's LIKELY that the Voynich is unique, but we just can't say for sure. There are other manuscripts that are just as unique in text, writing system, or artistry.
I think it is important to remember that the only surviving medieval documents are not just manuscripts. There are many other documents that survive in archives in Italy and elsewhere such as letters, decrees, etc. When I was researching in the Milan State Archives I was looking through numerous sheets of loose documents of which they have many. I say this as if one were to read the Voynich forum one might have the impression that manuscripts are all there is when in fact they just constitute part. And it is clear to me from experience that so little of these other documents have been studied in any detail that there could easily to be something amongst them to be found. Also I wonder what percentage of surviving manuscripts have not been digitised and so may be largely unknown to Voynich researchers.
(12-06-2026, 03:49 PM)Jimmy123 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.we know that the VMS was used heavily, due to paper fading, so that means that many people used it for practical purposes and were able to read it without many problems.
The first part is true: the original ink has faded considerably (which is more visible in the drawings than in the text, for reasons that won't go into here). Although that was probably due to the type of ink being unsuitable for use on vellum.
But the conclusion does not follow. Most of the "heavy use" happened in the ~600 years after the book was created. Baresch, for one, seems to have been obsessed with the VMS for much of his life (in the mid 1600s), and surely leafed through it many, many times. And I bet that, between its donation to Beinecke and them deciding to lock it away, it was the most consulted manuscript in their possession.
There is no evidence at all that anyone else besides the Author could have read the VMS, or were supposed to. In fact, there is (admittedly very thin) evidence suggesting that the Author himself could not read it -- because he was effectively blind by the time he decided to have the book copied onto vellum. This evidence is the many apparent errors made by the Scribe who did the copying, which were not corrected or amended.
All the best, --stolfi
(12-06-2026, 06:28 PM)Bernd Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.What we can say for sure is that whatever 'Voynichese' is, it never gained enough traction to become common knowledge. Neither at the time the VM was created, nor was something even remotely similar re-invented in the following centuries.
This is probably correct, unless it is one of those things that was so common that nobody bothered writing about it. There are many things we just don't know about the past because they were just things you did. Maybe it was something like a common word game among students, usually played on blackboards or wax tablets or whatnot. None of it survived because it wasn't codex material. And nobody wrote about it because why would you?
Again, I don't necessarily think that this is true, but it's fun to think about. Maybe if a 15th century student saw the VM, he'd ask "Jesus, why did they use all this parchment for playing Frumpfelstumpfel?"
(12-06-2026, 11:28 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Maybe if a 15th century student saw the VM, he'd ask "Jesus, why did they use all this parchment for playing Frumpfelstumpfel?"
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There are many languages we only know of in a contextual manner - Dacian is one I can think of with only one inscription. There were also languages all through history that would have been writen on leaves which we don't have evidence of now. It could mean anything or nothing only have one example.