The Voynich Ninja

Spencer Coll. MS. 65 is a 15th century Italian herbal in the Taccuinum Sanitatis tradition. But it is an unusual one. In fact, it might somehow even be related to the VMS!

This herbal is written in Italian and has the peculiar feature of having illustrations of castles and towers with Ghibelline (swallowtail) merlons. In fact, there seem to be a lot of them:

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There even seems to be several castles with Ghibelline wall and towers all around (note the first picture below, in which there appear to be bathing people inside):

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Can someone fluent in Italian check which castles these might represent? That could be a clue to the Rosettes section castles of the VMS!

But there are other scenes that might be related to bathing, too:

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Hoow about this weird animal, kind of reminds me of the VMS "armadillo/pangolin":

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Some herb roots are also voynich-y:

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You can find the MS here: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Could this MS be relevant to the Voynich manuscript in some way?

Dated to ca. 1475 by notes in dossier; in a northern Italian dialect. Acc. to Kup, the direct ancestor of the illustration cycle in our ms. is the Latin Tacuinum Vienna ONB 2644 (from ca. 1385 for the Cerruti family; facsimile in bibliography).
Content: Compiled in Arabic by Ibn Butlan, late 11th c., deriving from Dioscorides. A Tacuinum ms. in Vienna with ownership note from 1472, very like this ms., is ascribed to Cadamosto (as translator?). Here, table of contents, ff. 1-2v.

Maybe some hints?

(27-08-2026, 04:59 PM)Linda Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Dated to ca. 1475 by notes in dossier; in a northern Italian dialect. Acc. to Kup, the direct ancestor of the illustration cycle in our ms. is the Latin Tacuinum Vienna ONB 2644 (from ca. 1385 for the Cerruti family; facsimile in bibliography).
Content: Compiled in Arabic by Ibn Butlan, late 11th c., deriving from Dioscorides. A Tacuinum ms. in Vienna with ownership note from 1472, very like this ms., is ascribed to Cadamosto (as translator?). Here, table of contents, ff. 1-2v.

Maybe some hints?

Great info, thanks @Linda

I believe I have identified the castle in this illustration:

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It is Toscanella (today known as Tuscania): You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

It has these baths preserved from inside the castle:

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Compare this with the baths in the illustration:

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I looked in historical records and the castle used to be a very impressive Ghibelline style fortress with long rows of swallowtailed walls:

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Today the castle does not exist any more:

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But a sketch from a few hundred years ago reveals its extent:

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The village was known in the middle ages for having abundant sulfurous hot springs that were famous bathing places.

I'm getting excited...

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Sources:

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(27-08-2026, 05:47 PM)JustAnotherTheory Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I believe I have identified the castle in this illustration:



It is Toscanella (today known as Tuscania): You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

It has these baths preserved from inside the castle:





Compare this with the baths in the illustration:



I looked in historical records and the castle used to be a very impressive Ghibelline style fortress with long rows of swallowtailed walls:





Today the castle does not exist any more:



But a sketch from a few hundred years ago reveals its extent:



The village was known in the middle ages for having abundant sulfurous hot springs that were famous bathing places.

I'm getting excited...

___________________________________________

Sources:

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

This is my first post, so sorry if I get the formatting wrong, but from what I can tell the text below identifies it as the baths of "petuoli". The next illustration shows the Bagni San Filippo, which, from a quick google search, are still well known today, unless there's some other baths of "san filipo" I don't know about. There's a wikipedia page about De balneis puteolanis, a poem about the baths of pozzuoli, where this section: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. not only gives a source which says that it was continually used throughout the middle ages, but also that the volcanic region spans from the bay of "Puteoli", which resembles the "petuoli" spelling. Wikipedia's not the most reliable source, of course, but a good starting point.

I did some more digging and according to this source: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Footnote 83 on page 37 of the pdf the baths with swallowtail merlons are actually depicting the baths in Petriolo, not Pozzuoli. The source covers the Tacuinum among other texts, and also mentions how the latter part of the bathing section (including that building) quotes Bagni della Porretta (which in the text is written as "poreta")zuoli()

See also this 2016 thread:

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This castle is already on the map.

That sketch is a "highly imaginative reconstruction" according to the book you shared (una ricostruzione molto fantasiosa, p. 134). However, the mid-19th century drawing and the 1982 survey support an early origin for the merlons. The castle was abandoned at the end of the fifteenth century, and there were no renovations in the prior decades, so this was likely anyway.

Disegno di Vincenzo Marcelliani (metà del 1800). 
An earlier survey from 1972 provides further confirmation:

Quote:The only surviving original merlons at Tuscania are of the ghibelline type (Fig. 3). These have two projecting stone hooks on them from which wooden shutters were hung between the merlons to give extra protection to the defenders in the embrasures. Hooks, loops and other means of attaching shutters are quite widespread throughout Europe, but hitherto seem to have gone unrecorded in Italy although they cannot be uncommon there. (We owe this information on the use of shuttering to Prof. A. W. Lawrence. See also Toy 1955, 196.) Two other types of merlon occur at Tuscania: square and shouldered. The former are all modern. The latter are a rare type and though it would be easy to dismiss them as decorative additions, they could well be original since they too have hooks, and arrow slits have been cut into them.

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By the way, there is ample evidence of shutters between the merlons nowadays.


Porta di Poggio was built in 1774, so those merlons are late. 
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Thanks Mr. Dumont. Interesting points.

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(27-08-2026, 09:13 PM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.See also this 2016 thread:

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Of course this has been discussed before... facepalm.png. This forum is the Voynich equivalent of "The Simpsons already did it".

Thanks to @MarcoP's thread suggestion, I was able to find this particular copy of the herbal:

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One thing struck me in this herbal: the text is written on top, above or next to the plants, and never touches or goes below the roots (just like th VMS). Such a writing style is, in my opinion, very rare among herbals of the period.