The Voynich Ninja

A comment by Diane You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.:

Quote:Ask  "who most often pictured crossbowmen in calendars after 1440" and the answer will surely come back "Germany".  However, if you ask "Does anyone have an idea of why the crossbow in the Voynich manuscript looks as if it's made of wood, and why the archer's hand might be pictured in that position?" then the answer comes back (as it did thanks to a former colleague) - because it's a rare form of crossbow only known from a couple of late archaeological finds - of Spanish bows specifically meant for maritime use.

(emphasis mine)


made me put together these ideas in response. Rather than hi-jack the thread I thought I'd ask her some questions in this thread.
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I don't think we can infer much from the way the chap is holding the crossbow - his right hand isn't even on it, but floating off in the air above it, as if to indicate that he's not going to fire the (cocked and loaded) crossbow.

It's far more productive to concentrate on the general shape of the crossbow, and the dress of the archer.

I'm intrigued by your Spanish maritime use comment. The crossbow depicted in the VM is quite clearly a stirrup one, which was used by the Spanish forces (and other Christian nations across Europe), but maritime use required longer distances so I understand they tended to incorporate the slower winding mechanism to get a stronger pull.

French soldier c. 1415 with a winding stirrup crossbow

But the VM archer doesn't have a winding mechanism, suggesting it was a less powerful manual pull stirrup firing crossbow.

The Spanish were using by the 14th century a cranequín, a metal crossbow with a top winding mechanishm (rather than the side winding mechanism):



The dress, of course, especially the capote hat, does not indicate a Spaniard.

I have read that the Genoese were considered the preeminent crossbowmen of their era. They fought at Crecy and they fought at Kulikovo. And they lost both times. Genoa also fought with Venice and lost there too eventually.

So how can we try to pin a national or ethic identity on the image in VMs Sagittarius? Can we call in a panel of experts? Obviously this topic has been pounded into the ground repeatedly. Can it even be said with any clarity that the VMs illustration actually provides sufficiently distinctive markers to make an accurate identification rather than just a generic representation  of a crossbowman - leaving it to the reader's grasp of historical knowledge?

...And I would like to add the following to R.Sale's question:

If an accurate identification is luckily achieved, then what this will give us? Will new oppotunities to advance appear in that case? Remember those guibelline merlons. Did they bring us forward?

I had many more images of crossbowmen than I posted in my blog. I tried to pick ones that were representative of the whole and especially those with stirrups and those related to zodiacs/calenders, otherwise the blog posts become too long.

What I did notice, however, as I was gathering them, was that the VMS crossbowman's clothing leaned more toward crossbow tournament dress and somewhat more towards hunting dress and was generally different from images of archers dressed for warfare.


We should also keep in mind that although the southern reaches of the Holy Roman Empire were receding at the time the VMS was created, the germanic areas of Germany and Lombardy included three coastlines in the 14th century, so maritime use in no way rules out any of the larger European nations of the time. Personally, I don't think the drawing is accurate or detailed enough to definitively ID it as a specific subset of crossbow, maritime or otherwise.

Since the crossbow sagittarius has always been an illustration of special interest, I have read the blog entry in question:
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more than once. Following is why it has not convinced me.

First of all it is postulated that the position of the right hand is intentional. This is possible but not at all certain, and if we look at the left hand (that really isn't there at all) one may doubt that this is something that the draughtsman paid a lot of attention to. However, that's also just a guess. It is not certain either way, but it already makes it clear that the conclusion is also going to be uncertain.

The special part of the Spanish maritime crossbow seems to be an extra lock. The blog post has some figures, but they don't say which of the parts belong to a "normal" crossbow, and which are special for the maritime crossbow. It is suggested that the maritime bow "had a hitherto-unknown feature: an additional locking device which required a notched nut’s being inserted into the topside of the stock, about halfway down its length".

However, the nut is needed in all crossbows. The extra lock seems to be the safety wedge indicated in figure 7.
This is a guess because it is not clearly explained.

In any case, the location of the nut, on the top of the stock, is clearly at the point where the string crosses the stock. It would have to be handled before charging, not after, and the bow in the Voynich MS is already charged.

The right hand of the Voynich archer is way behind this point (a good idea by the way), so the argument that he is handing a special Spanish maritime bow is not confirmed at all.



If there is a misinterpretation of the mechanism from my side, it would be good to have this clarified, because the way it is described now is not at all clear.

(27-08-2016, 05:15 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view....And I would like to add the following to R.Sale's question:

If an accurate identification is luckily achieved, then what this will give us? Will new oppotunities to advance appear in that case? Remember those guibelline merlons. Did they bring us forward?

Hi Anton, your use of "us" puzzles me. Do you mean that you find the guibelline merlons uninformative?

In my opinion, each single detail taken in isolation is irrelevant, but collecting all available clues, it is possible to come up with something informative. My point of view is that there are a number of elements suggesting a German origin: these include those resulting from analyses of the whole zodiac (such as that performed by JKP in a number of posts), the Crossbow (a detail in a much larger image cycle) and the color annotations mentioned by Rene and more recently by You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. 
There are also elements suggesting a Northern Italian origin. These include parallels with Italian herbals (again discussed by Rene, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and others, and confirmed by Touwaide) and the guibelline merlons.

What I get from all this is an Italian or German place of production for the manuscript. I would also include in-between areas as candidates (Switzerland and Tirol). 

Of course, the analysis of the images alone will not allow reading the manuscript: in order to move forward, the language must be taken in as well. It would be nice to further restrict the possible place of production, but even the larger area that I consider likely gives a number of useful constraints about the languages spoken there when the ms was written.

I discovered the Voynich manuscript through Stephen Bax' 2014 paper You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. In one of the first pages Stephen notes that "scholars have tended to focus almost exclusively on European herbals and European languages, and ignored the potential value of herbal manuscripts from other cultures, for example in the Near East." I always thought and still think that the ms likely includes non-European features. Stephen's (and Derek Vogt's) more recent research suggests a possible Romany origin, hence a mainly Indian language that was already present in Europe in the early XV Century, with cultural influences from India, Persia and the Near East. My ignorance of non-Latin languages does not allow me to contribute much on this front, but I find the hypothesis well worth pursuing and compatible with both the recognizable and not-so-recognizable features in the images.

Hi Marco,

Well they are informative, but the information is indecisive. I would say that what's most informative in those merlons is not that they are depicted in the portion of the map allegedly representing Europe, but that they are also depicted in other portions of the map. This means that the person who depicted them not only was familiar with guibelline merlons but he  perceived guibelline merlons as the prevalent type of merlons. This suggests that a person who depicted them was literally surrounded by the guibelline merlons at the time he made that drawing.

But that's an assumption. What if guibelline merlons do not stand for depiction of real objects but for a "political" manifest of some kind? What if the person who depicted them was not a native to these merlons but just lived amongst them for some time (like, studied or teached in an Italian university)? What if the map was copied verbatim from another source and included into the manuscript as a standalone element?

And so on.

For me, aror sheey in one line with a German phrase in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is thousand times more informative than the guibelline merlons.

I have my own weird "pet-theory" about what the VMS origin and history might have been, but that's based on "hearsay" from the Internet and fragments of books that I have read (I mean I read fragments, not books). I won't disclose it until I'm sure there's anything rational in it, and for that I need to study quite a many aspect still - perhaps it's all absurd. But the root idea (and I think there's some sense in it) is that the VMS is not a one-time product, but a "legacy" of a "thinker" or "teacher" brought together (possibly, from a number of manuscripts) by his "successors" or "pupils".

(I understand this is mostly off-topic, sorry)

(28-08-2016, 02:04 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Hi Marco,

Well they are informative, but the information is indecisive. I would say that what's most informative in those merlons is not that they are depicted in the portion of the map allegedly representing Europe, but that they are also depicted in other portions of the map. This means that the person who depicted them not only was familiar with guibelline merlons but he  perceived guibelline merlons as the prevalent type of merlons. This suggests that a person who depicted them was literally surrounded by the guibelline merlons at the time he made that drawing.

As I wrote above, all information is indecisive is taken a bit at a time. When multiple clues point in the same direction, they begin to look significant.
I agree with what you write about the author being surrounded by guibelline merlons: their presence likely speaks more of the was around the illustrator rather then of the features of the illustrated places (if the castles are literal and symbols of something different). Something similar can be seen in a Milanese ms written in French and telling a story taking place in Britain (Queste del saint graal, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., 1380 ca): the illustrator made ample use of dove-tailed merlons and other architectural details he could see in Lombardy.

(28-08-2016, 02:04 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.But that's an assumption. What if guibelline merlons do not stand for depiction of real objects but for a "political" manifest of some kind? What if the person who depicted them was not a native to these merlons but just lived amongst them for some time (like, studied or teached in an Italian university)? What if the map was copied verbatim from another source and included into the manuscript as a standalone element?

And so on.

For me, aror sheey in one line with a German phrase in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is thousand times more informative than the guibelline merlons.

As I said, I think all elements taken in isolation are dubious. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. might have been added later, in a different place, by someone who could still read and write Voynichese but spoke a language not related to that of the author (not that I think this is the case, but it is not impossible). It's natural that different people evaluate differently the relative importance of single observations, but all observations are important.

(28-08-2016, 02:04 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I have my own weird "pet-theory" about what the VMS origin and history might have been, but that's based on "hearsay" from the Internet and fragments of books that I have read (I mean I read fragments, not books). I won't disclose it until I'm sure there's anything rational in it, and for that I need to study quite a many aspect still - perhaps it's all absurd. But the root idea (and I think there's some sense in it) is that the VMS is not a one-time product, but a "legacy" of a "thinker" or "teacher" brought together (possibly, from a number of manuscripts) by his "successors" or "pupils".

I am looking forward to read your theory, when you will be ready to share it!

Quote:You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. might have been added later, in a different place, by someone who could still read and write Voynichese but spoke a language not related to that of the author (not that I think this is the case, but it is not impossible)

Nope. It's the same hand (is it Currier A or B? ).

To return to the crossbowman, just to add some info to the thread, I remember reading somewhere that a very similar crossbowman has been depicted somewhere in Wurzburg. Unfortunately, I've forgotten the details, perhaps someone can comment upon that.

The 'crossbowman' thing has been around for ages. 

I understand that someone wanted to know about the maritime bow.

It's included in the full analysis of the image which I've posted as a separate page.

Here's the link.
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I've slowly come to realise that the big gulf between my approach to study of this manuscript's imagery and that of others is that I'm usually analyzing the image and explaining the region and period indicated by the details and by the style.

A majority of others are, as it were writing something between an historical and a historical-fictional narrative, one into which they attempt to fit any given image from the manuscript.  So they're chiefly writing about their theory, and using the pictures as illustration of the theory.

It's not a bad method - in theory.  The fundamental problem is that the narratives are not based on anything very solid.

Arguments for the 'German' theory, for example, seem to me to rely on peripheral matters such as whether a bit of marginalia is or isn't written in German.  But in fact, you can get medieval manuscripts which have marginalia in three or four different vernacular languages, and anybody could learn to speak German.  It's not enough to provenance anything.

Same with an argument that the plants represent a herbal.  No-one has demonstrated the validity of that idea, yet everyone builds their story about the plant-pictures from that assumption.

And so on.

By criticising the generally-adopted methodology here, I'm not having a shot at anyone in particular.  Voynich studies started like that with Wilfrid Voynich's approach, and everyone else has pretty much gone with it. 

But arguing that the Voynich archer is German only works if you never look at a wider range of images for Sagittarius, whether that wider range is geographical or linguistic or chronological.

We don't actually know even if the Voynich archer figure was originally designed as a form for Sagittarius, or whether someone decided to use it later in that way.  And since the series DOES NOT present us with the Latin European zodiac series, or indeed any known version of the Roman zodiac series, there is so much being presumed and pre-empted before any specialists in Latin European zodiac or astronomical imagery is asked to comment that I think it a bit of a waste.

I'd much rather have asked the author of the two-volume history of medieval Latin astronomical imagery to offer comparisons for the 'sun-and-moon' diagrams.  But that's just me.