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| Rauwolf & Clusius & Gessner |
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Posted by: stopsquark - 16-03-2026, 02:28 AM - Forum: Provenance & history
- Replies (2)
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I just read the paper You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. relevant because Rauwolf is one of the names often discussed in reconstruction of the VMS provenance. Quoting some relevant passages:
"The plants he [Rauwolf] collected formed the first two books of his plant collection. Rauwolf graduated in 1562 from the University of Valence, Dauphiné (Dannenfeldt 1968). In 1563, he carried out his "peregrinatio academica" traveling through the Alps to N. Italy. On the way, he collected the plants that formed the third book herbarium. Rauwolf visited Padua, Verona, Mantua, Ferrara, Bologna, Florence, Modena, Piacenza, Parma, Milan, and Como, heading forward through Switzerland to Germany. During this homeward journey, Rauwolf visited Conrad Gessner (1516–1565) in Zurich, accompanied by his friend and classmate from Montpellier, Johann Bauhin (1541–1613) (Durling 1965).
According to Legré (1900), that same year, Rauwolf met in Augsburg with Carolus Clusius (1526–1609), to which he presented the plants he had collected in France and Italy, and presumably accepted Clusius’ annotations and corrections of several plant names. Doubting Legré’s argument, Ganzinger (1963) attributed the numerous annotations and corrections found in Rauwolf’s herbaria to Leonhart Fuchs (1501–1566), suggesting that Rauwolf, on his way back to Augsburg in 1563, also visited Fuchs, his former teacher in Tübingen.
In 1571, Rauwolf was appointed city physician of Augsburg, a position that he, as a devoted Protestant, lost 17 years later due to religious conflicts.Thereby getting into financial difficulties, he decided to sell his herbaria, which he achieved for a remarkable price, 310 Reichstaler, which had to be paid to Rauwolf by the imperial chamber.The four book herbaria were bought in 1593 by a commissioner of the Habsburg Emperor Rudolf II..."
I know that Rauwolf -> Widemann-> Rudolf is a likely chain that people often suggest. When reading this paper, though, I was also quite struck by the fact that Rauwolf's "pergrinatio academica" took him directly through the regions where we expect the VMS likely originated- it seems relatively plausible that Rauwolf could have obtained the VMS at some point in 1562 or 1563. I'm curious about whether his colleagues in that region (Clusius and Gessner), both of whom were avid curiosity collectors and who have extant correspondence in libraries, have been investigated as possible Voynich-owners or annotators. The only You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. doesn't seem to mention an exchange of books aside from the one Rauwolf wrote, but I haven't found an online archive of Gessner's letters yet. Fuchs may also be worth looking into!
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| About the generation of similar words |
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Posted by: quimqu - 15-03-2026, 08:17 PM - Forum: Analysis of the text
- Replies (71)
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This weekend I have been exploring the internal structure of word variants in the Voynich manuscript with a fairly simple approach. The goal was to try to answer the question of the generation of words from the same family. When very similar words appear next to each other, do they generate in successive chains of transformation, or do they form radial families around a base form?
I think this distinction is important because some models of generation proposed for the Voynich (such as Torsten Timm's model) assume that a word is often generated by modifying the immediately preceding word, that is, a successive or sequential generation.
Below I briefly explain the method used and the main results.
Basic idea: When reading the Voynich text it is common to find groups of very similar words within a short space. For example: qokedy, qokeedy, qokeey, qokeeydy.
This type of sequence suggests that they could be variants of the same base form. To study this systematically, the text is simply treated as a linear sequence of words. For each word:
- It is considered a potential core.
- The next 40 or so words are examined.
- If any word has a small edit distance (Levenshtein ≤ 2), it is added to the same group. I call these local groups of variants "bursts".
Reconstructing relationships: Once a burst has been identified, the next step is to look at how the variants relate to each other. For each new variant, we look at whether it is more similar to the core or to a previous variant within the same burst. From this, we can reconstruct a small dependency structure. Three main patterns emerge.
- Radial (star) structure:
variant
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variant — core — variant
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variant
Most variants are derived directly from the core.
- Linear (chain) structure
core → variant → variant → variant
Each form is derived from the previous variant.
- Mixed structure: a combination of the two.
Control texts: To find out what is normal in real texts, the same procedure was applied to three control texts: De Docta Ignorantia (Latin), Alchemical herbal (Latin), Culpepper's herbal (English). In these texts the bursts tend to be: small, mostly radial, with very few linear chains. Typical values:
- star structures: ~0.68–0.80
- linear chains: ~0.003–0.007
- average burst size: ~2–3 variants
Results in the Voynich: Applying exactly the same procedure to the Voynich manuscript, we obtain approximately these global values:
- non-isolated bursts: ~4512
- average burst size: ~3.45
- average depth: ~1.56
Structural distribution:
- star: ~0.63
- mixed: ~0.36
- chain: ~0.01
This means that bursts are larger than in the control texts, linear chains are still very rare and there are more mixed structures. Mixed structures usually have this form:
core → variant
core → variant
variant → variant
That is, many variants derive directly from the core, but some also derive from other variants.
To test whether this structure depended only on the Voynich vocabulary or also on the actual order of the text, I repeated exactly the same analysis on a permuted version of the manuscript, keeping the same words within each page but shuffling their order. The result is that the bursts do not disappear, but they do become slightly smaller, shallower, and more radial. In the actual text there is a higher proportion of mixed structures and slightly more internal links between variants. This suggests that the Voynich vocabulary already favors families of similar forms, but that the actual order of the text adds additional local organization.
The analysis also shows that the phenomenon is not homogeneous throughout the manuscript. The astronomical and zodiacal sections tend to have more radial bursts, while the biological-balneological section, and partly also Herbal and Text-only, show more mixed and deeper structures. This suggests that the local behavior of variant families changes according to the section.
Interpretation: The results suggest that local families of variants in the Voynich are not primarily organized as long chains of sequential transformation, that is, the dominant pattern does not appear to be simply a word repeatedly modified step by step. Instead, they are more like local fields of related forms, in which several variants form around a base form, and sometimes some of these variants also give rise to further modifications.
Schematically, the pattern would look more like this:
core
├ variant
├ variant
│ └ variant
└ variant
than a simple chain of the type:
core → variant → variant → variant
What mechanism might generate this? One possible interpretation is that the scribe was working with local families of forms rather than a simple linear succession of modified copies. In this scenario, a word appears and, within the same immediate context, variants are generated by:
- small orthographic modifications
- reuse of similar forms
- occasional modifications of other recent variants
Such a mechanism would naturally produce:
- local groupings of similar words
- larger bursts than in normal control texts
- partially interwoven, not strictly linear structures
Furthermore, the permuted text control suggests that this pattern does not depend solely on the manuscript's word repertoire. The Voynich vocabulary already favors families of similar forms, but the actual order of the text seems to add a somewhat deeper and more mixed local organization.
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| My pet theory |
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Posted by: JustAnotherTheory - 15-03-2026, 11:50 AM - Forum: Theories & Solutions
- Replies (14)
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Everyone has their own "pet theory" on what the VMS is, or what the illustrations/imagery represent. In this thread I offer mine. It is based on reading almost 3000 pages of Wappenbuch (15th century coat of arms compendia), almost 25 different Bellifortis and many other related illustrated books and manuscripts from the 1400s.
Studying the VMS is indeed an incredible time sink, and at this point I feel I've wasted enough time in my life on this, so I'll offer my "pet theory" and probably give this whole subject a break for a while.
So in a nutshell, my proposition is this: the plant section in the VMS is not about plants at all. Rather, the plants are artistic renditions of existing coat of arms, heraldry and other material inspired from contemporary books. I'll offer some conjectures on "why", at the end of this post.
It all started with an observation about folio f90v1. It occurred to me that the structure of this "plant" ressembles the classic "lion with a crown" heraldry:
Thinking that perhaps this is not simply a coincidence, I continued checking some contemporary heraldry manuscripts, Wappenbuchs. And indeed, it seemed to me that such coincidences occur many times. Take the root of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. for instance:
Or the root of f46v:
Some leaves also remind one of classical heraldic elements. How about some peacock feathers:
Then we have the many "croziers", i.e., bishop's staffs, which are abundant in medieval heraldry. Why do they appear so much in the VMS plants?
Or how about the Wolkenstein family coat of arms:
Or this:
We also have a spear:
The quadruple wheel is a well-known heraldic element, too.
Let's move on to Bellifortis. This classic war book has a lot of small details that remind on of the VMS. Here are a few below. Since each copy is different, I find it likely that there exists one copy (maybe lost) that resembles the VMS even more. Anyway, take a look at this.
How about this?
And this walking man "root":
Is this a COVID cell, or rather a classic detonating device from Bellifortis?
Is this an unknown flower the world has never seen, or is it a fountain?
Is this a flower, or a shield?
Some conclusions and conjectures
In the course of my "study", I found a large amount of coincidences like those presented above, which I will omit here for lack of space. It seems to me that almost every page of the VMS plant section can be corresponded with a heraldic element or some other item from Bellifortis. So now I ask: why?
Conjecture 1. The plants in the VMS "plants" section are not plants.
To me, it is pointless to try and identify these plants, because they are simply NOT plants. But do they have some connection to the text?
Conjecture 2. The plants in the VMS "plants" section encode some meaning related to the text on the same page.
By this I mean, that if you can unambiguously identify that a plant of a specific folio is the coat of arms of, say, Sigismund I, or Pope Martin V, then somehow on that page you should have the word "Sigismund" or "Papst Martinus" or something within the text. So instead of looking for plants, like "Hellebore" or "Lily", we should be looking for people's names.
Conjecture 3. The VMS is a forgery, and the author(s) copied elements from 15th century popular books to make it look authentic.
The fact that there are so many references to visual elements from diiverse books might mean that the forger(s) used these as inspiration for their forgery.
________________________
There are my two cents, and now I'll give this whole thing a break. I hope you enjoyed my "pet theory".
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| Huth's reading of f116v: "gâs" as "ganz" confirmed in medieval German corpus |
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Posted by: Torsten - 14-03-2026, 10:46 PM - Forum: Marginalia
- Replies (48)
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In his presentation at the Voynich Zoom on March 11, Volkhard Huth proposed reading part of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. as "so nim gâs mich," interpreting "gâs" as an East Central German dialectal form of "ganz" (wholly, completely), yielding "so nimm mich ganz."
I was able to verify this reading using the Reference Corpus of Middle High German / Early New High German (Referenzkorpus Mittelhochdeutsch) hosted at Ruhr-Universität Bochum. The corpus contains three instances of "gâs" used as an adverb meaning "ganz":
1. "den vrouwin Und îlte des gâs zouwin"
2. "den hiez er bindin Und bat im gâs ir uindin"
3. "Sie azin gâs un̄ quamin"
Notably, all three instances are spelled with a long-s in word-final position.
In each case, "gâs" functions as the adverb "ganz" (wholly, entirely, completely). All three instances come from the same text, classified as "omd" — ostmitteldeutsch (East Central German). This is the dialect region that includes Thuringia, Saxony, and the area around Prague and Vienna. The corpus evidence shows that "gâs" with word-final long-s is attested. This means "gâs mich" can be read as two separate words — the adverb "gâs" (ganz, wholly) and the pronoun "mich" (me) — yielding "so nim gâs mich": "so take me wholly."
The form "gâs" for "ganz" is therefore attested in medieval East Central German — the dialect region consistent with Huth's proposed geographical origin of the manuscript.
Sources:
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| The origin of Fabrizio Salani's "AG" monagram |
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Posted by: Koen G - 13-03-2026, 03:59 PM - Forum: Imagery
- Replies (48)
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(I post this thread here, so it can be easily located in the same subforum as the other thread).
I've been doing some digging on the origin of the monogram on the mystery parchment, and after some dead ends, I now believe we should be able to find a printed source. I need a new thread though, since this is a lot to explain and it may require its own investigation.
Tavi found a UK company "Custom Wax N Seals", which offers this design in one of their monogram stamps. I decided to email them, although apparently Fabrizio has been in contact with them before. I received a very polite and helpful response:
- This design has not been ordered from the company in or before 2013, so the stamp on the parchment definitely did not come from them.
- They got the design from a book: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., published by Dover in 2004. I see that there is also You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
- I was unable to look inside this book, but one of the angry commenters mentioned that is is basically the same as You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., also published by Dover in 1970.
- This 1970 publication includes the "Unabridged republication of Monograms and Ciphers by H. Renoir, published by A. Fullarton and Company, London and Edinburgh, 1870-74."
- It is in this Renoir book that the more angular version of the monogram is found (Style 1 of the UK store). Our exact style (5) is not there.
Some interesting things to note:- All are clearly related.
- The Salani seal is closer overall to the UK "style 5".
- However, the Renoir monogram letters overlap in the same order as those of the seal.
Therefore, it seems likely that the design of the seal originated after Renoir's publication, but independently from its adoption by the UK company.
It is very likely that the exact seal we're looking for is featured in one of these Dover publications. Since the UK company referred me to the 2004 edition, this or the 2012 edition may be worth tracking down.
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| Page One Voynichese "Signatures" |
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Posted by: pjburkshire - 13-03-2026, 03:06 PM - Forum: Analysis of the text
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Something about You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. has recently started bothering me. It looks like four paragraphs. Each seems to end with what to me looks like a signature. They probably aren't signatures but I don't know what else to call them.
I'm not talking about the disputed mystery erased "Tepenec" at the bottom. I'm talking about the Voynichese text.
1:
<f1r.6,=Pt> ydaraishy<$>
ydaraishy
ydaraishy
ydaraiCishy ( ydaraiCishy )
2:
<f1r.10,=Pt> dain.os.teody<$>
dain os teody
dain os teody
dain or teody ( dain or teody )
3:
<f1r.21,=Pt> otol.daiiin<$>
otol daiiin
otol daiiin
4:
<f1r.28,=Pt> dchaiin<$>
dchaiin
dchaiin
What are these words? Could they be the names of four authors -- each giving his own introduction to the work?
Only the first one, ydaraishy ( ydaraishy ), seem to be unique within the manuscript. daiin.net has it as ydaraiCishy ( ydaraiCishy ).
daiin.net has the second one as dain or teody ( dain or teody ).
daiin.net has the third one the same as voynichese.com, otol daiiin ( otol daiiin ). I did note that the first word, otol ( otol ), is the same word as the label for Elemental Fire / Yellow bile on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. .
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| How fast could a scribe write a Voynich like text? |
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Posted by: dexdex - 13-03-2026, 12:57 PM - Forum: Analysis of the text
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Hello,
a certain question that me and one of my friends just had was: what would be the expected time for a scribe to write a Voynich-like text? Specifically, I'm wondering because while we have some inkling (hah!) about rates of work of professional scribes in the medieval times (it seems to be 4-8 folios a week depending on the source), this would be a faithful copy of a meaningful text!
So, perhaps producing text would take a different amount of time depending on how the Voynich was created. Here are some interesting things that could impact it, broken down by theory:
- A faithful copy of an earlier draft. Presumably, we could take the standard rate of text production as a good rule of thumb, though the Voynich alphabet seems easier to copy than gothic script, for instance.
- A sloppy copy of an earlier draft. This would probably take less time, but presumably one would expect more errors being corrected - though perhaps the scribe(s) didn't care. If that is the case, what could be the rate of production that would satisfy whatever patron asked the scribe for the copy?
- The first draft of a meaningful text: where are the corrections? Composing meaningful text takes time, too, so it could take longer than copying.
- Intuitive gibberish, as in the Gaskell & Bowern paper 'Gibberish after all.' Presumably, since one neither has to copy anything nor worry about exactness, but simply put quill to paper and maybe reference other nearby words while writing, this would be the fastest method. With that stipulation, what's the fastest one could do?
The reason I'm wondering is we're putting a lot of stock into this being an extreme amount of effort; but maybe, if the manuscript is meaningless either due to being a sloppy copy or an outright gibberish hoax, the production period would be relatively brief. This has some implications for whether it would be worth writing it as a hoax or for sale.
Cheers
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| Can we go further? |
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Posted by: quimqu - 12-03-2026, 04:49 PM - Forum: Analysis of the text
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After quite a long time (months) trying to adapt my knowledge in data science, and the new things I have learned along the way, to the analysis of the Voynich text, I am reaching a rather frustrating point where I ask myself whether we might actually be at the end of the road regarding the analysis of the manuscript’s text.
What I have been finding lately in the studies I have carried out and posted here is that the results at the level of text structure, entropy, etc., all end up reaching and reaffirming conclusions that “human” experts had already arrived at years or even decades ago. It does not seem that we can squeeze much more information out of the Voynich text, assuming it is a text at all.
I am convinced that if no human has been able to solve the Voynich, we will not be able to do it with the help of artificial intelligence either, since in the end it only repeats what humans have already done before.
Do you think that, from the perspective of text analysis, it is still possible to go further?
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| Godefrid Alois Kinner |
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Posted by: ReneZ - 12-03-2026, 11:39 AM - Forum: Provenance & history
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Kinner is a name that is probably only known by people who have a deep interest in the history of the Voynich MS, but his letters to Kircher provide an independent reference to the fact that Johannes Marcus Marci sent the MS to Kircher with the request to have it translated.
Just by chance, I ran into this reference to his letters: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
and was pleased to find old Voynich researcher Philip Neal involved, together with Thomas Conlon, both of whom together also translated the Kircher letter in response to Moretus and Barschius, which is discussed in detail here:
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
I have not (yet) followed any of the links in the page, but greatly appreciate the various collaborative activities of historical research it refers to.
Kinner was also mentioned in the discussion of Fabrizio Salani's document, but as this page indicates, he only became involved with the Bohemian court after 1649, well after Barschius' first letter to Kircher (1637).
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