I am keen to date the attached cipher. In the inventory it is described as "Lettera cifrata dell'oratore di Milano."
The folder it was in contains only 15th century and very early 16th century documents, so it is unlikely to be from outside that time period, though anything is possible.
It is possible that it is mislabelled and miscategorised, although I would not assume so without strong reasons.
It doesn't look like any of the late 15th century Milanese ciphers that I have seen. It doesn't look like any of the early 15th century Milanese ciphers, however early 15th century Milanese ciphers seem to be much more diverse in design than the late 15th century ones. I have not seem many 16th Milanese ciphers, so it is hard for me to say if it belongs to that era.
Has anyone seen anything similar? What makes it stand out to me is the presence of the symbols written over some of the characters.
The Rosettes diagram includes images of various buildings and several interesting architectural details, though some are hard to read.
Here I have selected a few and compared them with details from You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., a copy of the well-known "Notitia Dignitatum".
Quote:The manuscript is modelled after the Carolingian copy (the lost Carolingian "Codex Spirensis") of a late antique manuscript. This manuscript is the earliest copy of this text to survive complete, made at Basel in 1436 by an Italian scribe and a French illuminator (Peronet Lamy) for Petrus Donatus, bishop of Padua.
Of course, the fold-out contains other noteworthy architectural details that have no parallel in the Basel manuscript (e.g. the ghibelline merlons, or the "stepped" cylindrical tower). Some buildings have their own threads, others can be discussed here.
I open this thread to discuss the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. as a reference to San Michael.
A detail of the "wings" are the red bands on the top of both "wings".
Here are samples of San Michael with red feathers on the top on the wings.
From left to right:
SYou are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. unknown artist. Getty Museum
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. C 1405. Metropolitan Museum
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (Spain) 1435-1445
As a heraldic image, the VM eagle (if it is an eagle) would have its wings "splayed", like Sigismund's, so that is something they have in common. However, the division of the VM's feathers is decidedly un-heraldic. In heraldry, the large feathers are in the mid section (blue), hanging under the wings. The feathers in the red section are either absent or small. In the VM though, the top feathers are larger than the ones in the mid section, and they extend well above where the creature's head would be.
In heraldry, the tail generally goes down first, and then outward. For example, in the case of Sigismund's seal, you can see that there is first a vertical column, and then almost horizontal feathers. In the VM, we see something completely different, and you will be hard-pressed to find a heraldic eagle that looks like this.
I'm not saying that these differences must be explained, maybe this is just the best way to draw a heraldic eagle in a root. But I don't find the resemblance as straightforward as some people claim.
I entirely appeciate the virtues of tackling Voynichese context-free - such studies are of course necessary and valuable - but I don’t understand why people can be allergic to bringing context to the conundrum.
My methodological model calls for an alignment of text, context and subtext, and I happily alternate between taking a microscope and then a telescope to the problem. The difficulty is a bit like that posed by particle physics: the laws that govern the micro level don’t knit with the laws that govern the macro. The quest is for a general theory.
Contextually, I am led to the conclusion that the language in question must be/should be/ought to be, Ladin. Others have come to the same conclusion. I am strongly of the view that the contextual evidence points to that.
But textually, the text doesn’t map to Ladin (or any other known language.) On the face of it, it least of all resembles a Romance language. There are decypherment theories abroad about “Old Latin” to which Ladin might conform, but it’s a stretch. Nothing like that fits cogently without a lot of massaging.
Nevertheless, I think what we see is an attempt to create a writing system for Ladin. I suspect our problems might lie more with the script rather than with the language.
Moreover, from context, I expect the content to be a sort of survey, with a lot of measurements and numbers generated by systematic studies, which may explain why the text seems like a sort of artificial lexicon with excessive repetition and combinatorics. Such things are less a feature of the language and more the result of the content.
I then test contextual hypotheses against the context-free reality of the text. If there’s no way to legitimately construe the data to the proposed context, it’s back to the drawng board.
But I certainly want to narrow the search with a contextual frame and think that constructive speculation about context is an important part of the slow two-step towards a solution.
I watched Stephen Bax on Voynich Ninja recently. I share some of his views. The script could be an attempt to craft a writing system for a previously oral-only language (he cited the Armenian script as an example.) He makes useful comments about that scenario.
His priviso is that it is a language community with an intellectual need for a script – at which point he wanders off to talk about Hungarian.
That is the point at which I want to apply a contextual focus and argue that Ladin had such an intellectual need in the relevant period (and in a region that is a strong candidate as the relevant locale.)
I am encouraged to discover that there is evidence that Ladin was first put to writing in limited ways as early as the 1300s (although our first extant samples are from 1700s.) The Ladin were overtaken by history and never formed a viable national identity, but there were times when Ladin was not as marginal a tongue as it is today.
The specific context I point to is the 1450s when Nicholas of Cusa was prince-bishop of Brixen and very famously came to blows with Verena von Stuben and the Ladin speaking Benedictine nuns of Sonnenberg, a squirmish in which the Ladin of Val Badia were the meat in the sandwich, as the saying goes. (It’s the same period in which the Ladin and their traditions were the focus of the rising tide of witch hunts.)
In any case, I readily admit the difficulties of matching the text to this (or any other) context. (And my own limitations with linguistics.) But for me, that is the way forward: text/context/text/context. Focus in. Stand back. (Bearing in mind the complications of subtext. There has to be motive, not just means and opportunity.)
Again: context-free studies are great. But I think it is useful to bring a contextual lens – or many – to the data, back and forward, searching for an unforced and cogent alignment.
The research problems are manifold. For a start, the modern presentation of Ladin is not a revealing guide to the language in the 1450s. Can anyone direct me to previous Voynich-Ladin studies that might help, even if to show how little it resembles Voynichese?
Arches of the Virgin:
To be honest, I didn't know that the Virgin had arches. Not till just the other day. The arches are an architectural structure on the north side of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Other than their early origin, nothing much is said about them. And apparently, they are difficult to photograph fully, being in close quarters. Of course, someone who had been there would know about the Seven Arches of the Virgin.
Let us suppose an intelligent and inquisitive person who has never seen the Voynich ms. is shown it and allowed to peruse it for five and only five minutes.
What are the peculiar and unusual features to be noticed on such first impressions?
I think there are three:
1. The nymph section.
2. The fold out map.
3. The script.
On first impressions we have a medieval herbal with an astrological section and, it seems, recipes for herbal preparations. Nothing unusual in any of that (until we look closer.)
But turning to the nymph (baneological) section is a WTF moment. It is when we reach page 75r that we realize this is not just an ordinary (if somewhat rustic) herbal.
I think the foldout map is a big surprise as well. First impressions must tell us that it is important to the whole work. It is unusual in itself and obviously a stand-out feature.
It is the script, though, that is most peculiar. On first impressions, given five minutes, we would think, quite reasonably, that it is written in some European language. There seem to be words and paragraphs and running text. But the script is entirely unfamiliar.
After looking at it for five minutes there is only one question to be asked: Why is it not written in Roman script?
There are, indeed, so many peculiar features of the Vms, upon closer inspection, and its peculiarities are so overwhelming, that it is useful, I think, to look at it with fresh eyes now and then, as if for the first time.
For me, these are the matters that are really begging for answers. I can explain an astrological herbal no matter how odd, but the nymphs, the map and the script place this work beyond the pale. That is what I see when I ask: what is wrong with this picture?
The script is the real mystery. Even if, on first impressions, I suspected the work is a cipher, or gibberish, I am left wondering why someone has invented a script for the purpose? Wasn’t scrambling the text concealment enough? Why has someone gone to the trouble of designing and deploying a new script?
I suspect this mystery is connected to the other peculiarities, the nymphs and the map, and that a single explanation will explain all three.
I am wondering what others might cite as the conspicuously peculiar and unusual features of the work, the core conundrums?
"Krebs! Krebs!!", I say. I think we may have one on a line. This is new to me, so any leads on prior discussions are appreciated.
It seems obvious now. The German word, 'Krebs' for lobster, crab, cancer is the key. It's the same as the family surname. That's a great example of heraldic canting. So, does that same sort of heraldic interpretation carry over to the VMs? Nicholas of Cusa was clearly in the same chronological space as the C-14.
Interesting to note in his bio that he was briefly in Paris in 1416. That was the year that the Duke of Berry died in Paris. The three Limbourg brothers also died that year. With all the violence in Paris in those years, of course he left.
If the interpretive connection to the VMs holds, it adds another example of contemporary heraldry being used in the VMs. A red crayfish in VMs Cancer may be no more significant than the red hats and blue stripes of VMs White Aries, or the mystic ring and cross held by the nymphs, or the Oresme cosmos, or the myth of Melusine. It's an indicator of something the VMs artist knows.
I've posted this elsewhere but I think it is relevant here. I am of the view, for sundry reasons, that Nicholas of Cusa is the brains behind the VMs and Voynichese. Turning to his writings, there are many suggestive passages that might help us think usefully about the text. Here is a passage from Cusanus that I find enormously intriguing vis-a-vis the Voynich:
One element universally enfolds within itself three elements; but the three elements generally enfold within themselves nine elements; and the nine specifically enfold within themselves twenty-seven elements. Therefore, the cube of three is the specific unfolding of the oneness of each element. But the species enfolds its own specific elements, just as the specific Latin language has its own specific elemental letters. Although these specific letters are few, they are of inexhaustible power. Hence, just as a Latin sentence consists of certain very universal letters, of general letters, of somewhat specific letters, and, lastly, of very specific letters—all contracted to the Latin sentence—so too every sensible-particular is like a complete sentence.
Conjectures, 95.
Here we see Cusanus' development (refinement) of the traditional analogy between cosmos and text, known as the stoicheon analogy, its classical source being Plato's Timaeus. I think we need to appreciate this type of thinking in order to understand what is going on in the VMs. Every sensible-particular is like a complete sentence (and so vice versa.)
Jasper Hopkins, the Cusanus expert, cannot make much sense of this passage - it is not a natural or familiar division of the Latin alphabet - , but Cusanus is dividing the letters of Latin up into four (Platonic) categories graded from general to particular. It gives us an important insight into how Cusanus was thinking about language.
