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+--- Thread: Herbal ms Florence 106 (1400 ca) (/thread-2003.html)
RE: Herbal ms Florence 106 (1400 ca) - DG97EEB - 24-12-2025
(14-07-2017, 10:03 AM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Full scans of Firenze ms 106 can be seen online. The ms includes one of the earliest copies of the Alchemical Herbal.
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I was looking at this manuscript today. It really is remarkably similar.. the blue and red flowers and the roots... Whatever Voynich language is, you can't say as a Compendium it's unusual for its time
RE: Herbal ms Florence 106 (1400 ca) - ReneZ - 25-12-2025
It has so many coincidental similarities with the Voynich MS that it is easy to imagine (hypothesis alert) that both manuscripts would have been in the interest of similar groups of people, and may have travelled similar paths:
They have the same size.
They were created around the same time.
A later owner wrote a cipher alphabet on the first page (ciphers don't usually go with herbals).
Florence 106 was created in N. Italy but spent some time in N. France before coming back. (This is entirely possible, but not known with any certainty for the Voynich MS).
RE: Herbal ms Florence 106 (1400 ca) - DG97EEB - 25-12-2025
(25-12-2025, 12:26 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It has so many coincidental similarities with the Voynich MS that it is easy to imagine (hypothesis alert) that both manuscripts would have been in the interest of similar groups of people, and may have travelled similar paths:
They have the same size.
They were created around the same time.
A later owner wrote a cipher alphabet on the first page (ciphers don't usually go with herbals).
Florence 106 was created in N. Italy but spent some time in N. France before coming back. (This is entirely possible, but not known with any certainty for the Voynich MS).
I can almost imagine someone having seen it or heard about it requesting a version for themselves, and the scribes having to memorise it quickly before giving it back, and that's why it looks so familiar and yet the VMS seems a slightly off facsimile... The rest of the Voynich manuscript in my view is nothing more than a commonplace book, with some De Balneis, some Sacrobosco, some Antidatorium, and some standard recipes like the ones towards the middle/back of this You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. ...
If it weren't for the text encoding (which given Fontana's influence in northern Italy at the time is also perhaps not so strange) , I'm not convinced it would be that special at all... And the fact that it's a unicom is simply an accident of fate... Saying that, there are also other surviving compendia like Cambridge University Library MS Dd.10.68 You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. which to me at least proves that in the intellectual millieu of northern Italy, plenty of people had time and resources to build these things, and experiment.
RE: Herbal ms Florence 106 (1400 ca) - MarcoP - 25-12-2025
Personally I agree with Jennifer M. Rampling, historian of medieval science, medicine, and alchemy (Yale facsimile):
Rampling Wrote:In the absence of decipherable text, the most promising guide to understanding the written content of the Voynich manuscript is its extensive set of illustrations. Yet these enigmatic images often serve to complicate the mystery further. … Of all the manuscript’s iconographical puzzles, none is more perplexing than the so-called biological or balneological section, with its many illustrations of unclothed female figures sporting within a complex system of waterworks, whether bathing in pools of green liquid or emerging from mysterious arrangements of pipes.
The sequence of the zodiac medallions is the better understood part of the illustrations, and good parallels have been found. But the arrangement of the zodiac pages as a whole (with the radially arranged “nymphs”) is only vaguely paralleled by Alfonso X’s Astromagia and Lapidario, from a different time and (probably) region than the Voynich manuscript.
The “De Balneis” was an influential medical work by the Salerno school and is a decent parallel for some of the Quire13 pools (but not the pipes, as the attached image). Other parallels like Astromagia or Fontana are unique works and not “commonplace” at all. The Alchemical Herbal was widespread in Italy, but it is also mysterious and only partially understood, in particular, its origin is unclear. And there is the fact that all these parallels are only partially similar, with no clear signs of being a direct influence. So I think that Rampling’s view of Voynich images as enigmatic rather than commonplace is fully justified.
RE: Herbal ms Florence 106 (1400 ca) - Antonio García Jiménez - 25-12-2025
Thank you Marco for introducing me to this author whom I was unaware of.
Enigmatic images. It's a good definition of female figures.
RE: Herbal ms Florence 106 (1400 ca) - DG97EEB - 25-12-2025
(25-12-2025, 09:02 AM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Personally I agree with Jennifer M. Rampling, historian of medieval science, medicine, and alchemy (Yale facsimile):
Rampling Wrote:In the absence of decipherable text, the most promising guide to understanding the written content of the Voynich manuscript is its extensive set of illustrations. Yet these enigmatic images often serve to complicate the mystery further. … Of all the manuscript’s iconographical puzzles, none is more perplexing than the so-called biological or balneological section, with its many illustrations of unclothed female figures sporting within a complex system of waterworks, whether bathing in pools of green liquid or emerging from mysterious arrangements of pipes.
The sequence of the zodiac medallions is the better understood part of the illustrations, and good parallels have been found. But the arrangement of the zodiac pages as a whole (with the radially arranged “nymphs”) is only vaguely paralleled by Alfonso X’s Astromagia and Lapidario, from a different time and (probably) region than the Voynich manuscript.
The “De Balneis” was an influential medical work by the Salerno school and is a decent parallel for some of the Quire13 pools (but not the pipes, as the attached image). Other parallels like Astromagia or Fontana are unique works and not “commonplace” at all. The Alchemical Herbal was widespread in Italy, but it is also mysterious and only partially understood, in particular, its origin is unclear. And there is the fact that all these parallels are only partially similar, with no clear signs of being a direct influence. So I think that Rampling’s view of Voynich images as enigmatic rather than commonplace is fully justified.
Commonplace in the specific sense of a Commonplace book or Vade Mecum or even a field book for use out in the world, maybe even linked to military.
Actually, my personal hunch (and it’s just that) is that the Voynich manuscript might not be a text in the normal sense at all.
Structurally, it behaves more like an instrument or reference aid: diagrams dominate, text never explains anything, and the same tightly constrained writing system is reused across very different kinds of pages. That’s a strange design if the goal were teaching or description, but it’s exactly what you’d expect if the manuscript was meant to be used by someone who already knew the system.
In other words, I wonder if the text functions more as a mnemonic or procedural scaffold than as language. That wouldn’t make it a cipher — just something that was never meant to be read independently.
RE: Herbal ms Florence 106 (1400 ca) - oshfdk - 25-12-2025
(25-12-2025, 01:27 PM)DG97EEB Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Structurally, it behaves more like an instrument or reference aid: diagrams dominate, text never explains anything, and the same tightly constrained writing system is reused across very different kinds of pages. That’s a strange design if the goal were teaching or description, but it’s exactly what you’d expect if the manuscript was meant to be used by someone who already knew the system.
This is not how I see it, I think proper diagrams are relatively rare, if you don't count the plant images. And there are plenty of text-only pages with no drawings at all. I'm not sure I understand "text never explains anything" part, how can we know this without reading the text?
RE: Herbal ms Florence 106 (1400 ca) - nablator - 25-12-2025
(25-12-2025, 01:27 PM)DG97EEB Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.That wouldn’t make it a cipher — just something that was never meant to be read independently.
AI-generated post, em dash and all...
RE: Herbal ms Florence 106 (1400 ca) - DG97EEB - 25-12-2025
(25-12-2025, 02:02 PM)nablator Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.(25-12-2025, 01:27 PM)DG97EEB Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.That wouldn’t make it a cipher — just something that was never meant to be read independently.
AI-generated post, em dash and all...
Haha . Actually no... I do use em dashes
happy Christmas though...(25-12-2025, 01:59 PM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.(25-12-2025, 01:27 PM)DG97EEB Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Structurally, it behaves more like an instrument or reference aid: diagrams dominate, text never explains anything, and the same tightly constrained writing system is reused across very different kinds of pages. That’s a strange design if the goal were teaching or description, but it’s exactly what you’d expect if the manuscript was meant to be used by someone who already knew the system.
This is not how I see it, I think proper diagrams are relatively rare, if you don't count the plant images. And there are plenty of text-only pages with no drawings at all. I'm not sure I understand "text never explains anything" part, how can we know this without reading the text?
Well the simplest answer is normally the right one - that over 100 years of the smartest people trying to solve it, no one has... Whatever remains, however improbable is right ..
RE: Herbal ms Florence 106 (1400 ca) - nablator - 25-12-2025
(25-12-2025, 02:09 PM)DG97EEB Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I do use em dashes
It's not only the em dash...
Happy Christmas.