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Poggio theory as presented by Claudio Foti: more evidence - Daniel Briggs - 30-03-2017
For the hundredth anniversary of the resurfacing of the Voynich manuscript, Claudio Foti presented evidence that Poggio Bracciolini may have been responsible, at least in part, for writing or ordering the writing of the Voynich manuscript. I thought his evidence was intriguing, so I decided to learn more about the characters involved. What I found was even more interesting. Of the numbered points below, some are just setting, while others I believe contribute credibility to this claim.
1. Poggio was called by John XXIII to the Council of Constance, southernmost Germany, 1414–1417, over which Sigismund presided in the sense of "defender of the Catholic Church." Its purpose was to determine the succession to the papacy, as well as what to do with heretics. Poggio spent time travelling Europe directly thereafter, collecting old books from libraries on the way. Jerome of Prague and Jan Hus were burned as a result of the Council, the latter at least against the preference of Sigismund.
2. Sigismund, who was already king of Hungary and Croatia, was coronated king of Bohemia in 1419. Martin V was pope from 1417 to 1431, and his election ended the Western Schism.
3. Guarino da Varona was an Italian translator contemporary to Poggio who set out to study at Constantinople and returned home with a case of books (another was lost at sea) from there. Guarino was a student of John Conversini of Ravenna, while Poggio was a student of John Malpaghini of Ravenna. All three Johns of Ravenna were students of Petrarch.
4. According to the Italian Wikipedia, John Malpaghini of Ravenna transcribed the Familiares of Leonardo Bruni into Rotunda, or Semigothic. Considering that one of his contributions to the time is in developing typography, Semigothic (Rotunda) certainly bears concrete resemblances to the Voynich script in how it treats curves and lines, and does flourishes, and the curve-line distinction is shown to be material in the Voynich manuscript by Brian Cham at You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
5. Poggio found Manilius' Astronomica during his trip to Constance for the Council of 1414–1417. He does not disclose whether he found it in Germany, Switzerland, France or elsewhere. He has a scribe copy it, and becomes frustrated with the scribe's superlative ignorance.
6. At the time, there was a high popular premium on proving the great antiquity of The Hermetica of Hermes Trismegistus.
7. The Florentines were clearly tasked with the creation in situ of a Hungarian royal court culture and knowledge base. Those situated by Sigismund's court almost certainly all knew each other and worked together on things.
8. This one (with the next) is the clincher for me. Foti already mentions it, but I think it carries great weight: Poggio writes that Piero Lamberteschi offered 500 florins for him to go to Hungary and partake in the writing of a book for three years. The way Poggio spills the details to Niccoli in the letter makes it clear that no one is supposed to know that this is happening. He's supposed to be presumed to be in England, and only lets it be known that it is the writing of a book in an oblique manner. He says he's thinking of accepting, but asking for 600 florins instead of 500.
9. Almost nothing is known about Piero Lamberteschi, other than that he and Poggio were friends and collaborators of Cosimo de' Medici, who "found" the Corpus Hermeticum. It is said that Lamberteschi is a cardinal; my guess is that Sigismund was given great liberty over appointments in his burgeoning region and was allowed to appoint himself a cardinal at his whim. Poggio likely saw him as a fellow widely learned Florentine. Online, we get little more than the entry of one book at one library: I Cherubini del Rigagnolo. So apparently, Lamberteschi liked cherubim enough to make them the title of a fantasy romance he wrote.
Given all this, I think that it is a very reasonable hypothesis that Marci's memory of Rudolf II paying 600 gold ducats for the manuscript is what naturally happened to a true statement after a long game of telephone: the King of Hungary, King of Bohemia, and Holy Roman Emperor paid 600 florins for it. (Or indeed ducats; Poggio in his letter could have chosen the well-known Florentine word as equivalent, since the weights were almost exactly the same.) Rudolf II was interested in the occult, so when it was forgotten exactly which King of Hungary, King of Bohemia, and Holy Roman Emperor did this, they naturally identified it as Rudolf II, due to his interest in the occult.
Four heads of Hungary later, Matthias Corvinus founds the largest library north of the Alps in Prague in 1460, where I'm guessing they store all the books going back to Sigismund's collection. Five heads of Hungary thereafter, it's Rudolf's library, and the book is sold to Jacobus de Tepenec after his death to settle his debts. Or Jacobus is just clearly the person in Rudolf's court to whom the book should clearly go, because he had been initiated into the Jesuit order and taught how to read the Voynich manuscript. In either case, it ends up in a Jesuit library, which is meet since it had been started by academic ancestors of the Jesuits, and the set of all people who knew how to read it from a certain point forward were Jesuits.
RE: Poggio theory as presented by Claudio Foti: more evidence - -JKP- - 30-03-2017
Poggio certainly has the right kind of profile...
...scholar, copyist, hunter-of-books, and (interestingly) he studied Latin and notarial law (which is significant because litterae elongata were frequently used to dress up and semi-fraud-proof legal documents, a detail that would certainly be noticed by a copyist).
Also, he traveled from Tuscany (which had been at the southern reaches of the Holy Roman Empire and the earlier Lombardic empire) to Bari which, at the time, still retained some of the same Lombardic colonist roots as Salerno and Naples (in other words, there were strong ethnic and scholarly ties between the multicultural Bari and northern Italy) and was, I believe, one of the conduits for the transmission of herbal/medical manuscripts.
Unfortunately, even if Poggio was somehow involved in the VMS project, I don't think his handwriting is in the manuscript. He was said to have a beautiful book hand and whoever wrote the marginalia on the last page, and the scribes who write the main text, clearly were not book-hand calligraphers or any kind of professional calligrapher. They don't even hold their quills at the right angle, a habit that calligraphers quickly learn and usually maintain even in their casual writing. The VMS is tidy, neat writing, but there's a big gap between that and the hand of a calligrapher, even if the scribe is writing in a curisve hand for less formal occasions, one can tell the difference.
But I'm nevertheless intrigued by the story that there may have been a 'secret project' in which he was involved and the sum that was paid. It's a very interesting trail. Thanks for posting.
RE: Poggio theory as presented by Claudio Foti: more evidence - Davidsch - 30-03-2017
When reference is made to Briancham, I can only think of the first of April joke.
RE: Poggio theory as presented by Claudio Foti: more evidence - -JKP- - 30-03-2017
I don't have time to do this in depth right now, but I looked up samples of Poggio's handwriting. They are pretty consistent, in a neat Italic book hand. Even his notes are written in much the same style and his inscription notes show that he had a sense of design and balance as far as the layout of the page is concerned.
There are also some samples claimed to be his that don't look like his hand (the manuscripts don't even look right overall, they look like they are from earlier time periods). Some are fuzzy, low-res examples, so it's hard to tell, but others look more like the kind of manuscripts that he was copying rather than his copies, so I wonder if some people on the Web are mistaking the original (that Poggio copied) for his copy? It's hard to be sure and would take legwork to sort out.
RE: Poggio theory as presented by Claudio Foti: more evidence - Koen G - 30-03-2017
Hi Daniel, and welcome to the forum!
I must say I'm intrigued. In my opinion the vast majority of the manuscript's imagery was copied from older sources, with only some notable 15th century additions like the crossbowman. The images contain astronomical concepts which would not have been understood by many in the 15th century.
So when you say that the discoverer of Manilius (!!) was to "partake in the writing of a book for three years", you have my attention. Do we have the exact wording of this passage? Might "partake" mean to oversee or guide a copying/compiling effort? The guy who gets angry at scribes for not understanding Manilius is exactly the type I'd hire for that job.
RE: Poggio theory as presented by Claudio Foti: more evidence - -JKP- - 30-03-2017
An interesting note in the Edinburgh Review...
"In that year [1422] his fellow-Tuscan, Piero Lamberteschi, made him an offer of employment which would bring him some 500 gold sequins in three years. Mr. Ross reckons this as equivalent in modern [1878] money of from 8,000l. to 10,000l. Poggio would have to go into Hungary: but with what object is nowhere stated openly in the correspondence which passed on the subject between Poggio and his friends, Niccolo Niccoli and Piero Lamberteschi. It has been conjectured that the employment was to consist of a professorship. As, however, no university existed in Hungary before 1465, Mr. Ross denies that this could have been the proposed vocation. Mr. Ross supposes that he accepted the offer, whatever it may have been. In default of any better hypothesis, he assumes the contemplated task was the composition of a history. Writing to Niccoli from London [note that he wrote from London, not Hungary], in June 1422, Poggio says: 'Give me leisure for writing that history;' and again: 'When I reflect on the merit of the ancient writers of history, I recoil with fear from the undertaking.' He returned from England to Italy in the summer of 1422 [not enough time for him to have accepted a long project in Hungary], and accepted the post of principal secretary to the Pope. In the spring of the following year correspondence begins between him and Niccoli at Florence, on the subject of some literary enterprise he has on foot. He complains in October to Niccoli that 'what the ancients did pleasantly, quickly, and easily, was to him troublesome, tedious, and burdensome.' Such a remark Mr. Ross considers that Poggio clearly could not have made unless he were attempting something in the way of the ancients. In November he asks Niccoli to send him some map of Ptolemy's 'Geography,' Suetonius also, and other historians, and above all, Plutarch's 'Lives of Illustrious Men.' The borrowing of these works is, to Mr. Ross, conclusive that Poggio was commencing an historical work. His 'History of Florence' is the only history he ever wrote under his own name. and that could scarcely have been begun in 1423, as it carried down as late as the year 1455, Suetonius, and Plutarch, and Ptolemy's map would not have been of service in its composition."
So it seems Poggio wasn't particularly thrilled about writing histories and those investigating this in the 19th century thought the invitation to Hungary MAY have been to write a history or to interpret something historical.
All right, so here comes the interesting part...
"The work Poggio was meditating was, in short, a forgery of missing writings of Tacitus. Mr. Ross supposes the original intention was to continue the 'Histories,' as Tacitus had himself intimated his intention of continuing them, by narrating the reign of Nerva. But the materials were probably insufficient. Mr. Ross might also have suggested that, in fabricating a book which Tacitus had declared it his purpose some time or other to compose, there was the danger that a rival book-finder might light upon the genuine work and expose the fraud. In any case the final project was shaped into a plot among these three learned persons, Poggio, Lamberteschi, and Niccoli, to forge the name of Tacitus to an earlier installment of Roman history..."
You can read the rest of it here:
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So it seems that 19th-century researchers see the "secret project" differently from how it has been interpreted in relation to the Voynich manuscript, but...
Even if it turns out that Poggio was in no way connected with the creation of the VMS, I would still consider him a "person of interest" due to his
renown as a book collector and his connections with other translators, copyists, and book collectors.
RE: Poggio theory as presented by Claudio Foti: more evidence - Anton - 30-03-2017
While the whole dscourse is very interesting, beyond any doubt, I'm dubious about the construct "evidence that Bracciolini may have been". "Evidence" is something that speaks either towards Bracciolini having been, or towards his having not been. It can't be towards "maying have been" (excuse me for my English).
RE: Poggio theory as presented by Claudio Foti: more evidence - MarcoP - 31-03-2017
This idea could explain the co-presence of Italian and German elements in the VMS: this is a problem that I find fascinating, but that is often ignored.
On the other hand, a very specific theory, mentioning the involvement of a single individual in the creation of the ms, requires a huge amount of evidence to be credible. The majority of the VMS is devoted to plants: do we have any documentation about Bracciolini's botanical expertise?
In my opinion, as proposed by Toresella and Touwaide, the ms is closer to medicine handbooks made for actual use than to the formal, costly manuscripts produced for courts. Consider the following points:
- the format of the ms is medium-small, while kingly manuscripts tend to be large
- the quality of the parchment is not high, with holes in several pages
- the layout of the pages is informal, with no page borders or line rulings
- no gilding; color initials are almost completely absent
- human figures are often distorted and anatomically incorrect, while kingly manuscripts were illustrated by professional artists
- the plants present a high number of zoomorphic and anthropomorphic features; these typically appear in popular herbals and only rarely in scientific “high-end” herbals
- the layout of the herbal section is similar to that of XV Century Italian popular herbals (e.g. the often mentioned You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., Special Collections, University of Vermont Library)
Also, compare the layout precision and figure quality of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. with those of the 1280 ca You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. made for Alfonso X.
Examples of more popular, utilitarian manuscripts could be:
- The English medical almanac You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (1400 ca)
- You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. Iatromathematical housebook “Most likely an amateur doctor with an interest in astronomy, from the Southern region of Germany, wrote the original text around 1400 and assembled it into a compendium”
- The most ancient part (1400 ca) of the Italian Herbal UPenn Schoenberg Collection You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
RE: Poggio theory as presented by Claudio Foti: more evidence - -JKP- - 31-03-2017
Even though there's considerable debate about it, let's say Poggio was indeed a forger (there are hints in his letters to his compatriots that something was going on)...
From what I've been reading, there was quite a bit of debate and refutation, reaffirmation, and continued debate about whether the "lost" Tacitus is a Poggio forgery. Some say the timeline offered by Ross is off in both directions and the claim of forgery is not substantiated. Poggio certainly had motive, opportunity, the right connections, and the right skills to pull it off... so I think it remains a possibility but it doesn't appear to have been proved one way or the other.
If the motive was profit, would Poggio create a book of drawings by an "unknown" author, in an unknown script, for a limited audience (it was mostly doctors who were interested in plants) when "hieroglyphics" (a more general term at the time than it is now) could be inserted into any kind of book? It took a long time to research and draw all those plants and to create the small-plants section at the end would have taken considerable time also. He was more of a calligrapher than an artist, and there's no evidence of formal calligraphy in the VMS. Although herbal and alchemical manuscripts were popular, something like the VMS might be a gamble. It might sell for a decent price and it might not, whereas a "lost" Tacitus manuscript would certainly command a princely sum.
I don't know. I'm simply glancing around at the research and mulling over possibilities. If he were involved with the creation of the VMS, it doesn't mean he wrote or illustrated it. Maybe his compatriots were creating it and his role was to announce its discovery or to deliver it because he had the right connections. Whatever is hinted at in the letters, it was a group project.
RE: Poggio theory as presented by Claudio Foti: more evidence - davidjackson - 31-03-2017
As I've said before, the whole book is basically a florigelia combined with a herbal.
In an age where a link with the ancient classics was paramount, an undateable creation like the Voynich would be worthless - unless you were trying to forge an eastern link, and there is no iconographic eastern tradition apparent in the Voynich.
Actually, that's what always worried me about the Rudolph link. Why would he pay good money for a worthless book? The whole story sounds like a modern interpretation of 'what he should have done' which doesn't take into account the mindset of the time. (Off topic rambling! I'll shut up or create a new topic later)