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+--- Thread: Comparison with BL ms Ashmole 399 (/thread-1873.html)
RE: Comparison with BL ms Ashmole 399 - Searcher - 26-04-2017
I think about Paracelsus again.
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RE: Comparison with BL ms Asmhole 399 - Wladimir D - 28-04-2017
(25-04-2017, 11:03 PM)-JKP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Dissection of people was generally not permitted in the 15th century, so I wouldn't expect drawings of bodily processes to be any more explicit than this.
Since the 10th century there was a religious sect Stercoraniftes, which made vivisection of people who were sentenced to death. The sect was defeated by the Inquisition, but the secret followers of this cult were able to keep the written works encrypted.
Quotation from work You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
[font=Consolas]Stercoraniftes. Opinion abfurde de ceux
[/font]
ènî foppofcfoîent que lé pain confacré
aans l'Euchariftie, c'eft-à-dirc changé
en Dieu ^ tniiflc être reiidu par k felle.
[font=Consolas]ttt Théologiens ont longtciii^ dîfputé[/font]
RE: Comparison with BL ms Asmhole 399 - MarcoP - 04-05-2017
(25-04-2017, 11:03 PM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Also, in the medieval mind, body parts were connected to the stars. Hence "zodiac man" came into existence.
I think JKP's comment could suggest a possible (however far-fetched) interpretation that brings together the "tubes as internal organs" and the "nymphs as constellations" ideas.
Illustrations of the "zodiac man" and of the less common You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. are both examples of "melothesia", i.e. of the idea that heavenly bodies control specific parts of the human body. If I understand correctly, an ancient theory divided each sign into 12 parts and assigned each of the resulting 144 "zodiac sign fragments" to parts of the human body (from the freely-accessible abstract of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. by Otto Neugebauer).
The nymphs in the "balneo" section could then be the same nymphs that appear in the "zodiac" section, each representing a single degree of a zodiac sign and its dominion on a specific part of the human body. Of course, this cannot be "dodecatemoria", since the zodiac nymphs appear to be 30 (not 12) for each zodiac sign.
RE: Comparison with BL ms Ashmole 399 - Koen G - 28-06-2017
So reconsidering the phallus thing, I'd like to ask the opinion of proponents of biological interpretations about the following comparison:
![[Image: penises.jpg?w=616]](https://herculeaf.files.wordpress.com/2017/06/penises.jpg?w=616)
If the one on the right is an ejaculating penis, is the one on the left a non-erect one?
At first glance one might say that the thing is too floppy or bendy, but, isn't the position of the "scrotum" more realistic in the left one?
edit: just for clarity, it's meant as a serious question
RE: Comparison with BL ms Ashmole 399 - MarcoP - 29-06-2017
(28-06-2017, 10:06 PM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.So reconsidering the phallus thing, I'd like to ask the opinion of proponents of biological interpretations about the following comparison:
If the one on the right is an ejaculating penis, is the one on the left a non-erect one?
I am not sure I count as a proponent of a biological interpretation: these shapes just seem to me to be somehow comparable with internal organs and their illustrations in medieval art. The parallels I am aware of are not enough to support anything specific (maybe with the exception of the "intestines" in 77v). I think the image on the right might or might not represent ejaculation: it could as well represent some other physiological phenomenon, or something entirely different.
It seems there is a pattern of a wider basin containing one or more nymphs above, with some kind of tube below. Both basins and tubes have different shapes, but the overall arrangement seems to recur. I guess it must mean something more general than the anatomy of the male reproductive system.
RE: Comparison with BL ms Ashmole 399 - Koen G - 04-07-2018
Marco, only now that I've been studying the VM layout features more closely I see the potential relevance of this MS. The way the images have been drawn first and then the text filling the available space is not something you see often.
By the way, looking at You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., is it written in a different script than the rest of the MS? Either way, the lines are a bit less straight and approach VM layout more. Also, on sight, I'd say this script looks more recent than the 13th century. The script on the left side looks different again, and rather close to the VM marginalia script. Again, closer than I'd expect for the time. There are also some similar words.
RE: Comparison with BL ms Ashmole 399 - MarcoP - 05-07-2018
(04-07-2018, 10:10 PM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Marco, only now that I've been studying the VM layout features more closely I see the potential relevance of this MS. The way the images have been drawn first and then the text filling the available space is not something you see often.
By the way, looking at You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., is it written in a different script than the rest of the MS? Either way, the lines are a bit less straight and approach VM layout more. Also, on sight, I'd say this script looks more recent than the 13th century. The script on the left side looks different again, and rather close to the VM marginalia script. Again, closer than I'd expect for the time. There are also some similar words.
Hello Koen,
you are clearly right about the script. Actually, in that detail one can see three different scripts:
* the original "textualis" in the label inside the circle (and all the other labels)
* a script I cannot classify in the central part of the page
* an English cursiva on the left (and top-right)
I think the script looks English because of the two-compartments a (different from that in the VMS).
Directly above the passage you highlighted, there must have been another recipe that was censored ("ad verucas? delendas", for the removal of warts?).
The passage on the left reads:
Si tu velis scire utrum
mulier sit pregnans. Accipe
alleum et ponat mulier in
matrice per noctem. Et in crasti-
no si sentiat odorem
allei in ore non est preg-
nans. Aliud teneat
crocum(?) per noctem in ore
et in mane eam respice-
as et si oculi sint infecti
non concipitur.
If you want to know whether a woman is pregnant, take garlic let the woman keep it in her womb for a night. If the next day you smell the garlic in her mouth, she is not pregnant. Otherwise, let her keep saffron(?) in her mouth for a night; in the morning, look at her eyes, and if they are irritated she has not conceived.
The words you highlighted are mulier (woman) and alleum (garlic).
RE: Comparison with BL ms Ashmole 399 - -JKP- - 05-07-2018
The two-compartment "a" was quite common in the 14th century but was dying out by the 15th century. By the end of the 14th century, some scribes were mixing the two in the same document. By the middle of the 15th century, the two-compartment "a" (sometimes called a 2-story "a") had almost disappeared.
The text on the left looks to me like marginalia, and it also looks as though a chunk of it has been erased. The most distinctive thing about it is the way the quill has been used to emphasize the thick and thin strokes. This is not especially common (it takes more effort).
RE: Comparison with BL ms Ashmole 399 - Koen G - 05-07-2018
Ah it's allei, I see. So it can't be related to the first two words of the marginalia because their respective final letters appear to be the same. A very interesting page nonetheless.
RE: Comparison with BL ms Ashmole 399 - -JKP- - 06-07-2018
You know, I had to read through this thread again to reacquaint myself with the contents, and I was struck again (as I was the first time) that out of all the sequences of images I've seen from one manuscript that bear similarities to the VMS, Marco's series in Post #1 is the most provocative.
And... there seems to me to be a lot of symbolic representation in the drawings that could easily be missed if they weren't labeled.
On Folio 13v we have a little guy who looks like a fetus in an enclosure (a womb). Even though the drawing is quite small, it's very detailed.
Below him is a long tube that is labeled as a channel/via of "private parts" and then a rounded bump, which I guessed was the cervix based on the shape and location (the label seems to confirm it)
Now, the tube continues, but I don't think this is an extension of the birth canal because the round thing at the bottom that looks like an upside-down vase is labeled "milk giving" (if I am reading it correctly as "lacritus dansus"). So, we have a temporal shift and the continuation of the tube at the bottom of the page might represent what happens after the baby passes through the cervix and is born.
In the middle ages, they believed that the "milk tubes" were shaped like fat arteries and came out of the uterus and ran up inside the body to each breast. They didn't understand that milk cells were in the breasts themselves and that liquids aren't always provided through tubes. Unfortunately some of the text (which refers to milk again) has been cut off at the bottom.
But going back to the objects on either side of the cervix. Before I looked at the labels, they looked to me like egg on the left and penis and testicles on the right (even more symbolically drawn than what looks to me like an ejaculating penis in the VMS). Looking at the labels, it says similitus hic on the left (which isn't very enlightening), but the one on the right is not ambiguous, it refers specifically to "tesculus" and "semen" (seed). I thought this was confirmation that it was a penis, especially since, at the head of the penis it says engorged with blood.
But then I read the text running along what I thought was the shaft of the penis and it says it is the channel for menstrual blood and I thought what? That doesn't make sense, then these are female parts, and then realized that the drawing is even more symbolic than I realized that the label describes how the sperm is supposed to get to the egg, through the vagina. So it describes this without coming right out and illustrating the sexual act, probably due to cultural prohibitions at the time.
The column-like drawings right and left have a label on the right describing them as the neck of the uterus. The text is scuffed off the red blobs, I can't read the one on the right, but they maybe some kind of organs (possibly the ovaries?).