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+--- Thread: Ascender fantasies (/thread-1988.html)
Ascender fantasies - Koen G - 05-07-2017
There are only a few images of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. offered by the library website, and many of those feature some kind of decoration in ascenders and descenders. I know that these are relatively common, but one of them struck me as somewhat similar in effect as some of the VM's more fanciful ascenders. This is what I mean:
So how common are these doodles? Do they often look like the VM ones?
RE: Ascender fantasies - MarcoP - 05-07-2017
A few examples were posted You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. I don't think these are common.
RE: Ascender fantasies - Koen G - 05-07-2017
Hmm, perhaps this is more relevant than I first thought.
If you need scribes/copyists to write/copy/adapt/compile/edit... a Voynich manuscript, might you perhaps enlist the service of someone trained in writing legal documents rather than a clergyman?
RE: Ascender fantasies - voynichbombe - 05-07-2017
You need a "diplomat".
IMHO these kind of embellishments are very common for certain frankian royal or imperial documents, where Litteræ Elongatæ (also sometimes called Oblongatæ or Tonsæ) would have been used.
RE: Ascender fantasies - VViews - 15-11-2018
(Moved here from the other thread at Koen Gh's suggestion)
This is a nice example of gallows embellishment on pilcrows.
![[Image: wisconsinulms57chronicle-2.jpg]](https://voynichviews.files.wordpress.com/2018/11/wisconsinulms57chronicle-2.jpg)
Apparently this is from Library of Wisconsin, special collections, Ms 57, but I don't know anything more about it.
RE: Ascender fantasies - Diane - 17-11-2018
Other members (not Koen) please note: Having far less time for the forum than I once did, comments about my own comments are unlikely to be seen by me.
Koen,
I'm not sure if you're talking about the ascenders as such or dating the content by similar ornament, so I'll address both issues as I covered them in 2015. For this subject, the most relevant of my posts s probably 'Who wrote the Gallows' , voynichimagery.com (7th October 2015).
It attracted a wide readership and made some useful new points (to judge from their subsequent dissemination).
Jim Reeds' first noticed ascenders in connection with 'gallows' and meticulously acknowledged his source (of course). See first mailing list rather than secondary reports.
I took his brief excursus and researched it in more depth. It was soon clear that the 'elongated ascender' as such is to be associated primarily with religio- legal documents as e.g. establishment documents for religious orders; land-grants for religious orders, and for universities and other items having legal force as well as (e.g.) books about the rules of law or 'laws' of grammar. Highly educated religious scribes were most likely to have been assigned duty in writing out documents of such a sort. ( "Law and scribe" proved a fascinating ancillary research topic, by the way)
A majority of examples sighted for the 'elongated ascenders' came from Papal representatives scribes and scriptoria.
Just to be clear, I coined that description 'elongated ascenders' for convenience and it seems to be due to Helmut that we owe the somewhat later-appearing Latinised version of that term. Unless I accidentally re-invented some term from formal palaeography of which I can find no other sign. So it was kind of Helmut to make the term I invented sound so much more authoritative by turning it into Latin.
Anyway - back to the subject: the Holy Roman E's secular scriptorium for a time employed a version of that style, but it tended tended become overly ornate, and far too ornate to provide any reasonable comparison for the Vms' - so as far as I was able to find.
The range which has to be considered runs from the 7thC (When researching Guglio Libri, I cited the Luxueil script) and must include 10thC Spain (for which I acknowledged as my chief source the original research and thesis by Johnathan Jarrett - who kindly gave permission for me to use certain pictures as illustration.
Aside: I was severely embarrassed to notice that not only was my own work 'filched' and reused without attribution, but so was Johnathan's. I understand that many people in the wider world of social media cannot distinguish between the results of original research and the anonymous matter in wiki articles, but surely members here will have better standards.
Jonathan Jarrett, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., (wordpress)
Ornament:
Two important points here: first that pen-work is not 'doodling' and secondly that the the larger proportion of works employing the technique are NON-Latin texts.
The period for the Latin examples is chiefly from the 12th- and 13thC, and the important basis for comparison is the ornamental 'palette' in the Voynich map.
I did not publish this on any wordpress blog before; I've had to do it now only to be able to post it here. From a 13thC grammar. I regret that past experience leads me to omit details of its provenance or location.
![[Image: 13thc-scribal-ornament.jpg?w=1700]](https://voynichoddments.files.wordpress.com/2018/11/13thc-scribal-ornament.jpg?w=1700)
RE: Ascender fantasies - Diane - 17-11-2018
Postscript:
Since my posts, and the Latinised version ('litterae elongata) used by Helmut, there has been published 'Melange' (2016) which now uses the term. I find no earlier example at all, but would be glad of correction on the point. Note that the document is another of the religio-legal sort.
"La charte de donation du monastère viennois de Saint-Ferréol à l’abbaye de Saint-Victor de Marseille (3 novembre 1036)", dans A. Nijenhuis-Bescher, E.-A. Pépy et J.-Y. Champeley (dir.), L’Honnête homme, l’or blanc et le Duc d’Albe. Mélanges offerts à Alain Becchia, Chambéry, 2016, p. 201-222.
I consider it an error to associate the style exclusively, or even chiefly, with imperial scribes.
RE: Ascender fantasies - davidjackson - 17-11-2018
The reason you're not familiar with the term "Litterae Elongata" is because it's a German technical term for the ascenders. See, ie, the 1965 article "Die Litterae Elongatae. Ein Beitrag zur Formengeschichte und Herkunft der mittelalterlichen Urkundenschrift" published in Archiv für Diplomatik by Jochen Götze.
The term has of course made it into English; see, ie, the entry for "Development and characteristics of chanceries" in the Encyclopedia Britannica which discusses litterae, both elongated and otherwise.
RE: Ascender fantasies - -JKP- - 17-11-2018
(17-11-2018, 02:39 AM)Diane Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. I'm not sure if you're talking about the ascenders as such or dating the content by similar ornament, so I'll address both issues as I covered them in 2015. For this subject, the most relevant of my posts s probably 'Who wrote the Gallows' , voynichimagery.com (7th October 2015)....
You mean the article that is closed off and no one can read? Are you planning to make them accessible again so we can verify your claims?
(17-11-2018, 02:39 AM)Diane Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Jim Reeds' first noticed ascenders in connection with 'gallows' and meticulously acknowledged his source (of course). See first mailing list rather than secondary reports.
I think some common sense needs to prevail in terms of crediting real discoveries and "crediting" that which is obvious. I don't think it's necessary to acknowledge those things that are so obvious a ten-year can see them without prompting, such as the existence of "gallows" style ascenders in the VMS.
(17-11-2018, 02:39 AM)Diane Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I took his brief excursus and researched it in more depth. It was soon clear that the 'elongated ascender' as such is to be associated primarily with religio- legal documents as e.g. establishment documents for religious orders; land-grants for religious orders, and for universities and other items having legal force as well as (e.g.) books about the rules of law or 'laws' of grammar. Highly educated religious scribes were most likely to have been assigned duty in writing out documents of such a sort. ( "Law and scribe" proved a fascinating ancillary research topic, by the way)
I have gone through thousands of manuscripts, and embellished and elongated ascenders are found in many kinds of documents. The ones in legal documents were not accessible or viewable by the average person. While there are numerous documents related to the affairs of religious orders, many are contracts for land, inheritance, etc.—legal arrangements of the upper classes, that are not necessarily religious in nature.
The gallows-style ascenders in other kinds of documents were more accessible to the average person than those in charters and other forms of contracts, so... even though litterae elongatae were common in legal documents, they were more available to be seen in the myriad other forms of manuscripts like chronicles, biblical interpretations, books of hours, etc. It's difficult to know which ones might have influenced the VMS.
RE: Ascender fantasies - VViews - 17-11-2018
This is probably pointless since Diane has stated that she won't be reading our replies, but it's Literae Oblongatae, not elongata.
A simple Google search for the right term would turn up a myriad of examples of them...
And JKP, you raise a good point about not being able to view the work she refers to, which makes all these claims of precedence unverifiable.
Although in the case of her claim to have invented the term literae oblongatae, there's really not even any need to check, as this term has been used by medievalists since the 19thC... I guess that makes the claim a kind of... ascender fantasy ?