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+--- Thread: Central European origin (/thread-2158.html)
Central European origin - ReneZ - 29-10-2017
Quote:... in the late 1990s when this rather silly 'central European' storyline was first produced ...
The "Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in The United States and Canada", by Seymour De Ricci, with the assistance of W. J. Wilson, was first published in 1937.
In vol. II, on pp.1845-1848 it describes the MSs included in "The estate of Wilfrid M. Voynich", New York.
Entry nr. 8 has:
Quote:8. Cipher ms. Vel. (date uncertain, authorities hesitate between the XIIIth and XVth c.; we suppose it to be not much older than 1500),
[...skipped...]
The country of origin seems to be some part of Central Europe.
[...skipped...]
It was later in the Collegio Romano, in Rome,
[...lots skipped...]
This description was almost certainly provided by Anne Nill. This is just 7 years after the death of Voynich, and in a way marks a break with the Roger Bacon tradition.
In the Beinecke library there is a carbon copy of a letter from Nill to De Ricci giving an earlier version of this description which is much shorter. At the time, Nill was working for W.J. Wilson, and compiling the index of this catalogue. Wilson was personally interested in this MS.
In 1937, Nill received a letter from the UK shop that was just being closed. This included the paper slips with the reference to the private library of P.Beckx, which gave away the origin of the collection of MSs that included the Voynich MS.
The above text, which includes this connection, must have been a last-minute change, made possible by the direct connection of Anne Nill with the publication.
RE: Dimensions and trimming of the MS - -JKP- - 30-10-2017
I haven't dismissed anything, including the Americas, I simply think some are more likely than others.
I'm always perplexed when I see people identify a VMS plant as a specific species. The drawings are not detailed enough to narrow any of them down to a specific species—even the Viola has about four likely candidates. Elizabeth Blackwell's botanical drawings are some of the finest of their kind and orders of magnitude better than the VMS drawings, and yet cannot always be identified down to a particular species.
I feel the same way about origins. I have a list of priorities. There are no cutoff points. I have a gray scale from more likely to less likely.
Origins are far more problematic than plants. Plants stay in one place. They can't walk around, they spread slowly (especially so before travel to the Americas and far east became mechanized), but people can and did travel extensively. We're all from Africa, but we profusely populated the far east thousands of years ago.
The Ainu, indigenous people of Japan, have caucasoid features. People from China and Mongolia have traveled to Siberia. The Vikings make it to Newfoundland, the northeastern Asians to North America. The southeast Asians to South and Middle America. Someone from Italy could travel to Madagascar or the Ivory coast. People are born one place, study another, and work another, and were surprisingly mobile in the middle ages. Merchants from China were shipwrecked off the coast of northeast Africa centuries ago. There's an ancient ship that foundered off the coast of Scandinavia that may be from the Mediterranean. Crusaders traveled thousands of miles and brought back many implements and manuscripts from their travels. Some of them stayed in the Levant or farther east, married, and raised kids.
I don't see how someone can decide on the basis of current evidence whether a person from outside Europe created the VMS inside Europe, or whether someone from inside Europe might have created it after spending some time outside of Europe (as the missionaries often did). Some people are very quick to absorb customs from other countries. Richard F. Burton eagerly learned other languages and cultures and even though some people are reluctant to adapt, I'm sure he's not the only one, east or west, who embraced customs from other regions.
Whoever created the VMS clearly had seen European manuscripts, but whether they saw the manuscripts in Europe, or whether they saw them elsewhere (manuscripts DID travel in both directions), is still an open question. The physical evidence is the best evidence we have for its origin (it is obviously not drawn on palm leaves, clay, bamboo, or papyrus) but it does not tell us how broadly the creators (or the mastermind) might have traveled or where they may have settled, for months, perhaps years, before creating the VMS, nor does it tell us where that person was born because the sum total of how much of your culture you bring with you depends partly on how old you were when you moved, and how willing you are to embrace new ideas.
Central Europe is higher on my list than the South Pacific, China, central Africa, Greenland, or the Americas, but I see no reason to take a stand because the data will eventually speak for itself.
RE: Cental European origin - MarcoP - 30-10-2017
The idea of a Central European origin was considered credible by scholars like Richard Salomon and Erwin Panofsky: this makes it quite relevant for anyone with a minimum of respect for academic scholarship. Similarly, when I read that Alain Touwaide seems to favour an Italian origin, the possibility that the ms was written in Italy gained considerable value in my eyes. I currently see the Central Europe / Italy issue as a major research focus (not that I believe I can contribute much). I hope I live enough to see the results of significant DNA tests on the parchment.
Calling "silly" the opinions of well-respected scholars (or of other people in general) can be a good way to get more clicks on a blog, but I think it should be forbidden on the forum. Sure, Salomon and Panofsky died a long time ago: they will not complain.
RE: Cental European origin - Anton - 30-10-2017
Quote:Calling "silly" the opinions of well-respected scholars (or of other people in general) can be a good way to get more clicks on a blog, but I think it should be forbidden on the forum.
We stand for cultivated discussion, if I'm not mistaken this has been included somewhere in our guidelines.
As for origin, it's important to distinguish between "production origin" and "content origin". Like, if I publish Milton, production origin is Moscow, Russia, while content origin is London, England. Did not follow the discussion in detail, but not sure the two are not messed in the discussion. If I understand correctly, the experts above quoted are judging by the content, so their assessment is of the origin of the content (or parts thereof). While DNA tests could point only to the place of production.
RE: Cental European origin - davidjackson - 30-10-2017
True Anton, but if the two are different, that indicates the Voynich is logically a copy (or, the author wrote at the end of a journey).
Either way, if the production is proven (DNA?) To be European, it doesn't prove anything; it just proves the scribe(s) was located in Europe.
RE: Cental European origin - MarcoP - 30-10-2017
(30-10-2017, 07:29 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.As for origin, it's important to distinguish between "production origin" and "content origin". Like, if I publish Milton, production origin is Moscow, Russia, while content origin is London, England. Did not follow the discussion in detail, but not sure the two are not messed in the discussion. If I understand correctly, the experts above quoted are judging by the content, so their assessment is of the origin of the content (or parts thereof). While DNA tests could point only to the place of production.
Hi Anton,
I agree on the importance of the distinction you describe. In most cases, the two origins are largely coincident, but in other cases they aren't.
Panofsky's position in 1954 was:
Quote:My guess is that the manuscript was produced in Germany, which is supported by the fact that the goat’s milk sentence is continuous with the text of at least the last page of the manuscript.So he was guessing the place of production on the basis of Salomon's observations on (marginal) content.
The manuscript was likely produced in a single place (or in a limited area), while it can easily incorporate influences from several places. Panofsky's earlier observations suggested that he was open to various influences (Spanish/Provencal, Jewish/Arabic, Dutch/Flemish) contributing to the illustrations. On the textual level, Italian astrological treaties often incorporated information from Greek and Arabic sources. Anyway, in many cases the place of origin often contributes to the content (e.g. your edition of Milton might include a Russian translation or introduction).
RE: Cental European origin - Diane - 08-11-2017
Anton is right to distinguish place of production from origin of the matter contained.
For reasons explained in more detail in a post to my blog, Panofsky's brief responses to the Questions put him by William Friedman have to be evaluated in the context of the times, of their respective social standing and the atmosphere of American politics in the immediate post-war period. Comparing them to the account given by Anne Nill, and even more importantly to the style and quality of Panofsky's usual evaluations of any work mean that greater weight must be given Anne Nill's account than those responses. There is also the effect of a bias created by O'Neill's over-confident assertions which skewed perceptions of the later period for quite a number of years. Even so, Panofsky would not go beyond the limit set by the lifetime of a Jew who had been forced to leave Spain in 1492. I think it inappropriate to imagine that the 'Questionnaire' represents any change of mind on Panofsky's part - but since O'Neill's 'sunflower' was being taken for granted, he adjusted the date and location of production. Also, Kraus or one of his assistants (sorry, I'll have to check that name) wrote later (in the '60s perhaps) that no area of Europe had been ruled out.
What has happened is that items which appear to support the 'central Europe' idea have been cherry-picked and all the other evidence and argument, including that provided by the vellum, hands, imagery and effectively all the primary evidence save a bit of marginalia (later by definition than manufacture) has been ignored by a majority of Voynicheros since the early 2000s.
Efforts to investigate alternatives, or to bring clear indications of the contrary to notice have generally been shrugged off and sometimes positively attacked without balanced consideration or reasoned argument.
As example: a curator from the Getty Museum likened the formation of centres in the calendar to mosaics produced in late Roman/Byzantine-ruled Syria. At much the same time, Sam G. noted that mosaics in late Roman/Byzantine north Africa show similar characteristics to another of the calendar centres. The two regions are linked - historically and culturally - from long before the Byzantine period, and it is common culture rather than official rule which chiefly influences forms in art.
The response to those items was a flood of German medieval manuscript illustrations - not any consideration of the matter. The 'central European' theory is thus opposed by (i) a large number of the early evaluations by *independent* specialists in manuscripts; (ii) by the total absence of a Germanic 'hand' in the text (iii) by the quality of the vellum's finish (iv) by the absence of Latin conventions in art... particularly in central European art (v) by the positive presence of conventions which can be found elsewhere... and so on, and so on, and so on.
What is habitually glossed over is that Panofsky's life and work, until he went to America, had been the study of medieval central European Latin (i.e. western Christian) art. That he dismissed any such origin for the matter in MS Beinecke 408 when he saw the ms, and spoke to Anne Nill, is an extraordinarily powerful argument against the theory that has been so actively promoted since c.2000 or so. Not even Pelling's detailed argument for a north Italian provenance was treated as balance for the other. I agree with Pelling that manufacture of the work should be ascribed to northern Italy - but the evidence points to Padua-Veneto (the conclusion and evidence for which I had already published before a recent book appeared in which the same was asserted)
Panofsky attributed the work to Jews of 'Spain or somewhere southern' and originally dated the content and appearance to the thirteenth century or so. I think he was right. Not about place of manufacture but about the nature of the content as expressed by the imagery, vellum and so on.
What fazed Panofsky was first, that 'the ladies' have bellies - since he knew of none such before the fifteenth century. I've shown they do occur in Spanish Jewish works of the earlier period. Secondly, Panofsky succumbed to the then-universal habit of imagining the work an autograph - i.e. identical date for first composition and for manufacture.
If a present-day Voynich writer's aim is to promote a theory, it is natural only to look for, and take into account, whatever they can find that might be interpreted to support their own narrative.
But when the aim is to reach a correct understanding of the manuscript - so as not to misdirect, misinform or mislead those who need to know where and when, and in what cultural and historical context the work was put together, then surely when evidence is rightly understood, fairly offered and relevant but contradicts a pet theory, it is the theory which should be more readily discarded.
I do apologise for using the word 'silly'; I should have said something like 'poorly supported by the primary evidence'.
RE: Cental European origin - Aga Tentakulus - 26-12-2019
For me, it is important to correctly classify and assign the few German words we see in the VM. I know that the dialect form also goes from Stuttgart, Munich to Vienna.
In the south it is limited by the Alps. A good guideline is the watershed.
I work with different programs.
For non-German speakers, it makes it easier to understand the dialect forms and spellings.
I have preset a program once, so you can see what I mean.
My question: Does anyone know of a similar program for southern Germany and Austria.
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RE: Cental European origin - bi3mw - 26-12-2019
(26-12-2019, 10:36 AM)Aga Tentakulus Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.....
My question: Does anyone know of a similar program for southern Germany and Austria.
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For Germany I have found the following link:
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The maps are obviously older.
RE: Cental European origin - Aga Tentakulus - 26-12-2019
Thanks bi3mw
It's good material, will take me a while to get through it, but it's extremely helpful.
Believe it or not, German is spoken here as well.