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+--- Thread: The sad story of the nebuly line. (/thread-2663.html)
The sad story of the nebuly line. - R. Sale - 03-03-2019
This is the sad story of the nebuly line. The nebuly line is one of a historical collection of various line patterns and, taking this collection as a set of patterns, they are best defined and identified through the illustrated heraldic lines of division. Such artistic patterns have existed prior to or outside of medieval heraldry, but the relevant heraldry, with its patterns and definitions, clearly existed well in advance of the VMs parchment dates as a widely known part of European culture. To define the nebuly pattern specifically, it is a regular meandering line, similar to a wavy line or sine wave, but one in which the individual crests and troughs are bulbous. Exactly how bulbous and how many fancy frills can be added to the basic design was an area much explored by medieval artists and is a topic that has been well examined here.
The story begins with the VMs investigator who long has been totally oblivious to everything in the paragraph above. The VMs pictures are strange. The VMs language is unknown. The violas are wilted – or inverted. And then there are the pages of exotic plants. Many investigators have suggested potential identifications for the apparent VMs monographs, some more convincing than others. This is a natural form of positive investigation, one that is based on the assumption that the illustrations are intended to be representational and then on finding the plant that best fits the necessary parameters. This is a typical investigation into the identity of the VMs plants, while trying to interpret the content of the VMs as a normal expository statement. This is the collective effort to move VMs botany forward. Those results have been interesting and informative. And if everything would have worked out better, this would be a happy story rather than a sad one.
But it is a sad story. The violas are all wilted. All attempts to interpret the VMs based on ‘face value’ have failed. Or at least they appear to have failed, depending on the criteria for success and the definition of ‘face value.’ Depending on how each investigator sees the VMs façade. And the sad story of the nebuly line has long been sad because none of those early investigators had the slightest notion about the nebuly line. There has long been a failure to recognize the examples in the botanical section where a clear nebuly line was used to represent a leaf margin three different times. The positive view of botany forward attempts to explain this as an exaggeration or an extinct variety or something. And the prior conditions of obliviousness still apply. Ignorance is bliss.
Now for the sake of discussion, let’s take the opposite perspective. Instead of the positive aspects of moving botany forward, what are the negating aspects of viewing botany backwards? Instead of seeking matches for specific botanical traits portrayed in the illustrations, consider asking what are the obvious botanical errors or mistakes in the VMs? The violas have wilted and there are three nebuly lines. And whatever the botanical reality might be, there are still three nebuly lines hidden in the leaves of the botanical illustrations. Has botanical research provided a single example, let alone three? Yet the sad part is that the investigation has always gone in the botanical direction. The modern investigators, as students of botany, attempt to find a natural explanation. The investigations of the past never went in the *other* direction because there was no recognition of the defined existence for the nebuly line. Only the investigator, who is sufficiently acquainted with the basics of medieval heraldry, would be able to correlate these VMs leaf margins with the proper heraldic name and definition. While, to the contrary, it might be assumed that, at the time of the VMs parchment dates, a better familiarity with heraldry would have promoted a greater chance of this recognition.
It is only in the past few years that the identity and existence of the nebuly line in the VMs has been recognized. And subsequent investigation of nebuly lines soon discovered a multitude of examples scattered throughout the balneological section of the VMs. And while the distractions there are numerous, they are, after a prolonged investigation, apparently just distractions after all. The solution to the VMs is not achieved right away in a single step. Like the botanical section, the balneological section is one that is open to multiple threads of speculative investigation which lead in various directions away from more significant options. The example of a nebuly line that is relevant to further investigation has instead been tucked away in an odd cosmic illustration on VMs f68v. Its relevance is confirmed by etymology and the 43 undulations. The sad story of the nebuly line is about a culturally identified line pattern long hidden in an unrecognized cosmos. The story of the nebuly line is sad because it is a record of missed opportunities. The failure to comprehend something that the author has placed in any document under investigation is surely going to affect the way in which that document will be interpreted. The inability to pick out and name things that exist in the illustrations totally thwarts the capacity for interpretation that is congruent with the author’s intentions. At the same time, the use of everything from nebuly lines to armorial and ecclesiastical heraldry shows that the VMs author possesses significant elements of traditional and historical knowledge that many modern investigators have apparently lacked. That’s how it is. The trick is to evaluate the functions of the parts, not their appearance, in order to see how disguise has been used and deception has occurred without the loss of identity.
One specific fact, when known, can function as a key to new areas of discovery; when unknown, it cannot. And in the case of the nebuly line, it is a key that opens an intellectual pathway to the renewed recognition of certain traditional, cultural elements that are present in the VMs illustrations and have long sat unrecognized. The proper interpretation of the VMs cosmos f68v, is a premier example. The existence of the heraldic fur called papelonny and the heraldic association involved in the origins of the ongoing tradition of the cardinal’s red galero are others. As an early and significant key to a traditional interpretation, yet one that has long been simultaneously disguised by medieval trickery and omitted by the modern failure to possess the essential facts, the presence of the nebuly lines, now being recognized, brings this sad story to an end.