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+--- Thread: [split] Comparing the Voynich with the works of Fontana (/thread-2714.html)
[split] Comparing the Voynich with the works of Fontana - Antonio García Jiménez - 31-03-2019
Following the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., I would like to compare the VMS with the Fontana's works which are, as Nickpelling says, the best matches for the Voynich. Let's say for example Bellicorum Instrumentorum Liber.
Both of them, the VMS and Bellicorum..., are contemporary and some pages have the same layout. The VMS pages have plants with a weird script and the work of Fontana also has an image with some lines of an encrypted text. For more similarity, most plants are fantastic like most of the images in the Bellicorum..
Given these evidences and observations, we can do some hipothesis or assumptions. Par example: the script of the Voynich is a cipher with an underlying language or the exotic alphabet of a natural language. This is a valid and legitimate assumption...but has not worked in many years of research. Why?
We don't know why Fontana encrypted the text. It was not to hide it because there are lines in Latin and the cipher is a simple substitution, easy to decipher. A modern theory is that it was a kind of copyright. I don't believe it. Too anachronistic.
In my opinion, in the invented script of Fontana there is a call to the supernatural forces. It's the power of magic. Fontana invokes this power so that his machines and artifacts work.
Is it the same for the VMS script? I think so. This of course is another assumption. The script is not the human language but the language of the stars. The same magic in both cases.
RE: [split] Comparing the Voynich with the works of Fontana - -JKP- - 31-03-2019
In this drawing, Fontana explicitly shows a cipher wheel (Bellicorum is c. 1420):
![[Image: 4260780769_851f266a66.jpg]](http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2689/4260780769_851f266a66.jpg)
Maybe Fontana encrypted the text to demonstrate how the cipher wheel could be used.
RE: [split] Comparing the Voynich with the works of Fontana - bi3mw - 01-04-2019
This device also looks like it's an idea for encryption.
![[Image: fontana_43r.png]](http://wwwhomes.uni-bielefeld.de/mwille2/VMS/fontana_43r.png)
Johannes : Bellicorum instrumentorum liber cum figuris - BSB Cod.icon. 242, Venedig, 1420 - 1430, Folio You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Here is a transcription of the secret code in BSB Cod.icon. 242 (Schulte, Heinrich)
Schulte, Heinrich: Transkription der Geheimschrift in des Johannes de Fontana Bellicorum instrumentorum liber - BSB Cod.icon. 242 a, München, 1910 [ You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. ]
RE: [split] Comparing the Voynich with the works of Fontana - MarcoP - 01-04-2019
(01-04-2019, 10:28 AM)bi3mw Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Here is a transcription of the secret code in BSB Cod.icon. 242 (Schulte, Heinrich)
Schulte, Heinrich: Transkription der Geheimschrift in des Johannes de Fontana Bellicorum instrumentorum liber - BSB Cod.icon. 242 a, München, 1910 [ You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. ]
Thank you! I was not aware of this transcription! This cursive is not the easiest script to read, but much better than Fontana's cipher
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. describes both the device at 42r and 49r of "Bellicorum instrumentorum liber" as Kombinationsschloß (combination lock).
RE: [split] Comparing the Voynich with the works of Fontana - bi3mw - 01-04-2019
Thanks @Marco, it has not occurred to me that they are combination locks.
RE: [split] Comparing the Voynich with the works of Fontana - Antonio García Jiménez - 01-04-2019
Hello Marco, I've entered your blog ViridisGreen and I've read the post 'Five medieval love spells'. It has surprised me a lot how people used to write magic characters, how they believed in their power. Some characters look like letters but others are weird glyphs. This belief is fascinating and I think it is related to what we see in the VMS and in the Fontana's works.
RE: [split] Comparing the Voynich with the works of Fontana - MarcoP - 01-04-2019
Hi Antonio,
I don't know about the VMS, but I think that Fontana was a rationalistic scientist and engineer (of course within the limits of his time). In my opinion, his cipher mostly has the goal of causing interest and admiration in his audience, as so many of his theatrical inventions.
See also what Anthony Grafton writes in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.:
Quote:Fontana was interested in [...] forms of magic, like astrology and the ars notoria, which he described in detail in a strange encyclopedic work. For the most part, however, he took pride in applying his own technical skills to analyzing natural phenomena and creating artificial ones. [...] Fontana insisted that he was no magus. When witnesses at Padua exclaimed that a torpedo he had designed must run by diabolic power, he refuted them with contempt: the device was purely mechanical, as befitted a maker who was also a master of both medieval Archimedean statics and optics and of Renaissance engineering craft.
RE: [split] Comparing the Voynich with the works of Fontana - -JKP- - 02-04-2019
Combination locks, haha! Of course! Very cool. They have much in common with cipher wheels:
Jefferson wheels: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.:
Here's a modern replica inspired by the Da Vinci code novel. Pretty cool-looking, actually:
![[Image: PRP%20DV%205120.jpg]](https://www.noblecollection.com/ItemImages/Large/PRP%20DV%205120.jpg)
Quote:MarcoP: I don't know about the VMS, but I think that Fontana was a rationalistic scientist and engineer (of course within the limits of his time). In my opinion, his cipher mostly has the goal of causing interest and admiration in his audience, as so many of his theatrical inventions.
I think this is a good summation.
When I first saw the manuscript, it reminded me of Da Vinci. Not in terms of the quality of the drawings, of course, but in terms of similar interests in mechanisms.
RE: [split] Comparing the Voynich with the works of Fontana - bi3mw - 02-04-2019
When I see tube systems as on Folio You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , I have to think involuntarily of depictions like on Quire 13. It becomes once more conscious how mechanically the drawings are there (partially). But I would not go so far as to see a thematic connection here. In Quire 13, in my opinion, an ongoing process is described (not primarily bathing). The presentation of individual devices, as in Fontana's work, is another concept.
RE: [split] Comparing the Voynich with the works of Fontana - Antonio García Jiménez - 03-04-2019
The world of Fontana and the author of VMS was full of angels, demons, astral spirits...Everyone believed in it. They were real forces. We don't believe in spirits and that deeply separates our mentalities.
Fontana, of course, was an engineer with scientific mentality but likely he, as his contemporaries, believed in the occult powers. As Anthony Grafton says, "he used his engineering skills to mimic the magicians". Is what he does with his drawing of the magic lantern, where he uses his knowledge of optics to project a devil. He conjures demons as necromancers do. Actually, what his skills do is to confirm the reality of magic.
I think that his encrypted code is also an imitation of the magic formulas