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+--- Thread: Trying to see examples of Johannes Hartlieb's handwriting (/thread-3294.html)
Trying to see examples of Johannes Hartlieb's handwriting - MichelleL11 - 19-07-2020
Although I greatly respect the support for the view that Johannes Hartlieb is a bit too late and probably "too famous" (what would be the chances?) to be the VM author, I did want to see his handwriting, if possible.
As kindly provided by Helmut Winkler in this thread:
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exemplars of his handwriting are available in Frank Furbeth's book, Johannes Hartlieb, Untersuchungen zu Leben und Werk, specifically page 280.
But I've either read too much of it or that specific page is somehow blocked from me. I even tried logging in with another computer but I guess the address is the same(?) so I was similarly blocked.
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If someone could retrieve that page and post it, I'd be really grateful.
I also note that there may be the same handwriting samples at Karl Drescher, "Johann Hartlieb" Eurphorion vol (26 or maybe 25,the cites are inconsistent) (1924) at page 348 but this seems less likely to be available -- probably because of copyright, or maybe just chance, I've only found older volumes of this German literary magazine available online.
RE: Trying to see examples of Johannes Hartlieb's handwriting - -JKP- - 19-07-2020
It's blocked to me, as well.
RE: Trying to see examples of Johannes Hartlieb's handwriting - bi3mw - 19-07-2020
Here's the page:
RE: Trying to see examples of Johannes Hartlieb's handwriting - MichelleL11 - 19-07-2020
THANK YOU SO MUCH!
Hmmmm . . . . my initial reaction it's not looking good, but I am far from a handwriting expert. But I do greatly appreciate the posting.
And if anyone has any thoughts on this handwriting in relation to the VM script -- feel free to comment -- all views definitely welcome!
RE: Trying to see examples of Johannes Hartlieb's handwriting - -JKP- - 19-07-2020
Thank you, bi3mw.
RE: Trying to see examples of Johannes Hartlieb's handwriting - MichelleL11 - 22-07-2020
I decided to go ahead and give it a try, even though I could be making silly mistakes (e.g. comparing things that shouldn't be compared) -- but the only way to get better at this is to practice. So here's my try:
First -- two "mich" (I hope)
Okay -- this looks nothing alike. I don't think he wrote the 116v marginalia.
Next, trying to compare letters that have glyphs that are similar.
Here are some letters that share shapes with glyphs (I hope):
![[Image: image.jpg?q=f1r-623-257-94-43]](https://voynich.ninja/extractor/image.jpg?q=f1r-623-257-94-43)
OK - nope, not similar. Even my inexperienced eye can draw that conclusion.
Well, it was worth a try. I still think it is useful to poke around Johannes Hartlieb's life for other possibilities (maybe Johann Hartlieb von Moeglingen, the father, as suggested by Aga Tentakulus). I wonder how many siblings were in THAT family? Maybe my "family project" scenario can still have legs . . .
On that topic, evidently there's a couple of amateur genealogists in Moeglingen who have traced the 13,469* relatives to Johann Hartlieb still living in that area of Germany -- I bet THEY know how many brothers and sisters Johanne Hartlieb had. LOL
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Quote from Google translate of article: *And even if the male line died out after the Thirty Years' War, they lived on in the female line: no fewer than 13 469 Möglingen, calculated the two Reicherts, descended from the Hartliebs in five centuries.
Oh well, thanks again to everyone for your help.
RE: Trying to see examples of Johannes Hartlieb's handwriting - Koen G - 22-07-2020
In general though I don't think we can draw conclusions from someone's handwriting in German vs Voynichese. If his mind and muscle memory thought of the glyphs as different, they may turn out different.
And the usual caveats, that one person may master various styles of handwriting, it may vary over time etc.
RE: Trying to see examples of Johannes Hartlieb's handwriting - MichelleL11 - 22-07-2020
(22-07-2020, 06:59 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.In general though I don't think we can draw conclusions from someone's handwriting in German vs Voynichese. If his mind and muscle memory thought of the glyphs as different, they may turn out different.
Yes, l now agree with that. Although l think potentially the 116v comparison holds greater weight, but admittedly there are lots of assumptions there, too.
It’s worth trying to make the comparison between glyphs and handwriting but l think it’s more telling should something positive be seen rather than conclusive if there are little to no parallels. There is plenty of evidence of a studied attempt at consistency for this invented script between the various scribes - certainly the differences that Lisa found were, to my amateur eye, quite small. Obviously these small differences speak much more loudly to an expert.
But this is one place where l think we can agree that the Voynich does not differ from usual approaches to handwritten manuscripts at the time - there was significant effort made to have the script be consistent. Further, some of these consistent characteristics run counter to the more “traditional” uses of the letters that the glyph shapes resemble.
The first thing that comes to mind for me is the leftward slant of the minims. That seems both consistent and unusual - although others who have seen more manuscripts may not agree with the “unusualness” of it. Are there other characteristics like this that can be focused on for a potential comparison between handwriting and the glyphs?
RE: Trying to see examples of Johannes Hartlieb's handwriting - -JKP- - 22-07-2020
Michelle, I've found about 1,000 scripts that are reasonably similar to the handwriting on 116v. I created a mathematical scale to compare each individual character, along with spacing and slant.
There are no perfect matches, but there are half a dozen that are reasonably close and they date from the 1400s (I didn't worry about the date when I collected them, I simply looked for similar scripts).
The main text is definitely more challenging. If you choose one scribe, for example the scribe that penned the early folios, you will see a dozen different shapes for "a", a dozen different shapes for "o". They are still recognizable as a specific scribe in the context of whole words, and when taken together with slant, stroke order, spacing, and the thickness of the characters, but they do not have the consistency of top scribes. This makes it really challenging to determine if this is how they would write these characters if they were writing in a traditional alphabet. As Koen points out, they may be thinking something else when writing the character. We don't even know what these characters are. If this is a line-curve system, the letter that looks like an "a" might not be an "a", it might be c + i (in terms of shapes).
There's quite a bit of evidence that the scribes knew Latin conventions, examples show up in numerous places, but these hints may be examples of habit rather than the actual structure of the Voynichese shapes. Even though it's a difficult challenge, I'm still looking for Voynichese-like shapes, but it's a much longer-term project and not guaranteed to yield anything. But you never know. Maybe someone will get lucky. It happens.
