Morten St George Theory

[-JKP-]

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[Morten St. George]

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JP, 

Thanks very much for making me aware of that wonderful source of information on the VMS. 

--Morten

[-JKP-]

There's a lot of good information there.

If you want to get a feeling for how they thought in the medieval period (or rather, how differently from us they thought), read some of MarcoP's translations of remedies. They are entertaining and also quite enlightening in terms of revealing the medieval thought process.

[Morten St. George]

Koen has written about the fashions. I suggest you read his blog.

I see that Koen displays image similarities between the VMS and a 1418 publication, and I concur that those similarities are unlikely to be purely coincidental. However, I do not view this as a "smoking gun" affirming the 15th century creation of VMS images because both the VMS and the 1418 publication could have had a common thirty-party source.

In my prior posts, I postulated that the VMS encryption was created in Toledo during the 13th century. Thus, the number one place to search for a precedent of the VMS zodiac symbols would be the dozens of astrology books (mainly translations from Arabic) published in Toledo during the 13th century.

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Do a page search on "astro" or "astrol" to quickly highlight relevant publications in that article.

This here is an image from the VMS alongside an image from one of the Toledo manuscripts:



Notice the double-lined necklines, long-sleeve shirts ending just before the wrist and, above all, flat top hats with a bulge in the middle. Off-hand, I'd say the VMS is depicting standard Spanish clothing of the 13th century, not the 15th century.

[Morten St. George]

If you want to get a feeling for how they thought in the medieval period (or rather, how differently from us they thought), read some of MarcoP's translations of remedies. They are entertaining and also quite enlightening in terms of revealing the medieval thought process.

Thanks JP. I'll take a look if I get the chance. I have in fact read a vast amount of Cabala literature from medieval times. One thing that impressed me is how much their mentality was so completed dominated by religion. Though it is hard to detect, I think there has to be a lot of religion in the VMS as well.

[Linda]

Koen has written about the fashions. I suggest you read his blog.

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Do a page search on "astro" or "astrol" to quickly highlight relevant publications in that article.

This here is an image from the VMS alongside an image from one of the Toledo manuscripts:

You do not give enough information here to see the text you took the image from. Could you please give a link to the original?

[-JKP-]

Koen has written about the fashions. I suggest you read his blog.

...

In my prior posts, I postulated that the VMS encryption was created in Toledo during the 13th century. Thus, the number one place to search for a precedent of the VMS zodiac symbols would be the dozens of astrology books (mainly translations from Arabic) published in Toledo during the 13th century.

...

I spent more than 7 years collecting more than 500 complete zodiac series (each with 12 symbols) and wrote numerous blogs about the results. When the PATTERNS that are found in the VMS imagery are evaluated in combination with each other NONE of the combination searches pointed to Spain. Not a single one. I wish they had. I find Spanish culture and history interesting, but they didn't.


The blog that includes the map is here:

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But, it's not a stand-alone blog. It depends on the reader having some familiarity with the half-dozen blogs that lead up to it.

I tried hard, but was not able to find a single exemplar from Spain that might have inspired the combination of themes that were brought together in the VMS.

[-JKP-]

If you want to get a feeling for how they thought in the medieval period (or rather, how differently from us they thought), read some of MarcoP's translations of remedies. They are entertaining and also quite enlightening in terms of revealing the medieval thought process.

Thanks JP. I'll take a look if I get the chance. I have in fact read a vast amount of Cabala literature from medieval times. One thing that impressed me is how much their mentality was so completed dominated by religion. Though it is hard to detect, I think there has to be a lot of religion in the VMS as well.

Many of the more scientifically oriented manuscripts of the Middle Ages don't have any references whatsoever to organized religion. They do often assume that God left clues in the way the universe was organized (like making the shape of the plant signal which part of the body it was supposed to cure). These were believed to be "messages" for the people studying natural phenomena, but this is a bit different from religious icons, practices, and literature.

[-JKP-]

Hats

Here is Koen's blog on headgear (Nov. 2016), which includes those worn by the nymphs:

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I also had information on hats and tunics more specifically related to the zodiac figures that I posted in two blogs (July 2017), along with a map of where these styles are found in manuscript art:


You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.  (fashion in the context of short-legged men)
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (rounded hat styles)

Edit, addition: Koen's post with more info on hats (Sept. 2018):

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Tunics

Here is a blog on the tunic styles in the VMS (Sept. 2018), where I talk about the hats, sleeves, simple neckbands, and the way the tunics are gathered:

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And here is Koen's blog where he collected a lot of examples, and specifically looked into the baggy-elbowed tunic (Nov. 2018).
Especially note the graphs that he includes further down that show the geographical and temporal distribution of these fashions.


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[Koen G]

The hats post more relevant to provenance is this one:
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But the real smoking gun for dating is in the sleeves post JKP linked above. I cross referenced the dates of relevant men's sleeves with those of the women, and the result confirms the radiocarbon dating. There's only a few decades when these two were in fashion simultaneously.

Fashion is usually updated to the expectationd of the time. That's why museum curators may use it to date an object if no other methods are available.

In our case, botn fashion and radio carbon dating point towards the early 15th century.