Text and context

[cvetkakocj@rogers.com]

I think the image of the eagle in 46v has been widely debated

Why an eagle? In my opinion it might be Saint Michael in the apocalypse book of the bible, the flowers on the top form the shape of a You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..

Ruby, the eagle was an ancient Illyrian symbol and when Rudolph IV elevated Carniola (which in pre-Roman times was part of Illyria and part of Venetia) to Duchy, the eagle was accepted as its coats of arms. Besides in many medieval manuscripts, it can also be found in the fresco at the Runkenstain castle. The Carniola was called Krain in Slovenian language.    
As to the question why somebody would depict a plant with roots like eagle, I have only one explanation. The plant should be interpreted symbolically. There are no plants that would have a blossom like a plant with the eagle root. I see in it ouroboro made of flowers (that is poem and wisdom) that makes some sort of near-completion.

[R. Sale]

Does the Order of the Golden Fleece date to 1430?

Does La Sainte Hostie de Dijon date to 1435? That's about as far as I can go. Still have three 'good' years left.

Could a person living in the 1440s still draw the fashions of the 1420s or have knowledge of prior times?

[Hermes777]

[quote='Ruby Novacna' pid='51282' dateline='1658067873']
I think the image of the eagle in 46v has been widely debated

Why an eagle? In my opinion it might be Saint Michael in the apocalypse book of the bible, the flowers on the top form the shape of a You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..

   

Given a context of alpine northern Italy the obvious heraldry suggested by the "eagle" motif is the coat of arms of County Tyrol. The original coat of arms is still to be seen on the altar at Tyrol Castle circa 1370s. Why the Tyrolean motif would be embedded as the roots of a herb is another question, but it is not naturalistic. 

In herbal symbolism more generally, plant roots might be depicted eagle-like or hawk-like to indicate that the root is medicinal to the eyes and assists long-range vision. Rue (ruta graveolans) would be an example, and very popular among sight-strained medieval scribes.

[R. Sale]

The eagle is the most common bird in heraldry. The VMs roots look more like a pair of wings. There is no body in the middle. No head or heads, no feet, no tail. It is suggestive, for sure, but it is also rather ambiguous as far as any particular heraldic assignment. It seems to lack any useful detail that can be corroborated by some historical example, like a checkered sash or two heads.

Ja, das ist ein schwarzer Flug. In French, un vol noir.

[Aga Tentakulus]

       

If I were to describe the root of the plant, I would assume that it grows rather flat and in all directions. Therefore, I would rather look at the root part from above.

We know that roots were often drawn in a particular shape. Let us think of the mandrake (as a male).
In the Far East it was the ginseng.
On the one hand as a hand and on the other hand the plant was assigned to a part of the body.

So why not an eagle?
But since the eagle was the symbol of the imperial Roman Empire, I would not consider it to be an indication of origin. The empire was not exactly small.

[Ruby Novacna]

the eagle was an ancient Illyrian symbol

Thank you, Cvetka for the images, unfortunately I don't see their dates. My question was just about the possible identification of the date of the image, based on the position of the feathers of our "eagle".

The VMs roots look more like a pair of wings

Eagle or pair of wings, what matters in my question is the position of its feathers to try to determine the date of the image. However, this is clearly not a vol.

Given a context of alpine northern Italy the obvious heraldry suggested by the "eagle" motif is the coat of arms of County Tyrol. The original coat of arms is still to be seen on the altar at Tyrol Castle circa 1370s.

The Tyrolean eagle is red, why should the colours be reversed?
Besides that, there are other root animals in the manuscript, why rely only on the eagle? I think Nick was talking about these images in his book.

[Hermes777]

the eagle was an ancient Illyrian symbol

Thank you, Cvetka for the images, unfortunately I don't see their dates. My question was just about the possible identification of the date of the image, based on the position of the feathers of our "eagle".

The VMs roots look more like a pair of wings

Eagle or pair of wings, what matters in my question is the position of its feathers to try to determine the date of the image. However, this is clearly not a vol.

Given a context of alpine northern Italy the obvious heraldry suggested by the "eagle" motif is the coat of arms of County Tyrol. The original coat of arms is still to be seen on the altar at Tyrol Castle circa 1370s.

The Tyrolean eagle is red, why should the colours be reversed?
Besides that, there are other root animals in the manuscript, why rely only on the eagle? I think Nick was talking about these images in his book.

As a general proposition regarding "root animals" in the ms. I offer the example of an eagle or hawk which may indicate herbs beneficial to the eyesight or even, by extension, to spiritual vision since such birds ascend (vertically) to the heavens as well as having acute long-seeing. Similarly, a herb good for lower back pain might be depicted with scorpion forms, correlating the scorpion with the lower spine. And so on. I haven't really investigated this, but I find it notable that there is no correlations to the human body in the work. No charts of the human body. No herb = zodiac = anatomy parallelisms. In which case, the correlates with the body and its organs may be indicated through zoomorphic stylisations of the herbal illustrations. This zoomorphic habit in European herbalism is still evident in popular and some botanical names: "Leopard's balm" etc. plant names that refer to animals. 

I know even less about heraldry. I only point to the eagle because it looks a bit like the Tyrolean crest, but I don't know.

[RenegadeHealer]

I cannot say whether this spelling was adopted from Slavic. Perhaps cvetkakocj knows more about this.

You know, I've always wanted to read that y at the beginning of that marginalia as "and". After all, y is indeed the word for "and" in several widely spoken standard Romance and Eastern Slavic languages. In all cases these are ultimately derived from Proto-Indo-European root *h₁eti. I scoured Wiktionary looking for any reflexes of *h₁eti in Proto-Germanic and its descendants, used as their word for "and" or a similar conjunction. There are indeed reflexes of this root in the Germanic languages, but they're truer to the root's original meaning as a demonstrative pronoun. I could find none that were glossed as "and", or any other conjunction.

As multilingual and cosmopolitan as Alpine south-central Europe was in the XV century, I have a hard time imagining Spanish-isms or Ukrainian-isms creeping into locals' speech and writing there.

As a lifelong word nerd and geography nerd, I'm very curious to find out where this one location and dialect where German speakers used y for "and". I'm also curious what the etymology of this oddly out-of-place local variant is.

[cvetkakocj@rogers.com]

Thank you, Cvetka for the images, unfortunately I don't see their dates.

The Carniolan (Krain) coats of arms was pictured in the Ingeram Codex (also Codex Cotta, Kunsthistorisches Museum A2302, made by Hans Ingeram for Albert VI, Archduke of Austria in 1459. It would therefore be used at the time the Voynich Manuscript was created.(I place the date around 1460, although some pages could be written earlier. My proposed author could have written it between 1420  when he was student at Vienna University and 1497, when he died at Geming). He could have used old parchment.)

The eagle was widely used symbol. Tyrol and Carniola were historically linked, often by the same dukes, and also by the Patriarchate of Aquileia. According to many scholarly articles I had read, the language spoken in Tyrol was much closer to Slovenian than to Latin or German. The Raetian and Friulian are still two Slovenian dialects.

The Duchy of Carniola (Herzogtum Krain, present-day Slovenia) was established in 1364 by Austrian Archduke Rudolph IV of Habsburg on the former East Frankish March of Carniola. Historically, the present-day Slovenia was divided between various secular and religious rulers.
The Symbol of eagle with spread wings was the symbol of the first Persian Empire which stretched from the Indus Valley to the Balkans. The eagle was used by Roman legions since 102 BC. It became the Illyrian national symbol which was adopted by many Slavic nations. In the medieval times, the eagle found its was into the coats of arms of many kingdoms.
Ottonian dynasty of Swabia adopted the eagle symbol in late 10th century, after Otto III conquered the Slavic lans. The double-headed eagle became the symbol of the Komnenos dynasty in the 11th and 12th century.
Leopold IV of Austria has used eagle as a heraldic symbol in 1136. It also became a symbol of the Holy Roman Empire.

Eagle was associated with many ancient deities, such as Egyptian god Horus. It also gave the name to Aquileia, which might be another connection to Tyrol and Carnioa by way of the Patriarchate of Aquileia, which was disolved in the early 15th century and its territories divided.
Considering other unnatural roots in the VM, it is more likely they allude to the ancient Venetic roots the people shared. After all, there was a strong belief in the Middle Ages that Anti, Sclaveni and Veneti were the same people in the distant past.

[Aga Tentakulus]

   

@RenegadeHealer
The "y" as "and" in German is only used like this in South Tyrol as far as Trieste.
It is used from so in Ladin.
I can't say whether it simply developed that way or was adopted by the Slavs. Anything from 700 years to 1400 is possible here.

Here is the link, it is only described in this way in the German Wiki.

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.