[split] "Plants of the Alchemists"

[ReneZ]

Thanks Koen, that is a fair answer.

The amount of erudition and experience in such a specialised topic may be hard to fathom for someone who does not have the same background. I apply that to myself as well, but for me this realisation has been made a bit more easy by having spoken about the Voynich MS with quite a number of such specialists.

The Toresella paper is in Italian, and so is the article by Touwaide that came out last year. Other relevant literature about the so-called alchemical herbals is equally in Italian. This means that this topic is not so easily accessible.

Toresella does not say that the herbal part of the Voynich MS belongs to this tradition, but from his comparison it is clear that it has relevance for understanding the Voynich MS. They originated from the second half of the 14th century and were copied throughout the 15th and into the 16th century. The vast majority (if not all) of them are from Northern Italy.

Touwaide (from personal communication) is less convinced about this connection, but in his paper he still quotes the result of his colleague's work. He concentrates more on a comparison with the Tractatus de Herbis tradition of illustrated herbals, which is basically contemporary with that of the alchemical herbals (though starting several decades earlier) and equally from N.Italy.

The other important point was already mentioned by Marco. Alchemical herbals do not have much to do with alchemy.