Comparison with BL ms Ashmole 399

[MarcoP]

I'm all for hidden phallic imagery but I have a really hard time (no pun intended) to see an ejaculating penis in that thing. It's a weird tube with stuff spreading out of it that looks more like dusty wind. The "phallus" then bends back on itself towards a nymph who puts her hand into the tube. She is standing in a empty sardines can.



What really makes it problematic though, is that very similar pipes can be seen elsewhere in the manuscript, even on the same page - so why should this one be a phallus?

Hi Koen, I agree that it is difficult to pinpoint specific illustrations to specific internal organs (but the “intestines” in detail i seem rather plausible to me).

In more generic terms, the idea is that there could be some similarity between the VMS and BL Ashmole 399. Since the BL manuscript discusses pregnancy in pages illustrated by scarcely-naturalistic, sometimes tube-like, images of various internal organs, one can think that also the VMS discusses pregnancy and the various tubes are symbolic (or at least abstracted) illustrations of internal organs.

It's pipes with a bulbous end emitting stuff, and at the other end there's a woman. So are these hidden sex acts?

It seems that the BL doesn't illustrate sex acts either. I don't think such illustrations are necessarily to be expected in a late medieval manuscript discussing human reproduction, but this is a field I am not really familiar with.

Some women in the Zodiac circles may indeed refer to the menstrual cycle, yet as far as we know this may as well be a purely cultural-linguistic matter. The words for month and menses are related in many languages, obviously, and so would be the concepts of the female cycle and that of the moon. I see very little indication to interpret any of this in a medical or biological way.

Yes, these things are far from obvious. Alain Touwaide (2016) mentions the risk of deception for the modern man, who often fails to see the strict connection between astrology and medicine in medieval culture (translation mine):

This part [the “herbal” section] is followed by a second one, made up of tables, astral wheels and other zodiacal data that evoke astrology and, consequently, astronomy and the obscure mechanics of heavenly spheres, more than the sub-lunar world of human beings and medicinal plants. One must not be deceived by the strong contrast between the two cycles of illustrations. The contents of this part present the tools used by physicians and healers to read in the stars the present and future medical history of their patients, to attempt to decipher the evolution of illnesses and foresee their resolution, or also to guess the future lives of newborn children and find the signs of their possible uncommon destinies.

I also found Marraccini's parallel with Glasgow ms Ferguson 6 illuminating. As you say, the relation between month and menses is obvious and widespread, yet this connection is not often made explicit in illustrations.

Anyway, bottom line is, any sexual references in the VM are as important for understanding the manuscript as, for example, crossbowmen are. They are of interest by themselves, but I just don't see how they can be considered a main theme in the manuscript.

It seems to me that you are comparing different things. While sex / gynecology is seen as a candidate for the meaning of part of the ms, the crossbowman is a concrete symbol for a specific concept (the zodiac sign Sagittarius).

The crossbowman is objectively there, while the sexual / gynecological interpretation is a hypothesis that has been put forward by several researchers.

You could compare the tubes with the crossbow. Or you could compare gynecology and astronomy. Since nobody ever suggested that the VMS is largely about weapons, I don't think the crossbow can be usefully compared with gynecology.

The sexual / gynecology hypothesis should be compared with other hypotheses. For instance, one could compare the idea with the interpretation of the balneological section as illustrations of Ptolemy's constellations. Simplifying for argument's sake, what we have here is a mix of tubes and human figures. The tubes could suggest gynecology, the human figures could suggest personifications of various kinds (e.g. the constellations). Or they could be literal bathing women with literal hydraulic tubes (as suggested by Davidsch above).