Morten St George Theory

[Morten St. George]

Morten St George:I never said Florida. The trees here don't look high enough and it's also doubtful that the medieval reach of the spotted jaguar came this far east. I was thinking closer to Louisiana on the north side of the Gulf of Mexico.

Then again, we don't know what some of these places looked like seven hundred years ago. I saw a medieval weather map indicating that the temperature around the Gulf was hotter back then than it is today. The fact that the gals are running around naked implies a warmer climate than what it normally found in Europe.

Women running around naked, especially if they are associated with water, is a very pagan theme. If these are nymphs, rather than women, then it doesn't have to be hot because nymphs are impervious to weather. If some of these images are depictions of older myths, then naked women would be entirely appropriate. Greek pottery and Roman mosaics are full of them and those mosaics stretch all over Europe into England.

Sorry, shouldn't have said Florida. I meant that general area and didn't know what to call it. Usually I call it the Gulf area.

There are many areas of Europe that are hot. And there are plenty of swamps in the Old World. Plus it doesn't have to be northern or central Europe, it could be the Middle East, Turkey, Spain, etc.

Morten St George: It seems Diebold Lauber postdates the VMS, so what point are you trying to make?

Lauber inherited the studio from a father or uncle or someone like that. It was a family business. Unfortunately, there's not much history before Diepoldt got involved. Sometimes similarity in drawing style is passed down through families, both genetically and by example. Diepoldt was good at advertising and his name survived historically partly because he gave writing lessons in addition to running the scriptorium. A number of the manuscripts from his studio have pictures of green water with critters in them and at least one also includes a mermaid (not a fish with a woman in its mouth, unfortunately... the VMS version is very uncommon).

When I first started researching him (in 2008) because of the similarity of a few of the drawings and of the Gothic handwriting, there was almost zero information about him on the Web, but there's quite a bit more now, and many more of his studio's manuscripts are now available online.


By the way, I'm not opposed to New World arguments. I'm opposed to New World arguments that apply equally well to the Old World. If it doesn't SPECIFICALLY distinguish New from Old, then it's not a strong enough argument.

There's clearly a lot of fantasy depicted in the swamp scenes (including imaging themselves in a Roman bath) but there's a lot of reality as well, such as the gal sleeping under the stars while wrapped in a blanket. Do you see anything like that in the ancient nymph drawings?

Moreover, I think the plant depictions and the herbal medicine pages go hand in hand with the swamp scenes but not so much with ancient nymphs.

The cathar.info website describes one part of their consolation ceremony as follows:

"Then followed the act of consoling. The Perfect took the Gospel and placed it on the postulant's head. Other Perfects present placed their right hands on the postulant's head."



Evidently, there were no Gospels in the swamps but we do seem to see a right hand on the postulant's head.

Consoling was a death-bed ceremony. The gals in the swamps were probably dead or nearly all dead by the late 13th or early 14th century. Even if there were a male among them, they did not believe in procreation. Such a male, if he existed, would have had to find a mate elsewhere in the Americas, or return to the Old World, in order for the gals' botanical research to have survived into the 15th century.

From a practical point of view, I'll mention recently reading that, to help gain converts in Europe, the Cathar perfectae establishing workshops for teaching paper-making among other skills. I don't know precisely what is meant by paper-making but I suspect that they could have had the skills needed to make something to write on in the swamps.

Also, recently, I added a new paragraph to my website:

"According to the ex-Cathar Rainier Sacconi, the Cathars had a sacred text that was written in heaven and brought down to Earth by the Christ. In the same region and in the same epoch, the Cabalists had a text that was written in heaven by the archangel Metatron and brought down to Earth by Elijah the prophet. There is reason to believe that they are both referring to the same text, and that the Voynich manuscript recipes are a transcription of that text."

To protect such a text, there could be enough motive for certain Old Worlders in the Old World to create the plants, the astrology, the swamps, and the herbs just to con you into thinking that the recipes were cooking instructions. Thus, I am not ruling out creation in the Old World but we would still be left with some explaining to do regarding the pointers to the New World.

Recently, I read something else of interest:

"Arab merchants and doctors had long found their way to Occitania across the Pyrenees from those parts of Spain then under Muslim control, or by sea from the East. They had been welcomed by the Cathars..."

So, maybe the Cathari went to Egypt instead of America. I see that our three-tower chateau looks a lot like Nile River chateaus. Were there marshes in the Nile River valley? I imagine there could have been.