You know, I had to read through this thread again to reacquaint myself with the contents, and I was struck again (as I was the first time) that out of all the sequences of images I've seen from one manuscript that bear similarities to the VMS, Marco's series in Post #1 is the most provocative.
And... there seems to me to be a lot of symbolic representation in the drawings that could easily be missed if they weren't labeled.
On Folio 13v we have a little guy who looks like a fetus in an enclosure (a womb). Even though the drawing is quite small, it's very detailed.
Below him is a long tube that is labeled as a channel/via of "private parts" and then a rounded bump, which I guessed was the cervix based on the shape and location (the label seems to confirm it)
Now, the tube continues, but I don't think this is an extension of the birth canal because the round thing at the bottom that looks like an upside-down vase is labeled "milk giving" (if I am reading it correctly as "lacritus dansus"). So, we have a temporal shift and the continuation of the tube at the bottom of the page might represent what happens after the baby passes through the cervix and is born.
In the middle ages, they believed that the "milk tubes" were shaped like fat arteries and came out of the uterus and ran up inside the body to each breast. They didn't understand that milk cells were in the breasts themselves and that liquids aren't always provided through tubes. Unfortunately some of the text (which refers to milk again) has been cut off at the bottom.
But going back to the objects on either side of the cervix. Before I looked at the labels, they looked to me like egg on the left and penis and testicles on the right (even more symbolically drawn than what looks to me like an ejaculating penis in the VMS). Looking at the labels, it says similitus hic on the left (which isn't very enlightening), but the one on the right is not ambiguous, it refers specifically to "tesculus" and "semen" (seed). I thought this was confirmation that it was a penis, especially since, at the head of the penis it says engorged with blood.
But then I read the text running along what I thought was the shaft of the penis and it says it is the channel for menstrual blood and I thought what? That doesn't make sense, then these are female parts, and then realized that the drawing is even more symbolic than I realized that the label describes how the sperm is supposed to get to the egg, through the vagina. So it describes this without coming right out and illustrating the sexual act, probably due to cultural prohibitions at the time.
The column-like drawings right and left have a label on the right describing them as the neck of the uterus. The text is scuffed off the red blobs, I can't read the one on the right, but they maybe some kind of organs (possibly the ovaries?).
And... there seems to me to be a lot of symbolic representation in the drawings that could easily be missed if they weren't labeled.
On Folio 13v we have a little guy who looks like a fetus in an enclosure (a womb). Even though the drawing is quite small, it's very detailed.
Below him is a long tube that is labeled as a channel/via of "private parts" and then a rounded bump, which I guessed was the cervix based on the shape and location (the label seems to confirm it)
Now, the tube continues, but I don't think this is an extension of the birth canal because the round thing at the bottom that looks like an upside-down vase is labeled "milk giving" (if I am reading it correctly as "lacritus dansus"). So, we have a temporal shift and the continuation of the tube at the bottom of the page might represent what happens after the baby passes through the cervix and is born.
In the middle ages, they believed that the "milk tubes" were shaped like fat arteries and came out of the uterus and ran up inside the body to each breast. They didn't understand that milk cells were in the breasts themselves and that liquids aren't always provided through tubes. Unfortunately some of the text (which refers to milk again) has been cut off at the bottom.
But going back to the objects on either side of the cervix. Before I looked at the labels, they looked to me like egg on the left and penis and testicles on the right (even more symbolically drawn than what looks to me like an ejaculating penis in the VMS). Looking at the labels, it says similitus hic on the left (which isn't very enlightening), but the one on the right is not ambiguous, it refers specifically to "tesculus" and "semen" (seed). I thought this was confirmation that it was a penis, especially since, at the head of the penis it says engorged with blood.
But then I read the text running along what I thought was the shaft of the penis and it says it is the channel for menstrual blood and I thought what? That doesn't make sense, then these are female parts, and then realized that the drawing is even more symbolic than I realized that the label describes how the sperm is supposed to get to the egg, through the vagina. So it describes this without coming right out and illustrating the sexual act, probably due to cultural prohibitions at the time.
The column-like drawings right and left have a label on the right describing them as the neck of the uterus. The text is scuffed off the red blobs, I can't read the one on the right, but they maybe some kind of organs (possibly the ovaries?).