(20-10-2019, 06:27 PM)ReneZ wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
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Alain is not really interested in the text, and his conclusion that the MS is not a 'serious medical MS' but like a parody of one, is based on the herbal illustrations. This is something that one has to take seriously in my opinion. The forensic dating should be left to those specialists, and the palaeography to others.
We don't know if the VMS plants have anything to do with medicine.
Even if they do, ALL medieval medicinal plant books look like parodies. They are full of utter nonsense... this plant can only be picked on the 6th day of the new moon, this plant can only be used on a Saturday, this plant is governed by Jupiter, this plant will cure dog bites (rabies) if it is mixed with cow urine and drunk in the evening, etc., etc.
This is not just the so-called alchemical herbals, this is in many herbals, both textual and illustrated. I don't think the VMS looks like a parody of medicinal herbals. I think that either the plants have some function other than being medicinal (not every herbal is medicinal, some of them are for garden plans, some are records of actual gardens, some are culinary) or there is possibly additional information encoded in the way the plants are executed (perhaps cultural or religious).
Do you know why artemisia is usually listed first in many of the old herbals? It's not because it starts with "a". It's because it is governed by the sun and therefore, by ancient reasoning, it belongs first.
And look at all the dragons, snakes, eyeballs, faces, etc. in medieval plant drawings. Those aren't parodies either. Ironically the strange animal shapes are not nonsense even if the cures are nonsense in the sense of being unscientific. They are mnemonic, and mnemonics are known to work rather well. If the strange roots in the VMS are also mnemonic, then there's no parody there, either.
So, to my mind, one should not assume the VMS plants are medicinal plants (they might be other things or a combination of categories) AND I do not think we should assume the VMS is a parody. I don't think there's any evidence yet for either assumption.
Quote:Even if the MS may be a 'fake', that doesn't mean that it's a modern fake.
Touwaide is saying the Marci letter may have been referencing a different book, and he seems to be giving a lot of attention to the possibility that W. Voynich masterminded the forgery. That can only be a modern fake.