Codicology - Vermont 'Tuscany Herbal'

[-JKP-]

...  We may need to switch attention from 'central Europe' to northern Italy in our hunt for the text.

I should appreciate comments on the posts from members here....

The data should determine the location of various aspects of the manuscript, not the researcher's "attention". There shouldn't be any need to shift any honest researcher's attention geographically.

If the researcher chooses a particular property of the manuscript and it leads to central Europe, that does not mean the researcher's attention was on central Europe or that the next trail (perhaps in another part of the manuscript) will lead in the same direction.


For example, when I was looking at hundreds of examples of zodiacs and zeroing in on each one in turn, I was not focusing any of my attention on central Europe whatsoever. I don't care where it leads. I particularly enjoy researching Asia and Africa, rather than Europe because it's more interesting and exotic to me but... I was focusing my attention on the zodiacs (not the geography) and the patterns that emerged by how they were depicted. I collected zodiacs worldwide, but the VMS zodiac symbols do not resemble Asian zodiacs in any way, so I was not drawn in that direction by the data. By the time I finished Libra, it was clear that it followed the conventions of western Europe and particularly those of central Europe.



I will say this again... What we call "northern Italy" is not what northern Italy was in the year 1400. Northern Italy was only 60% up the "leg" at that time and it wasn't a country, it was a collection of city-states. The germanic regions, the declining region of the Lombards, and the reach of the Holy Roman Empire was almost down to Rome, included what we now call Slovenia, western Austria and not long before had included Rome and the region around Venice and some of the area which is now eastern Spain and France.

When you are talking about something that was created 600 years ago, you have to qualify what you mean when you say "northern Italy" so that you cast it within the correct political and cultural boundaries of the time. What we call northern Italy, in the 14th and early 15th centuries, was largely germanic. Their political and cultural ties were with those who lived in central Europe more than they were with those who lived in the Italic city-states (with the exception of Salerno, which retained Lombard ties long after the Lombards lost the kingdom of Naples). And by the way, germanic does not mean German. The Germans were a subset of the Germanic peoples.


I'll will also say this once again... Just because something leads to central Europe does not mean the researcher has a central European "theory" or that the researcher's "attention" was on central Europe. The data led there. There is no need to "shift attention from central Europe" if the attention/assumption was not there in the first place and if the researcher is following specific attributes of the manuscript (writing, ink, parchment, drawing style, content, etc.) wherever they may lead. Which is what a researcher should do until a preponderance of evidence (which I don't think we have yet) provides some answers.