17-05-2016, 10:38 AM
Thanks to Anton,
I think it would be the impression of a newcomer that the greatest amount of researchers' attention is paid to Germany, and German manuscripts and images and so on.
As for being 'led by the data' I would agree, but as any statistician will tell you, the data reflects the parameters set for data collection. If people only look at 15thC Latin manuscripts from (say) Sicily, then they find their 'most like" to be an image in a fifteenth-century manuscript from Sicily.. or wherever.
In investigating the late Menno Knul's assertion that the Vermont 'Tuscany' Herbal was "convincingly like" Beinecke MS 408, I considered its materials, dimensions, palette, attitude to the page, style of imagery, details of imagery and script. If I could have done, I'd also have considered the binding.
The dimensions of the Voynich manuscript's membrane are relatively rare in our collections today, but there is evidence that they may have once been a standard size, many manuscripts having later been re-bound, and trimmed, this obscuring the original congruence.
However, having found un-trimmed paper from the Cairo geniza of those dimensions, and various other examples, including a fourteenth-century manuscript made in the Veneto and a handful of others catalogued as from 'North Italy' by the holding library, it seems appropriate on that score alone (not to mention Touwaide's illuminating comment) to attribute manufacture of our present volume to that region - Italy, like France, Italy and Spain having been very generally neglected by Voynich studies since 2000 save for Nick Pelling's research, which resulted in his attributing the work to Milan.
'Northern Italy' is used by most libraries as a normal description of provenance and as a rule everyone knows what is meant. Rome, I believe, is included in "central Italy" but above it and including Genoa, Milan, Padua, Pordenone (as in 'Odoric of..').. and Venice and Piacenza are 'north..'.
A critical issue, in this case, is page-layout and relative importance accorded written over pictorial text. If one is attempting to locate the place where a manuscript was made, then these technical details of manufacture, scribal habits and the way membrane was finished matter more than whether you see a bearded onion or not. Texts of the Circa instans type travelled the length and breadth of the Latin-speaking world, and a bearded onion might, too.
Codicology is an essential part of provenancing and the Voynich membrane is not finished in German style, the page is not laid out in the way Latin manuscripts from Germany were laid out; the hand which wrote the main text appears not to be German; the pagination is not German.There may be untrimmed German manuscripts with the same dimensions - but now we know that the binding isn't German either. I often marvel that the 'German' theory ever got off the ground, let alone that it has survived so long. But others may think the same of Nick's Italian theory..
I think it would be the impression of a newcomer that the greatest amount of researchers' attention is paid to Germany, and German manuscripts and images and so on.
As for being 'led by the data' I would agree, but as any statistician will tell you, the data reflects the parameters set for data collection. If people only look at 15thC Latin manuscripts from (say) Sicily, then they find their 'most like" to be an image in a fifteenth-century manuscript from Sicily.. or wherever.
In investigating the late Menno Knul's assertion that the Vermont 'Tuscany' Herbal was "convincingly like" Beinecke MS 408, I considered its materials, dimensions, palette, attitude to the page, style of imagery, details of imagery and script. If I could have done, I'd also have considered the binding.
The dimensions of the Voynich manuscript's membrane are relatively rare in our collections today, but there is evidence that they may have once been a standard size, many manuscripts having later been re-bound, and trimmed, this obscuring the original congruence.
However, having found un-trimmed paper from the Cairo geniza of those dimensions, and various other examples, including a fourteenth-century manuscript made in the Veneto and a handful of others catalogued as from 'North Italy' by the holding library, it seems appropriate on that score alone (not to mention Touwaide's illuminating comment) to attribute manufacture of our present volume to that region - Italy, like France, Italy and Spain having been very generally neglected by Voynich studies since 2000 save for Nick Pelling's research, which resulted in his attributing the work to Milan.
'Northern Italy' is used by most libraries as a normal description of provenance and as a rule everyone knows what is meant. Rome, I believe, is included in "central Italy" but above it and including Genoa, Milan, Padua, Pordenone (as in 'Odoric of..').. and Venice and Piacenza are 'north..'.
A critical issue, in this case, is page-layout and relative importance accorded written over pictorial text. If one is attempting to locate the place where a manuscript was made, then these technical details of manufacture, scribal habits and the way membrane was finished matter more than whether you see a bearded onion or not. Texts of the Circa instans type travelled the length and breadth of the Latin-speaking world, and a bearded onion might, too.
Codicology is an essential part of provenancing and the Voynich membrane is not finished in German style, the page is not laid out in the way Latin manuscripts from Germany were laid out; the hand which wrote the main text appears not to be German; the pagination is not German.There may be untrimmed German manuscripts with the same dimensions - but now we know that the binding isn't German either. I often marvel that the 'German' theory ever got off the ground, let alone that it has survived so long. But others may think the same of Nick's Italian theory..
![[+]](https://www.voynich.ninja/images/collapse_collapsed.png)