[Blog Post] An Allegory of Salvation (Koen Gheuens & Cary Rapaport)

[MarcoP]

On the lack of Christian imagery, I'm not sure if it is that exceptional. Again, bestiaries are Christian works, but they don't show it in their images (I know overtly Christian images can be added to bestiaries, but the series of beasts appears as an encyclopedia). Similarly, if I showed you just the images of an Ovide Moralisé and told you "this is a deeply Christian work", you would probably call me crazy.

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The question remains why the VM is so extreme in obscuring Christian symbolism. Not only does it lack any sign of devotion, it hardly seems to acknowledge the existence of medieval Europe's dominant culture. So is this not a question for everyone, not matter what their theory is? There are three categories of answers I can think of:

1) The nymphs are people of flesh and blood doing real, practical things related to a trade. (See Livre de Chasse, books about warfare, or those books of trades). In my opinion, this is impossible to defend given the symbolic appearance of the figures.
2) The manuscript is "foreign" and thus unaware of or indifferent towards the dominant culture in Europe. I used to be convinced of this, but I have found it increasingly hard to defend. On the one hand, there are indications of awareness of the dominant culture (Zodiac figures etc) and on the other hand, perhaps especially, there are no strong indications of another culture. The MS seems to dodge cultural giveaways rather than adopt a certain set.
3) This is what I believe now: the absence of overt Christian symbols is intentional, it's part of the game. We are, after all, dealing with a cipher manuscript, so there may have been some intellectual satisfaction derived from the act of obscuring. If you want to create a visual metaphor of "the cleansing and salvation of the body" for "the cleansing and salvation of the soul", then I can imaging this metaphor is extra successful if it uses only imagery from the field of medicine.

Hi Koen,
as a premise, I will say that I believe that (almost) everything is possible, heretics included.

It seems to me that asking why Christian symbolism is obscured implies a speculative interpretation (obscuration) that limits the possible answers. Moreover, a Christian cross prominently appears You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and this by itself shows that here we are not dealing with the extreme obscuration of Christian elements.
In my opinion, discussing the limited presence of Christian symbols would be more compatible with neutral observations.

About your point (2) and the idea that "there are no strong indications of another culture", I wonder what you would take as "strong indication"? Some of the VMS features that could possibly hint to non-European content are:

• the weird plants that some people (yourself included?) thought could be "exotic" (this is also discussed in Touwaide 2015)
  
• the peculiar prominence of the tent motif You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
  
• the unique pharmacy jars in the "pharma" / small-plants section
  
• the possible depiction of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. in f68r1/r2
  

While I agree that there is nothing "strong" in this list, I wonder if we should expect something different.
I think we can all agree that the author(s) of the Voynich manuscript were probably European: the style of the illustrations and costumes, the layout of the manuscript and the script are all European. So one can ask himself, which indicators of a foreign origin do we find in non-European works when they are re-created by Europeans?
This can be seen in translations of Islamic works like:

• Alfonso's Astromagia You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., Castile, XIII Century
  
• Tacuinum Sanitatis: e.g. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., Germany, 1400-1425
  
• Fendulus, "Liber Astrologiae", You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., Sicily, XIII Century
  
• Picatrix Latinus, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., Prague, 1450-1475
  

In my opinion, what the illustrations in these texts share is:

1. very little or no Christian symbolism
   
2. "weird" themes that cannot easily be interpreted in the context of European traditions (but not in the Tacuinum)
   

These two "indicators" are also shared by the VMS.

Fendulus features You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. But camels and ostriches also appear in European bestiaries, so do they count as "strong indication"?

All considered, I don't believe that an European "style" and lack of strong indication of a foreign culture are enough to exclude the idea that the contents of the manuscript are of a non-European origin.