09-08-2022, 12:09 AM
As far as female authors go, in the period, as others have noted, a strong candidate must be the Benedictine Sisters, with Hildegard of Bingen as one of their luminaries. They had a considerable monastic herbal tradition.
In the scenario I favour, the Voynich Manuscript specifically concerns the Ladin herbal tradition of the South Tyrol, alpine northern Italy. On my reading, especially of the map, it concerns the Ladin heartland, the Rosengarten mountain region, which are sacred to the Ladin folk tradition.
Given that location, the focus of attention must be the Benedictine Sisters at Sonnenburg Abbey who had immediate interaction with the Ladin of that area over hundreds of years. Here we find the Benedictine monastic herbalism in contact with the Ladin herb gathering tradition (both of them still extant today.) Indeed, the nuns at Sonneberg had spiritual control (and tithing rights) to one half of the Val Badia (the other half under the control of the Prince-Bishop). This situation led to friction - and even battle - when Nicholas of Cusa tried to reform the Abbey and ran into his nemesis, the abbess Verena von Stubon.
Leaving Cusanus out of it, though, these Benedictine sisters could conceivably have produced such a work. These were not pauper illiterate nuns. The abbey was founded for the daughters of rich local nobility. It boasted educated women. (They gave Nicholas of Cusa a run for his money!) Moreover, Hildegard gives us the conspicuous medieval instance of an artificial language: the Benedictine sisters might be predisposed to linguistic invention.
It might be a bit misleading to describe it as an abbey of nuns, though. It operated more as a civic centre. The Benedictine rule was never enforced. When Nicholas of Cusa arrived on a reforming mission he ordered the nuns to be cloistered and gave them thirty days to dispense with their boyfriends. The nuns - actually noble women - were outraged, fought back and turned to the Duke of Tyrol for protection. Before Cusanus arrived with the Catholic Reformation the abbey was not a quiet retreat dedicated to divine contemplation. It was rather more worldly. The Voynich Ms, though nominally Christian, doesn't seem to be especially pious. (The politics of the nuns was clearly Ghiberline.)
This is my Hypothesis B. But it is not because of any supposed female content in the manuscript. It is not an obstetric or gynaecological text or concerned with women's diseases (or any diseases on the evidence of the pictures). Nor with women bathing. But the Benedictine sisters of Sonnenburg were intelligent women in the right place at the right time. They'd be my vote for female authors. It would be good to establish a picture of the intellectual atmosphere of the abbey, its manuscripts etc. in the period. (But it was closed down in the 1700s and its property dispersed.)
Sonnenburg castle (in South Tyrol, not to be confused with the one in Switzerland) is now a luxury hotel and sports a herb garden of 250 herbs in the tradition, they tell the guests and tourists, of Hildegard.
In the scenario I favour, the Voynich Manuscript specifically concerns the Ladin herbal tradition of the South Tyrol, alpine northern Italy. On my reading, especially of the map, it concerns the Ladin heartland, the Rosengarten mountain region, which are sacred to the Ladin folk tradition.
Given that location, the focus of attention must be the Benedictine Sisters at Sonnenburg Abbey who had immediate interaction with the Ladin of that area over hundreds of years. Here we find the Benedictine monastic herbalism in contact with the Ladin herb gathering tradition (both of them still extant today.) Indeed, the nuns at Sonneberg had spiritual control (and tithing rights) to one half of the Val Badia (the other half under the control of the Prince-Bishop). This situation led to friction - and even battle - when Nicholas of Cusa tried to reform the Abbey and ran into his nemesis, the abbess Verena von Stubon.
Leaving Cusanus out of it, though, these Benedictine sisters could conceivably have produced such a work. These were not pauper illiterate nuns. The abbey was founded for the daughters of rich local nobility. It boasted educated women. (They gave Nicholas of Cusa a run for his money!) Moreover, Hildegard gives us the conspicuous medieval instance of an artificial language: the Benedictine sisters might be predisposed to linguistic invention.
It might be a bit misleading to describe it as an abbey of nuns, though. It operated more as a civic centre. The Benedictine rule was never enforced. When Nicholas of Cusa arrived on a reforming mission he ordered the nuns to be cloistered and gave them thirty days to dispense with their boyfriends. The nuns - actually noble women - were outraged, fought back and turned to the Duke of Tyrol for protection. Before Cusanus arrived with the Catholic Reformation the abbey was not a quiet retreat dedicated to divine contemplation. It was rather more worldly. The Voynich Ms, though nominally Christian, doesn't seem to be especially pious. (The politics of the nuns was clearly Ghiberline.)
This is my Hypothesis B. But it is not because of any supposed female content in the manuscript. It is not an obstetric or gynaecological text or concerned with women's diseases (or any diseases on the evidence of the pictures). Nor with women bathing. But the Benedictine sisters of Sonnenburg were intelligent women in the right place at the right time. They'd be my vote for female authors. It would be good to establish a picture of the intellectual atmosphere of the abbey, its manuscripts etc. in the period. (But it was closed down in the 1700s and its property dispersed.)
Sonnenburg castle (in South Tyrol, not to be confused with the one in Switzerland) is now a luxury hotel and sports a herb garden of 250 herbs in the tradition, they tell the guests and tourists, of Hildegard.