What initially sparked your interest in Voynich research?

[R. Sale]

Though I had seen the old 'Scientific America' article earlier, what got me interested in the VMs was the Goldstones' old book, 'The Friar and the Cipher'. That was several years before the VMs parchment C-14 tests. So, while the premise failed, it was an interesting biography of Roger Bacon. So much so, that I did a bit of my own supplementary research on that era, and, to make a long story short, specifically Bacon's connection to Ottobuono Fieschi, who was elected Pope in July of 1276 and died a few weeks later.

There's a lot of history there to pick up on, but one of the relevant details is heraldry. And one of the specific details is that Fieschi heraldry is armorial, and that it existed long before the general back-fill that gave all popes heraldic insignia sometime in the 1700s, (IIRC) There are actually a number of differing presentations of the Fieschi blazon, some better than others.

What caught my eye at the time was the final color image in the Goldstones' book which was VMs White Aries. And there among the surrounding nymphs, there were two whose tubs had blue stripes. Furthermore, if one ignores the axial misdirection, the stripes on the page are close to being oriented in the same diagonal direction as specified by the Fieschi blazon. And the fact is that the patterns are paired.

So, there goes nothing, because if the relevant history is unknown, nothing happens.

Investigation of the nymphs on VMs White Aries reveals a lot. Lots of painting. There are blue tubs and green tubs and tubs with blue stripes and more. There are red hats and white hats and so on.

Investigation of history reveals that heraldry functioned as a method of communication in both armorial and ecclesiastical situations. Red galeros for cardinals; white for Premonstratensians. Turns out that there is a nymph on the left side of the inner White Aries circle that has a red hat and a tub with blue stripes. Can this construction be given historical interpretation? History tells the origins of the cardinal's red galero; Pope Innocent IV was Sinibaldo Fieshi, who made his nephew a cardinal in 1251. This historical interpretation is supported by further investigation of VMs placement according to independent hierarchical, heraldic, and religious considerations. It's a long story.

The question that remains unanswered is whether VMs White Aries is a visual gate to a linguistic pathway? Do Stolfi's markers in the circular text bands have a real purpose?