Cribs in the Voynich MS

[Mark Knowles]

If the Voynich MS were a regular cipher from the late middle ages, even a relatively complicated one, then these cribs would have been extremely helpful.

Obviously this depends what one means by 'regular'.

So one cannot rule out the possibility that the VMs in fact isn’t a cipher, but just resembles one, perhaps by design.

I would agree with that, although one then has the problem of finding a historical precedent for whatever alternative one hypotheses.

I agree with David Jackson that the work of Ramon Llull, and his students and followers, is a potentially promising lead, when looking for novel ways a late medieval writer might have designed a newer and better cipher from scratch.

I have also said before as have others that the work of Ramon Llull is a very interesting avenue to explore, so I completely concur on this point.

What I can report from my research is that there were ciphers from the time that the Voynich manuscript is carbon dating to that are significantly more advanced than known of before. I can say that these ciphers exhibit sophistated features not seen in later 15th century ciphers. I can also say that on the basis of this evidence that the time from which the Voynich manuscript is carbon dated was a time of much greater cryptographic innovation than the previous or subsequent 50 years(possibly with the exception of the work of Leon Battista Alberti in 1466). The ciphers that I refer o here of are Milanese diplomatic ciphers. Whether or the extent to which the ciphers have anything in common with Voynichese is not clear, though it is not obvious that there is something in common.

Something that I, personally, found very persuasive of a link is that my much earlier cartographic research on Rosettes folio 86v lead me to believe that the author of the Voynich manuscript likely originated from the fairly isolated rural Abbey of Saints Nazzaro and Celso by the Sesia River. Assuming that this idea is correct the Abbot of this abbey therefore logically would seem by far the most likely candidate. It turns out that the Abbot was called Antonio Barbavara. Surprisingly subsequent research, unknown to me before my identification, has shown that the individual most likely to be responsible for ciphers in the Milanese chancellery was his brother Francesco Barbavara and other family members wrote ciphers for the Milanese government. Now it could be a "coincidence", to use the often dismissed term, that the pre-identified author and Abbot of a minor rural Abbey turned out to be the brother of maybe the most advanced cryptographer of the time who was inventing innovative ciphers. I am now keenly trying to locate Milanese ciphers from between the years 1425 and 1438 to help to fill a gap in my knowledge of these ciphers.

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I agree there is some lack of clarity in what people mean by the use of the word cipher. I am open to any definition of this term as long as we are all using the same definition as I don't want to get too bogged down in semantics.