12-08-2023, 06:39 AM
I'm very new to VM research but have been doing a lot of digging compiling resources like manuscripts and botanical sites, delving into history and even some archeology. To focus my efforts, I have accepted the radio carbon dating to 1404-1438 as most probable. Due to the limited amount of Latin and High German text in the VM, I have accepted a European, possibly Germanic, origin as likely. Additionally, I accept it as likely the original text was monochromatic and that coloring was added later, possibly by a different but contemporaneous person. This being supported by the presumed retouching of text and the presumed different hands in which the text was written. Most likely, it wasn't originally a bound book but rather loose parchments, the current binding being added much later and probably not the first binding. Whatever the original order of the parchments, they have been rearranged since and at least some parchments are missing. I find it highly unlikely this was either a hoax or a prank, medieval or contemporary, as some have suggested. It is simply too elaborate and too much has been proven about it for that to be believable.
Historically, the author would have been born and lived in very uncertain times in Europe in the Late Middle Ages. Famines and the Black Death decimated the population and there was a great need for experimental pharmacology. Labor shortages gave rise to peasant revolts and there was increased power to the guilds, increased power to the cities, the dominance of the Hanseatic League, and eventually the end of serfdom and the feudal system itself. Control of the Holy Roman Empire changed and it became fragmented with power held by the principalities. The Golden Horde was still a threat and the Ottoman Empire dominated while Central European kingdoms and territories experienced mergers and changes in control and struggled with borders and to maintain independence. There were many military battles and several wars. The Catholic Church in Europe was divided along political lines, eventually giving rise to the Protestant Reformation. The Teutonic Order reached the height of its power and then was on the decline. Paganism had mostly officially been replaced by Christianity but many pagan customs were incorporated locally, Lithuania remained pagan, and elsewhere pockets of paganism would have continued, particularly in rural areas and among smaller ethnic populations. Inquisitions were prevalent throughout Europe. Jews were persecuted and blamed in part for the Black Death. Women were persecuted for witchcraft.
My first thought when I started studying the VM was it was at least in part an alchemical text due to the seeming scientific, experimental and theoretical nature of the imagery. I still believe that but my suppositions have evolved. My current leanings are the author and original illustrator was an apothecary or a practitioner of folk medicine by trade but a scientist and an alchemist who experimented in secret and was probably more inclined towards paganism rather than Christianity. The author was probably a polymath but I doubt this is a known person and we may never know his or her identity but he or she would have been trusted and consulted locally, possibly regionally, by persons both with and without the means to pay for medicinal services. It is unlikely he or she was well-born or a member of the clergy or had a patron but evidently earned enough to afford parchment sheets purchased over time as needed. The author probably started work on the VM once successful in a trade and worked on it over many years. It is likely the person was from a family with the means to pay for at least a partial higher education, possibly at a university, as it seems the author had at least some classical training and was likely familiar with works that were commonly studied at the time as it seems at least some drawings may have been copied in part or were modified versions from other works. The person probably had access to plants only found locally and at least some of which may have since become extinct and he or she may have experimented with hybridization, both of which might explain in part why the plants are so difficult to identify with any certainty. This was probably someone who would have feared local persecution, probably death, as a heretic or worse should their secret activities and practices be discovered. If the person had been discovered, there would have been a record of any punishment received, though such a record may not have survived or hasn't been found or hasn't been connected to the VM yet. Fearing discovery, it would have been necessary to disguise the writing in the VM, hence the encryption or unidentified language. But it wouldn't have been too complicated as it would have been intended to be read by at least one other person, either a family member or an apprentice, perhaps both. I can't as yet rule out the possibility this person was of some very minor local ethnic group or their family could have migrated from somewhere else. In which case, they may have had their own language that was distinctly different from any other regionally, possibly globally, and perhaps both the language and the ethnicity are now extinct. In which case, it's possible those who knew the language could have been limited to a single family who were fluent in it.
All that said, I think the VM, like a poorer version of the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, was simply the author's loose scientific notes, never intended for those outside their inner circle, meaning an apprentice, possibly a son (or daughter), one who would have inherited it. I believe this apprentice was the one who added the colorization and retouched the text. Some of the pages could also have been the apprentice's own work, hence the different hand some have noted.
But then I am very new to VM research and this is a very early working theory, subject to a lot of change as I pull it apart and disprove it. Something I imagine I will be at a very, very long time.
Historically, the author would have been born and lived in very uncertain times in Europe in the Late Middle Ages. Famines and the Black Death decimated the population and there was a great need for experimental pharmacology. Labor shortages gave rise to peasant revolts and there was increased power to the guilds, increased power to the cities, the dominance of the Hanseatic League, and eventually the end of serfdom and the feudal system itself. Control of the Holy Roman Empire changed and it became fragmented with power held by the principalities. The Golden Horde was still a threat and the Ottoman Empire dominated while Central European kingdoms and territories experienced mergers and changes in control and struggled with borders and to maintain independence. There were many military battles and several wars. The Catholic Church in Europe was divided along political lines, eventually giving rise to the Protestant Reformation. The Teutonic Order reached the height of its power and then was on the decline. Paganism had mostly officially been replaced by Christianity but many pagan customs were incorporated locally, Lithuania remained pagan, and elsewhere pockets of paganism would have continued, particularly in rural areas and among smaller ethnic populations. Inquisitions were prevalent throughout Europe. Jews were persecuted and blamed in part for the Black Death. Women were persecuted for witchcraft.
My first thought when I started studying the VM was it was at least in part an alchemical text due to the seeming scientific, experimental and theoretical nature of the imagery. I still believe that but my suppositions have evolved. My current leanings are the author and original illustrator was an apothecary or a practitioner of folk medicine by trade but a scientist and an alchemist who experimented in secret and was probably more inclined towards paganism rather than Christianity. The author was probably a polymath but I doubt this is a known person and we may never know his or her identity but he or she would have been trusted and consulted locally, possibly regionally, by persons both with and without the means to pay for medicinal services. It is unlikely he or she was well-born or a member of the clergy or had a patron but evidently earned enough to afford parchment sheets purchased over time as needed. The author probably started work on the VM once successful in a trade and worked on it over many years. It is likely the person was from a family with the means to pay for at least a partial higher education, possibly at a university, as it seems the author had at least some classical training and was likely familiar with works that were commonly studied at the time as it seems at least some drawings may have been copied in part or were modified versions from other works. The person probably had access to plants only found locally and at least some of which may have since become extinct and he or she may have experimented with hybridization, both of which might explain in part why the plants are so difficult to identify with any certainty. This was probably someone who would have feared local persecution, probably death, as a heretic or worse should their secret activities and practices be discovered. If the person had been discovered, there would have been a record of any punishment received, though such a record may not have survived or hasn't been found or hasn't been connected to the VM yet. Fearing discovery, it would have been necessary to disguise the writing in the VM, hence the encryption or unidentified language. But it wouldn't have been too complicated as it would have been intended to be read by at least one other person, either a family member or an apprentice, perhaps both. I can't as yet rule out the possibility this person was of some very minor local ethnic group or their family could have migrated from somewhere else. In which case, they may have had their own language that was distinctly different from any other regionally, possibly globally, and perhaps both the language and the ethnicity are now extinct. In which case, it's possible those who knew the language could have been limited to a single family who were fluent in it.
All that said, I think the VM, like a poorer version of the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, was simply the author's loose scientific notes, never intended for those outside their inner circle, meaning an apprentice, possibly a son (or daughter), one who would have inherited it. I believe this apprentice was the one who added the colorization and retouched the text. Some of the pages could also have been the apprentice's own work, hence the different hand some have noted.
But then I am very new to VM research and this is a very early working theory, subject to a lot of change as I pull it apart and disprove it. Something I imagine I will be at a very, very long time.