[Article] The Voynich Manuscript, Dr Johannes Hartlieb and the Encipherment of Women’s Secrets

[MichelleL11]

[quote='MichelleL11' pid='59015' dateline='1713537158']
The assertion in various articles on the net that Hartlieb translated Hemmerlin's work for Sigmund is therefore simply wrong. This must be taken into account when evaluating Hartlieb's portfolio in relation to the VMS.

Just to be clear, there is no doubt that Hartlieb was very interested in bathing and its medical applications (even for himself) as, according to Fischer (which you cited), he went on multiple trips to baths local to him (Gastein) with the Dukes as their personal physician.  It was on one of these trips, very near the end of his life, that he received the Hemmerlin manuscript from the bishop of Chiemsee (Bernhard von Kraiburg) and was commanded by Sigmund to translate it from Latin to German.

However, what is not evident is that he was the one who actually performed the work.

There are three existant manuscripts known -- Cgm 733, dated 1481; Clm 8244 complied after 1517; and the earliest, Cgm 732, dated 1474.  (Hartlieb died in 1468).  The first two listed are attributed within to Johannes Hartlieb but the last is attributed to Jordan Tömlinger -- so this is the primary evidence that false attribution had occurred for this particular manuscript and that the translation was likely after Hartlieb's death.

Nothing is ever completely clear in this kind of stuff.