There is also the chance that parts of the VM were made later than the rest. If so, the large foldout (rosettes recto and verso) might be a good candidate. Especially the lack of various pigments is remarkable: why didn't anyone come in and paint the lips + cheeks red? Why aren't there any green details on the rosettes foldout when the color is used liberally in all other sections of the MS?
But yes... I have been very vocal about my preference for an early date. If the sequence has no precedent, then I will need to include early 1430's.
If you ask me, the most unusual thing about this find is the following. I'll try to explain. We've been looking for a matching tetradic sequence for decades. Medieval books are full of them: they loved groups of four. Four winds, directions, seasons, humors, elements... And much more. Still, nothing really worked for this, speculation aside. There were good ideas though, about the flower and the old woman especially, and thoughts of seasons and ages were justified. But we were missing the iconographic sequence. I tried hard to make sense of if but it never really worked.
Then a few days ago, I was idly browsing some Hausbuch-adjacent manuscripts looking for good bulls. The ladies with flowers drew my eye, but didn't seem too exceptional. Then, I saw the hunched old lady with cane and beads. This reminded me of the VM old lady. I went back to review the whole sequence but only saw ladies with flowers and canes. But then I turned a page forward, and there's a man with plain headgear looking at a yellow glass vessel.
I've gotten much more critical and pessimistic about matching VM images over the years, but this sent shivers down my spine. I knew it was something I had never seen before.
But now comes the weird thing: the doctor isn't part of a sequence at all! He just happens to appear after the four seasons in this particular tradition! The image of the medical practitioner simply introduces the section about the four temperaments.
So they are not a sequence, in the sense that they are originally not part of the same quartet. But they are a sequence in the sense that we literally expect them in a sequence in this manuscript tradition.
And then, researching depictions of doctors, I realized how ignorant I had been. Imagine if you showed a medieval person a stock image of a person in white with a stethoscope. Would they say: ah, a doctor? Of course not, they would be ignorant of the nature of the tool, the significance of the uniform, and the iconic function the stethoscope has in our society. For us, showing someone in certain clothing with a stethoscope or a syringe means: this person is a medical practitioner.
What I didn't realize before is that the urine sample being held up to the light had a similar function in medieval iconography as the stethoscope has to us. And the "learned person" style of hat has the same function as a doctor's uniform.
A medieval person would not ask: "what is this guy?"
They would ask: why is there a doctor in this diagram?
Similarly, the cane is a symbol of old age. The rosary (or paternoster, those are apparently different) was apparently also associated with the later stages of life. One's body could not do work anymore, so it was time to focus on the soul, and to prepare to meet one's maker. Care for the elderly was also associated with monastic institutions, which may have further strengthened the connection.
Anyway, what I was getting at is this: the makers of the Voynich diagram combined two figures from a seasons sequence with the stock image of a doctor immediately following that sequence in one specific manuscript tradition (that we know of). Why?
But yes... I have been very vocal about my preference for an early date. If the sequence has no precedent, then I will need to include early 1430's.
If you ask me, the most unusual thing about this find is the following. I'll try to explain. We've been looking for a matching tetradic sequence for decades. Medieval books are full of them: they loved groups of four. Four winds, directions, seasons, humors, elements... And much more. Still, nothing really worked for this, speculation aside. There were good ideas though, about the flower and the old woman especially, and thoughts of seasons and ages were justified. But we were missing the iconographic sequence. I tried hard to make sense of if but it never really worked.
Then a few days ago, I was idly browsing some Hausbuch-adjacent manuscripts looking for good bulls. The ladies with flowers drew my eye, but didn't seem too exceptional. Then, I saw the hunched old lady with cane and beads. This reminded me of the VM old lady. I went back to review the whole sequence but only saw ladies with flowers and canes. But then I turned a page forward, and there's a man with plain headgear looking at a yellow glass vessel.
I've gotten much more critical and pessimistic about matching VM images over the years, but this sent shivers down my spine. I knew it was something I had never seen before.
But now comes the weird thing: the doctor isn't part of a sequence at all! He just happens to appear after the four seasons in this particular tradition! The image of the medical practitioner simply introduces the section about the four temperaments.
So they are not a sequence, in the sense that they are originally not part of the same quartet. But they are a sequence in the sense that we literally expect them in a sequence in this manuscript tradition.
And then, researching depictions of doctors, I realized how ignorant I had been. Imagine if you showed a medieval person a stock image of a person in white with a stethoscope. Would they say: ah, a doctor? Of course not, they would be ignorant of the nature of the tool, the significance of the uniform, and the iconic function the stethoscope has in our society. For us, showing someone in certain clothing with a stethoscope or a syringe means: this person is a medical practitioner.
What I didn't realize before is that the urine sample being held up to the light had a similar function in medieval iconography as the stethoscope has to us. And the "learned person" style of hat has the same function as a doctor's uniform.
A medieval person would not ask: "what is this guy?"
They would ask: why is there a doctor in this diagram?
Similarly, the cane is a symbol of old age. The rosary (or paternoster, those are apparently different) was apparently also associated with the later stages of life. One's body could not do work anymore, so it was time to focus on the soul, and to prepare to meet one's maker. Care for the elderly was also associated with monastic institutions, which may have further strengthened the connection.
Anyway, what I was getting at is this: the makers of the Voynich diagram combined two figures from a seasons sequence with the stock image of a doctor immediately following that sequence in one specific manuscript tradition (that we know of). Why?
![[+]](https://www.voynich.ninja/images/collapse_collapsed.png)