15-08-2026, 05:21 PM
It doesn't seem like a good start to say that it doesn't matter what people of the time thought.
It is highly unlikely that folio f68v3 is a copy or that its authors drew inspiration from Oresme’s cosmos (BNF Fr. 565, fol. 23). This last illustration does not feature a conventional T-O map; instead, we see the lower half of the Earth covered in water—reflecting the view held by Oresme and the educated public in general. The T-O map on that page of the Voynich manuscript, however, appears to be a conventional map of the three known continents. Note that the lines of the T are straight, whereas in Oresme they are curved to simulate sphericity.
I believe you are referring to the scallop-shaped band as the celestial vault—a point on which we would agree—but we would disagree on the idea that the stars lie beneath that band, because the fixed stars are actually pinned to it. Oresme, one of the great medieval intellectuals, produced a translation of Aristotle that he annotated and corrected in certain respects, yet he did not base it on biblical thought. As a bishop and theologian, he did not wish to contradict Genesis; like others, he envisioned a crystalline sphere—made of frozen water or crystal—situated above the sphere of the fixed stars.
In the illustration, we see the scalloped band and the star-filled space between it and the Earth. Nothing else can be done in a two-dimensional plane, yet this represents a three-dimensional sphere, and the fixed stars mark the boundary of the medieval universe. The addition of the crystalline sphere—a feature that would appear during the Renaissance—was rare in this context.
The spiral arms visible on folio f68v3 of the Voynich manuscript are a simple graphic device used to simulate motion. This is what misled Newbold into believing they represented the Andromeda galaxy. But it does not originate with the Voynich. There are other medieval examples, such as one cited on ReneZ's page.
It is highly unlikely that folio f68v3 is a copy or that its authors drew inspiration from Oresme’s cosmos (BNF Fr. 565, fol. 23). This last illustration does not feature a conventional T-O map; instead, we see the lower half of the Earth covered in water—reflecting the view held by Oresme and the educated public in general. The T-O map on that page of the Voynich manuscript, however, appears to be a conventional map of the three known continents. Note that the lines of the T are straight, whereas in Oresme they are curved to simulate sphericity.
I believe you are referring to the scallop-shaped band as the celestial vault—a point on which we would agree—but we would disagree on the idea that the stars lie beneath that band, because the fixed stars are actually pinned to it. Oresme, one of the great medieval intellectuals, produced a translation of Aristotle that he annotated and corrected in certain respects, yet he did not base it on biblical thought. As a bishop and theologian, he did not wish to contradict Genesis; like others, he envisioned a crystalline sphere—made of frozen water or crystal—situated above the sphere of the fixed stars.
In the illustration, we see the scalloped band and the star-filled space between it and the Earth. Nothing else can be done in a two-dimensional plane, yet this represents a three-dimensional sphere, and the fixed stars mark the boundary of the medieval universe. The addition of the crystalline sphere—a feature that would appear during the Renaissance—was rare in this context.
The spiral arms visible on folio f68v3 of the Voynich manuscript are a simple graphic device used to simulate motion. This is what misled Newbold into believing they represented the Andromeda galaxy. But it does not originate with the Voynich. There are other medieval examples, such as one cited on ReneZ's page.