Zodiac Imagery: Manuscript Collection/Discussion

[eggyk]

(before you read, this is a fairly long post, and is not particularly relevant to the VMS itself)

I wanted to bring up something that came up today that is a great example of how logging these manuscripts may give insights in areas we don't expect.

Take this book of hours, written (somewhere) in france roughly 1450-1475AD: 
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On the face of it, this is a pretty standard book of hours with not all that much obvious relevance to the VMS. Within it though, is an interesting virgo. This depiction is -although not particularly exciting- quite distinctive with the woman holding a long, white piece of fabric. This is not a common motif; but it is something we've come across before, exactly twice.

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. ------------ 1470-1480AD  /  France, ?
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. ------  1401-1500AD  /  France?, ?

   

Note that M.312 is dated from 1470-1480AD. This is good, as it fits with the top end of our 1450-1475 range. Interestingly, the virgos are not the only matches here. Some other signs have matches too:

   

In all 3, the scorpio is clearly the same depiction (again, not a common depiction). The capricorns all appear to somewhat involve the "rocky slope / reaching up / eating a tree" concept (see my Aries <-> Capricorn thread You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). Two of the aries match with an "bending over / eating the grass" concept.

First, I had a look through the scorpio list to try to find whether any more instances of the same(ish) scorpio exist in other manuscripts: 

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. ----------- 1475-1485AD  / France N, Rouen
and to a lesser degree:
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. ------ 1475-1500AD  / France N, Rouen?
   

Again, two matches for the capricorn concept, and 1 match for the aries bending down. Next I tried looking for a mix of both of those concepts: 
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. ------- 1463-1498AD / France N, Rouen
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. ---------- 1480-1490AD / France N, Rouen?

   

You may be seeing a pattern here.. But one more: Musée Paul Arbaud MS 13 actually contains an extremely weird sagittarius, who is holding a sword instead of a bow. Has that ever been seen before? (yes)

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. -------------- 1475-1500AD France N, Rouen
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. ------ 1430-1470AD, France, ?

   

Again, both contain a match for the same capricorn concept, and both actually have a similar virgo to eachother, with one of them wearing a hat not too dissimilar to the manuscript we started with. And again, one of them matches the date range, and again it is an example from Northern France, Rouen.

Taking a step back, what i've done here is show links of varying strength between those 3 starting manuscripts with a production area near Rouen. Instead of A=F, its more like: A=B, and B~(C+D+E),  (C+D+E)~F,  therefore A~~F. Is this useful? Potentially. 

Médiathèque de l'Abbaye Saint-Vaast, Ms 1031 currently has no location, and an extremely broad dating range of simply "the 15th century". Based on what i've laid out above we can say the following: 
It has strong links to two virgos, 1450-1475 and 1470-1480
It has strong links to three scorpios, 1450-1475, 1470-1480 and 1475-1485
It has a decent link to another scorpio, 1475-1500

Therefore, it has one strong link to Rouen, and another decent link to Rouen. We started with "15thC" and "France?, ?", and end with "1450-1500" and "France N?, Rouen?". Not too bad. 

As a seperate conclusion, these comparisons also led me to find 3-4 missed examples of the capricorn concept that I had added before I started tracking it, all from Rouen too. Now most of the examples with that concept are from that area, but i'll probably talk about that in the other thread. 

Unfortunately, it takes a lot of time to do this type of research, but i'm hoping that eventually we may find similar transitive weak links with some of the zodiac symbols within the VMS, even if direct links can't be found. It is a big reason why so many examples have been added outside of the VMS carbon dating range, and why so many non-interesting entries are included. It seems like zodiac depiction during the 15th century wasn't some kind of clear-cut evolution or lineage of copying, but more of a big ball of wibbly wobbly, zodiacy stuff. They are all connected in varying ways, in varying amounts, but sometimes there are hidden trends that we can pluck out of the mess and use for our benefit.