28-11-2016, 05:38 AM
(This post was last modified: 28-11-2016, 05:41 AM by Diane.
Edit Reason: clarify
)
Koen,
I'd surely agree that once the Occitan or Judeo-Catalan inscriptions were added, the series was being taken for a calendar, and the Mediterranean world denoted the months of the calendar by the twelve constellations of the Roman zodiac.
But all this proves is that a correlation was being made, not that the intention of the original series was to represent the same 12 constellations that were so very well and widely known within Europe that as early as the ninth century, one writer didn't bother to llist them because "everyone knows them".
Indeed, they were as well known as the series of numbers around a clock-face, and as difficult to "get wrong" as any other universally familiar set of images. Depictions of the 12 month-creatures were found not only in a text-book, but in public places: in cathedrals, churches, mosaics in public buildings.
The point here is that those wishing to argue that the whole content of the manuscript and its imagery is a product of Latin European culture have to address the fact that the series does not represent the zodiac '12'.
It plainly and obviously does not; it is not a 'peculiar' zodiac: it is not a zodiac. I believe I may have been the first to investigate this matter in any depth, though I have since seen Rene and others quote some of my results while omitting the evidence and argument informing those results. The one I see most often repeated is that the series contains "two goats".
So, if it was not originally intended to represent those 12 constellations - at least not according to the Roman-Latin-Byzantine-Arab habit, then what was it supposed to represent, and where did it come from? That's the critical issue for correctly provenancing this imagery.
And if it was not meant as a zodiac series, yet is related to a ten-month period in some way, what (apart from astrology or text-book astronomy) might it relate to? Here, of course, most imaginations fail, and some historical and other study is needed to address the question.
Whether the series does, or doesn't relate to the ecliptic is not something we know; it is a presumption built from the presumption that the series relates to the Roman zodiac's "12".
Similarly, we find for example that the matter of "per degree astrology" has been raised over and over again, but no-one to my knowledge has ever been able to produce a Latin diagram bearing any resemblance to any of the month-folios' tiers of figures.
Here again - and I am very happy to hear of any precedent - I believe my comparisons to circles of 'angelic' figures were the first comparisons of that sort to be offered, but happily since then Marco and others have produced other 'angelic wheels', principally from works produced by Jewish and Islamic speaking scholars during the reign of Alfonzo called 'il Sabio'.
The examples I offered were also from the Jewish tradition, exploring the intersection between the Majorcan school of cartography and Panofsky's opinion that the work displayed element of Kabbalah, a tradition whose early centre was in what is now Northern Spain.
Apart from the work done by P.Han, and which has been largely ignored when it isn't simply parroted without due acknowledgement (a common custom among some of the pre-ninja Voynicheros), I have yet to see anyone attempt to investigate the questions raised by the Voynich calendar's imagery - and particularly whether, and how, the calendar's tiers and 'nymphs' may or do relate to other schemes for the heavens, other forms of calendar, and alternative series of imagery.
Or perhaps it was done, and the results (as so often) ignored because the results ran counter to a prevalent theory.
Discovering and citing precedents correctly is such an important part of decent scholarship, that I'm glad to see how well observed it is in this 'new wave' of Voynich workers - as it had been on the first mailing list.
I'd surely agree that once the Occitan or Judeo-Catalan inscriptions were added, the series was being taken for a calendar, and the Mediterranean world denoted the months of the calendar by the twelve constellations of the Roman zodiac.
But all this proves is that a correlation was being made, not that the intention of the original series was to represent the same 12 constellations that were so very well and widely known within Europe that as early as the ninth century, one writer didn't bother to llist them because "everyone knows them".
Indeed, they were as well known as the series of numbers around a clock-face, and as difficult to "get wrong" as any other universally familiar set of images. Depictions of the 12 month-creatures were found not only in a text-book, but in public places: in cathedrals, churches, mosaics in public buildings.
The point here is that those wishing to argue that the whole content of the manuscript and its imagery is a product of Latin European culture have to address the fact that the series does not represent the zodiac '12'.
It plainly and obviously does not; it is not a 'peculiar' zodiac: it is not a zodiac. I believe I may have been the first to investigate this matter in any depth, though I have since seen Rene and others quote some of my results while omitting the evidence and argument informing those results. The one I see most often repeated is that the series contains "two goats".
So, if it was not originally intended to represent those 12 constellations - at least not according to the Roman-Latin-Byzantine-Arab habit, then what was it supposed to represent, and where did it come from? That's the critical issue for correctly provenancing this imagery.
And if it was not meant as a zodiac series, yet is related to a ten-month period in some way, what (apart from astrology or text-book astronomy) might it relate to? Here, of course, most imaginations fail, and some historical and other study is needed to address the question.
Whether the series does, or doesn't relate to the ecliptic is not something we know; it is a presumption built from the presumption that the series relates to the Roman zodiac's "12".
Similarly, we find for example that the matter of "per degree astrology" has been raised over and over again, but no-one to my knowledge has ever been able to produce a Latin diagram bearing any resemblance to any of the month-folios' tiers of figures.
Here again - and I am very happy to hear of any precedent - I believe my comparisons to circles of 'angelic' figures were the first comparisons of that sort to be offered, but happily since then Marco and others have produced other 'angelic wheels', principally from works produced by Jewish and Islamic speaking scholars during the reign of Alfonzo called 'il Sabio'.
The examples I offered were also from the Jewish tradition, exploring the intersection between the Majorcan school of cartography and Panofsky's opinion that the work displayed element of Kabbalah, a tradition whose early centre was in what is now Northern Spain.
Apart from the work done by P.Han, and which has been largely ignored when it isn't simply parroted without due acknowledgement (a common custom among some of the pre-ninja Voynicheros), I have yet to see anyone attempt to investigate the questions raised by the Voynich calendar's imagery - and particularly whether, and how, the calendar's tiers and 'nymphs' may or do relate to other schemes for the heavens, other forms of calendar, and alternative series of imagery.
Or perhaps it was done, and the results (as so often) ignored because the results ran counter to a prevalent theory.
Discovering and citing precedents correctly is such an important part of decent scholarship, that I'm glad to see how well observed it is in this 'new wave' of Voynich workers - as it had been on the first mailing list.