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• My pet theory

  JustAnotherTheory > 2 hours ago

  Everyone has their own "pet theory" on what the VMS is, or what the illustrations/imagery represent. In this thread I offer mine. It is based on reading almost 3000 pages of Wappenbuch (15th century coat of arms compendia), almost 25 different Bellifortis and many other related illustrated books and manuscripts from the 1400s.
  
  Studying the VMS is indeed an incredible time sink, and at this point I feel I've wasted enough time in my life on this, so I'll offer my "pet theory" and probably give this whole subject a break for a while.
  
  So in a nutshell, my proposition is this: the plant section in the VMS is not about plants at all. Rather, the plants are artistic renditions of existing coat of arms, heraldry and other material inspired from contemporary books. I'll offer some conjectures on "why", at the end of this post.
  
  It all started with an observation about folio f90v1. It occurred to me that the structure of this "plant" ressembles the classic "lion with a crown" heraldry:
  
     
  
  Thinking that perhaps this is not simply a coincidence, I continued checking some contemporary heraldry manuscripts, Wappenbuchs. And indeed, it seemed to me that such coincidences occur many times. Take the root of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. for instance:
  
     
  
  Or the root of f46v:
  
     
  
  Some leaves also remind one of classical heraldic elements. How about some peacock feathers:
  
     
  
     
  
  Then we have the many "croziers", i.e., bishop's staffs, which are abundant in medieval heraldry. Why do they appear so much in the VMS plants?
  
     
  
  Or how about the Wolkenstein family coat of arms:
  
     
  
  Or this:
  
     
  
  We also have a spear:
  
     
  
  The quadruple wheel is a well-known heraldic element, too.
  
     
  
  Let's move on to Bellifortis. This classic war book has a lot of small details that remind on of the VMS. Here are a few below. Since each copy is different, I find it likely that there exists one copy (maybe lost) that resembles the VMS even more. Anyway, take a look at this.
  
     
  
  How about this?
  
     
  
  And this walking man "root":
  
     
  
  Is this a COVID cell, or rather a classic detonating device from Bellifortis?
  
     
  
  Is this an unknown flower the world has never seen, or is it a fountain?
  
     
  
  Is this a flower, or a shield?
  
     
  
  Some conclusions and conjectures
  
  In the course of my "study", I found a large amount of coincidences like those presented above, which I will omit here for lack of space. It seems to me that almost every page of the VMS plant section can be corresponded with a heraldic element or some other item from Bellifortis. So now I ask: why?
  
  Conjecture 1. The plants in the VMS "plants" section are not plants.
  
  To me, it is pointless to try and identify these plants, because they are simply NOT plants. But do they have some connection to the text?
  
  Conjecture 2. The plants in the VMS "plants" section encode some meaning related to the text on the same page.
  
  By this I mean, that if you can unambiguously identify that a plant of a specific folio is the coat of arms of, say, Sigismund I, or Pope Martin V, then somehow on that page you should have the word "Sigismund" or "Papst Martinus" or something within the text. So instead of looking for plants, like "Hellebore" or "Lily", we should be looking for people's names.
  
  Conjecture 3. The VMS is a forgery, and the author(s) copied elements from 15th century popular books to make it look authentic.
  
  The fact that there are so many references to visual elements from diiverse books might mean that the forger(s) used these as inspiration for their forgery.
  
  ________________________
  
  There are my two cents, and now I'll give this whole thing a break. I hope you enjoyed my "pet theory".

• RE: My pet theory

  Rafal > 37 minutes ago

  Quote:So in a nutshell, my proposition is this: the plant section in the VMS is not about plants at all.

  
  I wouldn't go so far. If you draw some unrealistic, not existing plants with parts inspired by other stuff, they are still plants.
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