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Mariano Sozzini the Elder's students

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• Mariano Sozzini the Elder's students

• Mariano Sozzini the Elder's students

  JustAnotherTheory > 4 hours ago

  So the idea recently came to me that the VMS might have been the prooduct of students at a school or university, who were studying a profession that was unrelated to scribal work or professionnal writing. Such a hypothesis has already been advanced several times on this forum, by some prominent members. Some have even suggested that the VMS writing looks like that of an apprentice lawyer.
  
  So this prompted me to look for handwriting examples of Italian university students in faculties of law in the first half of the 15th Century. There are not a lot of examples of this, as you might imagine. However, I got lucky, as some students in Siena's university of law actually did leave some written records behind.
  
  In particular, there was a group af about 12 students there, studying under Mariano Sozzini (the elder), who was a prominent lawyer who became famous because he taught the future Pope Pius II (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., in French as there is no Enlgish article available). These students often exchanged notes, and as it turns out they even coollaborated on a common student's notebook during Sozzini's afternoon classes.
  
  This notebook, Recollectae super quibusdam libri II Decretalium, is unfortunately in private hands. However, on the bookseller's webpage, we can see some (low resolution) scans of certain pages:
  
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  One page particularly stands out:
  
     
  
  Many other pages seem to have a Voynich-y feel to their handwriting. Note that among these students, there were several who were German and others Italian. I tried to track them down, and I found the name of the German student: Nicolaus Vetter. He wrote another treatise on Sizzini's courses later in Germany, it is preserved in Valenciennes, BM, MS 261, which is once again unfortunately not available as it is not digitised.
  
  But since we are talking about Siena, I was wondering whether these students could have had any access to Taccola's material, as he was a resident of Siena at this time. Recall that there are several hypotheses about the involvement of at least one Taccola notebook in Quire 13 of the VMS:
  
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  It turns out, that there is a connection between Taccola and Sozzini. According to a recent study on Taccola's life, On 8 December 1438, Taccola showed Sozzini his drawings from his De ingeneis at Sozzini's home in Siena:
  
     
  
  Link to the study:
  
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  This MS is today referred to as Munich, Clm 197 II and is present in several comparisons between Taccola's work and Quire 13 of the VMS. 
  
  So now we have:

  • A documented evidence, that Taccola showed at least one of his notebooks to Sozzini,
    
  • Sozzini's students often collaborated together, 
    
  • The students produced at least one common manuscript together,
    
  • The students were of German and Italian origin.
    

• RE: Mariano Sozzini the Elder's students

  ololololo > 4 hours ago

  This marginalia is generally similar to cTag/cTam
  Here, I’ll note that the distinctive feature of Voynichese script is that it is thin. The letters in other manuscripts always look wider than the letters in VMS. In the attached image, the letters are narrower than they should be. This is quite suitable for VMS...
  
  But what conclusions can be drawn? This is either a hoax prepared by the students (but I would like to note that there was at least one person in the writing team who could write well. He wrote the pages of Herbal A. This is evident from the large initial letters and the overall style of the writing), or it is a cipher created by these same students.

• RE: Mariano Sozzini the Elder's students

  DG97EEB > 2 hours ago

  Very nice... Only thing is I think it's slightly too late.. My quick search put this 1455....
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