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folio 85r2 possibly representing the 4 academic faculties

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  • folio 85r2 possibly representing the 4 academic faculties
• folio 85r2 possibly representing the 4 academic faculties

• folio 85r2 possibly representing the 4 academic faculties

  blongblingi > 1 hour ago

  Before i begin my claim, i must say that i'm a mere layman, and so if a lot of stuff here doesn't fit findings i didn't know about, i would love to hear about that.
  
  Now that i got that out of the way, let's look at how the folio might represent the four faculties:
  
  Medieval academia tended to have 4 faculties: Theology, Medicine, Law and The Arts. Here i will go through (what i think) each character might represent, from most to least likely (in my opinion atleast), as well as some of my (personal and unsubstantiated) speculations regarding the nature of the folio in general.
  
  First, for the most obvious one (imo atleast) we have medicine, represented by the guy on the right. the urine flask clearly represents a medieval doctor so i won't go deep here.
  
  Now, the man on the bottom based on this theory would represent theology: the similarities to St. anthony are already fairly established, and i believe it could be reasonable for a saint (though not anthony himself, asthe painting here could be a generic priest or saint) to represent theology.
  
  
  for the man on the left  holding a flower however, i suggest this: the man here represents the art of Rhetoric, which acts as a "representative" for the entire faculty of Arts and philosophy: i found a depiction in Cod. 2975, of rhetoric represented as a man holding a flower, with it being a pun on an older medieval book (from the 11th century) called "Flores rhetorici"     .  (however one thing to note here, is that a man gesturing here in the manner similar to the guy in the top of the folio is a representative of philosophy - this will be relevant later, and theology is represented here as the trinity, not as a saint. the manuscript given here was made in the 1460's, but it is assumed to be a copy of an older one, and the copy we have is from austria - fairly close to the theorized creation place of the voynich manuscript). I will admit that while i didn't manage to find other examples of "rhetoric directly holding a flower", i found another example of rhetoric pointing at a ring of flowers in the Regia Carmina fol. 29.      as well as an inscription near a depiction of rhetoric, represented as cicero woodworking, with an inscription near writing "Est mea dicendi ratio cum flore loquendi"     , so a rhetoric~flowers connection does exist. 
  
  lastly, we can look at the man at the top, and finally i here suggest that this man is a representative of the faculty of Law. while i would admit this acts as a descent stretch, the finger here isn't simply pointed, but pointed upwards. as can be seen from the Heidelberg Sachsenspiegel, Cod. Pal. germ 164 from the early 14th century:
     
  
   a raised right hand index finger demonstrates a verdict done by the judge. thus the only "big" feature from that side of the circle coincides with Law. Here we can also look at Cod. 2975 in that manner: philosophy is depicted as the "king of the Arts" in that manuscript, and what does a king do? (especially one whose entire being is deciding right from wrong ) , that's right- he judges. 
  
  now that i explained my chain of thought regarding that association, now it's time for a bit of speculation! what could this possibly tell us about the manuscript as a whole?
  i mainly have 2 theories: 1. that the voynich manuscript doesn't discuss only medicine (as can be easily seen by the botanic paintings of unknown plants) but also theology, the arts and law. Or 2. to act as a sort of proof, either by claiming that men of different fields all support the contents of the manuscript, or that the contents of the manuscript can be applied to all sciences. 
  
  
  all in all, i hope that the smell of "rhetorical flowers" here was pretty good (but not good enough to get you guys hooked completely in) and would love to hear what you guys think about this.
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