[Blog Post] Circular text-framed zodiacs limited to 200km radius...

[SherriMM]

Just published a new blog post, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. on my site. 

I shared five manuscript examples, including the original Bellifortis from 1405 (Gottingen Cod. Ms. Philos. 63) and a later copy (Codex FB 32009), as well as other manuscripts (not Bellifortis): Vienna ONB Cod. 3067; Munich Cgm 595; and BSB Cgm 312, which vary in date of creation from 1405 through 1450/1473 - though they were all created in a radius under 200 km in Bavaria - in no order:  Eichstatt, Augsburg, Ingolstadt, Swabia / Eastern Swabia, and Tyrol (Austria).  

I am very interested to see if anyone has more examples of the zodiac signs (especially those depicting classical planets) framed by text within a circle - in any manuscript - and if they are from this location. 

Are they limited to this specific area? Prove me right / wrong. Thanks! 

Including two images from the blog post. 

All the best,
Sherri

[DG97EEB]

Just published a new blog post, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. on my site. 

I shared five manuscript examples, including the original Bellifortis from 1405 (Gottingen Cod. Ms. Philos. 63) and a later copy (Codex FB 32009), as well as other manuscripts (not Bellifortis): Vienna ONB Cod. 3067; Munich Cgm 595; and BSB Cgm 312, which vary in date of creation from 1405 through 1450/1473 - though they were all created in a radius under 200 km in Bavaria - in no order:  Eichstatt, Augsburg, Ingolstadt, Swabia / Eastern Swabia, and Tyrol (Austria).  

I am very interested to see if anyone has more examples of the zodiac signs (especially those depicting classical planets) framed by text within a circle - in any manuscript - and if they are from this location. 

Are they limited to this specific area? Prove me right / wrong. Thanks! 

Including two images from the blog post. 

All the best,
Sherri

If you search for zodiac on the forum, you'll find the thread Eggyk is running. He has an entire spreadsheet where he and the community have been contributing. It's up to a couple hundred .

[SherriMM]

Just published a new blog post, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. on my site. 

I shared five manuscript examples, including the original Bellifortis from 1405 (Gottingen Cod. Ms. Philos. 63) and a later copy (Codex FB 32009), as well as other manuscripts (not Bellifortis): Vienna ONB Cod. 3067; Munich Cgm 595; and BSB Cgm 312, which vary in date of creation from 1405 through 1450/1473 - though they were all created in a radius under 200 km in Bavaria - in no order:  Eichstatt, Augsburg, Ingolstadt, Swabia / Eastern Swabia, and Tyrol (Austria).  

I am very interested to see if anyone has more examples of the zodiac signs (especially those depicting classical planets) framed by text within a circle - in any manuscript - and if they are from this location. 

Are they limited to this specific area? Prove me right / wrong. Thanks! 

Including two images from the blog post. 

All the best,
Sherri

If you search for zodiac on the forum, you'll find the thread Eggyk is running. He has an entire spreadsheet where he and the community have been contributing. It's up to a couple hundred .

Thank you for sharing that resource. Out of the hundreds of examples, I have only noticed one more example of circular text around the zodiac sign so far (#555 in Pisces on that sheet), Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek (ÖNB), Cod. 13647 from Sankt Florian, Austria (which does expand my radius by maybe 85 km). 

This manuscript section is more of a calendar format than a planetery children, or horse riders, in terms of imagery, but it does appear to be the mneumonic verses that are similar to my other examples (which I'm working on translating). Cod. 13647 does include the "Secret Secretorum", same as one of my other examples (Vienna ONB Cod. 3067) - are they related in other ways? 

Also ONB lists the date as 1300, but KdiH has it at 1380/1385 which would predate the Bellifortis, but seems more reasonable.

[DG97EEB]

Can I suggest you repost to You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. to keep the threads together

[eggyk]

Are they limited to this specific area? Prove me right / wrong. Thanks! 

Including two images from the blog post. 

All the best,
Sherri

Thanks for these! I had a look through the spreadsheet (before realising you have done the same), and you are completely correct. Somehow I didn't have Cgm312, and i didn't think Gottingen Cod. Ms. Philos. 63 was digitised, but we do have another manuscript that also contains this feature:

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1380-1385AD
Austria, Sankt Florian
(ONB is down right now so link might not work)
       

So again, same feature from the same-ish area. Many southern germany styles transferred quite far, from strasbourg to austria.   

Also ONB lists the date as 1300, but KdiH has it at 1380/1385 which would predate the Bellifortis, but seems more reasonable.

I think ONB has the habit of sometimes posting the year representing the beginning of the century in which the manuscript is dated.

[R. Sale]

Looks like this technique of writing in circular bands can also be found in a few Biblical texts from the SE German and Austrian areas, starting with Sankt Florian. [Some sources can be expanded to more images.]

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The VMs has circular bands of text in the zodiac sequence, in the cosmos, in the nine rosettes, and elsewhere. The important segments are marked with quatrefoils and other designs.

PS: Remember the Eastern crown.

[DG97EEB]

Deleted

[eggyk]

Just had another look. An almost exact copy of the work you show in CGM 595 is also found in: 
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1440-1460AD, 
Germany S, Swabia? (Based on swabian dialect)

   

It's actually the source with the best rated gemini ever found: 

   

[DG97EEB]

I deleted my earlier post, but we know these images are principally German.. but not exclusively. There are English manuscripts with the same.. This only becomes interesting if we identify a named illustrator

[eggyk]

I deleted my earlier post, but we know these images are principally German.. but not exclusively. There are English manuscripts with the same.. This only becomes interesting if we identify a named illustrator

I think it's not so much the zodiac style, but rather the thick bar around the medallion with inserted text. Medallions are common of course, and the thick bar is semi-common in that strasbourg-austria band, but finding text within the circles similar to the VMS is actually very rare.