Usually when I look at VMS text, I am trying to unravel the meaning (assuming there is one) or puzzle out some of the ambiguous shapes, but a while ago I noticed something about the pen strokes that reminded me of the text on folio 116v…
The Speed of the Quill
Medieval scribes wrote using a quill or stylus. Some wrote faster than others. A faster, lighter stroke dispenses less ink. There are other differences… some scribes pressed harder, and some pressed harder on the downstroke than the cross-stroke (for artistic effects). Some sharpened the quill to a finer point, which creates a different kind of line and overall look. Some sharpened the quill more frequently than others, which improves consistency. Usually goose quills were used, but other feathers were sometimes good for fine lines.
Adhesion holds the ink within the curve of the quill. When you press on the tip to spread the groove, gravity tugs the droplet and ink runs downward. You have to hold the pen at a certain angle, use exactly the right pressure, and pull the tip away from the topside for the ink to dispense evenly.
Here are the basic parts of a nib. It is a protein material that wears down. A scribe needs many quills to complete a long project.
A quill is not like a ballpoint pen. A ballpoint can draw loopty-loops because each part of the ball dispenses ink in the same way. It takes practice to pull a quill in the correct direction and, if you don’t do it right, the ink stutters or blobs. It takes a few years for calligraphers to really master the art.
Cutting a Quill
Shaping the tip of the quill. Often goose feathers were used. [Painting by Gerrit Dou c. 1633, courtesy of the Leiden collection.]
To create a quill, you harvest the feathers, scrape away the soft tissues, and age the feathers to “harden” them (in later years this was accelerated by heating). Artists and modern users have a romantic attachment to the feathery parts, but professional quill-makers and scribes usually removed them.
Use a sharp knife to shape the tip. The width of the tip is related to the width of the stroke. The tip is cut at a slight angle to accommodate the right or left hand. Even the curve of the feather is chosen for right- or left-handedness. A vertical slit is added to channel the ink in small doses from the inner curve of the quill.
If it is a feather quill, it needs to be re-dipped every few words and re-sharpened every few lines. (Don’t sharpen a quill as shown in this painting or you will cut your thumb—carve away, not toward your finger. What I do is press the quill-end alongside a small wooden block and shave toward the block—more control and less risk).
Because a quill needs to be pulled toward the side that holds the ink, a loop is usually drawn in two strokes—from top-to-bottom on the left, then top-to-bottom on the right. This prevents spattering or skipping.
Occasionally a scribe will draw a full loop if the nib is very fine and the loop is very small, but pushing against the direction of the pen is risky—the consequence may be a blob, pen-skip, or broken quill-tip. Similarly, straight strokes are drawn top to bottom to avoid going against the direction of the quill.
How Do Quill Mechanics Relate to the VMS?
If you pull a quill very quickly on the downstroke and start lifting in anticipation of moving to the next letter, the descender becomes very thin and light. Calligraphers are discouraged from doing this because it makes the script look uneven and a “g” might look like an “a”. Nevertheless, it happens, and appears to have happened in parts of the VMS.
On folio 99v, I noticed many of the downstrokes were barely visible. The scribe probably moved fast and reduced the pressure compared to other parts of the glyphs.
Note how many of the descenders are unusually light:
Compare it to this script on 103r where the descenders are darker and more clearly written:
On 116v, at the end of the manuscript, there is some distinctive lightening of descenders, possibly from the pen being moved quickly or possibly from some text that has been expunged below the last visible line:
I am not sure if the two arrows marked with question marks are faded descenders, but the tops of the letters look more like medieval “p” than “v”.
Unfortunately the 116v text does not match the handwriting style of the scribe who wrote the light descenders on f99v. I wish it did—it would be evidence that the 116v scribe might have helped with the manuscript. But the 99v example has rounded c-shapes, not as squeezed as those on 116v, and the descender on EVA-y on 116v is distinctly rounded and arced, so it’s probably a different scribe.
Identifying the Ambiguous Letter
So what is the strange letter on 116v? A “v” or the top of a “p”?
I looked for examples of flat-bottom “v” in medieval manuscripts and found quite a few, but it was definitely not as common as other forms of “v” with pointed or round bottoms.
Below are samples specifically culled from scripts that are similar to the overall script on 116v. These samples don’t match the shape of the VMS char as well as similar examples of the top of the letter “p”, but the differences aren’t sufficient to determine the identity of the VMS char:
So let’s move on to sections where the VMS text has been corrected or changed…
Amendments to the VMS Text
This is one of the more obvious examples where something spilled and someone tried to re-create the damaged text on top of the stain. The text is a bit awkward, the stain may have impeded the quill, but it appears to be added by someone familiar with VMS glyphs:
Less Obvious Examples
Some corrections are more subtle. You have to hunt for them. There are many edits in the VMS. I tried recording them, but it was taking too much time and there isn’t space to enumerate them all here, but I’ll point out a couple of interesting examples.
Apparently someone didn’t like the overly-light descenders on f100r (small-plants section) and tried to fix some of them. Note the light descender marked with a blue arrow. Some of the others have been overinked to add the missing stroke (marked in red).
Whoever over-inked wasn’t very expert. The lines are tentative and shaky. The thickness of the nib doesn’t match. The ink doesn’t match well either:
Medieval inks were not always brown. Some were closer to black when first applied and gradually faded to brown, so you can’t always go by color. Only testing can determine when the extra strokes were added. But the added ink isn’t just a different color, it’s a different kind of stroke, thin and spidery. It lacks the thick-thin characteristics of lines drawn with a quill. It resembles ink from a different kind of pen, maybe a metal stylus or something that can create thinner lines.
Darker ink also occurs at the bottom of f100v, on one of the small-plant folios, but the difference isn’t as great. One has to be careful in evaluating examples like the one below, because sometimes medieval ink was not mixed well and certain components in the ink faded while others remained dark.
I’m pretty sure the text on 100r in the previous example has been over-inked, but it’s harder to tell if the following example is over-inked or badly mixed ink where some components faded more than others:
Changes to Content
Darkening a too-light line is a superficial change that doesn’t alter the intention of a glyph, but there are places where lines have been added to change the shape of a letter. For example, on 100r in the middle, we see a shape that looks like a straight “d” changed into EVA-d with the addition of a loop.
In contrast to the overinked examples shown earlier, the added loop looks like a quill stroke. Even though it is darker ink, it has the thick-thin characteristics and more fluid style of the rest of the text:
So it’s possible that more than one person made changes to the text or that the scribe had difficulty with very fine lines and used a different, perhaps unfamiliar, kind of pen.
These revisions suggest that 1) someone cared about the legibility of the text and tried to fix the parts that were faded, and 2) someone comfortable with a quill cared about the consistency/accuracy of the VMS glyphs and corrected errors.
Here is another example with dark and light inks in which descenders have been fixed and one letter appears to have gained a longer lower-right stroke (100r lower-right):
The text is not the only thing that has been amended. Some of the drawings have, as well.
There are numerous places where a breast has been added to a nymph in a slightly darker ink. Usually it is the one closest to the viewer:
Nymph 1 Nymph 2 Nymph 3 Nymph 4
So who added it? Was it a production-line process where one person drew the outline and someone else added the inner details? Or was it a master-apprentice situation where a young apprentice was asked to do something “safe” that wouldn’t ruin the drawings, like adding a second breast?
The added breasts are usually in the same style as the original breast. In this case, the first is pointed, the second is somewhat rounded, the third is shaped like a thumb, and the fourth is larger and distinctly rounded. So… either it’s the same person who added them, or someone else made an effort to copy the original style.
Sometimes other parts of the body look like they are drawn by a different person. For example, the arms of the second nymph are different from the others.
One of the characteristics of many of the nymph drawings is that there is no shoulder on the side facing the viewer—the arm grows out of the neck. This is particularly noticeable on nymphs in 3/4 view. It’s a distinctive characteristic that can be seen on nymphs 3 and 4 in the example above. In contrast, Nymph 2 has an angular shoulder and smoother, darker arcs to the curve of the arms. Note also that there is no elbow on #2. The arms of the second nymph look like they were drawn by a different person.
Here are more examples of nymphs with non-anatomical shoulders. The arm on the right is almost growing out of the ear:
Places Where Both Text and Images Were Amended
On folio 73r, someone has added both text and breasts in a darker ink, using a finer writing implement than the original text. The text is consistent with other text on the folio in both style and glyph-arrangement, so perhaps the lines were added close to the time of original creation.
Here is a sample from the top of the folio, but there are numerous other additions below it:
A second breast has been added in darker ink in much the same way in the zodiac-figure folios and the pool folios, which suggests some kind of continuity between sections, if the dark ink is contemporary with the rest of the manuscript.
One important thing to note… the glyphs in the darker ink are written in legal Voynichese. Did the person know the system for generating tokens? Or did they copy others that already existed? If they knew the system, these marks may have been added in the 15th century.
There are numerous amendments to the drawings on 71v, one of the zodiac-figure folios. Ten of the 15 figures have been touched up with darker ink (or ink that has faded less over time). Most of the changes are to the hair and breasts:
In this group of nymphs, there is an interesting anatomical difference between the nymph with two original breasts (#2) and the two nymphs with added breasts (#5 and #6)…
On the original drawing (#2), the contour of the breast is defined by a line underneath, and the general direction is facing the viewer straight on. The added breasts on #5 and #6 are drawn differently. The direction is more of a side or 3/4 view and the line that defines the contour is on the side rather than underneath. The “touch-up” person may have been different from the original illustrator.
Less-Explainable Amendments
The changes or additions in the above examples are understandable. Light strokes were darkened, missing information was added. But the following example is harder to explain.
On f86r, there is an instance of “daiin” in which the last minim doesn’t have the usual tail swinging up to the left. Instead, someone with a narrower quill and a less steady hand added a large angular shape that is inconsistent with the rest of the text on the folio. The last minim has been awkwardly changed into an ambiguous shape that is not typical of Voynichese:
The amended shape is not round enough to be EVA-y and lacks the loop that is usual for EVA-m. The “dain” block doesn’t usually end this way, so the amender either added the wrong kind of tail (facing the wrong direction), or didn’t know how to draw one of the other VMS glyphs correctly and turned the tail-less minim into something strange.
In a previous blog, I posted some other examples in which atypical text was added to the beginnings or ends of lines.
Summary
The VMS includes numerous adjustments to the text and drawings; most of them are fixes to the original in a similar style. In some cases, however, textual additions seem out of character with the rest of the folio and it’s unclear why it was changed.
Most of the amendments were probably done around the same time the VMS was created, but some of the textual changes may have been added later. The proportion of changes isn’t high, but there are enough to make you wonder what happened to the VMS during the gaps in its provenance.
Changes or additions are not especially frequent, however, considering the length of the manuscript. It seems likely that a draft version was used to design the script first. It would be remarkable if it eventually turned up somewhere in the forgotten corners of a library or private collection.
“can i buy gabapentin in spain Medieval book’s secret code remains unbroken single-handed …Somewhere during its journey through medieval Europe, several people wrote notes in the margins of the book. The notes in brown ink are mostly Roman numerals, but the writing in red — which, from the style of the letters, seems to be from the fourteenth century — is mysterious. Some of the scribbles seem to be words, but they’re illegible. Others form a cryptic code of repeating letters….”
Here’s a screensnap that illustrates the notes in red ink. They are on almost every folio in the first half of the book, but become less frequent after page 100:
A folio from a mid-13th-century manuscript with two columns of text in black ink, with notes in red ink in the margins [Source: Harold and Mary Jean Hanson Rare Book Collection ]
I scanned through the manuscript from beginning to end looking for ciphertext or anything that might be considered as “secret code”. I couldn’t find any. I agree that the glosses are probably in 14th-century script, but I don’t agree that it’s illegible (except in places where the ink has worn off). It is somewhat messy, but mostly readable.
The red text is not ciphertext and I don’t think what resembles a cipher list at the end is necessarily related to the red text in the margins.
The Text in Red Ink
So what are the marks in red? They’re citations, cross-references. They follow a fairly regular format. Here’s an example, and below the screensnap I’ll give a breakdown of the parts:
The first symbol in each line is a paragraph-reference marker. These symbols are found in a variety of languages that use the Latin character-set.
Paragraph markers are recognizable because many are constructed using a loop or semi-circle or two, plus a line or two. If the line passes through a semi-circle, it looks a bit like a pitchfork. Sometimes a plus-symbol or hook-shape will be added.
This combination of shapes makes them sufficiently different from Latin letters that they can be added to the manuscript in the same color ink as the main text, and still be spotted without too much trouble. They mark passages-of-interest pointing to specific notes in the margins.
Here is an example from another manuscript. To modern eyes, the reference symbol in the bottom-left might look like a Venus symbol, but that is a coincidence. It looks like this because it dips into the same storehouse of components as the paragraph markers above—in this case, a loop and plus-symbol:
In the lower-left is a marginal note preceded by a medieval paragraph-reference symbol. These symbols were frequently comprised of loops, lines, and what we call the plus-symbol. They were attached to each other in different ways to provide a storehouse big enough so they could be added in numerous places without being redundant. Some writers would recycle the symbols each time the page was turned, other writers would create new combinations until they reached the end of the section. [Manuscript source: Vatican Vat.lat.1960]
Here is a simpler version from an earlier folio in the same manuscript:
Sometimes the reference symbols are more complex. This often happens if there are many notes and uniqueness is desired. Some writers recycled the same markers on the next folio, others added new ones until they reached the end of a section.
The example below is composed of a semi-circle, line, and hook-shape. You can see the symbol next to the marginal note and in the passage it references in the main text to the right:
Example of a paragraph-reference symbol in a medieval manuscript that connects a passage of text to a marginal note. [Source: MS Cotton Domitian A ix]
The Tranchedino collection of diplomatic ciphers includes many of these paragraph markers as cipher symbols. Since they are numerous, they are a convenient source for glyph-shapes. Often they have been combined with regular Latin letters.
But the U of F manuscript is not ciphertext. It’s Latin. So let’s look at the rest of the line of cryptic text.
After the paragraph-reference symbol, the two top lines are followed by a number in Roman numerals. In this example, we see the numbers 24 and 22 (or possibly 20 • 2 since there is a dot in between).
Next there is a q. or, as in the third line, a series of short abbreviations. Single- and double-letter abbreviations are very common in Latin for words and phrases like a.d. (anno domini) i.e. (id est) q (qui/quo), n.b. (nota bene), and many more.
After the q. abbreviation in the first two examples is another Roman numeral.
All three are followed at the end by a word or two, abbreviated.
I recognized the number-q-number pattern as a formal reference convention, so I looked for an example of the same style in a printed book. I felt it might be an easier way to demonstrate that this is not “mysterious” text but quite an orderly way of doing things.
I found this canon reference arranged according to the same pattern as the notes in red ink. It is comprised of a Roman numeral, q. abbreviation, Roman numeral and short summary text:
Format of a canon reference citation using traditional Roman numerals. [Dives and Pauper, Vol. 2, Parker and Barnum, 1976]
The q. can mean many things in Latin (q-words are very common), but in this context, it refers to quaestio (question).
So the printed phrase reflects the format of the first two lines of the text in red ink.
The third line is different from lines 1 and 2. Instead of a Roman numeral followed by q., it has de pd, which is usually the Latin abbreviation for de poenitentia, distinctio, followed by the number 1 and a note.
The Terse Abbreviations at the Ends of Lines
In the U of F manuscript, the summary text at the end of each line is abbreviated. While scanning through it, I saw abbreviations for Paulus, penitence, loses (verb, loses his life), from good (ex bono), don’t (noli), decree (fiat), leader (ducator), and holy (et sancta), and Ecclesiastes (bible reference). There were also references to “three” (trinity?), six days (creation?).
Here is another example from page 3 that follows the same format, consisting of paragraph-marker, Roman numeral q[uaestio], Roman numeral and abbreviated note. Sometimes there is an additional numeral and note. If the paragraph marker is omitted, it probably refers to the same section in the main text as the citation above it.
At the end of the line that starts with the number 24 is the abbreviation for “sanctus” preceded by the letter “d”. In many cases, “d” stands for deus, but in this case, it is dominus to represent the Latin phrase dominus sanctus (Holy/Sacred Lord):
On the line below it, are Roman numerals and a common abbreviation for variations of ecclesia/ecclesiastis/ecclesiastes/ecclesiastem. At the end is the abbreviation for ad fidem (to faith).
This is a copy of the New Testament, so the notes are completely consistent with the subject matter of the main text.
The abbreviations are terse, you have to know Latin to recognize them, but I can’t see any “mystery” or intention to hide. It is a standard citation system, and medieval scribes were familiar with terse abbreviations.
Now, let’s look at the cipher-like chart on the second-to-last page…
Is There a Cipher Alphabet?
There is an alphabet paired with a set of numbers near the end of the manuscript. It looks like this (I have broken it into two parts so it will fit better on the screen, but you can see the original scan here on page 162):
It’s very tempting to think that 1) this is a substitution cipher and 2) the numbers might be related to the many numbers in red ink in the main manuscript, but I am doubtful.
First, this is a very limited set of numbers (only 16) and the red glosses don’t have limits on what numbers can be used, as long as they are relevant to the citation.
Secondly, these are Indic-Arabic numbers. They were rarely used until later in the 14th century. They do exist earlier in some of the scientific manuscripts (mathematicians and astronomers recognized their utility) but this is a biblical text and it would be unusual to see them in this context in the 12th or 13th centuries. In other words, this alphabet may have been added after the red notes and probably a century or so after the original script.
Even if the red notes and the cipher-like alphabet were added at the same time (which is possible, since the writing style is the same), they don’t appear to serve the same purpose.
So, let’s say for a moment that the alphabet was added because there was space, not because it was connected to the red citations.
Assuming the alphabet stands on its own, can we determine if it is a cipher key?
Numeric ciphers were not common, but they did exist, and alphabetic cipher keys are sprinkled among medieval manuscripts, but one has to wonder… why were these particular letters and numbers chosen? The numbers are in sequence in the sense of getting larger and, depending on the language, the alphabet is incomplete.
What Comprises an Alphabet?
Languages have different sounds, which results in different alphabets, so a “full” alphabet depended on the language.
In Latin manuscripts, the alphabet usually consisted of
a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, l, m, n, o, p, q, r, s, t, u/v, x, z
Some scribes substituted a “y” shape for “i”. The letter “k” was usually only included if there were loanwords. The lettershapes “u” and “v” were roughly analogous. The letter “j” didn’t exist as we know it. What looks like a “j” in medieval manuscripts was actually a capital “i” (for names) or an embellished “i”. We know this because complete alphabets were often added in margins and they generally did not include “j”. The letter “y” was often absent. Sometimes the letter “i” and a final-i (“i” with a descending tail) were written together to resemble ÿ, but but most of the time, this was “ii”, not “y”.
If the language was German, “k” and sometimes “w” were included. In Middle English, most letters were included, except for “j”, but some scribes used “y” instead of “i”. Old English had letters (like thorn and wynn) that are not used in modern English and were uncommon in continental manuscripts outside of Saxony.
The Organization of Numbers in the Alphabet Chart
The U of F manuscript includes the following letters (with the “r” having been squeezed in and apparently associated with the “p”, similar to the way the “u/v” was associated with the “z”). Next to each is a number and some of the numbers encompass two letters.
If this were a cipher key, it would not be unusual for one cipher glyph to represent two letters, but it’s not certain that it’s a cipher key:
a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, l, m, n, o, p, r, s, t, u/v (tilted back), z
This is similar to the Latin alphabet, since j and k are not included, but there is a rather significant omission. The letter “q” was very common in Latin texts. It would be difficult to write Latin without a “q”, especially considering many abbreviated “q” words were abbreviated to only the “q”, omitting the rest of the letters.
So, if it’s an alphabet what language is it?
Sixteen numbers is not enough characters to represent most alphabets (most of them had around 21 characters or more) unless there were many-to-one assignments. Unfortunately, the more letters that are compressed down to one cipher glyph, the harder it is to decrypt a message (even for the person who composed the message). And there’s a limit—at some point, it becomes a one-way cipher.
Why so few characters? Even the old Italic alphabet needed 17 characters.
And why the sequential order of numbers? Eight of the numbers are in sequences of four (which makes it much easier to crack a cipher) and all of them are in numerical sequence, even if there are gaps. If this were a cipher, it would be considered a “light” version, minimally secure.
A comment on the alphabet from the University of Florida article:
Is it the key to a secret code? No one knows. You can try to decipher it… (U of F News, 2018)
I love puzzles and I enjoy collecting medieval ciphers. I wanted this to be a cipher key, but I strongly suspect that it’s not.
What else could it be? It’s not likely to be a tally sheet, as the order of the letters follows the order of the numbers, and it doesn’t appear to be numbers related to playing cards (which were popular at the time), or other sorts of games.
Another Explanation
I had to think about this for a few minutes to come up with a way to explain the sequence of numbers (from small to large) and the fact that many of the numbers are adjacent (26, 27, 28, 29). These characteristics are not common in cipher keys.
I think this might be a short index, or table of contents, with the numbers referencing something alphabetical.
If so, then it could be interpreted this way… the “a” entries begin on page 1, the p and r entries begin on page 28, and the u/v and z entries on page 34.
The largest gap is between “a” and “b” and this would fit with many kinds of lists, in which the “a” entries are more numerous than those beginning with other letters. Following this logic, the next most numerous section begins with “s”, followed by “c” and “i”. Using letter-frequency charts, it might be possible to figure out the potential language if this were an index to a dictionary, but this could be an index to something else, in which case, the frequencies might not divulge anything that specific.
The alphabet chart doesn’t appear to relate to the six pages in brown ink that precede them. Maybe it references something external to this manuscript (or something that is no longer bound inside it).
I thought the lack of a “q” might indicate a medieval German alphabet, but the “k” is also missing and “k” was common in German.
Summary
Even though I wanted this to be a cipher, it is clear that the notes in red ink are Latin cross-references in canon-citation style. The abbreviations are terse, you have to know Latin to expand them, but I didn’t see anything unusual about the words or the way they were formatted.
The alphabet at the end was more intriguing, but after some consideration, it is probably not a cipher either. The numbers are organized in a way that is uncommon for ciphers but logically consistent with something organized with gradually increasing numbers.
It might be some kind of index. If so, the numbers are probably page numbers. Why might there be letters missing? If it’s an index to a specialized list (like the names of towns, or the names of noble families), then some letters might not be used. Maybe there’s a document somewhere that is about 34 to 40 pages long whose content matches the number sequence and maybe not.
I’m still keeping my eyes open for medieval ciphers. This was less of a mystery than I expected, but there will be others.
In medieval times, people walked. Many cities were completely walled and you entered by the portal gate. Some cities had only one entrance. Some had three or four. If there was only one, it was important to know where it was or you could approach from the wrong side and spend hours or days backtracking along treachorous mountainous paths or deep forest.
To make it easier to recognize the gate from a distance, certain “signal” styles were adapted by builders and architects, many of which were specific to their region. It was common to build a tower, or a pair of towers, over the main portal. The extra height let the watchmen see who was coming, and visitors knew where to approach.
Medieval portal entrances were designed with distinctive features and usually stood higher than the walls so watchmen could scan incoming traffic from a suitable height, and travelers could find the right entrance to walled cities. [Source: Eidgenössische Chronik, Cod. ZF 18, c. 1520s]
Portal-Tower Architecture
Most towers were built with brick and mud or stone according to local engineering and cultural traditions. Some had flat platforms, others had roofs.
The Canaanite Gate in Tel Dan is several thousand years old and currently under restoration (the doorway has not been fully excavated). It features a heavy wall and a single portal in the central recessed portion of a thick wall. The portal is within a broad arch that predates Roman arches by about 1,500 years. There may have been a higher central tower above the doorway at the time of original construction:
The mud-brick Canaanite Gate in Tel Dan was built almost 4,000 years ago and features a thick wall, a higher portion above the portal (perhaps the remains of a tower), and an arched door-support. [Source: Hanay, Wikimedia]
This basic format, a strong wall, a central portal, and a raised platform or tower over the doorway was common to many countries.
There are a number of ancient gates in Bosra, in southwest Syria. They typically have arched doorways, but high towers above the gate are not usual.
The Gates of Istanbul are massive, with mostly-square towers, and very old. Some have been bricked up or restored over the years. This is the Belgrade Gate which still includes parts of the original wall:
Portions of the wall ran along the water and a chain was stretched over the canal to prevent undesired entry by boats.
Here are two examples of medieval tower portals from Cairo, Egypt. The well-fortified north-facing portal (left) has a platform and crenellations. The south portal (right) has elaborately carved minaret towers and stone roofs with sculptural finials:
The north-facing portal and south portal to the city of Cairo were built in two different styles in the 11th and 12th centuries. [Sources: Sailko and JMCC1, Wikipedia]
The bastion style on the left was a common style. It was designed for visibility and also for protection. It enabled guards to drop arrows, rocks, and burning oil onto anyone trying to storm the gate. This form of tower is often depicted in manuscript illuminations.
The Porta Soprana of Genoa, built in the 11th 12th century, is similar to the north-facing portal in Cairo, although not quite as massive. Between the two round towers, and on the top, are Ghibelline merlons, but it’s difficult to determine exactly when they were added. It is possible, in this case, that they are original, since this is one of the pockets where there were Ghibelline supporters, but since the portals were intended, in part, to assert the independence of Genoa, it’s questionable whether they would include a symbol specifically supporting the Holy Roman Empire:
The Porta Soprana portal in Genoa, built in the 12th century. [Source: Maurizio Beatrici, Wikimedia, 2016]
The little town of Münchenstein, on the northern Swiss border, had quite a simple portal with a square tower and crenellations:
The Augustus Arch, portal to Rimini, is very ancient and classical in design with an unusually large opening that probably never had a gate. The Ghibelline merlons were added in the 11th 10th century when the Ghibelline family took control of the city:
The Augustus Arch was originally built in the 1st century BCE and dedicated to Caeser Augustus by the Roman Senate. In the 11th 10th century, the Ghibelline merlons were added by the Ghibelline family. [Photo: Tobabi1, Wikipedia]
Gable Roofs
Sometimes towers had roofs similar to those on houses. A common style was the gable roof, seen in areas where ceramic or wooden roofs were added:
One of the roof styles used for medieval portal towers is the gable roof. In certain regions, the two ends of the roof-span sometimes included globe finials or flag finials.
Antique saddle with raised pommel and cantle [Source: The Met]
The span of a gable can vary. If it is a short-spanned gable with finials or raised peaks at either end, it is sometimes called a “saddleback” because of the resemblance to saddles with raised pommels and cantles (right).
Saddlebacks were common in Bohemia/Bavaria, Alsace, and parts of eastern France in the Middle Ages.
Historic Portals
The Butcher’s Tower (below) is a hip-style gable with inward-sloping sides and roofing materials on all four sides.
This picturesque watchtower was built in the 14th century, and stands above an entrance gate in a long wall.
Hip-gable style of “saddleback” roof with globe finials. The Butcher’s Tower, 1349, Ulm, Germany.
A similar style of portal can be seen in the Berner Chronik (Burgerbibliothek Mss.h.h.I.1), created between 1478 and 1483. It has a hip-gable saddleback roof with finials:
The main difference between this and the Butcher’s Tower is that the Berner Chronik portal has a crenellated level where the stone ends and the roof begins. In some cases, towers started out unroofed and roofs were added later. In other cases, there is a crenellated balcony at the apex of the stone that was part of the design.
In this illustration, there are two entrance portals built along the water for accessibility by boat and for extra security. Both portal towers have saddleback roofs with globe finials, but the tower on the left has a viewing window and the one on the right has a covered walkway leading to the opening:
Two portal towers leading to the city, entered by crossing bridges, one plain, the other covered. Both have hip-gable roofs with finials. The arch-shaped extensions are similar to those on the Butcher’s Tower. [Source: Amtliche Berner chronik, Mss.h.h.I.1, c. 1480]
Postscript 29 March 2020: I forgot to add the following drawing when I posted this blog, but it’s worth including because it’s part of an extensive collection of town maps from the mid-15th century. The drawings of Guillaume Revel are generally more accurate than castle drawings in storytelling manuscripts because part of his purpose was to document ducal holdings.
Revel drew the town of Feurs around 1450. There are four saddleback portals, each with flag finials and, unlike most castle drawings, he included details of the archways and balcony just below the rooftops, a style that was fairly common in this area but not always elsewhere. Between the portals are semicircular wall towers with simple battlements:
The walled town of Feurs in the 15th century is drawn here with four saddleback portal gates with flag finials. This detailed drawing was created as part of an armorial record by Guillaume Revel [source: BNF Français 22297]
The following examples of German towers include 1) double towers, one with a hip-gable saddleback on the left and a cone-shaped tower on the right, 2) a single tower with a saddleback roof and globe finials, and 3) a finial-topped cone tower surrounded by a balcony with battlements:
The Prague “Powder Tower” is situated on one of the main city portals on the Charles Bridge. During the reign of Emperor Rudolph II, it housed some of the alchemists
It has a hip gable with globe finials and turrets in the corners, similar to the tower in the center diagram above, but the Powder Tower was not built until 1475 and I couldn’t find any clear pictures of the original tower it replaced.
Towers similar to the Powder Tower served as portals to the cities of Batteheim and Ensißhein.
Sometimes local architecture was used to illustrate events in far-off places. For example, Vatican Pal. Lat. 871, includes a biblical story of Ezechiel that obviously didn’t take place in central Europe, and yet the illustrator drew local architecture, including a pair of flag finials facing outward:
On a side note… outside Ensißhein a meteorite boomed out of the sky and landed in a field November 1492. A number of woodcuts and drawings commemorating the event show a saddleback portal gate (a 15th-century drawing of Belgrade includes similar-looking portals):
Ensißhein (now Ensisheim) was immortalized in story and images in 1492 when it was struck by a meteorite. Citizens quickly started hacking off pieces, but an official intervened and preserved it for future generations.
Albrecht Dürer created elaborate allegorical engravings of the meteorite event replete with sun, moon, stars, cloudbands, angels, and people cowering in fear. Here are two examples:
Ensisheim is in eastern France, near the Swiss and German borders and I was intrigued by a more humble drawing of the meteorite event. People are pointing, birds are knocked out of their flight by the boom from the “thunderstone”, and animals scurry for their dens:
Meteorite blasting out of the sky with a loud boom, causing chaos November 1492 in the environs of the city of Ensißhein. [Courtesy of the Vatican Observatory Foundation, BAV Chigi G.11.36]
This illustration reminded me of the full-page drawing in the VMS that has multiple textures and emanations seemingly shaking the foundations of the earth. There is a person hiding or peeking out from behind a tor, a bird flapping by a cloudlike formation in the upper-right and another with wings raised as if to fly sits on the tor below.
I’ve already blogged about possible interpretations of this folio, and the Ensißhein meteorite event is probably too late to have influenced the VMS, but the fact that the folio has a narrative feel, like the Ensesheim drawings, makes me wonder if it chronicles a natural or mythical cataclysm:
Beinecke 408, the Voynich Manuscript, folio 86v, courtesy of the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscripts Library at Yale.
Another meteorite hit the earth near Basel, Switzerland, in the 16th century but I wasn’t able to find any illustrations of similar events before the Ensisheim meteorite. There are some earlier drawings of “comets”, however, and since the word “comet” was used rather imprecisely at the time, maybe some of these sitings were meteorites.
U. dall’Olmo, in the Journal for the History of Astronomy, 1978, Vol. 9 searched medieval records for celestial events and describes a spectacular meteor shower in southern Italy in 1387 that was said to light up the sky. Three decades later, a meteor appeared after sunset and split into three while traveling west to east. If the VMS drawing has anything to do with meteor events, maybe it chronicles something earlier than the thunderstone of Ensesheim.
More on Portal Gates
Helpoort portal, photo by Ben Bender, Wikimedia Commons
Getting back to portal gate designs… the Helpoort gate in the Netherlands is a 13th-century entrance portal with an arched entrance, two round towers, and an asymmetric cone-shaped roof. I don’t know how old the finials are (they tend to wear and be replaced) but globe and flag finials were common in the middle ages.
In the 17th century, Reims was drawn with two saddleback portal gates flanked by a pair of round towers with cone roofs. A series of round towers, some roofed, some not, are spaced at intervals along the city wall.
When Adam and Eve are driven from Paradise in this manuscript from Switzerland, we see them exiting through the portal gate roofed with a hip gable and two flag finials:
Adam and Eve driven from the walled garden of Paradise through a traditional portal gate with a hip gable roof with a pair of flag finials. [Source: Bern, Burgerbibliothek Cod. A 45, c. 1480]
Roofs in the VMS “Rosettes” Folio
There are a number of corner towers and portal towers on the VMS “map” folio. The drawings are very tiny but still recognizable. The roofs are consistent with the styles of the towers and with each other.
On the lower side of the top-right rosette, there is a simple square tower facing the rosette, but the tall tower is probably also a portal tower that faces the pathway on the other side (imagine standing on the rosette and looking toward the “path” as though you are seeing it from the back). The central tower roof is a gable with flag finials facing outwards, a typical saddleback, flanked by cone roofs with globe finials (I think the finial on the right is probably a smudged globe finial, but it may possibly be a flag finial):
On a circular wall within the rosette, possibly at the top of a steep area, there is another saddleback tower apparently attached to the wall, but it doesn’t appear to have a portal opening. It may be a watchtower rather than an entry point.
This one has a hip gable and a pair of finials that are so small, it’s difficult to tell if they are flag or globe finials. If it’s a watchtower rather than an entrance tower, they are probably globe finials.
I think it’s very unlikely that the drawing below represents a lighthouse. Lighthouses were generally round and even if they were square near the bottom, as in some of the most ancient, the top was usually round so the signal fires could be seen from multiple angles. All through history, the majority of lighthouses were round or rounded (octagonal) at the top. Even the tower of Hercules transitions from square to octagonal to rounded as one reaches the top.
I have never seen a historic lighthouse with a saddleback roof and, in general, lighthouses were not attached to walls at the tops of hills. More often they were on prominences jutting out into the water closer at sea level, or they were on small islands or rock formations in or near the harbor. This looks like a typical wall-tower:
On the same wall, on either side of this tower, there are additional towers that appear to have cone roofs and finials. Moving to the left side of the rosette, facing another “pathway”, there is a wall castle or city with Ghibelline merlons, two unroofed towers, and a tall, narrow hip gable with finials:
Note also that the Ghibelline merlons are not on every side. The merlons on the left are the more common square merlons.
Pointed merlons are found in many areas of southern Spain, and if they are placed in pairs, they superficially resemble Ghibelline merlons, but they are not the same. The merlons on the VMS are straight on the outside and angled on the inside and join without reaching the base. The merlons in Spain are angled on two sides to create a different shape. There are some swallowtail merlons in Spain, but I haven’t found any that existed before the latter part of the 15th century.
Beyond this compound, to the left, there appears to be a walled pathway with buildings and towers at intervals. On the outsides of the walls are what appear to be steep escarpments, very similar in shape to certain geological formations and also similar to the escarpments created by mining operations. The buildings on the left look like houses and possibly a tower with finials. On the right is a platform tower with crenellations, possibly roofed. In the center is a faint tower with a cone roof that looks like it might have been partially erased:
Mining was quite extensive in the Middle Ages. Silver, gold, and other metals, along with desirable stones such as gemstones, granite, and marble, were so heavily mined that entire mountains were sometimes reduced to foothills. During the process, narrow terraces were often formed. This makes it difficult to know whether the lines that look like escarpments in the VMS are natural or manmade.
The next section in the top-left is quite detailed and it’s difficult to interpret the structures that appear to be inset into apparent hollows in the pathway:
The blue tower appears to be sitting on a steep tor with a spiral pathway to the top, and is colored to distinguish it from the structures under and around it. For this reason, I am reluctant to call the bumpy thing in the upper hole a building, as it is the same colors and textures as the “dirt” around the lower tower. My best guess at the moment is that the upper “hole” might be a cave entrance or a cutaway in a cliff as was sometimes created in the middle ages, with arched lookout points along the way.
Walls with Buildings
Walls with attached buildings were quite common in the Middle Ages. The way the path widens out where it appears to be steep is fairly common, as well, providing intermittent stopping places and viewpoints.
Tollhouses were installed at regular intervals on major rivers and paths, so the presence of a house attached to the wall might indicate a checkpoint or tollhouse.
At the bottom of the folio, we see a long wall of Ghibelline merlons, but no towers:
This drawing of a wall in Constantinople, published 1580, has numerous attached towers, but they are shown with flat, unroofed, crenellated tops:
Old paintings of Florence, Italy, have towers similar to those in the illustration of Constantinople, with the exception of one portal tower that includes a low-profile hip-gable roof.
This image of Nuremberg published in 1493 includes numerous cone- and gable-style roofs, several with globe and flag finials:
Burgdorf was drawn very similar to Nuremburg, with a variety of gable- and cone-style roofs. Note the tall tower with the saddleback roof is plainly visible even though trees obscure the gate. The buildings on the hill have flag finials (perhaps more than actually existed at the time but which were not uncommon in Switzerland and can also be found in Thun, south of Bern):
The way the portal-style towers and gates are positioned in the VMS, at significant junctions between landmarks and pathways, makes sense in the context of the Middle Ages, a time when there were many walled cities.
Real or Mythical?
But are they real or mythical? Should they be interpreted as actual places?
The “tower in the hole” has always made me wonder if the illustrator were suggesting a link to the underworld. Oceanus was said to swirl around the earth in nine rings (there are nine circular “rosettes”), which hints at the possibility of myth. When Psyche planned to throw herself off a tower after Aphrodite gave her an impossible task, it was the tower that told Psyche how to get to the underworld and back without losing her life. Is the tower-in-a-hole a conduit between this world and the one below?
Summary
As can be seen by some of the examples in this and other blogs, illustrations of far-off places or mythical events were sometimes drawn with local architecture. The illustrators guessed, or simply drew what they knew. This means that the saddleback portals and Ghibelline merlons might not be literal, they could be symbolic, or simply familiar and thus easy to use.
Regardless of why they were chosen, the consistency among them suggests awareness of architectural styles that were common in the region stretching from Bohemia in the east and the Alsace and eastern France in the west, and from Bavaria in the north and Lombardy and the republic of Genoa in the south. If the “rosettes” folio is a map, it might represent this region and it might not, but even if it doesn’t, the illustrator chose elements that betray a specific familiarity with the southern portion of the Holy Roman Empire.
You might notice that the picture to the right has a saddelback portal flanked by two round towers with cone-shaped roofs, similar to the first VMS castle illustrated above. It could easily be a coincidence, but for the record, the image is from a chronicle of the crusades penned in the 1460s (Bibliothèque de Genève Ms. fr. 85).
I’ve mentioned a few times that maybe the Voynich Manuscript was a family project. This seems possible because medieval fathers sometimes created books of wisdom to hand down to their sons. One medieval family codex might be of particular interest to Voynich researchers because of visual similarities to the rosettes folio.
A Book Disembodied
The Cocharelli family previously of Provençe and Acre settled in Genoa and created a beautiful 14th-century codex for their children. Parts of it are based on stories told by the compiler’s grandfather. It was produced around the 1320s or 1330s, but has a murky history. At some point it was cut into pieces.
S. Nicolini (University of Bologna) reports that the cuttings appeared inside a 15th-century missal in the 19th century and were sold as part of an anonymous book collection.
Clippings have turned up in several different countries: England, Germany, Italy, and the United States. Some of the content is allegorical, being a treatise on the vices, but there are also historical events, and the folios are enlivened by naturalistic images of flora and fauna that would appeal to any age group. The drawings are surprisingly detailed considering the small size of the codex (approx. 160 x 99mm):
Naturalistic images of moths and insect embellish the base of the Prologue [BL Egerton MS 3127]
I have collected links to the fragments so they can be accessed from one place:
BL Additional 27695 – 15 fragments, including prologue, heaven and hell, vices of Envy, Avarice, and Gluttony, Adam and Eve, and notably the sack of Tripoli and death of Philip IV of France
BL Additional 28841 – exotic animals, marine life, insects, rodents, along with verse about the history of Sicily
BL Egerton 3127 – 4 fragments (2 leaves) of history and natural history
Fragment sold as part of Eine Wiener Sammlung, Berlin (12 May 1930)
The illuminators are currently identified as the Master of the Cocharelli Codex (active in Genoa, c. 1330) and the Monk of Hyères (disputed). The sequence of the illustrations is considered by researchers to be different from the original order.
Multicultural Influences
Parts of the manuscript are in a more eastern style and there are several black people in African dress in the main illustrations and in the borders, as well as a person in the center of a feast who looks Asian:
It makes you wonder if the grandfather who related these stories was a seafarer who traveled widely. There are documents that support the presence of Pellegrino Cocharelli at some of the locations mentioned in the codex (C. Concina, 2016).
One of the Egerton 3781 fragments includes this image of a garden fountain, and if you look closely, you will notice to the right, there is a building with arches and Ghibelline merlons. Genoa was well within the purview of the Holy Roman Empire in the early 14th century (the HRE included Rome and much of Burgundy/Provençe at the time):
In this illustration on the page with text about the vice of Luxuria (lust), we see a maiden feeding a bird next to an architectural birdhouse that has Ghibelline merlons between the three towers:
Ghibelline merlons were one way in which Italians, especially those in an east/west belt where Italy spread out into the wider geographical region of Lombardy and Bohemia, signaled their allegiance to the HRE (in opposition to the pope). This political implication continued until about the mid-15th century after which the merlons gradually became more decorative than political (and thereafter spread to other areas).
In the following battle scene from BL Additional 27695, there are square battlements on all the walls and towers except for the central tower, which has swallowtail Ghibelline merlons at the top. Since this represents the sack of Tripoli (Lebanon), it seems probable that the Ghibelline merlons are symbolic rather than literal, but installations of the Knights Templar sometimes had Ghibelline merlons, so perhaps they existed to a limited extent outside of northern Italy before the late 15th century.
In the waters of this elaborate illumination, there are four galleys from Genoa, in addition to others from Pisa and the Veneto:
In the 13th and 14th centuries, there were considerable tensions between the papacy and various kings and emperors in the late Middle Ages. Philip IV of France (1268–1314) aggressively challenged the power of the pope and the increasingly powerful Knights Templar. He gave important positions to his family members and even attempted to install a relative as Holy Roman Emperor to enlarge the kingdom of France.
The Cocharelli family recorded the arrest and torture of the Templars by Philip IV for a variety of charges, such as heresy, black magic, and financial corruption. In 1310 and 1314, King Philip had many of them burned at the stake. But his dreams of a large consolidated empire withered a few months later when he suffered a stroke while hunting in northern France. He died soon after.
Swallowtail Merlons in the Voynich Manuscript
In the Cocharelli illustration below, the roundup of the Templars is shown in the top half of the folio. The walled city has Ghibelline merlons on the front of the complex, but not the back. This is similar to the small drawing of a walled city or castle in the upper right section of the VMS rosettes folio.
The walled garden at the bottom of the Cocharelli folio, depicting game animals and the death of Philip IV, is completely surrounded by a long wall with Ghibelline merlons. In the VMS, there is also a long wall on one of the sections connecting two rosettes, but I wouldn’t describe this as a garden wall, it looks more like a long city or castle wall:
Since the events surrounding King Pillip in the Cocharelli codex took place in France, it is not likely that the merlons in these illustrations are literal, but since Philip IV was ardently against the power of the papacy and open to allegiances with the HRE, and the illustrators were Italian, it may have been their way of diagraming his political leanings:
Storybook style illustration recording the rounding up and persecution of the Knights Templar by Philip IV of France at the top, and the subsequent death of King Philip from a stroke while he was hunting in northern France. [Source: BL Additional MS 27695 folio 6v]
Detail of the walled city and roundup of the Knights Templar. Note the Ghibelline merlons are mostly at the front.
Closeup of the walled garden stocked with game, representing the death of Philip IV from a stroke that occurred during a hunt in northern France in 1314 not long after he had dispensed with the Templars.
The VMS is also known for its elaborate containers in the small-plants section and the container-like “towers” on the rosettes folio. There are also some interesting containers on Cocharelli folio f7v in a fragment that has been completely cut away from the text:
In contrast, the illustration of the Siege of Acre (Museo del Bargello), in which the Crusaders lost Acre, a city on the Levantine coast, Ghibelline merlons are not included except on a single portal in the lower center part of the city:
(Note, there is some dispute about this being Acre. Some scholars say Genoa, but the textual evidence seems to lean toward Acre.)
In a discussion of the possible ordering of the original Cocharelli codex folios, Concina mentions some of the political turmoil associated with the Guelfs and the Ghibellines:
In the summer of 1308 Opizzino Spinola of Lucoli proclaimed himself the only captain of Genoa by deposing and imprisoning Bernabò Doria, who was his co-ruler in the traditional diarchy established for the government of the city. Following this coup d’état, many leaders of the Ghibelline families of the Doria (including Corrado and his son Pietro) and Spinola of San Luca, as well as of the Guelf families of the Grimaldi and Fieschi, were forced to flee the city. In June 1309 those families exiled set aside their old differences and joined forces to defeat Opizzino and his army at Sestri Ponente, forcing him to take shelter in the castle of Gavi. On the same day, the Guelf and Ghibelline exiles entered Genoa, apparently without great losses….
In addition, if we consider historical references, we can glimpse a family [the Cocharellis] gravitating towards the Ghibelline party, the Doria and the Aragoneses.
—Chiara Concina (University of Verona)
Summary
As mentioned previously, the Ghibelline merlons in these drawings may be symbolic rather than literal. It’s hard to find evidence of this style of merlon outside of northern Italy/Lombardy/Bohemia before the latter 15th century and the Cocharelli drawings are from the 14th century when their geographical distribution was quite limited. But, considering that Philip IV of France was one of the more ardent opponents of the pope and friendlier than some French monarchs to the Holy Roman Empire (he was hoping to expand into that region as well, via family alliances), the Ghibelline merlon reflects his political leanings via a symbol that was familiar to Italian artists.
Here is a drawing of Padua, with a long wall and numerous towers topped by Ghibelline merlons, by Felice Celeste Zanchi c. 1300:
But are they real or symbolic? A 15th century drawing of Padua shows square merlons, so perhaps Zanchi added some from his imagination.
At times there is only a glimpse of the merlons, as in this illustration in BNF Latin 9333 (c. 1410s):
Sometimes the merlons are more clearly indicated, as in this earlier example of Tacuinum Sanitatis (Casanatense, 14th century):
So what about the merlons in the VMS rosettes folio. Are they literal or symbolic?
It is interesting that the walled city or castle at the top of the VMS folio was drawn with more Ghibelline merlons on the front than there on the back (similar to the Cocharelli depiction).
Is this how compounds were usually built? Or do the drawings in the two different codices have a common inspiration? Is the VMS merlon sending a political message? Is it a reference to a specific event? Or is it an actual place, a landmark to help a traveler find his way?
In April 2019, I posted a blog about double-cee shapes in the VMS text. This convention of combining two cees to create a different letter has a very long history but is not the custom in modern scripts. In medieval scripts, the tightly-coupled double-cee has a different meaning from two cee shapes slightly separated. Most of the time, the tightly-coupled cee represents a vowel. To identify which vowel, you have to look at position, as well. But first let’s look at the origins of some of these shapes…
Ancient Origins
To understand double-c and the Nota symbol, you need some familiarity with Greek and how it influenced Latin scribal conventions.
The Greek alphabet is found in handwritten Latin manuscripts up to about the 16th century, and was sometimes used in annotations in early medieval texts.
Here are a couple of examples from Latin manuscripts:
The Greek alphabet in a Latin manuscript from Southern Italy. [Source, Genève Cod. lat. 357]
Example of the Greek alphabet in a c. 1190s Latin text from southwest Germany. Note the shapes for nu (sometimes called “noy”) and omega as these were also used by Latin scribes. [Source: HHB Cod. Sal IX,39. A similar notation is in Einsiedeln Codex 29(878)]
Some of the Greek shapes and scribal conventions were adapted by Latin scribes. For example, certain ligatures and letter-shapes such as the N in Nota were common. The lowercase form of sigma (sometimes called symma or summa) and variants similar to sigma evolved into a broadly used form of final-ess that has some relevance to the VMS.
Final-Ess
Medieval scribes used initial, medial, and final forms for certain letters. Some used the same initial and medial forms, but reserved other shapes for the final form. These distinctions still exist in Middle Eastern scripts, but have disappeared from most western alphabets:
Here long-ess is used for initial and medial forms, whereas the shape loosely resembling Greek sigma is reserved for ess in the final position.
Not all scribes used the same shape for final-ess. There are several basic groups (long-ess/straight-ess, B-shape, 8-shape, sigma, and modern-ess). I will post examples of each in a future blog because the 8-shape relates to f116v.
The following set represents one of the common groups of final-ess relevant to Voynich studies because the month labels added to the VMS “zodiac figures” use this general form:
Here are examples of the sigma shape from a Greek manuscript, a Latin manuscript, and the “Mars” (March) label under the fish in the VMS:
The general style of final-ess that resembles Greek sigma, which shown in the chart above, can be seen in the labels added to the VMS “zodiac figures” drawings.
Latin Vowels (and the occasional consonant) Written with Double-Cee
Another letter with Greek shape-mates (although not always the same meaning) is the double-cee. This is a loose term describing a group of symbols in Latin manuscripts. Why is it a loose term? Because some scribes wrote a tightly coupled “oc” rather than “cc”, but most of the time you’ll see “cc”.
In the early medieval period, there was very little distinction between a “t” and a “c” and they can be hard to tell apart. But, it depends on which script you are reading. Sometimes the “t” is distinguished from “c” by being doubled, so it looks like “cc”. The letter “a” was sometimes written this way as well, which can be even more confusing to those who haven’t learned medieval languages because you can only figure it out by reading the whole sentence.
Here are some examples that explain how to distinguish double-t, double-c and two cees in a row, but note that some are ambiguous unless you can see the words before and after:
Note especially the second example (sicca) which includes both c + c and a tightly-coupled double-cee representing the letter “a”.
Additional picture added 8 March 2020 to illustrate that the double-c form of “a” was not limited to southern Italy or Dalmatia. This Merovingian example is from eastern France, probably from the Abbey of Luxeuil.
These loosely and tightly coupled cee shapes are also present in the Voynich Manuscript, but transcripts generally ignore the distinction (see my previous blog) and it is not yet known if it is a meaningful distinction. Now let’s look at another letter with similar characteristics…
Double-cee as “oo” “wa” or “u”
The medieval concept of “u” was not the same as we know it. In English, we make a distinction between “u” and “v” sounds and shapes. In medieval Latin, the “u” and “v” shapes were interchangeable in most languages using Latin characters and the sound was closer to a breathy w’ than an English “u” (and was not like our “v”). It was sometimes written as a superscripted double-cee shape next to the letter “q”.
Remember that Latin characters were used to write many languages, so it’s unwise to generalize too much, and difficult to describe a sound in any given language from 600 years ago. It’s better to think of the double-cee shape as a vowel (except when it was “t”) rather than as a specific letter.
Double-cee can represent “a” but it can also represent “u” (in the same manuscript), as well as indicating an ordinal, which means it is sometimes closer to a symbol than a specific letter. Once you understand the context, you can work out which letter it represents. In medieval script, context was king and many symbols had dual or triple meanings.
Greek Nu or “Noy”
Another Latin letter that is similar to Greek is the letter N.
We know it with an angular crossbar, as in the example to the right, but it was sometimes written with a straight crossbar (see below). In modern English, this form looks more like H than N. Sometimes the crossbar was at the top of the ascenders (somewhat like VMS EVA-k). Other times the crossbar was in the middle (similar to English H).
The crossbar could be single, or double, like a gate. Here are examples using a popular medieval symbol for pointing out interesting passages, the NOTA symbol. It was frequently stacked or intertwined like a monogram. Usually all four letters are present, although occasionally it is abbreviated NT:
Clearly there was some creative freedom to arrange the letters and yet the meaning is quite clear. The N will sometimes be combined with a B to create Nota Bene (note well).
Nota with Double-C
There is another form of Nota that uses more traditional forms.
Remember the “a” written as double-c mentioned above? Sometimes NOTA was written with the earlier form of “a” rather than the late-medieval “a”, as in these examples:
A Less Obvious Example
That should be enough background to help the reader interpret the more stylized symbol found in a 13th/14th-century scientific compilation.
BL Harley MS 1 includes treatises on astronomy/astrology and mathematics, and the first section is attributed to Abu Ishaq al-Bitruji al-Ishbili. In it there is a series of geometric drawings, and below the third second drawing we find a symbol in the left margin…
It is essentially the same as the old-style double-c “a” Nota symbols in the above examples, except the gate-style N has been stretched more than usual to encompass the comment directly below (which has since been erased). On the right side of the “gate” there is a tick for the T, an “o” and, above it, the double-cee symbol representing “a”.
More Uses for Double-Cee
In Harley MS 1, the symbol that resembles double-c is used in other ways, as well. It can be found in each of the geometric diagrams.
Here the double-cee symbol superscripted next to the number 1 introduces this as a series of drawings. You can think of it as an ordinal symbol and this diagram as the 1st:
As would be expected, the diagrams that follow are numbered in sequence as follows:
In a series of ordinals, sometimes the same symbol is used for all of them. Other times, the ordinals are individualized for each number, as in English (1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc.).
Here is an example showing the individualized ordinals of the VMS quire numbers compared to a set that uses only “m”:
Other common ordinal symbols are ° and superscripted-a.
This aspect of the VMS is, in a sense, a gift. If this ordinal system can be identified in other manuscripts, it might provide some clues to the early life of the VMS. Unfortunately, quire numbers are very difficult to find. I’ve been searching since 2008 and only have a handful of examples. They are usually trimmed off or bound inside the signatures where they can’t be seen. When I have time, I’ll post the ones I have so far.
Summary
The double-cee shape was disappearing by the 14th century and by the 15th century, the Nota symbol was often replaced by a manicule. By the 16th century, final-ess was beginning to disappear, as well, which means Greek influences were gradually replaced by early modern forms.
Even so, it helps to know these earlier conventions because there are aspects of the VMS that hint at some of these characteristics. Plus there are glyphs in the main text that may have been influenced by early-medieval conventions.
Also… there is a possibility that the separate cee shapes and tightly-coupled cee shapes in the VMS are not the same, which might partly explain why there are sometimes four in a row. If cee-gap-cee and double-cee are different, it might add some variety to the oddly monotonic script.
I found the series Ma Me My Mo Mu in a mid-15th-century German manuscript. This surprised me. If you know east Asian languages, you will recognize the syllabic nature of this series. Another sequence in the German codex is Ba Be Bi Bl Bo Be Bu.
So which language is it? It has elements of Japanese or Filippino but isn’t quite a perfect match for the order or the components. It’s unlikely that Japanese was known in the 1460s in Europe. Could east Asian languages have been recorded earlier than we realized? Or is it an African language (some of which are similar to Asian languages)?
Syllables and Numerals
First I’ll introduce you to the manuscript. If you glance through the chart on Barth 24, f1v and you know Japanese, this sequence jumps out: ma me my mo mu (note that medieval languages often substitute “y” shape for “i”)…
Series of two-character syllables beginning with “m” and “n” [Source: Ms. Barth. 24, c. 1460s, Rhein region].
If you read the fragments in this order: black, black, black, red, red, you get ma, my, mu, me, mo which is the correct order for Japanese syllables. Here is the Japanese, with Hiragana equivalents:
But the syllables in the German manuscript are out of order. You have to read the black ones first, followed by the red ones, to get the correct sequence in Japanese. Is this because a medieval scribe or missionary got it wrong? Or because it’s not Japanese but perhaps a related language with a slightly different order?
It turns out it’s not a language at all, it’s a system based on language components and, even more surprising, it is remarkably consistent across unrelated languages. The same system is used in German, Spanish, English, and (believe it or not), Malaysian. Could this be relevant to the VMS, perhaps in more than one way?
It turns out that the German manuscript is a dictionary but not a Romanized-Japanese dictionary. The numbers paired with syllables in the above example refer to folios, and when I looked up an unfamiliar word in the “M” section on Google search, it took me to a word in Tagalog. Once again, I thought, did missionaries compile this? And yet the rest of it looked like Latin (and read as Latin).
The word I selected turned out to be one very big coincidences. It is Latin. The manuscript is Catholicon, and I coincidentally picked a word that is also valid in Latinized Tagalog.
So what are these syllables if they are not Japanese or Tagalog?
Here is a larger screensnap so you can get a sense of the overall system. The numbers above the syllables are folio numbers:
It took a bit of research to find answers, but I learned that this is a medieval indexing system, one that was designed for large datasets.
We’re used to indexes with numbers accompanying short words and phrases. The one above is a little different and reaches us from the minds of people who lived more than 500 years ago, and it’s still valid! In the post-medieval centuries, it was adapted by schools to teach writing, and by American companies to sell filing systems and insurance services. It is still in use today for a wide variety of purposes.
The system is based on the lookup characteristics of common syllables at the beginnings of words and it’s almost spooky the way it generalizes across unrelated languages. It appears that basic and common sounds at the beginnings of words are somewhat universal despite dramatic differences between western and eastern languages.
Here are some examples. The first one is an indexing system used in American accounting systems in the 19th century. Note the M and B sequences:
Indexing lookup chart for common syllables at the beginnings of words or names (such as cities or clients) from American Counting-room, Volumes 7–8, 1883. Note the sequences listed in the text above the chart.
Here is another example of indexing for large sets of names (companies with 500 or more members). Note Ba Be Bi Bo Br Bu (not identical to the German example Ba Be Bi Bl Bo Be Bu, but close and also close to the Japanese Ma Me Mu Me Mo alphabet sequence:
Indexing system for insurance companies for large datasets, based on common syllables at the beginnings of words [A System of Records for Local Farmers’ Mutual Fire Insurance Companies, Valgren, USGPO, 1920].
The instructions for this system say to write the “guide letters” near the upper outside corners of the relevant pages (similar to folio numbers). It should probably be emphasized that even though medieval manuscripts were sometimes annotated with quire numbers prior to being sold, they were usually foliated by the purchaser, his heirs, or the bookbinder’s assistant when it was taken in for binding (sometimes decades or centuries after it was created).
Indexing didn’t always happen when a book was bound, sometimes the index was added weeks or decades later, but when it was professionally indexed, the indexers took their jobs very seriously. It could take months to critically analyze the manuscript, to annotate the margins and, finally, to create the index (as an example of this process, see BNF Latin 15754). In a sense, the index was like a Cliff Notes version of the manuscript.
So how could this indexing system possibly relate to east Asia? Well take a look at this 21st-century sequence for indexing street names in Malaysia:
I have removed “J” because it was generally non-existent in medieval Europe (what looks like a “j” is usually an embellished “i”) and also k because there are many more “k” syllables in 21st century Malaysian names than most western medieval languages. It is not a complete match by any means, but considering that German and Malaysian languages are very different, there are a remarkable number of matches in content and sequence.
This unexpected linguistic continuity gave me food for thought. I wondered… can this characteristic of languages have any relevance to the VMS?
Are There Indexes in the VMS?
Maybe. Here are some things to consider…
Some manuscripts were almost entirely indexes, which means the word patterns don’t match full sentences and numbers are frequent.
Some manuscripts, even long ones, had no indexes at all.
Some had brief section indexes (note the folios in the VMS that resemble “key” pages).
Some depended on an index as a separate volume.
Some had long indexes, extending for several folios (not unlike the dense text at the end of the Voynich Manuscript). Sometimes each entry was notated by a symbol such as a cross or flower.
Summary
Numerous insights can be gleaned from this. First of all, it shows there are aspects of language that are similar among western and Asian languages. The sample posted above demonstrates this with startling clarity.
Maybe it explains why Voynich “solutions” have been offered in a dozen different languages with many solvers (and statistical analysts) feeling strongly that it matches their language of choice. Perhaps we are seeing fragments (as in an index or as in words that have been broken into syllables with extra spaces) that follow patterns common to a number of languages.
Or perhaps the VMS (or portions of it) comprises an index which, in the middle ages could sometimes look like a student notebook, with many note-style annotations interspersed with numbers.
The concept of multiple volumes existed in the Middle Ages. There are a number of medieval herbals designed with separate text and illustrations. Bibliographers and historians have suggested that certain specific books, in a variety of subjects, may once have had a companion volume.
But does this apply to the Voynich Manuscript?
It’s my opinion that many of the VMS “labels” are not words, at least not if space boundaries are retained. Maybe they are references rather than names. It seems intuitively obvious to look for label matches in the main text (and I, of course, have done this as well), but this isn’t the only way to cross-reference. Label text doesn’t have to match the exact pattern of glyphs in the main text to function as a reference. It just has to “point” in some way (e.g., referencing a folio number, section, paragraph or quadrant, or perhaps a separate volume), a process that would result in a high degree of repetition and self-similarity.
I have seen cross-referencing in medieval manuscripts. There is an herbal in an English repository that cross-references the same plant in another manuscript, with a short annotation near the root. It is also very common in Greek herbals for illustrations in the margins to include an indexed number (written as letters) that references a formal index or some part of the text.
Even so, it should probably be noted that the VMS has quite a lot of text, most of it carefully integrated with the illustrations, which seems to speak against a companion volume, but if the VMS glyphs represent a verbose code, as one possibility, then the information content could be much lower than it appears.
Medieval charms are like puzzles—ancient traditions, archaic names, corrupted words, blended languages, and numerous abbreviations. To decompose or interpret them, one has to learn about historic religious practices, both eastern and western, and to study hundreds of charms so that the general patterns become more evident.
I’ve posted several blogs on charms, talismans, and amulets. It was the word oladabas on the second line and the repetition of six, morix, marix on the third line of VMS 116v that started me on this journey. These patterns reminded me of magic words (like Abracadabra) and patterns of sound-repetition that have long been associated with ancient magical rites.
The earlier blogs are here:
Repeated sound sequences and ancient words like Abracadabra (July 2013)
When I looked into this subject in more depth, I discovered that various versions of Aladabra, Abraca, Abracula, Abracadabra, ala drabra, et al, are closely related, and shortenings of the name in a repetitive line or diagram are not just to save space but to “reduce” the power of illness or malign spirits. Sometimes these are intended to be chanted aloud. Other times they are written on small squares or strips and worn on various parts of the body, or buried in the ground.
Abracadabra is possibly of Semitic origin and is mentioned in Serenus Sammonicus’s Liber Medicinalis as an incantation for fever as “chartae quod dicitur abracadabra”.
The charm words were not always written within shields or triangles, often they are within circles or pentagrams. Sometimes they are written in more prosaic style… let’s look again at an example I posted in 2016—a charm for fever:
The primary sequence begins with the word Abrachlam and is broken down in two sections Abrach + lam (you can think of this as alpha and omega, the beginning and end of the word). The beginning is reduced as follows:
Abrach, Abrach, Abrach, Abrach, Abrar, Abra, Abr, ab, A, B
And is interspersed with the shorter sequence from the end:
lam la l
Note how this differs from the shield charms (and from many of the more prosaic charms). This intertwining of the beginning and end is not common. Usually the ending is simply dropped to gradually reduce the word down to one or two characters, but the way the parts are interspersed in this example might be relevant to the VMS, as will be discussed farther down.
But first, a little more background. To fully appreciate charms, it helps to know a few abbreviations…
What is “aaa”?
Courtesy of St. John’s Orthodox Church
If you saw “aaa” in a manuscript or engraved on a talisman, you might scratch your head, but the history of charms reveals the meaning of this cryptic abbreviation.
When I came across the incantation “Agios Agios Agios” in a medieval manuscript, I recognized it because it is commonly written on Greek icons with images of saints, Jesus, and God (like the Arabs, the Greeks frequently exploited the calligraphic characteristics of letter shapes and intertwined them like monograms). On the right is a typical icon labeled O Agios. Agios means “otherly” and is often translated as reverend, holy, or sacred. It is written and abbreviated in numerous ways.
Agios was also Latinized in the Middle Ages. There are several examples in the Lindisfarne Gospels. I include one here:
O Agios Lucas, St. Luke [circa early 700s, century, British Library, MS Cotton Nero D IV]
Another example of Agios, in the context of charms, is in an Old English manuscript from the 11th century. The reader is instructed to sing Agios Agios Agios to the cattle each evening (ælce æfen) as a form of protection and aid (him to helpe):
Agios charm to be sung each evening to protect cattle [British Library, Cotton Vitellius E XVIII, f15v]
Agios is sometimes abbreviated as Ai, and the abbreviation aaa is also a shortened version of Agios, Agios, Agios. But Agios, Agios, Agios (used in priestly invocations) is itself an abbreviation. It comes from an old hymn in Greek:
Ágios ó theòs, ‘ágios ìskhuròs, ‘Ágios àthánatos èléeson èmâs…
This hymn is known as the Trisagion (thrice Agion) and is sung in liturgies and processions. If a person is familiar with the hymn, then they would recognize Agios, Agios, Agios in the context of a charm without having to see the full text of the hymn. It seems likely that it is a direct reference to the hymn because the cattle charm instructs the user to sing the charm words.
Thus, extreme abbreviation to single letters or double letters was not uncommon.
Other Mystery Abbreviations
In previous blogs, I posted examples of Abracula/Abgracula (right), a word gradually reduced to a talismanic shape (sometimes as a shield diagram), and frequently combined with crosses. Since posting this in 2013, I have also seen the word shortened to “Abrac” and “Arac” in textual charms.
In addition to shortened words, medieval charms often include repetitious sounds, in addition to Hebrew and Latin,”power syllables”, names of angels, and other components.
The following shield charm begins with “ab” in the upper left, followed by what appear to be mostly abbreviations in the outer band. The inner band also begins with “ab” if you flip it around, followed by numbers and a mixture of Greek and Latin letters. I was wondering why shield charms were common in Latin manuscripts and I’m not sure of the specific reason, but in Hebrew and Arabic exemplars, triangles are very common, so perhaps this is an adaptation of the triangle:
I noticed “ab” was frequently at the beginning of charm words and thought it might trace back to the biblical Abraham, but there’s another possibility… perhaps “ab-” is popular in charm words because it roughly represents the first two letters of the alphabet (Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Latin).
Below is another example from the same manuscript. In the top right are the names of the evangelists within quandrants, with a crossed circle in the center. On the third line are the names iasp[er] (a reference to Casper) melthior and bathazar (probably Balthazar), the three wise men, followed by invocations to archangels, followed by crosses and more names, including the following interesting passage:
+ elizabeth peperit Ioh[ann]em + Anna peperit Maria[m] + bra’ maria virgo peperit ihu’ (Jesus) Salvatore’ mu[n]di…
The names of women and their offspring are included in a number of childbearing charms and, if you scan down to the last line, you will see + a + g + l + a + amen, which is a clue that “agla” like “aaa” (Trisagion) is probably an acronym.
And so it is. It comes from the Hebrew אגלא for “Attah Gibbor Le’olam Adonai”. Adonai is one of the names of God, frequently included in charms with Eloyim and Sabaoth. This invocation acknowledges his might and power.
The following charm, added at the end of Arau MS Wett 4, also includes Adonai, Sabaoth, Grege, elyon, and tetragamaton (which also has Hebrew origins). At the end, are Baltasar and Melchior, as in the previous example and, as is common, several crosses (which in some cases indicates a genuflection):
Charm at the end of Ms Wett 4, folio 112r. This manuscript is from the second half of the 13th century, but these added notes might be from sometime in the 14th century, based on the handwriting. The second part may have been added at a different time, but it’s essentially the same style of handwriting (possibly the same writer), using a different writing implement and bottle of ink.
Near the end of the sixth line is the now-familiar agla.
Here’s a pestilence charm with a similar format and a brief partial-substitution cipher that I posted in June 2018:
15th century charm for warding off the pestilence (black plague). [Source e-codices Ms c 101]
Names of angels are also very common in charms and general books of magic. Here is an example with names of angels (and other sacred personages).:
Long lists of the names of angels are common in medieval books of magic. Notice how many have “el” or “ael” endings as is also true of archangels Michael and Gabriel. [Source: Vatican Lat. 1300]
Specific angels were said to be associated with each hour of the day or night, with the archangel Michael presiding over the first hour of the day (the time when many rites were instructed to begin).
Sound Repetitions
I mentioned Agios as a repeated invocation, but there are also many vaguely Hebrew or Latin-sounding phrases that don’t appear to mean anything or which are simply repeats of names. Often the cluster of syllables is identical or self-similar.
For example Hatim, Hatim, Hatim (also written hatyn, and probably representing a name), kadosh, kadosh, kadosh (the Hebrew word for sacred) and eye, eye, eye can be found in medieval conjurations for Thursday (as described in the Heptameron and by Lauron de Lawrence, 1915) . The odd-looking eye, eye, eye found in BSB Clm 809, is an abbreviation for eschereie, eschereie, eschereie.
What might be even more interesting to Voynich researchers is sequences that are self-similar…
In a childbirth charm in MS Sloane 3160, the text following christus regnat is erex + arex + rymex. Looking more closely, if the wordplay is based on “regnat” or “rex” then eREX aREX RymEX might be the basis for the pattern.
Sometimes the short Latin-like words refer to longer statements, just as aaa refers to agios in its longer form as agios + agios + agios or as a hymn. For example, the following statement:
In nomine patris max, in nomine filii max, in nomine spiritus sancti prax.
will sometimes be abbreviated in charms as max + max + prax.
Another sound sequence found in charms is habay + habar + hebar, with habar being the Hebrew word for incantation. Note how each word varies by only one letter.
In VMS 116v, on line three, we see siX + mariX + moriX + viX + so IX is common to all four and this being the VMS, I can’t help wondering if “ix” was chosen because it also doubles as the number 9. There are some oddities of spacing… the ix in each case appears to be written in the same handwriting and the “a” is the same as others on the page, but the backleaning i character (resembling EVA-i) in “vix” is quite perplexing. Was it intentional? Or a slip into thinking in Voynichese? Or is it a later addition in another hand?
Spelling was quite variable in the Middle Ages, so I looked up “morax” as a substitute for “morix” and discovered that morax or more commonly marax is a demon, one of the fallen angels—a spirit that could be summoned by Solomon, appearing as a bull. Marax governs astronomy, herbs, and precious stones. He can be invoked at any time except twilight.
This information comes from De Laurence’s 1916 Lesser Key of Solomon, which is translated from manuscripts in the British Museum. BNF Italian 1524 is another version that includes this diagram with AGLA in the top left, and a magic square in the bottom right together with other talismanic symbols:
An earlier manuscript said to have inspired this is the Livre des Esperitz (Book of Spirits, Trinity O.8.29), a French grimoire with influences dating back at least to the 13th century (Boudet, Médiévales). The French version calls this demon “Machin”. Other variations include Mathim or Bathym. Ancient sources mention Tamiel or Temel for a demon with the same characteristics.
These fallen angels were said by some to be fallen stars. Others saw them as personifications of human failings.
Some of John Dee’s writings are referenced in an 18th-century hand-written version of the Book of Spirits that is now in the Penn State Library (Ars Artium, Ms Codex 1677). The book includes a reference to the papers of Alchemist Richard Napier and a statement on a flyleaf that “I” (the scribe) copied the book from an old manuscript written upon parchment (British Royal Commission).
The Royal Commission also mentions a book on Kabbalah “bought at Naples from the Jesuits” Colledge, &c.” and a book on alchemy that “the Government seized upon the Convent and sold their Library.” Another writer, possibly C. Rainsford, further mentions that Sepher Rasiel came into his hands from the Naples Jesuits (1874), which provides some interesting connections between the Jesuits and occult books.
But to get back to our demon…it appears that the name morax/marax, when associated with fallen angels, originated sometime in the late middle ages or Renaissance, and we cannot be sure that marix or morix in the VMS is a spelling variation, but the similarity is provocative.
Now let’s look at another way to generate charm words…
Magic Squares
When I see self-similar patterns, I wonder if there is some formulaic way in which they are generated, other than simply having a couple of letters in common, as might be the case with palindromic magic squares. I saw one pattern that included the phrase ARAPS IASPER SCRIPT, which immediately reminded me of the famous SATOR/ROTAS square.
SATOR/ROTAS palindromic square [courtesy of M Disdero via Wikipedia, photo taken at Oppede, Luberon, France]
Many people are familiar with this square. It comes from ancient times and is frequently in books of magic, as with the Trinity example above.
Sometimes the square is omitted to show just the letters, as in the following incantation to influence friends in The Clavicle of Solomon, MS Sloane 3847. Note also the names of the three wise men, which were in MS Wett 4 pictured earlier, a variety of biblical names, and the four evangelists:
S. Sator, arepo, tenet, opera, rotas, Ioth, heth, he, vau, y. hac, Ia, Ia, Ia, papes, Ioazar, anarenetõ nomina sancta ad implete votum Amen. Baltazar, Iapher, Melchior, Abraham, Isaac, et Jacob, Sydrac, Misaac et Obednego, Marcus, Matheus, Lucas, Johannes, Ioron, Sizon, Tiris anfraton, adestote omnes in adiutorium ut a quacunque creatura voluere possim graciam impetrare.
Have you ever played with the letters in the SATOR/ROTAS square to create other words? For example, I noticed that PATER NOSTER (Our Father) can be constructed, and Pater Noster is also common in charms.
This made me wonder if charm sequences similar to ARAPS IASPER SCRIPT (ones whose origins are harder to identify) were loosely based on the SATOR idea. For example, something like this (I created this in a couple of minutes, so it’s not elegant, but it’s good enough to get the idea across).
Letters in this palindromic square can be picked out to generate the words ARAPS IASPER SCRIPT. To the medieval mind, perhaps they carry some of the “power” that comes from a palindromic square. Sound-similarity occurs almost by default when the character set is small.
Thus, I became suspicious that magic squares might have been used to generate a subset of charm words that are harder to fathom, and then I found this…
Abracula appears abbreviated as Abrac in Abrac Abeor Abere in Peter of Abano’s Heptameron. And it is apparently also the basis of “Ara”, an abbreviation used in a magic square with the following components:
Note the similarity of Ara and Ora to “aror” on folio 116v of the VMS. The preponderance of “a” and “o” (and the proximity of an “r” shape) is also a characteristic of the VMS main text.
If a string of something that looks like nonsense syllables were derived from other words in the same charm, then self-similarity across several lines would be significant. Even though the sequence SIX MARIX MORIX VIX isn’t sound-similar to the rest of 116v, it is similar to words in charms.
Practical Magic
The following example incorporates sacred names and abbreviations (typically Agla, Amara, Tanta, and others) within a circular frame surrounded by boxed crosses:
Sacred abbreviations and names surrounded by boxed crosses, all within a circle. The circle was not just decorative—often it was intended to be drawn on the ground, with the practitioner stepping within the circle and onlookers (if there are any) either waiting outside the circle or standing within, as well. The format varied with the tradition and the purpose of the charm. [15th century, BSB Clm 849]
If it is included, the name of God is often written first. Sometimes it is written several different ways. Other times the name of God is expressly omitted or only partially written, as certain cultures have prohibitions about writing the name of God.
AGLA is not specifically a name of God, but like max + max + prax represents a shortened phrase that includes the name Adonay, a reference to God that is very often in charms. Other common names in charms are Eloym and Sabaoth.
If you see C + M + B or G + M + B, there is a good chance it stands for Caspar Melchior Balthasar. M + G + E would be Michael, Emanual, Raphael and M + M + L + I is Mathew, Mark, Luke and Iohn (John). Names are sometimes written out in full or partly abbreviated. If there is limited space, the archangels are often chosen over other angel names. Sometimes many angel names are included.
Variations on words for friendship or love were also common in charms to win someone’s affections (or to get a girl to lift up her skirts).
As mentioned above, this shield-shaped charm symbol has numerous abbreviations and, as examples have shown, it was very common for charms and remedies to include Greek and Hebrew letters.
Unfortunately, when words or phrases are distilled down to one or two letters, it becomes harder to interpret them unless you can find a similar charm with the words written out. In this case, it’s possible the “ab” on the top-left is abracula or abracadabra as these words appear often in charms (especially shield charms):
This shield shape is populated with crosses and numerous abbreviations. It’s possible the “ab” stands for abracula, but sometimes an entire common phrase will be distilled down to a few letters for each word (note that there is “and” symbol before the last word on the top side) so it’s also possible this is a religious or magical invocation (a full phrase or sentence). [Wellcome MS Misc Alchem XII]
Magical diagrams in an Arabic manuscript, with symbols common to middle-eastern talismans and incantations [Baldah Al-Jinn]
Western charms have much in common with ancient Mediterranean, Arabic, and Indic charms, many of which have been transmitted through manuscripts created by Jewish and Greek scribes. Invocations to God from the Qur’an are sometimes included in divinatory diagrams.
Pentagrams, circles, shields, triangles, stars of David, and other geometric shapes are commonly found in both eastern and western manuscripts. Also common to eastern manuscripts is a double rectangle, with the second rectangle offset, with eight loops at the point, a symbol for Earth. Western manuscripts also include these shapes, but tend to favor circles, shields, stars, and rectangles. Sometimes the strange shapes that accompany divinatory frames are corruptions of Arabic letters and western-Arabic numerals.
Figures composed of spidery lines ending in circles are common in books of Kabbalah, and often the names of angels are expressed this way, as well. Some of the western alchemy and astrology symbols have these characteristics, as well. Shapes that resemble EVA-t are natural variations of these kinds of patterns.
Sword and Soil
In medieval books of magic, drawing a circle in the dirt with a sword or stick is a frequent instruction, and incantations may be chanted from the edge or inner portion of the circle, depending on the specific kind of charm. The user is frequently directed to face east. If animals are used in the ceremony, they are usually sacrificed (and sometimes buried in a specific spot) or let free with the understanding that bad spirits will depart with the animal. The unfortunate Hoopoe, a beautiful bird that is fast declining, was a favorite sacrificial victim.
Often a young virgin boy was used to read the signs in water, oil, or other somewhat reflective surfaces. It was assumed that someone with enough youth and innocence would tell the truth. Often the boy was asked to reveal who had perpetrated a crime and people were gullible enough to accept the boy’s interpretation and to punish the “guilty”.
This may seem irrational and superstitious, but even respected 16th-century scholars like John Dee believed it was possible to “channel” information from other realms via a scrying mirror and a medium (in this case, Edward Kelley, who was neither young nor virginal).
This example from a 15th-century manuscript (Clm 849) is circular, with a central star, five divisions, and a sword at the apex representing east (east was commonly shown as “up” in medieval maps and many magical diagrams). This is the general form of diagrams that were inscribed on the ground, sometimes with a real sword.
It was rare for books with diagrams like this to survive as they were actively sought out and destroyed by authorities. Sometimes just owning one of these books could get you imprisoned:
Instead of a figure, sometimes the words or letters for alpha and omega are written in the inner circle. In BL Sloane 3648, the central circle includes pentagrams with ADONAI written in each outer triangle and alpha and omega split across them on either side:
As mentioned earlier, charm words are often in groups of three with sound similarity. Sometimes the words are identical, as in Amen, Amen, Amen, or Fiat, Fiat, Fiat.
Sometimes they vary only slightly. Frequently the second and third words are only one or two letters different from the one that came before, as in Adra Adrata Adratta, or Adra Adrata Adracta, or one I see quite frequently, Hel, Hely Heloy (sometimes written Hely, Heloy, Heloe, Heloen or Helion, Heloi, Hel), or the variant shown here as Ely Eloy Elyon:
Holy names such as Sabaoth, Adonay, and Emanuel, and repetitious chants such as Hel, Hely, Heloy or Ely, Eloy, Elyon, are commonly found in books of divination, and in charms and remedies written in margins and flyleaves of manuscripts. [Source: BSB Clm 849, c. earlier in the 15th century]
I want to emphasize this because self-similar patterns are quite frequent in the main text of the Voynich Manuscript and I don’t think auto-copying is the only possible explanation. Before I post examples, I want to cover one more thing in folio 116v…
Names in Charms
In classical charms, a reference or invocation to Pagan heroes or gods was common. After Christianity became prevalent, the format remained essentially the same, but Hebrew and Christian names for God, angels, and the virgin Mary were often substituted, or shared space with older names whose origins were no longer known.
The second line of 116v has a word that might be “cere” which might be a Pagan reference to Ceres the goddess of crops and fertility, but there’s not enough information to know.
The next line includes the word maria with crosses on either side (which I mentioned in 2013 might be the sign for genuflection), and there is one that looks like it was inserted as an afterthought between the a and the r. This is quite possibly an invocation to the virgin Mary:
The word before “maria” is harder to discern. It looks like ahia, but the “i” is oddly written and the last stroke of the h is oddly abrupt and slightly truncated. It’s almost like an h badly melded with a k. It’s not quite a “b” (there is no bottom cross-stroke).
But let’s investigate the plausibility of ahia. This could be a reference to the prophet Ahia in the Biblical Book of Kings, who is best known for his prophesy that Jeroboam would be king. If the text on 116v is a medical charm, then Ahijah/Ahia/Ahiya would be an appropriate name, as Ahia the Shilonite was called upon in the Bible to be an intermediary between mortals and God in much the same way as Mary is asked to intercede on behalf of mortals in distress.
How Does This Relate to the VMS?
Patterns of repetition, in which subsequent tokens are only slightly different from preceding ones, are very prevalent in the VMS, but most of them are sequences of two (these can be found throughout the manuscript).
There are also dual and triple repeats with no apparent changes:
Are there sequences of three where the variation is limited to one character each time? A further example from folio 79r comes close, except that the third repetition has two changes, thus qolkeey qolkeedy qokedy:
This example, from the following folio might appear to be a sequence of five (with only one change in each), except that the differences in EVA-t and EVA-k create two changes rather than one:
Here’s a similar sequence with dar and dax at beginning and end and four very similar tokens in between:
There’s no rule in charms that limits changes to only one letter, but when studying an unknown text like the VMS, if you give yourself too many degrees of freedom, you may be biasing your results. It’s usually better to examine simple changes first and, depending on what they reveal, go from there.
What we frequently find in the VMS is sequences where two glyphs change from one to the next. What is especially interesting about these sequences is that the characters that create two changes rather than one are often EVA-t and EVA-k.
The word oladaba8 on 116v is similar to some of the variants on abracadabra. Here is a full phrase found in Grimoires:
ala drabra ladr[a] dabra rabra afra braraagla et alpha omega
Now if we take the first part (before the readable part that says “agla et alpha omega”) and reverse it (something that was frequently done with magical words), we get
ararb arfa arbar arbad ardal arbard ala
If we substitute VMS characters with similar shapes, we get something close to Voynichese:
It’s not legal Voynichese (it’s too repetitive, there are other ways it could be substituted, and it breaks a couple of rules), but it shows some provocative similarities between Voynichese and charm sequences that are difficult to find between Voynichese and natural languages.
A French book of medicine from the early 19th century mentions both abracadabra and its reverse arbadacarba. In turn, if you break up arbadacarba into ar sa da 8ar sa (or something along those lines), the similarities to VMS components are more evident.
Remember the reduction charms I mentioned at the beginning? Where a charm word is broken down into smaller and smaller bits? Here is another interesting sequence in the VMS:
No, it’s not exactly the same in terms of which letters are dropped, but the way it diminishes is more similar to charm reductions than it is to the way sentences are usually constructed. Reduction-style charm sequences don’t follow hard-and-fast rules, just general guidelines (note that these patterns are more prevalent in some sections of the VMS than others).
Summary
There are not enough VMS glyphs with talismanic shapes to prove a connection to books of kabbalah or western magic. There’s only one (EVA-t) that is not easily found in the Greco-Roman scribal repertoire. My research tells me that most VMS glyph-shapes are the same shapes as Latin letters, numbers, and abbreviations (with a few that resemble Greek).
Also… to suggest that the VMS is full of enciphered charm words would be to ignore line-complexity, and the great variety of sequences that comprise the text. It’s possible that VMS patterns are generated in another way and similarity to charms is coincidental.
But there are portions that resemble charms in terms of pattern, repetition, and successive lengths of tokens, so perhaps some parts of the manuscript were inspired by incantations or charms. The only way to find out is to study them to see where and how often they occur.
This is one of the VMS plant IDs I left blank in 2013 because I simply couldn’t find an explanation for the root shape. The plant has always looked to me like Tanacetum (or maybe Achillea), but I wanted to figure out the root before posting and was never completely sure if it was an angel, a bird, or something else. Now I realize it might not matter… there might be enough references in the style of the flower to help us understand the meaning behind it.
But first, let’s look at the VMS drawing…
Plant 46v
Plant 46v is drawn toward the left of the page, as though space were left for more text that was never added. The text itself is a bit unusual. There is a right-side column that extends downwards and almost runs into the plant rather than following the shape of the plant. It looks like the text may have been added in two passes, a chunk on the left and a narrowing chunk on the right.
The drawing is fairly large and clipped at the bottom. The size of the flowerheads appears to be exaggerated (perhaps to show the details?). The stalk curls in a way that is not common to very many species—it might be mnemonic or stylized. A few of the individual stalks end abruptly, without flowers, an intriguing detail that might be important.
Coloration
The painting is rough, but the choice of colors indicates some thought. The stalk has clear green on the bottom, shading to a pale grayish-brown on the upper stalk, with blue on the individual flower stalks, and a darker blue for the calyx. The root is a medium brown with a light section where it connects to the stalk, and two red patches on either side.
The leaves are somewhat fernlike, with slight tails, and carefully drawn individual leaf serrations. The leaf stalks are concentrated at the base. On the leaves themselves, almost hidden by paint, are some lines that might represent hairs, veins, or ridges.
In fact, the whole drawing seems somewhat stylized (not just the root, but also the flower stalk and, to some extent, the leaves). To me, the root looks like an angel or maybe a bird and other researchers have suggested it might be a bird. What is provocative about it is the round circle in the “neck” and the red lining on the “shoulders”. These are not accidental details. The round part almost looks like an attachment point, as one might see in a tool or a piece of folding portable furniture.
When I look at the drawing from a distance, it reminds me of Tanacetum or Achillea. Both are in the aster family and have button-like flowers and serrated somewhat frondy leaves. The flower-heads and the serrated leaves in the VMS drawing seem consistent with these plants, but a Voynich researcher had another idea that I think has merit…
Prior IDs
I don’t agree with Edith Sherwood’s 2015 ID. She suggested Geum urbanum (wood avens), which is a plant in the rose family, but the flowers of G. urbanum are not the same shape as the VMS drawing. They have five petals that splay out (see below-right), and the flowerheads are more discrete, and they do not tend to cluster on the same stalk. The palmate leaves don’t match the VMS drawing very well either. She has an earlier ID (2008) suggesting a different plant (Inula conyza), which fits the drawing better, so I’m not sure why she changed the ID.
I think the button-like flowers in the VMS drawing look more like asters than roses, and the VMS leaves are clearly not palmate (there are other VMS drawings that have well-defined palmate leaves, so clearly the illustrator knew how to draw palmate leaves).
Other IDs
On the Voynich.ninja forum, Ellie Velinska mentioned costmary (Tanacetum balsamita). I like this ID. Costmary has finely serrated leaves and button-like flowers. I think Velinska mentioned a bird in the root, but I had been thinking it might be an angel. Either way, it looks more mnemonic than natural.
In Renaissance-era herbals I have noticed that costmary is sometimes listed under the older name of Chrysanthemum balsamita. Costmary is the Bible-leaf plant (the fragrant leaves are dried and used as bookmarks), and the French name for costmary is Herbe Sainte-Marie (referring sometimes to Mary Magdalene, other times to Mary, mother of Jesus). It was used medicinally in the Middle Ages, and also as a flavoring (hence the alternate name ale-cost).
Velinska’s ID of costmary fits well in almost every way. I wanted to endorse it, but there is one troubling detail…
Costmary is an eastern plant. It is common in Asia but was not introduced to Europe until about the 16th century. It did exist in a few places in the Caucasus, but may not have been abundant, as there were other more common species of Tanacetum that grew in this region, and plants are always competing for habitat. So I tried to find costmary in medieval herbals to see if I could support Velinska’s idea, but found it difficult to find any examples. Those that most resemble it are probably sage, but for the record, here is what I found…
Tracking Down St. Mary
There are many plants called Sancte Maria/Santa Maria (including Dysphania ambrosioides, Solomon’s seal, and some species of Thymus) and the Linnaean system didn’t exist yet to help distinguish them. Most of the medieval drawinngs labeled Santa Maria show forget-me-nots or Solomon’s seal, or do not include flowers (which usually means the flowers are not a prevalent or useful part of the plant).
In medieval herbals, drawings labeled Santa Maria tend to depict leafy plants (which, unfortunately, are very numerous and hard to distinguish from each other), but it’s possible some of them are sage (Salvia), which is often drawn without flowers and called Santa Maria.
It’s possible this leafy plant, which is labeled Sancte Maria, is one of the common species of sage. The flowers were generally not included in the drawings, which makes it difficult to make a definitive identification, especially when there were several different plants with this name, but if it is sage, then the dog-muzzle style flowers would not be a good match for a VMS costmary ID.
There are numerous plants in medieval herbals with flowers that are similar to the VMS 46v. Feverfew, chamomile, and Tanacetum vulgare are common, but they are usually labeled in a way that they can be recognized and I have not found one that can be unambiguously pinpointed as Tanacetum balsamita.
A New Drawing of Santa Maria
Santa Maria, BNF Lat 17848, c. 1440s
Then, while looking through my copious files on medieval plants, I noticed that around the middle of the 15th century, a new drawing labeled Santa Maria shows up in a number of herbals. I couldn’t find it in the older references. Could this be costmary?
Unfortunately, the drawing doesn’t look like costmary, which is an aster. The mystery plant has a single long stalk with flame-like flowers (other versions of the drawing also have orange or red flame-like flowers). It looks more like Gladiolus or Salvia than costmary, so if it is costmary, it’s quite a bad drawing, even compared to other medieval drawings, and since most of the herbals have reasonably accurate drawings of tansy and feverfew (which are similar to costmary). I’m inclined to think the drawing on the right is not costmary, but maybe one of the red salvias.
Other Possibilities
The Tanacetum plants, in general, are a good match for VMS 46v. Many of them have frond-like sawtooth leaves and button-like flowers and, as mentioned, similar plants like tansy and feverfew are commonly found in medieval herbals. For the VMS plant, I was leaning more toward tansy than feverfew, but there are some varieties of feverfew that have shorter-than-usual petals and button-like centers, so it cannot be entirely eliminated.
I’m tempted to include Arabis collina on the list of possibilities. The leaves are a good match and the flower-stalk curls, but unfortunately, the flowers are wrong:
There is another species to consider. Achillea (also known as yarrow) has clusters of button-like flowers and finely serrated or frond-like leaves (depending on the species). It is widely distributed across Asia and Europe, and has much in common with the VMS drawing.
Achillea comes in several colors, including pink and red, but most varieties are yellow or creamy white. On some species, the flowers are like tansy, other times they are like chamomile. The leaves are sometimes feathery, sometimes more solid, and there are even woolly varieties. This plant is often included in medieval herbals under the name Millefolium:
Cotula is another possibiity. It has button flowers (there are quite a lot of asters with button flowers, sometimes called “rayless asters”), but the leaves are typically slender and smooth-margined, so the leaves are not a good match. Acamptopappus species also have button flowers, but it’s a desert plant (and American in origin), and the leaves are quite slender and small.
So I am still uncertain about the identity of 46v, if examined from a naturalistic point of view, and even thought costmary might not have been known in Europe in the early 15th century, it’s still one of my favorite IDs because the idea of an angel in the root would fit well with the name. A bird would too, if we are thinking in terms of Mary’s ascension and bird-drawings of the Holy Spirit.
But what about the curled stalk?
This is a question I’ve been wrestling with for some time, and another reason it has taken so long to post this blog. Is the curled stalk a characteristic of the plant, or is it a decorative embellishment?
There are plants with curled stalks (Arabis, Heliotrope and many others), but they don’t usually have rayless flowers, and the stalk on the right of the VMS drawing has exactly seven flowers (a number important to medieval society).
I’m leaning toward 46v being a stylized drawing, especially when I see decorative floral elements in manuscripts such as the ones below (I have flipped them so they face the same way as the VMS flower). In terms of iconography, take note of the clipped stalks:
Top-left, VMS 46v. Top-right and bottom, decorative aster-like floral motifs from the Gorleston Psalter.
A Connection to Medieval Cosmology?
I kept wondering why the VMS illustrator spun the flower stalk in a loop and put seven flowers on the right stalk and one on the left. I knew it was common for medieval and post-medieval emblems to include seven stars representing the “seven planets”. In medieval cosmology, the earth was the center of the universe, orbited by seven “stars”.
Does the flower on the left represent the earth, and the seven flowerheads on the right the seven “stars” (or “planets” as they were conceived at the time), which were defined as Moon, Mercury, Lucifer/Veneris, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn?
The seven “planets” from a medieval point of view as depicted in Liber Floridus as Sun, Moon, Mercury, Lucifer (Veneris), Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. These were all considered to be revolving around the Earth.
Here is a later example from Anatomia Auri (early 17th century) that I wanted to include because it combines medicine, astrology, cosmology, and alchemy. This astrological diagram focuses on Leo as the sun sign (notice the sign for Leo in the center by each of the sun’s cheeks) and, like earlier medieval drawings, shows the six other “planets” together with the sun:
Why did I pick this one from the early 17th century rather than one from the 15th century? Because the Leo sign by the sun’s cheeks reminded me of this diagram on VMS 28v, which was discussed extensively by K. Gheuens and others on the Voynich.ninja forum due to the emblematic shape and the mysterious figures in the center.
I think the writing in the center could be interpreted in several different ways, possibly the way Gheuens suggested, but one of the ideas that crossed my mind was that the portion on the right might be an upside-down Leo symbol, similar to those on the cheeks of the sun-sign in the diagram above.
But getting back to Plant 46v, is it possible the flowers represent the earth on the left and seven “planets” on the right in the medieval earth-centric universe? Or is it something else?
In Kabbalah, the number one is the source, origin; seven is family, harmony, which might fit with an angel-root, but less so with a bird.
If the root is an angel, then perhaps the flowers on the right represent the angels of the seven churches, which are depicted here with each one holding a star:
The angels of the seven churches, standing on a cloudband, each one holding a star. Sometimes a key of Solomon is drawn along with the seven angels, and the stars are sometimes likened to the seven medieval “planets”. [Source: BNF Français 13096]
Sometimes the seven stars of the seven churches are shown on one side, with the key of Solomon on the other:
The key of Solomon, with Latinized initials for Alpha and Omega? on either side of the nimbed God. The seven stars represent the seven churches and may also refer to the seven “planets”. [Source: BL Add 15243]
Unfortunately, it’s hard to narrow down a specific analogy because symbols of 1 + 7 are rather common. It might be a mnemonic for stars, such as the Pleiades (the seven sisters) and their father Atlas. The Pleiades are roughly arranged in an arc, with their father to one side:
Or there might be a religious analogy…
There is an image of the Virgin and child in the Pauper’s Bible that places the Virgin in the center of spiraling rings of water (the fountain or “font” analogy was adapted from water imagery in Pagan times).
You might wonder what this enigmatic drawing means (especially when one sees spiral images and a lot of water in the VMS, as well). It’s a mnemonic, in the Llullian tradition, representing a prayer that was widely included in Books of Hours. The fountains spiraling between Mary and the outer edge are invocations to the Virgin, representing her as the “fount” of mercy, grace, consolation, indulgence, etc.:
A mnemonic for a prayer common in Books of Hours that includes an invocation to the Virgin Mary [Source: Pauper’s Bible, BSB Clm 8201 1414/1415].
Thus, we see a focal point (Virgin and child) with seven comet-like “fonts” (funds, or fountains) in a spiral. It doesn’t look like the VMS plant, but the themes and elements are similar.
The Pauper’s Bible also has a large number of candlestick-like plant images, similar to those I mentioned in a previous post about The Desert of Religion and similar to those by Ramon Llull, as in this one enumerating key points of the philosophy of love:
Tree of the Philosophy of Love, Ramon Lull, c. 13th century [This version from the Biblioteca Diocesana de Mallorca]
Here are similar plant forms in the Pauper’s Bible that are used to express religious categorizations, concepts, and sometimes mnemonics:
Some of the VMS plants also have candelabra-like qualities, but they do not have labels on the leaves, so it’s difficult to know if they have a similar purpose.
In alchemical diagrams, an assumed relationship between astrology, the seven “planets”, plants, and candlesticks (a metaphor variously used for religion, heat, or light) and chemical processes (especially those of distillation) are frequently diagramed in a highly symbolic way, as in this example from Anatomia Auri:
Summary
I think two things are especially important to consider about VMS Plant 46v…
The first is the apparently symbolic root, and the spiraling, broken-off flower stalks. They are more decorative or mnemonic than naturalistic. Viny plants are common in the borders of medieval manuscripts, but my research so far indicates this style (with the spiral stalks with a few broken off) was especially prevalent in English/Northern French manuscripts of the 13th to 15th centuries. But unlike the VMS drawing, the manuscript flower stalks were mostly decorations and a single plant did not usually occupy a full page.
The second is to note that the drawing in the Pauper’s Bible is specifically mnemonic, in a way that was probably inspired by the works of Ramon Llull or one of his followers. It is designed to inform and to remind.
It’s easy to consider the root as symbolic, but perhaps the VMS flower is symbolic as well. Maybe the text that accompanies this specific drawing is not about plants. Maybe it is a description of a constellation (like Pleiades). Maybe the root is an eagle and the drawing is about alchemy. Or maybe Plant 46v represents a prayer and there is an angel in the root.
J.K. Petersen
Postscript: After posting a blog, I always notice a few hours later that I’ve forgotten something I intended to include.
This time, I left out the explanation for the oddities at the base of the plant stalk if the plant combines symbols from Christianity and alchemy. The eagle is a prevalent theme in alchemical diagrams and birds frequently represent ascension and the holy spirit in Christian imagery. So…
If 46v represents alchemical or Christian themes (or both), then the red shoulder and the odd round circle at the base of the stalk might be the blood of Christ (wine is a fermented product) and the “host” (the body of Christ as per Catholic tradition). In addition to possibly representing the “host”, the “o” might also double for the hole driven through Christ’s feet and hands at the crucifixion. I have sometimes seen this represented in medieval drawings as a simple “o”-shape.
Or perhaps it’s a symbolic representation of the philosopher’s stone (which was sometimes drawn in the claw of the alchemical eagle) or the pelican piercing its breast to feed its young (one of the common alchemical distillation jars was called a pelican jar due to the curved shape of the glass pipes that fed back into the main jar). In medieval illustrations, the pelican never looked like a real pelican, it was always drawn like a songbird or a small crane.
There are frequent comments that folio 77r represents medieval elements in the cosmological sense, but as you can see from my recent blog, I’m somewhat skeptical. There are five openings and two of the outflows are almost the same. Plus, they could be phlegm/bile/blood or various kinds of weather (hail, wind, rain, snow). But, even those ideas didn’t completely satisfy me, so I kept trying to think of others and here is an additional possibility….
A Different Interpretation
I’ve blogged about VMS folio 77r a few times and if you read the more recent ones, you may have noticed that I have never been completely convinced that these pipes were meant to be earth, water, air, and fire. Maybe they represent various outflows of alchemical heating and condensing processes:
In other words, instead of earth, water, air, and fire (except in the metaphorical sense in which most alchemical processes were expressed at the time), this might be heat, exhaust, and either two instances of condensation, or possibly one instance of boiling and the other of condensation, since two of the VMS outflows are very similar but not exactly the same.
Many alchemical images have been related to the VMS in one way or another over the decades. Not surprisingly, since many alchemical manuscripts are enigmatic and highly symbolic.
I’ve blogged a few distillation images myself, and the two big bladder-like things have always reminded me of distillation vessels, but I couldn’t decide exactly what they might be. It was bi3mw’spost #70 on the Alchemical Symbolism thread that motivated me to go back through my notes and think about it again. Now I think these bladders might represent the sublimation process:
Similarly, the bladder-like shapes at the top of f77v have always reminded me of the she-wolf’s teats in the story of Romulus and Remus, or the chest-of-plenty on Diana of Ephesus (which I have posted in the past), but now I think there might be another explanation:
Maybe the row of teats is a row of distillation vessels and the rounded forms left and right are heating vats.
Various alchemical vessels that have shapes similar to the VMS. The one on the bottom right is similar to another snaky distillation apparatus pointed out by bi3mw on the Voynich.ninja forum.
The pipes that connect them are spiritually guided by nymphs (all of alchemy was considered to be under spiritual guidance, hence the heavy use of religious motifs in alchemical drawings). Both magic and alchemy were suspect professions, associated with black arts, so the more religious symbology that was used, the more it legitimized these occupations.
The VMS Rosettes Folio Reprised
On a subject some researchers might not believe is related to distillation processes, I’ve also blogged numerous interpretations for the VMS “map” and I’ve only written up about 20% of the ideas I’ve been working on for years. One that has been lying on the backburner is that the central rosette might be the Tower of Philosophy, related to medieval alchemy. I haven’t posted it mainly because I wasn’t sure, but putting together the distillation process represented by the 77r pipes AND some of the features of the rosettes folio, I feel more confident about this idea than I did before.
I don’t know if anyone has specifically related the central rosette on the VMS “map” folio to the alchemical furnaces of the Tower of Philosophy. Most of the time people mention locations in the middle east (especially Baghdad) or north Africa and some people consider the folio to be a form of portolan.
To me, the central rosette always looked like a sacred place (probably because of the stars and arches and the central position), but I did not specifically associate it with the sacred mountain of the alchemists until today because many places were considered sacred in the middle ages. I think it might represent both sacred mountain and the alchemists’ furnace combined into one drawing. As I have mentioned in previous blogs… the meeting place between terrestrial and cosmological realms.
Here are two examples side-by-side so you can see the similarities. Note that the tower is round, with arches, like the arches in the center of the VMS rosette with the container-like towers. It has an almost onion-dome top and at the base of the image, there are more “towers” that look like pipes:
Left: Donato d’Eremita di Rocca alchemical furnace/tower of philosophy, Naples 1624 with many structural forms similar to central rosette on “map” folio of Voynich Manuscript, Beinecke 408, Yale.
Here is a link to an earlier (15th-century) image of an alchemy furnace with tower-like parts:
Robert Fludd’s images are often posted on the Voynich.ninja forum due to their structural and textural similarities to some of the VMS drawings. They are more sophisticated, and they were created much later than the VMS, but it’s my belief that his ideas were not entirely original, that they derive from older models and thus might have some relevance.
Here is an example that is similar in shape and direction to the general outlay of the rosettes folio. It represents a cosmic battle with demons and archangels attacking and defending the alchemist in the center. Notice the “spewy” things, all drawn in similar ways, but each taking a slightly different form (think of hordes of locusts or bees or frogs as are often mentioned in biblical literature):
I’ve blogged at length about the “spewy” things in the rosettes folder, never quite knowing what they were, but only that they looked like connections between the inner and outer circles. Maybe, as in Fludd’s engraving, they are pestilences, or a metaphorical reference to the battle between good and evil (with archangels and demons taking sides).
In this Rosicrucian image with alchemical references, notice the tent at the top of the sacred hill (sacred hills are a holdover from Paganism) and the alchemists’ cave below it. The VMS rosettes folio is full of these kinds of structures, almost too many to list in one blog, and MarcoP pointed out that Ellie Velinska had suggested tents for some of the shapes on the rosettes folio. When I took another look, I realized some of the small details that originally made no sense to me might be interpreted as tent flaps. Here is an image of a sacred hill atop an alchemists’ cave (such underground laboratories did actually exist, one was unearthed under a chapel complete with shards of numerous vessels):
Speculum Sophicum Rhodostauroticum, thought to be by Daniel Mögling
The Many Plant Folios
Distillation has a direct relationship to plants and plants like Centaurea (which I think is depicted fairly accurately on folio 2r) were of specific interest to distillers of alcoholic products, both recreational and medicinal. Tinctures of alcohol not only helped preserve the plants, but they provided concentrated formulas that were sometimes more effective than herbal “simples” (basic plant parts that had not been processed by distillation).
Jakob de Tepenecz, one of the probable owners of the VMS, became quite wealthy from sales of his distilled products. So much so, he could afford to lend money to the emperor himself.
I don’t know if the various sections of the VMS are like separate booklets that have been bound together, or if they were meant to relate to each other, but IF there’s an over-riding theme, then plants would fit right in.
Astrology
Alchemy has also been related to astrology and kabbalah. Besides the three “teats” (see f77v), this hybrid creature has a star on its crown rather than the usual Christian cross. There are also stars-on-sticks radiating from the center. The image further includes references to celestial beings and signs of the zodiac:
A combination of alchemical, kabbalistic, spiritual, and astrological symbols. Note the three “teats” teats and the star at the top of the crown that are reminiscent of VMS imagery. [Source: Michelspacher, 1615]
Notice also, in the above image, the inverted T-in-O, a cosmological variant of the T-in-O that is so common in map-related writings.
So maybe the VMS is alchemical after all. After investigating it for a while, I was leaning away from this idea, but a few things clicked when bi3mw revived the ninja thread, so I decided to take another look.
In 2016, I posted several blogs suggesting the imagery around the VMS zodiac figures might be cycles of life. In medieval times they called this the Ages of Man but since the nymphs are mostly women and some of the VMS cycles are specific to women’s physiology, I thought “stages of life” might be more appropriate.
I have less doubt about this interpretation than many aspects of the VMS, but I didn’t hear much support for the idea. The nymphs have variously been interpreted as star charts, parts of a calendar, and numerous other ideas (I have other ideas too, but the one I prefer for this specific wheel is stages of life). I intended to follow up the blog with more examples years ago, and this blog has been sitting in draft form since June, but other lines of research always intrude on continuing a series so, belatedly, here it is…
Ages of Man
Before we look at Ages of Man, keep in mind that classical Ages of Man (as described by Ovid and Hesiod) focused more on the evolution of mankind from gods, titans, heroes, to iron-age man, and less on the evolution of modern humans.
In the Middle Ages, dependence on classical beliefs began to wane. The concept of the Ages of Man still retained some classical ideas, but focused more and more on the individual’s journey through time. The stages of wo-man lagged behind the stages of man, but were gradually acknowledged in the Renaissance and early modern periods.
Unwinding the Zodiac-Figure Nymph-Wheels
Below is an overview of the folio, and following that, the unwound series of nymphs I posted in April 2016 (the figures surrounding the f70v fish).
Note: In this overview, I am not entirely certain if the tipped-over barrels in the center ring, which I think of as coffins, are being entered (as the last stage of life), or exited (as the soul ascends to the after-world), so the arrows in the inner ring might have a different start-point than indicated here, but either way, the basic idea is the same, the outer wheel is maturation and middle age, the inner wheel is older age with a sugar-coated version of death or possibly one of ascension:
In 2016, I suggested this was a life cycle from pre-adolescence to old age.
Note how the nymphs in the outer ring go from skinny unpregnant pre-adolescence through child-bearing years and middle age, to tipped-over baskets that resemble caskets. The age progression and tipped-over posture gave me a hint of their possible meaning:
I believe this is a cradle-to-grave sequence, but did such a concept exist in medieval society?
Yes, very much so, and it was drawn in a variety of ways. Here are some examples…
Cradle-to-Grave Sequences
This stages-of-life diagram is a simple timeline. Note how the first figure is young, the second-to-last is hunched, and the last figure tips over.
In classical and medieval times, the ages of life were usually described in six to eleven stages…
Plato described nine stages. Isidore of Seville (6th century) lists six: infantia, pueritia, adolescentia, juventus, gravitas, and senectus.
Shakespeare eloquently counts seven:
All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players, They have their exits and entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages…
Sometimes there were fewer stages. The following 13th- or 14th-century example (sorry, I couldn’t find a shelfmark) roughly follows Isidore’s classification (relative to the VMS, note the Gemini-like amorous couple in the adolescence circle):
Postscript 21 March 2020: This illustrator managed to include seven ages of man within the tiny space of a historiated initial, beginning at the bottom and going clockwise:
The seven ages of man contained within a historiated initial. [Source: Digital Walters W.171, c. 1402]
Sometimes the cycle was depicted like a generational photo, rather than as a chart. Here are two examples depicting seven stages:
From infancy to old age in seven stages, from De proprietatibus rerum, Published after Jan. 1486 in the same style as a French copy from 1485 [courtesy of the U.S. Library of Congress]
In other words, there were no set rules on how to organize the drawing, or how many stages to include. As long as the idea of cradle-to-grave was present, the illustrator could draw the passage of life in many ways.
Postscript 28 March 2020: I wanted to add this depiction of the Stages of Life because it’s a bit unusual. Most illustrators tried to compact the stages into one image. In this case, the stages were spread over two different folios several pages apart, with commentary in between (Cod. pal. germ. 471):
Ages Depicted Staircase-Style
Staircase drawings were especially popular in the 16th and 17th centuries and these later examples are of interest because the ages relate to animals through verse, and four of the animals are common to zodiac sequences (ram, bull, lion, goat). This is not a direct reference to astrology, it’s probably biblical, but it is interesting because depictions in other styles sometimes include astrological references (discussed further below).
Here’s the background on some of the stages-of-life animal drawings… There are biblical interpretations about the life of man being increased from 30 to between 70 and 100 years by adding in the ages of animals who begged to live shorter lifespans to ease their lives of burden.
The idea of animals relating to the ages of man is reflected in a classical Greek poem by Babrius:
Horse, bull, and dog appear freezing before the house of man. He opens the door, receives them kindly and offers them food; the horse gets barley, the bull legumens, and the dog food from the table. The animals filled with gratitude towards the man give up part of their years in return for his hospitality. First the horse repays with his years, that is why man is insolent in his youth; then the bull, therefore the middle-aged man has to work hard; last comes the dog with his years…
—L. Landau, The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 1920
Here is one of the later staircase-style cradle-to-grave illustrations. I include it because it shows how stages were increased over the smaller set from classical times:
The above drawing illustrates eleven stages with animals inset in the steps. The cradle and grave are on the ground, perhaps expressing the idea of “dust to dust”:
The verse for the child and the man of 30 are as follows:
Eh’ noch das kind fünf Jahr erreicht, Un Unschuld es dem ramme gleicht. (Before the child reaches five, it is innocent/unknowledgable about the ram.)
Mit dreißig zieht er in den Krieg, Stark wie ein Ochs, erringt den Sieg. (At thirty, he goes to war, strong like an ox, achieving the victory.)
Post-medieval cradle-to-grave illustrations often include biblical references in both the illustrations and the text, and the overall CtoG theme was included in hymns and prayers.
The Feminine Angle
Medieval depictions of the stages of life usually emphasize men, but a lightly modified version for women was created for commercial sale in later years.
This is a simplified version, without animals or verses, with a greater emphasis on marriage and children, as published in the early 19th century for women:
There were also versions with both men and women that might be more similar to the VMS. This one includes includes 17 figures (and a dog) and 11 stages:
Cradle to Grave. Based on Fridolin Leiber by Gustave May, Frankfurt, Germany, late 1800s.
Here is a similar theme from romance to old age, played out by flamboyant characters:
The Life Ages of Man, Abraham Bach the Edler, c. 1651 [courtesy of Wikimedia Commons]
The following example is more sparse than some, only six stages (or five, depending on how one interprets the top step with two figures), but includes animals, and emphasizes the cradle-to-grave aspect with a cradle and casket at either end:
Stylistically, these don’t have the same look or feel as the VMS nymphs, but in terms of content, there are other formats with larger numbers of figures. This one is populated by 24 figures on the ground and steps, plus about 24 more in the round frames, along with some overseers (including an angel and a demon). In other words, more than the VMS:
Stages of life from birth to the grave, with heaven and hell inset in the center, John Pitts, London 1811.
So those are some timeline, generational, and staircase formats, but there are also some based around wheels.
Co-opting the Wheel of Fortune Theme
Some stages-of-man illustrations borrowed from the “wheel of fortune” concept that was popular in the Middle Ages, with slight modifications in the characters. Note that this differs from most of the Wheel of Fortune drawings in that Fortuna is not present (there is a skeleton instead), there is no king at the top, and the emphasis is on maturing and aging rather than on one’s material standing, with a young boy on the left and a mostly prone figure on the bottom-right (and graves in the background):
The Wheel of Life in 10 steps with skeleton turning the wheel (c. 1800) [courtesy of http://www.kulturramtirol.at/ ]
In this Schwabian manuscript, blindfolded Fortuna is turning the wheel, but the main theme is clearly not a wheel of fortune. It represents cradle-to-grave with labels similar to those used by Isidore of Seville. An angel waits in the casket below:
Cradle-to-grave sequence in wheel-of-fortune style with seven classical stages [BSB Cgm 312, c. 1450]
The idea is also reflected in sculpture, as in this example from the tomb of Peter 1st in Alcobaça, who died later in the 14th century. Unfortunately, it is horribly defaced, but in the inner ring, you can see the Fortuna theme, and in the outer ring are the stages of life. You can make out a mother and infant in the lower left, and if you follow the figures clockwise through their life cycle, you eventually reach the prone figure under the lid of a casket at the bottom:
Mother and infant on the left in the outer ring, with stages of life running clockwise around until it reaches the crypt in the bottom-center. [Source: Alcobaça tomb of Peter 1 by ho visto nina volare, Wikipedia]
Here is a late-15th century blockprint of the stages of life as a wheel. Except for the wheel, it is similar to some of the staircase drawings:
The Wheel of Life might be the same idea as the VMS, but it doesn’t feel the same in terms of drawing style and so far there’s very little connection with zodiac figures. Are there stages-of-life drawings with astrological connections?
Connections to Astrology and Astronomy—Wheels with “Stars”
There is a variation on the Wheel of Fortune that has a stronger relationship to astrological/astronomical concepts than the previous examples. In this woodcut, Fortuna is replaced by an angel, the earth is in the center, and the seven stars or “planets”, as they called them (including the sun and moon), orbit around it.
Late 15th-century woodcut of cosmological themes (the seven “planets”) based on the general idea of a wheel of fortune or wheel of life.
The following example from the Psalter of Robert de Lisle, originated in England in the early 1300s. This is often called The Ages of Man but you might notice small differences between these early depictions and the way they drew the Ages of Man in the 15th and 16th centuries.
The general format is circular, with a figure in the center, and there is an infant in the first circle (7 o’clock) and a prone figure near the end (4 o’clock). In this way it is similar to the sculpture of Peter 1. The actual lifespan is shown in eight stages, plus a circle for the eulogy, and a sarcophagus for a total of ten. The labels mention infancy, youth, aging, and death, as was common for classical stages:
The Ages of Man, showing stages of life in a circle around a central figure. [Howard Psalter and De Lisle Psalter, British Library Arundel 83, Creative Commons 1.0 – Public Domain]
Medieval Classification of Stages
The stages in the following illustration from De Lisle Psalter are sandwiched together with Bible stories. Following the Tree of Life (the Jesse Tree) is a wheel with 12 stages of life, written as abbreviations for birth (Nasce[n]s), infancy (Infans), childhood (Puer.), adolescence (Adolesce[n]s), etc., counter-clockwise around the circle until one reaches death. In the corners are symbols for the four evangelists. The central figure is usually Jesus or God (in older manuscripts, the central figure is sometimes a personified sun):
12 Stages of Life from birth to death in the De Lysle Psalter, Arundel MS 82 (c. 1339) arranged in a wheel around a central figure of the deity nimbed. Symbols for Mathew, John, Luke, and Mark are in the corners.
Could images like this, arranged in a circle, have inspired the VMS creator to combine zodiac figures with the stages of life? The VMS is rife with illustrations that hint at concepts that have been combined, but they are not quite overt enough to be sure.
The Zodiac and Ages of Man
The idea of associating the stages of man with zodiac figures (thus creating 12 stages) may have come to us through Hebrew sources (e.g, the Midrash Tanhuman referenced by Landau, 1920).
Astrological mansions (affairs of man) are combined with zodiac symbols in the following example by Erhard Schön. They are expressed as figures within three concentric circles. The inner circle includes the seven “planets” that are present in many medieval cosmological drawings, surrounded by twelve zodiac figures, further surrounded by twelve mansions in the outer circle. Since this diagram was created by a card-maker (1515), it is not surprising that some of the outer figures are also found in Tarot cards.
The subject matter is slightly different from the VMS—it generally focuses on affairs of men, and all the zodiac figures are in one diagram, but the general format (zodiac figures combined with other figures in concentric wheels), is more like the VMS than many of the previous examples. Note how the the numbers run counterclockwise:
Natal horoscope by Erhard Schoen, early 16th century.
If you are curious about what the mansions represent, look at the seventh house (on the right, next to the skeleton) and you will see the marriage ceremony. The skeleton itself refers to death, wills, and testaments. The tenth house represents kings, generals, and other leaders. The eleventh house is not as easy to discern in this image, but it represents friendship and fidelity.
Astrological References from Eastern Europe
In Bulgaria, there are frescoes that combine several ideas, including night and day, the seasons, the stages of life, and zodiac figures.
For example, the wheel in the Church of the Nativity in Arbanasi is one of the closest parallels I’ve found so far to the stages of life wheel in the VMS. It has concentric circles of figures, a number of which are unclothed. The zodiac figures are traditional, however, are all included in one wheel, and are not of the same iconographic subset as the VMS zodiac figures, but it’s still worth keeping this fresco in mind (the labels in the green band are the months of the year). Unfortunately, the images are copyrighted so you will have to click the link.
Eastern Wheels
(Image courtesy of Wikipedia)
The wheel of life or Wheel of Becoming (called bhavacakra भवचक्र) is a prevalent theme in buddhist art, but it follows a different scheme from western manuscripts, emphasizing the idea of karma and rebirth and planes of existence, along with the different realms (animal, human, etc.). They don’t usually include zodiac figures in the same way as some of the western manuscripts and Bulgarian frescoes.
When zodiac figures are included in Wheels of Becoming, they are typically in the eastern style, composed entirely of animals and are usually symbolic of various emotions or states of being.
Many of these Buddhist wheels are later than the 16th century.
I believe the VMS wheel expresses a cradle-to-grave theme rather than eastern concepts of reincarnation.
Textual Versions of Stages of Life
Many manuscripts that include herbs, information on bathing, or astrological information are not illustrated. The same is true for Stages of Life.
L. Landau (1920) mentions a rhyming poem about the stages of life that I think is important for textual reasons related to the VMS. It is not medieval, it was written in Venice in 1554, but it stands out as an example of how languages and scripts can be jumbled together in less obvious ways, something that could easily have happened in the 14th or 15th centuries, as well.
Bodley Can. Or. 12, Neubauer 1217 (fol. 211b–213) is a slightly bewildering combination of German/Yiddish and Judeo-Italian that was not penned in Latin script—it was written using Hebrew letter-shapes even though it is not in Hebrew:
Bodleian Library, Can. Or. 12 (Neubauer 1217), folio 213, Judeo German/Italian (in alternate verses) written with Hebrew letters, probably intended for oral recitation.
Does the Stages-of-Life concept apply to other VMS wheels?
As mentioned in previous blogs, I believe that several of the other wheels have similar themes, but that they focus and enlarge on more specific stages, such as menstrual cycles and childbearing cycles.
For example, in the 2016 blog, I posted an unspun cycle from 70v (green Aries, which is on the same foldout as Pisces) that focuses on female nymphs and their journey through womanhood. I believe it begins with a pre-adolescent maturing into a woman and acquiring a large [probably pregnant] belly (and possibly stretch marks).
Notice the fancy veil on the sixth nymph. I’ve noticed a fancier veil on other nymphs in contexts where it might represent marriage (I’m not completely certain of this because diadems were often used in preference to veils, but it depended on the region and time period):
When I was researching medieval wedding customs I read that some couples lived together and didn’t get married until the woman became pregnant. The logic was that the husband-to-be wanted to be sure his fiancée could produce children. This was not the custom everywhere, there was a gradual shift from Pagan to Christian traditions that differed from region to region, but living together before marriage was not as uncommon or as counter-culture in the 15th century as I originally assumed.
It’s possible the lines on the belly of the nymphs in this sequence represent stretch marks. I say this based on looking at patterns in all the folios but I am not entirely sure this is the correct interpretation. I do think it’s worth considering, however, because the lines are never on the pre-adolescent girls or male nymphs. They are usually on the ones with big bellies or the thinner ones that follow soon after the big bellies. As far as I can tell, this sequence represents two pregnancies, perhaps to show that it happens more than once in a woman’s life.
I found it particularly interesting that the bellies in all the green Aries nymphs are prominently displayed so you can see if they are thin or large, except the last one…
Since the sequence starts with a pre-adolescent girl (I suspect the genitals are displayed above the edge of the barrel to make it clear it’s not a boy), I’m wondering if maybe the last nymph, with the hidden belly, represents menopause, the point at which there are no more buns in the oven.
Related Wheel-Themes
The nymphs around affectionate-Gemini relate to these themes, as well. At 2 o’clock, there is a lustful male (I’m pretty sure his flag is raised) with his eye on the nymph in front of him.
There are several other males surrounding Gemini, some of them clothed (it’s a bit of a leap, but I am reminded of love triangles, which were popular in medieval literature, stories such as Tristan and Isolde, the forerunner to the story of Guinevere):
I wanted to go into more detail about these other cycles, but it’s far too much information for one blog, so I’ll leave it for now and will fill in the rest as I have time.
Summary
It should be clear from the above examples, that there was no specific format for cradle-to-grave illustrations. They can be timelines, staircases, wheels, or anything else that gets the idea across. The number of figures isn’t rigid either. What is common to all of them is the progression from youth to old age, and old age is frequently represented by semi-prone or prone figures and may include various styles of crypts or coffins.
I see 70v Pisces nymphs as a cradle-to-grave theme and green Aries, Gemini, and some of the others, as subsets of the cradle-to-grave idea (an expansion of the middle years, with the focus on romance and child-bearing). It’s appropriate that the Pisces and Aries nymphs would be side-by-side, and perhaps intentional that the pregnancy cycle is on Aries, the symbol we most associate with spring.
