Monthly Archives: January 2018

Jan Jakub de Tepence

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I thought readers might enjoy some more background information on Jacobius Sinapius, the Latin name of Jan Jakub Horčický, a Jesuit of uncommon intelligence who rose from poverty to become Emperor Rudolf II’s physician and herbalist. Sinapius (also sometimes written Synapy), came to the attention of Wilfrid Voynich when a faint ghost of an expunged name was seen at the bottom of the first page of the Voynich Manuscript. René Zandbergen has collected samples of books with similar signatures located by various researchers.

The following biographical information is from a variety of sources, but the most important points are from an 1896 book of history in the Stanford library that was microfilmed in 1994 and scanned more recently by Google. Unfortunately, it is in Czech, and I have not studied Slavic languages. I  know some German (which is a second language to many Slavs) and a little bit of Russian, but it was a struggle to piece together information that was mostly in Czech.

In Czech history, Sinapius is presented as a promoter and defender of the Catholic faith, which is not central to solving the VMS, so I have selected events of particular interest to Voynich researchers.

Here is a detail of a scan of folio 1r from the Beinecke Library that shows the badly defaced vellum and faint marks of a name or signature Jacobi [á? de?] Tepenecz on the first line. There is possibly some obliterated text on the second line (or bad scratches in the vellum), and some faint marks to the right that may be a catalog number, as suggested by other researchers:

What made me particularly interested in re-visiting Sinapius’s history (which I looked at a few years ago) is the fact that the Ex Libris marks located by other researchers on books apparently from Sinapius’s library have some odd properties. I will describe those in a separate blog after summarizing some of his background.

In the Beginning…

Jan Jakub Horčický was born approx. 1575 to a poor family, in or near the village of Krumlově. Krumlově, now known as Český Krumlov, is a town in southern Bohemia that was ruled by the Rosenbergs in the early 14th century, the time leading up to the creation of the Voynich manuscript. The primary language of Krumlov was German and German became even more dominant when miners and tradesmen moved in to take advantage of local resources. If Jakub’s first language was Czech, then he was part of a minority population.

In the early 1600s, when Sinapius was in his mid-20s, the town was purchased by Emperor Rudolf II, who presented it to his son Julius. German was the primary language of the Holy Roman Empire. Why would this be relevant to Voynich research? Because the German language was expressed with certain scribal conventions that differed from those of Slavic languages.

When he was about 13, Jakub was accepted as a cleaning boy in the kitchen of the local Jesuit institution, which included a school. Someone apparently noticed the boy’s keen intelligence, as he was admitted to classes in 1590 and became associated with the local pharmacy, possibly as an apprentice, under the tutelage of Martin Schaffner, who was a Moravian-born apothecary in his mid-20s who was knowledgeable about herbs and distillation.

In autumn 1598, Jakub traveled to Prague to continue his studies in logic and natural sciences and honed his business skills by collecting, processing, and selling herbal remedies. Some of these herbs were collected in the Jesuit gardens on the slopes of Petřín Hill and at Vltava (below Letenská hill).

Detail of Prague in 1572, illustrating the vast lands and gardens. Georg Braun.

In 1600, he moved to Jindřichův castle, in SW Bohemia, to assume responsibilities for the grounds at a sprawling estate that shows many signs of having been remodeled and rebuilt over the centuries. It’s difficult to imagine what it looked like in the 1600s.

Shortly before 1606, he moved again, traveling north to Hradčany, an independent borough of central Prague. The map above illustrates Prague’s topography and vast gardens in the days before the farmland was covered over by buildings and streets. Sinapius apparently had enough idle time during his tenure to experiment with herbal remedies and to become acquainted with the alchemists in Rudolf II’s court.

Prague Castle in 1595, a few years before Sinapius moved there. [Wikipedia image contributed by Joris Hoefnagel]

Hearing of Sinapius’s skills, Emperor Rudolf called him, became acquainted with him, and was impressed. Sinapius joined those under the emperor’s patronage, and also spent time governing the monastery of St. Vitus and what is now St. George’s Basilica in Prague Castle.

When the Emperor fell ill in the winter of 1608, and the apothecary cured him of an ailment that other doctors had apparently failed to remedy, the emperor awarded him a coat of arms and the title of Jacob of Tepence (in Czech: Jakubu Horčickému z Tepence). This suggests that the name was added to the Voynich Manuscript sometime after 1608 or 1609.

Change in the Winds…

In 1612 , Emperor Rudolf II died and his younger brother Matthias (1557–1619) took over his title and estates and ejected many of the scientists who filled Rudolf’s court.

After the new régime was established, Sinapius was appointed governor of the royal estate of Mělník, just north of Prague. This appointment was rockier than the previous ones as the people of the region challenged his authority and his religious beliefs. Rudolf II had been religiously tolerant, but it was feared that Matthias would be less so.

For Sinapius, it was a time of general unrest and things became deadly when the Bohemians rose up against Matthias’s Habsburg dynasty. A provisional government was established, Sinapius refused to accept their authority, and was briefly imprisoned. The 30 Years War—a violent confrontation resulting in physical destruction, and millions of lost lives, created a major disruption that the kitchen boy from Krumlov probably never expected to experience in his lifetime. When released from prison, his future was uncertain and he faced possible expulsion.

In 1619, Emperor Matthias died, and two years later SInapius apparently fell from a horse and was injured such that his health failed and he died a year later, in 1622.

Unanswered Questions

Did the VMS belong to Emperor Rudolph, or to Jacob Sinapius? When the emperor died, was the manuscript in Sinapius’s possession?

Emperor Matthias didn’t share his older brother’s passion for alchemy, so he may not have cared about an unreadable book with strange pictures of plants. Would it have mattered to him if Sinapius kept it? Might he have given it to Sinapius? Or might Sinapius have quietly taken it with him when moving from Prague to Mělník and then, realizing his days were numbered, passed it on to his Jesuit brothers before he died?

The correspondence that went back and forth between the Jesuits about the VMS is never very explicit, which makes one wonder if the VMS was contraband. The other reason for the secrecy might have been social taboos against the “black arts”. Anything of an occult nature might be perceived as consorting with the devil. Whatever the reason, I noticed something about the Ex Libris markings that I will discuss in a future blog.

 

J.K. Petersen

© Copyright 2018, All Rights Reserved

A Bevy of Beasts

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Wilderness land was far more abundant in the Middle Ages than it is now. If you moved 80% of humans to another planet (along with their houses, roads, schools, and offices) and then spread the remaining 20% over the entire globe, that is how the planet was populated in the year 1400.

There was much more undeveloped land and contact with animals in those days. Most people lived on or near farms. Milk came from a cow or goat, not from a supermarket. Pigs and pigeons were purchased in the marketplace and slaughtered right there in the stall or in the back yard at home. A “taxi” was a horse, donkey, or ox-cart. Animals were everywhere—a king with bow and arrow could shoot hundreds in a single day without straying far from the castle.

And yet medieval illustrations of animals are weird—cows look like horses, ants look like bears, and reptiles/amphibians look like dinosaurs.

There are a number of possible explanations for this…

  • There were no television sets, Internet, or public libraries displaying images of animals from outside the person’s local area, and illustrated books were scarce (they were luxury items tucked away in monastic and private institutions). It’s hard to draw something you have never seen and even a good verbal description is sometimes not enough.
  • The medieval person’s sense of reality was different from ours. There were no public schools and the populace was mostly illiterate. Education was based on traditional folklore rather than scientific observation. If people were told the sun revolved around the earth, they believed it, and if they didn’t believe it, they risked death or imprisonment because conformity was strongly enforced.
  • There were religious taboos against drawing certain things in certain ways. To avoid idolatry, humans were often drawn as hybrids, and legends about an animal often influenced how it was drawn more than physical reality. Sometimes a drawing was thought to contain the spirit of what was drawn.
  • Some mythical creatures were believed to be real.
  • Some illustrators and scribes worked in scriptoria where division of labor, or the presence of servants, separated them from daily tasks such as catching and slaughtering animals. Their concept of animals came from copying other texts, not from first-hand experience. Even if they knew a better way to draw something, tradition often demanded conformity to earlier exemplars.

But enough background… let’s look at some pictures. Here are some medieval critters that might make you smile. The first one is the leucrota:

Leucrota images courtesy of the Kongelige Bibliotek (lower left), Bibliothèque Nationale de France (lower right), and the British Library.

The leucrota was believed to be a cross between a lion and a crocotta (a “dog-wolf”), with hind-quarters like a deer. The drawing top-left somewhat conveys this idea, it has claws and a more lion-like mane, but the drawings top-right scarcely resemble the offspring of a dog-wolf and lion—they have the head of a horse and the feet of a deer, and the bottom one looks like a cross between a sheep and a deer. The leucrota in Ms Bodley 533 doesn’t even resemble the images above, it looks like an angry sheep.

The only feature the various leucrota have in common is the distinctive long grin.

The leucrota isn’t necessarily mythical. It is sometimes described as a cross between a lion and a hyena, which may originally have been an attempt to describe a different species of hyena. The brown hyena (right) is quite a bit larger and furrier than the more familiar spotted hyena:

Left; Spotted hyena with mane, stubby tail, and fearsome grin, courtesy of PBS.org Animal Guide. Right: Brown hyena, which is quite a bit larger than other hyenas, and may have inspired descriptions of the “leucrota” (described as a cross between a lion and a wolf-dog (hyena). Image courtesy of Bernard Dupont on Wikipedia.).

If you look at the individual features of the leucrota in medieval drawings, the features seem a little less strange—the hyena is a doglike animal with a mane like a horse, the aggressive temperament of a lion, a moderately short tail used for signaling (like a deer), long legs with hoof-like paws, and a ferocious toothy jaw. In a way, medieval drawings are descriptive of individual parts even if the overall composition goes slightly awry.

Note that the drawing of a hyena in the manuscript below-left is more realistic. The illustrators of Arabic manuscripts lived closer to hyenas than those in central and northern Europe and were more likely to have seen them. Northerners tended to stylize or completely fictionalize the animal.

Using Props to Tell the Story

The hyena is both predator and scavenger. Its scavenging instincts were often expressed by drawing the animal stealing a corpse (bottom-right). Once the meme of the corpse-stealer became familiar, the illustrator could take liberties with the way the animal was drawn. Visual memes and attributes served as visual memory aids:

Left: a more naturalistic rendition of the hyena in an Arabic manuscript. Right: A stylized version of a hyena-monster desecrating a grave and stealing a corpse, a reference to the hyena’s scavenging habits.

In a previous blog about castorum, I included drawings of beavers that are quite fanciful, and here is one of my favorite drawings… ants that look like dogs and bears, from Cotton Vitellius A XV:

It’s a Croc

Equally strange are medieval drawings of crocodiles.

The smile of the crocodile is similar to the hyena’s toothy grin, but that’s where the resemblance ends. The medieval crocodile is sometimes drawn like a fish, sometimes like a lion, giant dog, monkey, or furry hedgehog, and sometimes like a basilisk, dragon, or dinosaur. There are even some that look like leucrotas.

The only way we know for sure it’s a crocodile is because it says so in the text, in combination with familiar legends, such as the crocodile eating a man (and crying crocodile tears after doing so), and the crocodile being outfoxed by the hydra.

There are several medieval crocodiles that look like monkeys, and one of them is slightly more reptilian than the others, but even it has a primate face rather than a reptile face. There is also one that looks more like a human-faced lion than any kind of reptile:

The crocodile carving on the wall of Chichester Cathedral (c. 1330) looks like a big fat beagle with a somewhat human face. You would never guess it was a crocodile.

There are many crocodiles drawn like mammals, I couldn’t fit them all, but the examples above should be enough to get the idea across—you can’t tell what they are just by looking at them.

What about lizards and salamanders?

Voynich researchers are probably wondering how lizards and amphibians are drawn because the VMS Scorpius looks more like a reptile/amphibian than an arthropod.

Sloane 4016 is a well-known herbal manuscript that includes a brontosaurus-like salamander standing on fat, upright legs (rather than splayed legs), labeled “salamandra”:

Here’s an even more extreme example from Montpellier H 437:

[Image of medieval salamander that resembles a kangaroo]

This might look like kangaroo road-kill but it’s clearly labeled “salamandre” [Montpellier H 437].

The giant dog-kangaroo in H 437 is labeled “salamandre” (salamander) and has the “fire salamander” flames to confirm that the text and image are in synch with one another.

The following illustration of the elements in Biblioteca de Catalunya. Ms. 1452 (based on Ramon Lull’s 13th-century astronomy/astrology) makes this association between fire and salamanders even more explicit. In this diagram, earth is represented by a man working the soil, water is a trio of fish, air is a peacock (which ironically can’t fly very well and rarely takes to the air), and fire is a salamander that looks more like a scorpion than an amphibian with the deeply curved tail and extra legs, but is clearly labeled “mandrina” which is short for “salamandrina”—an amphibian:

Crocodiles and lizards are reptiles and the drawing of Scorpius in the VMS and a number of other manuscripts that include zodiac symbols are drawn as reptiles/amphibians, dragons, turtles, and frogs. Here is version 1.1 of a map I created of the zodiac symbols that most closely resemble the reptilian creature in the VMS (originally posted on my 2016 blog about Scorpius symbols):

As can be seen by these examples, Scorpius symbols of a vaguely repitilian/amphibian character with upright legs occur in European manuscripts in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries, especially in France. I did locate one more lizard-like creature from the 16th century, and an earlier example of Scorpius-as-serpent, but opted to leave them out of the map.

Can We Tell Them Apart?

The medieval lizard-like Scorpius can usually be distinguished from medieval crocodiles by thinner legs, overall smaller size, and a milder expression on the face (crocodiles are frequently shown biting a human or a hydra). It’s not a big difference, but clearly none of the zodiac-Scorpios look like kangaroos, boars, monkeys, dogs, or lions.

As can be seen from the map, turtle-Scorpios tend to be from southern Germany and the Alsace, dragon-Scorpios from England/Normandy, and the zodiac symbol that most closely matches the VMS Scorpius in general proportions and uprightness of the legs is from Paris, France.

It seems very likely that the VMS zodiac illustrator had seen Parisian manuscripts or had visited churches with zodiac friezes in the north-east of France, where lizard-like Scorpios were cast into stone as early as the 11th century.

J.K. Petersen

Copyright © 2018 J.K. Petersen

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Postscript 7 June 2019 [addition]: I found this drawing in an early 14th-century English manuscript and felt it was appropriate to add to this blog.

It has long ears, a long nose, a ridge of wavy fur along its back, and a fluffy tail. Can you guess what it is?

C. 1315 English MS crocodile

British Library MS Royal 2 B VII (a crocodile).

Roundup of Past Blogs

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23 January 2018

I realized today it might be a good idea to post an occasional roundup of blogs to make it easier for readers to find related information. Most of the topics discussed on this site are too long to present in one post, so they are split up over a series of blogs. When read individually without the previous background information, they don’t make much sense, so hopefully this will make it easier to find related topics.

Voynich Text

Could some of the glyphs with ascenders be pilcrows?

Some observations on transcriptual interpretations of “dain” (this is very introductory, I have much more information on this, including statistical charts)

Observations on individual characters with parallels in Latin and Greek scripts:

A sample of Voynichese that illustrates how the text is heavily rule-based

General observations on paleography – some notes on two very similar scribal hands

Introduction to entropy for those who are unfamiliar with the term and want some clarification so they can explore some of the VMS computational attacks

 

Voynich Marginalia

Trying to discern the column text on f1r (Colorizing the text so it’s easier to see the letter forms)

Marginalia and possible color annotations on f1v

The marginalia on 66r (the prone figure with the pot)

Marginal Notes on f17r (I’ve written about this several times and have posted additional information on the voynich.ninja forum and I keep coming back to it, hoping to improve the interpretation, so this is a work-in-progress)

Folio 116v (the last page):

  • The “plummeting rock” (Some observations on the strange rounded shape on the last page)
  • The text on the last page (I’ve blogged about this several times. I keep coming back to it, hoping I can see it with fresh eyes and a different point of view.)
  • Introduction to healing charm (Abracula) and the last page marginalia (July 2013)
  • Introduction to the last page script and the handwriting on the last page (These blogs are from 2013 and are a bit dated—I have a huge amount of new information on this topic that I will post when I can find time.)
  • Is the last page a healing charm? (A 2016 continuation of the July 2013 post on the text and healing charm)
  • more on Pox Leber/Leben
  • what if it were French instead of German?
  • A paleographic investigation of the last-page marginalia text, Sept. 2017 (I have more information on this now that I will post when I can find time)

Parallels in scribal conventions between medieval Latin and Indic scripts

The conceptual basis of relative music systems and how they might be applied to ciphertext

 

Voynich Imagery

The Nymph on 77v (some possible interpretations of the arms-spread nymph… note that Cassiopeia has also been suggested by other researchers, and explored in some detail by K. Gheuens)

The Baths of Puteolanis (interesting parallels between the ancient baths near Naples and the VMS drawings)

Do the nymphs around the zodiac symbols represent a series of cycles?

Some of my earliest ideas about the top-left circle on the “map” foldout (note that these were some of my initial ideas from 2008, since then I have had several more and have also seen some fascinating visual parallels posted by other researchers such as a scallop shell recently posted by K. Gheuens)

Interesting parallels between water gardens and the VMS “map” page. I was hoping to find the water garden that inspired the Villa d’Este which might, in turn, have inspired the “map” page.

Interesting Visual and Cultural Traditions:

Examples of mnemonics in an herbal manuscript (Palatino 786)

 

Voynich Zodiac-Symbol Shapes

One of my earliest posts on the zodiac symbols and their marginalia labels from 2013 (subsequent blogs include much more information on the imagery)

Brief introduction to astrology and the history of zodiac imagery, including a map.

Trying to make sense of the VMS “zodiac” section – one possibility

 

Commentary on Various “Solutions”

General statements on code-breaking (not a solution) by Cicco Simonetta

 

Physical Characteristics

Brief list of manuscripts similar in size and dimensions to the VMS

 

History & Provenance

The item put into auction was a Kraus catalog mentioning the VMS, not the VMS itself

Guglielmo Libri catalog

 

General Cryptology

Glyphs from the mysterious note in the dictionary (not directly VMS-related)

This is a not a full set of links. I haven’t included most of the early blogs from 2013 (they’re mostly about plants and it would take too much space), but if I have missed some of the more recent ones (which is quite likely), I’ll update this page as I come across them.

J.K. Petersen

Ka Nu Se Me?

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18 January 2018

I’ve tried to avoid cipher-related puzzles other than the VMS. I wouldn’t mind looking at the Dorabella cipher, but even that is on my stay-away list—there aren’t enough hours in the day for all of them… but last night, just before going to bed, I was tugged into Klaus Schmeh’s blog by the following image. He has been mentioned a few times by Voynich researchers, so I have glanced at his site once or twice, but haven’t had time to read the articles. Last night I couldn’t resist because I noticed shapes in this note that looked familiar..

Schmeh posted the following note at the beginning of January 2018 and explained that it was originally uploaded to Reddit in November 2017:

I don’t know how much discussion there has been since November (or if the mystery has been solved since Klaus posted it at the beginning of January), but I wanted to jot my first impressions because it jumped out at me as having shapes similar to Japanese Hiragana and Katakana, which are syllabic character sets used for words that are not easily expressed with Kanji characters in the Japanese language.

A Little Housekeeping…

Sometimes the easiest way to explain something is to rearrange the shapes according to how they are constructed. Note that I have not studied these word-tokens grammatically other than to notice some are short (1 character) and others are longer. The chart below is a record of my first impressions after looking at the note for a few minutes. At first I thought it might be a straight substitution code but moments later realized the symbols may represent syllables rather than letters. The text on the bottom right looks like it might be a signature and the logo-like image at the top reminded me of the letterhead for a frat/sorority house or secret society. The note must have had some significance to the creator because he or she took extra time to draw the embellished initial.

Note that glyph shapes P, X, and 8 are common to many languages—it’s difficult to classify them, but there are many shapes in this short note that are similar to Japanese phonetic symbols. I’m not positing any direct analogies to Japanese script, the note is probably cipher text, but the shapes have proportions and combinations of loops and lines not unlike Hiragana and Katakana and may have been inspired by Japanese script or was devised by someone with an Asian background:

Unfortunately, I don’t have enough time to really delve into glyph-frequency or grammatical structure to see if the shapes match related sounds in Japanese, Arabic, or Brahmi languages (all of which are syllabic languages). Part of the problem is that shared symbols in natural languages are often assigned different sound values, depending on the region. For example, the Arabic alphabet is used to write many languages, from Africa to eastern India, that are mutually unintelligible.

I don’t see anything in the note to indicate a Korean origin for the glyph-shapes. Any resemblance to the Korean alphabet is small and probably superficial.

I see no strong evidence that these shapes are based on western alphabets, either. Even the shapes that look like “tee” or “leee” in English aren’t necessarily western; these little loops are found in several Asian alphabets, drawn in several different directions.

I did wonder if the three glyphs on the bottom right might be a name. If the note were ciphered Japanese, for example, there are many possibilities such as Haruma, Hinata, Ryota, Hiroto, Himari, Akari, Haruka, and others—all of which are represented by three characters. There are just as many possibilities in Indic languages or one of the Asian languages written with Arabic glyphs.

Regardless of the inspiration for the shapes, if it’s ciphertext, the underlying language could be anything, perhaps even Hawaiian.

One thing I noticed is that if you take the looped symbol for “te” in one of the Brahmi scripts and flip it and add a cross-bar, it looks like the shape in the note that resembles “tee” in English. A coincidence? Maybe. Where in the book was the note found? How old was the book? How old is the paper on which the note is written? Was it scented? Where exactly was it hidden? Was there anything on the other side? Are the edges straight or deckle? What are the letters that were cut off in the scan?

In the absence of details, it’s just one guess after another…

Where was the book found? Europe? Asia? the Americas? Could it have been written by someone in Asia to someone outside of Asia? A love letter perhaps? Or a letter from a penpal in ciphertext? Pure guesswork at this point, but still an interesting riddle.

J.K. Petersen

Copyright © 2018 J.K. Petersen, All Rights Reserved

Postscript Feb. 2, 2018: Something I didn’t mention when I originally posted this is that the symbol that looks a bit like a pair of scissors resembles a Mandaic character if you flip it 180°.

The reason I was reluctant to mention it, is because it’s an isolated character. The rest of the Mandaic character set doesn’t match the shapes and structure of the ciphered note as well as Hiragana and Katakana.

If you look at Hiragana syllables as a group, you will see an overall lines-and-loops design that differs from the straighter more sparse Katakana symbols. This is how native words in Japanese are distinguished from foreign words. It’s similar to the way we use italics in English to distinguish foreign words from the rest of the text, except that in Japanese, a separate set of shapes is used.

I suppose it’s possible that whoever wrote this might have selected a single shape from the Mandaic alphabet, as they did with Arabic/Urdu.

Final Page, But Probably Not the Finale

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9 January 2018

Like an ancient whale surfacing for air, discussions of the marginalia on folio 166v re-emerge from time-to-time. The subject this time was a possible French/Catalan interpretation, something Nick Pelling has apparently written about in the past and commented on in his Cipher Mysteries blogs.

I haven’t seen Pelling’s earlier writings about this folio, but I’m fairly certain the marginalia at the top of f17r is the same hand as the final page. Also, the f17r marginalia includes a word that looks to me like mallier (an ending often found in French), so I’m perfectly willing to consider a French interpretation, especially since porta?/portas/portad on the last page is a construction common to Romance languages.

If we evaluate the top line as French/Provençal, there are a number of possibilities. But first, I should mentioned that I thought for a long time that the last letter in this line was “r”. Now I am not so sure. The more I look at it, the more it resembles some kind of i-like blip followed by a worm-hole. If that’s a wormhole, then it’s probably not an “r”. I wish it were, so this line might be interpreted as a piece of verse. Then one might get something like this:

por le ber [o]u mon votr[e] fer   or   por le ber [o]u mon votr[e] fe

Yes, I know, this isn’t good French or Provençal, it’s as much of a potpourri as any German interpretation, but it shows that the top line is not necessarily germanic in the same sense as “so nim[m] gaf/gas mich” on the last line.

The words in the middle are by no means clear. It could be “um en” or “urien” or “uri on” or “[o]u mon” any number of odd interpretations. The second letter looks like an r that was turned into an m and the third letter is nothing I recognize except perhaps ç (which would not normally be followed by “n”).

The last word isn’t much better. The first letter looks like v, or p with the stem partly erased. The next letter is bizarre, neither “u” nor “o” but a somewhat Voynichese-backwards-leaning “u”. The next letter is unclear, but perhaps a p or a badly formed “r”. The f has part of the top erased, the “e” is clear and then the last letter is ambiguous, somewhat like “r” and yet not.

What could it mean? In Provençal, “le ber” refers to a noble and eventually became a surname, and “fe” is faith. If it’s “fer” then it’s something that is done. If one then looks at the second line through the same lens, we might end up with something like this:

au chi/qui ton o la dabas + imil tos + te/re +  c?e + cere/céré + portas + m

In some Provençal dialects, “qui” (who) was written as “chi”. Unfortunately, even though there are some Romance-language words here and “au qui ton” isn’t completely weird, the sum total of the line doesn’t make any grammatical sense.

If it were Spanish, one might be able to wrestle something out of “oladabas” if one assumes the first “d” is an “s” with a pen skip. Then it could be interpreted as “o las [h]abas” (or the beans).

So, it still comes out as a gobbledy-gook of French, Spanish, Latin, Voynichese, and German, with no cohesive meaning.

The only place I can think of where they might have spoken like this would be the borderlands between Switzerland (French and German), Provençal (Spanish/French/Italian), and Italy, where blended versions of French, German, and Romance languages were spoken and were mixed with Latin in scholarly circles. Either that or the writer used a set of tables in a variety of languages, with words selected and combined according to some system that’s not easy to discern.

Two or More Hands on the Last Page?

It’s important to note that the ink on the top line is slightly browner than the three lines lower, and if you look at the way the letter ell is drawn on the top line, with an added straight bar across the top loop, rather than a connected, angled bar as on the second line, there’s no guarantee these were written by the same person. Note also the smaller, more angular “e” on the top line, compared to the larger, rounder ones on the other lines. It’s the same style of handwriting, one that was extremely common (Gothic), but was it the same person?

It’s really hard to tell, especially when the marginalia on f17r illustrates both styles of ell (angled tops and straight tops):

A straight, disconnected loop on the top line is rare enough in Gothic hands that I hoped it might provide clues to the cultural identity of the scribe. For years I’ve searched for straight Gothic-style loops, and only found four that were were similar enough that I thought them worthy of note. One is in a manuscript of unknown European origin, one is thought to be from Germany, the third is attributed to Nuremberg, the fourth is possibly Venetian.

There are two that are not quite as distinctly similar, one from Clairvaux, France, and one from Germany. Perhaps one day I’ll hit a bingo and find a perfect match. In the meantime, I’m not any wiser as to the meaning of the text, but it’s always interesting to look at it from another point of view.

J.K. Petersen

Copyright © 2018 Jan, J.K. Petersen

Eyes, Ears, Nose, and Tropes

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7 January 2018

What are those eyes, faces, animals, dragons, demons, and other oddities added to plant drawings in herbal manuscripts? In medieval society, there were no encyclopedias, nature shows, or PDAs, and a very high proportion of the population was illiterate, so these added details served as memory aids to help the reader understand the plant.

Palatino 586, an herbal manuscript created around the same time as the VMS, has a large number of figural drawings associated with the plants, but they are hard to see due to the low resolution of the scans. Hopefully some day better scans will be available so we can fully appreciate their intricacy and significance. A few years ago, I did my best to read the text and interpret the drawings and was able to puzzle out some of the enigmatic additions.

This small selection of examples provides basic tips on interpreting the drawings.

Let’s start with one of the easier ones…

Page 10, Lower Left and Right

On page 10, the text introduces Auru’ (Aurum), which is Latin for gold. Underneath is a royal figure with gold scepter and crown. It was not uncommon for metals and minerals to be included in herbal texts, as some were used for medicinal purposes or as ingredients in composite formulae. In this case, the memory trigger is not medicinal uses, but common uses—the king holds a large gold coin, orb, or platter. The sun, suggesting a golden color or light, shines close by.

To fully understand this drawing, however, you have to look at the next one, which describes Argent (silver). It won’t surprise modern viewers to see gold and silver together, as they are both precious metals used for similar purposes, but in medieval times, there were additional reasons for pairing these metals and the drawing helps to explain this. We see a personified mountain, indicating that silver is an ore that must be mined, but the figure next to it is pointing to a scroll that refers to luna (the moon) because plants, metals, and minerals were considered to have governing bodies up in the heavens. They believed that gold and silver were ruled by the sun and the moon and shared some of their properties.

Page 11 Top Left and Right

On page 11 is a slightly more enigmatic drawing—a woman and a dog consuming round objects next to a plant with lumps on the stem. Reading the text we see [A]sa fetida, now known as Ferula asafoetida. This is a large resinous herb that exudes sap from the lower stem and root. Dried and crushed, the resin has long been used as a flavoring agent and medicinal substance. Thus, the illustration indicates that this is consumed by humans, but why the dog? As it turns out, in both eastern and western medicine, asafoetida was used to treat digestive difficulties in dogs and horses. It can be found as a remedy in historic copies of Materia Medica that were adapted for veterinary use.

To the right, on page 11, is a plant clearly labeled Agnus castus (Vitex agnus-castus), a name found in many herbal compendia. It’s an attractive shrubby tree with long lilac-colored spikes.

The drawing is quite amusing. On the left is a pretty young damsel extending a friendly hand. On the right, the fellow is turning a shoulder, averting his eyes, and trying to wave her away. The common name for this plant is “chaste tree” as it was believed it could subdue sexual passion. It also earned the name of “monk’s pepper” in religious orders that promoted chastity.

Most of the mnemonic figures in Palatino 586 are not found in other manuscripts with similarly drawn plants—they are unique to this codex.

Page 12 Lower Left

The name Apium emoyraydarum/hemorodarum is obsolete but Apium (usually A. graveolens) is historically used as a food, flavoring, and treatment for hemorrhoids and fistulas. Knights in armor frequently suffered various forms of sores and abscesses in the groin from long chafing horseback rides.

The diagram rather graphically shows a hand with a pointed object (probably a doctor’s hand with a surgical tool) and the patient with his butt and anus exposed. After a fistula was pierced or tied off, a salve that included Apium was used to coat the area to soothe the skin and help prevent infection.

Page 14 Bottom Right

The next image is a bit more challenging to interpret, partly because of the rooster, and partly because scholars long disputed which plant might be the source of the gum called Armoniacus/Ammoniacum.

You might notice in the picture that the plant is large, and the fellow with the axe confirms that this was a tree-like herb of considerable size compared to other similar species.

Note the three stripes on one of the branches. Cuts are made to encourage the sap to ooze out and as it dries, it forms lumps of resin which, in this drawing, are collected in a barrel.

There are a number of plants that exude gum from their stalks or roots and asafoetida has already been mentioned on Palatino 586, page 11, so the plant on page 14 is probably one of the Ferulas or fennel plants, several of which were known in the Middle Ages.

So far, so good, but what about the rooster?

The gum resin called ammoniacum is obtained from Dorema ammoniacum (a plant that can grow to nine feet). It was imported from India through Persia, but this form of gum was probably not known in the west in the Middle Ages. Instead, medieval herbals make reference to a gum from Africa. One possibility is Ferula tingitana, a south and east Mediterranean tree-like plant called Giant Fennel, but scholars have long doubted this. In the 18th and 19th centuries they proposed Ferula linkii and Ferula communis as better options. Some even suggested ammoniacum might come from Sylphium, the famous plant on ancient coins that is thought to have gone extinct due to over-harvesting (it was reputed to have chemicals effective for birth control).

The dispute was finally settled (or so they thought) by growing one of the plants in the famous Kew gardens, and waiting until it bloomed to discover its species. The verdict was Ferula communis, a plant that grows in two common forms.

Ferula communis, also known as giant fennel, narthex, or laser, is thought to be the source of gum ammoniac in the Middle Ages. However, some of the ancient herbals indicate another possibility. [Photo credit: Jan van der Straaten]

I’m not so sure the identity has been settled, and Palatino 586 adds a fascinating piece of history not found anywhere else by including a rooster with spurs. When I first saw it, I wondered if the spurs might be related to the slices on the trees, but some investigation of historic herbals revealed another possibility…

I haven’t seen anyone else mention this, but if you look at drawings of Ferula in herbal manuscripts, you will notice they are usually drawn like the following examples. Even Palatino 586 includes a plant labeled Ferula that has this form:

None of these images gives a clue as to why “spurs” are emphasized in Palatino 586, but this one might:

In a previous example, a dog was used to illustrate the use of the plant. In this case, I think the rooster is intended to help the reader identify the plant.

Ferula communis sometimes has spurlike projections, but it’s not a defining characteristic of the plant. Ferula tingitana is more spurlike than F. communis—it has leaf-like projections at the points where the stems branch—but they may not be prominent enough to inspire someone to draw a cowboy-rooster. However, there is another plant that is harvested for gum that is used medicinally that may be intended by these drawings.

Ferula narthex (right) is sometimes assumed to be another name for Ferula communis, possibly because the name narthex was loosely applied to many species of Ferula. However, F. narthex is a tall west Asian plant with thick stems that is more upright than F. communis, with very distinctive “spurs” at each node. It was probably known in Europe long before Dorema ammoniacum was imported.

Page 15 Lower Left

Anacer’u’ on page 15 probably refers to Anacardium and the maiden on the left is using a stick to knock the nuts from the tree. This is not the New World cashew, known as Anacardium orientale, but a cashew-like tree from India (Semecarpus anacardium) that was used for a wide variety of culinary and medicinal purposes. When black, the fruit is toxic, so it is harvested when it is a reddish color. I’m not sure what the maiden on the right is holding—it’s hard to see the details. It might be two bell-like vessels, or two pieces intended to fit together.

On page 16, the drawings are quite interesting. On the top left is Amigdale amare—bitter almond, a plant with a toxic seed. There’s a bird from the parrot family top-left, a dog by the base of the tree, and a woman’s face with something streaming out of the tree toward her cheek.

The bird can probably be explained by this Wikipedia photo by Jonathan Cardy, which illustrates the wild parakeet’s fondness for the flowers:

Bitter almond was known to kill dogs, even large dogs, and old medical texts state that the distilled liquid from the seeds produces dizziness, vertigo, and tinnitus in humans, which explains the liquid flowing from the tree to the ear of the woman on the ground.

Page 16 Top-Right

The image to the right also includes a bird at the top and a variety of faces at the bottom. Note that the demon-like face in the middle is somewhat rounded. This is to distinguish Aristolochia rotunda from A. longa, which has a slender root. In Sloane 4016, CLM 28531, and the Carrara herbal, dragons are drawn at the base of the plant, under the root. This is partly to indicate the name of the plant (serpentaria, snakeroot) and partly to indicate its purported use as an antidote to snake poison. It was also known to be toxic, which might explain the demon-like face in the 586 drawing. It is currently believed that aristolochic acid might contribute to kidney and bladder problems.

I don’t know whether they knew this by observation in the Middle Ages, but insects that eat the leaves of Aristolochia are injesting “chemical armor” that makes them toxic to birds.

The face on the bottom left presents a bit of a puzzle but maybe this is Aristotle providing a mnemonic for the name of the plant.

I can’t explain the catlike face on the right, with something like breath coming out of its nose, but perhaps it’s related to the smell of the plant. Aristolochia uses scent mimicry to lure pollinators, but it’s doubtful this was known in medieval times.

Page 22 Upper Right

The text for the drawing on page 22 is incomplete, it says only Alla. es herba, but the drawing is accurate and one can immediately recognize the plant as Oxalis acetosella, plus, the figural drawing confirms this. We see a man dressed in monk’s robes holding a scroll on which is written “alleluya…” which is the common name for this plant and a word used in hymns. Note the rounded shape from which the scroll is emanating—it may represent the mouth of a singer or a horn, and the man’s head is thrown back with his mouth wide open.

Note how the rhizome (side-growing root) is drawn. I have Oxalis in my garden in a shady spot where almost nothing else will grow and it spreads quite rapidly through rhizomes, and yet the Manfredus and Carrara herbals, Sloane 4016, Morgan M.873, and Harley 3736 (to give a few examples), show only a basic root. Probably the best-known herbal that includes the rhizome is Egerton 747 (ca 1295).

Page 25 Upper-Right

This is an interesting drawing with a bird on the left and a double-headed figure on the right with something horn-shaped by his mouth. It is labeled Bleta album.

Bleta refers to leaf and is usually associated with various forms of spinach and beet plants, valued for their edible leaves. However, this is obviously not chard, which has a mass of broad leaves growing low to the ground rather than jaggy leaves growing up the stalk. There are other forms, such as Bleta trigyna, that grow in this fashion.

Blitum bonus-henricus looks like this drawing when it is flattened and dried, the ruffled leaves taking on a more spiky appearance, and is commonly known as Good King Henry or Poor man’s asparagus. This is not based on an English king, however, it apparently comes from Heinrich which may, in turn stem from Old High German Heimrih (home ruler).

I’m not completely sure of the meaning of this drawing, but if the plant is Good King Henry, then perhaps the two-headed figure on the right is a troubadour with an extra head on his jester’s hat. Troubadours were performers skilled in puppeteering, acrobatics, juggling, clowning, and music—circus performers who were sometimes under the patronage of a ruler or noble house.

If the object in his mouth is a wind instrument, then it would fit with a king’s court filled with entertainers, and would evoke the name of the plant. It’s possible the bird is included because the seeds of the chenopods are very popular with birds. I’m not sure, however, since the seed tassels are not shown (perhaps because they are not the part of the plant that is used by humans).

On page 26 top-left, we see a woman wielding a broom, a common use for Bruscus ruscus. For page 28 lower-right, read the story about castoreum on a previous blog.

This is becoming long, so I’ll conclude with just one more…

The drawing on page 30 (left) might interest Voynich researchers because there’s a bath, but to understand what’s going on, one has to identify the plant. I’m fairly certain this is Cuminum cyminum (caraway).

Cyminum was used as a relaxant and soother of swollen bronchial tubes, so imagine that you’re sick with a bad cold and you treat it with a nice hot bath and a steam-pot full of herbs to help clear your sinuses.

The picture on the right might not be a steam pot. It looks like she is holding a spoon, so perhaps the drawing on the left indicates the relaxant properties and the one on the right illustrates the plant’s use as a digestive aid.

Summary

This is just a small selection of examples, there are approximately 300 individual figures associated with plants on the first 60 pages so it’s not possible to cover more than a tiny percentage in one blog, but it should be enough to illustrate that the figures serve a variety of purposes—sometimes indicating the use of the plant, sometimes physical properties that set it apart from similar species, and sometimes the name.

J.K. Petersen

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