Diane, when I refer to zodiac figures, I’m not talking about the folio, I’m talking about the figure in the middle. I don’t know what the nymph drawings surrounding the figures represent. They look to me like cycles of life (I’ve blogged about this), but whether they relate to the zodiac figures or not, I don’t know. Maybe they are a lunar calendar. Maybe they are good and bad days for bloodletting. I haven’t studied them in depth. I’ve been much too busy researching zodiac figures, plants, and the VMS text.
The month names that have been added in a later hand have always looked to me like an attempt to decipher the manuscript. Zodiac figures have long been associated with months, just as the 12 labors have long been associated with months, so it would not be unusual for someone to add month names to zodiac figures if they thought some of the VMS text might include month names and they were trying to match them up.
]]>Diane, I think you might be confusing two different issues: 1) the origin of the illustrative themes, and 2) the origin of the person who drew them. As I said in the post above, these are different research questions.
2) Whether the person who drew them was from central Europe is a completely different question and I do not address it in this post because it is more difficult question to answer. The person who drew them might be from Sweden or Greece, Egypt, the Levant, Morocco, Dalmatia, Czech, Iberia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Tunisia, Sardinia, Malta, Portugal, Aragon, Provençe, Naples, or any number of places. We all bring our cultural filters with us. The problem is that it’s difficult to know which details were borrowed or copied from existing sources and which ones were inserted by the illustrator’s personal experience and cultural heritage.
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To say that we disagree is to assume we are trying to answer the same question and I don’t think we are.
I wanted to determine where the themes originated. The findings are clearly illustrated on the map. The person who drew them might be from somewhere other than central Europe. In fact, my feeling from the time I first encountered the VMS is that the drawings might be by someone who was born in or spent time in the Mediterranean region (which includes many different nations and cultures), but this is harder to study or substantiate.
People in the Middle Ages moved around, a lot, often traveling thousands of miles to study at different universities or to seek patronage from different kings or emperors. There’s no reason why the VMS illustrator had to be from central Europe, but the exemplars for the VMS zodiac themes are most certainly from the Holy Roman Empire and the fringes near the Empire in the region of Flanders/NE France, as the evidence so far indicates.
]]>If a square consists of four sides but what one has is a figure of seven sides, it won’t do to ignore the three and call it a ‘square’ – even if the figure has been formed by a square interlocked with a triangle. Yet in speaking of the series of calendar centres, the thing is deemed a ‘zodiac’ even though what we have doesn’t meet the term’s definition. What I’m saying is that the differences can’t be presumed an error, so that we only explain what we imagine it *ought* to be. One has to explain what is actually there, in the manuscript.
I think Koen’s recent work on the ‘crayfish’ lobster is probably the best lead we’ve had so far.
Thank you for publishing my comment, and for replying to it, even so indirectly.
]]>I think that you have correctly bracketed the period we should be looking at, but I must say that I reached rather different conclusions about the region indicated, and I also feel it necessary that we should account for substantial stylistic differences: for example, the star-topped wand given the figure generally identified with Virgo – or, again, the design for the balance, which is quite unlike any I’ve seen in any Latin European work – although it’s nice to see that you, too, have included both the beginning (the region around Lake Tiberius) and the end (Amiens region) of the transmission-line for the standing human archer for Sagittarius, and have moved beyond the usual limits of citing only manuscript art.
As for the lion with the tree in the background and the looped tail. That is actually an ancient design, but reappears in the Christian art of the Mediterranean first in Spain and southern Italy (specifically in Sicily), and remains a regular form in Jewish manuscript art. What is yet to be explored in detail (I don’t mean in the context of Voynich studies, necessarily) is the movement of these designs in parallel with the movements caused by expulsions, plague and so on. Not many people would think (for example) that the red glass introduced for works of Opus Francigenum (like the archer window at Amiens) itself came from the region of Lake Tiberius (near beit Alpha) in the form of tesserae, some of it as old as the Roman period there. It was brought.. and perhaps the local artisans too.. It would explain the sudden non-classical type’s appearance in Amiens at that time.
So, while I daresay it’s annoying that I cannot agree with your assertion that the centres of the Voynich calendar ‘fit comfortably in central Europe’, it’s not a disagreement for the sake of it, but the conclusions of evidence and research. Perhaps if you find an example of the ‘fairy and wand’ or the anomalous design for the scales (they are a type which is attested, but not in Europe), then we may be closer to an accurate idea of where the drawings originated. As I said in treating these, I think they had reached northern France by as early as the tenth century, but perhaps you are closer to the mark with the 12th.
]]>D. O’Donovan wrote: “Since interpretation of the central emblems as a zodiac is more justified by longstanding habit than by what is actually in the manuscript, I feel that any final provenance must explain the ways in which the series differs – as it plainly does – from any known zodiac in the Latin manuscript tradition.”
It is important to distinguish between different research questions…
The ways in which the series differs might tell us something about the illustrator’s cultural background, but that is not the same question as where the inspiration for the figures originated.
It is very clear from the above examples that the VMS is thematically consistent with northeast France/Flanders and central-European zodiacs, even if the drawing style is different. As mentioned in the blog, these zodiac themes, when taken together as a group, are not characteristic of Scandinavia, England, Italy, Spain, eastern Europe or the Middle East.
]]>D. O’Donovan wrote: “About picturing a ‘lobster’ [the usual practice in art history today is increasingly to call it a crayfish]…”
I deliberately call it a crayfish based on my observations of where this symbol was substituted for a crab and not because of anything anyone else has written. I noticed that the coastal zodiacs had a higher proportion of crabs to represent Cancer (almost all English zodiacs use a crab rather than a crayfish). This is not surprising, as crabs and lobsters live in salt water and crayfish live in fresh water.
Many people in inland areas had never seen a crab or lobster, so it is not surprising that many of the crayfish zodiacs are from inland areas where crabs (and lobsters) don’t exist. It is particularly interesting that the Rivipulli zodiac, one of the first that has a crayfish rather than a crab, originates in the mountains at the confluence of a large river system where crayfish were traditionally eaten in great numbers and where restaurants still feature crayfish on their menus. It is because of this that I chose to use the word “crayfish” rather than “lobster” when referring to the Rivipulli symbol.
As for earlier work about the zodiac symbols, I have been blogging about the VMS figures since July 2013. I did research on astrology years before I knew about the Voynich manuscript, so it was natural that I would be drawn to this section.
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D. O’Donovan wrote: “But that is ongoing research, and not my research, so I’ll stop – but first I’d like to ask for details of those scholars whose opinions you mention in your post.”
My opinions are based on collecting, keying, and analyzing 540+ zodiac cycles (520 of which are complete cycles). I’m not aware of anyone else who has done this. No one has mapped datapoints for a series of specific combination searches either (I’m sure you know this), so obviously the data-map series is original research, as well.
]]>Since interpretation of the central emblems as a zodiac is more justified by longstanding habit than by what is actually in the manuscript, I feel that any final provenance must explain the ways in which the series differs – as it plainly does – from any known zodiac in the Latin manuscript tradition.
About picturing a ‘lobster’ [the usual practice in art history today is increasingly to call it a crayfish] – I have no wish to pre-empt Koen’s ongoing and meticulous study, but I think I may say that my understanding is that it is believed to derive from an early copy of the Germanicus Aratos, and it appears most often within the lines of Anglo-French-Norman Sicilian communication, though less in England than in France and Sicily – and also in Spain; it becomes more popular over time, and it is also evident that there’s a conscious effort made as the form is more widely adopted, of seeing Cancer as Sorpius’ counterpart: a ‘sea-scorpion’ to the land-scorpion. This I attribute to a classical Latin usage – not common, but found in influential writings such as Cicero’s – whereby the word ‘nepa’ might mean either a crab or a lobster/crayfish (as Koen says, the morphology is not greatly different).
re ‘nepa’ vide Isidore’s Glossary.
A lovely, late-fifteenth century expression of that intention to make Cancer and Scorpius a ‘pair’ is found in the French-made Book of Hours (Roman rite) for Rene of Anjou.
Koen ongoing work at present suggests the form’s popularity derives from that of the genre of ‘Marvels-rerum-naturis’ literature; the first flowering of which occurs , as I’m sure you know, in Paris with the ‘de rerum naturis’ of Thomas of Cantimpre. But that is ongoing research, and not my research, so I’ll stop – but first I’d like to ask for details of those scholars whose opinions you mention in your post.
PS – I think it fine of you to permit critiques of your posts; some prefer to convey an air that their ‘take’ is beyond debate.
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