Monthly Archives: April 2020

The Quicker Hand…

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23 April 2020

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.

Diagram of the basic parts of a quill pen tip.

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:

Examples of overly-light descenders on VMS folio f99v.

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:

Palaeographic examples of medieval flat-bottom "v".

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:

Example of over-inked descenders on VMS Folio 100r.

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:

VMS nymphs in barrels with poorly drawn shoulders
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.

J.K. Petersen

© Copyright 23 April 2020 J.K. Petersen, All Rights Reserved

Clearing up the Mystery…

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8 9 April 2020

A Web search led me to this University of Florida News article about a “secret code” in a mid-13th-century manuscript:

“Medieval book’s secret code remains unbroken
… 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:

University of Florida Smathers manuscript New Testament
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:

Detail of the red ink in the margins of a University of Florida library 13th-century manuscript.

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:

Example of paragraph-reference marker in Vat. Lat. 1960.
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:

Paragraph-reference symbol in a medieval manuscript Vat.lat.1960

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:

Paragraph-reference-marker symbol in Cotton Domitian Aix 4.
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]
Detail of the red ink in the margins of a University of Florida library 13th-century manuscript.

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 p d, 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):

Example of notes in red ink, commentary on the New Testament

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):

Alphabet that resembles a cipher in a University of Florida 13th-century manuscript.

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.

J.K. Petersen

© Copyright 9 April 2020, J.K. Petersen, All Rights Reserved