16 Dec. 2015
Voynich Manuscript Origins – Does Sagittarius Hold Clues?
In a previous post, from July 2013, I summarized zodiac symbols that are illustrated in the Voynich Manuscript (Beinecke 408) and included examples of symbols from other manuscripts.
Since then I’ve collected many more examples, far too many to include in one post, so I’ll constrain this one to Sagittarius, the archer, because, as I mentioned previously, it is somewhat unusual for Sagittarius to be represented with legs and a crossbow when the actual constellation is typically a centaur with a long bow.
Examples of Sagittarius as a centaur are far more frequent, such as this one (left) from Codex Sang. 250. And, with the exception of a rare example from Israel in the 6th century, most of those with legs occur between 1395 and the late 1400s, the same approximate time as the creation of the VM manuscript.
If we further narrow the examples to those with both legs and crossbows, then only a handful remain. To make it easier to understand the importance of these examples, I created a chart which shows the extents of the Roman Empire in the late 1300s overlaid with Sagittarius symbols. This made it easier to visualize the approximate origins and dates of creation of the ones drawn with legs
I felt it was important to include the political boundaries of the Holy Roman Empire because it provides context. I was not specifically looking for zodiac symbols in this region, I sought out every Sagittarius with legs that I could find, but discovered after collecting them that they had commonalities not only in attire, but in geography. It’s probable that others may surface that have never been digitized and uploaded to the Web but until that happens, one has to work with what is available.
The above chart illustrates Sagittarius with legs from a variety of documents. The one in the upper right was pasted into a manuscript and may not originate at the same time or place, but was probably created sometime before 1468.
The image in the lower left of the chart is technically not a zodiac symbol, although the volume from which it originates has astrological references. I included it because it resembles some of the zodiac drawings and might provide a clue as to why crossbows appear in zodiacs. The painting is from the Netherlands and shows a crossbow tournament. It occurred to me that the popularity of the crossbow for warfare and for competition may have inspired drawings of Sagittarius for a brief period of about three decades.
I didn’t include this image of the archer squatting because it’s from a fragment that has been assembled with a longer document, but it is assumed to be from Germany, with an estimated date of about 1457 or earlier. By the mid-1400s, most of the Sagittarius symbols had reverted to longbows and, by the 1500s, the legged version of Sagittarius had almost disappeared (other than obvious copies from older texts). Most of the examples that include crossbows are from the early to mid-1400s.
Note that the examples I’ve located so far tend to be from the same general region. Most are within the Holy Roman Empire, near to what is now the border between Germany and Switzerland. An early one appears to originate in Czech. The legged symbols from Israel and Italy are longbows.
The zodiac symbols in the VM do not appear to be copied from one specific source. If they are, that source has not yet turned up on the Web or may no longer exist. At least for now, it appears that the VM illustrator was inspired by a number of sources. Clearly Beinecke 408 is not a work of pure fantasy—many parallels to European culture are evident.
Location Clues
What is most significant about the Sagittarius crossbowmen is that they originate from a fairly specific time period (clustering around the 1420s to about 1475) and a fairly specific area of central Europe, the same region that matches the handwriting found in the marginal notes and on the last page of the VM (I refer to this handwriting as second script because there’s no definite evidence yet that the VM author (first script) and the author of the Germanic/Latin text on the last page are the same person—there are significant differences in the handwriting).
We also don’t know for certain whether the person who created the drawings is the same as the person who added the text. It probably is, but it should not be assumed that only one person authored the manuscript. In fact, it appears that the paint may have been added by someone other than the person who drew the lines, given that the lines are fairly careful and the painting rather sloppy, so we have to keep open to the possibility that the artist and author may be different people, as well.
The clustering of legged crossbow symbols isn’t sufficient evidence to assume Beinecke 408 was created in S.W. Germany or Switzerland (there are some perplexing oddities in the manuscript that are not typical of this region), but It’s certainly possible. The style of the plant illustrations and the handwriting on the last page are similar to others originating in the same general area (including northern Italy). The manuscript’s provenance, which includes Czech and Italy, and the organization of the content (and materials used to create it), also suggest a central European/Holy Roman Empire origin, so it may be that the person (or persons) who authored the Voynich Manuscript was born there or migrated to the area.
If you have seen any examples of Sagittarius with legs and a crossbow in documents from the 15th century or earlier that are not scanned and uploaded to the Web, I would be interested in hearing about them.
J.K. Petersen
Postscript: I should mention that I didn’t include examples of Sagittarius with goat legs (of which I found several examples, one from about four centuries before the VM), because it struck me that the Pan-like representation of Sagittarius was as distinct from Sagittarius with human legs as it was from Sagittarius as a centaur, individual enough that it deserves a separate article.
2016 Jan 11 Postscript: It was brought to my attention that David Jackson has located a further example of Sagittarius with what appears to be a crossbow, described in his article here.
© Copyright 2015 J.K. Petersen, All Rights Reserved
The ‘Pan’ Sagittarius derives from Eudoxus’ text, I understand.
The completely human form originates (as you rightly note) in the near east.
The first point is when and how it came to Europe: it appears first in the context of the Opus Francigenum (later called with derogatory intent ‘gothic style’ by people who preferred Greek and Roman classical architecture).
Its being given a crossbow rather than a long-bow is due to linguistic use of the term ‘saggitario’ to mean a person who used any sort of bow, and often both according to need. That is recorded in the Rolls in medieval Calais, then part of English territory.
I leave it to people better acquainted with German history than I am to explain why it should have become so popular in calendars there, but the type of bow shown in the Voynich manuscript is pretty clearly meant for one used in the south, and (according to the archaeologists) with a modification which made it more stable at sea. So despite the German images of Sagittarians, or Sagittarius with an ordinary sort of crossbow, the one in the Vms appears to derive from the south. At present, a friend in France is checking whether an image in a fourteenth-century manuscript from France is the same sort of crossbow. That would be good to know, because otherwise we have only a couple of archaeological finds, and their date of manufacture is believed about 1510. Doesn’t lessen the evidence for the Voynich bow being that type, of course.
I have a separate page on my blog for the complete analysis of the Voynich archer figure, if you’re interested.
O’Donovan blog
PS – that’s a lovely map. I wonder if I might print it?
Yes, you are welcome to print the map.
Hi!
I would like to enquire about the illustration from 1472 that is shown on the map.
Could you tell me the source, or help me to find a higher resolution of it?
Furthermore, interesting article and nice illustrations!
Great job!
Szabolcs Kozák
Thank you.
The citation for the one you requested is Codex Schürstab, folio 22v.
If you are interested in other examples of Sagittarius with legs and a longbow that resemble the one from 1472, here are some additional examples I have found that weren’t included on the map:
BSB Clm 13076 ca. 1356
Egerton 2724 ca. 1st half 15th century
Losbuch MS Germ. p. 642 approx. same time period as Egerton 2724
BSB CGM 312 ca. mid-15th century (almost a mirror image of the one on the map)
– JKP – If I might make a suggestion: a great many people have put in just as many hours as you have evidently done, and donated that time to help the study. In return, the only courteous (and I’d suggest, the only honest) thing to do is to avoid giving the false impression that you have done all the work yourself and so deserve all the credit for yourself.
You include several examples which were first promoted, and possibly even first discovered by Rene Zandbergen and published on his web-page before you joined the Voynich community online. You also include examples which Don Hoffman found after exhaustive searches. I’m quite sure nobody had ever traced the origin and history of the standing, human archer figure until I did, and I cannot tell you how much time I put into that research before writing up by findings in the form of 3 formal essays – not including the final analytical study which I published on my blog.
I must say I feel annoyed to see so many other peoples’ work — and a lot of it very widely known as their work — appear without the usual civilities and so on.
This sort of thing doesn’t do you much good, except with the most casual skimmers-by. You evidently spend a lot of time putting together what you read: to get the sort of reputation you evidently hope to gain, the thing to do is to be meticulously honest about which bits are original, and which deserve a little deference to those who got there before you.
It also has the merit that if you’re wrong – then you’re only wrong about your own ideas and conclusions You don’t have to carry the burden of other peoples’ errors. 🙂
Diane, I’ve been studying the Voynich Manuscript in-depth since 2007, since long before I started blogging about it. I have two high-capacity hard drives (terrabytes-large) entirely devoted to Voynich-related imagery. For the plants alone, I have more than 1/4 million images carefully selected from millions. Most of what I see posted online on VMS plants, on zodiacs, etc., is already in my files.
Many of the criticisms you have posted would have been unnecessary if you had simply clicked on the links I provided that fill in the background for the current blog. Some of your recent comments give the impression that you’re scan-reading and skipping over important details and thus misinterpreting what I’ve written.
—–
Diane wrote: “You evidently spend a lot of time putting together what you read: to get the sort of reputation you evidently hope to gain,…”.
This statement is so off-base I don’t even know how to respond. I’m not blogging to gain a reputation. Why would you think that? I’ve told you numerous times this is my hobby. I’m a software developer and media specialist. I have more work than time. Blogging is my way of giving something back. Others were sharing their research, so I finally decided to share mine.
-JKP – You’re quite right. The remark was uncalled for. It was wrong of me to quote one of your colleagues when addressing you. To each his own portion.)
You clip from that late copy of the Tacuuinm Sanitatis is interesting even though (as you say) too late and German. I’ll find whether it has been traced to the earlier Italian or Franco-Italian stream. Could still be relevant in that way.
I don’t want to make any assumptions about whether the Franco-Italian or German versions of the Tacuinum Sanitatus are more relevant. One can find parallels to the VMS in many versions of the TS, and all of them evolved from the 11th-century Arabic Taqwīm as‑siḥḥah.
I did notice that wide-sleeved men’s tunics are prominent in the Tacuinum Sanitatus Casanatense (14c), but not the kind that are narrow at the wrist and wide at the elbow like the bowman’s tunic. They are mostly wide at the wrist.
TS SN2644 does have some sleeves on the dresses that are trimmed with scallops or lace, a detail of the female dress in the VMS that is less common than plain-edged sleeves.
PS – what I find especially interesting about that image is that it appears to reflect some knowledge of Manilius – who as surely you will know – classes Sagittarius among the three ‘running’ constellations of the twelve. This isn’t surprising in terms of that copy’s date; but it also shows continuity with some earlier images of the celestial globe that are echoed by some earlier (Caroline and Ottonian) copies of the Aratea. Raises some interesting historical questions about such imagery. Oh – and in case it might help you sort out the relationship between the fully human and the Satyr/Pan sort of image for Sagittarius, the key is in the word ‘Arcitenens’ and variants thereof. The formal description has this a Satyr, but in Lausanne to which the style of Opus Francigenum passed from Laon, we see it in the eastern Mediterranean and Jewish form as fully human. It is believed that the reason the Jews invented the fully-human form is that to meld human features with those of other mammals contravened the Law. Hope you find that helpful.
I do agree with all the ideas you have introduced in your post.
They are very convincing and can definitely work.
Still, the posts are too brief for starters.
May you please prolong them a bit from subsequent time?
Thanks for the post.