Category Archives: Medieval Iconography

Tracing Long-Necked Taurus

I posted a blog on long-necked Taurus in April 2016, but was reluctant to add a specific picture of a red bull with a strikingly long neck. My focus was zodiac symbols and I didn’t want to include dozens of bulls that were not in zodiacs. I’ve decided to post this one, because the manuscript does have a zodiac series and the bull (which is in a different section) is so strikingly similar to the VMS.

There are two drawings of bulls in the VMS, one painted a little darker than the other. The placement of eyes and style of the nose differ, but their bodies are essentially the same shape:

In another manuscript that predates the VMS by about half a century, we find this drawing of a bull. It’s not a zodiac symbol, it’s in the bestiary section, but it is labeled “Taurus”:

I lightened the background (right) to make it easier to see the shape and pose. Note the long neck, long white curved horns, raised front leg, reddish coloration, very long tail, narrow pointed penis, and landscape background. Even though the background is rectangular and more ornate, the bull is very similar to the lighter VMS Taurus, including the angle of the head.

This drawing is more similar to the VMS bull than the one in the zodiac section. The zodiac Taurus is amber and faces the other way (and doesn’t have the front leg raised). The rest of the zodiac is based on traditional symbols and differs from the VMS in a number of ways—Sagittarius is a centaur, Leo has a man-face, the scorpion is more-or-less naturalistic, and the Libra scales are held by a female figure. It fits in with the H 437 tradition in the previous blog. The only significant commonalities with the VMS are the crayfish and the long noses on Pisces.

Are the similarities between the VMS zodiac bull and the bestiary bull coincidental? Why would these two long-necked bulls look so much alike when the zodiac drawings have little in common?

Maybe it’s not entirely a coincidence. If we look at Scorpius in BPL 14a, it is roughly like a scorpion, and yet the scorpion in the bestiary section (right), with fatter legs and body and snake-like tail, leans more toward medieval drawings of lizards and tarasques than a scorpion. Even though it’s drawn at a different angle, in some ways the bestiary critter is more similar to lizard-style Scorpiuses than the slightly more realistic one in the zodiac:

It seems possible that the illustrators of BPL 14a were consulting different sources when drawing the zodiac versus the bestiary. What’s even more puzzling is that the description next to the lizardly scorpion in the bestiary describes the stinger and knobby tail of a real scorpion, and yet these features are not in the drawing.

Crayfish, Centaur, and Libra-with-Figure

BPL 14a expresses themes that were common to the region, and which continued well into the 15th century, as illustrated by these two examples, one from the southern Netherlands (c. 1360) and a later, similar one in a 1455 Book of Hours (both now in The Hague).

Note how these differ from BPL 14a in colors and the shape that encloses the symbols, but they are the same basic themes: Virgo with grain, Libra with figure, somewhat naturalistic scorpion, shield Gemini, centaur-Sagittarius, and crayfish:

Like BPL 14a, the KB zodiac has Gemini shield, crayfish, Virgo with grain, Libra with a figure, a real scorpion, and centaur Sagittarius. Except for Aquarius and Leo, it’s clearly the same basic template.

Some of the Parisian and Castilian zodiacs follow this template, as well, except that Gemini does not have a shield, as in Egerton 1070, and BL Add 18851 and Add 38126.

Is there a match for Pisces in the bestiary?

Is there a pattern? Can we find evidence that VMS zodiac animals were taken from bestiaries?

It turns out that the fish section in BPL 14a is fairly extensive, and several drawings have long noses and double dorsal fins. Here are some examples, four of which have notably long snouts:

But… I don’t think they match the VMS as well as the Greek fresco fish mentioned in a previous blog.

What about Leo?

VMS Leo is distinctive for having a long neck (as do several of the other critters), only a hint of a mane, and possibly a furry coat. It has been suggested this might be a panther/leopard rather than a lion, but young lions are shaggy, with spots, and do not yet have manes, so even a cat with skimpy mane could represent a young or female lion.

This drawing in the feline section of the BPL 14a bestiary caught my eye, with the tilted head and its tail through its leg, but it is explicitly labeled “pardus” (abbreviated p[er]dus), so it is intended to be in the leopard rather than the lion family. It’s not posed quite like the VMS, either, but I thought I would include it for reference:

Note the faint suggestion of blue on the VMS lion.

There are a few zodiac and bestiary lions that are blue. Most of them originate in England or northern France/Normandy. The one in Walters W.37 has its tail through its leg, but has a distinctive mane. Trinity B-10-9 has a man-face and Morgan M.729 is posed quite differently (although it should be noted that Scorpius is rather tarasque-like and Gemini is an affectionate couple). Add MS 21926 (below) has a blue lion with one leg raised and only the hint of a mane:

The blue lion in Cotton MS Galba A XVIII (below) might be one of the earliest zodiacs with a blue lion (c. 9th century). It is facing the other way, but interestingly, several of the animals are standing on bumpy terrains, as are some of the VMS critters, and Sagittarius is a human.

It has been noticed by several researchers that the crayfish in this zodiac appears to have two heads. However, the zodiac also differs from the VMS in that the twins are male warriors, and Libra is held by a figure. Scorpius appears to be a two-headed serpent, a fairly unique depiction:
But getting back to the blue lion, what does it have to do with bestiaries?

I think it was Ellie Velinska who first brought this to my attention, but there’s a bluish-gray bestiary feline with a suggestion of fur or spots, a sparse mane, a raised paw, and its tail through its leg that is more similar to the VMS Leo than anything I’ve seen in a zodiac. Note also the very rounded shoulder joint on both the VMS and the bestiary lion:

Glancing through the bestiary, I noticed one other thing related to VMS critters in general…

In the serpent/dragon section of BPL 14a are a number of dragon-like critters that reminded me of the critter nosing a big plant in the VMS, in the sense of being vague and hard to figure out. These all are named, some of them with the names of real snakes (like “boa”), but they do not resemble snakes in any way. Sometimes it’s impossible to identify medieval creatures without the captions:

So what does all this mean?

I’m not sure yet, there’s still much work to be done… the VMS is consistent with a certain branch of zodiac illustrative traditions, as I hope I’ve demonstrated in previous blogs, and yet it’s possible the details, the animals and figures, were drawn from other sources. The VMS illustrator may have studied the zodiac motifs and then plugged in content from somewhere else.

I know that’s easy to say, but not so easy to prove, even if the resemblance of VMS Taurus to the bestiary bull is quite striking. It’s probably a good idea to keep in mind that VMS exemplars might be less obvious than assumed.

J.K. Petersen

Catching the Crayfish

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Crayfish are on the Voynich zodiac menu these days, so I thought I would cross-reference some of my previously posted maps and point out additional details about traditions that may have inspired the crayfish symbols in the VMS. Crayfish are quite prevalent in medieval and early Renaissance zodiac art (about 40%), with the rest being crabs.

In February 2016, I posted a blog about the unusual placement of legs on the crayfish tail, and also included naturalistic drawings of crayfish, showing how different species have different numbers of legs.

In that blog, I pointed out that some zodiacs have a pair of cee shapes on the backs of crayfish/lobsters and some don’t. I’d like to discuss this detail in more depth.

The Lines that Define

You can see the double semi-circles or “cee shapes” on the greenish VMS crayfish on the left and on the medieval calendar-zodiac crayfish on the right:

The crayfish above-right is from Würtzburg (c. 1240s). It is not the earliest example of a crayfish zodiac (an earlier one from Catalonia was described in the previous blog), but it may be one of the earliest to indicate the carapace with curved lines. It has four sets of spindly legs, like the VMS crayfish, but they are correctly placed on the body, not on the tail.

The earliest crayfish zodiacs emerged around the 11th and 12th centuries, in church architecture and manuscript art, but unlike the VMS, the crayfish was typically paired with traditional male Gemini twins.

There are no cee shapes on the crayfish symbols below. Instead, there was sometimes a line running from head to tail. The cee shapes were not yet a popular crayfish motif.

Some details are added by illustrators according to whim, and color (or the direction the figures are facing) is not always a defining feature, but the cee shapes provide an interesting glimpse into zodiac traditions. They appear to have emerged sometime around the 13th century.

Charting the Crayfish’s Carapace

After the c. 1240s Würtsburg symbol, there is a cee-shaped crayfish (c. 1260s) thought to be from Austria. It does not include a romantic Gemini or human Sagittarius, but is similar to the VMS in other ways (non-scorpion Scorpius, no-figure Libra, long-nosed Pisces) and might be considered a “cousin” in terms of motif:

Crayfish with cee shapes are sometimes found in Hebrew manuscripts, such as the Machsor Mazhor (which also has a non-scorpion Scorpius and male/female Gemini). The Machsor Mazhor, in turn, has similarities to Morgan M.855 and BSB Cgm 32. All three were created in the same general region (Austria, or possibly Germany) from c. late 1200s to c. 1340:

Geolocating the Crayfish Tradition

In March 2017, I posted a map of the origins of zodiacs that have a crayfish rather than a crab. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to fit all the examples (some dots are on top of each other), but hopefully there are enough to show that crayfish follow similar patterns to other VMS zodiac symbols, with notable clusters in northeast France and southern Germany, but the examples above suggest there may have been a convergence of traditions a couple of centuries after the earliest examples.

Cee-Shape Crayfish Paired with a More Lizardly Scorpius

The three previous examples have the turtle/tarasque style of Scorpius. The following zodiac is thought to be from France (possibly Provençal, c. 1340). It has a lizard-like scorpion and an interesting detail that is not especially common… Aries, Taurus, and Capricorn have rounded “paws” that aren’t very hoof-like, just as the VMS has unusually rounded hooves. The poses are also similar—note how Aries’s head is drawn from the side and Taurus from a higher perspective so both eyes and horns are visible:

While we’re on the subject of anatomy, look at Aries’s nose. It’s not a very common way to draw it, indistinct and very rounded, so I thought I would post this zodiac from Libr. pict. A 92 (possibly from Germany, c. 1400), which is one of the few that has animals with similarly drawn snouts. They’re not exactly the same, the mouths are more deeply indented, but they are worth noting, since it looks like the hooves on Capricorn might be somewhat rounded, as well:

Variations on Cee-Shape Themes

The following zodiacs, also from France, have similar themes to H 437 (traditional nude twins, a lizardlike Scorpius, centaur Sagittarius, and cee-shaped crayfish) but differ in having a figure holding the scales. Despite the differences in palette and style, they are thematically very similar to each other but, in a sense, one step farther from the VMS. Quite a few northern zodiacs had elaborate frames and traditional nude Gemini behind bushes or behind a shield:

Pairing the Crayfish with Human Sagittarius

The previous zodiacs all have Sagittarius as centaur or satyr. The earliest one I could find that has a cee-shape crayfish and a human archer is Vindo. Pal. 1850 from Prague (c. 1405). Unfortunately, the twins are traditional nude males, and the scorpion is naturalistic, so it’s not quite in the VMS ballpark, but it does have a no-figure Libra:

This 16th-century zodiac from Nuremberg (Cod. Pal. germ 833) has only minor differences and clearly comes from the same tradition as Vindo. Pal. 1850:

False Alarms

It’s easy to get excited about individual images when one first sees them. For example BSB Clm 826 (c. 1390) has a leg-tail Leo with its tongue sticking out, but I was reluctant to post it until I had done more research… I discovered that leg-tail lions are extremely common in medieval art, plus other aspects of Clm 826 are quite different from the VMS. It’s a real scorpion, Virgo has wings, Sagittarius is a satyr, and Taurus is a half-bull emerging from a cloudband. It seems unlikely that the VMS illustrator would copy Leo and completely ignore the other symbols when there are quite a few zodiacs that match the VMS quite well.

Summary

This all adds up to some interesting patterns. The VMS chiefly differs from other cee-shape-crayfish zodiacs in having affectionate male-female Gemini rather than the traditional male twins, yet is more similar overall to zodiacs that don’t include the cee shapes on the crayfish’s back, such as these, thought to be from Augsburg and Cologne:

As can be seen from the above examples, two of the better matches, in terms of motifs, are Morgan MS m.94, which has a line down the crayfish’s back, and Augsburg 2 Cod 5, which has an unusually ornate, decorated crayfish.

Part of the challenge of tracing these traditions is sorting out which details are significant, and which ones are not.

J.K. Petersen

From Brotherly Love to Otherly Love

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In May 2016, as part of a VMS zodiac series, I posted a blog about Gemini symbols evolving from twin brothers to affectionate siblings to the “otherly” love usually associated with romantic couples. I noted that the Claricia Psalter is one of the earliest depictions of male/female Gemini in an affectionate embrace. If you haven’t read it already, I suggest you at least scan the second half of the previous blog.

I chose the Claricia Psalter for a number of reasons—it is one of the first zodiacs to unambiguously show the twins as different genders, and is possibly one of the earliest zodiac images of “otherly” love (c. 1200s or earlier). It’s difficult to know if the figures are fraternal twins or a romantic couple, but the fact that they are male/female is a departure from classical images of Castor and Pollux, and also different from medieval images of the twins as warriors.

But there is more… it is also, in a sense, a “template” for zodiac cycles with the same cast of characters as the Voynich Manuscript.

Background

I’ve already described classical zodiacs a few times, but here is one from the 9th century to make it easier to see the differences between this and later zodiacs that resemble the VMS zodiac. Note the girdle on Aries, the nude, male warrior twins, Cancer as a crab, a real scorpion, and Sagittarius as a centaur:

The Claricia Psalter (Walters W.26) was created about three centuries later, probably in the southern HRE about midway between Bohemia and the Alsace, and is distinctly different in a number of ways that are relevant to the VMS.

The Claricia Psalter was created for an Augsburg abbey (possibly commissioned) and yet is rather crudely drawn and painted, not much higher in general skill level than the VMS. The palette is also similar, although the Claricia is enhanced with some highlights in gold, and the shade of red is a little more orange than the VMS and used with more frequency.

Here is the Claricia zodiac together with the Augsburg Psalter (which is very similar in subject matter, and contained within roundels like the VMS):

Is There a Traceable Zodiacal Tradition?

Is it possible to pin down the VMS to a specific illustrative tradition?

When I search through my database of more than 500 medieval zodiacs, I find fewer than 40 (only 6% of the total) that have this particular combination:

male/female Gemini,
Libra scales with no associated human-like figure, and
Cancer as a crayfish/lobster.

What is even more significant about this combination-search is that quite a number of the hits also have a non-scorpion Scorpius (in the form of a turtle/tarasque, dragon, or reptile/amphibian)—another commonality with the VMS—as in this example from the 13th century, created a few decades after the Claricia Psalter. Note also that the zodiacs are contained within roundels, like the Augsburg Psalter and the VMS:

To push the comparison with the VMS beyond the realm of coincidence, some of them also have Sagittarius with legs and Leo with his tail threaded through his legs.

I can’t quite tell if Cod. Vindo. Pal. 1982 (14th century) is male and female or two males, but it otherwise fits in this group, with a no-hand Libra, Cancer-crayfish, human Sagittarius, and tarasque-Scorpius.

Even though it is roughly drawn, and colored only with a bit of amber wash, the zodiac symbols in BAV Pal.lat.1369 (c. 1400s) have much in common with this tradition, as well. The couple is male/female, Cancer is a crayfish, and the scales have no figure. But this is a scientific compilation with many charts, and a number of volvelles, and the illustrator drew the zodiacs with the traditional centaur and a more-or-less real scorpion.

Note the clothing, which is very similar to the VMS, including unembellished round necklines. The symbols are contained within roundels and the labels are in German, but German was used in many places, including eastern Switzerland, Germany, parts of Bohemia, and parts of Lombardy, so the language doesn’t specifically pin down the localality:

This combination is first seen around the 1100s or 1200s and continues until the early 1500s. If we eliminate Sagittarius as a centaur, then we are left with those originating around the time of the Claricia Psalter until the 1470s. Specifying a human Sagittarius eliminates Hildegard von Bingen’s zodiac, a 13th-century zodiac from Stuttgart, Ludwig VIII 3, Codex Sang. 42, and the Augsburg Psalter, but I was curious to see which ones had the greatest similarity to the VMS symbols.

Morgan MS M.280 is very similar in format to Walters W.78 (the Augsburg Psalter). It has roundels with a clasping couple, crayfish, no-figure scale, and tarasque-Scorpius, but lacks the human Sagittarius:

Morgan M.280 and Walters W.78 demonstrate how two different illustrators can draw essentially the same things in quite different ways simply by changing the direction of a head or tail, or adding a detail or two:

Even though it has twists of its own, like the double-crayfish and the added stars, in terms of subject matter and chronology, the VMS zodiac fits quite well with this group. You can almost guess that Aquarius would probably be a mostly-clothed male with a single jug rather than two, and that Capricorn would be a running or walking goat rather than a mythical goatfish or a goat next to a water-well:

Another Transition

By the 1460s, another change was unfolding… a number of zodiac illustrators who closely followed the above patterns, including leg-tail tongue-Leo, reverted back to the traditional nude male twins and naturalistic scorpion, as in Codex Pal. Germ 298 (which also has a crossbowman) and LJS 449.

Dating to approximately the mid-15th century, Codex Pal. germ 298 includes roundels with crayfish-Cancer, leg-tail Leo, no-figure Libra, and the famous crossbowman, in keeping with zodiacs already mentioned, but like LJS 449, Gemini has been drawn as traditional nude twins rather than as a romantic couple in fine clothing.

But wait… LJS 449 has two zodiac sets (the second one incomplete) and in the second (which is the signs associated with their ruling planets), the symbols are contained within roundels, and Sagittarius is a human. Separate from the zodiacs, under a tree in a garden, we see an amorous couple. LJS 449 also has some medical topics, including an illustration of urine specimens.

Ludwig XII 8 also seems to fit within this group, with no-figure Libra, crayfish-Cancer, romantic-looking Gemini, a slightly dragony Scorpius, and a human archer. BSB CGM 7269 is similar, as well, and includes a crossbowman. The twins are of both sexes, holding hands, and sharing a bath (the “in” thing to do at the time was to dine together while bathing).

Cod. VIndo. Pal. 1951 (c. mid-1400s from France?) converts the bowman back into a satyr. Morgan MS G.1 (c. 1450s) has a lizardly Scorpius but Sagittarius is a centaur, and the twins are youthful nudes. It seems that by the later-1400s, some illustrators were reverting to traditional forms (as in Vat. Barb.lat.487 and Walters W.428), with the exception of Cancer, which remained a crayfish into the 16th century.

Summary

Can we geolocate the closest matches?

Even though the non-scorpion Scorpius may have originated in NE France, the manuscripts that combine it with male/female affectionate Gemini and crayfish-Cancer seem to be mostly from southern Germany, especially around Augsburg, with one from Basel, Switzerland (14th century).

This survey is restricted, of course, to digitized examples available on the Web, there may be treasures hiding in dusty libraries, but at least it gives a reasonably good picture of a specific approach to zodiacs that is consistent with the VMS.

J.K. Petersen

A Line in the Stars

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Recently Voynich Views posted a blog about the line (or lack of one) connecting the fish that represent the astrological symbol Pisces, paying specific attention to those that look like the VMS long-nosed fish. I have a dataset of more than 500 zodiac cycles, so I thought I would post them to help round out the picture.

Long-nosed fish are definitely in the minority. Only about 8% of the total samples in my files have long noses, and if you filter out those with a line between the fish, only 3% remain.

The majority of those with long noses originated in France, with a few from Austria and Germany. There were also single examples from Italy, Spain, Belgium, and the Netherlands. If you look back at the map of symbols similar to VMS Scorpio, you will see that several of those that resemble the VMS lizardy Scorpius are also from France.

The earliest examples, mainly from the 12th and 13th centuries are from France, England, Cologne, and Austria. Those enclosed in circles are from France, Austria, Germany, and the Hague.

Only two or three of the fish pairs have the same “wavy” shape as the VMS fish (a couple from Paris, possibly one from England, and one from Austria). Note that the 12th century zodiac from Seckau, Austria, may have had the drawings added in the 15th century, so I have sorted according to the later date [click to see larger]:

It’s interesting that so many of the VMS details are in the minority. Crossbow Sagittarius is relatively uncommon, as is lizardy Scorpius, and double-Cancer. The Gemini “courting couple” is also uncommon.

Pisces with a long nose is quite uncommon, especially those without a line between the fish. I sometimes wonder if the person who designed the VMS zodiac signs got the general idea from looking at zodiacs but inserted pictures copied from other sources. For example, in CLM 10072 and BNF Lat. 13025, we see a long-nosed fish in a pond, and a long-nosed fish with the scales emphasized in an embellished initial. The Book of Wonders and the Rochester Bestiary also have a variety of long-nosed fish. Plus, there are a couple of “zodiac man” images with long-nosed fish under the man’s feet that I didn’t include in the above compilation.

Another way that the VMS fish differ from many fish drawings is the way the scales cover the whole body. Many illustrators don’t put scales on the bellies:

The wavy form of the VMS bodies is also unusual. I found a “wavy” fish in an Arabic manuscript, but other than the undulating posture, it doesn’t strongly resemble the VMS fish. It has spots, three fins top and bottom, a pale belly, and a drawing style that is much more eastern:

There are also some long-nosed fish in the marketplace and in the water in Tacuinum Sanitatus:

This fish is scaly top to bottom, but the fins and nose are quite different from the VMS fish:

In the planetary influences section, Cod. Sang. 760 has a human Sagittarius and some scaly long-nosed fish, but the fish are roughly sketched and probably later than the VMS:

Morgan B.19 has a very cute drawing that looks like it was done by a child that includes a long-nosed fish with double dorsel fins:

In the Andalius De Sphaera (c. 1327), we see long-nosed dolphins. They’re not fish, they’re mammals but many old texts refer to them as fish and even today many people call them “fish”:

Family emblems, such as this one (which also features cloud-band imagery), sometimes include long-nosed fish:

The best match I’ve seen for the VMS fish outside of zodiac imagery was the one pointed out by MarcoP in the Sachsenspiegel. It has a long nose, a face quite similar to the VMS fish, and is scaly top to bottom. I’ve turned it sideways so it is easier to see:

Summary

Even though the VMS long-nosed fish are unique in a number of ways, there are several possible sources for the imagery, including zodiacs, bestiaries, and manuscripts unrelated to astrology.

The Parisian zodiac dating from c. 1350 (Morgan M.75) is the closest I’ve found so far as a Pisces symbol, in terms of style and features. Morgan M.75 also includes a four-legged Scorpius and crayfish Cancer, so perhaps there is some common source that connects them, but I’d like to gather more information and continue analyzing what I have before venturing any conclusions.

J.K. Petersen

[Postscript July 27, 2018] I found this picture after I posted the blog:

The drawing style is different from the VMS, but the features are notable. It has long-nosed double-dorsal fish that are scaly from top to bottom. Plus, something that is even harder to find in fish with these characteristics… the lower one has an undulating posture. The image detail is from a 14th-century hell-mouth fresco in the Timios Prodromos monastery in Serres, Greece.

Serres also has grottoes with fabulous stalactites. I’m always on the lookout for grottoes since some of the VMS bathing images have grotto-like structures.

J.K. Petersen

Postscript 30 August 2018: It has been suggested that the VMS Pisces symbol represents the New World alligator gar. Here is a picture of the gar. Note there is one fin top, two sets of fins bottom-front, and another fin back-bottom. Drawn from the side, it might look like one top and three bottom.

If the researchers who identified the VMS fish as alligator gar are going to ignore the mismatch in the number of fins, then any fish with a long nose could be said to be similar to the VMS fish, including the northern pike, which is indigenous to both Old and New Worlds:

The same researchers claim the fish with the nymph in its mouth on folio 79v is also an alligator gar. I can’t take that seriously. Look at the mouth, it’s very broad and blunt, more like a wide-mouthed bass:

In contrast, the mouth of the alligator gar is long, narrow, and toothy (especially this species):

Natural or Traditional?

Four years ago, I looked at hundreds of pictures of New World and Old World fish and there are several with long noses and two fins top and two bottom, but I have the feeling the VMS illustrator consulted other drawings rather than studying real fish because VMS Pisces resembles medieval illustrations more than it does naturalistic drawings of the time.

Here is a small subset of Pisces symbols with varying numbers of fins and long noses. They are all Old World illustrations:

I’ll leave it to the reader to decide whether the VMS fish look more like the New World alligator gar, or like fish in pre-conquest medieval illustrations. I’m partial to the fish in the Sachsenspiegel with its similar face and tail, and to the fish in the Greek fresco, which have the right number of fins, top-to-bottom scales, and narrow curvy bodies.

Stars on Strings

Zodiac Patterns – Human Sagittarius

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Two days ago, I posted maps illustrating combination searches of medieval zodiac images similar to those in the Voynich Manuscript. Today, a simpler search explores Sagittarius as a two-legged human, distinct from centaurs and satyrs. This is different from previous Sagittarius blogs where I focused on the crossbow and tunic.

Background

Medieval images of Sagittarius generally fall into three categories: centaurs, satyrs, and humans. Most of them are holding longbows, a few have crossbows. Here are examples that illustrate common themes:

Note how the VMS fits naturally with the human-in-tunic style that became popular in certain regions, especially in the 14th to mid-16th centuries. Sagittarius as a satyr is primarily found in Germany or northeastern France.

Evolution

The Egyptians and Greeks represented Sagittarius as a centaur. The tradition of using a human was uncommon but can be seen in the sacred reliefs of Romans who followed the Mithraic religion in the second century. Not all the Mithraic Sagittarius carvings are human, the London relief shows Sagittarius as a centaur, but the one associated with Hadrian’s wall at Housesteads, England, is a nude archer with a longbow (right).

A few centuries after the fall of Rome, clothed human archers appear in Hebrew mosaics south of the Sea of Galilee, in the general area now known as Beit Alfa. This is not far from the birthplace of astrology as we know it, originating with the Chaldeans and Egyptians.

Back in northern Europe, probably England, Sagittarius-as-human didn’t vanish after the fall of the Roman Empire. It shows up in the early 9th century in Cotton MS Galba A XVIII, in a series that includes a double-headed crayfish and a bull with his tail between his legs. There are additional echoes of the VMS in the bumpy terrains under the feet, and suggestions of foliage in the background, but Virgo and Libra do not look anything like the VMS, and Scorpio is a double-headed serpent in the arms of a human (possibly a reference to St. George battling a dragon or perhaps Ophiuchus, the serpent-wrestling constellation). Leo doesn’t have a leg-tail or a protruding tongue either.

Continental Examples

In the 12th and 13th centuries, a number of Sagittarius-as-human figures appear in churches and manuscripts in at least three places: the northeast of what is now France, in the Holy Roman Empire (mainly Germany), and in a Christian cathedral in Georgia (Georgia has been primarily Christian since the 4th century).

There is also a brevarium from Seckau, Austria (Graz MS 286) with some VMS-like characteristics such as a simple scale, a crayfish, and nibbling animals, but I am very suspicious that the zodiac symbols may have been added in the 14th or 15th century, mainly because of the style and themes, and partly because of the way the drawings overlap the original text.

By the mid-1300s, some of the zodiacs with Sagittarius-as-human were starting to look like the Voynich bowman. In particular, a manuscript thought to be from Germany, held in the Regensburger library (Clm 13076), has several commonalities, including a lion with a protruding tongue, a mammalian or lizardy scorpio, human Sagittarius, and Cancer as a crayfish. There is also a vague suggestion of bumpy terrain:

About 40 years later, a zodiac with a leg-tail lion and human archer appears in the north (Trinity B-11-7, possibly England), but it features Cancer as a crab and Scorpius as scorpion, and only superficially resembles the VMS. Big cats with their tails between their legs (a position that cats prefer to avoid that became a popular visual emblem) weren’t specific to zodiacs, they were frequently used on banners, friezes, and coats-of-arms throughout Europe and parts of the Middle East.

Graz MS 287 Human Sagittarius

By c. 1390 to c. 1405, examples of human Sagittarius can be found in Bohemia, and they have a number of commonalities with the VMS, including Leo with leg-tail, a crayfish, and Libra scales without a full figure. So, even though early lizard-style Scorpius emerged in northern France, if you look at several zodiac symbols together, those that are most similar to the VMS in the mid-to-late 14th century appear to be from the southeastern HRE.

Thus, if you ignore the crossbow for a moment, you will notice significant clustering of human-Sagittarius themes in the Holy Roman Empire:

A Tradition-Transmission Mystery

There is a zodiac cycle a little to the west of what appears to be a cluster in the SE HRE, an early-15th century manuscript from the Lake Constance area (not from St. Gall), one with similar themes to the VMS: a squatting Virgo, a crossbow, and Sagittarius wearing a tunic of the same style as the VMS (Cod. Sang. 827 c. 1425).

Note the crossbow and the wide sleeves that are narrow at the wrist. Cod. Sang. 827

So, the question is, might the VMS illustrator have seen one or more of the south-eastern HRE manuscripts and/or one from the Alsace or possibly even the one from Seckau? Or did the Sang. 827 illustrator independently see manuscripts from the southeastern HRE and interpret them in a similar way, with no connection to the VMS?

That’s one way of looking at it, but another possibility is that there might be an intermediary manuscript created sometime between 1400 and c. 1425 that influenced both of them, possibly one that has been lost?

And, there’s a further possibility. When combination searches are used, the VMS has many commonalities with manuscripts from the mid-15th century.

LJS 449 includes a crayfish, a leg-tail Leo, a human archer, and squatting Virgo gowned with many folds. Cod. Pal. Germ. 298, CGM 312, CGM 7269, 3085 Han, Estense De Sphaera, Codex Schürstab, and Sang. 760 (and several others) are similar, as well. Some that include combination themes also have romantic Gemini (e.g. Ludwig XII 8). Were the raw materials for the Voynich Manuscript stored for a decade or two before being used so that the contents belong to a later time period than the radio-carbon dated parchment? Might it have a closer kinship to southern German manuscripts from c. 1440 to 1470 rather than earlier sources from England or Burgundy/France?

I’m hoping a series of combination searches will provide a better sense of which illustrative traditions may have directly influenced the VMS and which are incidental or coincidental.

Summary

This search is speculative, as it describes results from a very specific point of view—Sagittarius as human—and one has to be careful not to read too much into it because zodiac cycles can be extremely similar and still differ on a symbol or two but, once again I found it intriguing that the examples from this specific search clustered so dramatically in certain regions and time periods.

J.K. Petersen

Zodiac Patterns

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This is part of an ongoing series on VMS zodiac symbols. This time rather than mapping specific symbols, I searched for combinations of traits similar to those found in the Voynich Manuscript. This cannot be done in a single blog, so I will start with one that charts three characteristics of Leo, Libra, and Cancer.

For the first combination search, I chose 1) Leo with his tail between his legs, 2) Libra alone (no hand supporting it), and 3) Cancer as a crayfish rather than a crab. This last one has some fairly distinctive regional differences that have been described in previous blogs.

There are many possible combinations, and it will take time to post them, but even this preliminary search filters the data in some intriguing ways. I will upload other combinations as I have time. You can click the image to see it larger:

There is quite a bit of information in these maps. Note that when you filter for these specific characteristics, Spain and England do not appear in the “hits” and even Italy is not represented except for one manuscript that is of uncertain origin. The dates are interesting, as well. There is no clear migratory route for these zodiac styles, but there are some patterns.

One of the reasons England did not appear in this combination is because English zodiacs tend to have a crab and place the tail behind or above Leo more often than between the legs. Spain follows the same pattern. Lions with leg-tails can be found (just as crayfish can be found), but they are usually not paired in this specific way.

I will leave you to peruse the maps, and when I have time I will post additional combination searches that illustrate other perspectives.

J.K. Petersen

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

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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?

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

Roundup of Past Blogs

Voynich Text

Could some of the glyphs with ascenders be pilcrows?

Some statistics on the possibility of 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:

The VMS bench char and common Latin conventions
The EVA-m glyph that resembles a “j” and represents “-ris” in Latin
“Benched” characters and numerals in Greek and Latin manuscripts
Observations on the VMS “4” glyph (this is long but even this does not include all the information I have on the 4 glyph)
Observations on “gallows” characters (this is only an introduction, I have much more information, including some statistical charts that I will post when I have time)
The “bird” glyph and squiggle (introductory, I have more information and examples that I will post when I can)
Is VMS cc different from VMS c c?

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

Introduction to biglyphs (June 2016)
How Latin shapes don’t necessarily mean Latin text (patterns that suggest the presence of biglyphs)
More on the structure of VMS text (I have much more information on this topic that will be posted as a series of blogs)
More on possible biglyphs (This is a followup to the June 2016 introduction to biglyphs. My observations apparently parallel some of the patterns Nick Pelling has observed, which I was unaware of at the time I wrote this—they may differ in a few details, but definitely agree on the overall structure.)

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)

The almost-obliterated column text of f1r (More discussion of the column text)
Updated Column-Text Chart Update to the column-text chart (I have more information on this since the March 2017 update and will upload the more recent chart when I have time)

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?

Is the f79 woman-fish a melusina?
Is there a Golden Fleece reference?
The pond critters on 79v
Are there “flower tails” in the VMS?
My impression of some of the VMS scribbles
Possible biological references in the VMS
Possible references to medical myths (Castorum and Theriac)
A cross or something else?
The mysterious blue cube in the small-plant pages
How many painters?
The VMS palette
Plant 51v spinner heads
jellyfish-like roots
Possible mnemonic leaves on Plant 51r
The jaggy leaves on Plant 10r
The dragony thing nibbling (or smelling) a plant

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:

Asian influence on Persian art
phoenix/simurg legends in medieval art
interpreting visual legends in herbal illustrations
an example of cloudband and water iconography
spirals and whorls
center motifs
textural traditions in rural east India textile arts

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.

Anomalies in the VMS crayfish/lobster drawing
Different drawing styles on the noses of green and white “Aries”
More on the Aries-symbol nose
Looking at Leo
The double crayfish/lobster Cancer symbol
The long neck and horns on Taurus
Stylistic forms of Libra
Observations on Gemini
The archer/bowman origins and how political borders kept changing
The bowman’s tunic
The crossbowman and short-legged men
Looking more closely at the crossbow
The crossbow individual parts in even more detail.

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

Commentary on Various “Solutions”

The Strong solution (notes from Strong’s decryption attempt)
Tucker and Talbert New World origin and plant IDs based on that premise
Nicholas Gibbs in the Times Literary Supplement

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

Eyes, Ears, Nose, and Tropes

1 Reply

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