This is the first time I’ve logged into my Voynich Portal account in 3.5 years. I couldn’t even remember my password. I’ve been fighting for democracy. All my research, hobbies, family relationships, all the things that matter to me, have been sidelined by the need to be actively engaged.
Time Lost
It was a crushing blow to set aside my research. After 13 years of basic legwork, I was making discoveries, exciting ones, and now all the emerging threads are moldering on an old hard drive that I pulled from a computer that I sold, with my paper notes gathering dust in the attic and under the bed. I feel like a small ship that lost everything in a bad storm, including the captain’s log and now, amidst an even bigger storm, I’m trying to find it all and drag it back into the boat.
Except I can’t. Not yet. There’s more work to be done on the home-front and it’s more urgent than ever.
A Token Note
I can’t pop in and out without at least posting something about the VMS. So maybe the most appropriate snippet is this… at the time I was forced to drop my Voynich research, in 2021, I was booking a trip to Europe. This is one of the more speculative parts of my research but I was itching to travel somewhere mysterious and beautiful, and I set my sights on Plitvice, the waters of the mysterious legend of the Black Queen.
I tentatively booked accommodation, selected a train pass, and was making a final decision between two air routes. I was long overdue for a vacation and wanted to see if there was a connection between the fabulous pools and falls in Plitvice and drawings in the Voynich Manuscript. I wanted to “walk the walk” and try to match up the connections on the “map” pages and “pool” pages with something real. I was forced to cancel all of it. I’m still longing to go there for both personal and academic reasons.
Summary
This is all I can post right now. I will try against all odds to drop in and get some of the more important VMS-related matters resolved (like my findings about the drawing that was located in Italy by F. Salani) but for now, duty calls.
Ancient Egyptians mastered the integration of anatomical knowledge and mythological stories into artistic symbols and figures. Artistically, the Eye is comprised of six different parts. Mythologically, each part is considered to be an individual symbol. Anatomically, each part corresponds with the center of a particular human sensorium.
Many have seen the Eye of Horus (or the Eye of Ra) as a decorative motif in jewelry. Historically, the Udjat (eye of Ra) was a talisman of protection, regeneration, and health, and was often included as a funerary item:
This Egyptian amulet, from around 800 B.C.E., combines a winged Udjat eye, a lion, and two uraei (sacred serpents), thus embodying Egyptian myths. [Source: The Met, public domain]
The lion and serpent (cobra) represent authority and the more powerful or darker aspects associated with the eye goddess, who was variously personified as the mother, daughter, or consort of the sun god.
Horus was a sky deity, depicted as a raptor. His right eye was associated with the sun and Ra, the left eye with the moon and the god Thoth. In this Udjat, from around the same time period as the one above, the wing and feet of the raptor replace the lion, and are combined with a single serpent, which may represent Seth:
Egyptian amulet with horus as a raptor, together with a serpent [Source: The Met]
The Eye symbology may predate the Egyptians, but this is murky history that I know very little about, so I will restrict my comments to Egyptian interpretation of this symbol. Some of this information was passed on to people in the Middle Ages through Greek intermediaries and merchants, but I don’t know how much was known by the 15th century.
The Myth Behind the Eye
The god of storms and disorder is known as Seth (sth). Seth vied with his relative Horus for the rule of Egypt. Seth stole or injured Horus’s eye, which was then restored by Thoth. Thus, the restored eye came to represent healing and regeneration.
Variations of the eye motif were especially popular in the millenium leading up to the Current Era and, in a specific form, came to embody other concepts as well. In addition to representing the senses, the Udjat has a mathematical meaning for each of its primary contours:
The sum total of these fractions adds up to 63/64ths. There have been many theories as to what might represent the presumed missing fraction and even the measurements themselves are disputed. [Image source: The Met]
The fractions represent powers of two.
This propensity for integrating multiple interpretations into symbols with mythical significance caught my attention because it reminded me of the Voynich Manuscript. It’s possible the VMS illustrations were drawn to embody more than one concept. If so, there is a historical precedent for this, one that that has come down to us primarily through Egyptian writings and artifacts.
And there’s more…
The right eye of Horus came to represent the sun, the left eye the moon. Which means that the blotting out of a right eye could represent a solar eclipse. Ancient myths might actually be a codification of this kind of event, with “gods” as personifications of the heavens.
Can this be more directly related to the VMS?
Nymph pointing to an eye or poking or removing it, a possible personification of a solar eclipse. [Source: Beinecke 408, Yale Rare Books and Manuscripts Library]
On Folio 80r we have an enigmatic illustration of a nymph pointing to the right eye of another nymph, or possibly stabbing or plucking it out. This is a departure from many of the more smiley and benign-looking VMS encounters. Could this unexpectedly violent interaction be a symbol for a solar eclipse?
If this seems implausible, look at the object in the nymph’s hand. The Eye of Horus is simultaneously a talisman, an embodiment of ancient stories, a celestial reference, and a representation of measures (the six pieces into which the eye broke in a battle with Seth).
If the blotting of the eye represents a solar eclipse, then perhaps the item in the hand of the nymph is a measuring caliper, a reference to the multiple uses for the Eye of Horus.
Is the eye-poking scene related to the one below It?
Like the ebb and flow of the Nile river, the battles between Seth and Horus stretched over decades, with Horus sometimes teaming up with Ra. Seth is sexually indiscriminant, makes a deal with Horus to sodomize him, and leaves behind his supposedly poisonous semen (Herman te Velde, 1967). Horus, at one point, steals Seth’s testicles (although I don’t know if this happened before or after their sexual encounter).
Could this drawing below the eye-poking scene be a sly reference to Seth’s severed testicles? Yes, I know, there are three bumps, but this is the VMS, nothing seems explicitly real.
Summary
Koen Gheuens posted a plausible interpretation for the figures at the top of this folio and the idea of the nymphs representing Seth and Horus and a possible reference to a solar eclipse does not fit well with the story of Philomela. So either the context shifts, or there is a connection that is more abstract (e.g., medieval astrology/astronomy), or it means something else.
If the Philomela story is correct, then the connection via astrology doesn’t seem very strong. Procne and Philomela were turned into birds, not stars.
Could it be a context-shift? Are there precedents for this possibility?
Morgan MS M.126 (England, c. 1470) is a series of tales that includes the story of Philomela on folio 125v. On the left, Tereus cuts out her tongue. On the right, Procne takes vengeance by feeding Tereus his child (note also the fancy containers). Above the action, the women are turned into birds:
Philomela, Procne, and Tereus. [Courtesy of Morgan Library MS M.126, England, c. 1470]
On the next folio is a different story. We go from Philomela, which is more of a morality tale, to a story of gods associated with stars. Here we see Arcas about to shoot Callisto, who Juno had transformed into a bear. When he saw what was about to happen to the bear, Juno changed Arcas into a bear, as well, and placed both of them in the sky to become Ursa Major and Minor, the Great and Little bears:
Creation of Ursa Major and Minor. [Courtesy of Morgan Library MS M.126, England, c. 1470]
Two folios later is the biblical story of Lazarus, and at the beginning of the manuscript is the story of Troy. In other words, Morgan M.126 is an eclectic collection from a number of mythical, moral, and historical sources. It is possible for stories of different genres, or with a different focus, to directly follow one another.
So perhaps there is more than one tale represented on VMS folio 80r and maybe the eye-poking scene represents a different myth from the one at the top. If it does represent a solar eclipse, then maybe it is related to cosmological or astrological imagery on other folios.
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.
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:
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:
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:
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:
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.
In 2016, I posted several blogs suggesting the imagery around the VMS zodiac figures might be cycles of life. In medieval times they called this the Ages of Man but since the nymphs are mostly women and some of the VMS cycles are specific to women’s physiology, I thought “stages of life” might be more appropriate.
I have less doubt about this interpretation than many aspects of the VMS, but I didn’t hear much support for the idea. The nymphs have variously been interpreted as star charts, parts of a calendar, and numerous other ideas (I have other ideas too, but the one I prefer for this specific wheel is stages of life). I intended to follow up the blog with more examples years ago, and this blog has been sitting in draft form since June, but other lines of research always intrude on continuing a series so, belatedly, here it is…
Ages of Man
Before we look at Ages of Man, keep in mind that classical Ages of Man (as described by Ovid and Hesiod) focused more on the evolution of mankind from gods, titans, heroes, to iron-age man, and less on the evolution of modern humans.
In the Middle Ages, dependence on classical beliefs began to wane. The concept of the Ages of Man still retained some classical ideas, but focused more and more on the individual’s journey through time. The stages of wo-man lagged behind the stages of man, but were gradually acknowledged in the Renaissance and early modern periods.
Unwinding the Zodiac-Figure Nymph-Wheels
Below is an overview of the folio, and following that, the unwound series of nymphs I posted in April 2016 (the figures surrounding the f70v fish).
Note: In this overview, I am not entirely certain if the tipped-over barrels in the center ring, which I think of as coffins, are being entered (as the last stage of life), or exited (as the soul ascends to the after-world), so the arrows in the inner ring might have a different start-point than indicated here, but either way, the basic idea is the same, the outer wheel is maturation and middle age, the inner wheel is older age with a sugar-coated version of death or possibly one of ascension:
In 2016, I suggested this was a life cycle from pre-adolescence to old age.
Note how the nymphs in the outer ring go from skinny unpregnant pre-adolescence through child-bearing years and middle age, to tipped-over baskets that resemble caskets. The age progression and tipped-over posture gave me a hint of their possible meaning:
I believe this is a cradle-to-grave sequence, but did such a concept exist in medieval society?
Yes, very much so, and it was drawn in a variety of ways. Here are some examples…
Cradle-to-Grave Sequences
This stages-of-life diagram is a simple timeline. Note how the first figure is young, the second-to-last is hunched, and the last figure tips over.
In classical and medieval times, the ages of life were usually described in six to eleven stages…
Plato described nine stages. Isidore of Seville (6th century) lists six: infantia, pueritia, adolescentia, juventus, gravitas, and senectus.
Shakespeare eloquently counts seven:
All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players, They have their exits and entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages…
Sometimes there were fewer stages. The following 13th- or 14th-century example (sorry, I couldn’t find a shelfmark) roughly follows Isidore’s classification (relative to the VMS, note the Gemini-like amorous couple in the adolescence circle):
Postscript 21 March 2020: This illustrator managed to include seven ages of man within the tiny space of a historiated initial, beginning at the bottom and going clockwise:
The seven ages of man contained within a historiated initial. [Source: Digital Walters W.171, c. 1402]
Sometimes the cycle was depicted like a generational photo, rather than as a chart. Here are two examples depicting seven stages:
From infancy to old age in seven stages, from De proprietatibus rerum, Published after Jan. 1486 in the same style as a French copy from 1485 [courtesy of the U.S. Library of Congress]
In other words, there were no set rules on how to organize the drawing, or how many stages to include. As long as the idea of cradle-to-grave was present, the illustrator could draw the passage of life in many ways.
Postscript 28 March 2020: I wanted to add this depiction of the Stages of Life because it’s a bit unusual. Most illustrators tried to compact the stages into one image. In this case, the stages were spread over two different folios several pages apart, with commentary in between (Cod. pal. germ. 471):
Ages Depicted Staircase-Style
Staircase drawings were especially popular in the 16th and 17th centuries and these later examples are of interest because the ages relate to animals through verse, and four of the animals are common to zodiac sequences (ram, bull, lion, goat). This is not a direct reference to astrology, it’s probably biblical, but it is interesting because depictions in other styles sometimes include astrological references (discussed further below).
Here’s the background on some of the stages-of-life animal drawings… There are biblical interpretations about the life of man being increased from 30 to between 70 and 100 years by adding in the ages of animals who begged to live shorter lifespans to ease their lives of burden.
The idea of animals relating to the ages of man is reflected in a classical Greek poem by Babrius:
Horse, bull, and dog appear freezing before the house of man. He opens the door, receives them kindly and offers them food; the horse gets barley, the bull legumens, and the dog food from the table. The animals filled with gratitude towards the man give up part of their years in return for his hospitality. First the horse repays with his years, that is why man is insolent in his youth; then the bull, therefore the middle-aged man has to work hard; last comes the dog with his years…
—L. Landau, The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 1920
Here is one of the later staircase-style cradle-to-grave illustrations. I include it because it shows how stages were increased over the smaller set from classical times:
The above drawing illustrates eleven stages with animals inset in the steps. The cradle and grave are on the ground, perhaps expressing the idea of “dust to dust”:
The verse for the child and the man of 30 are as follows:
Eh’ noch das kind fünf Jahr erreicht, Un Unschuld es dem ramme gleicht. (Before the child reaches five, it is innocent/unknowledgable about the ram.)
Mit dreißig zieht er in den Krieg, Stark wie ein Ochs, erringt den Sieg. (At thirty, he goes to war, strong like an ox, achieving the victory.)
Post-medieval cradle-to-grave illustrations often include biblical references in both the illustrations and the text, and the overall CtoG theme was included in hymns and prayers.
The Feminine Angle
Medieval depictions of the stages of life usually emphasize men, but a lightly modified version for women was created for commercial sale in later years.
This is a simplified version, without animals or verses, with a greater emphasis on marriage and children, as published in the early 19th century for women:
There were also versions with both men and women that might be more similar to the VMS. This one includes includes 17 figures (and a dog) and 11 stages:
Cradle to Grave. Based on Fridolin Leiber by Gustave May, Frankfurt, Germany, late 1800s.
Here is a similar theme from romance to old age, played out by flamboyant characters:
The Life Ages of Man, Abraham Bach the Edler, c. 1651 [courtesy of Wikimedia Commons]
The following example is more sparse than some, only six stages (or five, depending on how one interprets the top step with two figures), but includes animals, and emphasizes the cradle-to-grave aspect with a cradle and casket at either end:
Stylistically, these don’t have the same look or feel as the VMS nymphs, but in terms of content, there are other formats with larger numbers of figures. This one is populated by 24 figures on the ground and steps, plus about 24 more in the round frames, along with some overseers (including an angel and a demon). In other words, more than the VMS:
Stages of life from birth to the grave, with heaven and hell inset in the center, John Pitts, London 1811.
So those are some timeline, generational, and staircase formats, but there are also some based around wheels.
Co-opting the Wheel of Fortune Theme
Some stages-of-man illustrations borrowed from the “wheel of fortune” concept that was popular in the Middle Ages, with slight modifications in the characters. Note that this differs from most of the Wheel of Fortune drawings in that Fortuna is not present (there is a skeleton instead), there is no king at the top, and the emphasis is on maturing and aging rather than on one’s material standing, with a young boy on the left and a mostly prone figure on the bottom-right (and graves in the background):
The Wheel of Life in 10 steps with skeleton turning the wheel (c. 1800) [courtesy of http://www.kulturramtirol.at/ ]
In this Schwabian manuscript, blindfolded Fortuna is turning the wheel, but the main theme is clearly not a wheel of fortune. It represents cradle-to-grave with labels similar to those used by Isidore of Seville. An angel waits in the casket below:
Cradle-to-grave sequence in wheel-of-fortune style with seven classical stages [BSB Cgm 312, c. 1450]
The idea is also reflected in sculpture, as in this example from the tomb of Peter 1st in Alcobaça, who died later in the 14th century. Unfortunately, it is horribly defaced, but in the inner ring, you can see the Fortuna theme, and in the outer ring are the stages of life. You can make out a mother and infant in the lower left, and if you follow the figures clockwise through their life cycle, you eventually reach the prone figure under the lid of a casket at the bottom:
Mother and infant on the left in the outer ring, with stages of life running clockwise around until it reaches the crypt in the bottom-center. [Source: Alcobaça tomb of Peter 1 by ho visto nina volare, Wikipedia]
Here is a late-15th century blockprint of the stages of life as a wheel. Except for the wheel, it is similar to some of the staircase drawings:
The Wheel of Life might be the same idea as the VMS, but it doesn’t feel the same in terms of drawing style and so far there’s very little connection with zodiac figures. Are there stages-of-life drawings with astrological connections?
Connections to Astrology and Astronomy—Wheels with “Stars”
There is a variation on the Wheel of Fortune that has a stronger relationship to astrological/astronomical concepts than the previous examples. In this woodcut, Fortuna is replaced by an angel, the earth is in the center, and the seven stars or “planets”, as they called them (including the sun and moon), orbit around it.
Late 15th-century woodcut of cosmological themes (the seven “planets”) based on the general idea of a wheel of fortune or wheel of life.
The following example from the Psalter of Robert de Lisle, originated in England in the early 1300s. This is often called The Ages of Man but you might notice small differences between these early depictions and the way they drew the Ages of Man in the 15th and 16th centuries.
The general format is circular, with a figure in the center, and there is an infant in the first circle (7 o’clock) and a prone figure near the end (4 o’clock). In this way it is similar to the sculpture of Peter 1. The actual lifespan is shown in eight stages, plus a circle for the eulogy, and a sarcophagus for a total of ten. The labels mention infancy, youth, aging, and death, as was common for classical stages:
The Ages of Man, showing stages of life in a circle around a central figure. [Howard Psalter and De Lisle Psalter, British Library Arundel 83, Creative Commons 1.0 – Public Domain]
Medieval Classification of Stages
The stages in the following illustration from De Lisle Psalter are sandwiched together with Bible stories. Following the Tree of Life (the Jesse Tree) is a wheel with 12 stages of life, written as abbreviations for birth (Nasce[n]s), infancy (Infans), childhood (Puer.), adolescence (Adolesce[n]s), etc., counter-clockwise around the circle until one reaches death. In the corners are symbols for the four evangelists. The central figure is usually Jesus or God (in older manuscripts, the central figure is sometimes a personified sun):
12 Stages of Life from birth to death in the De Lysle Psalter, Arundel MS 82 (c. 1339) arranged in a wheel around a central figure of the deity nimbed. Symbols for Mathew, John, Luke, and Mark are in the corners.
Could images like this, arranged in a circle, have inspired the VMS creator to combine zodiac figures with the stages of life? The VMS is rife with illustrations that hint at concepts that have been combined, but they are not quite overt enough to be sure.
The Zodiac and Ages of Man
The idea of associating the stages of man with zodiac figures (thus creating 12 stages) may have come to us through Hebrew sources (e.g, the Midrash Tanhuman referenced by Landau, 1920).
Astrological mansions (affairs of man) are combined with zodiac symbols in the following example by Erhard Schön. They are expressed as figures within three concentric circles. The inner circle includes the seven “planets” that are present in many medieval cosmological drawings, surrounded by twelve zodiac figures, further surrounded by twelve mansions in the outer circle. Since this diagram was created by a card-maker (1515), it is not surprising that some of the outer figures are also found in Tarot cards.
The subject matter is slightly different from the VMS—it generally focuses on affairs of men, and all the zodiac figures are in one diagram, but the general format (zodiac figures combined with other figures in concentric wheels), is more like the VMS than many of the previous examples. Note how the the numbers run counterclockwise:
Natal horoscope by Erhard Schoen, early 16th century.
If you are curious about what the mansions represent, look at the seventh house (on the right, next to the skeleton) and you will see the marriage ceremony. The skeleton itself refers to death, wills, and testaments. The tenth house represents kings, generals, and other leaders. The eleventh house is not as easy to discern in this image, but it represents friendship and fidelity.
Astrological References from Eastern Europe
In Bulgaria, there are frescoes that combine several ideas, including night and day, the seasons, the stages of life, and zodiac figures.
For example, the wheel in the Church of the Nativity in Arbanasi is one of the closest parallels I’ve found so far to the stages of life wheel in the VMS. It has concentric circles of figures, a number of which are unclothed. The zodiac figures are traditional, however, are all included in one wheel, and are not of the same iconographic subset as the VMS zodiac figures, but it’s still worth keeping this fresco in mind (the labels in the green band are the months of the year). Unfortunately, the images are copyrighted so you will have to click the link.
Eastern Wheels
(Image courtesy of Wikipedia)
The wheel of life or Wheel of Becoming (called bhavacakra भवचक्र) is a prevalent theme in buddhist art, but it follows a different scheme from western manuscripts, emphasizing the idea of karma and rebirth and planes of existence, along with the different realms (animal, human, etc.). They don’t usually include zodiac figures in the same way as some of the western manuscripts and Bulgarian frescoes.
When zodiac figures are included in Wheels of Becoming, they are typically in the eastern style, composed entirely of animals and are usually symbolic of various emotions or states of being.
Many of these Buddhist wheels are later than the 16th century.
I believe the VMS wheel expresses a cradle-to-grave theme rather than eastern concepts of reincarnation.
Textual Versions of Stages of Life
Many manuscripts that include herbs, information on bathing, or astrological information are not illustrated. The same is true for Stages of Life.
L. Landau (1920) mentions a rhyming poem about the stages of life that I think is important for textual reasons related to the VMS. It is not medieval, it was written in Venice in 1554, but it stands out as an example of how languages and scripts can be jumbled together in less obvious ways, something that could easily have happened in the 14th or 15th centuries, as well.
Bodley Can. Or. 12, Neubauer 1217 (fol. 211b–213) is a slightly bewildering combination of German/Yiddish and Judeo-Italian that was not penned in Latin script—it was written using Hebrew letter-shapes even though it is not in Hebrew:
Bodleian Library, Can. Or. 12 (Neubauer 1217), folio 213, Judeo German/Italian (in alternate verses) written with Hebrew letters, probably intended for oral recitation.
Does the Stages-of-Life concept apply to other VMS wheels?
As mentioned in previous blogs, I believe that several of the other wheels have similar themes, but that they focus and enlarge on more specific stages, such as menstrual cycles and childbearing cycles.
For example, in the 2016 blog, I posted an unspun cycle from 70v (green Aries, which is on the same foldout as Pisces) that focuses on female nymphs and their journey through womanhood. I believe it begins with a pre-adolescent maturing into a woman and acquiring a large [probably pregnant] belly (and possibly stretch marks).
Notice the fancy veil on the sixth nymph. I’ve noticed a fancier veil on other nymphs in contexts where it might represent marriage (I’m not completely certain of this because diadems were often used in preference to veils, but it depended on the region and time period):
When I was researching medieval wedding customs I read that some couples lived together and didn’t get married until the woman became pregnant. The logic was that the husband-to-be wanted to be sure his fiancée could produce children. This was not the custom everywhere, there was a gradual shift from Pagan to Christian traditions that differed from region to region, but living together before marriage was not as uncommon or as counter-culture in the 15th century as I originally assumed.
It’s possible the lines on the belly of the nymphs in this sequence represent stretch marks. I say this based on looking at patterns in all the folios but I am not entirely sure this is the correct interpretation. I do think it’s worth considering, however, because the lines are never on the pre-adolescent girls or male nymphs. They are usually on the ones with big bellies or the thinner ones that follow soon after the big bellies. As far as I can tell, this sequence represents two pregnancies, perhaps to show that it happens more than once in a woman’s life.
I found it particularly interesting that the bellies in all the green Aries nymphs are prominently displayed so you can see if they are thin or large, except the last one…
Since the sequence starts with a pre-adolescent girl (I suspect the genitals are displayed above the edge of the barrel to make it clear it’s not a boy), I’m wondering if maybe the last nymph, with the hidden belly, represents menopause, the point at which there are no more buns in the oven.
Related Wheel-Themes
The nymphs around affectionate-Gemini relate to these themes, as well. At 2 o’clock, there is a lustful male (I’m pretty sure his flag is raised) with his eye on the nymph in front of him.
There are several other males surrounding Gemini, some of them clothed (it’s a bit of a leap, but I am reminded of love triangles, which were popular in medieval literature, stories such as Tristan and Isolde, the forerunner to the story of Guinevere):
I wanted to go into more detail about these other cycles, but it’s far too much information for one blog, so I’ll leave it for now and will fill in the rest as I have time.
Summary
It should be clear from the above examples, that there was no specific format for cradle-to-grave illustrations. They can be timelines, staircases, wheels, or anything else that gets the idea across. The number of figures isn’t rigid either. What is common to all of them is the progression from youth to old age, and old age is frequently represented by semi-prone or prone figures and may include various styles of crypts or coffins.
I see 70v Pisces nymphs as a cradle-to-grave theme and green Aries, Gemini, and some of the others, as subsets of the cradle-to-grave idea (an expansion of the middle years, with the focus on romance and child-bearing). It’s appropriate that the Pisces and Aries nymphs would be side-by-side, and perhaps intentional that the pregnancy cycle is on Aries, the symbol we most associate with spring.
The transition from Judaism is marked in Christian history by the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. These events are illustrated in ways that were surprisingly similar in distant lands such as Ethiopia, Armenia, and northern Germany. But there were also traditions specific to certain areas, so, I’ve been wondering if parallels exist in the VMS.
Ecclesia
Let’s look at Ecclesia. She personifies the church and shows up in medieval art a couple of centuries before she was paired with the second figure in this drama.
This is how to recognize her…
In these four interpretations Ecclesia carries a wine chalice (which holds the blood of Christ) or a monstrance, which in turn supports the “host”, a round bread-like object symbolizing the body of Christ. Note the cross and two lines on either side lightly inscribed on the host in the image on the right. Sometimes the name of Jesus is abbreviated around the image of a cross, sometimes a drawing of the Christ child is attached to the host (usually in Eucharist drawings).
In the two images on the left, Ecclesia holds a cross-staff. Sometimes she is nimbed, but often the halo is reserved for Mary and St. John and helps distinguish them from Ecclesia and her counterpart. Ecclesia is virtually always wearing a crown:
Ecclesia representing the Christian church, with common attributes such as the cross-staff, wine chalice or monstrance, and host.
In this VMS image, a nymph holds out a stick with a cross shape. It might be a tool (like a sighting stick) or a cross, or a cross-staff. We can’t tell if she’s wearing a crown. I’m beginning to think the nebuly-like parasol represents religious authority:
Maybe there are other elements on the folio to help identify her, but we’ll come back to that after we meet her partner…
Synagoga
Typically, Ecclesia is paired with another figure known as Synagoga. In a specific illustrative branch of the crucifixion, Ecclesia and Synagoga are paired on either side of Jesus on the cross.
Synagoga is always placed on the right and wears a blindfold (a Christian political symbol of her inability to see the message of the Messiah). She is frequently shown with a tablet in one hand, a broken staff, and sometimes a crown falling from her head. In contrast to Ecclesia, her posture is slouched and defeated:
Early depictions of the two women were not openly hostile but the intended message of the Christian religion being superior to pre-Christian beliefs was made iconographically clear.
In the next example, Ecclesia is shown in a variety of poses in the top panel. She stands tall and proud, carrying the torch that doubles as Christ’s blood in a wine goblet. On the left is a chalice with the crossed host, and a cross-staff.
In the panel below Ecclesia, Synagoga wears her customary blindfold (a reference to the veil of Moses). She looks tired and beleaguered and has lost her crown.
The odd “thing” in her hand on the far left might be hard to recognize unless you knew the story, but it is the head of a goat or ram, representing ancient rites of sacrifice. In her other hand is something resembling a bell (this is usually a tablet, but this odd detail might be important later). In this case, it is an overturned torch-chalice, like the one in the upper panel, except now it is hanging empty:
Illumination of a parable in the Speculum Humanae Salvationis of c. 1360 (Darmstadt). Below this panel, King Balthasar motions up at the women to make a point to Daniel, who stands nearby.
Postscript 17 March 2020: Here is essentially the same image (which I personally find distasteful now that I know what it means) from a c. 1420s Rheinland manuscript (Cod. pal. germ. 432):
This scene of the crucifixion shows the two women in context. Ecclesia catches Christ’s blood in her chalice while Synagoga, on the right, is losing her crown:
German Psalter with a pelican at the top feeding its babies with its own blood, workers nailing Christ to the cross, and Ecclesia and Synagoga flanking him on the left and right. The nimbed figures are Mary and Saint John.
In an earlier crucifixion from Hildesheim, Germany, Synagoga is identified with a conical hat, while Ecclesia, on the left, wears a crown:
Detail of the crucifixion, with Ecclesia and Synagoga in a cone-hat flanking Christ. Above are the sun and moon with faces. Hildesheim, c. 1170 [Courtesy of Getty Open Content Program]
An Armenian manuscript from the 14th century shows Ecclesia with crown and chalice, while Synagoga has had her crown lifted off by an angel. You can view this version on Getty Images.
Sculptural Media
The theme of Ecclesia and Synagoga appears in medieval in church architecture, as in this blindfolded Synagoga with tablet in one hand and a broken staff in the other:
Synagoga, Cathedral of Bamberg [Johannes Otto Först, public domain]
Are Ecclesia and Synagoga in the VMS?
Compared to many medieval manuscripts, the VMS is conspicuously nonviolent. There are smiling animals, clawless felines, and a notable lack of weapons. Yet one of the few images that has been interpreted as violent (at least by some) might, in fact, be our iconic pair.
In this drawing on f82r, the nymph on the left looks like she is poking the other one in the eye. But I’m not sure. Maybe she’s pointing at the eye or brushing away a tear. She is wearing a crown or some kind of fancy head-dress. Could she be Ecclesia indicating blindness?
I always thought the nymph on the right was carrying a pair of pincers, or a badly drawn compass. But what if this is Synagoga’s tablet, or an overturned empty torch or chalice as in the Darmstadt manuscript above? If it is an empty torch or tablet, it is artfully hidden in plain sight by not having a dark line across the bottom to distinguish it from the water:
I’m really not sure whether the nymph on the left is pointing or poking out an eye—blinding or indicating blindness in the other nymph. The only somewhat aggressive version of Ecclesia and Synagoga I’ve found so far is this one, by Pisano.
On the left, an angel escorts Ecclesia with her chalice toward the cross. On the right, another angel escorts the aging Synagoga away from the action:
The Crucifixion by Giovani Pisano, c. 1300 [Jollyroger, Wikimedia Commons, CC 3.0]
It’s not exactly on the same level of aggression as poking out an eye. Assuming for a moment that the nymph on the right might be Synagoga, can we confirm it by examining the other elements?
Is the “thing” in her hand an empty torch? Or is it a tablet?
If it’s a tablet, it’s a direct reference to Moses in the Old Testament. When Moses was a baby, he was set adrift in a basket so he would not be killed by the king. Could the nymph’s “skirt” be a basket? Is this why her hand looks like it’s inside the rim instead of outside? Is she standing in the river where Moses was found?
Has the illustrator combined Moses and Synagoga, male and female references to the Jewish faith, into one nymph? Is this why several of the VMS nymphs are sexually ambiguous (because they represent more than one thing)?
We know that Ecclesia is usually depicted on the left wearing a crown, Synagoga on the right without a crown (or in the process of losing it) and the nymphs happen to follow the same pattern.
Context
What about the other elements on the page?
I like K. Gheuen’s suggestion that the figures across the top of this folio might represent a story from Ovid. Most medieval scholars were familiar with classical history and myths, including Herodatus, Virgil, Ovid, Hesiod, and others, so I wouldn’t be surprised if this turned out to be Philomela’s story. The part that Gheuens quoted about the king seizing her hair and using it to tie her hands behind her back is especially convincing:
I couldn’t find a better explanation for the series, not even in Bible stories. It’s true that Eve was often drawn with long hair, and the spindle became her avatar when she was expelled from the garden, but I couldn’t find a good explanation for the other figures in relation to Eve.
Would the creator of the VMS have transitioned from Ovid at the top of the folio to Biblical references in the middle? I’m a bit uncomfortable with that idea, but given that the story changes from thread and spindles at the top to water and matched pairs of nymphs in the middle, maybe it’s possible.
So, moving down to the center of the page, we have the eye-poking nymph and a long river linking two nymphs on the right who look like they might be the same pair of nymphs repeated (this would not be unusual in medieval drawings)—the main difference is that the nymph on the far right has no attributes:
The nymphs on the bottom also look like the nymphs on the middle-left repeated, except that they are now shown separately, in elevated loges, rather than standing together in a river. The nymph on the left is holding another of the mystery items (or possibly three mystery items) but it doesn’t look like a host or chalice.
Can these two figures be found elsewhere in the VMS?
If we move to an earlier section of the quire, there is a nymph on 70r with the same kind of headdress as the nymph on 82r, and her counterpart is also like the nymph on the right on 82r—she’s slightly heavier, has no crown-like head-dress like the nymph on the left. In the earlier image, their arms cross.
If this is Ecclesia and Synagoga, might this symbolize the beginning of the transition from Judaism to Christianity?
More Instances of Possibly the Same Nymph
The nymph with the fancy headdress shows up again on 79v and this version really caught my attention because she’s on a wide elevated loge holding a ring, and she’s lying down. She’s not wrapped in a shroud, so I don’t think she’s dead. Is this a marriage bed?
If this nymph is Ecclesia, then the picture fits, because Ecclesia was expressly described in medieval literature as the bride of God.
Above her is the nymph holding out the cross (possibly a cross-staff?). The cross-staff was one of Ecclesia’s attributes, but the celestial parasol is hiding the top of her head, so it’s hard to know if it’s the same nymph.
The nymph on the lower rung is drawn more like the one that might be Synagoga and doesn’t have a head-dress. The position on the lower rung would fit with how she was treated iconographically in Christian literature—slouched, defeated, or in a lower panel as in the Darmstadt illustration.
Is there a larger story being told across a series of folios? The story of a transition from the Old Testament to the New, from the old religions to Christianity, with Ecclesia, the bride of God becoming the dominant nymph and expressing anger that Synagoga doesn’t want to “see” the Christian point of view?
What happens on the rest of the folio? Can it help us confirm or deny any of this?
Below the nymph with the ring and the one without a crown is the famous wide-mouthed fish in a pond full of strange critters:
I’ve always been reluctant to interpret this as the story of Jonah. For one thing, it just seems too easy. For another, some of the critters don’t look like sea monsters (except for the giant fish). The Creation cycle often includes a variety of animals, but not a giant fish (and this image doesn’t fit creation stories as well as some of the other drawings of the VMS).
If it’s two narratives rolled into one (if the imagery on the left is a different place or time from that on the right), it would be even harder to guess what it represents. I’m not sure what to make of it, but let’s see if it might be Jonah…
If the nymph in the fish’s mouth is Synagoga (note how the uncrowned nymph in each of these panels has shorter, colored hair and a slightly bigger belly and hips to distinguish her from the one with the longer hair and fancy head-dress), then perhaps the Jonah story is appropriate.
When a storm boils up at sea, Jonah’s companions question him, suspiciously trying to determine who is responsible for unleashing God’s wrath on the tossing boat, but Jonah answers quite simply as a God-fearing man, “I am a Hebrew”. What could encapsulate the identity of Synagoga more succinctly than, “I am a Hebrew”?
Classical Stories Mixed with Bible Passages?
It seemed strange to me that the VMS might mix classical history (e.g., Herodatus, Ovid, etc.) with Bible stories… until I came across Speculum Humane Salvationis, which freely combines them.
In the Speculum Humane Salvationis, which was popular in the 15th century, the story of Adam and Eve, the Deluge, and Anna and the Annuciation are immediately followed by the less-familiar prophetic vision of Astyages, the last king of Media. Astyages dreamed of a vine growing from the belly of his daughter Mandane, a vine that would spawn a boy (Cyrus) to challenge his grandfather for the empire. In a Persian version, Cyrus was suckled by a dog, similar to the infants Romulus and Remus.
Our information about Astyages comes almost entirely from Herodatus. The Bible includes only this one brief reference from the Book of Daniel:
And king Astyages was gathered to his fathers, and Cyrus the Persian received his kingdom.
Connections?
The idea of a vine growing out of Mandane’s belly to symbolize her son’s growth and eventual possession of the empire is echoed in the story of Jesse, in Isaiah 11. Jesse is shown lying down, at the base of the folio, with a vine growing from his “root” (it usually grows from his chest or belly).
This symbol of biblical genealogy came to be known as the Jesse tree.
A Jesse Tree next to a picture of Madonna and Child, from the Amiens region, c. late 15th century [BNF L’Arsenal MS 662]
I’ve always wondered if the clothed figures around the bull in the VMS zodiac-figures section are related to genealogy. Could it be a VMS version of a Jesse tree?
Jesse trees came in many different formats, some almost menorah-shaped (a reference to the tree of life). Often the figures are shown only from the waist up. But the main difference between a Jesse tree and the VMS drawing above is not the absence of a tree, but the absence of Jesse himself, who is usually shown as a man with a beard under the figures, dreaming.
So perhaps this is not a Jesse Tree, but there might be one somewhere in the VMS, just as Jacob’s ladder might be included (e.g., the image of nymphs one on top of the other within a green “waterfall”).
I have much more information on this line of thought, but it’s far too much for one blog. I will have to split it into two sections.
Summary
I am beginning to believe that some of the VMS nymphs appear more than once in several places, acting out a story that stretches across multiple sections or folios. There is a certain consistency to the way some of the pairs have been drawn.
I am not entirely sure that the pair described in this blog is Ecclesia and Synagoga, but I think it’s possible and I will discuss this more in Part 2. I also think it’s possible that more than one person might be represented by a single nymph, but this is harder to ascertain, so I will tackle that after some of the easier questions have been solved.
The VMS image at the top of folio 77r is often interpreted as the four elements (air, earth, fire, and water). But there are five pipes, not four. I did find one medieval representation with a fifth component in the center called null, and some conceptions include a fifth “element” as spirit, aether, or void, so it’s not unreasonable to suppose the diagram might represent elements:
Medieval representations of the elements took many forms, from simple lists and block drawings to elaborate illuminations. Some of them take their cues from ancient writings:
Yes, even things which we call elements, do not endure. Now listen well to me, and I will show the ways in which they change. The everlasting universe contains four elemental parts. And two of these are heavy—earth and water—and are borne downwards by weight. The other two devoid of weight, are air and—even lighter—fire: and, if these two are not constrained, they seek the higher regions. These four elements, though far apart in space, are all derived from one another. Earth dissolves as flowing water! Water, thinned still more, departs as wind and air; and the light air, still losing weight, sparkles on high as fire. But they return, along their former way: the fire, assuming weight, is changed to air; and then, more dense, that air is changed again to water; and that water, still more dense, compacts itself again as primal earth.
Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book 15
Sometimes an effort was made to relate elements to other concepts that fell into groups of four, eight, or twelve.
I didn’t want to assume the mysterious emanations from the VMS pipes were elements without investigating other possibilities, such as
traits (hot, cold, wet, and dry),
humors (black or yellow bile, blood, or phlegm), or possibly
temperaments (sanguine, choleric, phlegmatic, or melancholic)
the four Anemoi (Oricus, Occidens, Auster, Borea),
seasons (spring, summer, fall, winter), or
stages of life/wheel of fortune.
In the following chart, we see Ignis, Aer, Aqua and Terra in the center, above which are the four humors, and to the right a group of hot/cold/wet/dry traits that are frequently associated with medicinal plants:
Levels of Complexity in Medieval Charts
Simple visual charts conveyed many of these basic ideas. This chart displays the elements in rings, beginning with earth in the center:
Schematic of elements earth, water, air, fire, and “aiers pur” [Huntington EL 26A3]
Noe that there are five labeled rings, with a dark-blue ring on the outer edge called aiers pur
Sometimes there is no text. The colors and shapes tell the story, or the text is separate from the diagrams:
This simple 13th-century chart interposes traits between the four elements. Later in the manuscript the same idea was drawn with slight differences, as though the illustrator were experimenting with ways to present the information:
Elements form the outer ring, with traits in semicircles between them [Bodleian Digby 107]
Arrangements varied considerably. This is one of the less common ones, from a mid-15th century medical/astronomical text. The elements are stacked within an enclosing circle in a different order from the preceding Huntington diagram, (aqua, ter[r]a, aer, ignis).
Note the marker at the top of the chart, and the numerous Latin abbreviation symbols that encircle the diagrams (characteristics similar to the VMS). This is a small-format manuscript (207 x 145mm):
Simple schema illustrating water, earth, air, and fire [Morgan MS B.27]
Another diagram in Digby 107 places the elements Ignis, Aer, Aqua, and Terra in the corners, with connections through hot/cold/wet/dry along the sides. Contraria forms a cross in the center:
Here Ignis, Aqua, Aer, and Terra are also in the corners, along with their associated traits. There are conceptual connections through the sides like the previous diagram, except that “[con]trarie” is on two of the outer connections instead of in the center, with “Remitentes” on the other two sides. Further connections have been added cross-wise to connect the corners:
Elements schematically connected through the sides and center [Misc. Alchemical XII]
Coming back to Morgan MS B.27, sometimes the elements were related to humans rather than to a schematic of the heavens, a trend that became more prevalent in the century after this was created, with the rise of humanism (which had a greater emphasis on independent, scientific thought and the individual). Note the lines in the background form a shape similar to the divisions used for medieval horoscopes:
In the next example, temperaments, traits, and elements have been further related to the constellations on the ecliptic (the zodiac constellations):
Zodiac constellations are included in the outer rim of the chart. together with other fourfold temperaments, traits, and elements [Morgan MS B.12]
The following diagram lists the elements and traits around the outer edge and the humors in spokes radiating from the center. It includes a schematic illustration of the moon, “planets”, and stars at the top (the Sun was in the middle of the planets because it was wrongfully assumed it orbited the Earth):
Morgan B27 has attracted the attention of Voynich researchers due to the little flower-shape and text within concentric circles, but I was also intrigued by the content, which includes elements, traits, plants, zodiac constellations, and month names:
Note that the month names are Ianuari[us], Februari[us], Marcius, Apprilis, Maius, Iuni[us], Iulius, August[us], Septe’ber, October, Nove’ber, and Dece’ber. The language/spelling is different, but some of the abbreviation symbols are the same as the month-notes added to the VMS zodiac figures.
Sometimes these various schema (left) were combined with concepts of gravitational forces, as in the two examples on the right. It was common to illustrate gravity as people standing on the earth on four sides with their feet anchored to the ground. The diagram bottom-right is a little different because it includes animals with the people:
Sometimes the gravity diagrams include “tunnels” toward the center of the earth or a rock plummeting into the center. The following diagram is primarily to illustrate gravity (note how the characters are slouched as though they are being pulled toward the globe):
Four people on the globe, pulled toward the Earth by gravitational forces [BNF Français 14964]
I thought it might be possible to relate the figures on VMS 57v to temperaments or one of the other groups of four, but it’s hard to explain the various parts of the drawing as a cohesive whole and I prefer K. Gheuen’s idea (I wish I had thought of it), described in this blog about the wheel of fortune:
Toward a Concept of a Unified Whole
LJS 449 has one of the more complicated charts, where everything except the kitchen sink has been crammed into one diagram. If you have read my blog about mappae mundi you may notice that this chart is oriented in the common way of the time, with east at the top, the direction of the rising sun.
The traits and temperaments are beneath the four corner circles and between them are the 12 winds. Note the space-filling “justification” squiggles between the text blocks in the outer circle:
So those are a few of the medieval concepts that might be creatively illustrated with something emanating from pipes, or perhaps in a wheel with four people with their feet pointing toward the center, as in VMS 85r2:
Could 84r2 be a diagram of gravitational forces?
Maybe, if it has been combined with other ideas (like the four temperaments), but it would be unusual for a picture of gravity to have the sun in the center unless this illustrator knew something other people at the time did not (that the core of the Earth is intensely hot, or that the Sun was a prime gravitational force in our solar system, a heretical idea).
The diagram on the facing page also has four figures, each one holding a different object (possibly an attribute), with a moon rather than a sun in the center, suggesting a connection between the two folios:
There are two full pages of text between this diagram and the next one, so perhaps this section was important to the designer in some way.
Following these textural/figural rota is the foldout “map” that nay also incorporate fourfold schemata, as discussed in previous blogs. Perhaps the four corners are fire, water, earth, and air:
Other Possibilities
Magical diagrams are sometimes organized in groups of four.
Here is a 15th-century charm against the plague from the Leechbook (Wellcome Library) drawn in a style similar to humors and temperaments:
The text in charms often consists of names of angels, prayers, and “power” words (some of which can be traced back to ancient times, while others are a mystery). Sometimes they are accompanied by medicinal recipes.
Here is a similarly constructed talisman for protection in battle:
Talismanic rotum for protection in battle [Huntington HM 64]. Charms were often inscribed on parchment or leather and worn on the arm or around the neck.
But maybe VMS 77r has nothing to do with elements (in the schematic sense), or humors, traits, temperaments, or charms. Maybe it’s part of a story.
Could the various emanations from the pipes and cloudlike textures represent hail, rain, fire, and blood as described in classical literature and biblical passages?
If so, then perhaps the figures in loges on either sides are celestial beings—God’s emissaries carrying out his wishes (which apply to several religions, not just Christianity), and the ones on the lower left of 77r might be dishing out storms, floods, and other natural disasters.
Here is a 12th-century illustration of a tempest of fire, hail, and blood:
The first trumpet, Beatus manuscript [c. 1180, The Met]
Illustrations of plagues and calamitous weather are also found in Hebrew manuscripts, such as “the plague of hail” in the Hispano-Moresque Haggadah, Castile, c.1300.
I forgot to include this image when I posted this blog. It is another example of a trumpet, lines to represent sound, prone individuals below, and a burning star. The call of the third trumpet. [Source: The Cloisters Apocalypse, c. 1330]
More of this occurs in Morgan M.644. Here the emanations are accompanied by a plague of scorpions:
As an aside, note how M.644 uses a band of stars, rather than a cloudband, to define the celestial borders (above and right). This is more like old Egyptian borders on friezes and coffins than later medieval cloudbands, but the context is the same.
M.644 also incorporates numerous groups of four, including winged beings, four discs with dark-light slightly spiraled patterns, and 24 stars in the perimeter (6 groups of 4) and, in the center, the lamb of God (looking more like a horse than a lamb):
Agnus Dei surrounded by numerous motifs in groups of four [Morgan Library, New York, Morgan M.633, c. 940s Apocalypse manuscript]
In this early Spanish illustration, there are streams and corpses and a falling, burning star, with an angel (a clothed nymph?) orchestrating events:
Streams, corpses and a burning star [Spain, c. 940s, Morgan MS M.644]
Is the same theme in the VMS? If we pretend nymphs in airborne loges are divine beings, are they working the celestial machinery?
I’m beginning to think that the VMS nymphs aren’t nymphs at all. Maybe we should think of the ones in loges as “celestial engineers” who alternately guide the viewer or orchestrate earthly events. If so, perhaps the pipes at the top of 77r have more to do with natural elements or mythical calamities than the classifications of Aristotle.
Postscript 21 August 2019: If you scan back through this blog, you will see that I posted an image of “the first trumpet” from a Beatus manuscript, with textures streaming out of the end of the trumpet. This image exemplifies the point of the blog—that streaming textures don’t have to be Aristotelian-style elements, they can be other things, including temperaments, humors, sound, messages, or biblical-style calamities.
The idea that the poofs coming out of the VMS pipes might be something other than earth, air, fire, water, and spirit/aether has haunted me for years, but it wasn’t until I started focusing on Agnus Dei, early this year, that the idea of calamitous weather hit me, as well.
I was reluctant to post this blog because I knew I had another image in my files that included not just one trumpet, but several—but I couldn’t locate it among my terabytes of VMS imagery and my blogs tend to sit for a long time in Draft mode when I can’t find a specific image, so I posted it anyway.
I found the missing image today and have cropped it to emphasize the part with the trumpets. Note how each angel at the level just above the Earth has wings of a different color, just as the emanations from each VMS pipe is a slightly different texture or color. Four of these angels have trumpets, and one is dispensing emanations from a lidded chalice (a chalice often refers to Christ’s blood as a metaphor for spirit or the Godhead), so we have 1 + 4 to possibly match 1 + 4 in the VMS “pipes”:
A row of angels between heaven and earth dispense God’s judgment by pouring spiritual redemption (a chalice with Christ’s blood captured at the crucifixion) or various forms of calamitous weather (often wind, fire, flooding rain, or hail) [BNF Néerlandais 3]
Imagine that the nymphs on either side of the VMS folio in their respective “zoomers” are angels in charge of dispensing God’s commands. Also imagine that the VMS pipes are metaphorical trumpets, and each poof out of a pipe is some sort of calamity (e.g., rain, wind, fire, hail). Fire and hail (and sometimes frogs) were especially popular in terms of heavenly onslaughts. It’s possible the empty pipe refers to wind or to spirit in much the same way as the lidded chalice of blood sometimes refers to spirit or spiritual redemption (it is sometimes also a flaming chalice).
I don’t know if this is what the pipes represent, I still think temperaments, humors, or traditional elements are possible, but since this images helps clarify one of the possibilities I haven’t seen suggested by other researchers, I wanted to share it with readers.
Postscript 13 May 2020: Here are two more drawings that illustrate how the textures coming out of the “pipe” on f77r might not be elements in the medieval scientific sense but, alternately, could be forces of nature like wind, water, fire, and hail, as suggested in this blog.
These are from the Wellcome Apocalypse (MS49) and they show the various calamities that could be “rained down” by God if people didn’t behave themselves (with thanks to Arca Librarian for pointing out that this manuscript is now online).
Note the different textures used for each form of weather:
On folio 84r of the Voynich Manuscript, there is a drawing of textured niches, with a row of nymphs below its arches. Between groups of nymphs one might expect columns, but instead there are wavy lines painted blue, resembling a flow of liquid. The nymphs are thigh-deep in water that has been painted green. As with some of the other water-related drawings, the textures and “drips” give it a grotto-like feeling.
To the left is a pipe-shape with a large opening at the top and a smaller one at the bottom. A thinner rivulet connects the image to another pond pic at the bottom. Note that the water-like pools and rivulets on the left are blue.
In the top-left is a scaly textured mass that reminds me of the shape in the corner of 86v (right). It holds a high position and appears to have something pouring out of it (air? water? spiritual emanations?).
Each archway is adorned with hanging-bead curtains, but since I don’t think the VMS is a drug-induced 1960s-era hallucination, perhaps the “curtain” shapes represent dripping water or an artistically shadowed backdrop.
Pinpointing the Poses
To me, the nymphs have always looked very posed, like actors demonstrating something, or as though they were frozen in time. When I first saw it, the middle illustration on 84r reminded me of frames from an animation, or a sequence of movements in which one nymph’s motion follows from that of the previous, as though each one were waiting her turn in line:
Part of the reason they look so posed is the formulaic way in which they are drawn, but these poses have always intrigued me because they seemed somehow familiar.
Here is a 13th century image of Tisbe and Piramus, the famous lovers who whispered sweet nothings through a crack in the wall—the forbidden love that inspired Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream:
Even though they are quite posed, I don’t get the feeling the nymphly pool party was inspired by this story, so I looked for other examples.
There is too much on this folio to cover in one blog, so I’ll constrain my comments to the nymphs at the top, under the arched textures.
Posing in Pairs
Let’s look at how the nymphs are arranged…
At the top of 84r are four tightly coupled pairs and two nymphs who look like they might be holding hands from farther away. Flanking them are two additional nymphs that seem slightly set apart from the others, as though engaged in a different role.
Some of the nymphs are partly obscured by their pair-mates, and the paired nymphs are back-to-back as though they just passed each other.
I can’t quite tell if some of the couples have their elbows entwined, because the drawing isn’t very good, but there is almost a suggestion of this in at least one of the pairs. Their gestures are distinctive because they are expansive and seem to point beyond the confines of the niche:
It was the pairing and extended hands that drew my attention to a Byzantine relief sculpture with archways and paired figures:
Byzantine marble sarcophagus courtesy of The Met [public domain]. This fragment may have originated in Rome, but also passed through Paris and New York so it’s difficult to know where it might have been seen and how many artists it might have influenced.
Note the shell-like “curtains” at the back of the niche, with their downward-pointing lines and lightly scalloped edges, and how the gestures of some of the figures seem to point at something beyond the archways:
The nymph on the left is posed similarly to the figure on the sarcophagus, but the one on the right seems to be in some kind of LSD-induced reverie. She looks like she is about to serenely leap off a cliff. Or perhaps, in a moment of zen, she knocked her opponent to the ground with the heel of her board-breaking hand. Well, maybe not. There might be other explanations…
For some interesting ideas on VMS poses, refer to K. Gheuen’s blog.
Is there some overall pattern to the nymphs’ gestures that might explain the poses? Are these poses typical or uncommon?
Pairs and Poses on Sarcophagi
This row of figures, similar to the fragment in The Met, is on a sarcophagus from the Alyscamps cemetery, in Arles, Provençe:
Christ with scroll and figures in groups of two and three on the Alyscamps c. 4th century sarcophagus [courtesy of Ad Meskens, Wikipedia].
Christ stands in the center, flanked by figures in twos and threes within scalloped archways, but the gestures and poses in this relief are not as close to the VMS as the relief in the Met.
The arrangement of the figures in pairs, with one obscured by the other, and the slightly more expansive gestures, is similar to another 4th-century sarcophagus in the Gregoriano Profano Museum, but it lacks the shell-like embellishments and archways:
The theme of many of these sarcophagi is traditio legis and Christ is often shown at the center of apostles and evangelists handing a scroll to St. Peter. There are twelve nymphs, a number associated with apostles, but there is no suggestion of a Christ-like figure or evangelists in the VMS pool party.
This example of traditio legis, from Chartres cathedral, differs from the VMS and The Met sarcophagus in a number of ways, including the elevated position of Christ and symbols for the four evangelists. Below them, each apostle has his own archway, in groups of one or three between the pillars. The poses are constrained, and the gestures do not point to a distance beyond:
Traditio legis relief carvings in a portal of the Chartres cathedral [source Urban, Wikipedia].
The tympanum of the south portal of the Abbey Church of St. Pierre, Moissac (12th century) is similar in arrangement to the one at Chartres, except that the apostles are sitting, and a wavy cloudband (instead of arches) separates the Christ imagery from the apostles:
The figures of a sarcophagus from the Basilica of S. Ambrogio, Milan, are also quite constrained. They are arranged in a tidy row, slightly overlapping, and there are no fully-extended hand gestures. There are archways, but they are narrow, and placed behind (rather than around) the figures:
There is a large, very ornate relief in the tympanum of the abbey S. Foy à Conqes in France. The lower left corner feature twelve figures in pairs within archways, surrounding a Christ figure with his arms around two smaller figures:
Tympanum of the Abbey St. Foy in Conque [Daniel Villafruela, Wikimedia]
But the figures all look very respectable and constrained, no expansive gestures.
What we find is that pairs of figures within archways, combined with expressive highly extended gestures, are not common. It also seems to be easier to find VMS-like paired-poses in relief sculptures than in manuscripts, a situation that is reminiscent of some of the earliest VMS zodiac themes, which appeared on churches before they became common in manuscripts.
Another Viewpoint
Moving away from the arches for a moment, could there be another reason the nymphs are extending their arms and shown in pairs? Is it possible they are dancing?
The two VMS nymphs to the right look like they might be holding hands through the stream of liquid, and the two on the left look like they might be about to touch hands, so there is a hint of interaction between them. In fact, pairing may exist in two different senses. There are pairs in which the nymphs are very close together, but back-to-back, and there might also be pairs where the nymphs are farther apart but making eye contact:
Are these poses similar to historical images of dance?
In this c. 480 BCE cippus (tomb-marker), a piper stands in the middle as two toga-clad figures dance with gestures that are reminiscent of Egyptian styles, and similar to today’s Middle Eastern and Eastern dances (note the angles of the elbows and wrists). The style of pose is even more apparent on the accompanying face (right) with three dancers:
Greco-Roman cippus (Etruscan period) courtesy of The Trustees of the British Museum.
This style of cippus and dancing pose was commonly depicted on funerary art in central Italy around the 5th century BCE, when Etruscans flourished in this area.
It has been asserted that the Etruscans came from a different language-family than Indo-European and that their DNA history is somewhat diverse (with a segment originating in Turkey). It is, in some cases, unique (neither European nor Middle Eastern). It has also been suggested that the Etruscans originated from the Sea Peoples, some of which are said to have migrated to the Middle East. Whatever their origin, these poses are more similar to Middle Eastern than to early modern European dance styles, perhaps through the Turkish connection.
If the VMS nymphs are dancing, the cippus style is not the style we see in the drawings.
And where are the women?
Woman in Motion
By now it should be apparent that most of the previous examples of figures in archways are male
Are there women in archways posed like the VMS nymphs? Do they compare to the VMS in terms of organization and gestures? Are the nymphs symbolic of mythical figures, people in general, or are they specifically meant to be female?
Here is an early Roman relief with three nymphs dancing:
Early Roman-era relief, three nymphs dancing [Christelle Molinié, Wikidata & SBMA]
The background is plain, no archways or shells. The head poses are provocative, but otherwise these nymphs look very chaste, dressed from head to ankle, with their hands barely showing, and the hands are simply clutching the drapes of the nearby nymph, not calling attention to themselves.
Women within Archways
This old Pagan relief found in Carrawbrough features three water nymphs each with her own containers—one held high, the other illustrating the flow of water, each within her own archway:
Three nymphs with jugs within archways, from Coventina’s well, Carrawbrough
This imagery probably descended from Pagan representations of the three water-nymphs (a trio of nymphs was a very common theme in Roman art) flanked by the god Zeus and Pan, but this older example does not include archways and the figures look at the viewer rather than interacting among themselves:
Three Nymphs with shell-like vessels flanked by Zeus and Pan [Photo of Limstone relief of The Trustees of the British Museum (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)]
There is a relief of three dancing nymphs from Saladinovo (c. 2nd century BCE) in the Archaeological Museum of Sofia where the nymphs are more animated and the scarf-like fabric that flows around them almost has the effect of archways (the image is copyrighted by the Lessing archive, but you can view it here).
Here is a scene with Apollo, Athena, and the nine Muses, with two pairs on either side of the central figures, but the gestures are not expansive and the figures are not within archways:
Apollo and Muses [The Trustees of the British Museum (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)]
Another Christian-themed example of figures within arches is the story of Adam and Eve and their expulsion from the garden, shown here in a Modena relief by Wiligelmo:
The creation of Adam and Eve and their expulsion from the garden on the Cathedral of Modena in Italy [Photo Sailko, Wikipedia]
The Modena relief is interesting because it doesn’t just show a static event, it is, in a sense, a cartoon-strip style, with each section representing a different event in time. In other words, this storytelling format existed not only in medieval manuscripts, but in relief carvings as well, lending strength to the possibility that the multitude of figures in the VMS might not always be different people, perhaps some of them are the same figure in different points of time.
Myths and Muses
Something a little closer to the VMS pool party is an Italian sarcophagus with nine muses. In the center is a single figure separated from the paired nymphs on either side by two theatrical masks. It is similar in form to the traditio legis except it has a Pagan rather than a Christian theme.
So one can find women in pairs in archways, but the figures don’t overlap as much as the VMS characters and the gestures are less expansive:
As we go farther east, we see increasing differences in clothing and the ethnic features of the figures, but there are some similar themes. Here is one with figures in groups of two to four within niches, but there are no arches or out-reaching hands
It seems that groups of woman in motion are largely dance-themed.
There is a pre-Roman Peucetian fresco in Ruvo di Puglia, Italy (c. 5th century BCE) that features a row of fully robed women dancing, each one holding hands with the second person behind:
Peucetian tomb fresco of a row of women dancing, Le Musée absolut, Phaidon, Wikipedia. Note the similarity to the Greek tomb painting shown farther below.
There are no arches, but the gestures are a little more expansive and interactive than most of the relief sculptures.
In the next example, male and female dancers alternate and the action of their feet is more lively (this particular theme of “line dancing”, with hands touching, is quite common in ancient Greek art):
From a Greek tomb painting, c. 400 BCE
And this example from the 4th century BCE is quite unrestrained, one of the few with truly expansive gestures (perhaps a little too much Retsina), although there’s no actual physical contact between the figures:
There is a legend about the nine muses dancing with Apollo, and here we see them in a painting by Baldassare Peruzzi (c. 1510) based on traditional imagery:
In some of the earlier depictions, Apollo was to one side of the muses, playing a lyre.
Stylistically, these western dances are quite different from eastern depictions, some of which can be seen here.
Illuminations
The above images are mostly on frescoes and relief sculptures. What about imagery in manuscripts? As I’ve mentioned before, when writing about the zodiacs, it was easier for most people to view architectural art than to have access to a manuscript. A manuscript cost about a year’s wages, sometimes much more. There were a few chained libraries, but most of the manuscripts were in the private collections of kings and nobles. Embellishments on public buildings and open-air sarcophagi were free.
Nevertheless, I tried to find examples that might bear some relationship to the VMS in manuscript art.
In the Florentine Homer (1466), Homer is surrounded by nine muses (one behind his shoulder) and four wise men. There are roundels rather than arches, and each nymph is in a different pose. In total, there are 14 figures, so it doesn’t quite match up with numbers in the VMS:
British Library. In this title page to the Florentine Greek “Iliados”, Homer surrounded by nine muses and four additional figural medallions, 1466 [Harley MS 5600].
But muses would only account for nine dancers and the VMS has 12. If there is any connection between the VMS and classical literature, that discrepancy might be resolved by the three graces, who were sometimes shown together with the nine muses:
Dance of the Muses at Mount Helicon (1807). “For it is through the Muses and far-shooting Apollo that there are singers and harpers upon the earth…” –Hesiod, Theogony [Bertel Thorvaldsen, Alte Nationalgaleirie, Wikipedia].
And then, of course, to come back to a more literal interpretation of the VMS drawings, there are images of bathers in outdoor environments.
In the Bhagavatapurana, in a tropical locale with fast moving water, the gestures of bathers are quite expansive and almost like dancing. However, this version postdates the VMS by about a century-and-a-half. In general, expansive gestures are easier to find in later manuscripts than in earlier ones:
In De Balneis Puteolanis from the 14th century, bathers are shown within archways, in groups of two or three. This spa in the Naples region was still in operation at the time the VMS was created (it was destroyed by a volcanic eruption in 1538):
Bathers within archways in The baths of Pozzuoli, BnF Latin 8161 [c. mid 1300s]
This c. 1400 version of De Balneis from Italy not only has bathers within arches, but the gestures are fairly lively:
The figures don’t quite have the “posed” look of the VMS nymphs, however. The Pozzuoli image looks more like recorded history than a morality play.
It is interesting to note, however, that the image expresses two sets of activities. At the top are people rinsing their faces and talking, on the bottom are people more fully immersed, some of whom might be swimming.
The VMS also has levels. In the top image, the nymphs seem to be dancing. In the second one, below it, they look more like they are washing. In the third, one is bent over with her hand on her buttocks (washing her butt?) and most of the others have their hands by their butts, as well. A nymph on the left holds out an object… is it a sponge?
Here is a 17th-century depiction of nymphs bathing in arched grottoes, with the natural structures enhanced with added stonework. Could the VMS setting be based on something like this?
Nymphs bathing by Abraham van Coylenborch, 17th-century Flemish painting.
Summary
I can’t tell if the top pool of the 84r is meant to be literal or allegorical, but I think there’s something extra going on in the arrangement of the nymphs. If it’s a literal representation, maybe the pool party included dancing. Dancing was a very popular form of entertainment before television was invented, and every well-born person was expected to know basic steps.
Or maybe the nymphly poses are telling some kind of a story, as in the panels of Piramus and Tisbe. Either way, pictures of dancers with expressive gestures in the style of the VMS, set within archways, were not common in the early 15th century, so it might be significant that the closest parallel I have found so far for the gestures, was on a Byzantine sarcophagus that traveled from Rome, possibly through Paris, and eventually ended up in the United States.
I am fond of pyrotechnics and once kayaked out to see a giant fireworks display raining flames on the water.
It was risky. Powerboats with drunk pilots whooshed around me in the dark. To add to the adrenaline, sparks were landing on my shoulders and pfushed and sizzled against the kayak. They could have ignited my clothing or hair… but I loved the front-row seat.
If you can’t resist fireworks, imagine squinting into the middle of a diamond-studded vortex, sparks exploding all around you, with 8-foot swells lifting the boat closer to the blast. It’s awesome.
So it’s natural for me to want to find volcanoes in the VMS “map”. I’ve mentioned volcanoes numerous times on my blog and on the forum, have admitted that the Naples area is on my top-5 list of locations for the VMS “map” (it’s not my only idea, but it was the first region I studied in depth after a long investigation of the water-gardens at the villa d’Este). Recently, I wrote in more detail about volcanoes and mud vents.
Historical Precedent
The idea of volcanoes on the “map” foldout is not new. I took it for granted that many people probably saw them as volcanoes. A quick Google search as I was writing this blog brought up volcano references from 1996 and there are surely some older than that, considering there’s more than one rotum that could be interpreted as a volcano.
Rotum1 (top-left circle) looks like a mountain or gaping maw. Rotum7 (bottom-left), could be flows of water, but could also be flows of lava.
Similarly there are spewy mounds between the rota that might represent volcanoes or mud vents, but they might also be geysers or natural springs.
I’ve suggested Rotum3 might be the remains of a volcanic crater (e.g., the island of Nisida, which has a small crater-shaped harbor facing the sea, with remains of an ancient castle wall on the ridge).
I’ve also mentioned Vesuvius, the island of Sicily, and volcanic areas around Damascus, Azerbaijan, and the region around Ischia. Even though there are numerous possibilities, Naples is one of my favorites because it has ancient pools that potentially connect volcanic “hot spots” with thermal bathing.
Eruptions in the 14th and 15th Centuries
In 1302, there was a “spatter cone” eruption on Ischia (you can see a debris field to the lower right on this old map labeled “Locus terribilis…”):
In 1329, 1333, and 1381 Abraham Rees describes major eruptions of Mt. Etna. These kinds of events could have been handed down as oral or written history to the creator of the Voynich Manuscript. But are they reflected in the VMS “map”?
Cheshire One More Time (and Hopefully the Last)
Gerard Cheshire has based his entire “proto-Romance” linguistics solution around this very premise. In his recent paper he claims the VMS “map” documents a heroic rescue from a volcanic eruption.
In the previous two blogs, I commented on the linguistic flaws in his arguments. In this blog, I’ll quickly summarize his historical assertions.
Cheshire contends that nuns in the Castello Aragonese, off Ischia, wrote the VMS, and that the “map” documents the rescue from a 1444 eruption of Vulcano (in the Aeolian islands).
Other than the eruption, these ideas don’t seem to be supported by facts, …
I’ll continue looking, but I haven’t found any evidence that nuns lived on Ischia prior to c. 1600 or that they lived in King Alfonso’s Castello in the 15th century as Cheshire claims. The castle was built in 1441 just off Ischia, as shown in the diagram on the right. Cheshire writes that this is where the VMS originated.
The following timeline shows some key events related to Cheshire’s theory that appear to be at odds with his claims:
Cheshire says that Maria of Castile organized a rescue from an eruption of Vulcano. The only rescue mission I came across was the liberation of Alfonso and his brother when they were captured in Naples. If any historian has evidence that Maria of Castile ferried victims away from a volcanic eruption in 1444, feel free to comment below.
As much as I like the idea, the interpretation of the VMS map as one or more volcanoes is problematic when applied to the Naples area. There are two sets of Ghibelline merlons on the VMS “map” that don’t mesh well with Naples. In the mid-15th century, this style of battlement was mostly confined to parts of what we now call northern Italy. For this reason, I have never committed fully to Naples and have continued researching the other possibilities on my list…
Lava and Lavage
Let’s assume for a moment that the various vents and flows on the VMS “map” are streams and sources of water, which may or may not have a volcanic source…
One of my other favored locations is an area with numerous hot springs, including Bagni San Filippo, Bagnore, and Saturnia.
Of particular interest are the natural spring areas of Tuscany, such as San Filippo, where thermal pools, dripping foliage, and calciferous stalactite formations are nestled in a picturesque setting of rivers and woods—just the thing to inspire drawings of nymphly bathing and grotto-like archways and caves.
Some of the pools have calciferous walls that hold the water in step-like terraces. Others are ringed with stone walls that have been built and rebuilt for thousands of years.
Some pools appear bright blue, others green.
Sparkling calciferous pools in Bagni San Filippo [Detail courtesy of Il Vechhio]
Numerous waterfalls carve pathways through the rocks to feed the step formations:
This by itself is not enough to connect San Filippo, Saturnia, or Monticiano hot springs with the VMS. There are thousands of hot springs throughout Europe, in Turkey, Germany, eastern Europe, several regions of Italy, and Sicily.
What interests me about the hot springs in Tuscany is that they are near a stronghold for Ghibelline sympathizers, which might explain the swallowtail merlons:
Some people have suggested that the VMS pools might be color-coded for fresh or salt water. I think this is possible, especially if the pools represent something less literal than bathing pools. But, if they are bathing pools, maybe the colors represent hot or cold water. It was believed (and still is) that alternating between different temperatures can be therapeutic.
It was also believed that pools with certain temperatures and mineral balances were good for particular parts of the body, which might explain some of the drawings in the “bio” section. There’s no guarantee the different sections of the VMS relate to each other, but I’m hoping they do, because a holistic approach, on the part of the designer, appeals to me.
Moon-Shaped Medieval Castles
If the “stars” on Rotum3 (upper-right) are meant to represent water, then it’s possible it is a moon-shaped island with a castle at the top. It’s one of the reasons I think it could be an island in the Naples area. There are several crater-shaped islands, including Nisida.
In Greece, Santorini is similar (I’ve been there and if you scramble up Mesa Vuono mountain, you get a real sense of the vastness of the crater).
But if the “map” represents Tuscany, where would you find a moon-shaped island? This might be a bit of a stretch, but this 1664 map of Elba, an island off the coast of Tuscany, has a very interesting drawing of a moon-shaped castle-complex labeled Cosmopoli, with a man-made bridge connecting it to Elba. It’s not on a steep hill, like Nisida, but at least it has some of the characteristics of Rotum3:
Rotum3 isn’t necessarily an island, it might just be a stopping point on a strip map, but if it is an island, there are a few locations that could account for its distinctive shape.
Along the Pathway
There’s another detail on the VMS map that can relate to Tuscany… on the pathway between Rotum2 and Rotum3 are some undulating ledges that look somewhat like dunes, possibly sand dunes.
If you turn them, however, so that the tower and wall are facing up, then they look more like solid escarpments.
They’re too steep and narrow to be vineyards, but they reminded me of something, something I couldn’t put my finger on at first…
Then one morning I woke up and remembered—marble quarries, the mountains of Carrara, pathways and ledges.
Here’s a photo…
Note the textural differences between the paths winding up into the mountains and the escarpments where the marble has been quarried in stepwise fashion.
We don’t know exactly how the quarry looked in the middle ages, but the mountains have been mined for hundreds of years, supplying marble for pillars, walls, mosaics, and classical statues that grace ancient buildings. Now marble is used largely for floor tiles and countertops.
It’s not a perfect match for the VMS drawing, but it does have a similar feeling, so maybe the “dunes” represent some pathway through mountains.
Summary
I can’t possibly cover every detail of the map in one blog, this is enough for now. Much of this I’ve mentioned before, but it illustrates that there are many ways to interpret the “map”, more of which I’ll cover in future blogs.
I’ve frequently mentioned that the VMS illustrator had difficulty visualizing three dimensions. This weakness is especially apparent in the joints of humans and animals. Joints are attached to the torso with interlocking sockets and a specific pattern of controlling muscles, and the VMS illustrator didn’t “get” this (or wasn’t able to picture it in his or her mind) and thus relied on formulas (or imperfect copies of exemplars) instead.
When I first looked at the VMS “zodiac” figures, I noticed that the hind limbs of VMS critters were distinctly quirky. I searched for examples of this anatomical eccentricity for years and they were harder to find than I expected. Even illustrators with weak drawing skills usually understood that the hind limbs of these animals angle backward, and yet the VMS illustrator did not (click to see larger):
When I did find a creature with similarly odd hind limbs, it was in a Lauber manuscript that I blogged about in January 2016. It wasn’t just the hind limbs that were anatomically peculiar, the drawing was similar to the VMS in other ways, including subject matter and palette—and both were pond critters. Even the face of the vaguely defined critter was somewhat similar in form and expression to the VMS.
I will post the example again with arrows added so I don’t have to repeat the commentary from the previous blog:
Obviously the illustrator on the right is more skilled, but the subject matter, general idea, and even some of the execution is similar.
Now let’s look at human joints where there is a similar VMS anomaly.
Note in these samples how the shoulder joint is almost missing. There is a line connecting the neck to the upper arm that never really defines the shoulder correctly. As a result, the neck looks unusually thick and the arm has a vague snake-like appearance. In one case, the arm is coming out of the nymph’s cheek!
The illustrator adapted a formula and rarely varied from it.
Are the Faces Also Unusual?
If we momentarily ignore the arm coming out of the neck, the VMS faces are not especially unusual. Below left are six examples from approximately the same angle. Note that they have similarly rounded bumps for the cheek, vague chins, and almost absent jawlines on the side facing the viewer.
Many of the faces on the right, from other manuscripts, follow the same basic formula. The L-shaped nose is also quite common, as are the ruddy cheeks. The main difference is that the eyes and lips are defined a little better than those in the VMS:
So the misplaced shoulder is rather unusual, but the general form of the faces is not.
What about the details?
There are many places in the VMS where breasts and other parts appear to have been added later, sometimes in a darker ink, maybe by a different hand, maybe not. It’s difficult to know if another hand added them since the breasts vary from one drawing to the next, not just from one group to the next. Maybe they were added by the same person sometime later. The only place they seem significantly different is where they are drawn like big round eyeballs.
Note the faces on the left in the following examples. The majority of VMS faces are drawn this way, with a bumpy line defining the outer contour, similar to those in the previous chart. But there are a few that are drawn like the ones on the right, with a distinctive shape that defines a melon-shaped forehead and connects it in a continuous curve to the nose. Like the nose on one of the Aries figures, this looks suspiciously like a different hand, more confident and slightly more skilled, even if it’s an odd way to draw a face:
The added lines on the right have an almost cartoon-like quality. So far, I haven’t found faces in other manuscripts drawn this way.
I thought the over-inking and melon-shaped foreheads might have been done at a later time (perhaps much later), but the more I looked at the faces with this peculiar forehead, the more I realized that other figures with this difference looked like original drawings rather than ones that were inked in later. Here are some examples. Note the hollow-looking eyes:
There’s another variation in the VMS faces that caught my attention. Even though most of the facial features are essentially the same, a few of the VMS nymphs have an extra little point in their chins, a variation that is less common than the rounded or almost-absent chin:
This is the feature that seems most distinctive, next to the melon-foreheads. The weirdly attached shoulder is also unusual enough that it could be spotted in another manuscript.
Summary
I have more information on VMS bodies, but this is enough for now. There are certain facial formulae in the VMS that are distinctive, particularly the melon-forehead and chin with a tiny point, combined with the vaguely defined closer side, L-shaped nose, and ruddy cheeks.
This was not an artist drawing from a variety of angles who was thinking about light and composition. The VMS illustrator learned a simple “outline” approach with little consideration for the underlying muscles or joints. The resultant drawings are clumsy, but have the advantage of speed—many figures could be drawn in a short time.
Folio 77v of the Voynich Manuscript always struck me as anatomical. Mammaries and a uterus in the middle, tubes that might be blood vessels or the path between the ovaries and the uterus, something on the middle-right that resembles tubules or a curled intestine and, on the left, a penis with a nymph standing in the testicles, her hand by a “pipe” leading to the penis.
It seems strange, a nymph standing in testicles, but that’s what it looked like to me.
Then, while searching for something unrelated, I came across a detail in a manuscript from the 15th century that I never expected to see.
Illustrated Myths in MS Rawl. B. 214
Rawlinson B. 214 is less than 20 pages, and consists of two-tone compass-drawn charts sandwiched around colored illustrations.
The illustrations are painted in generous shades of brown blue, red, and green. There are Sibyls and gods, including Saturn, Jupiter, and other characters from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, such as Iuno (queen of the gods), Neptunus, and Pluto:
At Saturn’s feet, there is a character that may have particular significance to the VMS. But first, a quick summary of the other pages…
On the following leaf, we see Apollo with a harp and Corvus flying over a laurel tree:
Next to the laurel is a bevy of females, with muses Talia (comedy) and Urania (astronomy) standing out from the crowd. You might notice that Urania is drawn in an appealing way, similar to a few of the VMS nymphs who were drawn with an extra dose of charisma:
Under this is Phiton, a dragon with long ears and somewhat vague wings that reminds me, once again, of the critter in the VMS that is nibbling on a large plant. At first I wondered if this was an animal version of Phaeton (the charioteer), but it turns out it might be a python, and the marginalia mentions “Phiton serpens”. In medieval bestiaries, as illustrated in the previous blog, serpents were often depicted with legs and ears. There are numerous references to serpents in the Metamorphoses.
The following folio has another complex scene in which Venus takes center stage, standing in water, flanked on the left by three naked nymphs. The next page shows Diana with a bow, next to several unlabeled nymphs modestly dressed. Below this, is a rainbow framing Pallas (Minerva). In her hand is a head on a shield labeled “Caput gorgonum” (Gorgon’s head):
Following this is Iuno/Juno with her sight obscured by a cloudband (perhaps at the moment when Jupiter turns into a heifer). She is standing behind another rainbow, flanked by “pavones” (peacocks) whose tails memorialize the hundred eyes of Argus after he was decapitated by Mercury:
Below this, Sybil Bethia rides in a cart.
A Change of Style
And then the lushly colored illustrations revert to something that could easily be mistaken for a cosmology or geometry chart, but which is labeled with Grecian landmarks, including Mount Pindus, Mount Pelyon (Pelion), and Mount Ossa. These are north of the Greek Islands, as one travels toward Macedonia. It’s a map, in a style quite different from modern maps and more similar to early eastern maps than those of northern Europe.
After the map, is a drawing that looks vaguely cosmological, but reading the labels tells us it is about literature and philosophy, listing Virgil, Omer, and Ovid, along with muses and poets, somewhat in the manner of Lullian diagrams.
Back to the VMS
This line-up is quite interesting… nymphs, rainbows, a map in a slightly unconventional style, charts of elements and literature that might be hard to interpret if the labels were in a strange script, and an unusual biological reference that I wrongly assumed was unique to the VMS. When I saw the drawing of Venus in Rawl. B. 214, it instantly reminded me of the VMS drawing on folio 77v, which has always looked to me like a nymph standing in testicles above an ejaculating penis:
It seems unlikely that the Rawl. Venus-in-testes was copied from the Voynich Manuscript, it was created in the mid-1400s, but it could be the other way around, IF the VMS text and drawings were added a few decades after the parchment was processed. But, assuming the VMS drawings were added early in the 15th century, then an earlier textual or visual source might have inspired the explicit drawing.
And then I had an aha! moment…
A nymph standing in gonads. Of course! It’s the classical story of Venus born of the foam of her father’s severed genitals. It might seem a far-fetched way to interpret the VMS nymph if it weren’t for the Rawl. Venus being clearly labeled, clearly standing in a testical-boat, and clearly placed within the context of classical myth.
Can we go one step further? Might there also be an astrological interpretation, as suggested by K. Gheuen’s Konstellations? Maybe. Not only were the classical gods deeply associated with stars and planets, but classical poets were fond of creating alternate stories…
Accounts of how the newly born Venus reached shore vary, but here is one version…
When her father’s godly froth hit the sea and Venus was born, she was aided by fishes, who ferried her safely to the beach and guaranteed their place in history by reigning over her in the sky. The following image may be intended to reflect the environment in which Venus was born, rather than the story of the fishes, but it helps us visualize Venus’s birth. Note the cherub handing her the mirror that became her attribute:
The birth of Aphrodite from a Roman mosaic in the Bardo National Museum, Tunis.
In the Iliad, Aphrodite (Venus) is associated with sexual intercourse, which would make her an appropriate symbol for a biological description of sexual organs or the sexual act. It is thought by some that Hesiod (c. 700 BCE) added or adapted the story of the severed genitals.
But is 77v a clinical description of sex and sexual organs dressed up with classical imagery, or is it classical imagery in the context of ancient myths (without the clinical component)? The difference would influence how one interprets the text.
My personal suspicion, until we know more, is that the drawings on this folio are meant to express biology, with classical myths as mnemonics. I lean this way because plants, astrology, biology, and therapeutic bathing (especially bathing in thermal spas), are all important medieval medical subjects.
Wresting Meaning Out of an Obscure Drawing
The VMS is not exactly like the Rawlinson drawing. It has an extra detail. There is a “tube” by the nymph’s hand. I thought it might be the connection between the seminiferous tubules and the penis long before I realized there might be a connection to classical literature. If there is, then the VMS drawing makes a more direct reference to the biological path for the “froth” by which Venus (Aphrodite) was born (the Greek word αφρός/aphros means “foam” and can also be interpreted as semen).
Usually we see sanitized versions of Venus’s birth (albeit some lovely ones like Boticelli’s). Here is a much simpler 14th-century drawing (right), from an Occitan manuscript—Venus in the surf, holding her mirror attribute. An ancient depiction, from a Pompeiian fresco, shows her lying in a large shell, with a stylus or small scepter, with drapery overhead. In fact, they aren’t necessarily sanitized, they are probably alternate versions in which the semen falls to the sea without the father losing his family jewels. The tradition that explicitly talks about castration diverges from Homer.
The Cringe-Worthy Version
William Sale suggested in 1961 that the castration myth traces back to the Cyprians, as expressed in a Corinthian terracotta figure of Aphrodite arising from a genital sac, but I had trouble finding examples online, and was hoping to find exemplars more accessible to a medieval manuscript illustrator.
There are gruesome drawings of Cronos castrating his father Uranus, and some where the victim just stares in another direction as though it’s no big deal for your son to whack off your privates (e.g., Bodleian MS Douce 195).
It doesn’t seem necessary to post dozens of examples (which can be found in ceramics, sculpture, manuscript art, and also in tarot cards), as there appear to be three main kinds:
Cronos/Jupiter castrating his father with no inclusion of Venus,
Cronos castrating his father with Venus nearby, often in water,
Venus born from the castrated genitals of her father (as in Rawl. B 214 and possibly the VMS).
Here are examples of what appear to be typical variations, with the less common Rawl. drawing included for reference:
Summary
I was eager to find a possible exemplar for the VMS but one never knows how long it will take. Most of the more common depictions are of French or English origin, but there may be other sources for a theme that dates back to ancient Greece.
If additional images of Venus standing in her father’s genitals were found, or even just one that predates the VMS, it could be a key link in unraveling which predecessors may have influenced its construction.
