Tag Archives: VMS marginalia

Matching the Marginalia

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It’s a challenge to find paleographic matches to the VMS. I’ve been hunting for almost eleven years, sampled more than 50,000 characters from scripts that were similar to the marginalia or to the main text, and developed tools to more objectively compare scripts based on slant, heaviness, spacing (between letters and lines), and the individual shapes of each letter.

Evaluating the VMS main text is particularly difficult because some of the glyphs may not be letters, they may be symbols, numbers, or abbreviations, so I will describe the marginalia first, and then explain my strategy for locating scripts similar to Voynichese in a separate blog.

As a sideline, I also looked for matches to the column text on folio 1r, but it is not my primary interest, so I have presented it more simply as a chart, which you can see here.

Selecting the Marginalia

For sampling individual letters in the marginalia, I used these sections:

  • The more consistent letter-forms on folio 116v (some shapes look like they might be in another hand, although it’s hard to tell, so I gave precedence to those that matched several times on the page rather than those that were questionable), and
  • The strip of text at the top of folio 17r (which I believe is the same handwriting as most of the text on folio 116v):

[pic of VMS 116v and 17r marginalia]

Note that I have doubts that the first letter of “valden” is a “v”. For one thing, no one wrote v like this in the Middle Ages (in more than 1,000 samples of text in a similar style, only one v comes close to the shape in “valsen”—this is an unusually low hit rate), but more importantly, if you look closely at the scans, you might notice traces of tails and letters under the last line (to see it you have to ignore the bleed-through from the other side).

Also, the part of the first letter that is visible is a close match to the top of other “p” shapes on this page, which makes me even more suspicious about this letter being “v”. Judge for yourself, here are some examples of common “v” shapes from the Middle Ages (keep in mind that “v” and “u” were used interchangeably in the Middle Ages):

[pic of medieval letter u/v]

The “v” in “vix” is not common either, usually “v” was written with a curve, but this form is not rare, it is simply uncommon, so I have provisionally used this for “v”, but gave it lower priority than other letters that are written several times (and more clearly).

[pic of V similar to VMS marginalia]

First Impressions

When I first saw the marginalia, it looked to me like hybrid text, Gothic with hints of both cursive and book hands (I’ll post details later). There are also hints of Italic/humanist hand (e.g., note the small, rounded, spaced-out m).

But… scribes and scholars moved around, so it’s hard to generalize, and there were blended scripts similar to the VMS marginalia in several multicultural areas, including 1) Lombardy, 2) the area encircling the Veneto, 3) some parts of Bavaria/Tyrol, and parts of 4) Alsace/Schwabia.

There’s no sign that the marginalia was influenced by Anglicana, but not all English scribes wrote Anglicana, some adopted the styles of St. Gall. It doesn’t seem as elegant as many of the Parisian scripts, but not all were elegant, and scholars brought many different writing styles to Paris, so… I tried to put my initial impressions out of mind as I searched for similar texts, because I didn’t want to narrow my search based on preconceptions. Thus, I searched digitized manuscripts from as many regions as possible.

Matching the Marginalia

My only requirement for collecting a sample was overall similarity to the basic forms in the marginalia. These scripts tend to score 50 or higher. A really good score is 73 or higher.

Language didn’t matter and, for the most part, dates were ignored (I was hoping dates would fall naturally into place). In general, scripts scored as follows:

[samples of Gothic text similar to the VMS marginalia]

I sampled the following characters:

  • letters of the alphabet,
  • common abbreviations, and
  • words like leben/leber/lebe, maria, and vix, when I could find them, or similar words if I couldn’t.

A full sample was typically about 40 characters but not all source texts are long, some are marginalia or short dedications and thus were sampled for as many characters as were available. If the text was heavily abbreviated, I sampled most of the common abbreviations.

Scribes often used more than one shape for certain letters, depending on their position in the word, so I included terminal forms and forms with tails, but “character ratings” were only given to letters that specifically matched marginalia. The rest were evaluated separately.

Here are some general observations from approximately 1,000 reasonably close samples…

  • Gothic cursive, book, and hybrid hands were common throughout Europe from the late 14th century until the early 16th century, so common that paleographers often have difficulty identifying place of origin.
  • I was hoping for scores of 95 or better (out of a possible 120 for individual character shapes), but found it extremely difficult to find hands with totals higher than 75. I only have a few. There were a number of interesting finds in the 60 to 75-point range, however. Even if they didn’t match overall, there is some useful information that can be gleaned from individual characters that scored high.
  • I was hoping high scores might help me geolocate the marginalia-writer’s origins, but many of the manuscripts that scored high are of uncertain origin.
  • Certain letter-forms are very common, while others are specific to the scribe. For example, thousands of scribes wrote p, r, s, and o like the marginalia, while other letters are unusual or more commonly found in 14th-century scripts or in book hands. I will describe these characteristics in separate blogs.

The marginalia is not abbreviated in obvious or traditional ways, but one gets the feeling that some of the words might be missing letters because the words don’t quite make sense. There are, however, languages that have implied vowels, like some of the Bohemian languages, so perhaps this mindset was familiar to the writer and influenced the way words were written.

Scoring Individual Letters

Each letter is scored differently based on how widely the letter varied in medieval scripts. The letter “o”, for example, is not going to vary as significantly as an ornate letter like “g” or “h-with-a-tail”.

A perfect match scores 6. Out of tens of thousands of individual-letter clips, only one 6 has been given so far. Very close matches generally score 5 because even close matches don’t quite look like the same handwriting. The overall shape might be the same, but there are usually subtle differences in pressure, stroke order, or the way the parts connect.

[pic of similar and dissimilar letterforms]

How objective and consistent are these scores?

The first (and more important) answer is that I have a list of criteria for rating each letter—these could be taught to another person as long as that person has experience in reading old scripts.

The second answer is anecdotal…

One day I noticed two sets of samples lined up next to each other with identical scores. I thought I had discovered two different manuscripts written by the same scribe. As it turned out, I had inadvertently sampled the same manuscript (different folios) almost four years apart. The results were exactly the same.

Why does it matter?

The marginalia may have been added long after the VMS was created, so why would I devote so many years to studying it?

It’s possible it was added later, but research into the letterforms has convinced me that the marginalia may have been written close to the time of the VMS, perhaps even at the same time. If so, then the marginalia writer was potentially a designer, advisor, or even illustrator.

Even if the marginalia was added later, anything that can be learned about the Voynich Manuscript brings us a little closer to understanding it, and if the source of the script style can be located (or connected with other documents in the same handwriting), it might help unravel the missing provenance.

J.K. Petersen

© Copyright 2018 J.K. Petersen, All Rights Reserved

Small Clues in the Marginalia

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I’ve mentioned that the person who wrote the VMS marginalia may have learned to write in the late 14th century or early 15th century. If so, he or she could have lived at the same time as those who illustrated and wrote the VMS, and might even have been involved in the creation of the manuscript in some way.

I’ve already posted some of the statistical properties of the marginalia “g” on the voynich.ninja forum. Here is a reprise of the comparison chart:

Paleography samples similar to VMS marginalia "g"

Samples of the letters “g” and “a” suggest the marginalia writer was familiar with older handwriting (e.g., 14th century), or with more formal book hands, and it appears that the writer may have learned to write in the late 14th or early 15th century. This suspicion is not based on just one set of statistics, however.

The Sample Set

[Pic VMS abc]To sample the marginalia, I used the text on 116v and 17r because I’m fairly confident it is the same handwriting. I did not use “ven mus mel” because there are too few words to be certain if it’s the same. Many scribes had similar handwriting. In fact, they were encouraged to copy each other so several scribes could work on the same manuscript without awkward transitions.

Samples of Voynich Manuscript marginalia

Below is the sample set I use for full comparisons. Note that the “z” is actually an abbreviation symbol, but most scribes wrote it like the letter “z” and sometimes also the number “3”, so I provisionally stored it in the “z” slot.

It’s not clear whether the last letter of “gaf” on the last line is “f” or “s” but since most scribes wrote them the same (except for the crossbar), it probably doesn’t make a big difference. When assigning values to similarity, I gave higher priority to letters that are repeated and clearly written. I consider the “u” and “v” shapes to be lower priority since “u” is not clear and the “v” appears to be in a different style.

Note that “n” has both a descending “tail” and a non-tail form. This is very common. Many scribes wrote n, m, and h both with and without a tail:

Paleography sample of VMS marginaliaNow here’s an interesting puzzle…

Is the first “a” on f17r a double-chamber “a”, the style that was popular in the 14th century, but less so in the 15th century?

It’s hard to tell, but it looks like it might be, if the top is slightly fuzzed. It was very common for the two-chamber “a” to be taller than other characters nearby:

Voynich marginalia - mallier allor

It’s impractical to post exhaustive statistics or lists of manuscripts that have different styles of the letter “a” in a blog, but to give the flavor of it, here are examples from the 14th century with only the double-chambered “a” (from scripts with some similarity to the marginalia):

In paleography, there are many hybrid scripts (scripts that blend different styles). Paleographers frequently argue about names and classifications (some have devoted whole books to this), but diversity isn’t a bad thing—it can help identify an individual’s writing.

The Significance of the Double-Story “a”

As the single-story “a” became more popular in the 15th century, some scribes mixed both singles and doubles, sometimes even in the same sentence. Here you can see both kinds of “a” in marginalia that was added c. 14th century to an early medieval calendar:

Sometimes the mixing was random, other times, the double-story “a” was used as an uppercase “a” or at the beginnings of words.

The double-story “a” was retained for a longer time in more formal book hands, but casual hands gradually abandoned it for the single-story “a”. By the late 14th century and early 15th century, many manuscripts included only the single-story “a”:

Paleography sample of single-story "a"

Some Statistical Properties of the Marginalia “a”

As mentioned previously, I set up a mathematical system to compare letters more objectively. A perfect match on higher-priority letters would be 120 (with slant, weight, connectivity, spacing, etc., assessed separately). After 10 years, 5 months, and 5 days of searching for a close match, I still find it quite difficult to locate scripts higher than 75, so a bit of luck will probably be necessary to do better.

It surprised me that a medieval “a” could be so varied. Out of a sample of more than 1,000 manuscripts specifically chosen for their similarity to the VMS marginalia, only 20% scored 4 or higher (out of 6) for letter-forms.

Note that the stem is fairly vertical, and the loop doesn’t quite close on the bottom. There is a small point at the top of the stem and the serif turns up at a fairly sharp angle.

Finding all these characteristics together is a challenge, but here are some of the better matches. Note that the overall score (listed under the letter) isn’t always high. In other words, even if the “a” was fairly close to the VMS script, sometimes other letters were not:

Paleography samples of the letter "a"

If the letter on 17r is a double-story “a”, then it has some physical and statistical commonalities with the single-story “a”. The stem is fairly upright and the bottom loop is not quite closed. Note that the bottom loop is larger than the top one (some scribes did it the other way around).

Here are some examples from handwriting that is fairly similar to the VMS (note that only one “a” is significantly similar to the VMS “a” in shape, proportions, and slant, and it lacks the sharp serif):

Paleography double-story "a"

When the double-story “a” is substituted, the statistics for overall similarity come out very much like the previous search, as did the date range of most of the samples. In other words, scribes with handwriting similar to the VMS writer used either or both forms of “a” around the same time period as they wrote letter-forms similar to the VMS.

Summary

The greater popularity of the double-story “a” in the 14th century might suggest a date earlier  rather than later in the 15th century, although there are a few areas where the double-story “a” was still common until the end of the 15th century. Some parts of eastern Europe, and many of the smaller more remote towns, lagged behind large urban areas in terms of the evolution of script. It does seem very likely, however, based on the paleographic evidence, that the marginalia was added after 1330 and before 1490. It’s not as precise as radio-carbon dating, but it does help when research from various disciplines tends to confirm rather than deny the existing data.

I have much more information on this topic, but will cover it in separate blogs, and I will leave it up to the reader to decide whether the letter on folio 17r is a double-story “a”.

J.K. Petersen

© Copyright 2018 J.K. Petersen, All Rights Reserved

Jan Jakub de Tepence

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I thought readers might enjoy some more background information on Jacobius Sinapius, the Latin name of Jan Jakub Horčický, a Jesuit of uncommon intelligence who rose from poverty to become Emperor Rudolf II’s physician and herbalist. Sinapius (also sometimes written Synapy), came to the attention of Wilfrid Voynich when a faint ghost of an expunged name was seen at the bottom of the first page of the Voynich Manuscript. René Zandbergen has collected samples of books with similar signatures located by various researchers.

The following biographical information is from a variety of sources, but the most important points are from an 1896 book of history in the Stanford library that was microfilmed in 1994 and scanned more recently by Google. Unfortunately, it is in Czech, and I have not studied Slavic languages. I  know some German (which is a second language to many Slavs) and a little bit of Russian, but it was a struggle to piece together information that was mostly in Czech.

In Czech history, Sinapius is presented as a promoter and defender of the Catholic faith, which is not central to solving the VMS, so I have selected events of particular interest to Voynich researchers.

Here is a detail of a scan of folio 1r from the Beinecke Library that shows the badly defaced vellum and faint marks of a name or signature Jacobi [á? de?] Tepenecz on the first line. There is possibly some obliterated text on the second line (or bad scratches in the vellum), and some faint marks to the right that may be a catalog number, as suggested by other researchers:

What made me particularly interested in re-visiting Sinapius’s history (which I looked at a few years ago) is the fact that the Ex Libris marks located by other researchers on books apparently from Sinapius’s library have some odd properties. I will describe those in a separate blog after summarizing some of his background.

In the Beginning…

Jan Jakub Horčický was born approx. 1575 to a poor family, in or near the village of Krumlově. Krumlově, now known as Český Krumlov, is a town in southern Bohemia that was ruled by the Rosenbergs in the early 14th century, the time leading up to the creation of the Voynich manuscript. The primary language of Krumlov was German and German became even more dominant when miners and tradesmen moved in to take advantage of local resources. If Jakub’s first language was Czech, then he was part of a minority population.

In the early 1600s, when Sinapius was in his mid-20s, the town was purchased by Emperor Rudolf II, who presented it to his son Julius. German was the primary language of the Holy Roman Empire. Why would this be relevant to Voynich research? Because the German language was expressed with certain scribal conventions that differed from those of Slavic languages.

When he was about 13, Jakub was accepted as a cleaning boy in the kitchen of the local Jesuit institution, which included a school. Someone apparently noticed the boy’s keen intelligence, as he was admitted to classes in 1590 and became associated with the local pharmacy, possibly as an apprentice, under the tutelage of Martin Schaffner, who was a Moravian-born apothecary in his mid-20s who was knowledgeable about herbs and distillation.

In autumn 1598, Jakub traveled to Prague to continue his studies in logic and natural sciences and honed his business skills by collecting, processing, and selling herbal remedies. Some of these herbs were collected in the Jesuit gardens on the slopes of Petřín Hill and at Vltava (below Letenská hill).

Detail of Prague in 1572, illustrating the vast lands and gardens. Georg Braun.

In 1600, he moved to Jindřichův castle, in SW Bohemia, to assume responsibilities for the grounds at a sprawling estate that shows many signs of having been remodeled and rebuilt over the centuries. It’s difficult to imagine what it looked like in the 1600s.

Shortly before 1606, he moved again, traveling north to Hradčany, an independent borough of central Prague. The map above illustrates Prague’s topography and vast gardens in the days before the farmland was covered over by buildings and streets. Sinapius apparently had enough idle time during his tenure to experiment with herbal remedies and to become acquainted with the alchemists in Rudolf II’s court.

Prague Castle in 1595, a few years before Sinapius moved there. [Wikipedia image contributed by Joris Hoefnagel]

Hearing of Sinapius’s skills, Emperor Rudolf called him, became acquainted with him, and was impressed. Sinapius joined those under the emperor’s patronage, and also spent time governing the monastery of St. Vitus and what is now St. George’s Basilica in Prague Castle.

When the Emperor fell ill in the winter of 1608, and the apothecary cured him of an ailment that other doctors had apparently failed to remedy, the emperor awarded him a coat of arms and the title of Jacob of Tepence (in Czech: Jakubu Horčickému z Tepence). This suggests that the name was added to the Voynich Manuscript sometime after 1608 or 1609.

Change in the Winds…

In 1612 , Emperor Rudolf II died and his younger brother Matthias (1557–1619) took over his title and estates and ejected many of the scientists who filled Rudolf’s court.

After the new régime was established, Sinapius was appointed governor of the royal estate of Mělník, just north of Prague. This appointment was rockier than the previous ones as the people of the region challenged his authority and his religious beliefs. Rudolf II had been religiously tolerant, but it was feared that Matthias would be less so.

For Sinapius, it was a time of general unrest and things became deadly when the Bohemians rose up against Matthias’s Habsburg dynasty. A provisional government was established, Sinapius refused to accept their authority, and was briefly imprisoned. The 30 Years War—a violent confrontation resulting in physical destruction, and millions of lost lives, created a major disruption that the kitchen boy from Krumlov probably never expected to experience in his lifetime. When released from prison, his future was uncertain and he faced possible expulsion.

In 1619, Emperor Matthias died, and two years later SInapius apparently fell from a horse and was injured such that his health failed and he died a year later, in 1622.

Unanswered Questions

Did the VMS belong to Emperor Rudolph, or to Jacob Sinapius? When the emperor died, was the manuscript in Sinapius’s possession?

Emperor Matthias didn’t share his older brother’s passion for alchemy, so he may not have cared about an unreadable book with strange pictures of plants. Would it have mattered to him if Sinapius kept it? Might he have given it to Sinapius? Or might Sinapius have quietly taken it with him when moving from Prague to Mělník and then, realizing his days were numbered, passed it on to his Jesuit brothers before he died?

The correspondence that went back and forth between the Jesuits about the VMS is never very explicit, which makes one wonder if the VMS was contraband. The other reason for the secrecy might have been social taboos against the “black arts”. Anything of an occult nature might be perceived as consorting with the devil. Whatever the reason, I noticed something about the Ex Libris markings that I will discuss in a future blog.

 

J.K. Petersen

© Copyright 2018, All Rights Reserved

Ven Mus Mel

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I’ve already written about the text next to the “aching tummy” figure at the base of folio 66r in a couple of blogs but perhaps it’s time to post some of the background information that influenced my ideas about what it might say.

Ven Muß Mel

I should start by saying, I’m pretty sure there is a letter “m” in “mel” that has been overwritten with a couple of heavier strokes so that the changed letter almost resembles a “g”. Since the interpretation of “mel” and “gel” are very different, this blog will concentrate on the original word “mel” and leave “gel” for a separate blog.

Note that it was very common for a single “s” to be written as “ß” in the middle ages, if it was at the end of a word. It was not always intended as a ligature for double ess.

I’ve already described some possible interpretations for individual parts of this phrase. To recap, in Anglo-Saxon “ven/wen” refers to a swelling or tumor, which may or may not apply to how it is used here, but should be considered as a possibility because the mysterious letter above it resembles an Anglo-Saxon letter form.

In German, muß typically means must/should but can also be “mouse” in Nordic areas. The word “mel” sometimes means honey (more often spelled melle, but sometimes also mell or mel), a very common ingredient in medieval remedies. Mel can also mean flour, and it too is a common ingredient.

All these interpretations have been mentioned in my previous blogs, but I thought I would take a moment to fill in some of the background information that influenced my perception of the text.

This is just one possibility, but if we consider “muß mel” as belonging together, we get a phrase (or compound word) that can be traced back to the middle ages.

Müsmehl is ground grain that was distinguished from bread flower by its color and texture. It was known as musmel/müsmel in the middle ages, and corresponds to later spellings of müsmehl and Muasmähl (note that corn meal was sometimes substituted for the original grains after the conquest of the Americas). This ground grain was used for porridge and a granola-like mixture, similar to the grains in muesli/müsli (note the similarity in the words).

Historical Confirmation of Terminology

In the Hermann Miles Chronik notation for anno 1529, there is a list of prices for basic foodstuffs. It tells mentions a quarter of “korn” (grain) and a “fierlig” of müsmel at 18 d.

Schillings, florins, and ducats were common currencies at the time, but I’m not sure what the currency unit “d” represents. Fiertel is a quarter, but fierlig appears to be a larger quantity, given that a fierlig of müsmel was almost four times costlier than a pound of “flaisch” (meat). Note that the definition of a “pound” varied from region to region.

In Württembergische Geschichtsquellen, published in 1905 in Swabia, the distinction between “schön mel” and “müsmel” is noted. In English, schön mel generally refers to fine flour—flour for breads and pastries.

Thus, the term is documented in print at least by the 16th century and may have existed in oral history for some time prior.

Summary

I’ve already mentioned that the handwriting on 66r next to the prone figure appears to be the same hand that wrote the marginalia on 116v. What is particularly interesting about the term “musmel/ mus mel” is that it was not widespread. In this form, it was mainly used in an area that is geographically consistent with some of the idiosyncracies in the spelling/grammar of the marginalia on the last page. For example, in Schwabia and the Alsace, “p” was often substituted for “b” (which would support an interpretation of “pox” as goat) and “a” for “e”, and letters were frequently dropped from words—characteristics one sees in the Hermann Miles Chronik and that are expressed or hinted at on 116v.

Although I have spent several years trying to systematically track down the homeland of the marginalia writer, and have a great deal of paleographic data, I haven’t yet committed to a specific region. Gothic cursive was written everywhere from Scotland to Naples, and France to Bohemia in the 15th century, and the marginalia writer’s hand (which is a mixture of cursive and book forms) does not give away a specific location. However, the combination of the handwriting style and the spelling and grammar suggests that the marginalia author may have learned to write Latin letter forms in the Alsace or Swabia.

If the marginalia on 66r is intended to be “muß mel” in the sense of ground grains/flour, and if the scribe is the same person who penned 116v, then it strengthens the evidence for the Voynich manuscript having passed through the hands of someone familiar with linguistic conventions of a fairly specific region.

 

J.K. Petersen

© Copyright 2017 J.K. Petersen, All Rights Reserved

Postscript October 2018: At first I thought that the handwriting on 116v and 17r and 66r were all in the same handwriting. They are a similar style. But after more study and collecting many more thousands of medieval handwriting samples, I am no longer sure. I still believe 116v and 17r are in the same handwriting, but I now have doubts about the short note on 66v for a number of reasons.