<\/a><\/p>\nI’ve often wondered if the Voynich author lived in, or perhaps travelled to, a region of mountains and caves, based on the lofty escarpments in the “Map Section” and the abundance of bathing belles and grottos in the Voynich Manuscript.<\/p>\n
Bansk\u00e1 Bystrica, if it is in any way connected to the Voynich Manuscript, certainly fits the bill. It is a treasure trove of caves, many as yet undiscovered, within which are breathtaking grottos, stalactites, green underground pools, and water reservoirs historically used by castle inhabitants. There are currently many spas in the region.<\/p>\n
Also, as might be expected in or around a mining town, there are ornate metalworks dating back to before the 16th century\u2014items that might have inspired the tall ornate vessels in the “Kitchen Section” (called by some the “Pharmaceutical Section”).<\/p>\n
We do not know the exact origin of the Voynich Manuscript. The best guess so far is that it came into the hands of Emperor Rudolph II and made its way, through other sets of hands, to the Villa Mondragone, near Rome, where it was purchased by Wilfred Voynich.<\/p>\n
Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II was king of the Bohemian regions in the late 1500s, in the same general area as Bansk\u00e1 Bystrica. Rudolph was an avid patron of the arts and kept an extensive library. His castle in Prague was less than 400 miles from Bansk\u00e1 Bystrica. It seems possible that the person who wrote on the last page of the VM and the scribe who wrote out the literature in Der Neusohler Cato<\/em> could be related either by blood, by cultural background, or by political connections.<\/p>\n[Der Neusohler Cato<\/em> is in the repository Moravsk\u00e1 zemsk\u00e1 knihovna v Brn\u011b.]<\/p>\nJ.K. Petersen<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Introduction Der Neusohler Cato,\u00a0a compendium of literature created in the 15th century, includes script that is\u00a0 similar to some of the handwriting on the last page of the Voynich Manuscript, as well as an example of symbolic encipherment. A few examples have been described in a previous blog post titled Medieval Mindsets. In it, I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/voynichportal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/773"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/voynichportal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/voynichportal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voynichportal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voynichportal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=773"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/voynichportal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/773\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1030,"href":"https:\/\/voynichportal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/773\/revisions\/1030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/voynichportal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voynichportal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voynichportal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}