For some time, now, a site which presents itself as Singapore-based and Amazon-related has been systematically harvesting every post and page on this site. I gather from comments by Nick Pelling that he has seen the same at his.
It may be someone hoping to cobble together some quick-sale Amazon ‘Voynich’ book. It may be an AI looking for more data to repeat. It may be neither – it isn’t necessarily really Singaporean or Amazon-related – but I’m not comfortable about it.
By limiting access to subscribers, I can at least hope I am speaking to people, and ones who are genuinely interested in this medieval manuscript.
All posts*, in future, will be ‘subscribers only’. Hope that’s ok with all of you.
If you have a wordpress account the easy way to subscribe is just to add the blog’s address to your Reader roll.
that is, subscribers have access to the analytical-critical studies that provide the evidence and argument. Non-subscribers will be able to read an occasional general topic post, and some summary posts. I would ask subscribers not to circulate copies of the analytical posts.
Part 1 ended with this photo showing an image of Asclepius sculpted on the Rector’s Palace in Dubrovnik, a city which is – to use the wiki article’s words – “historically known as Ragusa, [and] is a city in southern Dalmatia, Croatia, by the Adriatic Sea.” The sculpture is dated to be between 1432 and 1440, though it is argued, more likely 1435-1440.
None of the names associated with the work is Venetian, that city having held control over the city from 1205–1358, and from which Ragusa had only then been freed, partly due to its alliance with Ancona and partly the intervention of the newly appointed Holy Roman Emperor, Sigismund – as mentioned in Part 1.
For what follows, Dubrovnik’s historical connections with the Greek-speaking world, and to anti-Venetian interests will be important, so a few preliminaries are in order.
During the seventeenth century, Athanasius Kircher would assert the Voynich script to be ‘Jerome’s Illyrican’ or ‘Illyrian’, illustrated not long before in a publication issued by the Vatican printery. It was assumed by Voynich writers to mean Glagolitic, until it occurred to a researcher to check whether or not the assumption was valid. I then published this illustration to show the difference. Other Voynich sites then included the same image.
During the last quarter of 1666, with a letter evidently sent from Fr. Coupain in Lyons to Kircher in Rome, some drawings were included which (as Berj Ensanien first noted), show an inscription with glyphs not unlike the Voynich glyphs and adjacent to what appears to be a coin of Doclea. I’ve not been able to discover another example of such a coin for Illyrian Doclea, nor for the other town of that name, which lay in Phrygia.
Another item drawn on the same page (Kircher Archive. Doc. 563 APUG 35) shows a Semitic goddess known generically as ‘Mistress of the Beasts’ and other evidence from around Doclea shows its early links were with the eastern Mediterranean. For example, Stevović* refers to ‘a persistent cult’ of St.Thecla there during the early Byzantine period and Thecla was chiefly known and reverenced in the eastern Mediterranean, her cult centre being in Egypt.
Ivan Stevović, ‘Early Byzantine Doclea and its citizens: Longe ab patriam” Niš and Byzantium. 14: 121–136. [pdf]
Doclea still existed during the time of Pliny the Elder (who died in the same eruption of Vesuvius which buried Pompeii and Herculaneum), so it might – or might not – be relevant that Pliny knew Doclea as famous among his countrymen for its cheeses – this implying export and perhaps even in the same type of cheese-boxes, wide in proportion to their height, which are employed for the same purpose to this day.
image from a commercial site. Permission given.
Doclea would be destroyed by a series of natural and man-made disasters after the 4thC AD, and finally lost about 927AD, when its last bishop took refuge in Ragusa (mod.Dubrovnik), over which he was soon appointed Archbishop. This might seem arcane detail to a modern reader, but it must be remembered that for the region’s families and authorities, that history was still a living tradition when the ‘Asclepius’ half-capital was carved, at some time between 1435-1440 AD.
The first of the maps shown below indicates the position of old Doclea by the three red dots which mean ‘archaeological site’. It shows the site’s position in relation to medieval Ragusa (mod. Dubrovnik), to what had been once a predominantly Greek-speaking region.
map of Roman era Illyria – courtesy of albanopedia.com.
The next map shows Ragusa/Dubrovnik in relation to Ancona and to Venice. In fact medieval Ragusa lay about sixteen miles higher up the coast than the Roman ‘Epidaurum’ but it was by reference to Epidaurum that the work’s patron insisted Asclepius be carved on the Rector’s Palace.
map derived from one published in ‘Doclea (llyria)’ article, wikipedia.
An inscription tells us that, ” …. On the first was carved Aesculapius, the restorer of medical art, at the instigation of that remarkable poet and most learned man of letters, Nicolo de Lazina, a noble of Cremona,… who … undertook to exercise and bear the burden of the chancellorship of Ragusa, and is now bearing it. For he, since he knew and had learned in his literary studies that Aesculapius had his origin at Epidaurus, which is now called Ragusa, took the greatest pains and trouble that his image should be carved on the building, and he composed a metrical epitaph to him which was fixed in the wall”.
The worthy Lazina was, of course mistaken about Asclepius’ being born in Ragusa. Another Epidaurus – in the Greek Peloponnese – has that honour.
These three historical and cultural themes – the Semitic, the Roman and the Greek are all present in this fascinating image of Asclepius carved by Pietro di Martino da Milano or a member of his workshop at a time when Raugusa’s independence had been won with difficulty from the Venetians, and which maintained that independence by alliance with Italy, and chiefly with Venice’s rival, Ancona.
As the wiki article put it so neatly, this alliance “enabled the two towns on opposite sides of the Adriatic to resist attempts by the Venetians to make the Adriatic a ‘Venetian Bay’..” Ancona and Ragusa developed a trade route alternative to that maintained by Venice through Austria to Germany, passing instead through Ancona to Florence and via Milan to end in Flanders [map]. But Ancona and Ragusa (as it then was) were still directly connected with the eastern Mediterranean, both being termini of the maritime routes which brought silk and other eastern products from further east, though Asia Minor. As one writer for UNESCO puts it,
Included within these routes are the Maritime Silk Routes of Anatolia. The main ports were situated in Trabzon, Istanbul, Bursa, Izmir, and Antioch. These were connected with Crimea, Venice, Florence, Dubrovnik [Ragusa], or Ancona in Europe, and ports of the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea and Southeast Asian regions.
Earlier this month (April 7th., 2024) I had reason to mention use of the acanthus in late medieval art, and that it became so closely associated with Florence and the early ‘renaissance’ in Italy that it is still called ‘Florentine style’. It is an element emphasised, naturally enough in the Dubrovnik Asclepius where its form is closer to the classical Greek and Corinthian, in its representing the acanthus as a single broad leaf, and in this context, I’ll mention that the same approach is seen in Indo-Greek Taxila, the drawing below of a Buddhist stupa dated to c.2ndC BC.*
* I regret the drawing is all I can provide, the associated documents having been lost to a bushfire in 2013.
What turns us towards Roman Italy is, rather, the extraordinarily eclectic form given the entablature above ‘Asclepius’ head.
What we’re trying to discover, of course, is whether the longer containers on Asclepius’ right knee resemble those in the Voynich leaf-and-root section simply from co-incidence; whether the Milanese carver was just dreaming up antiquity, or if he was copying an artefact genuinely ‘ancient’, or whether containers of this sort were really to be seen in the markets or apothecary’s workshops of early fifteenth century Dubrovnik or (even, as it might be) in reality or in imagery gained in the artist’s home town of Milan.
The method of construction and any ornament will have to be factored in, and whether (and why) those in the Voynich manuscript are coloured red and’/or blue.
This post is over the 1500 word mark, so I’ll break it here. I’d remind readers that it’s a summary of the writer’s own research, and if parts are used by others, the source is to be acknowledged.
Before ending this installment I do want to make the point that the Dubrovnik image comes very early in the history of art in the style we describe as Italy’s ‘Renaissance’ art, and despite its allusions to antiquity, the Dubrovnik Asclepius cannot be considered ‘renaissance’ art. Where it – and the Voynich quires – belong in the history of renaissance art can be seen from the following, quite standard, list of ‘top ten’ renaissance artists. I hope it will show clearly why, on the few occasions when Irwin Panofsky voluntarily commented on the Voynich manuscript, he emphasised two things: first, that it was undoubtedly genuine and secondly that there was nothing in it of renaissance style. For this ‘top ten’ list, I’ve lazily copied and adapted one provided in a post by Mark Cartwright.
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Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378-1455 CE) – the sculptor who created the ‘Gates of Paradise’ in Florence. GatesofParadise, (1425-52) Baptistery of San Giovanni in Florence.
Donatello (c. 1386-1466 CE) – Medici patrons. Baptistry gates competition divided him from Ghiberti, with whom he had been working from c.1401. A tax return from 1427 marks the peak of his career.
Jan van Eyck (c. 1390-1441 CE) – a genius of oil painting who has perhaps never been equalled since.
4. Giovanni Bellini (c. 1430-1516 CE) – a master of colour, perspective, and hyper-realistic detail.
5. Andrea Mantegna (c. 1431-1506 CE) – a brilliant draughtsman and a maestro at achieving playful effects of perspective.
6. Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510 CE) – a master with colours and at reinterpreting classical images.
7. Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519 CE) – he transformed the study of subjects and innovated in all areas, especially portraiture.
8. Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528 CE) – the greatest engraver and master of detail, light, and realism.
9. Michelangelo (1475-1564 CE) – the first ‘Renaissance man’ who was as skilled in painting as in sculpture.
10. Raphael (1483-1520 CE) – a master of colouring, harmony, and creating the illusion of space.
No Italian woodblock print can be directly relevant to discussion of the Voynich manuscript for, to quote the Met’s specialist, Wendy Thompson, “The golden age of Italian woodcut illustration began in the last quarter of the fifteenth century.” Other essays on the subject of woodblock prints, by the same author, here.
Afterword – (April 27th.). My review of Green and Brewer makes dour reading, so here’s some good news to begin from – the meticulous paper by Andrew and Noah Steckley, ‘Subtle Signs of Scribal Intent in the Voynich Manuscript‘, downloadable as a pdf through ArXiv.
And so to the less positive…
Among the ‘online community’, I’m developing a reputation for being the ‘grumpy old one’ because theoretical narratives fail to impress me, no matter how popular or whether or not they are propounded in print.
The reason is simple enough. I want the writers of semi-historical narratives to explain how they came to form their ideas, which ideas they are simply parroting from earlier amateurs and wiki articles, what questions they asked and investigated, and a clear statement of why they chose to ascribe the manuscript’s manufacture to one region and time rather than another. It’s not really too much to ask.
If you were to pick a manuscript at random from the collection of the British Library, or any other of the great European collections. you could ask reasonable questions and receive reasonable answers. Not with much Voynich writing.
Suppose you select a manuscript which the British (or other) major library has catalogued as “Twelfth-century English or French”. We’ll suppose it contains some images and a text written in Latin.
Now, you could ask of the library, ‘Why do you say this is “English or French”? Why not one or the other? Why could it not be described as Spanish, or as German, or as southern Italian?’ You’d get a considered answer, solidly grounded in codicology, palaeography, historical and art-historical scholarship. It would be a rational conclusion.
You could query it. You might ask ‘What’s so characteristically English-or-French’ about it? Is it the quality of the vellum? The way the sheets were cut? The method and spacing for ruling-out? Is it the quires’ form and dimensions? The type of thread and -stitching used when the quires were formed into a text-block?
And why “twelfth century” not thirteenth- or fourteenth- or later? Is it some quality in the inks? The range of pigments used (‘the palette’)? Is it the fact that a quill pen has been used? Is it the style/s of writing (the ‘hand/s’)? Is it the way the drawings are disposed upon the page? Is it the order of setting down text versus pictures? Is it the disposition of images on the page? Is it the way the human face and body are drawn? Is it the style of clothing? It is – more generally – the style of drawing as such? Is the attribution entirely dependent on interpretation of the images, or of the written text?
To some of those questions, the answer might be ‘yes’; to others ‘no’ and to some ‘that criterion does not apply’. But there would be a consistent and coherent explanation for why that manuscript was catalogued as ‘Twelfth-century English or French” and for why it could not be described as “mid-thirteenth century Spanish..or German..” (or whatever).
That’s what you don’t see in Voynich-related writings or as foundation for the Voynich theories most promoted in public arenas and in print. To keep this contemporary I’ll focus on a recent publication by Keagan Brewer and Monica Green. (advertised by one of its authors here).
For Monica Green’s decision to shift her focus from the earlier ‘Salernitan Trotula Voynich’ theory to this current ‘Hartleib-Trotula’ version, no explanation is given and to those who did not follow Green’s earlier efforts, a false impression might be taken that this is the first airing of her ‘Women’s genitalia and health’ idea, for she and her co-author say,
“First we looked at Bavarian physician Johannes Hartlieb (circa 1410–68), who lived around the time and place the Voynich manuscript was made”.
That’s not so, at least not in Green’s case, and she must also know that most of what Hartleib produced by way of ‘women’s medicine’ was merely a translation into German of the older Salernitan ‘Trotula’ which by Hartleib’s time was well known throughout southern Europe. I say Green must know this because it was she who picked up and developed the ‘Trotula’ research upon the death of John F. Benton in 1988. Her older ‘Salernitan-Trotula-Voynich’ theory was ignored, and her decision to shift the theory’s focus from Salerno to Germany, adding mention of pseudo-Albertus Magnus and Rudolf is certainly more likely to see the Germanist camp which formerly ignored and ridiculed her ideas turn towards her in a much friendlier mood, whether or not Green and Brewer acknowledge the precedent of Toresella’s “sex-crazed herbalist” theory.
In the end, what Green and Brewer offer us is just another typical Voynich-style story whose foundation is oft-repeated but baseless assertion, elaborated by no more than subjective impressions of drawings whose study has been omitted. I can find no other reasonable explanation for repeating long-outdated, and invalid assumptions, such as…
“Certain illustrations (the zodiac symbols, a crown design and a particular shape of castle wall called a swallowtail merlon) indicate the manuscript was made in the southern Germanic or northern Italian cultural areas.”
If a scholar makes such definite statements, one is entitled to ask the usual questions, such as “Where’s your informing research?” and “Where’s the balance of evidence?” and above all “where are the comparative studies which you read, or conducted, and which permitted you to reject all other possibilities?”
One might fairly ask these writers if they, themselves, took time to trace the history of those constellation emblems, or to investigate the various historical and iconographic questions raised. One is entitled to ask any writer to show, or cite, the evidence which they decided eliminated all possibilities save (in the case of Green and Brewer) a “German or northern Italian” provenance.
Are they aware that the ‘swallow tail merlons’ argument is bankrupt, depending as it did on two false assumptions – first that all remaining examples were created before 1440 and secondly that any drawing must mean the motif literally?
Monica Green and Keagan Brewer have followed the old, very old ‘Newbold’ approach – presuming that from no more than whatever their own imagination produces when they look at the manuscript’s problematic images, they can form a valid theory. As her chief key to understanding the whole content, provenance and ‘authorship’ for this manuscript, Green simply repeats her old impression that artefacts in the hands of some unclothed figures are positioned by reference to that figure’s genitals (rather than, say, their feet, or head, or spine or some relationship to the context in which the figure is placed). So the new version still says,
“One section contains illustrations of naked women holding objects adjacent to, or oriented towards, their genitalia. These wouldn’t belong in a solely herbal or astronomical manuscript. To make sense of these images, we investigated the culture of late-medieval gynaecology and sexology – which physicians at the time often referred to as “women’s secrets”.
To presume all unclothed figures ‘naked people’ is a very old and persistent flaw in Voynich studies; so is presuming the manuscript ought to be about medicine, and that the content was created only when the present manuscript was made (or as much later as a preferred theory might require). We are still left with no codicological, palaeographic, historical or art-historical reason for any of it.
Indifference to the history of art, medieval learning and even the history of medicine, is pervasive in Voynich writings, but even so it comes as a shock that Green and Brewer should presume to state as if it had been fact that Hartleib “lived around the time and place the Voynich manuscript was made.” It’s just not true.
We don’t know where the manuscript was made.
Research of the necessary seriousness, depth and quality has never yet been done by a person suitably qualified, experienced and free of influence from the more persistent (or ingratiating) Voynich fans.
As for when it was made – the range currently accepted is not so congenial to the Germanists, but was confirmed by radiocarbon-14 dating as the earlier decades of the fifteenth century.
The radiocarbon range is from 1405 (five years before Hartlieb was born) to c.1438, by which time Hartlieb had produced no more than a guide to various herbs, possibly developed from his student’s crib.
Apart from social advantages in the online ‘Voynich community’ I can’t see that Green’s ‘Trotula’ theory is much improved by her shifting its focus from Salerno to Germany.
I meant to add a comment on what Green and Brewer assert about the Voynich map, but it is so far below even the usual level of under-researched or plainly wrong Voynich theorising that I can only hope that those authors and their readers find time to take long daily walks and don’t leave themselves vulnerable to dehydration.
Postscript:
The post’s sub- title from a comment made (here) by David Cameron Staples, who said about Green and Brewer’s article:
What makes me well-disposed to this theory is that it’s 1) not self-published. 2) does not cast aspersions at the entire academic establishment for failing to recognise the author’s genius. 3) does not claim to be even attempting to “solve” the manuscript, or even to decipher the code, just to provide a new potentially useful data point 4) is careful to state the limits of its conclusions.
David apparently doesn’t know that although the “entire academic establishment” may not publicly shun Voynicheros or say in print that the Voynich manuscript is a field chiefly occupied by fans, fanatics and fantasists, a majority will avoid any contact with the online ‘community’ or its best-known representatives.
Voynich ‘conferences’ might be labelled as international, and numerous Voynicheros do have degrees in some field or another (not necessarily relevant), but in the end most Voynich theories are built from whatever most people are used to hearing, and what their own imagination suggests to them when they look at the drawings.
Voynich research is typically limited to hunting means to have another semi-historical fantasy tale adopted as if it were valid.
There was a time when a Voynich researcher could laugh at the whole phenomenon of ‘Voynich studies’. Not today, when each man’s theory is his best-beloved and to doubt its rectitude is fighting words, but some years ago when self-directed laughter was more often heard, Nick Pelling once wrote:
“They may beat us on quantity of madness, but on quality – never.”
I’ll say again, I really do not mind what a person thinks, but I expect to have it explained why they think so, and I do mind when the ‘explanation’ is mere rationalisation and extrapolation from no better basis than personal impressions and second-hand fantasies.
I expect you have heard the one about the fellow asked to take the Rorschach test. The story ends .. “You’re the one with the dirty pictures’.
Below, fully clothed (of course) is an image of St.Agatha, patron saint of Apulia.
It’s easy to give an impression that research is a Roman road – broad, full-on, forward-march. That’s how conclusions must be written up, but it means that many fascinating side-lights must be dropped when they lie on the wrong side of the balance of evidence.
Here are a few examples from my research-notes about the leaf-and-root section.
Fantasy and reality.
The Smithsonian dates this show-globe to c.1850, so more than sixty years before Wilfrid began hawking his manuscript about in New York, The form is possibly derived from that of a hookah, but it resembles so nearly a couple of the artefacts in the Voynich manuscript’s leaf-and-root section that I couldn’t help imagining a scene where it been made later, by a glass-maker who saw the seemingly impossible forms in the Vms as a challenge.
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2. Keeping an eye on the Time.
Europe of 1430 (or so) was a very different place from Europe in 1536 (or so). In the heat of the chase for something that might seem to us to look “like” something in the Vms, it’s very easy to lose sight of that fact.
Hunting precedents for the leaf-and-root section’s simple, cylindrical containers, it became a constant effort not to start behaving as if half a century, or 75 years, or 100 years was neither here nor there. But the fact is that even before you reach the Columbus/da Gama line, Europe had seen radical change since the 1430s.
Library of Trinity College, Cambridge MS O.I.20, fol. 265 r., and see 246 v. Illustrations from a 13thC copy of a work on surgery by Roger of Salerno.
This next example was especially difficult to put aside, because it does show two forms of canister – one with overlapping lid, like a hat-box, and the other with a pressure-sealed or ‘hermetically’-sealed almost-flat lid, a type also found in the leaf-and-root section. But … it’s just too late, and without evidence from archaeology or some other reliable source, one cannot just imagine the scene in Venice in 1516 would be what you’d see in a pharmacy there – or anywhere else – in 1416.
Nor will this next one do – unless I find time to research the question of whether such containers were used in the eastern Mediterranean before the 15thC. The photograph was taken in Ankara’s Pharmacy Museum and published in the mid 1980s.
Bhupendra R. Hajratwala, ‘Turkish Pharmacy Museum’, Pharmacy in History, Vol. 27, No. 4 (1985), pp. 221-222.
Woodblock illustrations require caution; a block might be adjusted for a later edition, or for use in another book altogether. This (below) has been altered.
But the next image passed every test, even if it doesn’t prove what you might hope or expect it should. In the next post, I’ll provide details of my source.
In treating drawings from the Voynich manuscript, there are what can be described as critical axes – one is the historical time-line; for general readers, I’ll describe the other as the image’s historical lineage. In terms of a human family, the two would be closely connected, but that isn’t necessarily so for every element in a piece of medieval art – not even in a piece certainly made in medieval Europe, by a European, for a western Christian (‘Latin’) audience.
The most common error which has been seen in Voynich studies when the drawings are cited as support of a theoretical history, is that a theorist will presume that ‘medieval’ means ‘medieval European’ and then imposes present-day state-borders and notions of ‘nationality’ upon it. There are other unconscious assumptions made, such as that medieval Europe was essentially parochial, static, and sedentary. It is very rare to find any Voynich researcher investigate media other than manuscripts, or researchers with a ‘national’ theory look past the modern nation’s boundaries for comparative material.
Reminder: the purpose of this blog is to investigate why study of this one medieval manuscript diverged so early from normal practices and standards – and why it still does.
Reviewing the past century and more, we find it usual that a person with an idea – a possibility – that the manuscript was/might have been made in thirteenth-century England, or in fourteenth-century France, or in fifteenth century Italy, or in sixteenth century Spain (etc.) will never test the merits of that possibility but only hunt for items, or formulate ‘logical’ arguments that they think likely to persuade others to adopt that idea as ‘theory’.
The benchmark is not that a comparison or fact is ‘demonstrably relevant’ to this manuscript, but that it is ‘likely to be believed’ by a target group, whether a group of potential buyers (Wilfrid), or a group of cryptographers (see list of persons mentioned by d’Imperio), or more recently those who regard themselves as members of ‘the’ online community.
To adopt an idea as ‘theory’ in advance of any research done is a reversal of the usual order of operations, and this post and the next will, I hope, demonstrate the distinction. For this post, I’ll adopt the role, not of an ordinary Voynich theorist but of a fairly recently-defined notional “type”: the Voynich ‘meta-theory’ guy. In Part 2, I’ll treat the same material using the normal, non-Voynich, approach.
The example I’ll use are cylindrical containers drawn in the manuscript’s ‘leaf and root’ section.
What the Voynich ‘meta-theory’ character pretends to do is to apply his imagined superior genius to explain, without specifics, why apparent differences of opinion between mere ‘researchers’ can be resolved and reconciled by reason of his genius alone.
What he actually does is not bother with research at all, apart from trawling and pilfering from the real work done by others. His excuse is that mere ‘researchers’ haven’t the ability or the right to create ‘meta-theories’ as he does and, therefore, that the people who do the work are persons inferior to him in his adopted pose of professorial authority, so that he need not name or credit them save when he pleases, though he plagiarise without limit.
In effect, this sort of ‘meta-theory’ chap is attempting to manufacture the simulacrum of an elephant by taking a bit of rope from one person, a fan from another, a handy snake from a third, and a bit wall earlier prepared, mixing them with various other oddments. Magical thinking.
On second thoughts that analogy to ‘the blind men and the elephant’ is less apt than the tale of ‘Stone soup‘. I hope you read it.
Have cauldron. Your work accepted.
In the role of a s ‘meta-theory’ guy, I begin by looking at current theories about these objects from the leaf-and-root section.
Newbold’ impression was that they are “the sort of receptacles used by [medieval] pharmacists”. Another, who imagines the manuscript a ‘military text’ produced a ‘picture-match’ meant to guide readers to infer that the Voynich objects are meant for some type of handgun or cannon. Another Voyinchero is attracted by Newbold’s ‘microscope’ idea, but since microscopes didn’t exist in the thirteenth century England, he says these microscopes prove the drawings were made later than the fifteenth century.
Another Voynich theorist says no-one else has noticed the ‘feet’ under some of these cylinders, that they are ‘like’ the feet on Norwegian metal stoves, and produces a ‘picture-match’ in proof – not mentioning that the Norwegian artefact is eighteenth-century.
It is obvious that not one of those theorists has paid close attention to the argument of any other, nor engaged in debate with them.
So here comes the meta-theory guy with his conceptual cauldron. He looks at which persons might provide him with the most social or other credit. His meta-theory will have to include something about German-speaking areas and western emperors to please Rene Zandbergen; something from Nick Pelling – perhaps his enquiry into Murano glass; a few Kircher-related items. And without explaining where the whole maritime-trade and cartography theme entered Voynich studies, that too, with the permission of the relevant researcher or not. More, since that work by a researcher not-to-be-named is fairly well-known, the meta-theory will need a few arbitrary substitutions, as ‘Adriatic’ for ‘south-western Mediterranean; ‘Venetians for Genoese’ …and so on.
So I’m looking at the Adriatic. For the Kircher part, I’ll add a letter written to Athanasius Kircher in 1639 (work first contributed by Berj Ensanien); and a letter written by Kircher (comments and trans. by Philip Neal), and more items taken from D.N. O’Donovan’s research, though of course one may not speak that name without incurring forum meta-demerits. Meta-theory me can probably get away with implying myself entitled to credit for Berj’ work too (who knows his name today?).
Berj Ensanien, ‘The antique script communications-to-Kircher of Fr. Matthieu Coupain’, Journal of Voynich Studies, Volume III (2009), 31st. Jan., (online)
The Meta-theory.
So the meta-theory is to be “Fifteenth-century-western-Christian-German-Venetian-Illyrian-medicinal-alchemical-Voynich” meta-theory.
What’s not to love?
I now review the various efforts at ‘picture-match’ for these simple cylindrical containers but find the ‘picture-matches’ to date pretty woeful, and though – as a meta-theory guy – I regard research as activity beneath me, I start hunting something similar from the medieval Adriatic, finding this on the Balkan side.
It was carved during the first half of the fifteenth century in Dubrovnik, and shows Asclepius (Lat. Aesculapius), “restorer of [ancient] medicine”, with two lovely lidded, cylindrical containers under his right hand and under his left various leaves which, it is obvious, he has just taken from those same containers.
‘Meta-theory guy’ is satisfied, and expects you to believe the image supports his “Fifteenth-century-western-Christian-German-Venetian-Illyrian-medicinal-alchemical-Voynich” meta-theory.
NOTE: The old Roman province of ‘Illyria’ covered much of the Balkans, including what would be later described as Dalmatia and as Albania, respectively. Meta-theorist me will cite, without acknowledgements, the following images (below) taken from Voynich research published by the real me, D.N. O’Donovan. Depending on personal inclinations, the meta-theorist might, or might not, reproduce the references which were provided by the original Voynich researcher.
What else should be in the cauldron? Oh yes -Holy Roman Emperors. Right. So I now deign to do a web-search for ‘Dubrovnik’ AND ‘Holy Roman Emperor’…. and there you are…
“In 1418, the Republic of Ragusa, as Dubrovnik was then named, erected a statue of Roland …as a symbol of loyalty to Sigismund of Luxembourg (1368–1437), King of Hungary and Croatia (as of 1387), Prince-Elector of Brandenburg (between 1378 and 1388 and again between 1411 and 1415), German King (as of 1411), King of Bohemia (as of 1419) and Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire (as of 1433), who helped by a successful war alliance against Venice to retain Ragusa’s independence.
Simples.
Kircher plus ‘Illyria’… Kircher’s letter to Moretus (1639) and letter to Kircher from Fr. Coupain.
Meta-theory guy me might now pilfer, without mention of the source, the following image of old Illyrian costume and (again without mentioning the researcher who first contributed this) compare it with the doubled skirt on the Voynich’s archer and explain that the Voynich archer’s bow is a type attested in use by marines – but not that it is seen in a fourteenth-century French manuscript or that the only surviving example of such a bow was one used by Spanish marines post 1490. (The garment is known as a fustanella).
Apart from the simple cylinders, .. oh well, for the rest I wave vaguely towards Venice and Murano – not mentioning its demographics, but leaving it to Nick Pelling to explain the ‘Murano’ argument. I’ll have to credit him, I suppose.
I might say something vague, then, about the Adriatic routes being controlled by Venice and that Venice chose Ragusa’s head of state (‘Rector’) during the 14th C. (No research needed – I got that from another wiki article). I might pilfer a bit more from the research done by you-know-who, such as mention of a map seen in an old Franciscan friary in Dalmatia by someone who later commented on it, and who had also been asked to comment on the Voynich manuscript. But I might omit his name too.
But overall I have plenty of items which I can produce as support for my asserting that “cylindrical containers of this kind were used in the Adriatic during the early fifteenth century, to transport medicinal herbs’
Who wouldn’t believe it? How could it not win a popularity poll on ‘X’?
Oh – nearly forgot the ‘alchemical’ group – the relief in Dubrovnik includes a tripod and a receiver of some sort.
So that’s a Voynich meta-theory.
What’s not to like? I’ll tell you.
“Meta-theory guy” avoided giving you information that would allow you to test or check the accuracy of his assertions
‘M-T’ added nothing to what you actually know about the drawings in Voynich manuscript’s leaf-and-root section; deliberately led you to believe information and insights were his which were appropriated improperly and then re-used in a form so distorted as to misinform. He did not even try to identify a single one among the plant-parts in that section of the manuscript, nor establish uses for any. ‘M-T’ didn’t even trouble to try and demonstrate that his theory about the cylindrical containers applies to the rest, and said not a word about any finer details, or why care should have been taken to include them when the drawings are already so very small.
What you took from the ‘meta-theory’ was an understanding of what you were to believe – the ‘Adriatic’-imperial-Venetian-herbal-medicine’ storyline. Not why you should believe it, nor whether the evidence adduced was properly represented, or any argument proving the theory an accurate reflection of the draughtsman’s intention.
There was no effort made to trace the lineage of that ‘Asclepius’ portrait. For all you know, it was created by a passing Russian, or an Ethiopian, or an Armenian. It might be a meticulous copy, of some remnant from Dubrovnik’s ancient past. All you learn from a theorist is their theory, and theories never advance beyond ‘It might have been…’
Next post, speaking as a researcher, I’ll demonstrate how a better perspective and rather different conclusions result when you are provided with evidence and sources in a more traditional way – traditional, that is, outside the Voynich bubble.
Voynich Revisionist 
