Skies above Pt 4: Past studies

Today, theories focused on ‘naming the author’ are less prevalent than they were, but discussion of the month-diagrams continues to circle the narrow circuit it did  half a century ago, and whose furlong posts (one cannot call them milestones) are summarised below.  Failure to move forward is not  due to those fifty-year old ideas and impressions having proven true from a balance of evidence, but because tradition and repetition lends them greater credence than is deserved by any evidence adduced then or since.

Rather embarrassingly one still finds even today that assumptions infusing d’Imperio’s book of half a century ago remain unquestioned – ‘givens’ – within the study.  Among these tacitly accepted notions is that any non-Latin (western Christian) matter could occur in this manuscript only because selected by some Latin ‘gatekeeper’;  that the astronomical learning of Jews or of others save those who wrote in Arabic can be relevant only in the context of magic, astrology and other non-objective systems – and even then as imagined subject to Latin mediation.  Thus, for example, Panofsky’s reference to Kabbalah is transformed into an assumption of magical and not philosophical thought and only discussed through the prism of post-1492 works of Latin magic and  ‘Christian Cabala’.

Similarly, though the Arabs’ “lunar mansions” system has been mentioned now and then, the usual habit has been to limit discussion to what appears of it in Latin works, and to again consider it chiefly in terms of works directly related to Latin interest in astrology and magic.

There may be more serious efforts underway to investigate other possibilities apart from the theory of fifteenth-century Latin authorship and mediation, but if so they have had little effect on the culture of the ‘Voynich community’ in public.   I might say here that after having shared some of the research conducted over almost a decade, and with the kind advice and guidance of specialists in a number of areas, including Jewish scholarship,  publication of a certain work whose authors were two well-known Voynicheros, and another less well known,  and in which was included a so-called ‘Jewish theory’ which I can only describe as a parody or travesty in its abysmal ignorance of its supposed subject, and such utter indifference to fact and to cultural sensitivities that it was one of the reasons which led me to  close Voynichimagery to the public, deciding to share no more original work online except as a formal paper.

By “Alfonso’s manuscript” it is usually supposed Panofsky meant either Libros del saber de astronomía (Books of Wisdom of Astronomy) or  Libro de los juicios de las estrellas (Book of Judgements of Astrology), with the former the more probable.The question then is which copy he meant by ‘Alfonso’s manuscript.’King Alfonso X of Castile did not compose the Libros… (though his name serves, still, for  ‘gate-keeper’).  As the  modern title suggests,the Libros del saber… is a compilation, and we now know it was made in Burgos at the king’s command, and by Jewish scholars who translated works from their languages of Aramaic and Arabic.  Aramaic remained in use among Jews as a language of religious advice and commentary. In the eastern Mediterranean, Aramaic had been widely spoken but with the Muslim conquests was gradually supplanted by Arabic as the language of everyday life.Cross-Mediterranean trade, however, long maintained Greek as  lingua franca, and this was so too among Mediterranean Jews before the revival of Hebrew as a spoken language – c.10thC. On the matter of Aramaic, see for example:

In Arabic-speaking lands, “It is known that at an early age Jewish boys had to memorize the Aramaic translation of the weekly reading from the Hebrew Bible, and in order to understand the Hebrew original as well as its Aramaic translation, they had to memorize the Arabic translation verse by verse…. This popular background was obviously shared by Karaites and Rabbanites alike.

• Meira Polliack, ‘The Medieval Karaite Tradition of Translating the Hebrew Bible into Arabic: Its Sources, Characteristics and Historical Background’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Third Series, Vol. 6, No. 2 (Jul., 1996), pp. 189-196. (quoted from p.193).

I am not concerned with linguistics. If any reader’s interest is piqued by mention of Aramaic,  Michael Sokoloff‘s work is perhaps the best place to start, but readers may want to  consider Koen Gheuens’ recent work on ‘type to token’ ratios first.  The following papers are listed, not as key texts in linguistics but because each proved either fascinating, or useful, or both.  For an instant widening of horizons, the first paper is warmly recommend to all readers.

Bibliography – Aramaic-related.

• *Alexander Kulik, ‘Jews from Rus in Medieval England’, The Jewish Quarterly Review, Vol. 102, No. 3 (Summer 2012) 371-403.*
• Peter T. Daniels, ‘A Calligraphic Approach to Aramaic Paleography’, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Vol. 43, No. 1 (Jan., 1984), pp. 55-68. In the best scholarly tradition, Daniel begins by giving the reader an outline of, and references to, previous studies on the subject.
• David M. Bunis, Judezmo: The Jewish Language of the Ottoman Sephardim:  European Judaism: A Journal for the New Europe, Vol. 44, No. 1, The State of Ladino Studies II (Spring 2011), pp. 22-35.
•  Charlotte Hallavant and Marie-Pierre Ruas, ‘The first archaeobotanical evidence of Spinacia oleracea L. (spinach) in late 12th—mid 13th century A.D. France; Vegetation History and Archaeobotany, Vol. 23, No. 2 (March 2014), pp. 153-165. [A history of the dissemination of spinach. My only excuse for including this item from concurrent research into the plant-pictures, and apart from intrinsic interest is that before reaching France, spinach had come first to Iberia, and apparently straight from Mesopotamia, where in the 4thC a work written in Aramaic mentions the plant. – D.]
• Kottsieper and Peter Stein, ‘Sabaic and Aramaic — a common origin?’,  Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies, Vol. 44, Supplement: Language of
  Southern Arabia: Papers from the Special Session of the Seminar for Arabian Studies held on 27 July 2013 (2014), pp. 81-87.
• John C. Reeves, ‘Manichaica Aramaica? Adam and the Magical Deliverance of Seth’. Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 119, No. 3 (Jul. – Sep., 1999), pp.432-439.
• Avihai Shivtiel, ‘Judaeo- Romance and Judaeo-Arabic Word-list from the Genizah’, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, April 2007  34(1), 63-74.
• Maud Kozodoy, ‘Medieval Hebrew Medical Poetry: Uses and Contexts’, Aleph , Vol. 11, No. 2 (2011), pp. 213-288. Considers 12th-14thC works from Latin (Christian) Iberia.
• Michael Sokoloff and Joseph Yahalom, ‘Aramaic Piyyuṭim [liturgical poems] from the Byzantine Period’, The Jewish Quarterly Review, New Series, Vol. 75, No. 3 (Jan., 1985), pp. 309-321. [More interesting than the title might suggest].

• Geoffrey Khan, ‘The Neo-Aramaic Dialect Spoken by Jews from the Region of Arbel (Iraqi Kurdistan)  Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Vol. 62, No. 2 (1999), pp. 213-225.

Los Libros.. was made in the last quarter of the thirteenth century. The original manuscript is lost and the earliest copy remaining is in the library of the Complutense University in Madrid. (note – 2019 – I had earlier thought this the copy Panofsky meant by ‘Alfonso’s manuscript’ but now think the Vatican copy the more likely).

Textual and iconological precedents and/or exemplars for the Libros has been treated by numerous scholars, but chiefly in the context of Alfonso’s reign and other works produced for him.   Of course, as  Panofsky surely knew the text’s origins lay elsewhere.

The original is lost.  The  copy of Libros del saber de astronomia  in the Complutense University collection is early, dated 1278 AD, It was made in Burgos.

• Madrid, Biblioteca Histórica Marqués de Valdecilla, Universidad Complutense de Madrid (BHl BH Mss. 156) Libros del saber de astronomia.(1276-79) (digitised, world catalogue library, Item 15401).

Others held in Spain:

• Madrid, National Library of Spain Mss 1197  Tratados de Alfonso X sobre astrología y sobre las propiedades de las piedras  (1501 to 1600?).  (ascription ‘Alfonso X’)
• Madrid, National Library of Spain, Mss  3306  Colección de libros relativos a astrología y astronomía, (1401 to 1600).  (digitised, Biblioteca Nacional de España , Biblioteca Digital Hispánica). Title on the binding ‘Astrologia de los Arabes’. Explanatory technical diagrams executed in monochrome, those in the later section very fine.

Vatican copy (introduced to Aby Warburg in 1911)

• Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (BAV) Reg.lat.1283. Title as “Tratado de astrología y magia” de Alfonso X El Sabio”. Digitised in three parts, the relevant section in Part A.
• Alejandro Garcia Aviles, ‘Two Astromagical Manuscripts of Alfonso X’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes Vol. 59 (1996) No.19.

Among secondary references listed in the BAV I would recommend:.

• Maria Teresa Cacho, ‘Manuscritos hispánicos de los siglos XV y XVI en bibliotecas italianas’, in Nápoles-Roma 1504. Culture y literatura española y portuguesa en Italia in the fifth centenary of la muerte de Isabel la Católica, edición al cuidado de Javier Gómez-Montero & Folke Gernert, (2005),
• Alejandro Garcia Aviles, El tiempo y los astros: Arte, ciencia y religio6n Edad Media. (Eitum: 2001).  The title translates as Time and stars : art, science and religion in the High Middle Ages.  The volume is offered as a free-to-download pdf online, but on a site which demands personal information.

Four years afterwards and in Hamburg, Warburg mould meet the newly-graduated Erwin Panofsky.  Their association, and the disruptions of war, make it probable that Panofsky’s knowledge of the Libros was due to Warburg.   The influence of the one scholar on the other has been much discussed in the literature but was neatly surveyed and commented on by Elizabeth Seer‘s lecture, now uploaded at you.tube:

• Elizabeth Seer, ‘First Contact: Panofsky meets Warburg‘.

Among the lines investigated but found to be ‘dead ends’ were  Libro de las formas et de las ymagenes, and the woefully confused images in extant Latin copies of the Picatrix.*  I expect some readers will have suspected the same after my reference to the Jagelonian Picatrix in the previous post.  I confess I’m at a loss to understand why the Picatrix should so often crop up in Voynich writings and can only suggest it may be due to d’Imperio’s having mentioned it and that a copy (now in Darmstadt) was once in Rudolf II’s library – as Pingree notes in his critical edition of the Latin text.

IN 2010 the present writer gave it as her opinion – not as hypothesis but as the conclusion of research – that the central emblems in the Voynich diagrams represent a late phase in the text’s development, and that while most of the content appears to have arrived in the Latin domain by about 1330 AD, these emblems are among those added later ,closer to when the present manuscript was produced, and by re-employing images from a Latin source which she estimated as c.10thC in date, and possibly from Fleury.

If we could be certain about why the centres were excised from the Complutense ms, it would surely  shed more light on the nature of the emblems in the (now lost) original.  The excisions here may be due to reasons as simple as that an old manuscript was cannibalised for models to be used in the scriptorium, or stolen by someone who liked the look of them (not unknown), but given that  Panofsky also thought the Voynich imagery contained ‘something of Cabala’ one must also consider the possibility that the original emblems were removed because they showed evidence of similar esoteric Jewish themes.

Historically, the idea is consistent with what we know occurred in late medieval Iberia. A situation of that sort offers one possible explanation for the disparity between the Voyinch diagrams and their emblems, the result of which has been a disparity in their legibility for a modern western audience; the emblem is formed according to  conventions of western Europe’s visual language and more generally that of the Mediterranean world; as a result it seems easily legible while the rest of the diagram does not.  A modern reader of European heritage (direct or otherwise) interprets at first glance the image of a balance, yet is bemused by an oddly-shaped female figure in a container which could as easily be meant for a tower as a basket or tub.  This is not a draughtsman’s idiosyncratic drawing; it is a drawing whose meaning depends on a set of ideas and associations (a ‘visual language’) not our own.

• Harvey J. Hames, ‘Exotericism and Esotericism in Thirteenth Century Kabbalah‘ (webpage)

And as the complex vision of the celestial hierarchy entered western Christendom from a non-canonical source (Pseudo-Dionysos), so too its suffusion through Jewish medieval thought was owed to the non-canonical Jewish works of Kabbalah.

It was also contrary to Jewish custom to depict angels winged, or figures which were half-human and half animal.  It is to Jews of the eastern Mediterranean that the west owes its depiction of Sagittarius as a fully human, striding or standing bowman. In the opinion of the present writer, the most probable means by which it came west to be represented in glass within early works of the then-new Opus Francigenum is that it came along with the red glass tesserae and perhaps also with workmen from the region of Lake Tiberius and from Tyre.

Though the present author’s citing, in that context ,the zodiac from Beth Alpha was met with indifference or assertions of its irrelevance at the time, one now sees the same mosaic (minus any of the accompanying historical and cultural notes, or the point in citing it) reproduced in various Voynich writers’ contributions to the study.

But to return to the question of possible influence from Kabbalah – this cannot explain the style in which the ‘ladies’ are drawn, and offers no immediate explanation for their ‘barrels’ either.  Reference to Jewish custom, more generally, might bear an argument that the tiered ‘ladies’ were meant for angels but since they are not winged, they can scarcely be other than Jewish angels or pre-Christian equivalents.  On the other hand, we have examples of the term ‘angel’ being used in other senses, as a bishop’s being described as the angel of the region under his guidance.  If we were to suppose such a case for the tiered ‘ladies’ however, we could only suppose them to represent locations; it is inconceivable that early Christian practice could be to signify a bishop by means of a naked female form.

Any later argument that the ‘ladies’ are tiered Christian angels must refer to a diagram which survives only in a late copy of a text not composed until a century after the Voynich manuscript was made.

A point regularly overlooked is that, while attempts to argue by ‘matching the picture’ may be valid when stylistics are taken into account, they are invalid if an image is defined only by some object perceived in it.

That becomes obvious if considered in any real-world and non-Voynich context.

No-one would claim that a fresco in which the Virgin Mary was shown, seated, must be Spanish for no better reason than that a Spanish icon was set beside it and that too showed the Virgin seated.

Style of drawing and the contexts matter.

Informing language is also important.  Most of us retain concepts  by means of words, and links between concepts are also, for most of us, conveyed in words.It is very difficult for anyone who has acquired language to set about drawing say, a cat, without first thinking the word ‘cat’. A cartoon punning on the (late) Shah of Iran by making the figure half feline would immediately suggest to us (quite apart from context and drawing style) that the first maker may have spoken French and intended the image as a visual pun addressed to Francophone audience.

Such an impression may then guide research, and may prove the key indicator of origin, but until deeper enquiry confirms or denies, it remains just a ‘guess’.The search must be aimed at finding  stylistic customs and linguistic disposition occurring together, and in a way that accords with the problematic image.

I do not think that the Libros images do this.  It may have been Panofsky’s opinion that they do but if so, he did not express himself so strongly. Again, I do not think the celestial hierarchy image in the later copy of Thenaud’s Introductory Treatise can be argued, retrospectively, an explanation for the Voynich month-diagrams.  Others, maintaining a strictly ‘Latin European’ theme, and following d’Imperio’s focus on seventeenth-century ‘Christian Kabbalah’ may be inclined to differ.