Category: art analysis – approaches

O’Donovan notes #12.3 the merlon thing. The mapping exercise.

c.2700 words

The author’s rights are asserted.

Update, .

Koen has been in touch, and explained that the project was open collaboration, any forum-members who cared to do so contributing information and pictures they found and these, naturally enough, depended on each member’s decisions about where to look for examples. The map which results is thus a map of those contributions, and indirectly a reflection of members’ areas of interest. At the same time, my impression is that Koen would still welcome a broader data-base. If you care to contribute, but disinclined to have to join an online forum to do it, you might leave a comment under Koen’s blogpost of 2021. [here].

16th March 2023.

——-

Researchers whose attention is focused on the written text in Beinecke MS 408 are looking for single finite answer to what is commonly assumed a ciphertext. I hope I do them no injustice in saying that for most, scientific method is closely associated with statistical analysis, and in recent years we have seen images mapped as data points in an effort to apply forms of frequency analysis.

“Scientific” statistics.

Where in earlier years, the habit among those without specific training in reading pre-modern images was to claim it needed nothing but subjective interpretation and commonsense, or that historical arguments could be made by doing no more than presenting paired images as ‘matches’.

More recently, we have seen some effort made to reduce the treatment of drawings to a kind of statistical analysis which, though not particularly appropriate as methodology seems to be regarded as more efficient than studying the history of art and its methodologies, as if mapping ‘data points’ is by definition more scientific.

Few of us now leave school without learning that any science experiment begins by clearly stating the aim of that experiment. Then by itemising the specimens or samples to be tested. In labs one then describes the method, or at least details of the ISO and Standard Method(s) being applied.

Science students soon learn that if sample-collection is biased; if the methods employed are inappropriate; even if one or more samples are wrongly identified or if the technician is careless in applying standard methods, they still end up with a statistical result but the question posed will not have been answered nor any hypothesis rightly tested.

J.K. Petersen

So far as I’m aware, the first person to try creating distribution-maps for images from Beinecke MS 408 was the Voynichero known only as ‘JK Petersen’. His efforts were hampered by his having evidently little background in medieval history, codicology, or palaeography and none in the history of art or the analytical methods best suited to addressing problematic drawings. His dedication to the ‘all-western-Christian-Germanic-central European’ vision was undisguised and was reflected in his research parameters and thus in his range of processed data.

On the other hand, even within his narrow research-parameters, his work turned up images that certainly assisted others, simply because he introduced so many. I believe he was the first to refer to that French Franciscan manual’s ‘November crocodile’ which assisted our own investigation of the Voynich calendar. What they didn’t and couldn’t do was to prove the manuscript a German product.

Koen and the Lobsters.

Koen Gheuns applied a more nuanced version of that method to clarify one path of dissemination for the ‘lobsters’ in the Voynich calendar, although (perhaps depending on the Warburg database?), he believed the type originated with Michael Scot’s work in twelfth-century Italy and Sicily.

From that point Koen moved forward through northern France to Alsace and to examples seen in images produced from Diebold Lauber’s workshop.

Our subsequent study here complemented Koen’s work by enquiring what precedent works might have influenced Scot’s conception of the Cancer lobsters. We focused on England where Scot received his early education, and France where he received his higher education, as well as southern Spain where he worked for some time and Sicily-southern-Italy where Scot worked in the Sicilian court and where the core copies of his texts were made and first preserved.

Once again, the presence of an effort at data-mapping proved a useful resource, even if it did not prove what the makers believed their statistical-geographic maps proved.

Koen et al. and swallowtails.

Koen Gheuens next approached the topic of ‘swallowtail’ merlons but it is characteristic of Koen’s thoughtful approach that, unlike ‘JKP’ , he began by stating clearly the aim of his latest experiment. His question was “Where were images of swallowtail merlons produced before 1450?”. This was limited by his further aim to more clearly define what is implied when sources speak of ‘swallowtail’ merlons as characteristic of northern Italy. He wanted more clarity on ‘northern Italy’.

The end result was that his research-parameters reduced in practice to “Where, within western Europe, do we find drawings or paintings showing buildings with swallowtail battlements?”

His tacit argument seems to be that wherever we find the most extant instances of such drawings or paintings, that is the most likely place to have seen the origin of this detail in one roundel of the Voynich map (often described as the ‘rosettes page’).

Whether the experiment did – or even could – point to where the Voynich manuscript was made is the question we consider in this post.

As Koen said, in his post of 2021, he had intended to limit the experiment to images in manuscripts and other forms of art. It was a sensible and well-informed decision, but in the event because working with a group he agreed to add a layer marking extant buildings on which ‘swallowtails’ of any type can be seen today.

As a result, the number of data points was greatly increased; the architectural (red) dots largely obscured the iconographic results, and the overall weighting shifted. (see maps further below)

I have tried to contact Koen, first to ask his permission to reproduce his map, and then to ask if he could send a comparison from which the red dots were absent, but so far I’ve been unable to reach him.

Koen assumes that a representation of ‘swallowtail’ merlons will serve as a cultural marker and thus narrow the range in which we might suppose the Voynich manuscript was made. His post of 2021 does not appear to distinguish provenance for the manuscript’s manufacture from provenancing contents.

If it could be shown that, prior to 1440, none but northern Italian draughtsmen created drawings that included swallowtail merlons, or rendered them in wood-carving, relief carvings, mosaics and so on, the chances would be good that the draughtsman who put them on the structure drawn in the map’s north roundel had been a native of northern Italy, or had gained his training there.

But even then, it would be just a fair chance. At the very least one would have to show that all the stylistic details in the map – or in that one roundel – find counterparts in works first created in northern Italy.

And even if the draughtsman had been native to northern Italy, it would not alone tell us where he was when the drawing was first given its form, or when that happened.

Numerous non-Latins travelled in Europe and members of various Italian city-states travelled abroad. Before 1440, we know, some were to be found resident around the Black Sea, in Egypt, central Asia, southern Iraq, Iran and southern China.

I’ll say again – provenancing the manuscript-as-object is work proper to codicologists and palaeographers. Provenancing content is a separate matter – and more exactly, a range of separate matters.

Koen’s range of samples accords with his stated aim of clarifying ‘northern Italian’ in connection with drawings of swallowtail merlons, but the finished map could suggest a certain bias in the sampling. Could – not necessarily does. The reason is poor documentation.

The reader is left uncertain whether the absence of examples from England, France, most of Spain, and the Adriatic (apart from Venice) means that efforts to find examples in those regions returned a null result, or whether the research parameters were so narrowly defined from the outset that those regions were ignored? If the study intended to clarify ‘northern Italian’ it’s understandable, but in that case why include manuscripts from Barcelona and Naples? Was the research heavily dependent, perhaps, on libraries having a large number of their manuscripts digitised?

Koen explained clearly the difficulties involved in adding architectural structures to the data, and in my opinion his initial plan to omit structures was wise, but working as part of a team means compromise. The red dots now swamp the map, and in some cases (such as Genoa), the structures included do not have pre-1440 merlons no matter how energetically civic pride might insist the nineteenth-century reconstructions were historically accurate.

Further difficulties arise because the specimens/data are not labelled, or not labelled accurately in the legend, so that readers are left without any idea of whether the cluster over Milan is the result of a single atelier’s work over, say, 1440-1450, or whether they represent manuscripts made there between 1200-1450. Those placed on Venice may, for all we know, contain a text closely related to that of Naples or Barcelona. Specimen-labelling is basic to any scientific experiment.

Below is a close-up of northern Italy. The whole of Koen’s map can be seen through the link (HERE) which he, and later Peter M., provided.

While this post was in draft, Peter M. directed me to the latest version but it seems little has changed since 2021.

So what does the map tell us?

Not very much. For non-manuscript paintings (the blue dots) none but location details are provided and for the manuscripts (black dots) all the usual information is omitted.

It is impossible, therefore, to determine whether – for example – what we see as blue dots through central Italy is the result of a single painter’s wanderings, or whether due to dissemination of a particular text, or text-type, or the motif’s popularity and transmission within a certain sector of society, such as the intermarrying nobility or a particular religious order.

We cannot follow the chronology for dissemination in manuscripts, since none is identifiable: date, title, holding library and shelf-number are all omitted.

Red Dots.

Koen was perfectly right to urge caution about the overlay of those red dots. Even specialists in military architecture, and archaeologists working in the field are cautious when it comes to assertions about present-day examples of swallowtail merlons.

Even specialists in the history of these forms may have difficulty determining whether some are, or are not authentic reconstructions. I may be mistaken but to the best of my knowledge no original swallowtail merlons are extant in Genoa despite the protests of civic pride that the nineteenth-century rebuilds are authentic reconstructions.

It is true, as in the case of these Genoese merlons (above) that some closely reproduce an early form of such merlons. it is evident from the merlon’s height – able to cover a standing archer – and from the inclusion of slits through which the enemy might be observed and an arrow fired. Nonetheless, the merlons we see today date to the nineteenth-century.

Thanks to a Peter M., who quotes a source he describes as Castle Association and Architecture in the Middle Ages, I can say that before 1450 AD

*The swallowtail pinnacle (merlon) is unknown in the German-speaking part of Switzerland.

*North of the Alps, there are none [no structures with swallowtail merlons?] before 1500.

*From about 1540, castles [north of the Alps??] began to use the dovetailed battlements as a fashionable design. In most cases, even the architect is known.

Context and Significance.

It is understandable that for Voynicheros whose background is in the pragmatic sciences mapping ‘data-points’ might seem a logical way to produce or support any statistical argument, but that expectation is misapplied when it comes to reading and understanding the intention behind a pre-modern picture.

In the same way, people more accustomed to subjects using binary logic have a habit of assuming a division of all images into the literal versus the ‘decorative’, or the meaningful versus the non-meaningful and the same ideas are seen in descriptions of where and why swallowtails were used.

In the critical sciences, data mapping has to involve informed qualitative judgements and more than superficial knowledge of historical periods, documents and cultural attitudes.

Just as counting the number of jars in a medical store-cupboard, and mapping where each stands will not make a doctor of you, so simple data-point maps cannot alone explain he origin, date or intention of any among the Voynich manuscript’s drawings.

The factor most often overlooked is that of perceived significance: in this case what significance the various types of swallowtail merlons had for persons who commissioned, made, copied or regarded a given image in a given social environment and historical moment.

We know that, for a time, one or more types of swallowtail signified ‘the imperial party’. Were the mapped examples found chiefly in cities granted independent status by, say Frederick II, or are they perhaps more often seen in lands that were under the direct control of a western emperor when an image was made? Is the usage dependent a given city’s current political alignment or, perhaps, the leanings of a specific patron? Was a given instance intended to elicit negative or positive response?

Koen’s enthusiasm in 2021 led him to overstatement in his summary, for he wrote:

“The neat thing about this map is that we know for sure that the VM belongs on it as a data point among the blue markers”.

Why should we suppose that for the original maker, those merlons were any more definitive than the square-topped merlons, or more important than the starry spiral, or the various topographic elements? And those are all just in the map’s north roundel. Are any attested in the mapped manuscripts or paintings and if so which?

What lends Koen’s results more weight is that a number of quite independent researchers came to similar conclusions about a focus on the region around, or otherwise connected to Milan, where Koen’s map records the greatest number of manuscripts containing images with swallowtail merlons.

Milan is where Pelling’s historical research, combined with his studies of ciphers, codicology and palaeography, finally led him by 2005-6.

I’ve also concluded, in regard to the Voynich map, that we are most likely to owe its present form to a collaboration of Jews and Genoese, attested not only in Genoa but in Constantinople, Caffa and the Balearics.

Where to from here?

That work done by Koen Gheuens and his friends is not wasted. It should prove very helpful to anyone investigating questions of textual and iconographic transmission in those parts of medieval Latin Europe.

What the map cannot do is tell us where and when Beinecke MS 408 was produced. Establishing a manuscript’s date and place of manufacture is the work of palaeographers and codicologists.

Provenancing content is something else again.

Other questions: Merli, Rook, Rukh.

Etymologies should be taken with a little salt on the side of your plate, to be taken as needed.

For the term ‘merlon’ an etymological dictionary has:

The term merlon comes from the French language, adapted from the Italian merlone, possibly a shortened form of mergola, connected to Latin mergae (pitchfork), or from a diminutive moerulus, from murus or moerus (a wall). An alternative etymology suggests that the medieval Latin merulus (mentioned from the end of the 10th century) functioned as a diminutive of Latin merle, “blackbird”, expressing an image of this bird sitting on a wall.

Let’s start with that tenth century usage, which saw the walls ‘merli’ as blackbirds. Later, in English, the tower-birds, and the chesspiece both became ‘rooks’.

The nineteenth-century etymologists’ well-known disdain for languages other than Latin, Greek and the Germanic group often leaves them blank- when faced with terms gained from Celtic, Hebrew, Egyptian or Berber. In this case the word they cannot see is well known in Hebrew as in Persian – as ruach in Hebrew (esp. Genesis 1:2) and as rukh in Persian.

When working through the Voynich map, section by section and detail by detail, hunting out examples in art and architecture and commentaries in older sources, one chicken-and-egg problem nagged at me.

‘Did the chess-piece inspire the merlons, or did such merlons inspire the form given that chesspiece?’

I scarcely mentioned that part of the research in the summaries published through Voynichimagery, but I’ve decided to write up a little more now for any readers who feel impelled to follow a thread to the heart of an historical maze. That will be in the next post in a couple of weeks’ time.

Until then, here is one detail from a mid-fourteenth manuscript to think about.

The manuscript was made in Persia very shortly before the Plague arose and thus only a very few years before, in France, the ‘November crocodile’ was drawn in grisaille in that Franciscan missal.

As you see, here the rook (Persian rukh) maintains the same form it had in the eleventh century when the chess-players mosaic was made in Piacenza.

Notice in this illustration the hats with stiff, back-turned brims, too, and the garment fastened under the right arm.

Also, from a drawing placed on the back of the Voynich map

a high-collared version..

O’Donovan notes 12.1: The Merlons thing.

c.2500 words

The author’s rights are asserted.

First, let’s put that detail into physical perspective.

From the Yale facsimile edition, we find that the entire Voynich map measures, overall near enough to 420 mm square. That’s 16.5 inches each side.

Within that map, the roundel containing the detail of interest measures close to 100mm (3.9 inches)

Within that, the structure given crenellations measures just 30mm by 45mm (1.2 x 1.8 inches).

.. for reasons I’ve never seen explained, it’s a habit among Voynich writers to omit or truncate the flanking arcs, thus reducing the detail to the size of an ordinary postage-stamp – about 25mm (1 inch) square.

That’s about the length of your thumb’s top joint. Try taking your finest pen and reproducing it there some day when you’re bored at work. 🙂

What does this tell us about this detail-in-a-detail-in-a drawing?

First, that given the physical constraints on the draughtsman, this detail isn’t likely to be a detailed and literal portrait of any single structure or location, simply because the scale precludes inclusion of enough details to clearly distinguish one structure from all others of similar form within a purely literal genre.

The same constraints tell us that for a given place or location to be clearly identifiable, some of what is included should be there for its resonance in terms of medieval iconographic forms: that is for its existing symbolic or metaphorical hooks.

To put this another way, the constraints imposed by the available space mean that the structure must serve as token for that place and while some elements may indeed be literal, others will not or may not be so.

Consider the difference between what you would produce if asked to present a literal portrait of your local place of worship, as distinct from marking it on a map. In the first place you would need to add far more detail to show the ways in which it differs from all other churches built in the same architectural style, but in the second case, you might just draw one of these:

or you might use a more literal-looking token, detailed only enough that a visitor will connect your drawing to a local building when she or she comes across it – even though the drawing is in no sense a literal ‘portrait’. Like this:

The idea of a ‘token’ image embraces the purely symbolic and the merely generic.

A token can include some literal details (such as the rose window, if your local building has one), but omits all non-essentials and can even include non-literal details – your local building may not have a cross on its door, for example. As you see, this drawing doesn’t show whether the building is made of stone, of brick, of stucco or of wood, which a literal portrait would have to do.

Given the very limited space assigned this detail in the Voynich map, our default assumption (pending other evidence) must be that for the first maker of this detail, each item he did include here had no less weight and importance than any other, regardless of whether one item is drawn in a way generic, symbolic or literal.

It is irrelevant that one or another of the inclusions springs more readily to a modern eye; it is quite as much a mistake to ignore the form of the central tower or the subsidiary towers or the square merlons as the fishtails.

So then, to the degree that the drawing must necessarily be reduced to whatever the maker considered essential elements, what we have is a token, but one hopes a significant token, for the intended place.

For the moment we set aside the various theories which have the Voynich map a description of some poetic, theological or other set of ways. We’ll start from an initial position that the map is not of some otherworld and see how we go.

Given a combination of an intention to communicate information of some kind, and the constrained space available, we now consider each of those features the first maker considered distinctive – even definitive – and suppose further (for the time being) that the place indicated did exist to so late as c.1440.

The structure is placed between two great curving ‘walls’ though it isn’t immediately clear whether those are meant for topographic or for man-made forms. Certainly no defensive walls would be found extending across the lowest point of a very narrow and very steep river valley – a moment’s thought will show you why.

At the front we see a great entry-way opening directly onto what is shown (by a fairly-well known convention in late medieval cartography) as a waterway, shallow and having only one opening. Today we don’t conceive of the Mediterranean as a large shallow ‘bay’, but evidently that’s how the maker viewed it and in fact that’s exactly what the Mediterranean is. By comparison with the open ocean, the Mediterranean is shallow and it does have only one natural opening to the deep sea, through the straits of Gibraltar.

So, without presuming which elements in the Voynich detail convey information by literal depiction and which by symbolic value, consider the remaining items included.

The enclosed area is drawn about twice as wide as it is deep. It is enclosed on three sides by walls.

Inside those walls is drawn nothing but one great tower, apparently round since two others which are square are found outside the back wall and are clearly shown so.

That central tower is evidently distinctive in having three storeys (assuming one window-token equals one storey). The roof is tall and conical, but seems to sit within the tower’s upper edge, which suggests that between the tower proper and the roof is an upper parapet or walkway.

Behind the rear wall, there is placed to our left one of those square towers and this has its top coloured blue, the same pigment used to colour an adjacent area. Where that ends, to the right, is a second square extramural tower, this having its top coloured yellow.

We may suggest, then, that perhaps here the blue is used to denote water, so the front entryway is a water-gate and the tower to the left, outside the walls is a water-tower. If that is what the maker intended, then perhaps the lines of blue which we see following along the top of those curving flanks could indicate aqueducts of the sort so often seen in Roman-era settlements, especially in the near east. But, on the other hand, those lines may only indicate some natural descent of fresh water down steep hillsides. No need to decide yet which the maker intended. The analysis is still in its early stages.

As we look for sites fulfilling our criteria so far, the nature of the less easily discerned will serve as a test for each possible identification.

And now at last we come to the merlons.

There are at least two, and possibly three forms of merlon shown on these walls – the ordinary square merlons and what might be described as two forms of fishtail merlons or, perhaps, an attempt to draw twice the same form of fishtail merlons, but whatever the case, the form given those across the front appear different from those seen on the right side of the rear wall.

As you’ll see (further below) there wasn’t just one form of fishtail merlon, but of course the difference may again be due to the scale at which the draughtsman was obliged to work.

Since we don’t yet know when the drawing was first enunciated, so even if we date our present copy 1405-1438, some effort will be needed to determine by research which elements are employed for their symbolic information and which are more nearly literal within this token. Nor can be even guess, as yet, whether the intended place and structures remained standing beyond 1440 AD, even if they existed to that time.

A common and very typical error in Voynich studies is to begin by assuming that one can identify the place by adopting Mary d’Imperio’s suggestion that its resembled a castle, and then start collecting photographs of such examples of castles having fishtail merlons as exist today, without doing any deeper investigation of the date to which such merlons are dated – in fact many examples seen in Europe today are the result of romantic nineteenth-century ‘renovations’.

Merlons – geographic range.

Merlons of various kinds, including the fishtail type are attested during the medieval centuries from as far north as the Black Sea to as far south as Egypt, and from Asia Minor to western Europe. Some are attested by contemporary writings, some by relics in near-ruins, others by what little still remains in structures often destroyed and re-built since those times.

These facts are well-known to historians and to students of military architecture, and have been reprised and documented often enough in contributions to Voynich studies, that there is really very little excuse one can offer, in 2023, for such misleading assertions as – and I quote:

The swallowtail merlons on the Rosettes** castle and city walls tie the manuscript to southern-German or northern-Italian contexts.

The term ‘context’ avoids saying ‘locations’ while implying it; the substitution provides a loophole, so that in future the theorist can claim the assertion applies to any time when any southern German or northern Italian may have been in any place – including the Black Sea, or Egypt, or somewhere in between such as Constantinople.

But asserting that the type is tied to southern Germany and northern Italy is easily disproven and here again, the work has already been done and more than once since 2010. If readers find no reference to the earlier contributions or to these Sicilian precedents shown below (again) it may be because those researchers have relied too heavily on specifically Voynich-related sites rather than turning to external and more impartial [non-wiki] sources.

The following three images all show buildings in Sicily, and all having their merlons in original style(s), according to our best current information. The first example dates to the tenth century and it is said the merlons which had crumbled over time were accurately repaired; the second example is dated to the twelfth century; the third to the thirteenth century, from which time we see such forms first used by the Franco-Savoyard Challant family* in the Valle d’Aosta, west of Milan.

*They built the famous Fénis castle, among others, and it remained in the possession of the Fénis branch of the lords of Challant until 1716.

Notice the varied forms given these older fishtail merlons in Sicily.

TENTH CENTURY: This part of the tower dates to the period of Arab rule in Sicily (i.e. from 902AD). Before that time, the island had been part of the Byzantine empire. It was gradually re-taken by Christian forces and freebooters in numerous battles between 999 and 1139AD. The Latins who finally took it decided to keep it rather than returning it to the Byzantine emperor, although Byzantine and Arab influence remained strong in the island to the end of the 13thC.
c. TWELFTH Century.
THIRTEENTH CENTURY – Palazzo Corvaja, Taormina.

Nick Pelling’s historical research led him to made a fair case for the present manuscript’s having been made in, or near Milan.

He did begin by expecting all the content would be the original composition of single Latin Christian author who had lived contemporary with the present manuscript’s manufacture. This was in keeping with most theoretical Voynich narratives to that time (2006)

Unlike the creators of many other Voynich narratives, Pelling adopted standard scholarly ethics and used accepted methods, while taking pains to consider the codicological evidence and, as best he could, to date and describe the manuscript’s palaeography. All this in addition to attempting to explain the whole work in the light of his studies of late medieval cryptology.

Pelling was (so far as I know) the first among the Reeds’ list generation of Voynich writers to pay attention to the implications of the script’s “4o” form, while being chiefly interested in its presence in some early fifteenth-century Milanese ciphers.

Pelling read the Voynich map as a city-plan or city-scape rather than a map in any narrower sense.

Unlike many other creators of variants on the traditionalist narrative, Pelling laid out for his readers the course of his own research. He gathered and then presented and cited honestly the full range of precedents and sources he found; he explained his reasoning and the data used to inform that reasoning. He was prepared – within limits – to debate his own findings as few later traditionalists would do, and as some have never done. Even more in keeping with the better type of scholarship, Pelling himself published comments and responses made to his work – the positive and the negative, both. This sort of open-intelligence attitude attracted so many researchers that to just one of the posts listed below he received more than 600 comments.

Pelling represents the last flicker of that energetic, co-operative and actively debating atmosphere which initially gave the first mailing list under Reeds such energy and which led rapidly to numerous new insights still being re-discovered by those living in the present ‘groundhog day’ fog. Thereafter the rise of a ‘believe my theory or else’ and degradation of ethics and standards in the online arenas saw debate and any honest engagement with informed dissent constantly discouraged or disdained by the more ambitious theorists until today one finds little activity of that kind in any Voynich arena.

Whether any of the Voynich research published since 2006 has moved Pelling’s own opinions on any point, I cannot say. It is something which readers must discover for themselves.

Below are linked two of Pelling’s earlier posts. one about the larger drawing and the other about the detail presently of interest, I add a link to a post made by Koen Gheuens in 2017 and, because it tracks the history of this particular ‘groundhog day’, a post made for this blog about 18 months ago. Perhaps after that discussion of Pelling’s contributions to the study I should add that he and I differ on a great many points, especially those invoking one or other of the manuscript’s drawings. 🙂

more on the backstory in an earlier post at this blog:

  • D.N.O’Donovan, ‘Swallowtails‘ voynichrevisionist (October 8th., 2021)

In the next post, we’ll move from surviving examples in Sicily to those which begin to appear from about the 13thC in the Franco-Savoyard Valle d’Aosta.

The Valle d’Aosta is not on the Venetian side of Italy, but in an area which will have become familiar to any readers who laboured through our analyses of the calendar’s ‘July’ and ‘November’ emblems. That is, a region between Milan-Genoa and adjacent to regions in which forms of Occitan were spoken during the middle ages – including Genoa. In the map detail shown below, the marker for Valle d’Aosta is seen slightly left of centre at the top of the image.

Valle d’Aosta in the mountains west of Milan, above the Lombardy plain.

O’Donovan notes 8.7 Confusion or chronology? laying out the pieces.

c.1200 words

The author’s rights are asserted.

So far, in considering these two diagrams (on folio 85r and folio 67v-1), what we’ve been doing is like picking out two small pieces from a pile of jig-saw puzzle pieces for which there is no convenient picture printed on the box.

What we must now do is to pause to think about what these two pieces tell us and because the manuscript is evidently no uniform composition but a compilation, what they tell us may not only differ between one and the other of these pieces, but may agree or disagree with the traditional expectation that all the matter in Beinecke MS 408 would be of western Christian (i.e. ‘Latin’ European) origin and an expression of no other cultural traditions.

.First piece – diagram on folio 85r (part).

Analysis (see posts in Series #6) showed some elements do use conventions closely consistent with those of medieval Latin art, particularly the fact that in it four winds are given characters closely reflecting the content in a widely-used western text – Isidore’s Etymologiae.

Yet elements in the same diagram expresses ideas and habits alien to the Latins’ visual vocabulary, most importantly use of an asymmetrical four-fold division for the circuit.

Other characteristics presenting opposition to the traditionalists’ assumption that the whole manuscript is an expression of Latin culture, is the accurate depiction of Mongol dress and a ‘lily’ which is no fleur-de-lys.

But the single most telling detail is the asymmetrical divisions’ being marked by a form that ‘L.L.’ suggested might be the fly-whisk (as symbol of religious or of civil authority, known from western North Africa, through Ethiopia into India and south-east Asia) but which I think closer in its sense here to that ‘whisk-like’ form as banner – a motif employed not only in Asia by the Mongols, but also in art produced in a Persian environment during the period of Mongol rule (13th-14th C). An example is shown at right.

In those cases the ‘whisk’ takes on the character of a banner, and the sense it bears is most like the flag as emblem in Europe; that is, it signifies not only religious or secular authority, but planting the flag constitutes a claim to rule over a that territory.

Between the second half of the thirteenth century and much of the fourteenth century, Mongols ruled the largest empire the world has ever seen. They were the great power throughout the Mediterranean world during that era, with only Mamluk Egypt as significant second. The Seljuk Turks waited in the wings.

As the Yuan dynasty, Mongol rule within China would survive until 1368 AD.

During that time, foreign traders were welcomed in China’s foreigners’ ports, protected across the overland ‘silk roads’ and foreign ambassadors and their religions invited. Among those who accepted invitations to come to China itself there were a few western Christians and of those (very few) of which records remain, none but persons from Italian city-states remained long. For example, we hear of one doctor from Bologna, a Franciscan friar from Sicily, another Sicilian resident as trader, and of Katerina Villioni who died there in 1342.

While, therefore, it is statistically most likely that matter now in Beinecke MS 408 came into European horizons with someone who was not a Latin (i.e. western European Christian), and otherwise most likely that it was brought by an Italian or a Jew whose home was in the south-western region of the Mediterranean, it is not beyond all possibility that a Latin from some other part of Europe might have fetched much of the material from ‘oriental parts’ in that brief period called the ‘Pax Mongolica’.

Example 2 (folio 67v-1 – starting with post #8.3)

In this case, the diagram’s main, central, part displays habits that can fairly be described as ancient, and Egyptian, but continuity within the art of Egypt and regions it influenced during Egypt’s four-thousand years as an independent kingdom means these same motifs and ideas continued to be seen even when Egypt lay under foreign rule, as it did for almost all of the six centuries which preceded the Christian era. In the sixth century, Egypt had been taken first by Persia, then in the fourth century it was taken from Persia by the Macedonian Greeks, who were in their turn supplanted by Rome.

On the other hand, this diagram’s peripheral emblems, whose subject is entirely astronomical, suggest by their forms and selected subjects, no ancient origin. One emblem’s being overlaid with heavy pigment implies a late effort to ‘Latinise’ that detail, while retaining in it the image of an unmistakeably Asiatic face – again suggesting the Mongol century and a discrepancy between the customs informing the original drawing and what are evidently later additions, the latest of which is a less-than-congenial influence from one or more ‘heavy painters’ or the work’s overseer.

Reflecting more than one cultural tradition and historical era is no reason to suppose the drawings faked. Quite the opposite; they speak to issues of origin and subsequent transmission which – so long as we do not create pre-emptive narratives (‘theories’) – are more helpful than troubling.

Matter deemed ‘ancient’ was typically revered and carefully transmitted everywhere, though in Latin Europe that reverence was usually accorded only the information in written text and it is unusual to see images not immediately ‘translated’ to suit the customs of Latins’ visual language.

The diagram on folio 85r provides a nice example of how certain elements might be left untranslated – either because they had no Latin equivalent, or were considered insignificant or as I think is found again in other sections of the manuscript, because the fifteenth-century copyists had been ordered to alter nothing.

We are only concerned with the manuscript’s drawings. When and where the written part of the text gained its present form is for others to determine.

For these two diagrams, then, it appears that the most likely period for their first arrival in Europe is during the ‘Mongol century’ – late thirteenth to late fourteenth centuries.

Once more, for any newcomers, I repeat that this ‘Notes’ series is not here to ‘showcase’ my own research, but to demonstrate the value of adopting an analytical rather than a theory-driven approach.

Partly for that reason and partly there is a persistent problem of plagiarism among a few Voynicheros (all linked at first- or second remove to the same university), I won’t be including in these notes the complete analysis of any one drawing or series, though in the usual way it is an absolute requirement of formal analyses that an account must be given of the entire drawing, or the entire series of drawings being discussed. A theorist may cherry-pick, and most do. Iconological analyses may not.

I’ve said that the fourth of the peripheral emblems in folio 67v-1 represents certain stars in Orion, but being reminded of that problem with persistent plagiarism I’ve decided to omit further details here.

In treating its ‘North’ emblem, however, it became apparent that a person who exercised a form of overseeing- or censoring role is linked with the addition of heavy pigments, and the nature of that ‘censorship’ suggests a Latin scholar and/or -cleric responsible.

The next series will investigate whether the same is true for images in a different section where astronomical emblems are found.

Within what we’ve called the ‘Voynich calendar’, some sections show the ‘heavy’ painter’s influence especially pronounced, though for the exercise just two central emblems will be considered, both of which have been regarded by even the staunchest of Voynich traditionalists as ‘unusual’ and unhelpful to a theory of the manuscript as entirely an expression of western Christian culture.

These are the emblems which now fill the centre of the diagrams for July, and for November.

The series is described as a calendar because its diagrams’ central emblems are over-written with month-names in a dialect or language variously identified, but always as a language or dialect used in the south-western Mediterranean or in regions linked to them by the sea-lanes: Occitan, Judeo-Catalan, and Norman French most often suggested.

O’Donovan notes #6i (cont.2) Refining the date-range.

c.3200 words

The author’s rights are asserted..

Continuing a demonstration of analytical-critical method.

At the end of post #6h, we asked how the drawing might be oriented.

In post #6i Part 1, details given one of the four figures led to assigning that figure the northern quadrant, considering the fourfold divisions in terms of the Mediterranean custom which named directions by the winds from each quarter.

At the same time, the sun in the diagram’s centre informs us that either this first identification is mistaken, or that the diagram was actually designed to face South – which was certainly not the practice in Latin Europe.

That first detail, together with reference to the wind-rose in Walters MS 73 has led to tentative dating for first enunciation of this diagram to about the last quarter of the 12thC.

So now, turning the diagram so that this northern quadrant is upright – a little east of North as Walters MS 73 has for the wind ‘Apeliotes vel Boreas’ we now consider the figure which lies to our right.

Apeliotes – Ἀπηλιώτης (Apēliṓtēs) – named the South-east wind in the Greek tradition. In the Walters diagram it names the wind for due East, with Apeliotes vel Boreas ‘Nor-nor-East’.

It might seem natural to say, ‘Given that the female figure is for the North, so this is represents the Eastern quadrant’, but it is far too early to presume that our interpretation of the first detail is right. By ‘right’ I mean the way the first enunciator expected it to be read.

In this sort of work, to be too sure, too soon, is very often to fall very short of the mark.

I’ll be as brief as I can.

This figure wears Chinese costume; other details suggesting the Mongol era. It also appears to reflect ideas about the Mongols that circulated in Europe, and elsewhere, as early as the last quarter of the twelfth century, though I concluded, overall, that this detail is unlikely to have been given its present form until 1270-1301 AD.

The telling detail is the slightly uneven line, paralleled by a pale band, which runs diagonally (on the figure’ right side) from a narrow neck-band or -collar to below the armpit.

The following illustration is undated, but the colour contrasts make the purpose of that line and its parallel, pale band, very clear.

The Mongol horsemen wore the deel, a robe which wrapped around to fasten at the wearer’s right side, near the waist. Its sleeves might be longer or shorter – but this ordinary form is not quite what we see in the Voynich drawing.

Court robes of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries show the development of a wider neck-band over time, but not quite a fastening which begins so high on the neck as we have drawn in folio 85r (part).

To find a garment of the Mongol era where the overlap-fastening begins on the left-hand side of the collar band, we must move into a period after 1270-71, when the Mongols’ conquest of China saw Kublai Khan found a new dynasty, called the Yuan dynasty. Below is how court robes changed their design, although such ‘Yuan’ robes were still to be seen as court robes worn so late as the early twentieth century.

The Voynich figure’s dress, in reflecting that more courtly style, makes it still more interesting, because while untold thousands and tens of thousands in the near east and in parts of Europe had seen the deem deel at first hand before 1404-1438, far fewer saw such court-dress and still fewer were Europeans.

To imagine that the first maker of the diagram on folio 85r might have been a European is one thing; even to imagine his or her name may be found in what remains to us from Latin sources is an exercise in extreme optimism, not to say outright folly. We simply don’t need to play ‘name the author’ game at all. It is an old habit inherited by the Voynich traditionalists, but one which can, and which I think should be avoided by those trying to do these drawings justice.

The Latin west was certainly aware of the Mongols’ existence by the last quarter of the twelfth century, as reports flooded in from Latins in the eastern Mediterranean, and from Byzantium. The pleas for military assistance were desperate and blood-curdling stories were plainly widespread- some more accurate than others.

The earliest effort to make direct contact was between the western Pope and a leader of certain Christians of Asia, whose contemporary head was known as The Elder, John, or as ‘Prester John’.

There is so much confusion in today’s tertiary sources, about the history of western contact that I’ll quote here from the official Lives of the Popes, compiled by Mann who had access to the papal archives in addition to other sources.

As may be gathered from a letter of Alexander III, among those Westerns who now began to penetrate into the Far East, was the Pope’s own physician, Philip. On his return he assured the Pope that he had conversed with the chief men of “John, the magnificent king of the Indians, and most holy of priests,” and that they had assured him that it was their ruler’s wish “to be instructed in the Catholic and Apostolic doctrines, and that it was his fervent desire that he and the realms entrusted to him should never hold any doctrine at variance with those of the Apostolic See.” Alexander, accordingly, wrote to the aforesaid “illustrious John,” and .. assured him that he had heard … from his own physician [Philip] of his desire for instruction in the Catholic faith, and for a place at Jerusalem in which good men from his kingdom might be fully taught the true faith. Despite, therefore, “the far distant and unknown countries” in which he lived, he had decided, he continued, to send him the said Philip, who might instruct him in those articles in which he was not in unison with the Christian and Catholic faith… But to this letter, ” given at Venice on the Rialto,” no answer ever came. (Horace K. Mann, Lives of the Popes… Vol.10 p.230)

Horace K. Mann, Lives of the Popes… Vol.10 (p.230)

Whether the physician Philip himself returned, history does not relate. That there could be any communication, verbal or written, between that eastern Christian elder and the papal court would require the presence of competent interpreters and/or translators who knew John’s language and Latin.

The period when Philip was sent east must have been between 1159-1181, and though Grousset is often credited with suggesting that the ‘Prester (Christian elder) John’ was a Kerait, the information that John was head of a [Nestorian] Christian Mongol community in the far east comes from two early sources, Benjamin of Tudela and Bar Hebraeus, the latter certainly having been in a position to know.

I should mention here that the language of the Keraits’ [also as ‘Kereits’ and ‘Keraites’] was Jurchen, the language which Jorge Stolfi’s statistical analyses of the Voynich texts led him to propose as the language of Voynichese.

In 1165, Benjamin of Tudela left from the north-east of the Iberian peninsula, returning in 1173 and though his information about the Mongols was gained partly, at least, from hearsay, it was included in the book of his Travels. I think it noteworthy that from Jewish communities he also learned of ‘Prester John’ as an elder or a priest-king among certain Mongols.

So by the last quarter of the twelfth century, when the Walters manuscript was made, it is possible that someone in Europe might have known the style of formal eastern dress, as well as that earlier taken by viking-style costume. But if so, no other evidence of such knowledge is to be seen in European sources extant from that time, or even by the mid-thirteenth century when Matthew of Paris has no idea of what Mongols wore, despite his own constant references to them – or rather what was being said and written about them.

In his Chronica Major, for the year 1242, Matthew includes a letter written by Ivo, Bishop of Narbonne.

Ivor’s focus was chiefly on defending himself against charges of associating with groups of western Christians of whom the Latin church disapproved, but he does speak about the Mongols’ invading the Duchy of Austria in 1242, of the horrors perpetrated, the Mongols’ physical stature and habits, and – speaking of interpreters – of a very interesting Englishman.

At the approach of a large Christian army, the Tatars suddenly retreat back into Hungary. Several of the former besiegers are captured, including a multi-lingual English outlaw, who had served the Tatars as an interpreter and envoy, since they needed such talents in order to attain their goal of conquering the world.

But even though Ivo’s letter reports, thanks to that nameless Englishman, the Tatars’ physique and character, and even includes drawings, nothing is said about their dress and the drawings are clearly more reliant on imagination than one might have expected.

All of which makes the accuracy of the Voynich figure’s dress the more fascinating – and all the less likely to have been enunciated first by a sedentary European.

It is not the costume, however, which leads me to think that whoever first formed this drawing was probably of the Abrahamic faiths but rather the form given the right hand.

Unless its being given six fingers is due to no more than some some slip of the pen, it would remind those who knew their bible – Jews, Muslims and Christians of every stripe – of a passage from the second book of Samuel:

”And there was yet a battle in Gath, where was a man of great stature, that had on every hand six fingers, and on every foot six toes, four and twenty in number; and he also was born to the giant.”

Add to this the passage from Ezechiel (Ez. 38:15, 38:12) which seems to prophecy the coming of the Mongols, and promises that God’s people will be saved in Israel, and one sees what impact it would have had when the Mongol’s devastations in Syria and Palestine were halted by a Mamluk army in 1260 wo defeated them at ‘Goliath’s well’.

All of which leads me to think that the figure’s hand has been given six fingers less as part of any portrait than to recall those passages from biblical text, and a widespread idea the Mongols were sons of ‘the giants’ whom legend had it Alexander walled up behind the ‘Caspian Gates‘.

for notes and references, see following post.

In England, as elsewhere, the thing everyone knew about giants, apart from their size, was that they ate people and were descended from tribes of Gog and Magog. Those ideas (save giant stature) also pervade the panic-stricken letters sent to Europe from Syria and the Holy Land before the second Council of Lyons.

Papal mission to the Mongols (1245–1247)
Given the prevalence of such ideas among Byzantines and Latins prior to 1260, one can only admire the courage of André of Longjumeau, assigned as leader to one of four missions to the Mongols sent by Pope Innocent IV. Longjumeau left Lyon for the Levant in the spring of 1245, vising Muslim centres in Syria and representatives of the Nestorian and of the Jacobite churches in Persia, before finally delivering the papal correspondence to a Mongol general near Tabriz.

While in that large and multi-cultural city, a hive of traders and of scholars, he met a monk from the far east named Simeon Rabban Ata, to whom the Khan had given responsibility for supervising, protecting and overseeing Christians in the recently-conquered nearer east.

We owe our knowledge of Rabban Simeon chiefly to Vincent of Beauvais. (Speculum historiale XXX, 70) though Vincent also had access to matter from John of Plano Carpini and from a book written by one Simon of Saint-Quentin, now lost.

Saint-Quentin is not an uncommon place-name in France, though in the present context, that in Aisne is obviously an attractive possibility.

Named by the Romans Augusta Viromanduorum, by the 12th and 13th centuries Saint-Quentin in Aisne was noted for three things: its great Abbey which was a pilgrimage centre, its prosperity thanks to the production and trade in woolen textiles, and its high vulnerability in times of war. The Abbey was ruined and presumably most of its ancient library lost during the first World War.

What turns our attention towards that northern and overland route from the Black sea that was taken by Simon of Saint-Quentin and others, is not simply the garment given the Voynich figure, or what little is recorded of the official journeys, but the final part of this detail from the diagram: the flower-like form shown just above the figure’s upraised right hand. It also offers a narrower dating for the diagram’s first enunciation.

Emblematic detail

One possibility which has often sprung to the minds of modern readers is that this is the ‘Lily’ of Sicily’s Lilibe or Lilybaeum embodied by the Anglo-French and Sicilian ‘fleur-de-lys’. Another is that it is some flower more closely associated with the East and with the Mongols.

By way of one argument that the fleur-de-lys represents an Iris flower (for the Greek Iris was goddess of dawn), the ‘fleur-de-lys’ idea has some merit.

The difficulty, however, is that the form given this item isn’t that of the western, or indeed the of eastern “fleur de lys”.

In Europe, as elsewhere influenced by the Latins, the fleur-de-lys is formed with a bar across it and with its centre given a sharp, blade-like tip. Here is how it appears even in the south-eastern Mediterranean during the fourteenth century.

If one thinks the Voynich detail an allusion to Sicily’s Lilybaeum, known to the Greeks as Lilibaion but called ‘Lilybe’ in some medieval works, one then might imagine this figure, in its Mongol dress and in the pose of a preacher or orator, as meant for some known person such as the Sicilian John of Montecorvino – but there is little evidence that any of the four human figures in this diagram is meant to be a portrait, and one is left then with the simple fact that the detail is not drawn like the western fleur-de-lys and that the diagram is not European either in its being is oriented to the south, rather than to the east or north as the Latins’ habit was.

I note that an article ‘John of Montecorvino’ in the Catholic Encyclopaedia says that John started on his journey in 1289, having been provided with letters to Arg[h]un, and to the great Emperor Kublai Khan, to Kaidu, Prince of the Tatars, to the King of Armenia and to the Patriarch of the Jacobites…From Persia John went by sea to India, in 1291, where he preached for thirteen months …. Travelling by sea from Meliapur, he reached China in 1294. That much of is supported by reliable evidence, but much else in that article relies on just two letters, said to have come from John, but whose authenticity is doubted. John of Plano Carpini travelled to Mongolia (1142-47 AD) though not to preach, so much as to serve as papal representative and courier.

My own view is that the object says “yuan“, which named the Mongol dynasty and which means literally ‘circle’ or ‘coin’. The character ‘yuan’ (元) appears on Chinese coins from well before before the Mongol century or the establishment of the Yuan dynasty (大元). On the earlier, T’ang dynasty coin illustrated (below, left) the character ‘Yuan’ is seen lowest of the four.

When considering the diagram’s female figure, we noted that fabrics might serve a form of currency, and so now the possibility arises (and must be tested) that all four figures may include mention of the means by which tribute was to be given. It is not unusual to find multiple layers of meaning in drawings from the pre-modern world. People today ask ‘Is it about geography OR about astronomy OR about religion OR…’ though an image can refer to a number of such things at once.

Once again, I’d urge anyone interested in the drawings in Beinecke MS 408 but who suppose medieval people had unsophisticated minds, to buy and read cover-to-cover these two books as their basic introduction to our subject:

  • Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory
  • Veronica Sekules, Medieval Art (Oxford History of Art series)

The following information is not offered casually, and was not casually obtained. If it seems a bit ‘Hey-presto’, I hope readers will understand that I’m trying to keep the post as short as I can.

In another of the sources consulted, I found the following paragraph:

Almaligh produced money in 650H and 651H [1253/4], and Bukhara and Samarqand issued large flat billon, probably in 651H. …. All of these inscriptions were similar to those of Bulghar and Tiflis, specifically in not having the name of the local dynast except in Fars. Instead, they had the great khan’s name and, except in Greater Khurasan and Transoxiana, his tamgha. In Fars, the imperial tamgha was artfully  drawn to resemble a graceful fleur de lys …

Judith Kolbas (2013), The Mongols in Iran: Chingiz Khan to Uljaytu 1220–1309.

I was unable to find any image of such a coin minted for Fars in 1253/4, but found a later example (below) – not minted in Fars, though it may have been circulating in Amaligh.*

It was Qaidu II who ruled from 1272 to 1301 AD

So – what do you think? Near enough to what one might remember of such an emblem?

Having previously offered a date for first enunciation of the diagram on folio 85r (part) in the latter part of the twelfth century, we must now extend it to between 1270-1301 AD, a period when Latins were not only visiting regions under Mongol rule, but had established residence there. In this the most prominent by far were Italians – chiefly from Siena, Pisa and above all from Genoa but as the northern Mongol rulers,* converted to Islam, attempted to establish friendly diplomatic relations with Mamluk Egypt, Venice came to enjoy their favour.

*that is ‘northern’ in terms of the greater Mediterranean. See the wiki article ‘Golden Horde‘ for quick overview. The critical period was during the rule of Uzbeg Khan (1312–1341), who adopted Islam.

It remains now only to see whether this figure agrees, once more, with utterances given the winds in Walters MS 37 73.

Wind

For winds in the eastern quadrant, we have:

  1. Subsolanus vel Apeliotes: [EAST] “Subte phebe tono,” “I thunder from beneath the [rising] Sun.”
  2. Eurus vel ?? [SSE] “Flatus nubes gigno,” or “I cause the clouds to blow.”
  3. Euroauster [SE] “Tellus denique calescit,” or “The Earth finally becomes warm.”
  4. Austro vel [S*] “Pluuias cum fulmine initio,” or “I begin rain and lightning.”

* for ‘Austroafricus‘

‘I thunder from beneath the rising sun’ – EAST – seems appropriate enough: not only for the thundering of Mongol horsemen, but for this figure’s stance as orator/preacher.

Subsolanus vel Apeliotes – Subte phebe tono
“I thunder from beneath the [rising] Sun.”

NOTE – Anyone chiefly interested in Voynichese should be aware that there is a wide diversity between manuscripts in their assignment of compass-directions and wind-names. Between one manuscript and another, between one linguistic or regional tradition and another, such assignments and the wind-names may (and usually will) differ widely. Variations of that sort continue well into the early modern period.

Material used for this post derives from research, summaries from which were published by the present writer through voynichimagery, including – but not limited to, the following articles –

  • D.N. O’Donovan ‘Thundering jackets and ‘fleur-de-lys’
  • __________________, ‘Response… re f.85v-1’ (a series of four articles, written before the Beinecke page repaginated the manuscript)
  • __________________, ‘Response to Nick Pelling’s recent post’ (in two parts).
  • __________________, ‘Winds and Wings’
  • __________________ ‘Some events of the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries…’ (a series related to part of the map’s analysis).

ADDITIONAL NOTES:

The footnotes, references, quoted passages and additional notes specifically relevant to study of Beinecke MS 408, adding more than 3,000 words to this post, have been removed and will be posted separately.

O’Donovan notes #6i (cont.) understanding the woman.

c.2800 words

The author’s rights are asserted.

This is the second installment of a demonstration of analytical-critical method.

If you found time to do that first but most vital work – the slow, methodical memorisation of the image to be researched – presently the diagram on folio 85r (part) – you might have wondered why I put the female figure first when she appears at the bottom of that diagram.

If you then also found time to think about the costumes given each of the four figures, you might have noticed, among other things, the care taken by whoever added the heavy blue paint and who is normally pretty careless, to avoid painting over two round, white areas seen near the woman’s collar bones – and despite their minute size.

(detail) folio 85r (part) female figure.

Under extremely high magnification, they don’t appear as circles, but at normal distance, that’s the impression given. They are not oval.

from Scandanavian Museum

Here (right) is the classic (if now debated) reconstruction of Scandinavian women’s dress during the viking era. This type of over-garment is called a strap-dress or (less often today) an apron-dress. I’m sure you will see its similarity to the upper part of the Voynich figure’s clothing.

It makes sense that Scandinavian dress should be identified in a general way with North, but given the Voynich manuscript’s date, some questions arise immediately. Resort to guesswork and imagination is easy and fun; serious interest means serious work.

As so often our questions are of the when-and-where? and why?sort, such as:

  1. Over what period and range did women’s garments bear a pair of round brooches near the collar bone? and
  2. Why is there no sign, in the Voynich figure, of beads or chains looped between those two brooches when they were a constant in native Scandinavian dress?

As we now have it, the drawing (and so this detail) can be no older than the manuscript’s vellum (1404-1438 AD), yet ‘the viking era’ is normally said to have ended around 1100 AD.

There’s uncertainty about how the ensuing changes affected customs in dress within Scandinavia between the 12th-15th centuries, but more is known of regions where there had been earlier Scandinavian influence.

If you now look again at the Voynich figure, you should be able to list points at which her costume differs from that classic reconstruction of what viking-era costume looked like in its homeland.

Differences matter.

The Voynich figure’s over-dress is shown with a fuller skirt, and with side openings that evidently extend only from about the hip to the hem, though the top is comparable to the viking-era’s over-dress.

The brooches appear more circular than oval and less heavy than those in the Museum’s reconstruction.

A serious researcher must now set out to discover whether there exists evidence of smaller, lighter and nearly round brooches used with Scandinavian dress, and/or Scandinavian-influenced dress. Differences matter because they embody telling evidence. And it’s not enough, either, to settle for a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’. The date and range over which such brooches might occur provide parameters in which the Voynich image might, reasonably, have been first enunciated. Earlier posts in this series have emphasised the distinction to be made between when an image was inscribed on the current medium and when (and where) it was first given form.

Sources.

At the moment, archaeological reports are a sensible place to start seeking answers for this first set of questions.

They are better indexed than most medieval manuscripts, and include the sort of technical detail omitted from more general histories of the medieval world.

I’ll mention only two among the sources I used when investigating this image some while ago, because now I’m concerned to counter a habit prevalent in Voynich studies, by which a single source or ‘expert’ is treated as enough evidence for some point or other.

An iconological analyst must read enough to have a pretty well balanced understanding of the current state of study in whatever topic is being considered.

Balance of Evidence – example: Scandinavian dress of England?

Reviewing, in 2005, the newly published and expanded second edition of Gale R. Owen-Crocker, Dress in Anglo-Saxon England, David A. Hinton, from the University of Southampton, said in his concluding paragraphs:

Women in the Anglo-Scandinavian zone may have looked different from those further south in England because of their hairstyles and caps, but they did not wear Scandinavian dress.

Sounds pretty definitive, doesn’t it?

The example of Anglo-Scandinavian dress is relevant because one should not forget that from 1912 to the 1960s, few doubted Wilfrid Voynich’s assertion that in some unspecified ways – presumably the format, ink and vellum – the manuscript looked overall like some work produced in thirteenth-century England.

Among those who saw the manuscript, and did not appear to dispute this, were keepers of medieval manuscripts such as Richard Garnett and specialists in the history of thirteenth-century English writings, including Robert Steele. The Marci letter with its bit of third-hand gossip mentioning Roger Bacon wouldn’t have impressed them to the point where they’d ignore the physical evidence.

I was both pleased and surprised to find that in offering my opinion that the content in our present fifteenth-century manuscript was copied from earlier exemplars, I had a couple of precedents to cite, though none for my conclusion that most of the matter, by far, had not not entered Latin horizons much before 1350 AD*.

*a conclusion reached by investigating, one after another, about 60 pages of the manuscript’s drawings, over the initial period of nine years (2008-2017). Since 2014 or thereabouts, an increasing number of Voynicheros have come to accept that the manuscript is a compilation, and recent codicological studies appear to confirm it. This is a boon to the manuscript’s study, promising to end at last the century-long fixation on “naming the author”.

The diagram on folio 85r (part) is one among the minority of images in this manuscript that do seem to speak ‘European’ – which is why I’m taking that diagram as our first example, easing readers into one style of analytical-critical method.

Just four years after Hinton made that categorical statement, a new study was published:

  • Jane F. Kershaw, ‘Culture and Gender in the Danelaw: Scandinavian and Anglo-Scandinavian Brooches, Viking and Medieval Scandinavia, Vol. 5 (2009), pp. 295-325.

It shows, from extant examples, not only that circular Scandinavian-style brooches occur, both in Scandinavia and in England, before 1100 AD, but in Table 1 names the styles, their typology in archaeological terms and (of course) cites her precedents and sources.

(detail) taken from Table 1, Kershaw, ‘Culture and Gender…’ (2009)

At the same time, it is clear that the Voynich manuscript’s drawings are no product of Viking art nor of native Celtic art of the time – there’s not a hint of interlace anywhere in it.

Kershaw clarifies another point for us and helps narrow the likely time-frame for this drawing, one of the handful in the Voynich manuscript which use the conventions of western Mediterranean art.

With regard to the absence of any strings of beads or chains slung between the two shoulder-brooches, in the Voynich figure, we may quote Kershaw’s saying:

In the Viking period, brooches with suspended chains with attached tools in the style of chatelaine brooches represent a uniquely Scandinavian and Baltic fashion. They were not part of contemporary Anglo-Saxon female dress, as evidenced by the fact that native late Anglo-Saxon brooches lack suspension loops or equivalent features.

ibid., p.300.

Since England’s Anglo-Saxon era formally ends with Harold’s victory in 1066, and the era of the Scandinavian vikings or raidings ends about 1100 AD, we’d expect that within England, Scandinavian forms in English dress would give way, within a century or so, to those showing allegiance to the conqueror. Historical and iconological sources show this so.

The incoming style is exemplified by dress given the Bayeux tapestry’s three (yes, only three) female figures. That shown here (below) is on a figure which most commentators think represents Harold’s sister, Edith (c.1025-1075), who had married Edward the Confessor.

The Bayeux tapestry records events of Harold’s invasion of England.

By the time the Queen Mary Psalter was made (1310-20) in the region adjacent to what is still called the ‘Danelaw’, a sleeveless, open-sided garment appears by now only as something to be worn by the dispossessed, forced to work now as labourers because (so the embedded, silent message reads) they’d offended the deity.

Once the pair accept demotion to the status of crofters, with Adam now at his delving and Eve at her spinning, they are clothed in dress appropriate to their status within the new order of things.

Since I date the last alterations made to the Voynich map to about 1350 AD* and as we have it now, the diagram of interest has been drawn on the map’s reverse and is on vellum dated to the early fifteenth century, we are looking at a gap of between two and four hundred years between when one might have seen Anglo-Scandinavian dress worn in England and when our present diagram was inscribed on folio 85r (part).

*again, this a conclusion of my own research into the images in Beinecke MS 408.

How could a fifteenth-century draughtsman know so much about what women had worn in the tenth and eleventh centuries?

One immediate possibility is that the diagram was copied from an older work, but since the woman’s dress differs from that of the classic Scandinavian type, another region influenced by that style is more likely to have produced the form we see now.

Even so late as the Queen Mary Psalter, we see an occasional reference to the old Anglo-Scandinavian ways but now always associated with the lower social classes. The cap and bound hair seen on this servant-figure (below) is meant to signify both foreignness and servant-class. It represents a servant of Pharaoh’s daughter in the act of committing Moses to the waters.

On another page, two women are shown jousting. It’s a satirical image [a horse-laugh] and while both wear a sleeveless top dress, neither has the underskirt visible – as it is in the Voynich figure.

A different fourteenth-century manuscript – another made in London, does show the underskirt. This, again, is the dress given a servant, but it is still not like the dress given the Voynich figure, since the sleeves are a version of those we saw Edith wearing almost three centuries before.

For the present problem of how a fifteenth-century manuscript can show, apparently accurately, a form of dress scarcely attested after 1066, one answer is that it copies from an older monument, manuscript or sculpture etc., Another is that the fifteenth-century maker might have travelled north. We don’t know how women dressed in fifteenth-century Scandinavia and, in any case, archaeological finds tell us that the era of those disc-brooches was long in the past.

On reaching an impasse of this sort, when neither political history nor archaeology (to date) can provide answers, it’s often helpful to consider another angle of approach.

In this case, we also notice that the figure on folio 85r (part) is shown as a servant, with hair tightly covered, and that she labours at what I take to be work connected with the production of textiles.

I’ll explain (further below) why I read those interlocked loops as fibres or fabric.

A different angle of approach also changes the form for our question – “How would a fifteenth-century scribe encounter a drawing that associates Scandinavian-derived dress specifically with the less-than-genteel aspects of textile production?”

A recent study of Scandinavian techniques and trade in textiles adds nuance to our view of relations between Scandinavia, the British Isles and Ireland before the end of the viking-era.

Smith writes,

The similarity in spin between the British Isles and Iceland, suggest[s] strong cultural ties between these two regions.

Michèle Hayeur Smith,(2014) ‘Dress, Cloth, and the Farmer’s Wife’, Journal of the North Atlantic, Special Volume 6: In the Footsteps of Vebæk Vatnahverfi 2005–2011, pp. 64-81
from Michèle Hayeur Smith, op.cit.

What the Voynich figure is busy doing, as I read it, is pegging out chains of wet, wrung-out cloths, or hanks of spun fibre (wool or linen would be expected). It may be meant for a very loosely chained warp.* The point is that she’s engaged in work associated with textiles and that in some regions, evidently, the immediate association made with such lowly work was that of ‘a northern woman’ – one who dressed in a variant form of Scandinavian costume, one similar to what we know of the Anglo-Scandinavian style.

*chaining the warp describes a phase in weaving between winding out the warp threads and threading that warp onto the loom. In some traditions, the warp is dyed at this stage.

Smith speaks of such an association, especially, in relation to Iceland’s textile production during the viking era, connections not only cultural, but technical and specifically related to textile production, trade and technology-transfer. People living in Ireland and in the isles were spinning their yarn z-z.

For illustrations of what is meant by an ‘S’ or a ‘Z’ twist, see e.g. here. Twist-direction is also relevant to codicology. Again, though, I’d stress that such online articles are best used as a first ‘sketch’, not a first-and-final source.

Smith writes,

Textile production was one of the more important household activities of Icelanders in the 10th century. Produced entirely by women, textiles rapidly gained importance, becoming a significant trade commodity exported to Norway in the early medieval period, with growing markets expanding first to the British Isles and then to Northern Europe. Within Iceland, cloth became the basis of the economic system, used as currency to pay taxes, tithes, debts, and fines. Medieval literary sources suggest strict legal guidelines that were implemented regulating the size, length, and quality of this currency. (Ibid., p.64)

If, for argument’s sake, we suppose that the drawing now on the reverse of the Voynich map had been copied from an older work – one dated, say, mid-late 12thC when memory of the older Scandinavian influence was still fresh in the British Isles and/or Ireland, so it might explain this easy association we find made with Anglo- [or Irish-?] Scandinavian dress, and why a figure of that kind would be taken for the quintessential figure for the pegger-out of chained ‘clouts‘.

As I first did when publishing my own research, I’ll quote here the Online Etymological Dictionary, while keeping in mind that etymological dictionaries of the modern kind did not exist even by 1438 …

clout: Etym. before 900 AD.

Middle English; Old English clūt – piece of cloth or metal, c. Middle Dutch, Middle Low German klūte, Old Norse klūtr. cloud (n.). meaning “of the nature of clouds” recorded from c.1300;

meaning “full of clouds” is late 14c.; … Figurative sense of “gloomy” is late 14thc.

To someone who had memorised his Latin texts – a monk or cleric almost by definition even so late as1300 AD – the informing phrase for such an image would come from some earlier authoritative source, such as the works of Isidore or of Bede, which latter had [already] transformed England’s religious and ecclesiastical culture during the viking period.

clarification (10th June 2022) – the last clause is badly expressed. I mean that the church in England, as it was during the viking era, was one already unified and transformed by Bede, whose importance in England’s history meant his writings were more revered and more often referred to there.

A late 12thC century compendium of Bede’s work and matter from Isidore’s Etymologiae etc., is Walters manuscript W.73, in which we find a large drawing which shows the circuit of winds that breathe upon the world, and one – situated slightly east of North – is there named ‘Aquilo vel Boreas’. It speaks its character: “Constringo nubes“.

from Walters MC 37. The North wind is seen at the bottom of this detail, with Aquilo vel Boreas next above it. Details of this manuscript

And if the original enunciator of the Voynich drawing was thinking both of cloth and of clouds, and understood the sense of Constringo nubes (“binding clouds together”), I have a suspicion he was also thinking of the word ‘nubile’ when he gave the woman’s hip its provocative turn.

and see Isidore Etymologiae XIII.7.2 “Clouds (nubes) are named from ‘veiling’ (obnubere). that is, covering the sky; whence also brides (nupta)..”; X.N.184, “Nubile (nubilis), “marriageable” (ad nubendum habilis); and I.xxxvi.12 “Nubila, nix, grando, procellae, fulmina, venti” (Clouds, snow, hail, tempests, lightning, winds).” trans. and ed. Barney, Lewis, Beach, Berghof (2006).

“Constringo nubes”
[plus mulier catenata? cf. linked rings in Basel, Universitätsbibliothek AN IV 18 f.25r Fulda. 9thC]

Drawings of the pre-modern period are invariably formed by the original maker’s thought – and thought in words – so I’m never quite satisfied with any analysis from which the informing words do not emerge

In this case, I am satisfied. The reader is free to differ.

And so now, in that detail from folio 85r (part) we have a fairly nubile chainer of clouts who stands a little to one side of the peg near a ‘Pole’, and who is drawn in a way that allows a possibility that this diagram was first enunciated by someone from the British Isles or, perhaps, from Ireland, and for whom the near-north ‘chainer of clouds’ brought to mind a female dressed in a version of Scandinavian dress, unlike that worn in Scandinavia itself, but associated with the Anglo-Saxons.

At the very least we can fairly conclude, I think, that the answer to our question about how to orient the four figures is partly answered. The woman is of the North. This tells us (by the way the sun-face is drawn) that the diagram as a whole is south-oriented.

We know, too, that the diagram may be meant to speak to directions named by winds in Mediterranean style and that the drawing we now have came from some earlier work, but while I would agree that this particular detail presents as if first enunciated by an educated Latin (that is, a western European Christian), it was not the Latins’ custom* to make South the primary point of orientation.

*If this is news to you, then for a short basic overview you might start here.

By the way

Recalling that Baresch believed the manuscript’s content was, in some sense, Egyptian – that is why he sent copies of some pages to Kircher – I might mention two men who certainly travelled so far as Egypt, among the thousands of others who did, not least because it was a regular point of disemarkation for pilgrims en route to Jerusalem. These two were the English Hugo the Illuminator (Master Hugo) and the Irishman Symon Semeonis. Hugo died in Egypt.

When I introduced their names to Voynich studies, I had not seen Edel Mulcahy’s blogpost about Symon, but it’s still available, good, and is not too long:

Elly Dekker, Illustrating the Phaenomena (2013).

O’Donovan notes #6i: Speaking the same language – sort of.

c.1900 words

The author’s rights are asserted.

This is me trying to introduce techniques of iconological analysis to an audience I’ve never met, while using none (or almost none) of the technical terms and without assuming the audience has read as much as a basic history of art. Good luck to all of us. 🙂

I was going to return to the two crowned women (see end of #6b) but instead I’ll pick up from post #6g, which emphasised the difference between a medium’s date and place of manufacture, and those of whatever is represented on/within it.

In the last paragraphs. I pointed out that between the image itself, and the reader’s ability to understand it, is a barrier that seems more, or less opaque, according to whether it ‘speaks’ the language, visual and/or spoken, to which you’re accustomed. It’s not fashionable, at present, to speak of graphic ‘languages’ but the concept is easy for newcomers to understand. I illustrated this point about the drawn and the written line with these nine images.

In the Voynich manuscript, as we’ve learned since 1912, few of the images appear legible. The reason for this, to put it simply, is that the original maker (enunciator) and his intended audience did not use the same conventions as those informing the art of medieval western Christian Europe – from which tradition our own derive today.

However there are some few images in the manuscript which do seem to speak ‘European’, or something nearly cognate with it.

One of them is to be seen on the reverse of the Voynich map. This is the example I’ll be concentrating on.

This page used to be known as folio 85v – 1, and so my illustrations may come up labelled ’85v-1′. Since the time I published my research-summary for this page, and today, the Beinecke library re-paginated the manuscript, the new system leaving this page – among others – without a specific number. On the Beinecke website its description is now “85r (part)“.

but the site’s side-bar is up again – cheers, Beinecke.

With no way to distinguish one (part) from another, researchers must include an illustration or link every time one (part) or another (part) is being discussed.

Materials – vellum

In the normal way, the vellum’s quality and finish would contribute to our investigation. Specialists can distinguish between vellum made in tenth century Persia as against that made in thirteenth century north Africa, and these again can be distinguished from vellum made at the same time in Germany or France. But between closely connected regions such as southern France and northern Spain, or Spain and North Africa it may be impossible to be categorical. The example shown at right pictures a section of a Q’uran sold by Southeby’s, with a description which reads in part:

Qur’an Section. Illuminated Arabic manuscript on vellum. North Africa or Southern Spain. 13thC, 9 lines per page in neat magribi script in brown ink on vellum.

The Voynich manuscript’s brown ink is no proof of European origin, either.

The feature most telling of inscription within western Europe or under western Christian auspices is that noted in the letter sent from McCrone to the Beinecke library [pdf]:

“The writing appears to have been done with a quill pen.”

The question one would normally ask next, of course, is the range over which quill-pens were being used early in the fifteenth century. I don’t just mean geographic range, but demographic range.

In fact, we don’t have to ask that question, though we should if the drawing had survived as a single image of unknown origins.

In case the ‘who used quill-pens’ question interests you, it’s fine to get your first background ‘sketch’ from an online site, but for anything better you’ll need to dig deeper. As a random example of information in a webpage (here), I’ve bolded the statements which are too vague or are a bit dubious.

It is known that some parts of the Dead Sea Scrolls were written with quill in 2nd century BC. St. Isidore of Seville mentions them in the 7th century [AD] in his writings, and it is believed that quills then began to spread as a popular method of writing as better than reed pens. With quills, it was easy to write on parchment and vellum. They were also used with fine brushes to illustrate manuscripts with figures, decorations, and images and become more and more popular from the 15th century on, when writing and [reading?] flourished writing started to spread [sic] through the western world.

(detail) folio 1r

About that general issue, I think there’s a reasonable possibility that the red-coloured glyphs on folio 1r (right) are an effort to copy an inscription written initially with a vermilion brush. I’ve never found time to look into that possibility in depth, so take it as no more than a possibility.

My point is that neither the use of vellum, nor the use of a brown iron-gall ink, nor even apparent use of a quill pen is exclusively European. The presence of all three together makes it probable that the images were set down as we now have them in western (Latin) Europe or in areas under Latin control.

None of it tell us when, or where, the drawings were first enunciated.

On the contrary, the fact that for more than a century these images have appeared unintelligible to highly trained and experienced people – specialists in manuscripts such as Goldschmidt or Kraus, eminent specialists in the history of western Christian art, such as Erwin Panofsky, and very dedicated and thorough researchers such as John Tiltman, demonstrates clearly enough that a majority of images in this manuscript were not first given their form in that environment and do not employ the conventions employed in art of the medieval west.

(detail) f.78v

For yourself, you may feel a bit puzzled by the image from 85r (part), but I should think that feeling far less strong than your reaction on realising the object near the outstretched hand of a figure in folio 78v was never meant for a Latin cross.

Perhaps you feel tha you don’t quite “get” the image on folio 85r(part), but that on folio 78v seems to “make no sense”.

Of course both do make sense; what you’re experiencing is the different reaction you might have to a person who speaks your language but with a different accent, as against one speaking a language you haven’t learned – yet.

Beginning investigation – Scan the image – f.85r (part).

Here the aim is not to hunt frantically for ‘the’ answer.

Scan the image slowly and methodically, giving equal weight to details that do, and those that don’t strike a sort-of-familiar chord.

Different people go about this differently, but it’s a vital preliminary.

Some people look carefully and methodically, memorising every detail; others try to make a close copy by hand. Others like to mutter to themselves, describing an image detail by detail. Whatever method works for you and doesn’t annoy the neighbours is fine.

Similarities and Differences.

Technical issues will come to the fore as you scan the image. If you are trying to make an exact copy, for example, how would you expect to form the diagram’s circles?

Would you reach for a pair of compasses? If so – stop first and check. Did the fifteenth-century copyist use a pair of compasses?

To answer that question you might need to download a large version of the page from the Beinecke site (see link above). While you’re checking out that question about compasses you might also ask – Is there any sign of a ruler’s being used?

(Next time someone tries to compare images in the Beinecke ms with drawings illustrating the works of Hildegard of Bingen, you might remember this issue of instruments).

As it happens, the ruler-and-compass issue one of the big research questions in Voynich studies, despite the fact that few have recognised its being one. It is one of the reasons I think a drawing on folio 57v was inscribed in a very different situation from the rest.

But if you like musing, or like digging, it’s a fascinating question when you’ve nothing else on your mind: What sort of people, where and when, did not rule out a page before writing, and generally eschewed use of ruler-straight lines?

It is evident that among the fifteenth-century copyists there was at least one who thought he would tidy up a couple of the ‘bathy-‘ images by using a ruler, but his hand isn’t seen for long!

This post is already long enough, so I’ll skip other questions of this sort and move on to an apparent use of two fourfold systems to organise the drawing.

Fourfold divisions.

One fourfold division is provided by the four human figures; the other by what is revealed on close inspection to be four banners or perhaps leaves, or perhaps they’re meant for channeled waters which peter out. Their nominal poles/stems/canals serve to divide the four inhabited sections. Here’s one:

If they’re meant for rivers*, then the person who first made this drawing understood ‘the Paradise’ to occupy the centre of the world, under the mid-heavens.

*In Biblical tradition, four rivers flowed out from Paradise; the Arabs say two remain above ground – the Nile and the Euphrates – but the other two sank underground.

On the other hand, if they were meant to signify banners or flags, we might ask whether they are meant as reference to physical banners/flags? Or for the four principal winds? Or the cardinal points of direction as ‘four Poles’? The four winds are not always closely identified with the cardinal directions.

Where one illustrator might show an allegorical ‘North Wind’ blowing from the North Pole (magnetic- or astronomical-) the navigators and weatherwise knew that the winds which came directly from the Pole were not principal winds, but fairly light ones. In the words of one fifteenth century Arab navigator:

The four cardinal winds are light winds. The remaining ones have technically-formed names and we have mentioned them all in the following verse

“The wind of al-Saba comes from the rising of the sun

But a little towards the Pole, while Shamāl slightly to the west of it [Pole]

Between Canopus’ setting and the west comes Dabūr

Canopus’ rising shows the place of al-Janūb”

G.R. Tibbetts, (1971) Arab Navigation… (p.142)

Canopus, known as Suhel or Suhail, is the star described in earlier western astronomy as alpha Argo ratis. A western conference of astronomers decided, in 1888, to break the enormous constellation of the southern ship into its parts, so now Canopus is master only of its hull: alpha Carina.

How can we know whether the diagram is speaking about the physical world, or about winds, stars, seasons, or about Paradise or even the four horsemen of the Apocalypse?

More to the point, how can we know if, and how, we should align a set of these fourfold division with the cardinal points.

Here’s a clue. Consider the four figures.

I’ll be very nice to my kind readers and be more specific still.

Lingering over the details, consider the costume that each has been given.

… to be continued.

image enlarged from original

(and no, it’s not a fleur-de-lys – that’s your memory tossing up a ‘nearest match’. Check that impression – How was the fleur-de-lys actually drawn in Europe over the period between the 12th-late 14thC?)