Tag: Cicero

O’Donovan notes. Calendar emblems 6.3: of ‘Ausonian verses’ and Scythian bows.

2400 words

The author’s rights are asserted.

To the best of my knowledge, all precedents are correctly acknowledged in what follows. If none is cited then, to the best of my knowledge, that item had not been considered in connection with Beinecke MS 408 before it was brought to notice in essays and research summaries published by the present writer from 2009 onwards. If you know better (and you may do) by all means email or leave a comment with the details.

From now on, there’ll be no more quotation marks around the phase Voynich calendar in these posts.

The mail has now brought a copy of Faith Wallis’ English translation of de Temporum ratione and in a note Wallis confirms that verses Bede attributes to “one of the ancients” are those of Ausonius – the same verses used as tags in a twelfth-century mosaic calendar in San Savino in Piacenza.

Here are those verses again, in a nicer font.

More than twenty years ago, in the first Voynich mailing list, Jim Reeds’ referred to San Savino’s charter document as an example of those elongated letters (mis-called “gallows letters”) which have been noted in the Voynich script. Strange to say, no one looked at the monastery’s art to see if it had anything useful to add – so I did, a while ago but the link to computus – and thus to Ausonius – now returns us to Piacenza by a different route.

San Savino’s 12thC charter. cited by Jim Reeds before 2002.

During the earlier exploration and thanks to Jonathan Jarrett‘s kindly responding to emailed queries, I showed several more such charters with similarly elongated ascenders, concluding that the custom had become rare in the Latin west by the end of the twelfth century, and that in any case it is typically found there only in documents of the charter type written on the authority of the pope or ancillary authorities, but that isn’t our focus now.

San Savino’s twelfth-century mosaic did not survive the centuries entire. Its July roundel survived, but those for November and December did not fare so well.

We’ve seen that the July emblem offers a nice specimen of a locusta– Cancer and one with a three-point head, like those in the Voynich emblem for July.

Here (below) the image on the left shows what remained of the November emblem in 1836 when a careful drawing in ink and watercolour was made of what remained.

(left) detail from the 1836 drawing and watercolour record; (right) the November roundel after recent restoration-reconstruction.

Following the making of the 1836 record, a century and a half evidently saw more lost by attrition. A recent effort at reconstruction and restoration, observing best practice, has kept very clear the distinction between what remained of the original by 2010 and what the restorers added, since they have used sympathetic materials, colours and forms but kept it very clear what is newly added and what was there when they began. I’ve put orange rings over the left-hand detail (above) to show all that remained for the restorers to work with.

It is clear that the roundel had shown a creature whose tail ended with a hook-spike, and though one does not know what other historical information was available to the restorers and their clients, some uncertainty must remain about the original form for that figure.

Attrition must have removed even more of the December emblem, because certain noteworthy discrepancies are evident between the recent reconstruction and details still visible, and carefully recorded, in 1836.

It is worth taking the time to consider those differences with care. As we’ll see, it is not impossible that the figure had not been, originally, of the Centaur type but, like the Voynich archer, a standing human figure of the kind I term – following Cicero and Ausonius – “Arcitenens”.

Of the December figure nothing remained even in 1836 but part of the bow, the hands on that bow, a forearm and a hat. Between each of those details as shown by the drawing, and their appearance in the recent restoration, a number of important differences are evident.

Compare – the form taken by the top of the bow, by the line of its curves; the bow’s position relative to the last letter of “Sagittarius” – and especially the position of the human hands on the bow and on the bowstring.

It is true that the roundel was always labelled as Sagittarius and not with Ausonius’ term, adopted from Cicero*, but we have other instances of Sagittarius’ being represented with just two legs, including in some copies of Aratus that are in Latin, but are found in what were at the time the outer fringes of the Carolingian sphere.

*Ausonius’ use of the term Arcitenens (archaised as “Arquitenens”) is very rare, and the word appears to have been employed first by Cicero in his translation of Aratus’ poem. The Greek term he rendered so is usually found only as an epithet for Artemis or for Apollo and thus implies a human and not half-animal body for the figure.

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A Scythian Bow – history and inferences.

The original form for the Piacenzan archer’s bow had it a recurved bow of the sort called Scythian. Above (left) is an example of that type in an early copy of the Latin Aratus, and (right) another whose bow and stance suggests the Parthian, but who is again given goat-like legs, which in the language of most northern Latin medieval art signifies the devil.

Yet that same form for Sagittarius’ bow is attested in what was then Scythian territory, on a coin produced about fifty years after Eudoxus’ death, for a town called Παντικάπαιον (Pantikapaion). The town had been founded by speakers of Ionian Greek; its name would later be rendered in Roman form as Panticapaeum.

One side of that coin shows a Pan-like figure and the other a Scythian bow. To the best of my knowledge, the second motif had not been been recognised as an allusion to the constellation Sagittarius before an essay published, by the present author, on the subject of the Voynich archer. Since then I have seen the second part of the following illustration re-used online by a number of writers, chiefly those interested in astrology.

reprinted from D.N.O’Donovan, ‘Not a Centaur. Sagittarius fol 73v’ voynichimagery, June 24th., 2015, from an earlier article which the author had published elsewhere in October 2013. coin by permission, Wildwinds.

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Scythopolis/Beth Shean in Galilee

Fifty years later still, in what is now Israel, and upon the ruined foundations of an earlier town occupied by Egyptians and Canaanites, the Macedonian-Greek ruler of Egypt, Ptolemy II Philadelphus (r.282-246 BC), established a new town, naming it Scythopolis.

Scholars suppose the choice of name may be due to the new town’s being first occupied by former mercenaries in the Hellenistic armies, following a practice often observed in ancient as in more rent times, by which unwanted mercenaries are given homes and land and so turned into useful settlers rather than becoming lordless marauding bands.

Scythopolis grew to be a substantial walled city before being taken by Pompey, and though the Romans re-named it, the older name persisted. As late as the sixth century AD, a Byzantine-Greek Christian, a scholar and bishop for that area, is referred to as John Scythopolita (ca. 536–550 AD) or “the Scholasticus.”

The same town is now called Beth Shean or Bet She’an. There, a mosaic dated to the sixth century provides our earliest-known example of a Roman zodiac in which Sagittarius is made a fully human, standing or striding archer. This rota is inscribed with Hebrew letters and, quite apart from the town’s association with Scythians, this form avoids any suggestion of human-and-animal combined, which concept was always abhorrent to the Jews, and at that time equally distasteful to eastern Christians of that region.

website of Beth Alpha, Beit She’an.

Another mosaic floor from Beth Shean, again from the 6thC AD, formed a floor open to the sky and was part of a Christian monastery. This eschews altogether any use of the Roman zodiac, maintaining the much older custom of dividing the year by seasonal activities and (optionally), religious observances. Interestingly, there was apparently no objection to showing personifications of sun and moon, these each representing half of the night-and-day of 24 hours as well as the division between warmer and cooler months and possibly the circuit of stars on the solar, and the lunar paths, respectively.

Monastery of the Lady Mary Beth Shean (6thC).

the

Those two figures may remind some readers of how sun and moon are represented on ivory tabulae recovered from Grand in the High Vosges, and dated variously between the 1st-3rdC AD. Others, more familiar with Roman artefacts may be reminded instead of a peg-calendar (or parapegma) scratched into the walls of a public baths that had been built in imperial Rome, though this example is again dated to the 6thC AD. (sorry about the poor quality image).

from a private copy.

A nice blogpost (in Spanish) about peg-calendars.

*Hilario Mendiaga, ‘Parapegma‘, debreves (Blogger blog), (April 24th., 2012)

Beth Shean would be deserted and destroyed in the following (7th) century, so we can be sure both these mosaics date to no later than the sixth century.

upper and lower images from old posts *20010-2013) in Dennis Aubrey’s Via Lucis

The earliest remaining western example of a fully human standing archer for Sagittarius appears in glass. First, an example from Aisne (Braisne) abbey, later taken to Soissons according to the late Dennis Aubrey, who took the photo shown (right, upper register).

That window used red glass of a kind which, by the 9thC, only a few families still knew how to produce, and all lived on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, with glass tesserae being found in great heaps near Lake Tiberius and exported widely during the Medieval centuries. It is possible, therefore, that the appearance of the “Beth Shean” type, which appears unheralded in the Latin west was because not only materials, but workers, were imported, and as early as the 9th and 10th centuries, for a new style developing in French architecture and which in its fullest form became known as the “Opus Francigenum”. It was later despised by some Italian humanists, Giorgio Vasari calling it “gothic” – meaning barbaric – but as so often, the label stuck and all derogatory overtones were eventually forgotten, from which arose another mistaken idea that there had been something uniquely Germanic about it.

A thirteenth-century example in the cathedral of Lausanne shows that along with adopting the architectural elements of Opus Francigenum, efforts were made to introduce similar forms for the coloured glass windows. (above, lower register).

The earlier, French, example evinces a stronger suggestion of Pan-like legs, though now covered with a hairy fabric rather than a hairy pelt. The bow was soon made more like that familiar to a medieval Latin audience – a change which makes even more interesting the original form for the archer’s bow in the Piacenzan mosaic.

Between what we find in publicly accessible images such as these, and images used in medieval manuscripts – private possessions by definition – the interactions are certainly fascinating and tempting to explore, but that is more than our present topic permits. It is, however, interesting to note that the Lausanne window as it is now is uses “Arcitenens” and not “Sagittarius” as the label.

One would dearly like to know whether there was once circulating an illustrated copy of Ausionius’ Eclogues as school-room verses, and if so whether those had been replaced as a basic text by the Poeticon astronomicon – and when – and whether (if such a change occurred) this was only because the latter was ascribed, probably erroneously, to the more eminent figure of Hyginus? Fascinating as it would be to investigate such questions, they too must be left aside here.

What we can say is that it would appear the Piacenzan mosaic originally showed a Scythian (recurved) bow and – for all that was left of it by 1836 – might have shown a standing human figure. It is significant, I think, that the original shows the figure not as about to shoot, but simply nocking the arrow – preparing to make the weapon ready, as is also true of the Voynich bowman, though his bow has been formed as a crossbow, and his appearance now presents a curious combination of the Spanish, the Dalmatian-Greek and possibly the Genoese. We can also say that a Scythian bow for Sagittarius suggests Hellenistic or eastern Greek precedents.

In my opinion, one is meant to read in the present form for the Voynich figure a punning allusion to the kingdom of the Archipelago: ‘Arci-tenens’. However… that is not an idea appropriate before the thirteenth-to-fifteenth centuries, when I suggest the Voynich archer figure was ‘modernised’.

Here again is what had remained of the roundel in Piacenza by 1836.

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Bede’s source for the “Ausonian verses”

Bede knew the zodiac signs should begin in the middle of one month and finish in the middle of the next – but Ausonius says nothing of that. He assigns the fishes to March, the Crab (= langouste) to July and the Archer for December, as the Voynich calendar does. No crocodile is mentioned, but in his verse for November “bids.. go headlong” which might suggest something of the kind.

Wallis identifies Bede’s source for the verses:

“Bede derived the Eclogue and its introduction from a text entitled ‘De causis quibus nomina acceperunt duodecim signa‘ edited by Jones in BOD 665-667. This edition omits the poem proper. but it is included in Jones’ earlier transcription in Bedae psudepigrapha 103. This same text was the primary source for [Bede’s] ‘On the Nature of Things‘ [pt] 17. Its presence in the “Bobbio computus” (Milan, Ambrosiana H. 150 inf ) suggests an Irish origin

Faith Wallis, Bede: The Reckoning… pp.54-55
  • Faith Wallis, Bede (trans.), Bede: The Reckoning of Time. Translated with introduction, notes and commentary by Faith Wallis, Liverpool University Press, 1988 (Translated texts for Historians series Vol. 29)
  • re ‘De causis quibus nomina acceperunt duodecim signa’ – It seems there was an edition (or thesis) with that title issued in 2010; copy listed by the Favey Library of Villanova University. The book(?) has been digitised but is accessible only to ‘alum’ (alumnus?) accounts.

I’ll leave you with a few things to think over. A map of the old Irish foundations in Europe, and two more details from the Piacenza mosaic.

In the next post, I’ll begin with Cicero’s advice to a friend about his son’s education.

Bobbio the Irish and Piacenza.

Nicklies speaks, a little vaguely, of possible or probable links between the Piacenza mosaic and one made a century earlier for Bobbio.

Bobbio was certainly an Irish foundation and Piacenza’s mosaic has some plainly Irish motifs, including one often mistaken for the later and romantic Latin figure of ‘Melusine’, or a type termed a ‘mermaid’ though it carries neither mirror nor comb.

It had arisen as an Irish, and occasionally an Anglo-Saxon image for the ship or coracle, represented in a style deriving from that of late Roman-North Africa, where they are called by art-historians “triton-” figures.

Most of the Latin versions extant are, however, made as grotesques and date from the the 12thC though occasionally, as with the two shown above, a more faithful version survived. That shown on the right (above) is from San Savino. The other is from an English church built in the 12thC, but on an Anglo-Saxon foundation. Whether the older block were re-used, or clerics in this church felt more sympathy for pre-Norman tradition, one cannot say.

Another variation on the triton type appears, evidently by way of iconography of Basilidean gnosticism, in this highly eclectic Late Roman relief found in Trier and dated to the 3rdC AD.

A water-monster in the Piacenza mosaic is oddly reminiscent of our crocodile-Ammit type. It has an unnervingly wide grin as it bears away an unfortunate soul.

It was a custom of the pre-Christian Irish and Celtic peoples to carry off the head of enemy, but faces are given many watery creatures in medieval constellation-drawings, as we’ve seen.

In the next post, I’ll be considering the calendars of the Labours type and how an association with the Roman zodiac appears relatively late in the history of such rosters. It looks as if what we may have in the Voynich series is an intersection of the two – something which is found during the late Roman-early Christian period and chiefly between the c.3rdC -6th C AD.

The post will have its line assisted thanks, indirectly, to Mr. JK. Petersen’s having once mentioned a certain fourteenth-century French manuscript.

From the website of San Savino

Elevated souls Pt 2a. ‘Astro —-‘

  • Header image: (left) stars of northern latitudes; (right) declination and right ascension  -image courtesy ‘Sky and Telescope’.

Previous two:

 

David Pingree

In 1982, the Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes (Vol. 45) published the paper:

David Pingree,  ‘An Illustrated Greek Astronomical Manuscript. Commentary of Theon of Alexandria on the Handy Tables and Scholia and Other Writings of Ptolemy Concerning Them’.  ( pp. 185-192).

I begin by mentioning it for several reasons.

The late Prof. Pingree is one of the “two Davids” whose works are among those indispensable for study of what some pre-modern peoples knew about stars and – most pertinent to our chief study – how they thought about and imagined the heavens.

The ‘other David’ of the two is David A. King, whose works include the Ciphers of the Monks, in which King drew attention to the same Picard instrument whose orthography for month-names is – as I think Pelling first observed – closely similar to that of the Voynich month-names’.

Since the matter of  ‘Occitan month-names’ is among those affected by metaphorical ‘palimpsest-ing’,  I add more detail.

Writing in 2004, Shaun Palmer credits Stolfi with the proposal and (quite properly) notes that Pelling had come earlier than himself and independently to hold a similar view.  Pelling’s book (2006) then treated and illustrated the issue in  detail (pp. 21-23).  Those three  references should give you a clear idea of the evidence and substance behind this now-widely-accepted view.Searching for ‘Occitan’ today at voynich.nu I found the references given on this point to be an anonymous blogpost of 2012  and a note of thanks to Don Hoffman for providing Zandbergen with bibliographic details of King’s book. Following the principle that  “no acknowledgement asserts no debt”, readers might assume all  unprovenanced matter on that page (which is copyrighted  to  the owner as is every blogpost)  must be a result of the owner’s own research, crediting Zandbergen accordingly.

That paper by Pingree is chiefly concerned with the manuscript Ambrosianus H. 57. sup. (= 437). The ‘tables’ in question are known as  ‘Ptolemy’s Handy Tables’ but were compiled from Ptolemy’s data a century later, by Theon of Alexandria.  Researchers working on the Voynich manuscript might like to consider, in addition, matters associated with Ptolemy’s Geography, as balance for a tendency to associate Ptolemy solely with astrology, or even solely with astronomy. See e.g.

  • Dmitry Shcheglov, ‘Hipparchus’ Table of Climata and Ptolemy’s Geography’, (available through academia.edu)

 

Question 1: Is there Astrological matter in the month folios?

Caution Newcomers should be aware  that nothing in the manuscript has yet been proven related to any branch of occult or pseudo-scientific practice including that of astrology, though  speculation has been so common –  thanks initially to Wilfrid Voynich and his inflation of the ‘Rudolf rumour’ – that many imagine it has been proven beyond doubt.  Yet the stars are part of the natural world and natural, too, may be their observation and depiction.  To represent the theological position of the earlier medieval west, we may refer again to  Augustine:

Amiens Cathedral exterior: Virgo = Threshing               see   labours of the months.

Who can fail to perceive how great is the difference between useful observations of the heavenly bodies in connection with the weather, such as farmers or sailors make … and the vain hallucinations of men who observe the heavens not to know the weather. or their course … but merely to pry into the future ….

from Augustine’s Letters  55 15

  • Anne Lawrence-Mathers, Medieval Meteorology: Forecasting the Weather from Aristotle to the Almanac (2019)
why is the astrological  idea a problem?

Objection 1.  The idea’s introduction depended entirely on ideas about John Dee’s connection to the manuscript, in combination with consideration (only) of the month-names and central emblems from the month-folios.  The latter were taken to depict the ‘signs’ forming a tropical zodiac, rather than taken literally as a depiction of the physically-visible constellations which appear in sequence through the seasons of the year.  The conflation of constellation with astrological ‘sign’ is endemic in Voynich discussions, even today.  

Even if the emblems did constitute a representation of the zodiac ’12’ there is no necessary connection between their depiction and that aspect of mathematics which defined astrology in the medieval world.  In other words, there is no necessary connection between a depiction of the ecliptic constellations and tropical- or sidereal astrology.  

That the opposite idea should be so prevalent in Voynich writings today is due to the fact that most modern readers, living in an industrialised society and urban environment, don’t need to know the stars as people did in earlier times.   Today, we use clocks, watches and phones to know the time; we learn from the weather man what sort of weather we’ll have today; we rely on automatic or printed calendars to tell us where we are in the cycle of months and seasons.   Reflection from city lights, and nights spent indoors (or outdoors) under artificial lights means  many see none but a few of the brightest stars in the night sky.   And all this, together, means that the word ‘zodiac’ instantly evokes the motifs of ‘birth-signs’ and daily horoscopes for us today, and thus seems the ‘most obvious’ interpretation for any comparable series, especially if stars are depicted. 

 Thus, the constant error has been an imposition on a manuscript  six hundred years old, the hierarchy of ideas proper to twentieth- century urbanites.

Things were different six centuries ago.

Objection 2.  No  zodiac sequence contains (as the month-emblems do) two goats, or two sheep,  or a sheep and goat adjacent to one another.

This issue and others raised by the month-emblems are rarely even noticed today by Voynich writers. and of the few who do notice, fewer speak, and of the very few who do mention a problem, the majority do not address that problem so much as seek a way to turn back into the fold any who show signs of doubting that “its-a-zodiac-and-zodiac-means-astrology” proposition chain.    In private conversation a Voynichero once said that he didn’t include both pros and cons in his own writings  because “if your mind is too open, your brains fall out” – which sounds to me like some conservative slogan gone wrong. 🙂

Objection 3. Even if we grant that,  in adding the month-names later, the person who did that truly  believed  the emblems represented constellations from the zodiac, more cannot be deduced from it than  he had  regarded the series as a series of months and their stars.  It is no support for an idea that  “months+stars means astrology”.  

Objection 4. is that the the Voynich series names only  ten months, and the months omitted (January and February) are – perhaps coincidentally or perhaps not –  the months when the fields were dormant, and when  ships of the Mediterranean stayed in harbour. The ‘sailing year’ ran from March until (nominally) November but the historical records show that in fact ships of the harbours where the most competent seamen were based might continue  sailing coast wise even as late as December.

Other points:

  • An argument that the remnants of two cut pages following  the month-diagrams  had once contained two more diagrams of that sort is – like theorised astrological purpose – only speculation at present. 
  • As I’ve explained elsewhere, correlations of month-name, month-marking constellation, and associated ‘labour’ were not uniform  even within Latin Europe., and the correlations made in the month-diagrams between emblem and month-name are not those of the northern latitudes (England, Germany and northern France).
  •   When responding to a Voyichero’s query,  Prof. Ewa Sniezynska-Stolot of the Jagiellonian University in Cracow – whose area is given as the history of European art, especially its traditions of astrological imagery-  also mentioned calendars in connection with the month-diagrams’ central emblems.  Here the difficulty is that her opinion was a short note written in response to a Voynichero’s query and it appears she was given no indication there was any reason to doubt that the content in this manuscript might have any but a medieval Latin European origin.  The answer of an expert is typically provided within the framework of the question posed.  Not knowing that explains why William Friedman got so little from Panofsky, where Anne Nill had received so much more  – and we’re not talking word-count here.
  • Nor do we know what Sniezynska-Stolot was shown of the manuscript at the time (2000), or whether in colour or copy-flo.   As translated by  Rafel Prinke and  reported in Reeds’ mailing list, her note has a distinctly off-hand tone.

By  13 Jan 2001 her note’s content was already reported to Reeds’ mailing list and members were discussing it in  connection with specific problems of the kind no longer acknowledged as existing by the most conservative faction and whose discussion is thereby discouraged, with ‘blanking’ from the record of any non-conservative who might do so. 

Still – let’s move on to one possible hint of the astrological… and trust our brains won’t fall out. 🙂

Astrological versus (purely) Astronomical

Exaltation and Depression?

Consider the following pair  from the first of the ‘April’ diagrams (folio 70v-ii), keeping in mind that the fifteenth-century draughtsman could draw ‘nicely’  but for reasons as yet unclear, didn’t wish to.  What message are we to take from their presentation? What aspects are we supposed to  read as meaningful? What about their postures, for example?

 

Did the original maker  intend the male  figure is to be read as ‘elevated’/’exalted’ and the female as ‘dejected’ or dismayed?   Or are our  subjective reactions focusing on details he would have dismissed as irrelevant?

If he meant attention paid to their posture, we must realise that such terms as ‘elevation’, ‘exaltation {Gk. ὕψωμα]  and ‘dejection/depression’ [Gk. ταπείνωμα] were used technically of the planets in Byzantine astrology, while  “seldom, if ever, found in the West” -as Pingree observes, though he finds that their illustration  in  Ambrosianus H. 57. sup is drawn ‘in western style’.

Indeed, the draughtsman’s style may be western, but it has  little in common with that of the person who drew the unclothed figures in the Voynich month-folios, except perhaps a common implication (also found in certain Islamic texts) that when figures from polytheistic religions are presented, the images should express moral censure. (see further, below) I say ‘perhaps’ because we have no proof thus far that the Voynich figures were intended as deities or anything of the sort. Neither have I seen any argument which proves that  the Voynich manuscript depicts any of the five planets, let alone all of them.

*The planets proper, the ‘wandering stars’, included only Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn in medieval times.

re planets…2001

In 2001, a member of the first (Reeds’) mailing list responded to Robert Firth’s comment on the fact that the ‘celestial’ folios hadn’t served as key to the written text as many hoped they might,  by saying  that “we” ‘ ..have quite a number of good (even if not dead certain) [identifications]:- the Pleiades and Aldebaran; – the seven planets; – two sets of twelve labels in 12-segmented circles; – one (or two?) set of 28 segments, “obviously” indicating the mansions of the moon. (12 Jan 2001).  All members of that list, at the time, would have known which of them had contributed each item, with what evidence and what argument (if any) but as yet I don’t know. If you can enlighten me on the point, please do. I’ve seen nothing one could call a cogent argument for it between 2008 and today.

detail) Milan, Ambrosianus H.57.sup. f.112v. Venus – on which see Pingree (1982) p.32

The unclothed pagan deities for each planet are depicted with a certain censure in the Ambrosianus manuscript  –  e.g. Venus (right) is depicted as as a debauchee – given the face of a young and pretty woman but a body heavy, old and exhausted from bearing children by various fathers. I see little obvious similarity between the draughtman’s style and that in the Voynich month-folios.  Expressions of moral censure in depiction of figures from polytheistic religions are  also seen in some Islamic works, notably in the  ‘Book of Marvels’ ‘Kitab al Bulhan’ (MS. Bodl. Or. 133) a seventeenth-century work (or copy) where Voynich-like “glyphs” were also inscribed.

That-last point was initially brought to notice by – I believe  – by Nick Pelling in his review (2008) of Okasha El Daly’s book. A detail (‘Crab’) from the same Bodley ms was later considered by one Voynich blogger whose blog I cannot find online today. In two posts of 2013 the present writer commented on several of  images from that manuscript, together with  other examples of ‘Voynich-like’ glyphs.

An image posted to pininterest by Marco Ponzi associates a detail from the Bodleian ms with one on folio 67v 2. His commentary may appear elsewhere but I’m not willing to join that site to find out.  (Again, if anyone already has more detail, I’d be happy to include it in the comments section below this post.)

On the Greek astrological terms and their significance see e.g.

  • Roger Beck, (2008) A Brief History of Ancient Astrology, pp. 57-8
  • Roger Beck, (2017) A Brief History of Ancient Astrology  pp. 242ff.
  • Chris Brennan, Hellenistic Astrology: The Study of Fate and Fortune.
  • James Evans. Time and Cosmos in Greco-Roman Antiquity (p.135). Evans’ equating ‘Chaldean’ with ‘Babylonian’ is over-confident.
  • Tamysn Barton,  Ancient Astrology (2002).

Neither  Aratus/Cicero’s Aratea, nor Manilius’ Astronomica  (written  c.30–40 AD) makes use of the planets, a point to be kept in mind given the date for Vat.gr. 1291 and possible  pre-Christian (but anti-Greek? anti-polytheist?) origin for its ‘women of an hour’ (see previous post).

Manilius in the west

Goold believed that before his election to Pope, Gerbert d’Aurillac had found in Bobbio a copy of Manilius’ Astronomica bound (as Gerbert said) with a copy of Boethius’ text on mathematics. Other scholars have doubted this, attributing the west’s knowledge of that text (as we have it) to Poggio Bracciolini’s practice of  commandeer manuscripts from monastic libraries by his position as papal secretary.  The ‘discoveries’ were then copied (at a price) for members of the Italian literati, who appreciated Poggio’s ‘little arm’. His own view is recorded in one colophon, which translated reads “This oration, formerly lost owing to the fault of the times, Poggio restored to the Latin-speaking world and brought it back to Italy, having found it hidden [sic] in Gaul, in the woods of Langres.” If he had acquired it from Bèze abbey, that copy is unlikely to have been older than the 11th-12thC.

Again with the older period in mind, and possible bridges between  pre-Christian astronomical works and the early fifteenth century when the Voynich manuscript was made, I’ll add here part of the description of Niceforous’ visit to Cyprus in the fourteenth century.  There was still a Lusignan ruler in the island, one who with his chief scholar George Lapithes asked the noble visitor from Constantinople to summarise for them as many astronomical texts as they could gather. They brought him copies of Ptolemy’s works, including the  Tetrabiblos, called Ἀποτελεσματικά ετράβιβλος in the Greek – but also,  according to  Niceforous (I quote from another paper by Pingree):

“all the books that still existed composed about such matters, by Ptolemy’s predecessors and by more recent authors as well as those that had been written in antiquity and by the  Chaldaeans and the Persians”. 

  • George Lapithes and David Pingree, The Byzantine Version of the “Toledan Tables”: The Work of George Lapithes?’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, Vol. 30 (1976), pp. 85+87-132.

Pingree offers evidence and argument for a/the Greek translation of the Toledan Tables’  in Cyprus during the first half of the fourteenth century, to which same period, as it happens, I assign their ‘return to the Mediterranean’ phase for  the majority of parts in the Voynich manuscript.

Ambrosiana H.57. sup. – evolution 2ndC AD – c.1458..

Claudius Ptolemy lived in the 2ndC AD.  Theon of Alexandria in the 3rdC AD.   So then, discussing the content in the Amrbosiana manuscript, Pingree tells us:

We may conclude, then, that the original [i.e. the Ambrosiana] manuscript was copied in 1358, and that a series of owners for the next century added to it, rearranged it, and annotated it. It is likely that the manuscript was copied in Byzantium, and remained there while these changes and additions were being made to it. There is no absolute proof for this supposition in the manuscript itself, but it is known that the texts in Ambrosianus H. 57. sup. were copied in part from Laurentianus 28, 7;3 and that manuscript can be shown to be Constantinopolitan. (Pingree, op.cit. p.186)

and

There is no doubt, on the evidence of the script, that the codex could have been written in Constantinople in 1357-58. It is in the style associated with the Hodegoi scriptorium over a period of about half a century.  Western connexions of this scriptorium are not apparent. If they existed they would be more likely at this time to have been with Venice than with Southern Italy.   (ibid. p.192)

.. yet when it comes to those miniatures …(emphasis is mine)

The consensus of opinion is that the style of the miniatures is basically Western, though with an admixture of Byzantine elements. Islamic tradition lies behind the curious iconography, in which the planets are shown with their day- and night-houses, exaltations and dejections: this is seldom, if ever, found in the West. No immediate model has been located in an admittedly cursory search. An artist active in Southern Italy or Sicily may be indicated by the mixture of Italian and French styles. It is not impossible that an artist of, say, the Neapolitan school was working in Constantinople in the mid-fourteenth century – a time when others (Barlaam of Seminara, for example) travelled freely between that city and Italy. No artist answering to this description can, however, be securely documented in Constantinople at this time. Nor can it be assumed that the manuscript was decorated in the same place as it was written: the illustrations may be later additions. Indeed, they look very much as if they are.    (ibid. p.192)

 

For those who managed to come so far   –  here’s the sweet….

B. Astronomical?

Returning to the pair on folio 70v-ii, a closer look at the female figure…Short-ish hair, large head, figure’s right side drawn with a swelling line, indicating a breast. But where the figure’s left breast would be, there’s only what appears to be a piece of skin, marked with lines evoking sutures or something of that kind. Obviously not a skin-graft  (skin-grafting, history of)

We have a word for females who display just one breast. It’s from the Greek: a- (ἀ-) which means lacking and mazos (μαζός), which means breast   ..so, …”without breast”= Amazon.

Classical Greek and Roman imagery doesn’t depict Amazons  lacking a breast. They show a figure who is usually short-haired,  sometimes in armour which can include a breast-cover, or with only one breast covered by clothing and/or armour.

Interestingly, on fol. 70v-ii, the breastplate has been understood by the draughtsman to be of the high-collared type. The two images (at right) are shown simply to demonstrate that high-collared breastplates,  for females, are not entirely unattested.  An amazonian caryatid in Dresden wears armour very similar in deign to the Keralan type. That caryatid is described (by a seller of prints) as  ‘an ancient wall sculpture’. I can only say that their definition of ‘ancient’ is unusual.

The Keralan tradition marks by such means one of the eight chief patron- ‘mother’ goddesses, known to be warrior-women when necessary.

To this day women archers may don a breast cover in addition to the cover always provided for the forearm by the long, skin-tight sleeve and/or by a wrist-guard which might be better called a forearm-guard (but isn’t).  These were traditionally made of thick leather; The present day Olympian (below) wears ones of modern materials.

When you consider that women in pre-Renaissance Europe didn’t normally ever handle a bow, and that  the two drawings in the lower register were made  two thousand years apart from each other, the conceptual image informing the physical image per se has evidently survived remarkably well. The fifteenth-century draughtsman understood his exemplar.

 

So now – which star(s) if any might have been identified as  ‘Amazon’ by any tradition of star-lore, at any time between the 5thC BC and 15thC AD? Here are two possibilities from the Greco-Latin-Arab traditions with which I think readers will be most familiar.

 

  1. alpha [α] Virginis (Lat.Spica) ?

According to the 15thC Yemeni, Ibn Majid, the star α Virginis serves as the manzil (lunar station/mansion) and in that context is known as Simak al A’zal, ‘warrior without a spear’ (Tibbett’s translation p.100). And the figure from the first April diagram certainly has none.  However, women of the Arab tribes in Arabia, and more particularly of the Yemen, appear from the early accounts to have been treated more on par with men and in the pre-Islamic period to have been decidedly martial. By comparing with both older and early medieval works, it appears that until the seventh century AD, α Virginis may  have been often envisaged as a female warrior, one who roared or howled in the attack.   As Virgo, she is still armed in an image within the 9thC Byzantine manuscript Vat.gr.1291.

9thC Greek  (prob. from a late classical source)

A star-ceiling made in Egypt under the patronage of the Roman emperor Tiberius in 50BC, shows Virgo holding a ‘spike’ staff of some kind. The image shown here (below, right) is  as illustrated by Wallace Budge.

1stC BC. image in late-Hellenistic Dendera. If the spike is papyrus, the use of palm and scroll as alternative is understandable.

While Virgo’s spike-star  was generally envisaged as a stalk or sheaf of wheat for most of the Latin period, the alternative tradition was not forgotten, and the late image seen below shows how it was preserved – as a martyr-like palm branch held delicately by a more passive and ladylike virgin angel.

So if this is the intention behind the ‘Amazon’ on folio 70v-ii, her being without a weapon may be due to the same cultural attitudes (not necessarily Arab) which sees  the ‘ladies of an hour’ drawn with arms deprived of strength in Vat.gr.1291 folio 9r- as we also see   in the month-folios of the Vms.

Libra

In both instances, the informing ideas appear to me  indicative of deep-seated belief that the stars had effective power to harm and I doubt such fear derives from the classical Greeks or from the Orthodox Christians of ninth-century Constantinople. That Vat.gr.1291  has drawn on ideologically opposed traditions is evident if one compares the charming figure for Virgo in the ‘helios’ diagram (folio 9r) with the frankly unnerving and skeltal ‘ghost’ which is one of the few figures un-erased from the same manuscript’s planispheric ‘night sky’. (right)

So let’s return to the charming Virgo.  Unlike her counterpart on folio 23r of that manuscript, hers is not  the stocky body we associate with Europe’s late Roman art. She is envisaged as a slender and elegant messenger, whose ‘spike’  now appears more like rolled scroll. (angelos means ‘messenger’.)

This may be a good moment to remind readers that Alain Touwaide said the Voynich manuscript’s appearance suggested to him the sort of Byzantine hospital workers’ notebooks called iatrosophia, though it wasn’t one.

Touwaide has studied such manuals within his wider area of specialisation, and among his publications  is

  • Alain Touwaide, ‘Byzantine Hospital Manuals (Iatrosophia) as a Source for the Study of Therapeutics’, in Barbara S. Bowers (ed.), The Medieval Hospital and Medical Practice  pp.147-173 of Vol. 3 of AVISTA Studies in the History of Medieval Technology, Science and Art, (2007).

I agree that in the  Vms, we have a compilation of matter brought together for an entirely practical purpose, and find it possible the ‘bringing together’ may have occurred in comparable circumstances, and even within the Byzantine sphere, but having already treated in detail a large proportion of the Vms’ imagery,  I am glad that I am not in the unenviable position of having to differ from Professor Touwaide on the ‘practical handbook’ issue, or the ‘compilation’ issue, though I should have been obliged, unhappily, to do so had he said the whole was a work of medicine, or even of astrological medicine.

  • at the moment I can’t refer you to the printed version of Touwaide’s Voynich talk (or, rather first Voynich talk) at Mondragone.  The book is unobtainable, and Stephen Bax’ site where it had been shortly reviewed is presently infected by some virus.  Maybe later.

2. gamma [γ] Orionis.

Hinkley Allen informs us that in  “the Alfonsine tables” (no version or copy is specified) the star γ Orionis has a previously-unattested name, as  Bellatrix – a term from Latin and which means again, a female warrior.

Note – Ptolemy’s Tables, Alfonsine or Toledan Tables in Voynich studies

I was surprised to find no mention of any of these tables in Voynich writings or chats until speculations about occult topics had taken been current for about ninety years.

One would have thought an examination of standard sources for astronomical knowledge would be tested first before resort was had to speculation, but things went the other way.  Perhaps, yet again, we must attribute this oddness in the study first to Wilfrid Voynich’s tale, and a feeling among some that support for the ‘Rudolf’ idea had to marshalled.   However that may be, even today (Nov.2019), I find no mention of the Toledan tables at Nick Pelling’s site, or at voynich.nu.  I believe there was some talk of them in comments to Stephen Bax’ site, but at present it is under ‘virus interdiction’. I hope to check it and properly credit anyone who posted there if/when the site and its comments return.

Otherwise, I have found nothing about the Alfonsine or Tioledan tables (do let me know if you know better) until 2002 (ninety years after Voynich acquired the manuscript), when Luis Vélez’ says in  Reeds’ mailing list (Tue, 16 Jul 2002):

Thus, students of medicine at Bologna… learnt astrology [sic.] for four years, including grounding in Euclid’s geometry and Ptolemy’s Almagest. In addition, they learnt how to use instruments such as the astrolabe and the quadrant, and were taught how to use the Alfonsine Tables along with their canons. ..

 

Hinkley-Allen suggests ‘Bellatix’  was gained by mis-translation of an Arabic term, ‘roaring lion’.  I should have been inclined to dismiss this altogether, as mere transposition of some term for a star in Virgo – except that it survives experiment extremely well.  Experiment involves cultural and specific context, in addition to the image’s individual characteristics and drawing-style.

As you see, where the chap looks quite upbeat, the female looks decidedly “down”, doesn’t she?

Those interested in the written part of the Voynich manuscript might care to research uses for the opposition between elevation/exultation and subjection/ being downcast as applied by older works to matters other than planetary dispositions.

And with these two feasible identifications, mentioned  I’ll leave the astronomical and astrological possibilities for you to think about, except a last note that in another place, according to Tibbett’s note, al ibn Majid identifies Bellatrix with Orion’s hand [lit. Yad al Jauza’, usually Betelgeuse],  and it is in connection with this passage that Majid relates a condensed ‘cipher’ mnemonic for some fairly technical and mathematical matter.

Should it be of interest to any reader, description of that ‘cipher-mnemonic’ runs from the last paragraph on p.87 to the end of the first paragraph on f.88 in Tibbett’s English translation..

Postscript: From the research into historical and cultural context – I think one topic should have been mentioned, viz. the Indian tradition.  Thus, our Bellatrix (γ Orionis) is still recorded as ‘Yad al Jawzã’ al-Yusrã’ on astrolabes made in Lahore by a ‘dynasty’ of astrolabe makers in the sixteenth- and early seventeenth centuries.

  • see e.g. Mubashir ul-Haq Abbasi and Sreeramula Raeswars Sarma, ‘An Astrolabe by Muḥammad Muqīm of Lahore Dated 1047 AH (1637-38 CE)’, Islamic Studies, Vol. 53, No. 1/2 (Spring-Summer 2014), pp. 37-65

In the same context, the ‘serpentine’ extension behind Betelgeuse may allude to the ‘Ketu’ (headless body) of Rahu Ketu in Tamil and Hindu astronomy.  The sources differ considerably and I don’t want to give an impression that I place much importance on it.)

Also, we know that the Indian and Muslim traditions were both still present in Iberia during the fourteenth century, as Chabas and Goldstein (among others) have said:

quote stars Jews Spain astronomical tables 14thC Indian trad

Chorography..

I had meant to now talk about chorography, and identifications of stars with places – not by astrology but by an older system of observation and  a mythos of locality.. as well as by nominal superimposition of  celestial and terrestrial co-ordinates (made easier in medieval times if one had an astrolabe).

I would have begun from the classical sources’ identification of Amazon lands, by Herodotus and later authors, illustrated by a couple of maps, and then moved on to the technical correlations for star-and-place as well as the various astrological equations of peoples and regions …. coins, legends, Manilius, Dorothea of Sidon etc., remarks on Genoa’s colonies in the Black Sea (from c.1290s to the time the Plague came..) and so, eventually,  to Ptolemy’s co-ordinates.

But this post is already a trying length, almost 4,700 words, so I’ll leave all that material from my logs aside, except to say the Voynich ‘strings’ may bind place and star.

The star-place correspondence system has to be conceptual or temporary because the vernal equinox moves, as the first minute of right ascension doesn’t.  Then there are also the eastern navigator’s “fetterings” but …alas.. who’d ever read so much?

At least you have some sources for this last and  far from unimportant section.

edit (6th December 2019).

Can’t get the ‘comments’ to include this image, so here it is. Proof of relevance to c.1420.  See second of the comments following this post.