Mountain ascent

The most important identification I make – the key to everything – is to see the central rondel of the Voynich map as depicting the Rosengarten mountains in the Dolomites. I have described the basis of the identification in a video: here.

Part of my reading of the topography of the map is the following:

On my reading, the corner circles are at a lower altitude than the middle circles, and the middle circles are at a lower altitude to the central circle. The central circle depicts the Rosegarten mountains as sacred spires, the centre and locus of the landscape depicted. The map depicts paths of ascent up to those mountains. This is why there are no diagonal paths from the corners to the centre: you cannot go directly from the lower hills to the highest peaks. You have to climb in steps to higher junctions first.

The side view can be stylized thus:

Understanding this structural topographical feature is one of the keys to understanding the organising principles of the map as a whole.

R. B.

Hypothesis B

I offer a second, related, hypothesis – hypothesis B, the Benedictine option. It is less plausible than the first but is not out of the question. I consider it subsidiary to the Cusean Ladin Hypothesis proper.

This alternative hypothesis has no need for Nicholas of Cusa, except perhaps indirectly as a catalyst. Instead, the Voynich manuscript is the work of the Benedictine sisters who had spiritual dominion over much of the Ladin population, including half of Val Badia.

By my hypothesis, the work, first and foremost, concerns the Ladin herbal tradition. The quest is to explain the strange (and quite developed) presentation of that tradition. Who might have done this? It concerns a rustic herbal tradition but we can be sure that it is not by a rustic herbalist from the mountain valleys. So who in that landscape could account for the cosmology, the language, the script, all the elements beyond the rustic herbal tradition?

Hypothesis A answers Nicholas of Cusa. He was bishop over the Ladin of that region for a prolonged period.

But also in that same landscape – with even longer acquaintance with the Ladin – are the Benedictine nuns of Sonnenberg castle (Castle Badia Sonnenberg). Might not they be a candidate for the intellectual development of Ladin herbalism? Hypothesis B.

That is: the Voynich manuscript is a Benedictine account of the Ladin tradition.

In this variant hypothesis, the work is thus in the tradition of Hildegard of Bingen and the Benedictine monastic herbal tradition, with its distinctive natural philosophy, cosmology and medicine – with this applied to, or married to, fused to, informing, the native herb tradition of the local region, the herbalism of the Ladin.

In such a scenario, the language and the invented script might be explained in the Benedictine tradition: after all, Hildergard, the great luminary of the Benedictine sisters, is the prototypal case of a language and script being created in the Middle Ages.

The work, then, would be more visionary in nature than rational and scientific (as it would be in Hypothesis A.)

The work would also, then, be by women. Where in the Ladin landscape do we find educated, literate women? The nuns of Sonnenberg.

The historical context is important. The Benedictine nuns were a centuries-old institution in the region and occupied Sonnenberg castle. The nuns themselves came from the leading local families. Their languages were German and Ladin. The application of the Benedictine rule was loose, though, which better allowed the nuns to serve functions in the community.

This state of affairs was challenged by the arrival of the reformer Nicholas of Cusa, who, as the new bishop, upset long standing arrangements and imposed the strict rule. The nuns – local nobility – were suddenly cloistered. They protested that the strict rule had never been applied at Sonnenberg in its entire history. It was a covent for noble women, not just any nuns. (Cusanus gave them thirty days to disconnect from their boyfriends!) Thus the famous rivalry between Cusanus and his nemesis, the abbess, Verena von Stuben.

From which side of that dispute does the Voynich ms. come? Who has assisted in making a written, developed account of the Ladin tradition? Cusanus, the outsider, or the Benedictine nuns? Hypothesis A supposes that Cusanus came to know the local Ladin tradition and provided a commentary thereupon. In Hypothesis B we can assume that the nuns knew the local traditions first hand, and had known them for centuries. We can conjecture that there was some meshing between the (substantial) Benedictine tradition of herbalism (herb cultivation) and the local herb gathering tradition.

In view of this question, for instance, it might be significant that the Voynich map (which I take to be of that region, Dolomite Ladinia) features conspicuous Ghiberline architectural markings, including long boundaries with the tell-tale swallowtail merlons. Does this announce a political affiliation? The Benedictine sisters appealed to Duke Sigismund against Cusanus – it was essentially a good old Papacy vs. Hapsburgs dispute. There is nothing even slightly papal in the Voynich ms. On that count, it seems a thoroughly (or even explicitly) Ghiberline document. That would put it in the camp of the nuns versus Cardinal Cusanus.

It is an attractive alternative. Prima facie the involvement of the local Benedictine nuns is more likely than the involvement of Nicholas. It is hard to associate Cusanus with a rustic herbal. The folkish nature of the manuscript is much more in keeping with the Benedictine nuns.

But the sophistication of the cosmology, and the language, the Llullian Art (?), Graeco-Islamic influence, and many other features of the work seem more within the reach of someone like Nicholas of Cusa than someone like Verena von Stuben and her nuns.

R. B.

Equation

 To reduce my hypothesis to arithmetic simplicity, the equation is:

The simplest and most adequate explanation for all the oddities we find in the Voynich manuscript is that the cosmology of Nicholas of Cusa has been applied to the herbal tradition of the Ladin people of alpine northern Italy.

I contend that we can apply this simple equation to almost any aspect of the Voynich and find plausible reasons for most things, including the contradictions of the work.

Folkish art = the Ladin tradition
Complex text = Cusanus
Rare and unfamiliar herbs = the Ladin tradition
The mountain nymphs = the Ladin mythology
Pagan elements? = the Ladin tradition
Humanism? = Cusanus
Heliocentricism? = Cusanus
Graeco-Islamic astrology? = Cusanus
Llullian influence? = Cusanus

The main equation is:

A folkish herb tradition + an early modern cosmology.

That is the conundrum that confronts us in the Voynich manuscript, along with a text in an unknown language in an unknown script that is evidently the work of some highly literate person. How do we explain this unusual conjunction? The rustic herbal informed by an early modern cosmology and a text suggesting a deep knowledge of Latin manuscript traditions and an author with linguistic genius? The equation Ladin + Cusanus is an historical circumstance that would explain it, or at least offer a more adequate explanation than any other.

R. B.  

Ladin herb tradition

A recent study published in an ethnobotancial journal reported this:

“Worldwide mountain regions are recognized as hotspots of ethnopharmacologically relevant species diversity. In South Tyrol (Southern Alps, Italy), due to the region’s high plant diversity and isolated population, a unique traditional botanical knowledge of medicinal plants has flourished, which traces its history back to prehistoric times.”

I am firmly of the view that this “unique and ancient” tradition is what is depicted in the Voynich manuscript. It is a herb gathering tradition with an accompanying folk medicine based upon the rich and unique botany of the alpine regions. This is what we see in the Voynich ms.

It is important to understand that it is a herb gathering tradition – and thus we have the map which sets out a specific terrain, a specific landscape.

Another consideration is the very nature of the herbs of the region. Many are rare and only found in remote mountain locations - locations known only to experienced herb gatherers. Many are also strange. We still know little about this botany. Only recently new species of carnivorous herbs were discovered in the area. The alpine environment is harsh and the seasons short. The conditions create a unique botany of plants with concentrated medicinal powers. Many herbs lie dormant for most of the year and only flower for brief periods, sometimes only days. The flowers and other forms are often bizarre. The herbs typically have deep root systems to support long periods of dormancy. This is the sort of strange and unfamiliar botany we see depicted - in a medieval manner - in the Voynich manuscript.

It is believed that the Ladin herbal tradition extends back to the Iron Age. It is the oldest continuous herbal tradition in Europe. It is also one of the least studied and least understood. The herb lore of the Ladin, like their sagas and myths, is an oral tradition preserved in the Ladin language.

The central tenet of my hypothesis regarding the Voynich manuscript is that it concerns the Ladin herb gathering tradition. (The second tenet of my hypothesis is that the Voynich ms. is the outcome of the period in which Nicholas of Cusa was prince-bishop over the Ladin people and the Ladin territories. If you take the cosmology of Cusanus and apply it to the Ladin tradition, you have the Voynich ms.)

R. B.

Map directions

The most fundamental correlates to establish in the ninefold Voynich map (Rosette) are the four directions. This, like everything else, is much discussed, with advocates for every possibility. There is, however, what I would describe as a majority opinion and it provides the most probable alignment. It is based on assuming that the two suns in the corners of the map indicate an east/west axis, and that the small diagram in the bottom left with a pointer marks north - both very defensible assumptions. We won't go over all the arguments here. No other alignment is as cogent.

 

The alignment is as follows:

The purpose of this post is just to put this on record. The Voynich space is so full of chatter and contradictions that it can difficult to get a sense of what is solid and what is not. With only slight exaggeration, there are some Voynich groups where people will argue for twenty years as to whether it's a "map" or a "chart". Debates about the directions can be tangled and confusing.

Amidst it all, though, you will find a good body of considered opinion favoring the above alignment. On the available evidence, it is the natural reading of what is suggested. Objections can be made, but none of them changes the strong likelihood that this is the correct reading.

It is an important question. We are given a map. What are its directions? It is surely a vital step towards understanding the map that we know this. For the purposes of study, anyway, we have to adopt a working assumption and proceed with it. This is the model that I think is most adequate for such purposes. In fact I think it can be safely adopted as a working model for subsequent study: it can be taken as some (reasonably) solid ground.

We ought to be ever ready to scrap it if we must, but it is the safest platform from which to begin.

These seasonal parallels follow naturally:

 

 

 
And these correlates:

*
*  *
*  *  *

The various other possibilities are illustrated below:

R. B.

Sketch of scenario

Here is a rough sketch of the sort of scenario I think is likely. I can expand on each of these points.

Nicholas of Cusa arrives in the Tyrol as the Prince-Bishop of Brixen.

He becomes apprised of the herbal traditions of the local Ladin people who are part of his flock.

He gives an understanding of those traditions in terms of his own cosmology and his version of the Llullian Art.

He instigates or contributes to the production of a private copy of the same: a Cusean (Llullist) account of the Ladin herbal tradition and its local cosmology.

It is a work of collaboration between a Ladiner, versed in local lore, and his bishop, the cosmologist and scientist.

Specifically, Nicholas:

*Designs the script
*Composes the text
*Helps design the work
*Funds its production
*Helps organise its production

His motives are: pastoral, fraternal and intellectual.

A likely geographical locus of this scenario is the Castle Tor in the Val Badia.

The scenario provides no specific reason why Cusanus felt it necessary to create a new script for the project instead of using the Roman script, and it requires that the person for whom the work was made could read the script without any trouble.

R. B.

Mountain tonics

These are speculative notes I made on the 'vessels' or 'canister' section of the manuscript. I still subscribe to most of the points made.

There is a system of alchemical herbalism depicted in the Voyncich manuscript. The work is clearly in the genre of alchemical herbals typical of northern Italy in the 1400s. It is an eccentric addition to the genre, but that is its setting and its provenance. My purpose is to explain how the herbalism in the work operated, at least in principle.

What is being made in the work is what I will call tonics. A tonic is a medicine that gives “tone”, which is to say it restores general health. A tonic is not for specific diseases. It is for over-all well being.

Note that there are no diseases depicted in the Voynich manuscript. It is not about particular diseases. It is not a work written in response to an outbreak of the plague, for instance. There are those who think it concerns women’s health, but there are no depictions of female diseases, or any diseases, and all the women depicted (nympha) are rosy cheeked and healthy.

But the production of medical or herbal preparations is depicted. So what can these be for? I think they are best described as tonics. Herbal tonics.

And the herbs in question are mountain herbs, an alpine botany from northern Italy. It is important to appreciate the virtues and distinctive nature of this botany. The northern Italian alpine area is a region of extraordinarily rich and unique wild herbs that have been collected as medicines since ancient times. Indeed, it is a region with an indigenous tradition of herbal medicine, extending back to before the Romans, even to prehistory, fostered by the isolation of valleys and communitys. Alpine herbs are often botantically odd, with exaggerated flowers or other features (some are bizarre and carnivorous) and are medicinally potent as a result of short seasons, rich soils, a pristine environment and mineralized mountain waters. The manuscript is about this materia medica and concerns the production of certain tonics from these herbs.

It is also important – essential – to appreciate that herbs are not the only feature of this medicine. Mountain waters and mineral springs are a feature of the landscape, in a dolomitic geology, with many spring-fed lakes and ponds, underground rivers, waterfalls and cascades. The region is famous for its pristine mineral waters and healing springs. I propose that, as well as mountain herbs, the production of tonics also included the use of mineralized waters from the same mountains as the herbs. A tonic, that is, is a water-based herbal complex (as they are called). Note that there is no sign of distillation in the manuscript, and in fact no depictions of fire at all. I conclude that alcohol was not the medium for the medicines. Rather, we have methods of water extraction.

The extraction is done in the vessels (canisters) depicted in the pharmacological pages. I can describe how they worked in principle, if not in detail. The idea is that layers of various pre-prepared herbs are assembled, then water is added to the top of the vessel. This is clearly shown. The water then filters down through the layers and is collected at the bottom – also clearly shown. The water, remember, is not a neutral H2O, but is rather a special medium with virtues of its own that is itself integral to the tonic. The resulting tonic is a combination of herbal extracts dissolved in mineral-rich mountain water.

That, I think, is the basic idea and what is being depicted. We are shown the herbs, and then the herbs are prepared and assembled in combinations in connection with these vessels. The vessels clearly have liquid added at the top, and liquid collected at the bottom. I suppose that the herbs were placed in the vessels and had the water filter through them in layers according to certain recipes. This is still a method used in some herbalism today. It is usually referred to as percolation, although modern herbalists tend to use stronger solvents than water, but that is a modern development. Methods of water extraction were the norm before the modern era, even in highly developed systems like traditional Chinese medicine. What the Voynich ms. depicts, I think, is water extraction by percolation.

There is, however, somewhat more to it. We need to understand this basic process in terms of the rustic folk traditions that underpin this herbalism. What we have here is a mountain alchemy based in a premodern cosmology. For ways of understanding it we can perhaps learn from examples from other mountain alchemies, in Buddhist Tibet and Taoist China, for instance. In the Voynich ms. we have an indigenous European tradition from the mountains between Italy and Germany.

I propose understanding the vessels – filtration vessels – as mimetic of mountains, and the filtering of water down through the assembled layers within them is akin to the filtering of waters down through the interior of a mountain. Each vessel is, as it were, a symbolic mountain, and the process by which the tonics were prepared imitated the natural processes of the mountain. Such a tonic, that is, was designed to impart something of the power and strength of a mountain by sympathetic magic, as we would say. The power of the herbs is thus enhanced.

That is the question: how is the simple power of the herbs being enhanced? Alchemies enhance, exaggerate, speed up, natural processes. A tonic is a concentration. In later alchemical herbalism (Paracelsean) the powers of herbs are enhanced by extracting and concentrating them in tinctures with alcohol as the solvent. That is not depicted in the Voynich ms. Instead, we see herbal complexes, and water is the agent. We do not see fermentation processes either, or calcination, or other familiar processes. Instead, I propose, the vessels energize the tonic with a process that imitates that of a mountain. If nothing else, this preserves a quality of the environment in which the herbs grew: mountain herbs in mountain water prepared in a vessel that imitates a mountain.

It is unlikely to have been a rapid process. More likely, the desired effect was to have the mountain water dripping slowly down through the layered herbs. Percolation is a time-consuming method of water extraction. Possibly, layers of clay or sand or pebbles or other similar substances were added at controlled points to further extend the analogy with a mountain. The dynamic of the device is taken from the internal hydrology of the mountain, the mysterious filterations of water through various geological layers in a complex system of underground streams, pools, seeps and watersheds producing the magical vital waters of the springs. I imagine that a vessel was prepared, layer upon layer, the water added at the top, and it is then left for some time (weeks, months?) as the water moved slowly down the vessel to be collected at the bottom. Possibly more water was added and the process repeated several times.

The result would be a liquid extraction of minerals and herbs. In the case of tinctures, the alcohol acts as a preservative as well as a solvent. In these ‘mountain tonics’ the minerals in the water play that role. Many important ingredients in herbs are not water soluable. Moreover, plant matter contains sugars and water extractions will quickly sour. That is an advantage of using alcohol; it dissolves and preserves. But mineralized waters will extract a wider range of chemistry from the herbs than pure water, and tonics made with mineralized waters will last much longer. As with any folk medical tradition, this would be calculated according to age-old experience and observation.

The analogy with the mountain is important because it explains the depictions of the nympha and many of the features of the manuscript. I take it that these are indeed water nymphs and what is being depicted is the way the nymphs control and regulate the internal hydrology of the mountains. There is a very clear depiction of the process on one page. At the top is a nymph collecting rain water at the pinnacle of a mountain. This water then filters down through underground pools and streams - streams depicted uniquely as an organic vascular system, implying a conception of a living mountain – into mineral springs, guided all the way by nymphs. This is a picture of the natural process that is imitated - by folk mimesis - in the filtration vessels, the percolators, used to make the tonics.

The natural process is illustrated with nympha because this was indeed the belief of the peoples of those regions and this herbalism. Even today, numerous lakes and water features in that landscape are said to be populated by water nymphs. Water nymphs feature in the folk legends of those mountains, most famously in the legend of the nymph (more recently ‘mermaid’) of Lake Carezza. The traditional cosmology of the people of the mountains and valleys – we must include the mountain herb gatherers – was explained in terms of nature spirits, tales of nymphs. This is what we see in the Voynich ms., water nymphs at work. The making of tonics in the mountain-vesels imitates and participates in their work and is perhaps supposed to harness their assistance or at least something of their powers in the waters used to make the tonic.

This last point, I think, explains the astrology in the work where, importantly, the nymphs appear again, but in a celestial rather than a sub-mountainous setting. I take it that they are the same nymphs and so the manuscript establishes an explicit connection between the mountain nymphs (and their work) and the astrological cycles. It is reveaing that some of the nymphs in the bathing scenes are measuring the depth of the water. The nymphs control the rise and fall of the underground waters. This is of great importance and needs to be explained in some detail.

It is a conspicuous feature of mountain waters in these regions that they rise and fall, and not always just with the seasons. Some spring-fed lakes, like Lake Carezza, for instance, are famous for mysteriously rising and falling water levels. That is exactly why the lake is said to be enchanted by a nymph. The hydrology of it involves two types of water: snow thaw, or surface water, and spring water coming from inside the mountain. Some water bodies are fed more by one than another. The underground flows can vary according to complex processes, often slow, through different geologies that mineralize the water along the way. The maze of rivers and caverns and water tunnels beneath the mountain are the terrain of the nympha. They control the rhythms and cycles of the deep mountain waters. We see them doing this in the manuscript and specifically we see them measuring the flows. At the same time, these flows dictate the mineral content of water bodies. I take it that the blue water in the manuscript is snow thaw or plain water, rain water, and the green water is mineralized.

The astrology concerns cycles of the heavens that coincide with the activity of the nympha, which is to say the rising and falling of the mountain tides. The nympha, as I say, also dwell in the celestial waters. The quality and quantity of mountain waters coincides with the sightings of various stars and constellations. This is what happens in Egypt. The rising and falling of the waters of the Nile are observed to be syncranized with the cycles of Sirius. In the Voiynch ms. the author is elaborating relationships between the subterranean waters and the cosmic waters, with mountain-as-cosmos the implied analogy. Theirs is no need to argue that mountain people are star watchers: we build our own observatories on mountain peaks. The Voynich ms. contains a mountain astrology that is specifically tied to the cycles of the subterranean waters.

This is important, as I say, because it controls the qualities of the waters, as well as rise and fall – Lake Carezza changes colour according to changing mineral content – but also, I suggest, because it also signals crucial points in the growth of the alpine herbs. The mountains are a dynamic cosmology. Some herbs have very short lifecycles, growing and flowering quickly under certain conditions, often in remote or hidden valleys. Herb gatherers have many means of following these cycles, including astronomical signals and changes in the water flows of the mountain. The Voynich ms. is a book made by herb gatherers. They do not grow herbs. It is not horticultural. It contains information relevant to herb gatherers – including a map of nine mountains and their springs in the Rosette Folio - who then prepare and preserve the collected herbs in the form of tonics – potentized or alchemical tonics made by water-extraction percolation.

We know from contnuing modern herbal traditions in this region, and from comparable traditions elsewhere, that the same herb can be counted as having different properties and powers depending upon what mountain it grows upon, what soil, watered by what springs. It is a highly localized tradition. The time in the season, in the moods of the mountain, and under what stars ,is an important factor too. It is, in fact, a traditional craft, and that is what we find presented at the core of the Voynich ms, a work concerning the herb gathering/ folk medicine craft of the Italian Tyrol, or at least one iteration of that tradition. We know there was not just a single version of that herbal medical tradition in northern Italy. Since different regions have different herbs and different conditions, they develop different methods and preparations. It is likely that many traditions, many recipes, were confined to single villages or even single families or lineages.

For all of that, I think this craft tradition has been blended to extraneous material, especially in regards the astrology. The production of tonics is likely to be traditional knowledge, undeveloped by the addition of exotic alchemical ideas and processes and equipment. But the astrology system has been blostered by the addition of new and outside influences which have been synthesized with the local star-lore. The new knowledge is Graeco-Arabic such as we find in humanistic learning in northern Italian cities in this period. The oft-noted humanist hand of the scribe tells us of at least some humanistic education. He seems less influenced by Graeco-Arabic herbalism and labotarory methods than by Graeco-Arabic astrology. The herbalism in the work is essentially rustic. But the astrology is more book-learned. We can suppose that the author is from the mountain herbalist tradition – it is most likely ancestral – but he has also been exposed to more developed astrological schemes during an education in the towns. I would describe him as an elder and an authority in his craft, who is bringing a new knowledge-set to his own star-lore. The astrology in the work is not indigenous, or not entirely so, but the herbalism is, or is mostly.

This makes the Byzantine handbook of Ptolemy especially interesting. It shows similar arrangements of similar celestial nymphs. We know that text was in Brescia in the relevant region in the 1460s. It has long been suggested that the author knew this work. If so, he has matched the nymphs of the ptolemaic scheme with the water-nymphs of his mountain tradition. That is the point of synthesis. That is the point of assimilation. The identity of the celestial waters with the subterranean waters would not have been an innovation: this is a very ancient and widespread cosmology of water. The author has enriched his folk tradition of nympha – mountainous and celestial – with more sophisticated astrologies, Greek and Arab, then current among the educated in northern Italy.

The Voynich ms., that is, is a blend of old and new, but mainly old. I suggest it is a type of compendium that not only preserves a body of traditional herbal knowledge, recording an essentially oral tradition of herb and medical lore, but sets out to illuminate that knowledge with new, book learning, thereby bringing it up to date. Trained and expert in his own alpine herbal and tonic-making tradition, our author – perhaps unusually – also received at least some town education. Astrology was an integral part of the medical curriculum at Padua and other north Italian universities and centres of learning. Our author is literate, multi-lingual, but perhaps not cosmopolitan, and to be frank the manuscript, though remarkable, is rustic and unprofessional. The evidence is against him being highly educated. This is the work of a mountain herbalist, a herb gatherer, deeply learned in his craft, who has learnt something of bookish medicine, especially the astrology which he blends with his native (and ancient) stellar cosmology of nympha, amplifying them with the compatible Greek ideas.

Clearly, the work is not a contribution to academic herbalism. So what was it for? The author is not presenting his tradition, its botany and its tonics to either a general or a learned humanistic audience. Rather, he is taking things he has acquired from academic herbalism in order to assemble materials for a small and private readership within his craft. The work should be considered a type of craft document, a reference work for himself and his fellow herb gatherers. Above all, though, it is best understood as a work on the cusp of literacy. I suspect it is bringing much of its material into a literate form for the first time. The tonics are an oral heritage, and it is being brought into writing by an author deeply learned in that oral heritage who is perhaps among the first of his people to read and write and to be taught something of the modern medicine in the cities.

We might be reminded, in this, of the story of Paracelsus a hundred years later. He grew up steeped in alpine herbal traditions, then went to the city to study medicine. In his case, he was appalled by the new methods and reinvented his native mountain herbalism as an alternative school of medical thought, building upon its inherent alchemical themes. In the case of the Voynich ms. the author is not taking his tradition to town. He is taking things learnt in the towns back home. Singer insisted the manuscript is proto-Paracelsean. It is a similar encounter between alpine herbalism and Graeco-Arabic cosmology, but the Voynich author is engaged in a different enterprise than Von Hohenheim, and at a lesser level of competence. There is no polemic against a medical establishment or any similar agenda we can detect. It is not a vexatious document. It is private and good humored and often whimsical.

Yet, as with many traditional crafts, the herb gathering traditions contained in the work are likely to have been secret or at least a guarded knowledge. Herb gatherers do not share their knowledge of mountain terrain and vegetation any more than people who gather mushrooms in the hills reveal their best picking spots or a prospector will tell you where he found his gold. And the tonics are not being explained for industrial production: they are handcrafted medicines, mountain elixirs, made according to secret recipes, and secret methods, I surmise, from herbs and waters and ingredients collected from the mountains according to ancient, and secret, or closely guarded, traditions.

This, of course, might well be enough to explain the cryptic language and script in the manuscript. It is an in-house text, for a private audience, perhaps coded. Anyway, the regions in question – South Tyrol – are a language soup upon a Latin base. There has always been a patchwork of obscure languages and dialects in the mountains and valleys, sometimes in very small populations. Forms of vulgar Latin persisted from Roman times, along with Bavarian and German influences. The area was often under the control of the Holy Roman Empire from the Germanic north. I note the evidence suggesting the author may have had German as his first tongue.

Even though we cannot read it, the Voynich text is very likely from this background, and in that case may be in an extinct language. This is compounded by being written in a private script and perhaps a private short-hand. But worse, the text might remain half-oral and the marks on the page, the letters and words, may be prompts for oral instruction and only make sense when informed with oral explanations. Note that there are what appear to be songs and poems in the text. An oral tradition is being written down.

To recap: the manuscript presents alpine herbs in the context of mountain hydrology – we might say a sacred hydrology, or at least an enchanted one. And an accompanying, connected astrology. These two sources, materials – herbs and waters – are the ingredients for the tonics made in the vessels in the pharmacological pages which operate by water-extraction percolation. This method, I want to say, imitates the internal hydrological processes of a mountain.

It is especially important to place the work in the right geography, the right landscape. The mountain is the central fact in the Voynich world. It needs to be understood not only in terms of a mountain herbalism but also a mountain cosmology.

R. B.

© Copyright is inalienable.

Some basic questions

The Voynich manuscript has been studied to death, but it is still devilishly difficult to have clarity about even basic questions. Here are a few, with answers from within the perspective of a Cusanus Ladin hypothesis:

Do the illustrations and the text go together?

Almost certainly. There are proposals that the pictures look like a herbal but the text is really about secret military plans to reconquer Constantinople, and such like, but the safest assumption is that image and text go together. The text is some sort of commentary upon, an accompaniment to, the pictures and diagrams. It is safe to assume the text and the pictures are about the same thing.

Do the illustrations and the (plaintext) language go together?

Likely, but not necessarily. Latin, Ladin, German or Italian might go with the illustrations, in historical context. Greek, Arabic, Hebrew etc. would be external languages. It is possible, but less likely, the pictures might show the Ladin herbal tradition but the text is in Greek, for instance. More likely the plaintext is in a local language. Some exotic languages like Chinese or Filipino come up in computational studies, but they would be entirely remote from the illustrations which are clearly European. They are very unlikely.

Do the script and the illustrations go together?

Possibly, but not necessarily. The script might have been created for other purposes. It appears that scribes were very familiar with it as if well-practiced. But we have no other instances of it – none – which suggests it is exclusive to this work (and therefore designed for the task.) Let’s rephrase the question:

Is the script designed especially for use in this work?

Possibly, but not necessarily. Perhaps a strong possibility. It does seem as if someone, for whatever reasons, designed a new script for the purposes of writing this book. The task required a new script and system of glyphs. There is no evidence at all that the script existed prior to this work (or was used afterwards.)

What is it about the work that necessitated a new script?

It is difficult to say. There are many possible reasons, none of them compelling. Concealment is the obvious one. But on the evidence of the illustrations, which are copious, the work seems innocuous. There seems no reason to hide the content unless the text is much more heretical or concerns more sensitive matters than the illustrations.

Is it a new script to record a previously unwritten language?

Perhaps. A new script would define an ethnic tongue as distinct. This would not be altogether unusual in a period when vernacular languages were forming distinct identities. The obvious language in context would be Ladin, but we know that Ladin was easily accommodated by the Roman script (being close to Latin anyway.) It didn’t require a unique orthography, unless the script is designed to make the language distinct from others as a means of defining it and/or as a nationalist gesture. There is little or no evidence supporting these conjectures.

What other reasons could there be?

The script – perhaps the language – could be experimental. Or it could be a private shorthand. That has often been suggested: that it is a previously unknown system of Latin shorthand. That should be counted as a good possibility. We have an astrological herbal with a Latin commentary, but the commentary has been cast in an unfamiliar system of shorthand with its own newly assembled system of notation. There is no motive to conceal – it is just that we cannot read the shorthand. We are left with the question: why invent a new system of Latin shorthand? That question might be easier to answer than many others.

R. B.

Heliocentric

Here is a simple argument in support of my hypothesis:

It is entirely arguable that the cosmology depicted in the Voynich manuscript is heliocentric. There is no need to argue it here. It is one of the first things noted about the work. It certainly deviates from the standard Ptolemaic geocentric model. On the whole, it offers a unique cosmology that has defied ready identification. I think it is best described as early modern.

It was the heliocentricism, amongst other things, that led so many people to place the work in the 1500s, the golden era of Renaissance astronomy and scientific speculation, or later. All the pioneers of modern astronomy have been touted as possible authors.

But the carbon-dating of the codex places the work firmly in the 1400s, and earlier rather than later. This is an inescapable constraint on possible scenarios. Even though its cosmology seems advanced, the work cannot be a production of the 1500s or later.

Who is the great unsung champion of heliocentricism in the 1400s? Who anticipated Copernicus by a century? Nicholas of Cusa.

Ladin and Latin

By my proposal, the Voynich manuscript concerns and depicts aspects the herbal traditions of the Ladin people from the alpine regions of northern Italy. Nicholas of Cusa was made prince-bishop of Brixen and so became bishop over the Ladin speaking communities in the 1450s. I propose that the Voynich ms. is the result of that encounter - Cusean thought and Cusean cosmology applied to the traditions of the Ladin (who have the Rosengarten mountains in the Dolomites as the centre of their world.)

Accordingly, I would expect LADIN to be a language of interest in the study of the Voynich ms. It has been proposed before over the years. The manuscript is clearly not written in Ladin in the plain, yet from the historical context in which I want to place the work Ladin would be the language in the background. It is the language that corresponds to the illustrations in the manuscript. The legends and folklore concerning the nymphs depicted, for instance, are preserved in the Ladin language (and only in the Ladin language.)

But what is the Ladin language? As the name suggests, it is a type of  Latin. It was once widespread throughout alpine northern Italy. It is now confined to several language "islands" in remote valleys. Mussolini suppressed the language and treated it as a deviant Italian, but it is a distinct language with ancient origins. It is a remnant of the language spoken by Roman soldiers who settled the region in the first century BC., fused, it is believed, with pre-Roman Rhaeto-Etruscan.

The mythology and folklore of Ladin is of enormous interest today because it shows signs of being exceedingly ancient. Some of the motifs and mythic structures are believed to extend back to the Iron Age. This means there has been linguistic continuity in the Ladin oral tradition since very ancient times. It is a treasury of ancient linguistic relics.

The modern language, though, is a reconstruction formed under political pressures. In truth, Ladin survives in a highly fragmented form, with numerous tiny distinct dialects in different mountain regions. In the 20th C. the language was artificially consolidated into a standard form. The modern language, therefore, is not an entirely good guide to the medieval language. Ladin has changed in recent centuries.

In the 1400s it was the common language of the alpine regions of the County Tyrol. It was unwritten - although there is evidence of a document written in Ladin in the 1300s. The official language of the region was German, with Gallo-Italian influences from the south. Of course, the ecclesiastical language was Latin. Latin was the language of the educated. Ladin was the language of the unlettered. To put them side by side, Ladin must have seemed a barbaric, rustic form of Latin.

In my scenario, the high-church Latin scholar Cusanus (also proficient in Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, Catalan and a host of other languages) has a prolonged encounter with the Ladin people and their traditions. I draw attention to Cusanus' concern for the ways of the "Layman" to be seen in some of his minor works. He was intellectually interested in the wisdom and native intelligence, and the sciences (including herbalism) of the "Layman."

I cannot explain the Voynich language (who can?) but I do believe it is the outcome of the encounter between Nicholas of Cusa and the Ladin people. (The historical centre of Ladin culture, and the home of the Ladin museum today, is the bishop's residence in the Castle Tor in the Val Badia.)

One possibility here is that the script in the Voynich ms. has been invented in order to provide an orthography for Ladin. The glyph set would then map phonically to the sounds of spoken (medieval) Ladin. The text would then be a record of Ladin traditions, or similar. This seems unlikely in reality but it is not out of the question. It would be the natural outcome of my hypothesis.

It is unlikely, I think, because I doubt the Ladin formed a national, ethnic or linguistic identity until centuries later (and to a large extent until the modern era) and, just as Mussolini regarded Ladin as bad Italian, so in the 1400s was it likely to be regarded as bad Latin rather than a distinct and unique tongue needing its own script.

What this means is that it is LATIN that is the language at issue. When I point to Ladin I am pointing to a language within the immediate orbit of Latin. A strong body of researchers have proposed that the Voynich ms. is written in some form of Latin. Yet a formal high Latin wouldn't match the rustic folkish nature of the illustrations. And why would it require inventing a new script? Why is it not written in Roman script?

Identifying the manuscript as concerning Ladin traditions must also place German within the range of possibilities. The whole region is German speaking today, even though part of Italy, and was invaded by the Bavarians in the post-Roman centuries AD. It was German intrusions that forced the Ladin to retreat into the remote mountain valleys. Germanization has always been the greatest linguistic threat to the Ladin language communities.

In the 1400s German was, like today, the majority tongue of the region. Needless to say, Cusanus was a German. Tyrolean German, or some dialect thereof, presents itself as a candidate for the underlying language of the Voynich ms. (But, as it happens, German studies of the codex have more often suggested a nordic than a southern German as a possibility.)

There are, of course, degrees of literacy. Reading German in official documents is one level, whereas reading Church or classical Latin is another. German, Latin and Italian are the written languages of the Sudtirol in the relevant period, German and Italian being vernaculars and more likely to be within the reach of the "Layman".

Ladin itself remains for me the focus of interest. At very least, I would expect to see its influence in toponyms and labels, if not in the running text. Again: it is the language that preserves the folklore upon which the Voynich manuscript draws. By my reckoning, it must be part of the solution.

Some examples of written Ladin:

Text & Context

My methodological model calls for an alignment of text, context and subtext, and I happily alternate between taking a microscope and then a telescope to the problem. The difficulty is a bit like that posed by particle physics: the laws that govern the micro level don’t knit with the laws that govern the macro. The quest is for a general theory. 

Contextually, for example, I am led to the conclusion that the language in question must be/should be/ought to be, Ladin. Others have come to the same conclusion. I am strongly of the view that the contextual evidence suggests that. 

But textually, the text doesn’t map to Ladin (or any other known language.) On the face of it, it least of all resembles a Romance language. There are decypherment theories abroad about “Old Latin” to which Ladin might conform, but it’s a stretch. Nothing like that fits cogently without a lot of massaging. 

Nevertheless, I think what we see might be an attempt to create a writing system for Ladin. I suspect our problems might lie more with the script rather than with the language. 

Moreover, from context, I expect the content to be a sort of survey, with a lot of measurements and numbers generated by systematic studies, which may explain why the text seems like a sort of artificial lexicon with excessive repetition and combinatorics. Such things are less a feature of the language and more the result of the content. 

I then test contextual hypotheses against the context-free reality of the text. If there’s no way to legitimately construe the data to the proposed context, it’s back to the drawing board.

I want to narrow the search with a contextual frame and think that constructive speculation about context is an important part of the slow two-step towards a solution.

* * *

I watched Stephen Bax recently. I share some of his views. The script could be an attempt to craft a writing system for a previously oral-only language  (he cited the Armenian script as an example.) He makes useful comments about that scenario. 

His proviso is that it is a language community with an intellectual need for a script – at which point he wanders off to talk about Hungarian. 

That is the point at which I want to apply a contextual focus and argue that Ladin had such an intellectual need in the relevant period (and in a region that is a strong candidate as the relevant locale.)

I am encouraged to discover that there is evidence that Ladin was first put to writing in limited ways as early as the 1300s (although our first extant samples are from 1700s.) The Ladin were overtaken by history and never formed a viable national identity, but there were times when Ladin was not as marginal a tongue as it is today. 

The specific context I point to is the 1450s when Nicholas of Cusa was prince-bishop of Brixen and very famously came to blows with Verena von Stuben and the Ladin speaking Benedictine nuns of Sonnenberg, a skirmish in which the Ladin of Val Badia were the meat in the sandwich, as the saying goes. (It’s the same period in which the Ladin and their traditions were the focus of the rising tide of witch hunts.) 

In any case, I readily admit the difficulties of matching the text to this (or any other) context. (And my own limitations with linguistics.) But for me, that is the way forward: text/context/text/context. Focus in. Stand back. (Bearing in mind the complications of subtext. There has to be motive, not just means and opportunity.)

Again: context-free studies are necessary. But I think it is useful to bring a contextual lens – or many – to the data, back and forward, searching for an unforced and cogent alignment.

R. B.

System of Nine

 

 From the outset, my very first impressions, I have been of the view that the large foldout map that features in the Voynich manuscript must be the key to the work. But so what? So have thousands of others. I remain hopeful that there are still new ways to look at the problem.

Quite apart from indicating a geographical location and placing the work within a landscape, I want to emphasize that the map is stylized according to a certain pattern, and it has always been my suspicion that this pattern in itself is significant to the work as a whole. In my more unrestrained musings I suspect it is the actual masterkey to the work, hidden in plain sight.

While I think the map participates in a tradition of nine sacred mountains and follows certain conventions pertaining to pilgrimage maps, I think its numerological foundations are separate to that and that it represents some system of nine. Nine what? Perhaps many things. My suspicion is that there is a conceptual or philosophical system of nine underpinning the manuscript as a whole.

Ninefold schemes are far from uncommon in medieval and early modern thinking: any or all of them could be analogized to this diagram by the medieval habit of mind. Certain ones stand out in context and have often been noted: Dante's ninefold schema, for example.

In view of my hypothesis, several other suggestions emerge. Most importantly, there are the ninefold hierarchies of Christian cosmology that feature in the deeply influential mysticism of Dionysus the Areopagite. This is the ultimate background to Nicholas of Cusa's Christian neoplatonism.

It is also, possibly, a foundation for Ramon Llull's Ars Magna which features a system of nine Divine Attributes as its first principle and platform.

Then Cusanus develops his own system of nine as a feature of his mystical theology. Throughout the intellectual tradition to which Cusanus belongs there are important ninefold systems. In Cusanus, the number is especially Trinitarian - three sets of three, 3 x 3.

In this post I just want to flag this as a worthy direction for continued study that arises out of both the text and context. The text itself leads us to the map, and the map is formed from a pattern of nine circles. The context I supply - a Cusean authorship - reveals the importance of ninefold conceptual schemes in the relevant intellectual milieu. It is worth exploring.

* * *

As a first point, I am especially interested in the constraints upon the possibilities in the diagram. Diagonal connections are not permitted. It is not possible to go from the corners to the centre. If we take the nine circles as a system of combinatorics, for example, then some combinations are possible and some are not by this design.

R. B.

Sans text

It is a pity there is not a version of the Voynich available with the text removed, so that it can be viewed as a Mutus liber, a book of pictures. In fact, given the nature of the work and the extent to which it has been studied, it is surprising that a text-free version has not been prepared (to my knowledge). If we remove the text we have a much clearer view of the work. It is an important step in any thorough appreciation of the manuscript and its mysteries.

Here are a few samples I have prepared to help me visualize the work sans text:

There must have been a time when the manuscript was in this condition: illustrations but no text. With perhaps one or two exceptions (?), it appears that the illustrations were done first and then the text was added. It is not, therefore, an illuminated manuscript. It is not a text that has been illuminated with drawings. Rather, it is a set of drawings that has been annotated with text. This is why it is important to appreciate the work as a Mutus liber - a silent book - in the first instance.

(Possibly the colouring was done last of all? It is sloppy and makes the drawings look more poorly done than they are.)

What is the relationship between text and illustration? In a hundred years of study not even that question has been resolved. Was the text already composed when the illustrations were made? Did the illustrator know the text beforehand and design pages with the text in view? Or were illustrations made and then a text was composed to go with them? It is clear that the illustrator has left space for text. Was the text already known? 

To my eye, there are only a few places where the text is cramped because the illustrator has left too little space for what needed to be written. Otherwise, the text seems to fit into the vacant spaces with unusual tidiness.

I can't find any incontestable instances of text and illustration interacting. The characters and figures illustrated never seem to acknowledge the text, for example. Often, in medieval works, a figure in the margins might point to a word or letter in the text. Nothing like that happens here because the text was added after the illustrations. The text labels the illustrations but the illustrations don't seem to interact with the text. They are made to go with the text and leave spaces for text but there is no play between illustration and text.

The page is a unit of design here. The manuscript is a series of pages. The work was conceived as a series of pages. Other than in the foldouts, no text or illustrations cross the borders from one page into another. Each page is designed as a single stand alone unit. The bulk of the manuscript consists of a series of single pages each depicting a plant to which a few paragraphs of text has been added. The text is added towards the top of those pages, usually, because the herb illustrations give particular emphasis to the roots of the plants.

In some pages (such as the herbs) the picture is central and the text is added around it. In other places (the nymph section) the illustrations are in the margins and the page is designed to place the text central - there are implicit text boxes as part of the page design. And then there are pages, of course, with text only.

That is to say, there are text boxes in the design of some pages, but not in others. In most of the herbal pages the illustrator has not left a distinct text box. He has left plenty of space for text, but the text has been added wherever it fits rather than in set spaces.  Often the text will wind around or among the parts of the plant.

I am always struck by how visually abundant the work is. You would say that it is copiously illustrated. This suggests to me that the illustrations are central to the design. It is not as though someone had a precious pre-existing text to which they have added illustrations. Again: it is not an illuminated text. Rather, the pictures are as important as the text, perhaps more so, in the overall conception of the work. The text seems like notes upon the pictures. The text seems to explain the pictures rather than the pictures add to the text.

In the beginning, I posit, when someone sat down and first thought of making such a manuscript, and they asked, How will we communicate our message? the answer was: with lots of pictures, and text to explain them. It was a book of pictures from the beginning. There was no point at which the maker had a text that needed illustrating. There might have been pictures that needed a text.

An obvious scenario that might have happened at some point in the process - constructive speculation - is something like this:

*Someone - illiterate - has a collection of herb drawings.
*They are given to someone - literate - who provides notes to accompany them in the vacant spaces above and around the drawings. 

The illustrations are, for the most part, cartoonish and unsophisticated. The illustrator certainly struggles with the human form. If you compare the herb drawings with other herbal manuscripts from the period you will see that they are relatively crude as well. But the text - on the evidence of the script and what we can see of its language - is the work of a sophisticated, educated mind, probably a highly educated mind. I find a very noticeable contrast and incongruity between text and illustration over all.

R. B.