It is remarkable that after so long Voynich studies are still so unfocused and scattered. What should have happened is that various paradigms of attack should have been established and all others filtered out. Instead, the work is still being considered in an open slather model that has no boundaries and is directionless. (Worse, the whole work has recently fallen into the cold, unimaginative hands of the counters of instances.)
Above all, there is a robust body of evidence – and a corresponding body of expert opinion over the decades – that place the work in Renaissance northern Italy. (Many add to this the adjective “alpine”.)
There is no agreement as to what part of northern Italy, east or west, or any of the details, but there is some agreement on the generalities. I wouldn’t describe it as a majority opinion, but no other location has as many advocates. This has been the case from the outset.
It is a justifiable paradigm of study – northern Italy, early to mid 1400s. It may not be right, of course, but it rates as a very good chance.
Outside of this paradigm are all those solutions and hypotheses that place the work somewhere other than that broad geographical frame: Russia, Poland, Spain, Scotland, Mexico, wherever.
When I scan Voynich literature that is what I see. There are two camps. There’s those who advocate (or suspect) northern Italy, and then there’s the rest who think it is from outside of that context. A northern Italian location stands out as a consistent possibility.
There’s also a third camp – those who are too timid to make a call and who consequently study it without a geographical focus, as if it could have been written anywhere on planet Earth (and some of them even question that!)
The Voynich ms. is an historical problem. Its study requires some historical focus. Research has so far been remarkably disparate and unfocused. It is unhelpful and jarring to research, an impediment, to have those who are searching for an Italian milieu to be debating evidence with someone who thinks it was written in Brazil. The two people are studying under different and ill-matching paradigms, two opposed set of assumptions and cannot usefully compare notes.
If I was coordinating a research project on this I’d make the distinction: north Italian solutions as opposed to proposals for a place of origin outside of north Italy. If I had limited funding, my money would be on the team studying the text and illustrations in a general north Italian context.
in my own case, I nominate eastern northern Italy - the County of Tyrol and the Dolomites - as the relevant region. Others, with good arguments, place it in western northern Italy, more towards Switzerland. Either way, northern Italy.
A north Italian context doesn’t preclude exotic languages, by the way. You could even squeeze Chinese in there – Marco Polo and all that. It is not a matter of limiting possibilities; it is just a matter of historical focus based on a sober assessment of likelihoods.
Any sober assessment of the evidence, along with an overview of expert assessment, says that northern Italy is a good bet, and a better bet than elsewhere. This should have been established as a platform for constructive investigation, set aside from other models, long ago. It is just one of the many reasons why there has been so little progress in the study of the work in the last one hundred years.
The other paradigm that emerges is Central Europe.
R.B.
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