Fontana

Nicholas of Cusa is, I admit, an unlikely candidate as the mind behind the Voynich manuscript. I can think of countless objections. I pursue the possibility for two main reasons:

*The language
*The cosmology

For all its folkishness, the Voynich manuscript displays a sophisticated early modern cosmology and the language and script are evidently the creation of a very considerable mind, most likely one steeped in the conventions of Latin manuscripts and (arguably) someone familiar with the systems of Ramon Llull. The cosmology also shows Graeco-Arabic influence. (And it is somewhat Germanic.) Cusanus is the right sort of polymath in the right region at (roughly) the right time.

But the identification is, I admit, the weakest link in my hypothesis. My identifications go:

*Alpine northern Italy
*The Ladin herb tradition
*Under the influence of Nicholas of Cusa

This is in order of certainty. I am very certain the work hails from alpine northern Italy. I am almost as certain it concerns the herbal tradition of the Ladin people. I am less certain that Nicholas of Cusa is the relevant mind. He was in alpine northern Italy and was bishop over the Ladin people. But that is circumstantial. The identification only holds if I can show that there is content in the manuscript that is typical of or under the influence of Cusanus. As it happens, I think there is. But that is more a matter of interpretation than demonstration.

On other counts, there is an alternative. Many researchers have pointed to him before: Giovanni Fontana. There are stylistic and other similarities between manuscripts by Fontana and the Voynich. He also wrote entire tomes in cypher. He used Llull-like cypher wheels. He must be reckoned a strong possibility.

Most importantly, in his later years Fontana was official physician to the Friulian municipality in eastern Italy, the Friulian language being a form of eastern Ladin. So he satisfies the first two and most certain aspects of my hypothesis: alpine northern Italy and the Ladin herb tradition. He is also somewhat earlier than Cusanus and fits the chronology more exactly.

Why not Fontana? I considered him early in my investigations. At the time I was dissuaded by his military interests and the lack of a corresponding cosmology of the right tenor, depth and orientation. Nor did I think the Voynich is encoded and clandestine. I also doubted his cartographical skills. To me the work, finally, seemed beyond him. I can see the stylistic similarities in Fontana’s works, but I do not see the same philosophy, cosmology, interests or preoccupations. There is no interest in gadgets and machines in the Voynich, for example. But again, these are largely matters of interpretation.

I am entirely prepared to concede to a Fontana identification. But if so, I think the identification has been assembled and argued wrongly. He might be the right man, but not for the reasons usually given. Instead, I would see the work as arising out of his encounter with the Ladin herbal tradition (and its mythology) while physician in Udine. I haven’t read any account of a Fontana-did-it scenario that concentrates on that context (but I haven’t read everything ever posted.)

Meanwhile, the arrival of Nicholas of Cusa in the Ladin heartland and his encounter with the Ladin herb tradition remains my focus. The cosmology in the work strikes me as distinctly Cusean. One of my assumptions is that a crisis motivates people to write books. The Voynich was not written on a whim: it was necessary. What crisis brought it into being? On my reading of the history of the relevant region, the appointment of Nicholas of Cusa as Prince-Bishop of the region and the fall-out of that appointment is a scenario too suggestive to ignore.

But Fontana and Cusanus were contemporaries, Fontana the elder by about ten years. He died around the time Cusanus was embroiled in the affairs of South Tyrol. Cusanus was influential in the ideas of his times. There is no reason why Fontana could not have been influenced by ideas we would describe as Cusean, either directly through the written word or by osmosis, or just because such ideas were in the air. Cusanus was a pioneer of what I describe as “early modern” cosmology – it’s not quite medieval but it’s not quite modern either – and any intelligent and interested mind in the Quatrocento might be apprised of his bold new ideas.

In that case, an identification of Giovanni Fontana might fit my formula: northern Italy (Udine), the Ladin herb tradition (Friulian, eastern Ladin) and under the influence of Nicholas of Cusa. I am more inclined to think it would be someone nearer to Cusanus himself, but the term Cusean might be taken more broadly. The same might be said for the term Llullean. Nicholas was the great sponsor of Llull, but Llull’s influence was widespread, emanating out of the University of Padua which was, due to Spanish faculty, a hotbed of Llullism. Both Cusanus and Fontana studied in Padua, but at different times.

R. B.