Approaches to the Voynich language often take this form:
First we notice that a certain word looks awefully like a Coptic word we know. The language must be Coptic, we decide. But then we notice a word that looks Greek. It must be Coptic with Greek loan words!
But wait! This word looks Arabic! That’s the Arabic word for dandelion next to the dandelion picture! Then, venturing further, we decide it must all be strung together with old Spanish grammar. Go figure!
The shortcomings of this method are plain.
But much the same method prevails in the analysis of the illustrations. Here, researchers trawl through medieval manuscripts from far and wide in the search for matches or similarities to the Voynich illustrations. The availability of high resolution images of manuscripts nowadays facilitates this. It is fun, but instead of a woven garment we end up with a patchwork quilt:
Someone finds a “strong resemblance” to the Voynich foldout in a ninth century Irish manuscript. Aha! But someone finds a “sure match” between a Voynich herb and a 12th C herbal from Romania. Then someone finds a “very close” match between the Pisces fish in the Voynich and a southern French Book of Hours. Then a “striking match” between the Voynich and a moon face in a manuscript from Sicily dated 1428.
After eight months exhaustive study a team of scholars has a “definite match” between an architectural feature in the Voynich and a building that once stood in Provence. Next, someone finds an “exact alignment” between a Voynich illustration and an actual castle in Poland (copious photographs supplied.)
Then someone notices some intriguing and tell-tale similarities between the Voynich illustrator’s shading technique and that of an obscure fourteenth century illustrator from Armenia...
And so it goes. Each of these identifications might be persuasive in themselves – some more and some less – but together they tell us nothing useful. Isolated instances of resemblance merely demonstrate that the Voynich manuscript participates in the widespread visual vocabularies of its era.
What would be revealing is a pattern of similarities. And a general and pervasive similarity might be more revealing than an isolated drawing.
After a century of this picture-matching game, no clear patterns have emerged. The sum total of what we’ve found: the manuscript comes from Europe.
First we notice that a certain word looks awefully like a Coptic word we know. The language must be Coptic, we decide. But then we notice a word that looks Greek. It must be Coptic with Greek loan words!
But wait! This word looks Arabic! That’s the Arabic word for dandelion next to the dandelion picture! Then, venturing further, we decide it must all be strung together with old Spanish grammar. Go figure!
The shortcomings of this method are plain.
But much the same method prevails in the analysis of the illustrations. Here, researchers trawl through medieval manuscripts from far and wide in the search for matches or similarities to the Voynich illustrations. The availability of high resolution images of manuscripts nowadays facilitates this. It is fun, but instead of a woven garment we end up with a patchwork quilt:
Someone finds a “strong resemblance” to the Voynich foldout in a ninth century Irish manuscript. Aha! But someone finds a “sure match” between a Voynich herb and a 12th C herbal from Romania. Then someone finds a “very close” match between the Pisces fish in the Voynich and a southern French Book of Hours. Then a “striking match” between the Voynich and a moon face in a manuscript from Sicily dated 1428.
After eight months exhaustive study a team of scholars has a “definite match” between an architectural feature in the Voynich and a building that once stood in Provence. Next, someone finds an “exact alignment” between a Voynich illustration and an actual castle in Poland (copious photographs supplied.)
Then someone notices some intriguing and tell-tale similarities between the Voynich illustrator’s shading technique and that of an obscure fourteenth century illustrator from Armenia...
And so it goes. Each of these identifications might be persuasive in themselves – some more and some less – but together they tell us nothing useful. Isolated instances of resemblance merely demonstrate that the Voynich manuscript participates in the widespread visual vocabularies of its era.
What would be revealing is a pattern of similarities. And a general and pervasive similarity might be more revealing than an isolated drawing.
After a century of this picture-matching game, no clear patterns have emerged. The sum total of what we’ve found: the manuscript comes from Europe.
* * *
As far as I can tell, the only case of a general and pervasive similarity that has been proposed with any conviction is in the work of Giovanni Fontana. Here it is not a matter of particular drawings, but the style, penmanship, level of weirdness and other unquantifiable impressions that constitute a general resemblance.
A vague resemblance, some would insist. It is hardly convincing. Here are a few examples:
Surely the most telling objection to the identification is that the illustrator here has a much higher level of skill when it comes to depicting the human form. The Voynich illustrator can draw herbs (especially roots) and can cast diagrams - some skill with technical drawing, or at least drawing circles - but certainly struggles when it comes to depicting people and human anatomy, and is not very flash with animals either. Fontana's manuscripts are not nearly so challenged in this department. He is a much better draughtsman in the relevant areas.
All the same, we seem to be in a not dissimilar world of ideas. There is a shared eccentricity and simplicity. Perhaps a similar organisation of the page space and other graphic elements. But this may only indicate a similar period and geographical region, or a wider school of ideas, or fashions. There is assuredly nothing in Fontana's extant works that is unmistakably and indisputably Voynichistic. It has been examined extensively for this purpose and the results are paltry. If anything, there are more contraindications than indications. But it is about as near as we have come to a general resemblance rather than just matching a flower here or a crenelation there.
R. B.
All the same, we seem to be in a not dissimilar world of ideas. There is a shared eccentricity and simplicity. Perhaps a similar organisation of the page space and other graphic elements. But this may only indicate a similar period and geographical region, or a wider school of ideas, or fashions. There is assuredly nothing in Fontana's extant works that is unmistakably and indisputably Voynichistic. It has been examined extensively for this purpose and the results are paltry. If anything, there are more contraindications than indications. But it is about as near as we have come to a general resemblance rather than just matching a flower here or a crenelation there.
R. B.
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