Another name that looms large in my research is Cardinal Bessarion. He is an important character in the intellectual world of the fourteenth century Renaissance, and a close friend of Nicholas of Cusa.
There is an interesting anecdote recorded regarding these two friends.
It is said that, one day, they both attended a hunting party. Cardinal Bessarion had his sights set upon a hare, but it suddenly scuttled away and disappeared.
"Where has it gone?" Bessarion asked.
Nicholas replied: "If you apply the rule CDK from the Ars Magna, you will find the hare."
No doubt this was said in jest, and perhaps in a tone of scepticism, but - as it happens - it is correct: the rule CDK in the Ars Magna concerns questions of "Where?"
What the anecdote reveals is just how deep was Nicholas of Cusa's familiarity with the Ars Magna of Ramon Lllull. He could reference it effortlessly. It tells us the extent to which Cusanus had studied Llull's system in depth.
This is not at all explicit in Cusanus' extant writings. We can clearly see the influence of Llull in his work, and yet in all his writings and sermons he mentions Llull by name only once or twice.
Llull was controversial, and his orthodoxy had often been questioned. Cusanus' study of Llull was a private dedication, and he was diplomatic and cautious in his advocacy of Llullism, while at the same time being at the forefront of the Llullian revival in the 1400s.
From this anecdote we can see that he had a full command of Llull's system: indeed, he was the foremost student of Llull's thought in that era. What he put in writing is somewhat misleading: there were dimensions to his thinking and intellectual endeavours not reflected in his extant works.
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My argument here is that the Voynich language is remarkably Llullian - the construction and combinatorics strongly suggests the influence of Llullianism. It appears to be a very sophisticated linguistic invention generated using some form of combinatorics that, surely, must go back to Lllull, of all people in the Middle Ages.
I then argue that the person with the greatest command of Llull's systems in the 1400s was Nicholas of Cusa. In fact, it is arguable that only Cusanus had the necessary depth of familiarity and understanding.