The Voynich manuscript is not very Christian.
I should know. I have proposed Nicholas of Cusa as a possible candidate for author, and the overwhelming objection to his candidacy is that the manuscript just isn’t Christian enough!
It is Christian. But not very. Not conspicuously. It does not present a religious agenda, in the first instance.
Three categories cover it:
1. Christian vitalism
2. Christian humanism
3. Christian neoplatonism
The worldview presented in the manuscript is properly placed in the long tradition of Christian vitalism. On any reading, it is about herbs, health, medicine, and nature, the cosmos, is presented as animate, living, populated with beings (nymphs).
Its perspective – the script and other features, as well - are also properly regarded as humanist – it appears to be the work of a Christian humanist, i.e. a Christian with a deep interest in the Graeco-Roman classical heritage.
The naked nymphs, to be sure, are Hellenic iconography, not Christian, and have classical sources and inspiration, in the first instance.
Moreover, the worldview found in the work is properly described as Neoplatonic. It presents an emanationist cosmology more typical of medieval (early Renaissance) Neoplatonism than the standard medieval Aristotelean cosmology.
This makes the work only nominally Christian. It is, otherwise, secular, vernacular. Certainly, non-ecclestiastical, and there is no appearance that it engages in religious polemic.
* * *
Overall, there is a notable lack of Biblical content. There are no (explicit) scenes from any Biblical narrative, neither Genesis, nor any scenes from the Gospels and Life of Christ.
Neither Christ, nor the Virgin Mary, nor any saints, make an appearance.
The illustrations are of a cosmological, quasi-scientific nature: secular and/or classical, not Biblical.
To situate it properly, however, we need to note that the religious or spiritual affiliations that are apparent in the work are distinctly Solomonic.
Such Biblical allusions as are apparent are to Solomonic themes. The (Hellenic) nymphs are presented with clear allusions to the wives and concubines of Solomon bathing in the Pools of Solomon in Jerusalem.
The Solomonic elements also make the work arcane, occult – a work of hidden knowledge. In the Biblical tradition it is Solomon who knows the secrets of nature.
But it is not in the dark side of Solomonic spirituality that seeks to command demonic and chthonic powers such as Solomon did: it is not a grimoire.
Rather, if anything, it presents a benign nature magic, an astrological herbalism, that in Biblical terms (also Koranic) is part of the learning of Solomon.
Indeed, in the wider tradition, Solomon knew the secrets of nature because he knew the Language of the Birds, which is to say he could read the text of nature.
The Voynich language, the text, might be understood as part of this distinctly Solomonic theme.
* * *
But this is only to place it in a world that is Christian normative where the Bible is in the very air that people breathe.
Given that, it is not very religious at all. At least, not on the evidence of the illustrations.
There is a tendency in Voynich Studies, though, to import religious symbolism and a religious agenda into the text on the assumption that it must be more religious than it is.
Some researchers see allusions to contemporary religious disputes, or to heterodox religious movements: Hussites, Cathars, Templars, etc.
A more likely context is the late medieval attention to remnant paganisms in Christian lands and the rise of the witch persecutions.
Due to deep sociological currents in the period, nature magic, rustic herbalism and the like was cast as witchcraft.
What we see in the Voynich ms. is counter to that: a herbal tradition and its rustic nature spirits are both Hellenized and Christianized, made benign.
I make this argument in the following Youtube presentation:
The Christian Nymph
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-OVHj_-Vk0
This makes the work Christianizing, but it is a body of Hellenic and folk paganism that is being Christianized.
* * *
Beyond that, it is more appropriate to consider the work as philosophical rather than religious in character.
It is, above all, cosmological, but it is not the familiar Christian cosmology of a Divine heirarchy headed by the Trinity, with choirs of angels and so on.
Rather, it participates in early Renaissance cosmological speculation and the assimilation of new viewpoints of a scientific or exotic nature – matters not always easily reconciled with Catholic dogma.
It is a cosmology informed more by Plato than by the Church Fathers.
Yet there is no atmosphere of heresy in the Voynich ms. There is no atmosphere of controversy.
The work, on every appearance, and despite the cryptic nature of the text, is expository, not polemical.
The work presents a cosmological system, or systems, with a minimum of explicit Christian symbolism: only enough to mark it as Christian.
* * *
On my reading, though, there is an important Christian symbolism at the heart of the work.
It is a symbolism that features in Christian vitalism: namely, the Light of Christ, and by extension the revitalizing power of water.
At the centre of the Voynich foldout map, I argue, we see the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem (Solomonic) with the onion domed buildings representing the candle-flame lit on Easter morn – Christ, the light of the world, is risen.
It is straightforward Christian solar symbolism. Christ is the risen sun. His light heals.
The (Christian) nymphs – with their golden hair and rosy cheeks – are the agents of the healing light (of Christ.)
At the same time, there is a parallel water symbolism: water baptizes, water redeems, water heals in Christian cosmology. Rain is a blessing, a revelation.
We see the symbolism of light and water – in a very Christian iteration of that symbolism – throughout the manuscript.
This makes it deeply Christian, in a sense. A distinctly Christian cosmology of water and light is pervasive.
To this I would add that it seems possible, or even likely, to me that the uniquely Christian preoccupation – and problem – of calculating Easter is perhaps a central concern in the work’s astronomy.
R.B.
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