There are (at least) three ways the presentation of the Voynich manuscript is deceptive, three pitfalls.
To be clear, none of these might be by authorial intention, but anyone who peruses the manuscript is likely to form an erroneous opinion for (at least) three reasons, three things which are deceptive and lead researchers astray.
The first is that the text appears to be linguistic but is not so. The text looks like a language, but it is not a language.
The second is that it is a 'herbal' containing a catalogue of herbs for the purposes of identification. This turns out not to be the case either.
The third is that the work is folkish, rustic and unsophisticated. The illustrations and the manuscript overall gives this impression. But it is also false.
It is a work of the early Renaissance, and they say the script is 'humanist' in style, but otherwise the work does not seem 'humanist' at all.
It seems more medieval, and unaffected by the early Renaissance 'humanist' movement - a movement that was educated, scholarly and, at that time, confined to quite a small strata of society.
The Voynich seems more folkish.
And since it is not conspicuously or only nominally Christian we might suppose it draws upon pagan or pre-Christian influences - a work not of scholars but of more common origins.
The author is educated, but the overall presentation is rustic.
* * *
The present writer once studied (and wrote a 25,000 word paper) on Masaccio's fresco, The Holy Trinity, dated to the late 1420s.
This is a masterpiece of linear perspective and Dominican realism.
If the Voynich is from the same period, it is worlds apart in style, execution, conception... everything.
Massacio's fresco is a masterpiece of the early Renaissance. The Voynich manuscript is, as Voynich called it, an "ugly duckling" and there is little or nothing in it that announces the early Renaissance. (Except the 'humanist' script.)
This is why the experts were so wrong about the dating. Some of the experts saw the work from later, on the basis of identifying plants from the New World. But everyone else placed it earlier, away from the classical influences of Renaissance scholarship.
It came as a great surprise to many when the carbon dating was established. It is not a typical work of the early 1400s, and most experts expected an earlier date.
The perplexing thing was the 'humanist' writing but the work does not otherwise seem to participate in early Renaissance 'humanism' at all.
The impression is of a medieval herbal written in a mysterious language.
But it is not medieval, not a herbal, and not written in a mysterious language.
From these first appearances, researchers are likely to head off in wrong directions.
Readers of these blog pages will see how I was misled, and have grappled with, each of these deceptions.
The third of them is the most grievous and underpins the other two.
* * *
To clarify what is the actual situation (as I now see it):
1. The text is quasi-linguistic. It looks like a written text, but in fact it is a record of astrological notations concerning meteorology and the risings, settings and culminations of fixed stars.
2. The manuscript is not a herbal. It looks like it belongs in the genre of northern Italian 'Herbals' which have a catalogue of medicinal herbs.
But the 'herbs' are not identifiable herbs in the usual manner.
Instead, what we have is a study of botany (from an astrological viewpopint.) Not "herbs" but plants. Not a materia medica, but a materia botanica.
It is something other than a work about herbal medicine.
3. Most importantly, though, it is not folkish: rather it is far more classical than it appears.
As it happens, the 'humanist' writing is tell-tale. The direct inspiration for the work is Hellenic and classical, and it is part of the 'humanist' recovery of the Graeco-Latin heritage.
Specifically, it is Ptolemaic and is directly inspired by the celebrated copy of the Canones of Ptolemy which, at the time, was in the library of the Bishopric of Brescia.
More specifically still, it is inspired by the iconography of the Helios figure in that manuscript.
We know this Canones to be a Carolingean manuscript from the 9th C. but early Renaissance humanists were under the impression such works were ancient and classical.
Thus they copied Carolingean miniscule in the belief it was the ancient Latin writing style.
Beyond that direct and demonstrable influence, the Voynich astrology concerns Ptolemy's Phases of the Fixed Stars; a solar/stellar astrology of heliacal risings matched to seasonal and weather patterns.
It is very Ptolemaic. Very (ancient) Greek. Very Hellenic. It represents an attempt to recover an ancient system.
Assuredly, medieval cosmology was Ptolemaic, but our author has studied the Canones - and what we might call its Helios cosmology - in pursuit of the ancient Ptolemy.
This makes our author a humanist, indeed, with classical interests. Nominally a Christain, but with interests in the Graeco-Latin classics and the humanist project of recovering that lost heritage.
His focus is Ptolemy, and his belief is that the Helios figure in the Brescia Canones is a key to Ptolemy.
Herein, too, is the source of the folkishness of the manuscript. If the Voynich illustrations seem crude, so too its the Helios illustration in the Canones. In fact, for the most part, the nymphs in the Voynich are slightly better drawn than the cartoonish figures in the Helios illustration in the Brescia Canones.
This is not the humanism that tries to copy classical sculpture and architecture, or tries to rediscover linear perspective: the author believes the Brescia Canones is ancient (when in fact it is Carolingean) and that the cartoonish nymphs are in an ancient style.
This cartoonishness makes it look medieval and rustic to us: it is intended to look ancient, in the style of the (supposedly ancient) illustrator who composed the Helios figure.
It is even possible that the Voynich illustrator was able to draw much better, but deliberately aped what he thought was an ancient style.
Similarly, the script has been designed with 'humanist' objectives, aping Carolingean styles in the belief they are authentically ancient.
As for the botany, it is under the natural rulership of Helios. It is not a medical botanica, it is a study of botany in relation to the Helios cosmology - something quite different.
* * *
From the outset, I have resisted proposals the work is Hellenic in nature. Others have seen allusions to Ovid, or Virgil, or other classical sources. These all seemed unlikely to me.
Rather, I gave the work more rustic, local origins. There might still be a local, rustic dimension, but the work is far more Hellenic than I had allowed. Appearances are deceptive.
The linguistic deception is the deepest in Voynich Studies, though. The text looks as though it can be read, even pronounced. But on closer inspection it is constructed, a system of notation, primarily a system of numbers. It is quasi-linguistic.
This remains to be given a full explanation, but in the first instance an explanation presents itself:
The text of the Canones is alphanumeric. Numbers are Greek letters. Under this inspiration, our author has devised his own alphanumeric system, an adaptation of Roman numeration.
Again: it is not necessary to think that the author set out to deceive readers in these ways. More likely, we have misunderstood the work.
And again I point out that these are conceptual difficulties. We fail to accurately or adequately conceptualize what it is we are looking at in this manuscript.
The overarching question is: If it is not a medieval herbal written in a mysterious language - if this is a false impression - what exactly is it?
We might have to give up cherished certainties in order to provide an answer.
R.B.
