The medieval Voynich Manuscript - chaos in academe!

Wilfrid Voynich (1865–1930) was born into an aristocratic Polish-Lithuanian family and became an anti-Czarist activist and biblio­phile. After being arrested, he was sent to Siberia and event­ual­ly moved to Brit­ain, opening an Soho Square London antiquarian book­shop in 1898.

Wilfrid was a regular visitor to the Continent, especially Italy where he became friends with the librarian Achille Ratti who event­ually became Pope Pius XI. Voynich was able to buy many old books & manuscripts, brought in religious houses. In 1912 he vis­ited Villa Mondragone Frascati, invited by the Jes­uits who were sell­ing some of their books in order to raise funds. In particular he was invited to inspect a trunk that came from the estate of Ath­an­asius Kircher, a famous C17th scholar. There he discovered a manu­s­cript apparently writ­t­en in an unknown alphabet and décor­at­ed with 200+ illustrations, half of which showed unknown plants, figures and symbols.

Ladies bathing in tubs connected by an elaborate network of pipes.

The manuscript was written by an unknown author and composed in an unknown lang­uage(s). It had been dated to the early C15th, possibly from northern Italy. Some pages were mis­sing, but the surviving version comprised c240 vellum pages. The 113 plant illustrat­ions resembled herbal man­uscripts of the era that presented inform­ation about plants and their possible uses for medical purposes. But the document’s 113 plant illustrations did not seem to depict fl­ora found on Earth. Plus throughout its vellum pages were visuals of the cosmos, groups of naked women cavorting through pools.

Voynich had found an interesting and large map that showed 4 isl­ands of the Mediterranean Sea, the conjoined islands of Vulcan­ello and Vulcano, Lipari, Ischia & Castello Aragonese. An eruption in 1440 prompted a rescue miss­ion from Naples, at the time ruled by Alfonso the Magnanimous, hus­band of Maria. So the map was int­erp­reted as showing the erupting volcano in the lower left corner, with lava flows & pumice rafts in the stylised drawing. If true, this would be one of the earliest drawings of a volcano ever found in medieval literature. As the rescue miss­ion was sent from the islet of Castello Aragonese, they passed the islands of Ischia and Lipari. The navigation routes between the islands were marked with two compass roses to help navigation. Geol­ogical and histor­ic­al evidence also suggested further (late C16th) volcanic erup­t­ions.

The 1444 map ? showing a rescue mission from the islet of Castello Aragonese (C) 

to the volcanic island of Vulcanello (A), passing the island of Ischia (B) and Lipari (D)

Voynich went to the U.S in 1914 on the Lusitania, settling there and crossing the Atlantic as needed, maintaining his London shop as well as establishing an Americ­an base. For the rest of his life, Voynich studied the manuscript about the natural world, but wasn't able to crack the code. He died in the USA in 1930.

The manuscript was eventually studied by many professional crypto­graphers, including secret Am­erican and British code breakers from WWI & WW2. They too failed. Mod­ern forensic analysis, including carbon dating, revealed the materials used were probably produced in northern Italy from 1404-38, or even more rec­ently. But the flowing script and arcane alph­abet were not recognised

In 2014, research claimed that the Voynich manuscript was a botan­ical encyclopaedia about medicinal plants growing in America. In 2017, a statistical analysis of the alphabet claimed the code was written in an odd mix of Italian, Span­ish, Latin, English & Germ­an. Bedfordshire Uni linguists proposed sounds to match the symb­ols, declaring he had decoded 14 of them. Delaware State Uni re­searchers argued the manusc­ript may have had its origins in cen­tral Mexico, based on analys­ing the strange plant ill­ustrations. Some authors recognised plant species found in Europe, while some auth­ors recognised plants found only in Central Asia; it impossible to match names with the unknown alphab­et.

Researchers from University of Alberta used artificial intelligence to decode sections of the document, using the algorithmic deciph­er­ment technique on the underlying, encrypted language. The AI indic­at­ed Hebrew was the most likely source, edging out other potential mat­ches that weren't commonly used for writing during the Middle Ages. The researchers hypothesised the cipher acting on the Hebrew language could be an example of alphabetically ordered alphagrams, rearranging the order of letters in words, while dropping vowels.

Despite all the research, no one has ever been able to prove the meaning of the text, and some have speculated that the manuscript might be just a historic fake. What did the strange symbols mean?

New high-resolution scans of the manuscript were rec­ently posted at Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manus­cript Library site. The new scanning equipment made the colour more accurate.

The nymphs bathing

ConclusionIn 1912, the manuscript started to make its way into popular imag­ination, the basis for both imag­inary theories and nov­els. It arr­ived at Yale’s Manuscript Library in 1969 well intact, hous­ed now among a collection of rare texts. Its curvy writ­ing in brown-black ink and strange sprouting flowers still att­ract code breakers.

In 2019 a British academic claimed the manuscript was a th­erapeutic reference book composed by nuns for Maria of Castile, queen of Aragon, in a lost language known as proto-Romance. In the Journal of Romance Studies, Uni of Bristol researcher Dr Gerard Cheshire argued the manuscript was a compen­d­ium of informat­ion on herbal remedies, therapeutic bathing and astrological read­ings. It focused on female physical and mental health, reproduction and par­enting. Rather than being written in code, he believed its lang­uage and writing system were commonplace back then, and he claimed the document was the sole surviving text written in proto-Romance. Academic disagreements have continued.

Photo credits: Science Alert