Let me clarify right away: I did not use AI or anything like that. I don't speak English, so I used a translator. I apologize for any errors.

Have a good day! Could you tell me if you are considering the alchemical theory? The first symbols in the text resemble the graphic symbols of alchemy from that period. It seems to me that the botanical section graphically shows the apparatus itself or part of it and the reaction taking place inside it, represented by plants and roots. Perhaps it even encodes the element used. In the text, the first symbol denotes the process of heating, cooling, and so on. Then comes the result. It seems to me that it is about obtaining some element through distillation. I think the author was experimenting and mixing substances, and perhaps was describing not formulas, but what they saw with their own eyes — the reaction process itself. What do you think about this? Are there similar theories? Could you tell me what devices were used in the past to tell time?

I found an interesting candidate for the "loopy object" on the top left corner of f116v:

   

It's from Bodleian Library, MS. Canon. Ital. 280:

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Other features of this MS might also be of note (comparisons to the VMS on the right):

   

   

So the idea recently came to me that the VMS might have been the prooduct of students at a school or university, who were studying a profession that was unrelated to scribal work or professionnal writing. Such a hypothesis has already been advanced several times on this forum, by some prominent members. Some have even suggested that the VMS writing looks like that of an apprentice lawyer.

So this prompted me to look for handwriting examples of Italian university students in faculties of law in the first half of the 15th Century. There are not a lot of examples of this, as you might imagine. However, I got lucky, as some students in Siena's university of law actually did leave some written records behind.

In particular, there was a group af about 12 students there, studying under Mariano Sozzini (the elder), who was a prominent lawyer who became famous because he taught the future Pope Pius II (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., in French as there is no Enlgish article available). These students often exchanged notes, and as it turns out they even coollaborated on a common student's notebook during Sozzini's afternoon classes.

This notebook, Recollectae super quibusdam libri II Decretalium, is unfortunately in private hands. However, on the bookseller's webpage, we can see some (low resolution) scans of certain pages:

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One page particularly stands out:

   

Many other pages seem to have a Voynich-y feel to their handwriting. Note that among these students, there were several who were German and others Italian. I tried to track them down, and I found the name of the German student: Nicolaus Vetter. He wrote another treatise on Sizzini's courses later in Germany, it is preserved in Valenciennes, BM, MS 261, which is once again unfortunately not available as it is not digitised.

But since we are talking about Siena, I was wondering whether these students could have had any access to Taccola's material, as he was a resident of Siena at this time. Recall that there are several hypotheses about the involvement of at least one Taccola notebook in Quire 13 of the VMS:

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It turns out, that there is a connection between Taccola and Sozzini. According to a recent study on Taccola's life, On 8 December 1438, Taccola showed Sozzini his drawings from his De ingeneis at Sozzini's home in Siena:

   

Link to the study:

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This MS is today referred to as Munich, Clm 197 II and is present in several comparisons between Taccola's work and Quire 13 of the VMS. 

So now we have:

• A documented evidence, that Taccola showed at least one of his notebooks to Sozzini,
  
• Sozzini's students often collaborated together, 
  
• The students produced at least one common manuscript together,
  
• The students were of German and Italian origin.
  

I don't think this Manuscript has been discussed You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

It's Augsburg, early 15th Century herbal and bestiary. .. I have looked at my own archive and Google and it hasn't turned up... It was owned by a prominent Artz/apothecary family whose work later appeared in a Hartlieb..

c. 1403–1409: Produced in southern Germany on paper; some later additions use paper dated 1428–1436.
1407: A note records a visit by Anzinus, son of Jörg Tömlinger, a Munich apothecary, placing the manuscript in a Munich pharmaceutical milieu.
Contains extensive medical, pharmaceutical and herbal material, including more than 200 plant images, followed by an illustrated bestiary of about 73 animal species.
By the 15th century it belonged to the Benedictine abbey of St Mang at Füssen, confirmed by an ownership inscription.
After the abbey was secularised in 1803, its library passed to the Oettingen-Wallerstein collection.
In 1980 Bavaria acquired that library; the manuscript is now Universitätsbibliothek Augsburg, Cod. II.1.2° 109.

I can't find any information about who created it...

The manuscript is the individual and spontaneous work of a European polymath, written slowly and fluidly from left to right with regular spacing that reflects a real language. However, it is stripped of small grammatical words (such as conjunctions) due to the author's need for a condensed, telegraphic style that focuses on the core terms of hypothetical ideas. The motive behind the simplicity of the drawings and the casual coloring—which occasionally bleeds outside the lines—is neither art, deception, nor an attempt to commercialize the book. Rather, it is a purely scientific drive, oscillating between "passionate inner monologue" and the recording of "dream-like visions" of non-existent, hypothetical plants and cosmic configurations. Ultimately, the manuscript forms a personal notebook designed to preserve scientific suggestions and aspirations far ahead of its time, hidden behind an invented cipher alphabet to protect the author's intellectual freedom during a highly oppressive political and religious era (1404–1438).
What confirms this personal, non-utilitarian identity of the book is the absolute absence of any motive for fame or trade on the part of its author. It is completely illogical for someone seeking fame and money to formulate their thoughts in an obscure language that no one understands, which perfectly explains why the manuscript remained isolated and hidden in the shadows for more than two centuries before ever reaching the hands of an emperor or a king. It appears that this scholar's intellectual journey was abruptly cut short by a forced event during that turbulent era—such as being forcibly taken away when the rulers' soldiers raided his home and confiscated his research, or the book being stolen from him, or perhaps he hid it in a secret place and died without telling anyone. Thus, it remained shrouded in secrecy until its location was discovered a generation or two after his death, which preserved its absolute confidentiality and prevented any copies or imitations of its unique alphabet from appearing in history.
The strongest candidate to be the author of this manuscript could be the polymath Giovanni Fontana. In that exact era, he faced official accusations and persecution for practicing black magic and heresy due to his forward-looking machines that were ahead of his time. Consequently, he was forced to cipher his writings and tighten secrecy to protect his life. He was entirely isolated from the political and scientific environment until he died in total isolation and obscurity around 1455, with no mention of his burial site or the circumstances of his death. Furthermore, his works and ciphered notebooks were indeed confiscated by the Church and government authorities to be banned from publication and entirely forgotten, and attempts were made to erase his identity by rewriting some of his works under pseudonyms of other figures. As a result, his name remained wiped out and unknown in history books for centuries until his notebooks were discovered by chance in the modern era. Even if Fontana himself was not the author, this identical oppressive environment and the documented political and historical background of a "forced event" certainly and definitively confirm everything reached and established in this theory.

I stumbled on this tonight so admittedly I don't have much to say on it. 
I just thought it was interesting how the "alternating colour test tubes" of the VMS You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. have a likeness to these designs and thought I would share. 
These examples were underground until after Voynich's passing so could not have been inspiration for this page hoax or not, but it does have me wondering if this design persisted and if maybe somewhere there is a sky scene with a roman shell design frame.  

   

Fishbourne Palace

Note the outer ends, alternating colours and radial design
   
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Design in corners
   
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Hello everyone.

After spending some time comparing the Voynich Manuscript with other forms of fifteenth-century visual and technical material, I have been wondering whether we may sometimes be approaching the Rosettes page from the wrong direction.

This is only a working hypothesis, and I am not suggesting any specific identification.

What if the Rosettes page is not primarily a geographical map at all?

What if it represents a designed system, in which the circles, pathways, channels and structures show relationships between different components rather than actual places?

One thing that led me to consider this was my recent reading of Filarete.

I am not suggesting that Filarete influenced the Voynich Manuscript, especially since his work is later.

What interests me is the broader way in which drawings could function as vehicles for organised knowledge.

In Filarete, a drawing is not necessarily just an image of something.

It can express measurements, relationships, circulation, water systems, gardens, buildings and the internal logic of a designed whole.

This made me look again at the Rosettes page.

Instead of asking “what place does this represent?”, perhaps another useful question would be “what kind of system is being represented here?”

The nine major circular areas could potentially function as modules or conceptual zones.

The connecting elements might represent circulation, transmission or relationships between them rather than roads in a literal landscape.

The repeated structures, pipes, walls, openings and radial forms might therefore be more important for their function within the composition than for what they visually resemble.

I think this idea could be tested without assuming that it is correct.

For example, we could ask whether similar graphic elements consistently perform similar functions across the page.

We could examine whether the connections between the nine areas follow a deliberate structural logic.

We could also compare the page with contemporary technical, architectural, hydraulic or cosmological diagrams, not simply in terms of visual resemblance, but in terms of how information is organised.

For me, the important distinction would be between three questions.

What do the individual forms look like?
How do they behave within the diagram?
What kind of information could the entire structure be designed to communicate?

I would be very interested to know whether this kind of interpretation has already been discussed in detail here.

I would also be interested in examples of other fifteenth-century diagrams in which apparently architectural or geographical forms are actually being used to represent a more abstract system.

At this stage, I am treating this only as a possible way of looking at the page, not as an identification.

I would be very interested to hear your thoughts.

Visual comparison only. I am not suggesting a direct connection or influence between Filarete and the Voynich Manuscript.

MS 408, fol.85v.

BNCF, MS Palatino E.B.15.7, fol. 18r.

Attached Files

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In this thread, I will gather all found attestations of poxleber or something similar, with links to relevant threads. Since this is the curated subforum, it is not possible to reply to this thread. Please comment in one of the poxleber threads, like this one: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Liver as a meat product

• You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. shows that buck's liver was used in cooking, but it does not contain the spelling poxleber. Forms include packs leber, pokchleber, pokch leber. A problem is that "x" is uncommon in medieval German spelling, outside of loan words and Roman numerals.
  
• Cookbook, c. 1450, southeast Germany/Austria:  "Nym ein Pokchsleber". You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. 
  
• City Law, 1503, Kitzbühel. The only known attestation of "poxleber" as a meat product was found by You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (?). It is in a law from the city of Kitzbühel (Tyrol). See You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. for background.
  

• Thomas Ebendorfer, 1449, Vienna. Theologian, professor and historian Thomas Ebendorfer complains about the pox-swearing of the commonfolk. This passage does not contain anything with leber, but it provides valuable linguistic background because this is actually someone talking about pox-swearing in practice. See You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. for discussion. I analyzed Ebendorfer's text in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. The timestamp takes you straight to the Ebendorfer part, the rest of the video provides background on vain swearing.
  
• Hans Folz, late 15th century, Nürnberg. Used lots of pox-swearing but no "leber" that I know of. He wrote in the same place and genre as Sachs (see next section), but his Fastnachtspiele were not anticlerical. See: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and following posts.
  

• Reformation literature (often satirical commentary on the clergy).
  
• Given the reformation background, they are all post-1500
  
• Dialogue, direct speech, either in pamphlets or satirical plays. Uttered by boorish people of low social standing, or detestable clergymen acting like such people.
  
• Preferentially used in fixed expressions rather than as a standalone expletive.
  

• Georg Motschiedler, 1525, Nürnberg. Pamphlet in dialogue form by obscure reformation writer Georg Motschiedler. Posted by @JustAnotherTheory (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.).
  - "Das euch pox leber schend", may pox leber harm you. 
  
• Niklaus Manuel, 1528, Switzerland. Dialogue by reformation writer You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., found by @JustAnotherTheory (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.).
  - "sommer boxleber", bastardization of "so mir Gotts leber hilfe", so help me God's liver. Also uses "pox", so the lack of "poxleber" can be called a coincidence.
  
• Joachim Greff von Zwickau, 1535, Magdeburg. German translation of the Roman play Aulularia. Posted by Pierre Dumont (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.)
  - "Potz lungn, potz leber!" Exclamation of joy by a servant.
  
• Hans Sachs, 1550 ca., Nürnberg. Several attestations in carnival plays by Hans Sachs. Found in the Fastnachtspiel (carnival play) Der Bauer im Fegefeuer (1552). Expressions:
  - "schendt sie pox leber und lung!" May God's liver and lung harm her!
  - "botz lung, botz leber, wo bin ich doch?" God's lung, God's liver, where am I?! 
  

Eg. Root: 
1) find the labels representing root
2) find paragraphs that only mention those labels and not others
3) find words in those paragraphs that are unique to those paragraphs regarding roots
4) cross reference those words found in the paragraphs of other categories and narrow it down like that.

Please let me know what you think and if you can help me at all

I recently felt it was worth focusing more closely on the manuscript’s figures rather than on the text itself.

For some time, I’ve been exploring the historical context of Northern Italy and Central Europe in the early fifteenth century, with particular attention to Barbara of Cilli, Sigismund of Luxembourg, the Order of the Dragon, and related figures.

I realise this line of research may seem speculative, but I think this historical context is worth investigating.

I’ve already written quite a lot about this. After all, the Voynich Manuscript itself is what led me down this path.

I’d be very interested in discussing this further. The chronology appears broadly compatible, and several of the figures and motifs have caught my attention.

Even if this line of investigation ultimately turns out to be wrong, I think the figures themselves deserve closer attention, especially when compared with early fifteenth-century Central and Northern European material.

I’d also be interested to know what others think about the so-called “pangolin” figure. Could it possibly be related to, or inspired by, imagery associated with the Order of the Dragon?

At this stage, I’m treating this only as a visual and historical comparison, not as an identification.

       

MS 408, fol. 80v.