Are the 1430s the most likely date range for the Zodiac drawings?
Mark Knowles > 24-11-2022, 05:15 PM
This was not a topic that I intended to look into at all a few weeks ago, but a claim that the Voynich pre-dates 1430 drew me in, so I have found myself looking at the Zodiac roundels and Koen Gheuens' excellent work on them. I tend to research only a few specific areas of the Voynich and this topic was not on my agenda. In fact it does feel like a bit of a distraction from my cryptographic researches. Nevertheless once I start something I tend to continue with it until when or if I feel I have reached an appropriate point to end. I am a little reluctant to raise this topic again as it got somewhat tense before, but it is an important topic and so I think should be raised given that I have given it some more thought.
I want to reiterate that Koen and others have clearly done a good job researching this topic, so that if I disagree with other people's conclusions it is not out of malice or lack of respect for their efforts, but purely determined by my thoughts on the evidence as presented.
As previously discussed and as Koen agrees there is no reason on the basis of the Zodiac clothing fashion to say that the Voynich manuscript could not date from the 1430s.
On his blog, Koen writes:
"Combining this information with the knowledge that the clothing of the VM Gemini, Virgo and archer were typical for the period 1400-1430"
Now if 1430 is not the end of the possible date range for the Voynich Illustrations then the logical implications of statements like this need to be re-examined.
This made me wonder whether the evidence in fact makes the Zodiac drawings more likely to date from the 1430s than other decades.
Having read Koen and Nick Pelling's posts on their blogs on the subject it got me thinking.
There were a few specific details that struck me.
1) The Zodiac Drawings appear to be exact copies
Koen points out how the Voynich Illustrator tries poorly to copy the shadings in a blue dress exactly indicating that the Illustrator was copying from drawings detail for detail.
Koen writes:
"What this suggests is that the VM painter was trying to faithfully follow an example, even though the required techniques surpassed his skill."
This would indicate that the Zodiac drawings were faithful and not altered copies of the source Illustrations.
On that basis it seems reasonable to think that the Voynich Illustrator would have copied the fashion exactly from the original manuscript and not updated it to fit contemporary fashion.
So why would someone alter the crossbowman's elbows? This certainly pushes the dating forward.
Of course if the central Zodiac drawings are exact copies from an earlier manuscript then those Voynich drawings could really date from any time after the inception of that fashion.
In fact given the central Zodiac drawings are copied whilst the other smaller Zodiac drawings around appear invented, it would seem that the central drawings reflect earlier fashion whilst the smaller ones may reflect contemporary fashion. This would imply that the smaller ones fashion are better suited to providing a contemporary dating.
However then one has to ask how much the original manuscript is most likely to pre-date the Voynich copies by 1 year, 5 years, 10 years, 20 years, 50 years. That is not an easy question to answer. Was this a culture of wanting to read the latest best selling manuscript or a culture where people happily pored over old manuscripts? Was someone more likely to be looking at a manuscript 1 year old or 10 years old? In theory one could calculate the estimated mean age of manuscripts consulted at that time. However in practice this would be very hard to do and not necessarily of much use.
2) Diebold Lauber drawings are the most like those of in the Voynich and Lauber's work dates from around 1427 onward.
From what I understand Diebold Lauber's manuscript of Buch der Natur(ca. 1440) is the closest known parallel to the Voynich Zodiac Illustrations; please correct me if I am wrong Koen. I have read that the workshop of Diebold Lauber produced manuscripts between 1427 and around 1467.
Now the obvious thing I wonder is if one of Diebold Lauber's works is where the Voynich Illustrator copied his drawings.
If the Diebold Lauber drawings are the most similar to the central Zodiac drawings then why not assume the date of the Voynich drawings is close to the date of the most similar Diebold Lauber drawings and why assume the original source is not a work of Diebold Lauber himself?
Lauber himself appears to have been known to copy older drawings in his manuscripts without making alterations for reasons of contemporary fashion. This allows plenty of scope for a later dating of the original Lauber manuscript from which the Voynich Zodiac drawings were copied.
Given that Diebold Lauber works date from 1427 to 1467 and given our carbon dating, does that not place the Voynich mostly likely in the 1430s?
It has been argued that Lauber and the Voynich author may have copied from a common source rather than the Voynich author direct from Lauber. However is that likely?
Are the similarities between Lauber and the Voynich too great to have been filtered through a previous author?
Why should an unknown earlier source be a preferable link to that of a known later producer with the greatest degree of similarity to the Voynich drawings?
One assumes the unnecessary complexity of this second source when the simpler option of the Voynich Illustrations being derived direct from Lauber seems the most obvious.
To quote Nick Pelling:
"the Voynich’s zodiac roundel drawings appear to me to have been copied (albeit fairly ineptly) en masse from a single (probably German) calendar of the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century. What’s different here is that it now seems quite likely to me that the particular calendar was from Diebold Lauber’s workshop."
After all this might suggest that the 1430s is the most likely range for the dating of the Zodiac Illustrations rather than being excluded, given the carbon dating pushes the date to before 1438.
Having looked more into this I wonder why it was ever thought the Voynich pre-dates 1430 based on the Zodiac fashion, that position seems to make little sense to me on closer inspection. I suppose it comes from the interpretation of quotes from a specialist or specialists as well as the mean date on the basis of Koen's collected of examples being 1415. It should be noted that specialists gave their estimate of the dates from which they believe the fashion originates not the date on which a manuscript containing such illustrations might have been copied.
As anyone who knows my research will know that for many years I have believed the author(s) spent a significant length of time in Basel at the Papal Council. This of course is not so far south of Haguenau, so a not unlikely place to find Diebold Lauber manuscripts. Note I made this association with Basel prior to any awareness of any kind of connection in the Voynich to North of the Alps, though I was of course aware of possible Northern Italian links. Obviously my narrative of a journey from North Italy, the Duchy of Milan, to Basel and backs accounts for both Italian and German influences on the Voynich.
So I naturally wonder if this theory is true then did the author see a copy of one of Lauber's manuscript whilst in Basel?
If one is claiming that the Voynich Zodiac drawings come from Lauber then the search for the earliest "surviving" Lauber manuscript with the most in common Illustrations with the Voynich seems a sensible one.
Has anyone made a list of Diebold Lauber's manuscripts that are known to survive and those that don't appear to have?
I saw a list that Nick Pelling mentions and I will probably discuss it with him, though I don't know how complete it is or what efforts have been made to systematically trace all of these manuscripts.