RE: How outlandish is the Voynich MS imagery?
-JKP- > 13-04-2016, 09:37 PM
The VMS is no more unusual than many. I've seen some pretty quirky manuscripts (there's an English manuscript where he invented his own system of numbers and symbols for the planets, a very simplistic and easy to understand system, but his own system nevertheless) and he organized the information in a way that was different from others.
It was not uncommon in the 15th and 16th centuries to create medieval equivalents of encyclopedias of knowledge on particular topics: on astronomy, on medicine, on history (chronicles).
The compilation of information on herbs, zodiacs, the spheres, and what appears to possibly be women's health and possibly pharma sections was almost typical when compared with other doctor's almanacs that included astrological information. The main differences are 1) that it's more extensive, 2) that some parts appear more symbolic than literal, 3) that it appears to focus on women, and 4) that it's in an unknown style of script. The overall content is not unusual.
Balneological pictures and Dante's inferno-style pictures (with lots of people in pools) were not uncommon at this time either and the tradition of recording herbs had long since been established.
I sometimes wonder if the outpouring of information into books in the 15th C was, in part, a reaction to the high death rate of the 14th century when much knowledge was lost. The 14th century was a particularly rough one... famine, significant climate change, several waves of plague, wars. Some believed that the Plaque might wipe out the human race entirely (it wiped out about 90% of the population in India).
The catastrophic losses may have motivated people to record what they knew. Just the name "Hausbuch" for knowledge that was once the provenance of monasteries and universities suggests a change in attitude toward the recording and dissemination of information.