Every now and again we uncover manuscripts with possible direct or indirect links to the Voynich Manuscript. They might contain a similar glyph, a similar illustration, or perhaps a similar diagram. A good example was Cod. Sang. 839 (discovered by Thomas Sauvaget) with the same quire number style.
Cod. Sang. 754 is perhaps special in how many similarities there are.
All credit to the discovery goes to Job (from the Voynichese project); I am simply documenting it for him. I will avoid making any bold claims and simply lay out all the similarities and let you make your own decision. I’ll also not bore you with the details of the manuscript until the end.
1. The illustration
The first thing Job noticed was the style of the illustration on page 164.
It should speak for itself.
(it’s the only full plant illustration in the manuscript so don’t bother looking for others)
2. The label
Then I noticed that the plant (Agrimonia) was labelled twice. “Huh, I wonder what’s the point of that,” I thought. Then something struck me about the lower label.
The writing is heavily sloped backwards so the strokes resemble Voynichese “i”. This is despite the fact that the rest of the manuscript’s writing, and even the other “m” and “n” on the same page, are upright.
This really got the ball rolling.
3. The last page
Now let’s look at the markings on the last page (p. 168).
It’s mostly nonsense
The last page is very similar to the marginalia on the last page of the Voynich Manuscript (f116v) in that it’s inscrutable.
I profess no skill in Latin nor medieval German, but I can see that very few sequences on page 168 are meaningful (e.g. what does “vn vn von don an a_” mean?). Makes sense given that it’s probably a pen test and not intended to be a meaningful text. Not only that, but it’s mostly pseudo-Latin with some pseudo-German, the same as f116v of the Voynich Manuscript.
Letter stroke shapes
The shape of the “x” is the same too. Page 168 has three in a row.
The way that the vague “an”/”m” beginning is constructed also parallels the marginalia of the Voynich Manuscript.
The Voynich Manuscript’s f116v has Latin characters distorted to look more like Voynichese and we can see that in Cod. Sang. 754 as well.
There are three words in a row with the Voynichese word ending “in”:
The last two words seem to be “domini noster” so I don’t know why this ending would be appropriate. The “d” is connected so it’s almost like the numeral 8.
This example shows more connected d’s and a nonsense word with the Voynichese “-aii-” structure.
Finally, the last page of both manuscripts contain the words “maria” and “gas” (albeit differently).
Now let’s get to the bulk of the manuscript. Just like the Voynich Manuscript, the author has a habit of doodling random quadrupeds, secret snakes and dragons eating bits of plants.
The loop-de-loop doodles are also similar:
5. More writing details
Cod. Sang. 754 also contains no punctuation (except for hyphens).
Job and I have looked for matches to the Voynich Manuscript’s marginalia in the text itself. The best we could find were “die leber” (throughout), “ſo min” (throughout) and “nuꜩ” (p. 68).
One of the minor mysteries of the marginalia on f116v was the vertical line of dots above the last “o”. Vogt stated in his marginalia study that we didn’t know if it was intentional, nor what it could mean.
It appears so often in Cod. Sang. 754 you could be forgiven for thinking it was a common convention!
They seem to be diacritic variations (old umlaut?).
More Voynichese-like text
The connected d’s and Voynichese-like “in” appear throughout the manuscript. Near the end of most paragraphs, and sometimes instead of “h”, there are symbols that look like Voynichese “k”, “z” and “m”:
These can lead to some familiar looking word shapes:
More stroke construction
We also find an open-topped “p” or “r” annotation:
And more of the highly backwards-sloped and unconnected writing scattered throughout (mostly as annotations and marginalia):
The exception is p. 32 which is entirely in this hand.
There are two pages with the “word, cross, word, …” format we see in f116v’s marginalia.
(the other one is page 80)
That’s it for the similarities. I’ve included everything we noticed so there are some strong matches and some weak ones. But collectively I think it is remarkable to find all of these features in a single manuscript.
Note that I am not proposing matches but rather resemblances, and again I will leave you to interpret these comparisons as you will. At the very least it hints at a culture/time/place that produces a superficially similar work. Even if it is completely unrelated to the Voynich Manuscript it helps to put things into context. That is, at best it is a sibling and at worst it is a cousin, either way it is closer than what we have found elsewhere.
Still with me? Want to know more about Cod. Sang. 754?
What: Untitled collection of medical texts in German (by the same person). It is listed as “Manual of drug practice (fragment, beginning missing)”. Carlton Bach told me it was specifically Middle High German.
It contains medical information, recipes and a herbal (with only one illustration). The introduction and (implied?) astronomical sections are missing, though since the ornate capitals disappear partway through the book (there are just blank rectangular spaces where they ought to appear) and there is only one illustration for the herbal, I wonder if it was unfinished or interrupted.
The details mention that the manuscript is written in one hand which is mostly true for the main text, but there are others in the annotations and last page.
Who: Appears to be anonymous. The description talks about the various sections including names, but it’s not always clear which sections are copied and which ones might be original. For example, it doesn’t say the first section is a “copy” or “excerpt” like the others. Yet it says it is “for Rudolf von Hohenberg” and the last person of that line (Rudolf III) died in 1389, well before the 1466 date.
Where: Description says “Glarus” which is in Switzerland. Not sure if that means the town or the canton, nor if that was the actual place of publication or just the earliest known location.
It was later in the collection of Aegidius Tschudi (from the town of Glarus) in the 16th century.
It is now in St. Gallen Stiftsbibliothek which is where Cod. Sang. 839 (mentioned in my introduction) also ended up, interestingly enough.
When: Dated 29 January 1466. Well, at least the first section.
Where to from here?
Descriptions say that this manuscript is related to 2° Cod. 572 of the Staats- und Stadtbibliothek Augsburg (1446, Bavaria or Swabia, printed by unknown) and Cod. Germ. 1 of the Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg (c. 1460, Swabia, by scribal community). Second hand descriptions are promising, as they are also collections of plants, recipes, astrology, medicine, alchemy and so on. They have similar structure, style, production, and even have some text in parallel (more details here). What’s most interesting is how they are from around the same time and place, Lake Constance area circa 1460, which corroborates other estimates about time, place and marginalia language.
Unfortunately, neither of these have been fully digitised. Would any interested German speakers want to write to these institutions?
Update 1 [2014-12-27]
Thanks to everyone who read this article from the mailing list! I’ll post some of the following discussion here so that regular viewers aren’t left out of the loop.
Steve D. suggests that f41r of the Voynich Manuscript also depicts Agrimony but in a different style from Cod. Sang 754. The seed pods may be emphasised because the medicinal oil contained within was the focus of the text, and the leaves deliberately hidden to avoid identification.
Yulia M (Russian site) found some other similarities in the manuscript which I re-post with her permission.
1) “M” (page 154)
2) Combinations “-ll-” and “-bl-” (page 148)
3) Unknown objects
(Anton Alipov identifies the one on the left as a rennet bag)
Rene Zandbergen says that the “striking” resemblance of the Agrimonia illustration may arise from a similar production method. The artist first drew an ink outline, then paint was applied sloppily with only a few colours (and perhaps by someone else). He points out two major differences – the Voynich Manuscript’s plant illustrations put more emphasis on the roots, and are done more carefully. Though with only one plant illustration in Cod. Sang 754, it is hard to really compare with confidence.
Helmut Winkler says that I have misread many German words, e.g. the “gas” in Cod. Sang. 754 should actually be “gans” (goose). However this is not so important as the main focus is mostly about the constructions and strokes.
The question about the double-labelling of Agrimonia has been answered; the later addition can correct the spelling of the first label, provide a more readable version, or provide the name in an alternate language. Apparently this is common in herbal manuscripts and double-labelling occurs elsewhere in Cod. Sang. 754 (e.g. page 160).