Re: astrological iconography

[Jorge Stolfi <stolfi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

    > [Rafal:] I have received a very kind and informative reply from
    > Prof. Ewa Sniezynska-Stolot of the Jagiellonian University in
    > Cracow (my repeated apologies to the list I had not written to
    > her earlier).
    
No apologies please; Ewa's report was a very valuable contribution,
many thanks for obtaining it!

    > [Ewa:] The Sagittarius' cap with fox tail points to Germany -
    > but they were also worn in Poland. I believe that the manuscript
    > can be dated to mid-15th c.

So the North Italian theory is not without contestants. Another small
step back towards complete ignorance. (As the Fortean Times admonishes
us, "for every expert there is an equal but opposite expert".)

    > [Ewa:] In my opinion it is a notebook of a liberal arts student.

While the drawings seem to fit that theory, the writing is too neat
and regular for a "student's notebook" the strict sense. But it could
be a "personal treatise" that the author distilled from his notebooks,
at some later time.

On the other hand, as it was remarked before, some of the "pharma"
drawings seem to be drafts for some of the "herbal" pages. So perhaps
"pharma" is indeed a notebook --- or a first copy of one, cleaned up
but not yet reorganized.

    > Similar notebooks are Beinecke 225 and 226.

I found the entry for MS 225,

  http://webtext.library.yale.edu/finddocs/fadsear.htm
  (enter "Worczin" and hit "search")
  
However the only "MS 226"s that I found at Beinecke seems to be 
something else entirely --- one is North Italian, the other is
French.   

    > The former belonged to Paul de Worczin who studied in Cracow in
    > 1422 (according to the Beinecke catalogue Cracow is in
    > Bohemia!). The latter is also from Cracow.
    
My understanding is that MS 225 was written by one of Worczin's
students, probably "Frater Jacobus de Paradiso (Jacobus de Jueterbogk)
who studied and taught in Cracow and came to the Carthusians at Erfurt
in 1442". The colophon reads "Finis disputatorum Paruorum naturalium
reportatorum post Reuerendum Magistrum Paulum de Worczin in studio
Craconien. Anno domini M CCCC XXII (1422), feria IIII (Wednesday?)
ante festum sancti michaelis".

All the best,

--stolfi