RE: Wenzel's Bible...?

["Brian Smith" <briansm@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

A few years ago I sent mail on this subject. Here is the most relevant
portion:

A few months
ago I found a large picture book containing hundreds of pictures from
Wenzel's manuscripts:

Author:       Krasa, Josef.
Title:        Rukopisy Vaclava IV.
Pub. Info.:   [Praha] Odeon [1971].

("Rokopis" means "manuscript" in Czech).  Most of the pictures are
from his Bible, but several are from the two surviving astrological
manuscripts, 2352 and 2378 (no mention is made of 2351, maybe someone
has a typo).  All of the manuscripts are typical richly illuminated
manuscripts with the one odd feature that many of the marginal
illustrations contain "bathing girls."  But I don't mean girls taking
baths -- they are young women bath _attendants_, usually shown wearing
thin white dresses and carrying buckets or tending to a male figure.
I found the pictures entirely unlike the VMS both in style and
content.  The primary illustrations in the astrological manuscripts
were fairly typical zodiac and concentric circle calendrical diagrams
(showing the controlling planet, lucky days, etc) not unlike VMS but
no more alike so than others I have seen.

No one apparently knows the story behind the bath attendants in the
Wenzel manuscripts.  Each source I read gave a different theory: an
allegory of baptism or holy cleanliness; his mistress; his wife; an
attendant who saved his life.

-----Original Message-----
From: Nick Pelling [mailto:incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Sunday, July 29, 2001 12:49 PM
To: voynich@xxxxxxxx
Subject: Wenzel's Bible...?


I think it would be a good idea to compile a list of currently open 
challenges that might help throw some light on the VMS.

For example: did anyone ever track down a copy of Wenzel's Bible with
its 
(infamous?) bathing scenes? It seems exactly the kind of thing that
would 
be likely to end up lost deep in the Vatican Library...

Or: did anyone ever compare the VMS folio numbering with Edward Kelley's

handwriting in "Liber mystorum sextus et sanctus" [British Library:
Sloane 
MS3189], as mentioned by Rafal Prinke?

	http://hum.amu.edu.pl/~rafalp/HERM/VMS/dee.htm#18

All suggestions for alternative (and better) challenges welcome!

Cheers, .....Nick Pelling.....