VMs: Dating and Placing the VMS "Archer"

["Donald Goodell" <donald.goodell@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Rafal:

Of course it's a "cross bow" that the Sagittarian archer is holding....sorry
for the typographcal error (I was literally running out of the door when I
was pounding out my last email and had my mind on other things!).....my
point however was about the "15th century Florentine Hat" (Brumbaugh) which
the Archer is wearing, which points to a Northern Italian provenance
somewhere in the middle 15th century. I don't think the Welsh ever wore hats
like that in the period 1420-1490 !

Interestingly, as you point out, the Archer is fully "human", and not the
Centaur-like being we see depicted normally for the Astrological sign of
Sagittarius: I too would be very interested to hear from anyone on this
thread who might have located any MSS that show any similar or direct
parallels to this peculiar "non-Centaur like" fully-human depiction of
Sagittarius that we see in the VMS (among so many peculiar depictions!); so
far I too have not come across anything similar, but if we could locate a
similar depiction, we might be able to see a topographical link, especially
in the Northern Italian balneogical/medicinal herbals of the "humanist" 15th
century...

On another completely different topic altogeher, regarding the cipher
language of the plaintext of the VMS which may be of interest to some of the
linguists or cryptologists among us, we may well be dealing with a "double
language application phenomenon" in both VMS-A and VMS-B whereby the
"plaintext" might be in one coherent language if literally rendered, but
with a whole other language "underneath"...especially if pronounced outloud
in a specific dialect. If we could ascertain the provenance of the VMS it
might open some "doors", (Latin:  "portas" as the "key" on the last page
seems to be saying, in grammatically bad Latin, "dabas michi multos
portas").

To give the VMS group a humourous (if somewhat filthy, sorry, Ladies, it's
the only quick example I can think of at the moment!) scatalogical example
from the works of my own musical hero, Herr W.A. Mozart (who like his father
often resorted to employ crypic ciphers when writing back to Salzburg in
letters that they believed might be intercepted by the court of the
Archbishop, i.e. the same ilk who had already cesured Leopold Mozart for
slander in the 1750s), consider the canon for four voices (K. 559, Vienna,
2nd Sept 1788) which is expressed OSTENSIBILY in grammatically proper LATIN
(but ultimately silly---or at least as it would first appear on the surface)

                            Difficile lectu mihi Mars
                ("Mars/Martian is difficult for me to read...")

     (which in Voynichese might be rendered phonetically
                             "difi cilele ctumi himars")

which in performance would be  PRONOUNCED (i.e. in canonic song-form in the
south German dialects) as a distinctly filthy humourous scatalogical joke
even clearer in song (which would of course not be lost on Mozart's musical
circle in Vienna who seemed to relish such profane language, especially
after a few beers, one would imagine, with Mozart playing Billiards, no
doubt!)

                         Diffizile Lech Du Mich im Arsch
                       ("Lick out my butt-hole very slowly")
etc. etc.

But the point of all this is: whatever the "plaintext" of the VMS may be
(and there may be several in the MS) there might well be a "hidden" SECOND
(i.e. different) language buried beneath the original, literal languae of
the plaintext.

One would imagine that if the author(s) of the VMS felt it necessary to
resort to such a double coded system, the "scientific" material in the MS
must have been considered highly contrary (i.e. heretical) to the rigid
beliefs of mother church who still believed that the world was flat and the
earth the centre of the Universe..and therefore very dangerous if it fell
into the wrong hands..(see Joshua chapter 10, where Joshua son of Nun
commands the Sun AND the Moon to Stand still so he can finish a battle "and
be revenged on his enemies" ...therefore "both Sun and Moon equally  must
have been in motion" said the Vatican clerics... until 1986 when Galileo was
finally taken off the hook)...

Comments from the group on any of this?

Forgive me again if some of these ideas have already been discussed in
previous threads over the past 12 years, I've just joined in the discussion
and thoroughly enjoy all the ideas so far I've read...

My advice to this group: Keep thinking Out of the Box !


DG
donald.goodell@xxxxxxxxx







----- Original Message -----
From: "Rafal T. Prinke" <rafalp@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: <vms-list@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, January 24, 2003 7:54 AM
Subject: VMs: the VMS archer


>
> Donald Goodell wrote:
>
> > I seem to remember the socalled  Saggittarian "long bow archer" in the
> > Astrological section of the VMS  wearing a Brescian (or at any rate, a
> > Northern Italian, even Florentine) Capello, (or"hat"),
>
> It is not a longbow - but a cross-bow. And this one of the
> curiosities of the VMS (in its understandable stratum) - as there
> seems to be no other representation of Sagittarius known in this form
> (man with a cross-bow rather than centaur with a bow). I kept
> looking for one without luck.
>
> But the figure itself looks vaguely similar to medieval
> German Planatenbuch imagery. Look, for instance, at this
> Web edition (the colouring is modern by the editor):
>
>   http://www.billyandcharlie.com/planets/planetsbook.html
>
> and especially the Children of Jupiter - where a cross-bow
> archer is shown, not very different from the VMS Saggitarius.
> As Jupiter is the ruling planet of that sign - it is
> understandable. But why did the VMS illuminator choose
> to use the cross-archer image instead of that of the Centaur?
>
> I believe finding another such image would be a great leap
> foreward in ascertaining the origin of the VMS.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Rafal
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