RE: VMs: Astronomical Notes, Comments, and Replies

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi everyone,

At 01:39 10/02/03 -0800, Rene wrote:
> Whether it was a mistake or part of a plan is
> hard to say. I tend to think the latter, but
> there is one missing label in the other
> zodiac pages, and there is also one page
> where the nymph has no star. These two, I think,
> are mistakes.

I would agree - whoever produced the VMS had an awful lot of (probably hard 
to visually decode) text to write down, and keeping the error rate to two 
mistakes out of 300 is probably pretty good going. :-)

It might be that that error rate is too high for easily readable text. 
Discuss! :-)

> > I also note that there is a pattern to the pages
>
> Well spotted.

One possible (partial) explanation: if you accept Sergio Toresella's 
observation that the zodiac/volvelle circles were *traced* (which might 
well explain the choice of very thin parchment as material of choice), then 
it's possible that some pairs of diagrams (on either side of a single 
bifolio) might share the basic circular shape *through the page*.

Or it might be that this was true of the original document that the VMS was 
copied from! :-)

Something to check over, anyway. :-)

> In that is the case, the VMs was written by George
> of Trebizond after all :-) He lived in the
> 15th C., in N.Italy, was familiar with all Greek
> philosophical (i.e. scientific) works, worked in
> diplomatic circles, and was quite mad in his
> older days, both by modern and contemporary
> standards :-).
> He used to lament the fact that he was born under
> the sign of Pisces.

I certainly think George of Trebizond is, in his madness, a strong 
candidate for being the originator/adaptor of the underlying zodiac 
diagrams (and probably the rest of the cosmological section) - but 
that,because I favour the VMS-as-bookshelf hypothesis, that doesn't mean he 
originated the rest of the stuff in the VMS, nor encoded it. :-)

His locus, according to the Catholic Encyclopedia (which doesn't seem to 
like him much) and elsewhere, is:-
1395 Crete (which was owned by Venice). -> Mantua -> Venice / Florence / 
Vicenza -> Rome -> Naples ->  Rome -> Crete -> Byzantium -> Rome (1486 
died). As Rene says, Gorge was indeed mad by the time he died. :-)

        http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06456a.htm

If you're Googling for him, he's also referenced under "Georgii 
Trapezuntii" (9 hits).

John Monfasani at Albany appears to have written plenty on him over the 
years: here's his homepage:-
        http://www.albany.edu/history/monfasani/

George of Trebizond: A Biography and a Study of his Rhetoric and Logic
John Monfasani
Brill Academic Publishers
ISBN: 90 04 04370 5
Cloth 1976 414 pp

Collectanea Trapezuntiana: Texts, Documents, and Bibliographies of George 
of Trebizond
edited by John Monfasani
Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies
ISBN: 0-86698-060-1
Hardcover 1984 888 pages

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

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