Doctor Gerard Cheshire, from Bristol University, claims he cracked one of the world's most mysterious texts, the Voynich manuscript, a medieval text which has eluded scholars for years.
The Voynich Manuscript has not yet been decoded. The Voynich Manuscript is a Medieval Codex with unusual drawings, and the meaning of the Voynich Manuscript has remained hidden because it has not been decoded since its discovery in Medieval times as well as in the period following the re-discovery
I made a decision several months ago to give up the commission side of my art business. As my calendar had filled with teaching engagements and trips to far-flung places, it became more and more difficult to find time to squeeze in the labor-intensive custom artwork. But when my friend Mary approached me a few […]
#OpChangeTheWorld2 🌎 This book without author, written in an unknown language and adorned with strange… by anarcho-pirate
A Medieval Guide to Love
#OpChangeTheWorld2 🌎 This book without author, written in an unknown language and adorned with strange… by anarcho-pirate
How do the pointed medieval shoes in our collection relate to London's LGBT history?
The British Library owns the only extant illustrated Old English herbal, and it recently digitized the entire manuscript.
The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University houses a very mysterious manuscript known as The Voynich Manuscript. Why so strange? Because it is written in a language and script unlike any other. It has been studied my historians, linguists and cryptologists but none can come up with a theory to explain the contents of the 246 page manuscript. The vellum on which it is written has been carbon dated to the early 15th century. Wilfrid Voynich (thus the name of the manuscript) claims to have discovered it in 1912 at a Jesuit college in Frascati, south east Rome. At the time it was thought that it may have been attributed to Roger Baker a 13th century English philosopher. Other suggestions have been the likes of the English occultist mathematician John Dee or his medium Edward Kelley. The enigma remains, as to who created this illustrated 246 page manuscript written in an unknown script / language? What are the strange plants and creatures and why the naked women featured on the pages?
“Wrap thy form in a mantle gray, Star-inwrought! Blind with thine hair the eyes of Day; Kiss her until she be wearied out.” An exquisite illuminated manuscript of two of Shelley's poems – To the Night & The Cloud – by the Arts & Crafts illustrator, Jessie Bayes (1876-1970).
But we're not reading the Voynich manuscript quite yet.
Rohonc Codex is illustrated, handwritten manuscript in some ways similar to the The Voynich Manuscript and other mysterious, encoded texts.
muscavomitoria: 8th century manuscript illustrated by Zoroaster & Clavis Artis
The discovery of an unidentified text in Hungary has led to more than 200 years of attempts to determine who authored it and to decipher its contents. Many scholars have studied the text, known as the Rohonc Codex, in an effort to understand its meaning and to determine who wrote it and when it was drafted. However, these efforts have been futile to date, as the meaning and origin of the text still remain a mystery.
Grimoire, herbal, cryptographic enigma or elegant artwork – whatever the Voynich Manuscript may be, it’s once again making small, cryptic waves. Most exciting is this fantastic Flickr set of hi-res scans of the 16h century tome. Meanwhile furthe evidence is …More →
*Please note that posters in the comments provide links to pages that no longer exist -- sadly! Yale at one point removed the archive of images from public view. I am sitting at my desk transported by the digital images...
Strange, Trippy And Perverted Pictures From Illuminated Medieval Manuscripts
Many of our readers will already be familiar with our Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts, a resource which enables you to search by shelfmark, keyword, or date, as well as by more advanced fields such as language and provenance. We thought it was about time to give a reminder that all...
The British Library is putting its treasury of medieval manuscripts online, starting with the most famous. To celebrate, here are some pages and details from the Lindisfarne Gospels. This masterpiece of Anglo-Saxon art was begun, our sources say, in 698 by Eadfrith, bishop of Lindisfarne (d. 721?). The text has Old English glosses added by Aldred, provost of Chester-le-Street (fl. c. 970). The decoration was done sometime in between by more than one person, possibly over a period of decades.
The Songbook of Zeghere van Male contains local and international 500 year old songs and motets. Made in 1542, the 1200-page long book is rich in illuminations, depicting ornamental and historiated initials and interlinear drawings not necessarily related to its content. Also known by its call number MS 125-128 in Cambrai’s Mediathèque Municipale, the late … Continue reading "Weird And Wonderful Illustrated Letters From A 16th Century Songbook"
Oh, Valentine’s Day: romance is in the air, passions are running high, the sense of anticipation and excitement is building…but – alas! – you are alone. How do you catch that man/woman/animal of your dreams? Despair not, oh singletons! The Medieval Manuscripts Blog is coming to your rescue. We have...
One of the most popular books ever written [in Arabic & Persian] is the book the [Muslim Civilisation] know as Kalila wa-Dimna, a bestseller for almost two thousand years, and a book still read with pleasure all over the world. It has been translated at least 200 times into 50 different languages.
Clavis Artis is an alchemical manuscript published in Germany in three volumes in the late 17th or early 18th century...
WAGtv’s “Ancient X-Files” Voynich episode will first air at 20:40 on 10th May 2012 on the National Geographic channel in France, where the series has been retitled “De l’ombre à la lumière“. Though the episode is entitled “Sodom and Gomorrah” (“Sodome et Gomorrhe” in French), be reassured that 50% of it is the Voynich part. … Read More →
Scribes in the 16th century clearly had too much fun with these *ahem* questionable illustrations…
The Songbook of Zeghere van Male contains local and international 500 year old songs and motets. Made in 1542, the 1200-page long book is rich in illuminations, depicting ornamental and historiated initials and interlinear drawings not necessarily related to its content. Also known by its call number MS 125-128 in Cambrai’s Mediathèque Municipale, the late … Continue reading "Weird And Wonderful Illustrated Letters From A 16th Century Songbook"
It takes no small amount of inquiry, from no few angles, to truly understand a form of art. This goes even more so for forms of art with which most of us in the 21st century have little direct experience.
The Kitab al-Bulhan, or Book of Wonders, is an Arabic manuscript dating mainly from the late 14th century A.D. and probably bound together in Baghdad during the reign of Jalayirid Sultan Ahmad (1382-1410). The manuscript is made up of astrological, astronomical and geomantic texts compiled by Abd al-Hasan Al-Isfahani, as well as a dedicated section of full-page illustrations, with each plate titled with 'A discourse on....', followed by the subject of the discourse (a folktale, a sign of the zodiac, a prophet, etc.). Housed at: Wikimedia Commons | From: Oxford Digital Library Underlying Work: PD Worldwide | Digital Copy: PD
Yale University released a book that recreates through photographs the enigmatic medieval Voynich Manuscript in its full form.
The Voynich Manuscript is a document that is notable for its strange text, that to date hasn't been decyphered. Theories range from a secret language or code...
Musicians from a Beatus of Liébana ms. from the first half of the tenth century. Wikimedia Commons By Jessica Knauss The complexity of the Iberian Peninsula in the Middle Ages has led to many different terms to refer to the distinct sectors of its multireligious, multicultural society. “Mozarabic” originally referred to the Christians who were allowed to continue practicing their faith under Muslim government, and later expanded to include the Iberian Christians who lived outside those territories as well. The time frame remains strict: it describes Moorish political dominance, from the seventh through the eleventh centuries. Christ in Majesty from a Moralia in Job completed in Valeranica, 945. Wikimedia Commons This time frame sets the characters from my Seven Noble Knights, which takes place in 974 and 990, squarely within the Mozarabic culture. I’m fascinated with the distinctive art of this culture because it’s the aesthetic my characters would have been surrounded by. From a Beatus of Liébana completed in Osma. Wikimedia Commons In the most abundant type of art, manuscript illumination, bright colors, almond-shaped eyes, elongated hands, and disregard for realism are the characteristics that most stand out for me. Perhaps the colors, bright enough to burn modern eyes, are the result of dim lighting in buildings with small windows. The lack of realism may have come about in part because the most popular work of literature at the time was a commentary on the Apocalypse, with all its fantastic creatures and events, by a monk called Beatus of Liébana. The Monastery "de Suso" at San Millán de la Cogolla is a rare example of Mozarabic architecture. Jessica Knauss It’s assumed that the driving force of Mozarabic art is a blending of older, revered Visigothic styles with adaptations from Arabic sources. However, it’s hard to trace the continuance of Visigothic style due to a general lack of surviving Visigothic sources. Much important architecture constructed during the Visigothic and Mozarabic periods no longer exists because in later generations it was demolished to make way for new styles. Although the Arabic inspirations in Mozarabic art are more obvious, they’re not easy to interpret. Some see a criticism of these borrowings embedded in the borrowings themselves because of the frontier nature of this art and the antagonism between the religions. Others prefer to think Mozarabic artists admired Arabic styles for their elegance as much as they admired Visigothic styles for their heritage. The Ark of the Covenant in the San Isidoro Bible, 960. Wikimedia Commons In The Art of Medieval Spain, O. K. Werkmeister illustrates that the Mozarabic attitude toward Arabic art sources seems to reflect the current state of the prolonged conflict. These monks were often working on the front lines and witnessed skirmishes and battles firsthand. The San Isidoro Bible of 960 illustrates Philistines riding in a style probably copied from Islamic art. In this way, the Bible story of intense fighting against frightening enemies became an allegory for the conflict the monks and lay people saw all around them. From the Beatus of Liébana of Girona, 975. Wikimedia Commons Fifty years later, the attitude seems to have flipped. A decorative casket Caliph Hisham II gave to his Sword of the Realm as part of a reward for conquering León was looted in a raid and brought back to a Christian church to serve as a reliquary for the bones of two Mozarabic martyrs. This reappropriation is the ultimate form of adaptation from Arabic sources. The casket could only be accepted as Christian at this exact moment in history, when the Caliphate of Córdoba was in decay and the enemy forces didn’t seem as threatening as before. The Whore of Babylon in the Girona Beatus. Wikimedia Commons Unique among European manuscript illumination of this period, the frontier monks nearly always left detailed colophons signing their work and stating the reasons and patrons for which it was made. Such signatures likely imitated the way artists claimed their work in the Muslim-governed territories, where artists had considerable social standing. It seems reasonable that the Mozarabic monks had similar artistic and cultural aspirations. Historians thank them for leaving such accurately self-conscious records. From "Facundus" ms. of Fernando I and Sancha of Castile, mid-eleventh century. Wikimedia Commons The Mozarabic monastic tradition wouldn’t last long after the rise of the Romanesque artistic style. The only example of work attempting to bridge the styles or to absorb Mozarabic sensibilities into international Romanesque are the manuscripts patronized by Fernando I and Sancha of Castile in the mid-eleventh century. For me, these manuscripts happily combine the old surrealism with a new, more complex control of contours. But there were no monastic centers that could juggle the two styles for long. Noah's ark, painted in Urgell. Wikimedia Commons Nevertheless, Mozarabic art was no flash in the pan. Something essential about it, perhaps its severity or its emotional impact, has remained in Spanish art. Many commentators draw a straight line between the San Isidoro Bible of 960 and Picasso’s Guernica. Jessica Knauss earned her PhD in medieval Spanish with a dissertation on the portrayal of Alfonso X’s laws in the Cantigas de Santa Maria, which has been published as the five-star-rated Law and Order in Medieval Spain. Look for her book of stories based on the Cantigas, coming 2021. A driven fiction writer, Jessica Knauss has edited many fine historical novels and is a bilingual freelance editor. Her historical epic, Seven NobleKnights, will be published in December 2020 by Encircle Publications. Her contemporary paranormal Awash in Talent is now available from Kindle Press. Find out more about her writing and bookish activities here. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter, too!
