Are the secrets of the Middle Ages' most mysterious manuscript hiding in plain sight?
This manuscript’s contents are a centuries-old mystery that still eludes scholars today. But is it really as cryptic as it seems, or are its answers hiding in plain sight?
At first glance, the Voynich manuscript doesn’t look like much. It’s an old book, about the size of a modern paperback, with colourful illustrations of plants and animals surrounding cursive handwritten script.
But on closer inspection, there’s something strange about the plants and animals depicted in the pages. They don’t resemble anything real. And the script isn’t in any recognisable language.
Called the ‘world's most mysterious manuscript,’ the Voynich manuscript has been eluding experts' attempts to decode or explain it for hundreds of years. What could it possibly mean?
A medieval compendium on herbs, healing, and the stars?
“We now know through radiocarbon dating that the Voynich manuscript was created during the early 15th century,” says author and journalist Garry J Shaw, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast. Specifically, the evidence suggests the manuscript was made between 1404 and 1438.
As to where it was made, that’s less clear, though there are hints.
“There are clues in the style of the illustrations – and little hints like the merlins and the fortifications of a little castle – that suggest Northern Italy as the location it was created,” he adds.
Other than that, nothing is known about why the Voynich manuscript was made, who made it, or what purpose it serves.
The ‘language’ it is written in isn’t any known language, so scholars have divided the book into sections based on the illustrations.
“The first section is dedicated to plants,” Shaw says. “You'll see all these interesting plants, quite unusual ones, often with their roots included as well. There seems to be an emphasis on the roots, which may be a clue to what is going on here.” That part is known as the ‘herbal’ section.
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After that come sections on astronomy or astrology with what look like zodiac signs and constellations; bathing, as shown by naked women in waters with unusual creatures around them; cosmology, with fold-out pages showing islands and castles; pharmacy, shown by bits of plants and apothecary jars; and, finally, full pages of text broken up into short paragraphs, which have been interpreted as recipes.
All these things were “trendy” topics of interest for the elite at the time, Shaw notes.
The book has passed through many different hands since the 15th century, and there was a 200-year period where there was no record of its whereabouts. It's named after Wilfrid Voynich, who bought it in 1912 and was the last person to try to decipher it before it was donated to the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University in 1969, where it has been held since.
The language of the Voynich manuscript
The language the manuscript is written in has come to be known as ‘Voynichese’.
The text has some characteristics that suggest it is a ‘constructed language’ (a language intentionally created for a specific purpose such as to accompany a work of fiction, like Klingon in Star Trek) as opposed to a ‘natural’ language which develops naturally and changes over time.
But Shaw doesn’t think the manuscript is a constructed language, because interest in them didn’t really arise until the 17th century, “when scholars started realising that Latin wasn't working for them anymore to communicate their discoveries,” he says. “It doesn’t fit the timeline of the artificial language craze.”
Many people have assumed that it’s a code, or a cipher, for a natural language and therefore has some sort of meaning.
There is some evidence that this is true. For example, there are ‘words’ that are overrepresented in each of the sections, which could be keywords relating to each section’s topic. And there are patterns of word lengths and frequencies, characters that appear more often which could be vowels, and words that commonly follow each other – all of which suggest a grammatical system.
On the other hand, there doesn't seem to be any punctuation, and it has an incredibly regular structure, unlike most known languages. There are lots of words that have incredibly similar spellings or differ only by one letter, which would lead to nonsense if they could actually be ‘translated.’
And lots of people have tried deciphering the writing over the years, including comparing it to languages such as Ukrainian, Latin, Old Turkic, and Mandarin, with no success.
Shaw thinks that the cipher explanation is unlikely. “Ciphers at this time were quite simple and weren't that hard to break. Yet even the great cryptological minds have not broken the Voynich cipher yet, even with the great computing power of today,” he says.
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Is the Voynich manuscript a hoax?
In a 2020 paper, medievalist and manuscript expert Lisa Fagin Davis wrote that she believes five different people worked on the Voynich script because of slight variations in the style of the handwriting throughout.
But Shaw says that the “greatest cost of producing a manuscript – up to 75 per cent – was normally hiring the scribes,” so it is unlikely that five different people would be paid to create it. Instead, he suggests that “some enterprising scribes” made it to entice someone rich into spending money.
“You see throughout history that people were just as interested in ripping people off in the past as they are today,” he says.
Because it looks like a medical compendium, complete with herbal recipes and therapeutic bathing practices that were of interest at the time, Shaw says he can imagine someone rich buying it, believing they could crack it – and not realising that they couldn’t until it was already bought for a high price.
He adds, “this was also a time of a great explosion of interest in book collecting, particularly among the elite who were trying to create fabulous libraries.” People would be willing to cough up a lot of money for unique, special books to add to their libraries, no matter the contents or if they had even read them. He thinks this is the most probable explanation.
“I love the Voynich mystery,” he concludes.
“I would love it to be some ingenious cipher from the past that breaks all of our knowledge of that time, or an ingenious early created language and script before the craze for them. So I sincerely hope I’m wrong, but unfortunately, I think the evidence points towards this being a hoax.”
Garry J Shaw was speaking to Emily Briffett on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.
Authors
Serafina Kenny is a freelance journalist specialising in the history of health, relationships, and social culture