VOYNICH MANUSRIPT EXPLAINED

  Objective: to adopt Latin alphabet for the use of Slovenians living in different political entities and to teach the fellow monks the vernacular language, which means that the various pages could have been authored or copied by other monks. The illustrations also reflect higher philosophical and political ideas aimed at the learned.

What is it about?

The majority represents spiritual poetry using floral imagery, individual labels representing vocabular, some illustrations possibly sketches of realistic life, and others representing esoteric communication related to mysticism and prophesy.

Proposed Author: Nicholas Kempf, native of Strasbourg, Prior of two Slovenian Cartusian monasteries (for several decades); philosopher, theologian, educator, poet, writer, mystic, church reformer, and author of over 30 books, most of which have been lost.

According to the Carbon testing, the Voynich manuscript was created between 1404 and 1439. The location of its creation is unknown, but it has been proven that Rudolph II, the Holy Roman Emperor, possessed it at some point, and that it was sent from his court, in Prague, to Athanasius Kircher, in Rome, with hope that he might be able to decipher it. The manuscript is named after Wilfried Voynich who acquired it in 1912, in Rome, brought it to the United States and it is now located at the Beinacke Library of Yale University.

The Voynich Manuscript has been the subject of intense research by amateur and professional linguists and several transcriptional alphabets have been created for the purpose of research and computer analysis. The European Voynich Alphabet or EVA, developed by Zandbergen and Landini, is the most widely used. The most helpful and factual information about VM is found on the Rene Zandbergen website www.voynich.nu. Several theories, as to the origin and language of the Voynich Manuscript have been proposed but none has been proven to be correct.

In our blog, we intend to prove that the language of the Voynich manuscript is the Slovenian language of the 15thcentury.

In comparing the script, the vocabulary and grammar with 15th century documents written in the present-day area of the Dolenjska region of Slovenia, it will be proven that the Voynich glyphs are adapted primarily from the Latin alphabet, except for a few unique glyphs, created particularly for Slovenian sounds.

We will reveal the possible location of where the Voynich Manuscript was created, and the name of the possible author (or authors).

We will explain the political, cultural and religious environments that created the necessity to create a written form of the Slovenian language and how the VM could have ended its journey at the court of Emperor Rudolf II and why he was willing to pay so much money for it. The blog will also explain how the thematic VM pages reflect the central objective of the author(s) and attempt to answer the questions various VM researchers wrestle with and offer an opinion on various Voynich theories.

Finally, we will analyze individual pages and provide a (1) vocabulary, transcribed into Latin and Slovenian letters, (2) a Slovenian translation (with an explanation of how the words evolved, or changed), and (3) an English translation. The analysis will provide enough information to get a basic idea on what the VM is about.

Voynich Manuscript – Research Method

Cvetka Kocjančič came across the Voynich manuscript by coincidence in 2016 and was instantly intrigued by it. She initially used the transliteration alphabet EVA available online to transcribe short words within the manuscript and observed that they had a perfect meaning in the Slovenian language. After she made several changes to the EVA alphabet, Cvetka was able to identify longer and more complicated Slovenian words as well as Slovenian expressions within the document.

Cvetka also observed different grammatical forms of the root words, grammatical endings for conjugations, declinations, tenses, gender and numbers as well as prefixes and unique Slovenian phrases. Inspired, she became a Voynich researcher.

Cvetka compared the script, vocabulary and grammar to the one two-page document, written in the 15th century in Slovenian language and Latin script, to the Slovenian Protestant books written a century later, where, in Slovenia, are recognized as the first printed books in Slovenian (Abecednik and Katekizem, 1550). Except for two short 2-page codices with religious content, no other document in the Slovenian language and Latin script from the middle of the 15th to the middle of 16th century exists.

The Slovenian Etymological Dictionary was helpful, but the dictionary is based on the first known written record of the words, which in most cases happens to be in the 16th century, and does not offer the proof that the words used in the VM existed in the 15th century. However, if the words survived from the 16th to the 20th century, it is most likely that they also existed 500 or 1000 years before.

Cvetka found that the words in the VM are used in different grammatical forms, and therefore only a few could be found in a dictionary, which is the reason why the VM language does not conform to computer analysis.

Being a poet herself, Cvetka also recognized the Voynich Manuscript text in the “Floral” section as poetry, based on floral imagery, which is also characteristic for Slovenian poetry.

When Prince Charles visited Slovenia for the first time, he referred to its beauty as “the best kept secret” and the same could be said for Slovenian medieval history. Most researchers seem to agree that the VM was written somewhere in Europe, possibly Austria or northern Italy, however Slovenia and the Slovenian language were never considered.

The Slovenian language was already spoken in the first Slovenian state of Carantania (658-828), present day Carinthia, located in southern Austria, northern Slovenia and north-eastern Italy, and has been spoken, since then, by Slovenians in Slovenia, members of the Slovenian diaspora and the Slovenian minorities of Austria, Italy, Hungary and Croatia.

Cvetka is looking forward to working with a group of professionals to explore and explain the VM in greater detail in the near future.

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• Sample VM Words for Replication Part 2
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© Copyright 2020 Cvetka Kocjancic, All Rights Reserved. 

Pictures: The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library,
Yale University Library in New Haven, Connecticut