MS 408

The Voynich Manuscript, Folio 57 Verso (ca 15th or 16th century), Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University
The Voynich Document,¹ a medieval manuscript written in an invented cipher alphabet that no-one can surely decrypt, is a touchstone for visual poets. Although its text remains essentially meaningless to us and its combination of image and text generally follows accepted documental structures—in particular the herbal—its rough-hewn beauty captures our imagination.


The Voynich Manuscript, Folio 68 Verso (ca 15th or 16th century), Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University
In spots, the codex displays an hypnotic beauty—especially, to my eye, in its astrological section. Maybe the draw of this book is that we must treat it as a child treats a picture book: We read the images and look at the text.


The Voynich Manuscript, Folio 86 Verso (ca 15th or 16th century), Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University
Because of my interest in the apparent visual poetic nature of this prose text, last week I read a new book about it entitled The Friar and the Cipher: Roger Bacon and the Unsolved Mystery of the Most Unusual Manuscript in the World.² Written by a married couple, Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone, this volume gives a fairly good overview of the murky history and provenance of the manuscript. Remarkably, however, after a brief prologue, the authors do not even mention or hint at the manuscript again until the bottom of page 199 in a 300-page book. This history focuses on Roger Bacon, the assumed creator of the manuscript and his intellectual forebears and descendants. Many chapters discuss (in more detail than a layperson might be able to handle) the intricate history of medieval clerical politics and intellectual history. And we are left, by the end of the book, with the idea that the polymath Bacon might certainly have been the author of the book—but there is no telling.³


The Voynich Manuscript, Folios 88 Verso, 89 Recto, and 89 Recto 2 (ca 15th or 16th century), Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University
The finding aid for this manuscript (with the catalog number MS 408) divides its text into six parts⁴:

Part I. ff. 1r-66v Botanical

Part II. ff. 67r-73v Astronomical or astrological

Part III. ff. 75r-84v Biological

Part IV. ff. 85r-86v Sextuple-folio folding leaf with array of nine medallions

Part V. ff. 87r-102v Pharmaceutical

Part VI. ff. 103r-117v Continuous text, with stars

The Beinecke Library at Yale has also done the world a service by posting images of all extant pages of the book on its website, thereby providing all of us better access to the book while also reducing the wear and tear on the volume.


The Voynich Manuscript, Folio 88 Recto (ca 15th or 16th century), Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University
When I click through the pages of the Voynich Manuscript, I am led to believe that it is a central source of inspiration for the visual poetry of mIEKAL aND, whose work I’ve too little made note of.⁵ For more information about this inspirational text, certainly consider reading the Goldstones’ book,⁶ and visit the eponymous website, The Voynich Document.

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¹ I’ve written about the Voynich Manuscript once before, but without images.

² Goldstone, Lawrence and Nancy. The Friar and the Cipher: Roger Bacon and the Unsolved Mystery of the Most Unusual Manuscript in the World. New York: Doubleday, 2005. The title reminds me of the hamfisted Simon Winchester and his two [sic] books on lexicography: The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of The Oxford English Dictionary, The Surgeon of Crowthorne, and The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary.

³ This is not a book for people confused by similar names, since Roger Bacon’s namesake Francis Bacon appears in the story hundreds of years later.

⁴ Where "ff" means "folios," "r" means "recto" (a right-hand page in a book) and "v" means "verso" (the left-hand page).

⁵ I must note that other clear influences on aND have been ancient scripts in general and the Russian futurist concept of zaum.

⁶ The book includes two pleasing features: eight pages of color reproductions of leaves of the Voynich Manuscript and footnotes (instead of the dreaded yet more common endnotes).

ecr. l’inf.