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Another Look at the Voynich Manuscript
The Voynich Manuscript has long baffled scholars—and attracted cranks and conspiracy theorists. Now a prominent medievalist is taking a new approach to unlocking its secrets.
Flowering through the indecipherable script were otherworldly illustrations: strange, prehistoric-looking plants with leaves in dreamy geometries; oversize pages that folded out to reveal rosettes, zodiacs, stars, the cosmos; lists of apparent medicinal formulas alongside drawings of herbs and spindly bottles. Another documented the Voynich’s suspected provenance, with evidence suggesting that the manuscript had been owned by the 16th-century Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II before passing through the hands of a court pharmacist, a Prague alchemist, a Bohemian doctor, and a German polymath on its way to the Jesuits in Italy. “I experienced a series of ‘eureka’ moments whilst deciphering the code, followed by a sense of disbelief and excitement when I realised the magnitude of the achievement.” He concluded that Dominican nuns had compiled the manuscript as a medical and astrological reference for Maria of Castile, a great-aunt of King Henry VIII’s first wife.
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