080016 SE The Voynich-Manuscript (2023W)

The Voynich Manuscript (Yale University, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, MS 408) is often cited as the world's most enigmatic codex. His name goes back to the previous owner Wilfrid Michael Voynich. To date, the script used has not been decoded, the language used has not been identified and the content of the manuscript is therefore not understandable. The illustrations alone allow conclusions to be drawn about the content, but they do not follow any known iconography. What can art historians achieve here? It is not to be expected that the text can be deciphered during the seminar. But an approximation based on the style and iconographic analysis of the illustrations should be possible.
The text may have been written in an artificial language and written in a cipher. Since the 17th century, clever people have been struggling with this double coding. Not even the use of decoding machines that were used successfully in World War I and II, as well as those of modern high-performance computers, brought about a breakthrough. Is the whole codex a hoax? Since the manuscript was demonstrably in the possession of Emperor Rudolf II (1552-1612), i.e. it has been available since the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries, it must be a very old hoax.
If one assumes that the manuscript is not a joke but a serious treatise, the numerous wash drawings are the only clues. Through them, part of the codex acts like an herbarium; but the plants are with exceptions non-existent in nature. Another part shows women bathing naked, as they cavort in various pools. Another part obviously deals with astronomical-astrological questions. But all this is ultimately enigmatic.
Since the content of the Voynich Codex cannot really be deciphered, the author and thus the time and place of origin of the manuscript remain in the dark. Among other things, Nostradamus was considered because the Provencal doctor and astrologer Michel de Nostredame (1503-66), who was valued at the French royal court, wrote cryptic prophecies. Also the English mathematician, astrologer, occultist and alchemist John Dee (1527-1608/1609), advisor and "magician" to Queen Elizabeth I, and the English or Irish occultist and "seer" Edward Kelley (1555-97/8), who claimed no less than having found the philosopher's stone and having made direct contact with angels, were considered as authors. In 1582, Dee and Kelly applied for employment with Emperor Rudolf II in Prague and with King Stephen I of Poland in Kraków. I.e.: Researchers made the enigmatic the starting point of the attribution as a common denominator, but this is not permissible from a scientific perspective.
An essential part of the seminar will therefore be the critical, method-based analysis of theses put forward in the literature, in videos, etc. From this, the questions for further presentations will be jointly developed in the forum. The focus is on the art historical approach. Because the illustrations are de facto dateable due to their style and probably also localisable. At least distant comparisons can be found for the iconography, which raise art-historical and cultural-historical questions that have not yet been asked.
Students are encouraged to intensify their own research through interviews with experts. This applies to the art-historical focus as well as methodological overlapping areas such as palaeography, in which help "from outside" is necessary.