The Voynich Manuscript is one of the most bizarre and intriguing tomes in the world. The Medieval 200-page book is written in alien looking glyphs that are, so far, indecipherable. Five different scribes were probably involved. The only clues hinting at its contents are its various colorful and rich illustrations of stars, planets, occult-like symbols, plants, and naked women suggesting botanical, astronomical, biological, and pharmaceutical themes.
The mystery of this 600-year-old manuscript has attracted some of the world’s brightest minds looking to break its code. Not much progress has been made, despite their best efforts. The speculated purpose of the Voynich Manuscript has ranged from a coded herbal atlas to an alchemy recipe book. Others believe any attempt to uncover its hidden meaning is futile, casting the manuscript aside as an elaborate hoax.
But not all have given up on the Voynich Manuscript. In a new study, Keagan Brewer and Michelle L. Lewis from Macquarie University in Australia, make the bold claim that at least some chapters of the manuscript are about sex, conception, and the female reproductive system — what Medieval physicians called ‘women’s secrets’.
The researchers make a convincing case by closely examining the book’s illustrations and corroborating their assumptions with what Medieval doctors knew about anatomy and medicine in the 1400s.
The mystery of the Voynich manuscript
Previous analysis of the vellum (animal skin) used to make the manuscript confirmed that it dates from the Medieval period, sometime between 1400 and 1440. No one knows who exactly wrote it, but certain illustrated zodiac symbols and designs suggest a southern German or northern Italian cultural origin.
After it was completed, the tome changed many hands. The book is believed to have once belonged to Rudolf II (1576–1612), the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, who was obsessed with alchemy and the occult. It came to modern attention when, in 1912, the manuscript was found by a Polish book dealer named Wilfrid Voynich.
Voynich claimed that Roger Bacon — a 13th-century monk and philosopher — was the original author of the manuscript. Bacon was a controversial figure. He was involved in all areas of science but also the occult, as were most scholars of his time. In a work called The Mirror of Alchemy, Bacon mentions the creation of an elixir that he claimed could not only transmute metals but also prolong life — a Philosopher’s Stone. The original procedure might have been concealed in the enciphered Voynich manuscript.
However, this is all just conjecture. Some Voynich enthusiasts point to astrologer/alchemist John Dee as the possible author. Others claim the whole thing is just an elaborate hoax by someone using Emperor Rudolf’s propensity for alchemy. Some even think it was a hoax created by Voynich himself.
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Voynich was an astute collector but also a former convict. He served time as a political prisoner in Warsaw and Eastern Siberia, having escaped from both, before arriving in England with fake papers. However, many doubt that Voynich forged the manuscript as the vellum is undoubtedly centuries old. The manuscript is currently housed at the Yale University library.
Medieval Censorship?
Brewer and Lewis noticed that some of the illustrations involve naked women holding objects that point to their genitalia. This initial observation led them down a rabbit hole in which they investigated late-medieval gynecology and sexology.
They eventually found a historical figure of interest, the Bavarian physician Johannes Hartlieb, who lived around the time and place the manuscript was made. Hartlieb seems to check all the boxes of a Manuscript-connected person. His published works mentioned plants, magic, astronomy, and women. He advocated using coded writings such as ciphers and secret alphabets to obscure medical knowledge about contraception and abortion.
According to the researchers, Hartlieb would go through all this trouble because he strongly believed that ‘women’s secrets’ had to stay that way — a secret. In his view, commoners, children, and especially women shouldn’t be made aware of things such as contraceptive or abortive plants, libido-altering diets, or vaginal ointments. Such things would inevitably lead to extramarital sex and God’s wrath would shortly follow, the Medieval scholar thought.
That’s not to say that the researchers think that Hartlieb is the author of the Voynich manuscript. Instead, Hartlieb’s attitudes — if they were indeed widespread — serve as a cultural context. They offer a frame through which to interpret the motivations of the Voynich scribes.
Besides studying Hartlieb’s work, the researchers also decoded many ciphered writings from the same period.
“The longest was a 21-line cipher from late-medieval northern Italy that obscured a recipe with gynecological uses, including abortion,” Brewer wrote in a blog post for The Conversation.
“We also found many examples of authors self-censoring, or of readers erasing or destroying information in gynaecological and/or sexological texts. Censors would often only obscure a few words, usually genital terms or plant names in recipes — but sometimes they would remove entire pages or chapters.”
“One Bavarian manuscript includes recipes for invisibility and magic spells for sexually coercing women, after which two pages have been removed. The censor writes this removal was done ‘not without reason’.”
Ancient gynaecology
Analyzing the Voynich manuscript through the lens of late-medieval medical beliefs and societal norms, researchers argue that the Rosettes diagram — the manuscript’s largest and most elaborate illustration — represents the female reproductive anatomy.
Centuries ago, Medieval doctors thought that the uterus had seven chambers and the vagina had two openings. Yes, we’ve come a long way. But the point is that the Rosettes, made out of nine circles, might have served to visualize this sort of early understanding of female internal anatomy.
“Abu Bakr Al-Rāzī, a Persian physician who influenced late-medieval European medicine, wrote that five small veins exist in the vaginas of virgins. We see these running from the top-left circle towards the center,” Brewer wrote.
Additionally, the diagram seems to include elements that symbolize various reproductive theories of the time. For example, it may show the interaction of male and female ‘sperms’ — believed necessary for conception — and the influence of natural forces like the sun on embryonic development. It was also thought that the uterus had two horns or spikes, which are featured on the top-right and bottom-right circles of the Rosettes.
While much of the Voynich manuscript remains a puzzle, this new interpretation invites further scholarly examination and may pave the way for a deeper understanding of this mysterious text.
In other Voynich-related developments, in 2018 researchers used AI on the ciphered manuscript and concluded it is written in an encoded form of Hebrew.
The new findings appeared in the journal Social History of Medicine.
BONUS: Check out our gallery of Codex Seraphinianus, probably the weirdest book in the world. It’s written in a language that doesn’t exist, with tons of inspiration from the Voynich Manuscript.
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