There is a medieval tradition called Arma Christi or Instruments of the Passion. In such images, many objects that somehow played a role in Christ’s final moments are depicted together, often around a crucified Jesus or a “Man of Sorrows”.
While researching my previous post about the five Holy Wounds, I came to a growing understanding that the Arma Christi play an important role in the symbolic elements we find worked into the Voynich large plant drawings. I don’t have enough time to write about this as much as I would like, and this will remain the case for the foreseeable future, so I have decided to write up a quick blog post now, outlining my main idea about the subject.
Having come to the understanding that Christian imagery has had an important role in the shaping of the large-plant section has come as a shock to me. It has shattered some of my deepest convictions about what the manuscript could and could not contain. But someone once told me to keep an open mind and always follow the evidence, so here we are. If I have built up any credibility over the last months, I would like to use this now, and implore the reader to approach this post with the same attitude. Know that I have rarely been as convinced of anything regarding the VM as I am about this.
The Instruments of the Passion
For this post, I will assume that the reader is familiar with the story of the Passion. The Arma Christi are objects that have played a part in the various stages of this story. In the previous post, I already mentioned the Holy Lance and the Holy Wounds as examples (in several versions, the Wounds themselves are part of the Instruments).
To understand this post, we must first familiarize ourselves with the Arma Christi, to know what to expect. The set of Instruments depicted in a single image varies, going from a dozen to three dozen. Some of the details are not always clear – for example, experts don’t always know for sure who are meant with the human faces included – but there are some common and straightforward items as well. The Wiki has a decent, though not exhaustive overview, which I’ll copy-paste and shorten a bit below:
- The Cross either depicted alone or with the crosses of the two thieves
- The Crown of Thorns
- The pillar or column where Jesus was whipped in the Flagellation of Christ
- The whip(s), in Germany often birches, used for the 39 lashes
- The Holy Sponge set on a reed, with which gall and vinegar were offered to Jesus
- The Holy Lance
- The Nails
- The Veil of Veronica
- The reed which was placed in Jesus’ hand as a sceptre in mockery
- The purple robe of mockery
- The Titulus Crucis
- The Holy Grail
- The Seamless robe of Jesus
- The dice with which the soldiers cast lots for Christ’s seamless robe
- The rooster (cock) that crowed after Peter’s third denial of Jesus
- The vessel used to hold the gall and vinegar
- The ladder used for the Deposition
- The hammer used to drive the nails into Jesus’ hands and feet
- The pincers used to remove the nails
- The vessel of myrrh, used to anoint the body of Jesus
- The shroud used to wrap the body of Jesus before burial
- The sun and moon, representing the eclipse which occurred during the Passion
- Thirty pieces of silver (or a money bag), the price of Judas’ betrayal
- A spitting face, indicating the mockery of Jesus
- The hand which slapped Jesus’ face
- The chains or cords which bound Jesus overnight in prison
- The lantern or torches used by the arresting soldiers at the time of the betrayal, as well as their swords and staves
- The sword used by Peter to cut off the ear of the High Priest’s servant. Sometimes a human ear is also represented.
- Sometimes the heads or hands of figures from the Passion are shown, including Judas, Caiaphas, or the man who mocked Christ spitting in Christ’s face. The washing hands of Pontius Pilate may be shown.
- The trumpet played for mocking Christ on the Way to Calvary.
In the following sections, I will present a number of Voynich plants which allude in some way to one or more Arma Christi. There should be more, but this is just a quick proof of concept. Ordered by current folio number. All comparative imagery used in this post comes from Arma Christi manuscripts (and a few Arma Christi paintings).
f10v & f32v: Rooster and Pelican
There are two shapes of long-tailed sitting bird profiles in the VM roots. Similarly there are two birds in Arma Christi, the rooster and the pelican. They are almost always shown sitting in profile, though their appearance varies.
f17r: Side Wound and Holy Lance
I discussed this in detail in the previous post. This folio includes both the Side Wound and leaves like lance points.
f17v: grotesque bearded profile
A surprising amount of Arma Christi pages include a mean-looking man with a long beard shown in profile. The side view is apparently to imply his bad intentions directed at the Christ figure. It is not always clear who he is supposed to represent, but I believe he is of the Pharisee type. This might mean that the hairy bumps in the root of this plant are camel bumps after all, as has been suggested before, since Jesus mentioned a camel in one of his trademark Pharisee burns:
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel!”
f34v: Thirty coins
The coins paid to Judas are shown in a variety of ways: in a bag, a purse, as a mass poured out of a hand. Sometimes though, they are carefully counted in a grid, or three rows of ten. In the VM, there are 29 coins, they forgot one on the top left branch.
f35v: Pillar of Flagellation with twining ropes, two Whips
The plants on this folio are known among Voynich researchers as “oak and ivy”. The identification of the climbing plant as ivy has been problematic, since ivy usually clings closer to the host, and has leaves.
The best Arma Christi parallels for this plant (so far) are from this manuscript. Note the way the ropes twine around the pillar. The two whips held by disembodied hands (a common Arma Christi trope) are parallelled in the roots. It is thematically appropriate that the Column and whips are joined in the same plant.
F35r: Chalice
This one is fairly obvious, f35r represents a chalice. The roots even form a foot.
f38r: two torches, two clubs
f40v: Sun
The Instruments also include a Sun and a Moon. The Sun is represented in the huge flower on f40v. This drawing includes some motifs that we also find in the Cosmological VM pages, which makes this even more fascinating.
f50r: Eclipse
Normal Arma Christi use a separate Sun and a Moon to represent the eclipse that took place when Jesus died. The VM brilliantly one-ups them by having a hole where the Sun was in f40v. I don’t know if they made the hole or planned this around an existing blemish, but either way it’s wonderful.
f42v: Lantern/Brazier
Arma Christi also includes a lantern, sometimes carried on a stick.
f93r: Sponge-on-a-Stick?
I’m not certain which plant represents the sponge on a stick they soaked in “sour wine” or vinegar to give Jesus something to drink, but I hope it’s this one… Has anything ever looked more spongy?
Conclusion
There are many more plants that likely refer to the Arma Christi, but these are some of the most obvious ones. Therefore, I would argue that the Passion of Christ was used as a linking device between a certain set of VM large-plant folios. The internet is swamped with Arma Christi images and I have limited time to flesh out this discovery. Luckily J.K.Petersen was quick to catch on and find some of the more relevant examples, a number of which are included in this post.
I don’t know yet what all of this means, this is new to me. Probably, if we take folio/bifolio order into account, we can come to a better understanding of the process involved. I get the impression that this was done with much care and thought, and there is probably more to it than just random Instruments of the Passion added to plant images.
I expect this post to meet some resistance from various angles. Some (which would have included myself before) will reject the Christian theme a priori. Others will have difficulties with the supposed symbolic content of the plants. But perhaps some readers will understand the unusual degree of correspondence between the Instruments of the Passion and so many VM plant elements.
Koen, my view on your identification of Arma Christi is quite different. I count 30 of them, some even consisting of different items.
f10v & f32v: Rooster and Pelican
I don’t see them. Cut out the roots and show them 1000 people without telling they are roots. Ask what they look like. How many would you think come up with a Rooster and a Pelican?
f17r: Side Wound and Holy Lance
To that I already had my say. Why two wounds? Why 12 holy lances – which a few words later appear to be ribs?
f17v: grotesque bearded profile
It’s like these toy cards with a face drawn, but the line from forehead to chin replaced by a thin chain. Whenever you shake the card a different face pops up, but almost always a face is seen. Same with the arbitrary VM curve.
f34v: Thirty coins
Now this would make sense if there were 30 flowers. With the intent to get a secret holy message across the scribe would not make such an error. Would he have drawn only 51 weeks in a calendar year?
f35v: Pillar of Flagellation with twining ropes, two Whips
The column looks like the example you gave. However I tried to find another with similar twining ropes – without success. Of course that does not prove there are not, but I think it was not the common way to draw the column. Anyway, getting to the whips – there are numerous roots that look like whips.
F35r: Chalice
Yes a chalice or for that matter any (wine) glass, from any culture.
f38r: two torches, two clubs
This is a bit funny. The four VM flowers are identical. Still two are supposed to be clubs and two would be torches. Not even burning.
f40v: Sun
Even if that is a sun, it has sun spots sun flares and sun prominences. That would make Rich extremely happy! I’m afraid it looks more like a little flower within the hart of the larger flower. And suns are a bit too general to associate with the passion.
f50r: Eclipse
Now that is a good one. The scribe encountered a page with a hole in it and immediately thought of an eclipse. To me it’s a strategically placed heart of a flower. No sun rays, no sun face, drawn as an oval sun? No moon either – it’s a hole.
f42v: Lantern/Brazier
The scribe thought it funny to have a lantern – not with the fire inside and uprising flames, but with the fire outside the holder with some downrising flames.
f93r: Sponge-on-a-Stick?
Presumably Jesus was hit by an artichoke?
My opinion: Only a few only remotely resemble your claim. To be expected anyway when comparing 30 elementary objects with 131 plants each with many parts. Add that nowhere in the MS Christianity appears. The overall story here is: whatever you see in an image, it is there once you believe it is there. It’s the Rohrschach test and why people see a face in the moon, or canals on Mars, or dippers in the stars, or islands in the clouds, or the future in tea leaves.
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Ger, did you expect Koen to score 100% in the short time he’s had to explore this new idea?
If there is visual encoding in the VMS, it’s not likely anyone would guess them all on the first try, and the person encoding them would certainly not have drawn them as literally as you seem to expect. If they had, they would be normal illustrations.
I think Koen’s idea has enough merit to explore it. Whether it will pan out, I don’t know, but I’m certainly not going to dismiss it because the shapes aren’t perfect matches for their possible metaphoric counterparts. The order in which they are presented, and the proximity of folios may clear up some of the questions.
Even if it doesn’t work out, this idea has clearly shaken up a few world views (including mine) and brought in a fresh way of thinking—something that will likely have unforeseen benefits.
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JKP, no, I did not expect him to score 100%. In my view he did not score at all, at least not more than what one would see in a passing cloud, in an ink spot, or in the wall tapestry of a dark bedroom. That said I appreciate his work very much – in this case I think he is on the wrong track.
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Poor Koen! I suspect you have caught Voynichitis. I would advise you to forget about the manuscript for a a couple of months so as not to repeat the fate of Newbold (and countless others).
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Don’t worry doctor, I know what I’m doing.
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Koen
I am among those unable to accept your interpretation of the images you have selected for this post, less because the analogies you offer are inherently subjective than because they are presented as being so.
Any physical image is the embodiment of a mental image, and the conceptions of that mental image like the form given in and the media in which it is expressed have – or have if valid – a solid basis in our knowledge of history, including cultural history and the history of images (conceptual or realised as pictures).
What I find worrying about your post is that there is no evidence of any such solid foundation; for example, not one of the images you’ve cited as illustration of your thinking displays any character in form or expression in common with the Vms images.
More broadly, I’m at a loss to identify any known historical situation which produced a need to obscure plainly Latin Christian themes or images in the way you posit here. One could invent a story such as a Latin Christian trying to conceal his beliefs because in some hostile environment (a Tatar slave or so on), but this would remain pure fiction without any concrete comparison being offered from a known time, place and cultural environment, in which similar stylistics and – in conjunction – a similar disjunction between overt and covert intention could be demonstrated.
It is precisely because I have such respect for your abilities as a scholar, and your ability to address a subject with meticulous objectivity (vide the lobsters) that I’m not going to respond to this post with sympathy, silence or expressions of faith.
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Diane
A few weeks ago my reply to a blog like this would have been much like yours. So I understand your point of view.
But I’ve been wondering… what do we really, really know for sure about this manuscript? And it’s so little. So I don’t like to exclude possibilities anymore.
Why hide christian imagery? Perhaps the makers had a varied audience in mind, some who would appreciate being pointed out these shapes and others who would object? Just one idea. It would be pragmatic for sure, but as you certainly know pragmaticism was a useful trait for travellers to possess.
I agree though, that this question remains a difficult one. But if I’m convinced the Ama Christi have been worked into some of these plants, then why should I reject this?
I have no illusions that many people will believe this right away (or maybe ever), and I won’t waste our time arguing back and forth. I guess you want to give the possibility a chance or you don’t. And that’s fine.
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Hi Koen, on the forum you recently mentioned the crescents on the rosette and plant, which i equated to flags on a corner of maps of the general area shown on portolan charts. By 1600 these crescents were in three corners of the map, perhaps this was the fear of those who might hide such imagery.
I cant find the example i mean which showed them up north and west of the black sea, but this one also has something else you recently mentioned, a certain hill, this occurs in later maps as well, but i dont recall seeing it in earlier ones.
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Koen,
I must thank you again – and this time for your courtesy in crediting me with disinterested motives and responding in the same tone.
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