Medieval Manuscripts

In early 2023, the picturesque city of Pienza in Tuscany hit the news, particularly in the lifestyle sections of various newspapers. The exact reasons for the conflict remain obscure, but the controversy appears to have been sparked by certain activities of the 'Monasterio Maria Tempio dello Spirito Santo'. In particular, it was the excessive use of social media which faced criticism from the church authorities, who reacted negatively to a Facebook advertisement inviting young women to spend a couple of days behind convent walls 'a costo zero'. Similarly and in contrast to the expectations towards cloistered nuns, those who followed the convent on social media encountered the nuns' very own pet, a parrot called Gigi. According to the convents' website, Gigi is the only male allowed entry into the nuns' private rooms. The situation culminated in the Bishop of Montepulciano deposing the abbess, a directive which both she and the nuns refused to obey. Since then, the dispute has been conducted in public with various prominent Catholic figures taking a stance on the issue. Several journalists attempted to frame this as a controversy between a more traditional wing of the Catholic Church and its progressive counterpart. The fact that, in contrast to a declining number of professions in Benedictine monasticism, the strictly observant convent had had some success in recruitment lead to a degree of scepticism. The topic continued to be covered in newspapers for around two weeks, and generated headlines such as: "Kloster-Oberin vom Vatikan abgesetzt -Nonnen widersetzen sich" 1 , "Sociable Tuscan nuns defy Vatican discipline" 2 , "Pienza, le suore di clausura contro la Santa Sede" 3 or just "Kampf der Nonnen" 4 .

This research dossier v1 presents a formal-first framework for the study of the Voynich Manuscript, moving away from subjective lexical guessing toward a hierarchical analysis of the manuscript as a structured formal writing system. Developed over twelve years of independent research, the framework treats the manuscript not as ordinary continuous prose, but as a complex data architecture organized through positional roles, section-conditioned behavior, and layout-sensitive regimes.

The dossier introduces three connected methodological components. The Garza Decoding Framework / RUMUZ protocol provides a regime-sensitive structural lens for analyzing the manuscript’s internal organization. The Knorozov-Dozen Protocol defines a controlled twelve-step sequence for morpheme segmentation, positional testing, statistical accumulation, and only then cautious translation-oriented reconstruction. The HGN model — Hierarchical Garza Notation — describes the manuscript as a slot-conditioned, morphographic, agglutinative-like formal system whose behavior varies across different manuscript branches, including Herbal, Pharma, Biological/Balneological, Cosmological, and Text-only material.

The central claim is architectural rather than decipherment-based: the Voynich Manuscript appears to operate through a shared formal inventory whose functions shift across sections and layouts. Different branches behave differently, but not as unrelated systems; rather, they appear to represent different regimes of one underlying formal architecture. Historical and linguistic comparators, including Sumerian/Akkadian and later Semitic continuity layers, are treated as secondary and exploratory unless supported by the prior formal structure.

This dossier establishes a reproducible research framework for continued segmentation, statistical accumulation, controlled translation-oriented reconstruction, and future computational or neural-network modeling. It does not claim final decipherment, but it defines a testable path for evaluating decipherment hypotheses.

Material introdutório para alunos de licenciatura sobre a aplicação prática da Paleografia e Diplomática Portuguesa (sécs. XIV-XVI). Ideal para estudantes que iniciam o seu percurso na leitura e transcrição de manuscritos e na análise documental.

The article draws attention to the Ukrainian library, which houses an extremely rich collection of manuscripts and printed materials from the 15th and 17th centuries and has remained beyond the reach of the scientific interest of European and Bulgarian researchers. Attention is focused on some more interesting incunabula, palaeotypes, and rare Cyrillic editions, as well as legal monuments, which are kept in the archives and funds of the Scientific Library of the Odesa National University "I. I. Mechnikov" (Ukraine). The literary monuments are now inaccessible for work and even in danger of destruction. Under more favorable conditions for work in Ukraine, however, specialists in medieval studies, jurisprudence, Old Bulgarian studies, and history will be available for analysis. The purpose of the study is to draw the attention of the modern researcher to some of the more interesting archival items from the author's perspective, who has had the opportunity to work de visu with several publications from the library's book collection. The author does not set out to present literary units in chronological order, such as incunabula 2 , palaeotypes, or rare old printed editions of the 16 th-18th centuries, but

URING visits to libraries and archives in the Campania region and specifically in the area of Salerno for the purpose of registering manuscript codices and documents, I have found twenty-one fragments, originally from three manuscripts, in Caroline minuscule. A folio from one manuscript serves as the cover of a notary’s register from 1518 to 1519,1 a folio from another manuscript serves as the flyleaf of a fourteenth-century manuscript containing part of the Summa theologiae of Thomas Aquinas,2 and nineteen small fragments from a single manuscript have been used to reinforce the spines of four sixteenth-century printed volumes also containing the Summa theologiae.3 In the following description and palaeographic analysis of the fragments, I identify their contents and formulate some hypotheses about their date and the circulation of the original codices,4 while also attempting to place them within

Sacerdote, poeta, musico, educatore, Pietro Edo da Pordenone (1426 ca.-1504) ha lasciato un’abbondante e variegata produzione artistica, che comprende testi poetici, volgarizzamenti, commenti alle sacre scritture, composizioni polifoniche dedicate alla pordenonese Confraternita dei Battuti, trattati d’argomento etico, morale e religioso, nonché svariate scritture a carattere pratico (statuti della Confraternita, libri defunctorum, quaderni d’amministrazione). Tramite il Convegno organizzato in occasione del sesto centenario della nascita, si intende restituirne l’immagine artistica e culturale, indagando non solo la sua figura, ma anche la cultura linguistica, letteraria e musicale del tempo e del contesto geografico nel quale è vissuto e ha operato.

A cura di Antonella Degl’Innocenti, Francesco Lo Monaco
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Premessa di A. Degl’Innocenti e F. Lo Monaco. LE VITE DI GIOVANNI GUALBERTO. LA GESTIONE DELLA MEMORIA NELLE COMUNITÀ VALLOMBROSANE (SECOLI XI-XVI). F. Lo Monaco, La «Vita sancti Iohannis Gualberti» di Andrea di Strumi: trasmissione e impieghi – F. Lo Monaco - Antonella Degl’Innocenti, La «Vita» anonima della Nazionale: continuità e innovazione nell’elaborazione della memoria agiografica – J. Righetti, La «Vita s. Iohannis Gualberti» di Attone di Pistoia (BHL 4398): la tradizione manoscritta - le fonti – A. Degl’Innocenti, La «Vita s. Iohannis Gualberti» di Gregorio di Passignano (BHL 4400): frammenti di una memoria contesa? – R. Angelini, Memoria e identità vallombrosana nella «Vita Iohannis Gualberti» di Andrea da Genova – P. Licciardello, I calendari vallombrosani medievali nelle biblioteche fiorentine (secoli XII-XIV) – R. Svanoni, Varie vicende di una memoria agiografica: l’obitus di Gregorio di Passignano nel necrologio del monastero vallombrosano di Astino (Bergamo, secoli XII-XVI) – P. Buffo, La biblioteca del monastero del S. Sepolcro di Astino in un inventario di fine Quattrocento – F. Salvestrini, L’agiografia su Giovanni Gualberto nel Rinascimento. Testi e contesti all’epoca dell’abate maggiore Biagio di Francesco del Milanese (ca. 1444/45-1523). INDICI, a cura di F. Lo Monaco. Indice dei nomi di persona. Indice dei nomi di luogo. Indice delle fonti manoscritte e a stampa antiche.

Pismo i sacrum to relacja, która inspiruje badaczy od wielu lat, ale polifonia zjawiska nie ułatwia syntetycznego ujęcia. Rękopisy z kręgu sacrum poświadczają starą konstatacje o potędze słowa pisanego, opinii którą wyrazili jako pierwsi antropolodzy za Claude Lévi-Straussem i Jackiem Goody. Pismo to narzędzie w celu dominacji i podboju. Jeśli przypomnimy często komentowane zdanie Michaela Clanchy, iż życie tekstów średniowiecznych zamyka się w trójkącie: making -keepinig -using, to w przypadku średniowiecznych tekstów sakralnych obraz zamyka się w kręgu piśmienności kościelnej i odzwierciedla relacje między różnymi poziomami kultury. Przypomnijmy, że podstawowy podział na litterati i illitterati wprowadzony przez Herberta Grundmanna, oznaczał uczonego i nieuczonego w Piśmie Świętym, a dopiero połączenie illitteratus ac idiota oznaczało analfabetę lub -jak to określał Jakub z Paradyżapopulus sine litteris. Relacje jeszcze lepiej tłumaczy znaczenie słowa bibliotheca, które w kręgach kościelnych oznaczało tylko księgi Pisma Świętego, źródła wiary w chrześcijaństwiereligii księgi. Wszystko to, co powyżej, obrazuje zjawisko ujęte w tytule: uzus sakralny jako monopol pisarzy kościelnych, a w kręgu pism religijnych szczególnie. Czy była to wspomniana dominacja z podbojem, można polemizować. Kodeksy w uzusie sakralnym spełniały rolę narzędzia do organizacji i formowania kultu, zarówno na poziomie wyższym, uczonej refleksji teologicznej, liturgicznej, kanonicznej, biblijnej, jak też niższym poziomie do budowania pobożności i duchowości indywidualnej w duszpasterstwie. o drugie z wymienionych obszerne kościelne piśmiennictwo sakralne jest ujmowane T pod wspólnym mianem, zaproponowanym przez Leonarda E. Boyle'a oraz Josepha Goeringa, pastoralia, które w najszerszym ujęciu obejmuje "wszelkie podręczniki, pomoce lub techniki od dyrektyw biskupich po mnemotechniczne wykazy siedmiu grzechów głównych, które pozwoliłyby kapłanowi lepiej zrozumieć jego urząd, nauczać swój lud i udzielać sakramentów (...) pogłębić ich wiarę i pobożne zachowania". Należą doń różne gatunki piśmiennictwa pastoralnego: podręczniki spowiednicze, traktaty o cnotach i wadach, komentarze i wykłady modlitw, katechizmy, zbiory kazań, kolekcje exemplów kaznodziejskich, traktaty z kazusami teologiczno-moralnymi, statuty synodalne, akta wizytacji. Takie piśmiennictwo, które rozwinęło się po IV Soborze Laterańskim z 1215 roku, stanowiło fundament w długim procesie chrystianizacji, ewangelizacji i wyznaczyło drogę do powstania późniejszych katechizmów. Perspektywę źródłoznawczą wyznaczają przede wszystkim repertoria: Mortona W. Bloomfielda, Richarda Newhausera i Istvána Petera Bejczy, ponadto bliższego stosunkom w Europie Środkowej Jiřego Kejřa oraz Johanna Baptisty Schneyera. Tytułowy uzus sakralny realizuje się najpełniej w pastoraliach, w pragmatycznym piśmiennictwie duszpasterskim, które towarzyszyło obszernym kolekcjom kazań. ORCID AUTORA: 0000-0001-8345-5307 prof. dr hab. Krzysztof Bracha Instytut Badań Literackich PAN Medieval codex in sacral use an introduction to the issue LITURGICA Wykład 2 Średniowieczna książka w uzusie sakralnym CZWARTEK, 22 I 2026 Ewangeliarz na tronie Kodeks jako obraz królującego Chrystusa-Logosu Wystąpienie ukazuje wpływ myśli teologicznej Orygenesa na symboliczną stronę wydarzeń soboru w Efezie (431), w trakcie których biskup Cyryl umieścił na tronie Ewangeliarz, widząc w nim realnie obecnego pośród zgromadzenia Jezusa Chrystusa. Zastąpienie przewodzącego tradycyjnie obradom ojców soborowych cesarza Zbawicielem, wpisuje się również w proces poszukiwania teologicznego uzasadnienia dla autonomii Kościoła i jego emancypacji spod władz imperialnej. Wydarzenia efeskie, a także kształtująca się po nicejskim soborze (325) teologiczna idea Chrystusa-Króla władcy wszechświata oraz orygenejska koncepcja wcielającego się w Pismo Logosu wywarły duży wpływ na wczesnochrześcijańską ikonografię, przyczyniając się do wykształcenia nieznanych jej wcześniej tematów. Dostrzeganie w kodeksie Ewangeliarza realnie obecnej osoby Syna Bożego implikowało ewolucję rytuału liturgicznego związanego z publiczną ekspozycją kodeksu w efekcie czego, włączono doń wiele elementów z imperialnego ceremoniału.

This paper presents a formal statistical characterization of the structural properties of the Voynich Manuscript (Beinecke MS 408), focusing on the internal logic of the Pharmaceutical and Herbal sections. We identify a set of robust computational constraints—including a rigid prefix-root-suffix morphology and a systematic "herbal-to-pharma" substring composition system—that define the manuscript’s unique textual architecture.

These regularities are evaluated against the hypothesis of a personalized Tironian shorthand system. While the observed patterns are shown to be theoretically compatible with such a framework of professional abbreviated notation, we present this as a heuristic model for structural comparison rather than a definitive linguistic identification. Furthermore, we document several candidate ingredient strings that, while currently below the threshold for statistical certainty, provide necessary test cases for future cross-corpus validation. By establishing these data-driven constraints, this work aims to narrow the search space for the manuscript’s functional nature.

Testo enigmatico quanto ad autore e
luogo di provenienza, il De
singularitate clericorum sembra
rivelare qualcosa del suo mistero grazie
all’analisi della superstite tradizione
manoscritta e delle attribuzioni del
testo ad un autore anonimo, a Origene,
Agostino e a quella già ben nota a
Cipriano.

The Voynich Manuscript (MS 408) has traditionally defied military cryptography and statistical linguistics. This research introduces "The Observer's Shelter," a transformative theoretical framework postulating that the codex is not an intentionally encrypted message, but rather a "cognitive anchor" and a life diary of a neurodivergent author-likely characterized by autism and severe dyslexia. Three fundamental pillars are analyzed: mirror writing as a trait of atypical laterality, repetitive text as a mechanism for visual self-regulation (linguistic stimming), and botanical-biological illustrations as maps of synesthetic thinking. It is concluded that the stylistic unity of the manuscript confirms a sole authorship, standing as a monument to mental resilience within a restrictive medieval environment.

The Voynich Manuscript (Beinecke MS 408, radiocarbon dated 1404-1438) has resisted decipherment for over a century. This paper presents a complete computational decipherment identifying the manuscript as a medieval Venetian Italian pharmaceutical recipe book, encrypted using a three-layer homophonic substitution cipher. The decipherment achieves 93.7% dictionary coverage across 51,321 decoded tokens, 85.7% accuracy on blind tests against unseen folios, and produces a 12.3× above-random signal (p<0.001). Six Venetian dialect-specific lexical forms emerged without being targeted. Cross-reference against the Carrara Herbal (Liber de Simplicibus, c.1390-1404) produced six exact vocabulary matches from an independent contemporary source. All methodology, cipher mappings, decoded folios, and validation data are publicly available and fully reproducible at voynichresearch.com.

The humanist Pietro Edo from Pordenone, born Pietro del Zochul, holds special significance in the context of the Venetian and Friulian Renaissance, not least as the first man of letters in his region and its historical and cultural context to have written in the vernacular, both for literary works and for practical documents. This contribution focuses in particular on Pietro Edo’s poem, in 19 cantos of chained tercets, known as Rimedio amoroso. It is dated to around the mid-15th century. The language is also explored, which has a pronounced Venetian character, revealing the author’s contact with the Paduan culture, where he was likely educated as a youth.

Este artículo, el primero de dos partes, examina los manuscritos del tratado náutico del siglo XVI de Agostino Cesareo, L’arte del navigare con il regimento della tramontana. A partir del análisis del manuscrito Princeton MS Kane 54 —que, pese a la pérdida de los dos primeros folios, confirma su autoría— se estudia su relación con otros tratados tempranos de navegación, su contenido y las volvelas (tablas en círculos concéntricos, giratorios y de papel). El examen de las dedicatorias muestra que Cesareo produjo numerosos manuscritos autógrafos de presentación, ofrecidos a nobles en Italia y en el extranjero, con el fin de obtener un mecenas que financiara la impresión. Estos ejemplares revelan redes literarias y el deseo de pasar del manuscrito a la imprenta en la Italia del siglo XVI. La segunda entrega de este trabajo proporciona una bibliografía comentada sobre los manuscritos del tratado de navegación de Cesareo.

The last biography of Jean Gerson appeared in 1928, just as the great Gerson scholars of the twentieth century proceeded completely to redraw the landscape of the field. Scholars still have not digested this scholarship, even as new studies pour from the press each year. Traps and pitfalls await even seasoned experts. P. Glorieux included in his chaotic edition various works that are spurious while overlooking others that are authentic. It is striking that we still do not have an authoritative list of Gerson's works. Brian Patrick McGuire's biography represents a major step forward in reckoning with this earlier literature. Few scholars, if any, know Gerson's works and their sources better than McGuire does, and for this biography he has also carefully digested the published documentary evidence on Gerson, much of which first appeared in the final volume of Glorieux's edition in 1973. He has assembled a vast amount of information into a coherent narrative. In the process, he pins down some details of chronology, he locates Gerson firmly in his historical setting (especially at Bruges, Paris and Lyon) and he explodes a few myths, such as the notion that Gerson taught schoolboys in his last years at Lyon. This study is certain to become the starting point for much future research on Gerson. McGuire's central theme is that Gerson offered an alternate vision of reform which might have spared Europe the great fractures of the sixteenth-century reformations. The book is tinged with a certain wistfulness in this respect, especially the conclusion, where at times McGuire seems desperate to try to rescue Gerson from the charge of irrelevance. His writings 'continue to exercise power ' ( p. 349), he writes, and ' his beliefs remain with us ' today ( p. 352). Here and elsewhere, McGuire's great concern is to bring Gerson into dialogue with the present. Much of the book, however, consists of a straight summary of the works that most interest McGuire. Various technical matters deserve further consideration, perhaps in a revised edition in the years ahead. Here are a few : (1) A serious technical hurdle facing Gerson researchers is the titles of his works. The titles in the modern edition are completely unreliable ; (2) This is a biography, yet McGuire never mentions a major work of Gerson's later career, his Gospel harmony the Monotessaron. The process of selecting works for discussion could be more transparent ; (3) Some of the specialist literature remains unabsorbed, especially the work of Andre ´Combes, who crammed important discussions of many works into the dense footnotes of his grand, misguided thesis on Gerson's conversion to mysticism. This was a missed opportunity to draw into the open for a wider audience scholarship that is virtually inaccessible to any but diehard specialists ; (4) McGuire devotes several pages to the Doctrinal aux simples gens ( pp. 37-40). Gerson's authorship is no longer accepted. (See G. Hasenohr, ' Doctrinal aux simples gens ', in Dictionnaire des lettres franc ¸aises, 1994, 387-8.) This kind of mistake is inevitable when dealing with Gerson. The work appears as authentic in the tenth volume of the edition. What better illustration of the dangers that await a Gerson researcher, even a scholar such as McGuire who has read deeply in the literature ? This close familiarity with the scholarship has allowed McGuire to produce a work that has much to offer anyone

Quisquis a morte peccati ad salutis & gratiae statum volet resurgere… SUP Circa peccatum Superbiae. INV Circa peccatum Invidiae. IRA Circa peccatum Irae. AVA Circa peccatum Avaritiae. INHALTSVERZEICHNIS ACED Circa peccatum Acediae. LUX Circa peccatum Luxuriae. GUL Circa peccatum Gulae. NOT v © Sti sbibliothek Melk A | 327 Sti sbibliothek Melk • Cod.

The five-scribe hypothesis proposed by Davis (2020c) has become a foundational premise in recent Voynich Manuscript research, influencing linguistic analysis, topic modeling, and public understanding of the manuscript. This paper subjects the hypothesis to critical examination. Building on the continuous evolution framework established in Timm (2026a), which demonstrated that the manuscript's text evolves gradually from one state to another rather than partitioning into discrete systems, this paper shows that: (1) Davis’s diagnostic criteria fail on empirical examination: for both the <k> crossbar and the <n> flourish, the variant forms she assigns to different scribes appear on nearly every page of the manuscript; (2) the five scribes reduce to pre-existing categories, with Scribes 1 and 2 replicating the Currier A/B language distinction and Scribe 4 identifying pages with labels rather than running text; (3) the chain of apparent independent confirmation is circular, with each study inheriting assumptions from the previous one; and (4) the handwriting variation is more parsimoniously explained as continuous evolution of a single hand alongside the documented continuous evolution of the vocabulary. The conclusion is that discrete scribe categories, like discrete language categories, are imposed on a continuum.

The intellectual legacy of Rashīd al-Dīn Faḍlallāh Hamadānī (d. 718/1318) extends beyond works he authored to encompass the Rabʿ-i Rashīdī complex, a multifaceted institution he founded near Tabriz in the early 14th century. This institution, which functioned as an intellectual hub, comprised numerous components, including two significant libraries, Dār al-maṣāḥif wa kutub al-ḥadīth and Kitābkhāna/Bayt al-kutub, which also housed their own ateliers for book production. Following Rashīd al-Dīn’s tragic death, both libraries, along with the rest of the complex, were looted. After centuries of quietude, researchers have identified some manuscripts from one of these libraries, Kitābkhāna, on the basis of a distinctive seal designed by Rashīd al-Dīn. This study expands the current corpus of manuscripts bearing this seal through a newly identified example. In the study, along with the manuscript bearing the seal, the other manuscripts constituting the corpus were subjected to thematic classification. Furthermore, the manuscript at the center of the study was contextualized within a historical-geographical framework through the provenance evidence it contains. The study employs a methodological framework frequently used to reconstruct historical libraries through the analysis of provenance evidence, such as ownership statements and seal impressions. This research contributes to understanding Rashīd al-Dīn’s intellectual legacy through the study of his own manuscripts, while simultaneously shedding light on processes of knowledge transmission in the medieval Islamic world.

Prezentowana publikacja to krytyczna edycja źródłowa dwóch rękopisów dotyczących miasta Zaniemyśla: księgi burmistrzowskiej oraz księgi wójtowskiej (obie zawierają wpisy z lat 1747–1792). Księgi obecnie są przechowywane w zbiorach Archiwum Państwowego w Poznaniu. Edycja ksiąg przynosi cenny materiał do poznania przeszłości Zaniemyśla i najbliższej okolicy. W łatwy sposób na kartach ksiąg można ujrzeć powstawanie nowego ośrodka miejskiego, tworzenie warunków dla rzemieślników, przyjmowanie do prawa miejskiego nowych mieszczan. Poznać można również stosunki międzyludzkie, kłótnie, waśnie, ale także zawierane ugody czy dość częsty obrót nieruchomościami. Zaniemyśl na kartach publikowanych źródeł jawi się jako szybko rozwijający się niewielki wielokulturowy ośrodek miejski, gdzie wspólnie żyją i mieszkają Polacy, Niemcy i Żydzi. Opublikowana jednocześnie edycja źródłowa ksiąg miejskich Zaniemyśla doskonale uzupełnia obraz miasta i przypomina o dawnym, miejskim charakterze tego ośrodka.

We apply Z3 SMT formal verification and 46 statistical tests to the Voynich Manuscript EVA transcription. Formal rejection of Latin, Greek, Persian, Vigenere cipher, and random substitution is established. Corpus distance analysis across 8 reference corpora identifies Andalusian Arabic dialect as the closest match (distance 1.009, vs Latin medical 1.386-37% gap). Currier A and B sections show statistically distinct profiles (distance 0.655), confirming the two-author hypothesis. Abjad numerical analysis reveals medically significant values (40-day treatment cycles, centesimal doses). We propose the manuscript is a pharmaceutical formulary in Andalusian Arabic dialect, transcribed in an invented phonetic script by a Hispano-Arabic practitioner before 1492.

The article is dedicated to a unique manuscript Vlad. 430 (Syn. gr. 186) created in the Norman Kingdom of Sicily and kept in the State Historical Museum in Moscow. The analysis of paleography and codicology, as well as the study of the features of illumination (headlines, initials, “vignettes”) of this codex allow us to date it to the middle – second half of the 12th century (before 1182), that is, to the reign of the Norman kings of the Hauteville dynasty. The minuscule script of the Moscow manuscript Vlad. 430 (Syn. gr. 186) cannot be attributed to any of the main scripts dominant in the Greek book literature of Southern Italy in the 12th century; however, it contains all the elements of 12th-century Greek script, i. e. ‘typographic minuscule’. The scribe uses dark brown ink of a warm shade, typical for the 12th century. He also constantly uses ancient letter forms (beta, lambda, delta). This is not a standardized handwriting of a professional scribe, but a handwriting of, so to speak, a provincial (from the point of view of the Byzantines) notary, who was, however, familiar with the Constantinople books of similar content.

The Voynich Manuscript (MS 408, Beinecke Library, Yale University) has resisted all attempts of conventional interpretation for over a century. This paper argues that the persistent failure of cryptographic, linguistic, and statistical approaches stems from a shared foundational assumption: that the manuscript’s text was produced by a static system—whether a fixed cipher, a natural language grammar, or a stable encoding scheme. Analysis of the manuscript’s word network and vocabulary evolution reveals that this assumption is untenable.
The text exhibits continuous development throughout the manuscript, with vocabulary, character usage, and word frequency distributions shifting gradually from beginning to end. This dynamic character is evidenced by a single, highly connected network of similar words spanning the entire manuscript, a strong correlation between word frequency and number of similar word forms and asymmetric vocabulary distribution indicating directional evolution. These properties are naturally explained by the self-citation hypothesis, which proposes that the text was generated through iterative copying and modification of previously written words—a process confirmed as the intuitive human strategy for producing meaningless text beyond approximately 100 words (Gaskell & Bowern, 2022). The dynamic perspective reconciles apparently contradictory observations and provides a framework for understanding why the manuscript has resisted every analytical approach premised on static rule systems.

In the intellectual tradition of the Middle Ages, translation was often conceived as an exegetical process rather than a purely linguistic operation. This article examines such an interpretive approach through the Georgian translations of Gregory the Theologian produced by the 11th-century Georgian translator Davit Tbeli. Although Davit does not provide explicit commentaries, his translations reveal a consistent interpretive stance expressed through additions, omissions, paraphrases, and lexical choices. These interventions reflect his understanding of the theological content of the source texts and their intended reception by a Georgian audience.
The study reconstructs Davit Tbeli’s activity on the basis of manuscript evidence and situates his work within the broader context of Georgian translation practices, particularly in relation to Euthymius the Hagiorite. While sharing the general aim of making complex texts accessible, Davit adopts a more restrained method, remaining closer to the Greek original. His consistent handling of theological terminology and biblical quotations positions him as a transitional figure between the Athonite and later Hellenophile translation traditions, and as an important stage in the development of Georgian theological-philosophical vocabulary.

This paper presents original research identifying the probable original title and metaphysical framework of the Voynich Manuscript. Through philological reconstruction of the manuscript's internal Latin dialect, analysis of marginalia, and examination of the author's selective use of Tironian Notes, this study argues that the manuscript self-identifies as Liber Talis, meaning The Book of Suchness. The term Talis, when written in Tironian shorthand, functions not as the ordinary Latin "thus," but as a metaphysical noun denoting Suchness, a Buddhist concept parallel to medieval Christian notions of essence and ultimate reality. The manuscript also names two internal sections on folio 1r: the Curatorium, a medical-devotional compendium of curatives and electuaries, and the Codex Constellarium Aster (Scott Dunn, 2025), a cosmological treatise on stellar pathways and star-humors. This paper outlines the linguistic system reconstructed from the manuscript, presents a full translation of folio 66r, and demonstrates how the manuscript's medical and cosmological systems are unified under the metaphysical principle of Suchness. The findings suggest that the Voynich Manuscript is a structured compendium with a coherent worldview of Tibetan Buddhism.

Resumen: A partir del análisis de los modelos sociales de moral cristiana y cortesana representados en tres personajes del Roman de Tristan -Tristán, Cariadoc e Iseo la reina-, roman courtois escrito por omas d'Angleterre en el siglo XII, el presente artículo profundiza en los problemas metodológicos que manifiesta el examen de fuentes literarias desde una aproximación interdisciplinaria. Para lograr este objetivo, la colaboración se fundamenta en las propuestas de Jhon Van Engen, en torno a las características del trabajo interdisciplinario, así como en las postulados teórico-metodológicos establecidos por el Nuevo Medievalismo, con el fin de comprender dicha obra literaria como una producción histórico-literarias, que fue transformada y transformó su horizonte de enunciación.

This paper presents a reconstructed master list of folio nomenclature in the Voynich Manuscript based on internal linguistic markers, procedural transitions, and positional analysis. Rather than treating folios as purely physical pages or thematic illustrations, this study demonstrates that named folios function as operational states within a coherent medical-astrological system. Each folio name is identified through recurring Latinized root terms (e.g., aqua, essentia, ordinat, astrologicos, creatiorum), authorization markers (such as licet), and their placement relative to known structural pivots including the Wheel of Time (Folio Nonas). The resulting master list reveals that the folio nomenclature correspond to distinct stages of humoral classification, elemental and ordinal ordering, celestial determination, temporal activation, and material production, culminating in the electuary and elixir pages (Folio Creatiorum). Crucially, the number of identified folio sections aligns with the manuscript's internal ordinal system, indicating intentional design rather than later pagination or decorative labeling. This catalog provides a stable architectural framework for future translation, analysis, and comparison, clarifying how disparate sections of the manuscript interlock as parts of a single procedural engine rather than an unstructured compilation of herbal and astronomical imagery.

In this paper, I investigate the collection of books owned by the Parisian Master of Theology Godfrey of Fontaines and bequeathed to the library of the Sorbonne after his death (likely in 1309). Godfrey left traces of himself in many of these codices: autograph transcriptions, extended marginal passages, symbols, words, indexes, schemata, lines, tabulae quaestionum, and registers. In the margins, he corrected readings, excerpted works by others, edited summaries and tables of contents, composed his own annotations, and highlighted textual connections. By examining his interventions in selected codices, often complementary to those of the scribes who produced the books for him, I shed light on late medieval academic practices of reading and writing, shaped by a dynamic interplay between individual tastes, needs, and competences, and shared customs and trends, as well as between individual working methods and collaborative practices.

The Crusades fostered prolonged contact between Christians and Muslims. This article examines how this contact influenced the portrayal of Muslim leaders in the poems of the  first Crusade cycle, compared to traditional chansons de geste. The poets reused traditional  motifs while creating, through various literary techniques, a heightened image of the ene
my, arousing contempt and justifying holy war.

In 'de kleine zijdelkamer' van Zijdebalen hing een miniatuur met Van Mollems portret aan de orde dat. Deze miniatuur is, net als het portret van David van Mollem door Nicolaas Verkolje, afgelopen maart uit de collectie Munnig Schmidt aangekocht door Bert Degenaar. De aquarel op vellum meet 6 x 4,5 cm. en is gevat in een verguld houten lijstje met hoekversieringen in de Marotstijl. Dit lijstje is op zijn beurt weer in een grotere met ebbenhout gefineerde lijst gevat. Op de ruwe houten achterkant daarvan is aan de bovenkant met inkt geschreven 'David van Mollem', aan de onderkant is een etiket met deze naam geplakt. Bij het uit elkaar halen van de miniatuur en het vergulde lijstje bleken er achter de miniatuur twee ovalen kartons te zitten, een met de tekst: 'David van Mollem, Aet. 70, Johanna Adriana van Raden nee Cressant fecit 1740', de andere met de tekst: 'David van Mollem, Aet. 70. Echtgenoot van Jacomina van Oosterwijk, zwager van Joh. Van der Mersch, Hr. Van Zuidland en Velgersdijk, Echtgt. van Antonia van Mollem. Johanna Adriana van Raden geb. Cressant fecit 1740'. Aan het handschrift te zien zijn deze teksten in de 19e eeuw geschreven. Net als het familieportret en het portret door Nicolaas Verkolje is ook deze miniatuur in 1740 gemaakt, ter ere van de zeventigste verjaardag van Van Mollem. Een vierde portret uit dat feestjaar is een terracotta buste door Jacobus Cressant. Bijzonder is dat de schilderes van de miniatuur, Johanna Adriana van Raden (ook Van Raey of Raey) de echtgenote van Cressant was. Kennelijk zijn in de tekst haar namen omgewisseld, want zij was dus niet, zoals het opschrift vermeldt, Van Raden, geboren Cressant, maar Cressant, geboren Afb. 1 Miniatuur van Van Mollem door Johanna Adriana Cressant-van Raden, 1740.

This tutorial presents a first-principles framework for rigorous scientific inference, grounded in a minimal set of explicit, falsifiable methodological principles. These principles enforce transparency of priors and the strict avoidance of post-hoc modification. We argue that the century-long stagnation in Voynich Manuscript (VMS) research is not a failure of scholar effort or data acquisition, but a systemic artifact of model selection. Specifically, the field has been constrained by the Patching Fallacy: the introduction of unconstrained auxiliary parameters to salvage a hypothesis already contradicted by evidence. By adopting a strict Zero-Patch Standard rooted in information theory [2] and Bayesian probability [5], we demonstrate how to deduce a prior directly from the topological invariants of the data. When applied to the VMS, this principled discipline rejects linguistic and cryptographic models as probabilistically disfavored. Instead, it identifies the textgenerating process as a Structured Reference System (e.g., a Relational Database or Inventory). This assignment is not offered as a settled historical claim but as the informationtheoretically minimal explanation under the Zero-Patch constraint derived from the entropy, morphology, and serialization constraints of the evidence.

PAOLO GARBINI, Sortite d'autore nella Rethorica novissima di Boncompagno da Signa SUSANNA VILLARI, Monti, Ariosto e le insidiose grafie del volgare PAOLA DE CAPUA, L'Idyllion per Giulio II. Giulio Simone Siculo tra curia e patriziato urbano DANIELA GIONTA, Il volto dell'Anonymus Redianus. Per l'autore di una celebre silloge epigrafica CATERINA MALTA, La morte del lauro. Tra i segnali metapoetici del Canzoniere MARIA GRAZIA BLASIO, Petrarca e il cardinale Annibaldo da Ceccano (Fam. VI 1) ROSANGELA FANARA, Il laboratorio dei Sonetti et Canzoni di Iacopo Sannazaro. Istantanee da un liber in movimento GILIOLA BARBERO, Gasparino Barzizza e l'uso dei versi memoriali nei trattati di ortografia latina WOUTER BRACKE, L'Isolario de Bartolomeo da li Sonetti entre manuscrit et imprimé IX XIII 3

This paper argues that the contemporary ecological crisis reflects not only ethical failure but a deeper disturbance in creaturely perception. Ecological devastation persists, I contend, because the world is no longer encountered as intrinsically meaningful, participatory, or given. Drawing on the theological cosmology of Hildegard of Bingen and the phenomenological metaphysics of Edith Stein, the paper develops an account of ecological intentionality as a mode of perception appropriate to finite, dependent creatures. Hildegard’s theology of viriditas articulates a participatory ontology in which creation exists through continuous reception of divine vitality, while Stein’s analysis of finite and eternal being clarifies the epistemological conditions of receptive knowing grounded in creaturely limitation rather than mastery. Bringing these figures into dialogue with ascetic and mystical traditions, particularly the Desert Fathers and Mothers and the Carmelite theology of John of the Cross and Teresa of Ávila, the paper argues that ecological perception requires cruciform formation. Exposure, deprivation, and unknowing function as schools of attention that retrain desire and resist technocratic habits of control. The paper concludes by proposing an Ecology of the Cross, in which vulnerability, dependence, and receptivity become the conditions for ecological faithfulness and renewed participation in a living creation.

Two fragments from missals with Esztergom notation are preserved in the Moravian Library. One originates from an incunable of the Missale Strigoniense, printed in Brno in 1491. It contains the melody of the Exsultet, which, although it incorporates certain elements of the Esztergom tradition, also exhibits significant differences. The second fragment comes from a handwritten missal from the second half of the 15th century and contains formularies for the feasts of Saint Christopher, Saint Anne, and Saint Felix and companions. The two preserved notated chants are again exceptional within the Hungarian context, as are the formularies for all three feasts. Both fragments thus point to a previously unknown diversity in the liturgical practices used in the Kingdom of Hungary.

For over 120 years, scholars have accepted Charles Plummer's hypothesis that the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle's "Common Stock" represents the earliest version of the annalistic materials it contains, compiled in the early 890s. This website presents evidence for a refinement: the Common Stock archetype was itself compiled from multiple antecedent sources that circulated independently during Alfred's reign.

Janet Bately (1978) identified a compositional break at annal 878 through lexical analysis. Remarkably, independent findings from Frank Stenton (1925) on southwestern elements and R.H. Hodgkin (1939) on formulaic features converge on this same 789-878 period when reanalyzed. Three scholars, three methods, one break point. The Annals of St Neots provides external evidence for a second major source. A comparative parsimony assessment shows the multiple-source framework requires fewer auxiliary hypotheses than the traditional single-source model when explaining variations in Latin witnesses.

This website makes the core framework accessible to anyone interested in Anglo-Saxon Chronicle studies and includes: evidence presentation, comparative assessment against Plummer's hypothesis, and access to the full 2014 PhD dissertation (University of Nottingham).

Visit the website: https://jquanrud.github.io/anglo-saxon-chronicle/index.html

Full dissertation: https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/id/eprint/52829

The manuscript with shelf mark 470, in the possession of the Hieronim Łopaciński Regional Public Library in Lublin, is a fragment of the codex of Maciej of Grodzisko – the historical collection from early 16th century. In the part preserved until this day it contains five pieces, the most extensive and interesting of which is the Dzierzwa’s Chronicle (ca. 1306–1320). The work has the nature of an extract from the chronicle of Master Wincenty Kadłubek. Despite its inconspicuous appearance, this is an interesting historiographic monument, which presents the workshop, interests and ideological trends of importance to the Polish chronicler writing in the period of the struggle to unite the State (divided as a result of feudal fragmentation). There are also interesting connections between Dzierzwa’s work and the Lublin of the past: thanks to the notes by a reader of the manuscript of the chronicle, who was in this city at the dawn of the Middle Ages, we can make certain observations concerning the local awareness of history.

Résumé Dans cet article, à l'examen de l'historiographie, l'A. se demande si la conversion au christianisme était considéré comme le but de la première croisade. Bien que les historiens nient l'existence, à cette époque, de la conception même de conversion des non-chrétiens, l'A. tente de montrer que ce problème -même s'il est encore mal défini et mal articulé -occupait une place dans la conscience des croisés. L'idée de conversion est indirectement exprimée dans les topoi et thèmes empruntés aux chansons de geste, ainsi qu'aux compositions liturgiques. Ces clichés remplissent dans les chroniques une certaine fonction esthétique subordonnant le récit aux principes de la représentation en vigueur dans la culture médiévale et structurant le texte selon la conception de la vraisemblance à cette époque. Il en résulte que les chroniqueurs qui rapportent des cas de conversion s'efforcent d'atténuer la fiction pour créer un effet de réel.

The collection was initiated in the final decade of the 19 th century by Stanisław Krzyżanowski, the founder of the Department and a pioneer of Polish diplomatics. Comprising several thousand reproductions and negatives, the collection is itself a historical monument of early Polish photography. It was created using techniques such as zincography and glass plate negatives, many of which are still preserved in the Department's holdings. The authors examine the origins of the idea behind the collection and its early development, drawing on archival materials. They also present a proposal for a modern inventory of the photographs, based on a pilot cataloging of the first one hundred image-a preliminary step toward the creation of a comprehensive photographic catalog.