Mysterious Manuscripts with Garry Shaw

There are several famous examples of mysterious medieval writing, including the so-far unbreakable Voynich Manuscript. So, what secrets were medieval people trying to hide? And why? This week, Danièle speaks with Garry Shaw about who was encrypting their manuscripts, the codes they used, and the centuries of attempts to crack the Voynich Manuscript.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:15):
Hi everyone, and welcome to episode two hundred and ninety
six of the Medieval Podcast. I'm Danielle Sabalski, also known
as the five Minute Medievalist. Encrypting secret information to hide
it from prying eyes is a strategy as old as
humanity itself, and whether it's low stakes like solving the
Daily Jumble or high stakes like the breaking of the

(00:36):
Enigma code at Bletchley Park, decryption is an almost irresistible challenge.
In the Middle Ages, there are several famous examples of
mysterious writing, including the so far unbreakable Voyage Manuscript. So
what secrets were medieval people trying to hide and why?
This week I spoke with doctor Gary Shaw about mysterious

(01:00):
evil manuscripts. In addition to writing for numerous publications like
New Scientist, History Today and The Independent, Gary is the
author of many books on a wide range of topics,
from the Pharaoh, life at Court and on Campaign to
Egyptian Mythology, A Traveler's Guide from Aswan to Alexandria. His

(01:20):
new book is Cryptic from Voyage to the Angel Diaries,
The story of the world's most mysterious manuscripts. Our conversation
on who was encrypting their manuscripts, the codes they used,
and our many modern attempts to crack the Voyage Manuscript
is coming up right after this. Well, welcome Gary to

(01:41):
talk about the world's most mysterious manuscripts. It's so nice
to meet you. Welcome to the podcast.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
Thank you very much. It's absolutely fantastic to be here.
Thanks for inviting me on the show.

Speaker 1 (01:51):
Well, it's my pleasure and especial welcome to you because
you're an Egyptologist, so welcome to the Middle Ages. What
brought you here?

Speaker 2 (01:59):
So, yeah, it's an interesting journey. My background for my
PhD is in Egyptology, and the books I've written beforehand
have all been Egypt focused. But for over a decade
now I've actually been working more in science journalism covering
archaeology and history, and for that work it's basically worldwide,
all historical periods, and so this particular book and this

(02:22):
particular interest mainly came out of my writings as a
journalist covering those topics, particularly writing about the Voyage Manuscript initially,
and from the kind of exploring other mysterious manuscripts. And yeah,
all of that basically built up and the interest came
from all of that, and I just found it so fascinating,
so I just wanted to explore this in greater detail.

Speaker 1 (02:43):
Well, this is why I love this podcast, because you
get to meet people who are just in this for
the enthusiasm, right. I don't think any of us are wealthy,
but we are surely enthusiastic. So yeah, I mean, these
are some really interesting manuscripts and it's not a surprise
to me that the Voyage manuscript hooked you. And I

(03:03):
think we're going to save this one for later because
it is the one to talk about for the longest.
But first of all, I wanted to ask you. In
this research that you've done about these mysterious manuscripts, you've
come across a lot of hidden stuff, So cryptography. Why
are people doing cryptography in the Middle Ages and even earlier?

Speaker 2 (03:24):
Okay, yes, So, as you say, the book covers basically
European manuscripts, medieval and early modern as well. And my
interest here is kind of the people doing this. So
I'm not a cryptographer, I'm not a specialist in deciphering things,
but I wanted to know why people were doing this
and kind of what motivated them. And when you look

(03:46):
at the earlier phases a lot of playfulness going on.
A lot of the scribes that you find playing around
with different types of ciphers or other unusual scripts and
alphabets so forth, are doing this, sometimes as a bit
of a game, times just simply to mark out. Their
names are separate from the other content in the manuscripts,
so it's very clear that you know, this is not

(04:07):
part of the main text. This is something they've added,
and it's just sometimes also part of the beauty of
it too. But the thing is, when you are looking
at the various manuscripts that people produced, it's also important
to remember that, of course you think of cryptography and
ciphers and codes, and you think of diplomacy and intelligence.
Sometimes even merchants secrets as well come up in this category,

(04:30):
and you know, these are people writing letters normally between
each other and communicating in this way. Those are the
really difficult to decrypt, the ones where people are putting
a real effort into incipherment. It's different, I think when
you look at the manuscripts, and that's what I'm particularly
interested in, because these are normally a lot simpler to break.
It's normally simply a one letter equals one symbol, for example,

(04:51):
a simple substitution cipher. And although secrecy might be an
element of what they're trying to do, I think it's
not always the prime concern or not the you know,
the main reason that they are using incipherment or codes
or secret scripts and invented languages and all these things
that I write about, there's a whole array of purposes

(05:11):
behind it. For example, I like to give the example
of alchemy. I think that's a good example for it,
because alchemists are trying to hide the secrets from the
unworthy in the manuscripts, but they want at the same
time people to be able to understand it. And so
other alchemists would know the kind of techniques and the symbols,
et cetera that they're using. It can understand it, decipher

(05:32):
it quite easily, and it shows a membership of that group,
you know. So it's sort of shows that you know
enough to be able to communicate with the other alchemists.
But so at the same time as being methods of secrecy,
they are bringing attention to themselves, drawing attention to themselves.
So it's this secrecy as performance performative secrecy and it's
kind of funny because it's the opposite of what you expect,

(05:54):
right from something secret. Normally, someone writes in cipher and
they don't want you to be able to understand it,
and it's almost like you don't want people to notice
it either. But actually, in reality, when people write these
inciphered documents or manuscripts in secret scripts, suddenly they becomes
very special. People become very excited by this mystery, and
it brings a lot of attention to it. And in fact,

(06:15):
you find that a lot I found with some of
the manuscripts I discuss in the book. There's an element
of playfulness in the here, people showing off their creativity,
their ingenuity. Sometimes they're trying to play a game with
the reader. And often yeah, it's simply a case of
being a member of a group, for example, as I said,
with alchemist, but also sometimes with early scientists too, or
would communicate each other it inciphered notebooks.

Speaker 1 (06:36):
Sometimes, yes, I would totally agree with you there, especially
when we think about the manuscript culture of the Middle Ages,
where people are hand copying these things, which means that
the manuscripts are traveling from place to place, and it
just seems like the type of thing that you would
do if you've been hand copying a manuscript all day,
to put something playful at the bottom to see if
the next person who has the manuscript can figure it

(06:59):
out again, just like something to keep you busy, something
to just keep your mind engaged. It just seems like
playfulness in a lot of cases. But as you say,
there are also serious cases as well, but people are
not usually trying to make it so difficult that nobody
can crack it, which is the type of thing that
always makes me laugh when I look at like Dan
Brown's stories and stuff like that, where the templars have

(07:21):
created something that's so difficult that only couple people can
figure it out, but they can still figure it out.

Speaker 2 (07:27):
Well, that's an interesting thing in itself too, just the
interest in medieval or early modern mysterious manuscripts, in fiction,
in movies and books and all of this. Every time
someone comes across some old manuscript and a TV show
or whatever, you know that something's going to happen, because
it's going to be you know, a grim ware of
dark magic, or you know something that might have some

(07:48):
sort of world ending mystery orus magical power behind it.
You know, raise a mummy or whatever in the case
of the Mummy movies, raise zombies in the case of
evil dead, necronomical from those movies, and I think that
adds to it too, I think. But we see that
today in movies and books still, but even in the past,
you know, it's has that same appeal. You know, the
idea of a mysterious manuscript was used by hoaxes as well.

(08:11):
The people would create hoax manuscripts that played on these
ideas of mysteries and symbols and alchemy to try and
you know, sell it to gullible people. You're talking about
my backgrounding Gyptology earlier on, well, I mean you can
even find examples of this strong two thousand years ago.
There's an ancient Egyptian story about the search for the
Scroll of Foth which involves Prince Setne kayan Wazt, a

(08:36):
son of King Rameses the second, the famous Rameses, and
the prince is trying to find this scroll that he
descends into an old tomb and gets met by various
ghosts of the people who stole this scroll in the past,
and how they explained to the prince all the horrors
that befell the family because of them stealing this sacred
scroll of power and magic, and the prince doesn't listen

(08:57):
to them and takes the scroll anyway, and then horrors
happen to him, two horrible things, and they has to
return it. So all the way back two thousand years.
The idea of mysterious manuscripts and writings with power is
just a big part I think of fiction. And you know,
it intrigues everybody. It's a great subject.

Speaker 1 (09:13):
Yes, I don't think you could be an Egyptologists without
coming across curses. Right, This is part of the hole stick.
But one of the things that you pulled out in
the book is that when medieval people and early modern
people as well came across something that looks suspicious, they
didn't believe it right away, right, Like we should give
them credit for wondering at first if it's a hoax

(09:34):
to begin with.

Speaker 2 (09:35):
Yeah, and you know there's quite a lot of hopes
is that you find as well. I have a whole
chapter dedicated to that. They were quite ingenious in fact
in the ways that they were trying to dupe buyers.
You know, they would often mix some sort of plain
texts or something that would entice people enough to read
it a bit further, give away a bit of the content,
and then mix that with inciphered material, which you know

(09:57):
you look at and think, oh, maybe maybe this is
full mysteries, and I and break this and then I'll
understand it, with some interesting illustrations as well, sometimes connections
with famous people of the past or an interesting topic
to draw them in. A good example of this is
the Libro Delta Zora, which is, if I remember correctly,
fifteenth century. It's in Madrid, and it's an our chemical
manuscript full of mysterious symbols and all of this, and

(10:21):
it's trying its best to be thirteenth century, right, Everything
about its design looks thirteenth century. But then you know,
you get an extra bit of writing in the from
a couple of centuries supposedly a couple of centuries later,
and it's meant to be by a famous necromancer who
was trying to break the code. So you can see
how this is going to draw people in a bit more.
Of course, modern scholars have looked at this and realized,

(10:43):
wait a minute. You know, you look at the handwriting
and the really old part, and then the bit that's
meant to be a bit later, and it's actually the
same handwriting, you know, so this grite wasn't trying very hard.
I think it's that manuscript too, where they include nulls
in this cipher, so symbols that have no meaning, just
to throw off decipherers. And the number of these start
dwindling as the manuscript goes by because they clearly got

(11:03):
bored putting them in. So this is still the funny
things like that always make me laugh. I mean, this
seems to have been produced probably to sell to the
Bishop of Toledo at the time when it was produced,
because he seems to have had a particular fascination with
alchemy and had alchemists and knocking round. So you can
see how they're targeting certain manuscripts people. I mean, another

(11:23):
good example is in the British Library. It's a manuscript
that's got the wonderful title of the Subtlety of Witches,
and you know this was only I think you open
it and it's full of in ciphered writing, and a
couple of years ago, at least in the last decade,
I think two researchers studied this and tried to break
the cipher and they did. Basically, it just revealed that

(11:44):
it's like, if I remember correctly, had sort of like
a dictionary. It's just the words that are inciphered, and
they're just a bunch of words like a dictionary entries,
and so it means nothing. It's completely pointless. Someone's got
this mysterious looking in ciphered writing, stuck an interesting title
on it, and probably don't just to sell to somebody.

Speaker 1 (12:02):
Yeah, that's right. The collectors like, look at this, I
got something amazing. I can't read it, but it's about
which is and it's got to be good. And then
meanwhile it's somebody's laundry list.

Speaker 2 (12:12):
I mean, I talk a lot towards the end of
the book about Northern Italian manuscript collecting in the fifteenth century,
and you look at what these rich people are amassing,
these great libraries of manuscripts earlier on in that phase,
and you know, they don't really care that much about
what's in them, as long as they're unique. They have
to look pretty, and they suddenly theyke a show off
to their friends or people visiting these fabulous libraries they

(12:34):
were amassing is status symbols. So you can see how
you know, someone could make quite a bit of money
producing folks intriguing looking manuscripts to try and dupe people
into behind their products for their libraries.

Speaker 1 (12:46):
I mean, you've got to make a living somehow, right, right,
So in your book, you don't start with a hoax,
you start with a saint. So tell us about this
early example of hiding speech or coming up with new speech.
Tell about Hildegard.

Speaker 2 (13:01):
Sure, I'm sure Hildegard of Bingham must be very well
known to your listeners, because she's one of the great
minds of the Middle Ages, a great visionary thinker, corresponded
with popes and archbishops and had great influence over the
religious elites at the time. So Hildegard is from Germany,
born in probably ten ninety eight, and she effectively from

(13:25):
a young age, from her teens, became an anchorress who
are a religious recluse, locked away from the world, and
this was probably all she was going to expect from
her life. She made this vow to hide herself from
the world and dedicate herself to God. But twenty years later,
a little bit older, she becomes elected as the leader
of the nuns in this what had now drawn to

(13:46):
be a small convent. This was in the monastery of
Dessi Bodenberg there and when she was in charge, she
started reducing the kind of austere measures of her predecessor
in charge, who was Jutter of Sponheim. So she starts
making things a bit nicer for the nuns in the convent,
and a couple of years after that is when things
start getting more dramatic. When she was at age forty two,

(14:08):
so quite a lot older than for when she actually
entered the convent in her teens, what seems to have
been the case is that she had been experiencing visions
for her entire life. Hildegarde talks about from even being
a young child, how she would see these great lights,
feel the searing heat, hear voices that were what she
interpreted as the voice of God. And she didn't tell

(14:29):
anybody about this. She kept it secret from anybody she'd met,
apart from her predecessor as head of the convent and
a monks them Volmar. But when she turns forty two,
she gets told by the voice in a vision to
share everything she's experienced, to write down her visions, to
write down everything that she's heard and spread the word,

(14:50):
and she's a bit scared about this at first. She's
kept the secret her entire life, but she does with
trepidation as the voice tells her. And this is her
the beginning of her rise to fame. She writes a
work of her visions called Scivias, takes her ten years.
Over this time she gets more and more famous. It
comes to the attention of the Pope Eugene the Third,
who gives it his papal seal of approval for her

(15:13):
to continue writing about these things, these visions she was experiencing,
and she gets thrown into this world now where she's
influencing very important men. She writes very angry letters to
the Pope, for example, telling him off for the status
of the church, and you know how bad things are
and how it needs to improve. And so she gets
taken very seriously because of her visions. And you know,
she even starts her own convent nearby at Rupertsburg. So

(15:36):
she becomes very very important for her time now once
she gets this fame, Once Scivias has been complete, she
starts writing about other topics, so the cosmos, the workings
of the cosmos. She writes about nature, animals, insects, plants,
And it's about this time in the eleven fifties that
she talks about experiencing another vision. She receives what she

(16:01):
calls an unknown language and unknown letters, and this is
one of her most mysterious creations. She's best known today
for her visionary writing, but also her music as well,
but this aspect of her life, this invented language, this
invented scripture, isn't well understood, and it's it's clear why
there's not much evidence for it that survives. Her unknown

(16:23):
language effectively survives as a list of nouns. It's oney
eleven of them, and we have three manuscripts that preserve this,
and they go from the most sacred and cosmic, from
God and angels the words, and they're all the way
down to plants and animals. So it's effectively a list
of everything that you can find in creation. For example,

(16:44):
God is aon's in her language. You have a word
for bees sapidus. You have a word for beer mug
gungle is. So you know, it goes all the way
from God down to beer mugs and everything else around.
And she seems to have been inspired by Samaria these
kind of dictionary light works that were quite popular at

(17:05):
the time, particularly the Sumerian Heinriki, which was popular in Germany.
These are wordless, similarly breaking down everything into categories. In existence,
she does the same thing, but it's quite clear it
seems that there was more to this than simply this
one surviving list of nouns. Occasionally we have her using
her invented words her unknown language in her songs, for example,

(17:28):
in fact, sorry, I say a few. I think there's
only one example of this, one example surviving song that
uses her words, and this is orskis cyclesia and she
peppers throughout this these invented words of hers, and it's
very strange. Why was she doing this? What was the purpose?
Did the other people in the convent? Did the other
nuns learn this language from her? Or was it just

(17:50):
for her alone? These are big questions that still can't
really be answered.

Speaker 1 (17:55):
This is an interesting one because throughout your book you
have other examples of people trying to find a universal language,
and I actually really this makes me feel tenderness towards
people from the past, like wanting to find a way
that we can all speak to each other. And then
there's also the language of angels people are trying to
figure out. And so this isn't Hildegard trying to be
like sneaky and trying to hide things in her work,

(18:18):
but she's trying to find something bigger. And so how
do you think this was well, how do you find
this was received when she was writing it?

Speaker 2 (18:27):
So again we're not quite sure how much it's spread
beyond her and her nuns. The example we have of Riskesyclesia,
that song seems to have been composed for the consecration
of a church, so outside of her convent. So it
seems that it wasn't just a secret that was being
kept for her in the nuns, so other people would
have heard of this. She mentions her unknown language and

(18:49):
a letter to the Pope Eugene, the third successor Anastasius,
and talks about how she received these in a vision,
her language and letters, and she mentions them also again
later on in another one of her works, and even
later on towards the end of her life. The mork
Volmar kind of laments that you know they're coming to
the end of their lives, who will be ei there
to speak her no language and to write her unknown letters.

(19:13):
He starts worrying about how this wool survived, and so
maybe that is when they started writing all of this
down to try and preserve it. But so as far
as it being used practically, it's kind of unclear. And
as you say later on, we have people doing this
great search for the language of God and all of this,
particularly under John d and the people of that age.
It's been suggested also that this could be a case

(19:34):
with the Hildegarde that perhaps she believed this came to
her in a vision, the original language of God, the
original language of creation, the language that Adam used to
name things at the beginning of time, which is something
that people were very interested in, but a little bit
later normally in time, this wasn't really something I think
that would have interested Hildegard so much. Maybe I'm wrong.
They've suggested it could be the language of virgins in heaven,

(19:55):
or perhaps that she was speaking in tongues, but there's
no recorded information about her speaking in tongues, so this
doesn't really fit either. And to go back to the
cryptographical angle, people have suggested that maybe this is, you know,
a secret communication method between her and the nuns, so
that others couldn't really understand what they were talking about. So,
you know, all of these are potentials. I think one

(20:17):
of the more convincing arguments is that it's a type
of thing they call it ornamentation in her songs that
certain composers of songs, poetry, etc. At the time would
litter there are words with Greek, and this would show
their high learning and make it sound more special and impressive. Now,
Hildegard didn't speak Greek, she didn't know this language. But

(20:40):
by adding these divine the inspired words of her own
creation which you know actually and her own creation they've
come from God, could be a sign, you know, of
her special importance, special connection to the divine, and so
maybe gave her song special power, divine power as a
result of their inclusion. So again it's not very clear
really why she was doing it. I mean, as I said,

(21:02):
there's also the unknown letters, which are also another element
of this, which are also equally little known because of
the lack of survival of information. We know what they
look like, we know those twenty three symbols and those
JV and W missing from that. Experts writing on this
suggest that the symbols may be inspired by Greek, Aramaic,

(21:22):
potentially Hebrew as well, but again it's their own thing.
They are special and unique, and we don't have much
examples of them used in practice. There's only a couple
from her lifetime that are known to have been written
in her lifetime, and these are found in letters that
were written to members of the clergy. Want is addressed
to a bishop. The other one is a bit more intriguing.

(21:44):
It's addressed to the monks of z Fulton in Germany,
and so the recipients the monks themselves. The address is
written in her symbols in her unknown letters. Now in
this letter, she's quite scolding of the monks in their
terrible ways and how they need to improve themselves and
be more pious, et cetera. So it has been suggested

(22:04):
that maybe she used these letters and the letter here
to kind of hide the identity of the recipients so
that prying guys might not see who this was addressed at.
So that's potential again. Though maybe these are something else
that came to her as a divine vision, so they
must have a divine power, and so others have also
suggested that maybe possibly again by using these symbols. She's

(22:27):
giving her religious power to the letters she's writing. It
gives it more energy from God, perhaps, kind of like
a stamp of authority.

Speaker 1 (22:35):
M Well, I mean, like so many things in our field,
we'll just never know. We'll just never know. But it's
an interesting example. And I like what you pulled out
here about her unknown letters as well, because we do
see an art people trying to create something that looks
like pseudo Arabic just for artistic purposes. We see this
in medieval art all the time, and so it's interesting

(22:58):
to see how people are interacting with these letter forms
and maybe coming up with one that speaks better to
what they're trying to say, like with these unknown letters. Sure, sure, okay,
I need to leave Hildegard behind.

Speaker 2 (23:10):
Kids.

Speaker 1 (23:10):
We have several more examples from the Middle Ages, and
I did say we have to get to Voyage at
the end. But one of the ones that I think
is really interesting and definitely not Angelic is Giovanni Fontana's work.
So tell us about his work.

Speaker 2 (23:25):
Yeah, Fontana's really fascinating. I really love researching him because
like Hildegar, who's also fascinating. Of course, she's really well
known She's very famous, people have written books about her.
Fontana is much less known. Pulling together the story of
his life is quite difficult. It's kind of quite fragmentary.
We don't even really know when he died or even
specifically when he was born. He seems to have been

(23:48):
born around thirteen ninety five in Venice, but that's a
kind of rough idea. Now. Fontana is one of these
guys from fifteenth century Italy who was interested in everything,
you know. It's kind of this kind of dawn of
the Renaissance, kind of the time when people are rediscovering
the great works of the past and questioning things and

(24:08):
experimenting and not just accepting the way things the knowledge
from the past as well. So he's born into this
era in Venice, the sort of a merchant, and he
goes in his teens to Padava, so thirty five kilometers
to the west, and start studying. And it's during this time,
during his studies in Padava that he seems to be
doing some quite eccentric things. Fontana wasn't just happy to

(24:32):
be doing experiments. They always had to have a bit
of a show to them. He's a bit of a prankster,
a bit of a showman. So he does some experiments
about the measuring the speed of the passage through water.
If you drop a lead weight and water, how fast
and its movement through the water. But he doesn't just
do it with a simple lump of lead. He makes
it look like a fish. For example. He likes to

(24:52):
measure distance as well traveling across space, how fast things
can move across land, and he does this by creating
more looks like a little skateboard with a rabbit on
top of it stuck with gunpowder, so you know it.
Tries to be creative with what he's doing, so he's
dressing up his inventions when he's doing his experiments. And
the best example of this to the extreme is that

(25:13):
he also liked to play pranks, it seems, particularly on
the clergy. So there's this wonderful story in one of
his manuscripts about him. A monk was coming to visit,
and in preparation for the monk turning up, he wanted
to be a bit mischievous, so he gets some bat wings,
some leathery fur, some gemstones for the eyes. So he
makes this kind of creature, this demon with wings, and

(25:35):
that's not enough so just as the monk is about
to turn up and come through the door, he stuffs
it with gunpowder, sets it alight, and throws it into
a barrel filled with water, so that when the monk
enters the room, he sees this kind of writhing beast
in the water that's kind of throwing off flames and exploding,
and the monk is terrified and thinks it's a true demon.
And of course Fontana's standing in the room laughing to

(25:56):
himself about what's what he's witnessing and how he can trick.
His idea was that he could use his inventions to
trick even the smartest people of his time and recreate
these things that people regard as supernatural events, but he
can do it through ingenuity. So this is a bit
of a theme through Fontana's life. As the decades pass,
he gets a doctorate, he becomes a physician again, and

(26:17):
he studies in Parava. Then seems to go back to
Venice to carry on as what it seems to be
as a practicing physician to earn a bit of money
for himself. But he keeps doing experiments and writing, and
this is when we get to this manuscript he produced
called the Bellicorum Instrumentorum lib so basically the Book of
the Instruments of Warfer And this is a book that's

(26:39):
filled with inventions his kind of creations, not just for WARFA,
although a lot of them are related to that. You
get some quite strange inventions, like there's an amphibious galleon,
for example, a boat with wheels which can travel on
land and water. There's a castle design with different levels
of weapons and the windows and automatically reload. There's a

(27:02):
massive cannon that fires into the water and so destabilize
the ships. And then there's like other creations too, like
he made a mechanism for helping someone do a tight
rope walk or lock picks, or labyrinths of different kinds,
you know. So he was quite creative. He was trying
to show off his imagination. There's a sort of chir
on wheels like an early car, which he says is

(27:24):
you know, it goes really fast, faster than a horse,
particularly when you're going downhill. It's really hard to stop,
and it's like you should have maybe invented brakes as
well as you know, the wheels on this thing. So
it's it's quite fun looking at these and they're really
well designed, and that the drawings of them in the manuscript.
But it's not enough to simply show his designs. He
seems to have another level of his ingenuity too, because

(27:46):
he basically writes most of his content in a cipher
of his own creation. So it's a unique cipher built
around circles. So you can see that you draw a
line of circles, and then where you'd put lines on
top of low or squiggly lines coming off these circles
that would designate what letter it stood for. So it's
a simple substitution. One of these symbols stands for a

(28:08):
letter of the alphabet, so it decrips into Latin. It's
not a complex cipher at all. It's really easy to break.
It's possible that he did this so that people couldn't
read the details of his inventions. It's possible, but it's
too simple. And I don't think it fits Fontane's character
to just be that simple too, because the way that
he seems to have liked dressing up his inventions and

(28:30):
making things more extravagant and appealing, it's probably something he's
doing here to appeal to the reader's playfulness. It shows
off his ingenuity, but it can also be treated as
a game as well. You know, you know, if you
can read this, if you can crack the code I've made,
and it kind of brings attention again, this idea of
secrecy as performance. It looks like it's a secret, and

(28:50):
to some degree it is right. If someone's just glancing
at his content of his manuscripts, you couldn't understand what
he'd written about. For if you were a smart you
could break it pretty easily. But it just shows how
smart he was and he was playing it seems also
with I guess a fashion of the time in northern
Italy in the early fifteenth century was a time in
diplomatic circles where people were experimenting with ciphers, trying to

(29:13):
make them more complex. There was a lot of warring
states at this time, so people weren't trying to find
better ways at hiding communications. So this could be a
potential inspiration for him that a potential wealthy patron might
have seen that he is inventing cyphers as well, not
just creations of weapons of war all of this, but
also ways of hiding writing, and so that would be

(29:34):
appealing as we've already said it's also a time of
rediscovery of writing from the past and exotic alphabets and languages,
so might have been trying to appeal to that. So
there's probably different levels here that go beyond pure secrecy.
And I sorry, I should also add that, you know,
another big thing that he does is he likes to
create inventions that scare people. You know, a lot of

(29:55):
his inventions are that are frightened, and he's doing this
on purpose. There's a sort of fire breathing, a sort
of devil in there as well, mechanical devil, magic lantern
to cast creatures onto the walls at night and scare people.
And so just as the way that he's kind of
dressing up these inventions to be something scarier, I think
there's an element here of him dressing up his writing

(30:15):
to be more impressive. So it's a great insight I
think into his plateful mind.

Speaker 1 (30:20):
Yes, And I wanted to know, having heard about this
manuscript in particular, does he use this cipher anywhere else
or just in this manuscript?

Speaker 2 (30:29):
As far as we are aware, there's only one other
manuscript in which he uses his cipher, written about ten
years later, and this is a manuscript dedicated to the
art of memory, and so he used it then. But
as far as we can tell, none of the other
surviving manuscripts use his cipher. Everything's just written in plaintext.
But maybe there's more out there. I mean, people are
constantly finding constantly that's a bit of an exaggeration, but

(30:51):
works by Fontana are being found still. I call him
the forgotten author at one point in my book because
this belikhora me instrumentorum liber People have known this is
Fontana's for centuries. His name is in it, but many
of his other writings, unfortunately, his name is missing from them.
So the example, I just gave you this book on
the art of memory that's in his cipher. People didn't

(31:13):
know who wrote this, and it was only when this
was being studied in I think it's either the late
nineteenth century or the early twentieth century that people realize
that cipher is the same one. You look at the clues,
the little biographical elements in their two and he realized,
oh wait, no, this is by this Fontana guy. But
there's an even better example. He was best known, I
think for a work that came out later on. There
was a book that was published like a century after

(31:36):
his death, called the Omnivous Read This Naturalibus, and this
is basically an encyclopedia of everything that could possibly be known.
It seems that Fontana wrote this in the fourteen forties
while he was working as a physician I think in
Udine in northern Italy. And he's put a lot of
effort into this. He's clearly done his research to try
to accumulate all this information. But it's published a century

(31:57):
later under a different name. Fontana's name is moved from
it completely. And this book seems to do pretty well.
Published in Venice, even you know, John d had a copy.
It was one that was interested in reading because of
its content about angels, because Fontana wrote a lot about
angels and the way they helped the cosmos and ran
the cosmos and there, and this was something that interested
John Dee and he took it on his travels with

(32:18):
him around Europe and all this. It was such an
important book to him. But Fontana's name is not in
the book. It was meant to be written by somebody
else completely. And again it was only in I think
the nineteen twenties that a scholar studied this book and thought,
wait a minute. When you look at the content, you
know clearly this person was living a century early. This
person was living in the fifteenth century in northern Italy,

(32:39):
and you know, you look at the biographical elements in
there and it's like, this looks a lot like this.
Do you have Annie Fontana guy? So you know again,
manuscript that he'd written that probably would have made him famous,
much more famous than he is today. You know, I
was only identified recently, and even as recently as twenty sixteen,
a manuscript was you know, identified as something that Fontanma
had written, So there's probably plenty more out there for

(33:01):
this guy to be discovered.

Speaker 1 (33:03):
It's so interesting when you think about the fact that
he wrote a whole book about how memory is important
and then he's not remembered very well. But it also
I think is interesting to me to write a book
about memory in cipher, because that would be the first
thing that I would forget, is I'm going to read
my own cipher.

Speaker 2 (33:19):
So maybe I stopped.

Speaker 1 (33:22):
Yes, right, this is the first time I've come across him,
I think, and it's a very interesting characters. So I'm
happy to have read the book for this alone. But
we do need to get to the Voyage Manuscript, which
is probably what has brought people to this podcast in
the beginning, to listen to this one, particularly about mysterious manuscripts. Okay,

(33:42):
why is there so much buzz about the Voyage Manuscript?
What is it? What's in it?

Speaker 2 (33:47):
Well, it's it's famously the most mysterious manuscript in the world,
of course, So yeah, it grabs everybody's attention. Anybody who
looks at Voytage Manuscript seems to immediately get soocked into
its mysteries. It's kind of inescapable, so for people who
don't know anything at all about it. It's a pretty
small manuscript in size, roughly the size of a paperback
i'd say, two hundred and forty folio pages, written on

(34:10):
kalfskin parchment, and basically as you're flicking through it, you
can see that it's full of illustrations, and they roughly
fall into different themes, I guess you could say, different sections.
The largest and most striking one, I suppose is the
herbal section at the beginning, where it's just filled with
issues of strange plants, sometimes with the odd occasional weird
creature around, like weird worms. Or snakes. Perhaps there's one

(34:32):
image of what looks like a tiny little green dragon.
It looks to be inhaling or exhaling a leaf, so
there's quite a lot of that. After that you get
some of the sort of astrological astronomical cosmological content, so
the most recognizable elements there are zodiacal signs and things
like this. There's also a section dedicated to bathing, which

(34:54):
is basically scenes of naked women in green and blue water,
occasionally with usual creatures as well, like a giant fish
or a strange or a creature that's knocking around in
one of the scenes. And then there's other part which
seems to be again this is all guesses. It looks
like it's about pharmaceutical material. Small images of plants, this
time some pots, as if it's listing the types of

(35:16):
things you might need to make some sort of recipe
or concoction. And then the final section has no illustrations
and it's just a series of text introduced by stars,
which people refer to potentially as recipes. So that's how
it roughly breaks down, and that alone would be quite weird.
But the thing is, when you start looking at more detail,
you look at the writing and you realize you can't
read it. The writing is in this kind of unusual

(35:37):
script that nobody is being able to decipher, no matter
how much people have been looking at it. It's unique.
It's unusual. But there are elements there that look familiar enough.
There are symbols that look like fours or eights or nines.
There's one that looks like two p's back to back
connected with the loops, or an X with a loop
on top of it, or two ccs next to each other,

(35:59):
like ccs see stuff like this, So it looks like
it's kind of recognizable. It looks like you should be
able to understand it if you put a bit of
time in. And I think that's part of the element
that sucks people into that. You see this, it looks
the themes are the They kind of show that you
should be able to understand the content. Then you look
at the writing and also think I should be able
to get that I reckon, And then yeah, people keep

(36:21):
trying and kept trying and keep trying, and it's been
going on now since well for centuries. But the modern fame,
the modern fame of the manuscript starts in nineteen twelve
when it was discovered by the book dealer Wilfrid Voidage
in Italy. So it became famous after that, but of
course people beforehand, for centuries, had also been trying to
understand this book.

Speaker 1 (36:39):
Well, what's really interesting about this particular manuscript is the
ones that we've been talking about so far. They've written
written by one person or one person in conjunction with
another person. But I mean shout out to Lisa Fagan
Davis who was on this podcast before. I think it
was her who identified that there's five different scribes or
illustrators and or illustrators working on this manuscript, like this

(37:01):
is a collective effort to create something that nobody can read.

Speaker 2 (37:06):
What that is and her paper, which I believe is
from twenty twenty, you know, it's one of these great
bits of new information, right because it's been such a
mysterious manuscript, people have been trying to understand it for
a long time. At the same time, though, you know,
people at great scholars have been looking at it. You know,
we've been getting little bits of extra information that all
adds extra clues to trying to figure out what this

(37:28):
is all about. So that paper that she produced was
one important step to understanding the collaborative nature or the
production of this manuscript. I'd say another part of the
modern rediscoveries moves forward was in I think two thousand
and nine when the book was radiocarbon dated, and so
that was greatly useful too, because of course people have

(37:49):
been studying this and trying to understand it and coming
up with theories, but without a date you can play
so they were kind of all over the place. The
radiocarbon dates that came out placed it quite clearly, sometimes
with between fourteen or four and fourteen thirty eight, so
the first half of the fifteenth century. So that's rules
out now. Roger Bacon, who was earlier than that, and
he was a popular contender from the time of voyage,

(38:11):
he referred to it as the Roger Bacon Cipher Manuscript.
But you know, Bacon's now out. Other people suggested that
it was made by John d And a little later on,
potentially while he was in Prague in the fifteen eighties
to sell to Rudolph the Second as maybe a hoax manuscript,
and of course that's now out of the picture too,
And it just lets you like the clues like these
five scribes clues like the date from the radiocarbon dating,

(38:34):
and then looking at the illustrations. The great work that's
been done by experts as well on that in recent decades,
as well of trying to zero in on little details
that just give you a little bit more of an
insight into where it was from. And all of this
really suggests North Italy as a potential the most likely
i'd say place of production for it. I think the

(38:55):
most famous little clue is there's a tiny little castle
in one of the illustrations, and when you look at
the ramparts they have what they call swallow tail merlins.
So this architectural feature there, which is very much found
around Verona at this point in the fifteenth century. There
is the zodiacal sign of Sagittarius in the astrological section
is we're in the hat of a Florentine archer, so

(39:17):
suggests Florence in northern Italy. In the book, I write
in the final chapter where I'm trying to bring all
this together about voyage, about how you know, manuscripts on
medicinal bathing were very popular at this point between thirteen
fifteen and fourteen fifty. In the universities of Bologna and
also in Padava, so this was a time of great
interest in this kind of topic. So again the fact

(39:39):
that there's a bathing section and that fits nicely into
that context too. And also when you look at the script,
although it's unusual and strange, it does again have a
lot of similarities to the types of symbols being used
in ciphers that were being produced in Northern Italy in
the early fifteenth century, but also our chemical texts and
shorthand as well. So again I think this is what
adds to this kind of familiarity to it. It's strange,

(40:01):
I mean, we can't even really say how many letters
there are in the voyage alphabet, let's say, because it's
hard to differentiate when one ends and one begins split
them apart. But it looks a lot like material from
early fifteenth century in Northern Italy ciphers. In particular. This
is all new information, right, this is stuff that until
recent decades you couldn't really place it so well location

(40:21):
wise and so well date wise. And when you've got
those two elements you can start, I think, putting together
new ideas about it. Well, but potentially who made it
and whine, et cetera.

Speaker 1 (40:31):
Yes, I mean I think that there are people listening
who are probably itching to shout at us, why don't
you put it in a supercomputer? Because we know that
computers were invented in part to crack the Enigma machine, right,
so computers and code breaking they go together. But people
have dried this, haven't they.

Speaker 2 (40:48):
Yep? Yep. I mean people have been trying to decipher
it since the time, well as I say, in the
past of course as well, but in the modern time,
since nineteen twelve, you have very experienced code breakers putting
their attention to it. To highlight to a particular William
and Elizabeth Friedman, and from the nineteen forties and for
decades after that, these were experienced code breakers who tried

(41:09):
to understand the manuscript, put together a one hitch manuscript
working group of minds to dedicate towards it. And they
were also the first, as far as i'm a word,
to use computers to try to break it. It didn't
really go anywhere, and by the end of their lives
they felt maybe it's not a cipher but an artificial language,
sort of attempt at making a universal language, perhaps, and

(41:30):
that it was sixteenth century, so again the radiocarbon dating
suggests that's incorrect. Now, I mean more so in recent decades.
You know, there's the been extreme computing power, if I
could put it that way, put towards it. A lot
of studies by linguists, by statisticians trying to look at
any patterns that appear. And what's intriguing to me. Again,

(41:50):
I'm not a linguist. My background is again in archaeology
and writing about history as well, but I'm more of
a historian. Let's say, I'm interested in context and the people.
But when I look at the research done by experts
in linguistics and statistics, I find it fascinating that there
are people who are very convinced that there's a real
language underlying this and there are proper patterns there, and

(42:11):
then there are others that say, no, the exact opposite.
They've also done similar studies using computers, etc. And they suggest, no,
there's nothing there, it's gibberish. And you know, it's just
interesting how there's two completely separate ideas being presented at
the same time.

Speaker 1 (42:25):
Yes, and I'm so glad that you went through this
range of ways that people have tried to crack it,
because people have come at this with all of our
ingenuity haven't been able to crack it. And one of
the interesting things that you mentioned, I think at this
point in the book and at other points in the book,
is that people can find patterns in gibberish, so like
you can actually statistically look at patterns of language and say, yeah,

(42:47):
this is somebody intentionally writing in Gibberish. But even that
hasn't worked with the Voyage manuscript.

Speaker 2 (42:53):
Yep, there are methods that the scribes could have used
to produce plenty of material, particularly now we know those
five of them working together. That would have mean the
work was spread as well. And it's interesting again, I
mean it's a bit speculative, of course, but if you
think that there's five of them working together normally, you know,
the great cost of producing a manuscript is actually hiring
the scribes. I think up to like seventy five percent

(43:15):
of the cost of producing a manuscript. So you know,
if they they were the masterminds behind it, they would
only have to get the materials. So it suddenly reduces
the cost of producing this and the time effort as well.

Speaker 1 (43:25):
Yes, well, there is so much time and effort and
material going into this, plus coordinating with a whole team
of people. So I got to ask you to speculate,
and we're not going to pin you down to this
because you know, hundreds and thousands of minds have been
working on this for centuries. But what do you think
is going on with this manuscript? If you could take
your best stab at it?

Speaker 2 (43:46):
Yeah, sure, no worries. Basically when you really boil it down,
people talk about this being a cipher or an artificial language,
or potentially a hoax, a late medieval hoax. From me
looking at the context again, talking about noted in cipher's
talking at that now we know the time period in
which it was produced. Research into fontana et cetera, and
things like this was knocking around at this point. I

(44:08):
just could not see from a sort of historical point
of view, from my historical context point of view, how
it could be such an unbreakable cipher that nobody could
break it today, That weren't ciphers being produced in that
place and time that I think could really not be
broken by these these new efforts, particularly computers. Other suggestions
that it was an artificial language, Yeah, sure, Hildegarden made

(44:30):
an artificial language, but she was very unusual. This craze
for artificial languages was much later. This was a seventeenth
century thing really, when scientists were finding that they needed
a new way to communicate their discoveries with each other
and Latin was on the decline, or they needed to
experiment with this. So again, the date again and the
location doesn't really suggest the idea of an artificial language.

(44:51):
And so I mean again, if someone forces me to
make an opinion on that, I think historically best fits
the idea of a late medieval hoax. Personally, I hope
I'm wrong. This is the thing I always like to
say here because I wanted to be more. I wanted
to be some ingenious cipher or some ingenious artificial language.
But again, you look at that what's around at the time. Again,

(45:13):
I have a chapter dedicated to hoaxes. And when I
was looking at all of this, to me, it just
kept screaming this kind of hoax manuscript Again, this idea
that five people potentially working together produced the manuscript that
looks like it should be breakable, playing on the idea
of the ciphers that were produced by people in the
early fifteenth century, using topics that were popular in all

(45:34):
that Italy at that time. So the bathing, medicinal bathing,
it looks like. Also North Italian again of that time,
are chemical herbal manuscripts, which was something that was produced
used by doctors physicians, and so when you put all
this together, it looks like again something that could be
a sort of medical treatise that would help you potentially

(45:55):
maybe directed to women's health because of the bathing women
in the The fact that medicinal bathing was very popular
in ordn Itity at that time factors into that too,
and the astrological elements would also be part of this
kind of the best times in which to use the
herbal concoctions. But of course all this is useless without
understanding the text, and so you can see there again

(46:15):
thinking cynically, you use the illustrations as a way in
to took someone into the idea of what this might
be about. But you do it on parchment, which is
interesting too for that time when paper would have been
a lot cheaper to produce it on parchment gives it
a sense of antiquity as well and makes it a
bit poshure. The manuscript would have been out of reach
of most people as far as affordability goes. It would
have you know, someone with a bit of money would

(46:36):
have had to have bought this. So again, what does
that mean. It's been produced purposely on this material that's
a bit expensive. It looks like a cipher, and the
elite at that time we're playing with cipher's and you know,
would have recognized these things. So again this all adds together.
I think to me that this was also this time
of manuscript mania collecting, particularly if you in aordn Italy.

(46:57):
For these rich collectors who liked stuff the libraries with
unique books, they often didn't even bother reading them. They
were simply there to look impressive. And so you can
imagine how having a unique manuscript would be something to
show off. Does that angle or potentially maybe a slightly
wealthier physician, a doctor who might be looking for medical
knowledge that others don't have that potentially, therefore five scribes

(47:20):
might have produced this to look like a medical treatise
where the cipher whether something that looks like a cipher
where if you put off effort and you can break
it and then unlock some extra knowledge and there that
this might be useful to someone, And again, if they
collaborated together, that will cut down on the costs. Again speculative.
Again if even if they worked at a bookseller's shop,
the materials might have already been there for them to use.

(47:43):
So again it cuts down on the time because there's
five of them, cuts down on the costs. And there
was a market for this type of thing at the time.
And as I like to highlight throughout the book, ripping
people off is not a modern thing. People were doing
this throughout history, and so again to me, historically context wise,
coming get it from this angle, I think it's the
most likely explanation for what it is. But again I

(48:05):
hope I'm wrong because I love the Varnus mystery and
I want it to be more.

Speaker 1 (48:11):
I think that there is so much in what you
just said where the fact that we have these ciphers
and we have hoaxes and stuff is all I think
based around the fact that we want to feel special,
We want this to be special. It plays on our
very humanness that this is going to be something magical.
It's going to unlock the secrets of the universe for us. So,

(48:31):
you know, fingers crossed that we will cracktice at some
point and the secrets of the universe will be revealed,
hopefully hopefully. So we only got into about half the
content of your book, so I hope that people will
look at it, especially the stuff about John d who
is super interesting when it comes to this type of thing.
So thank you so much, Gary for coming on and

(48:52):
telling us all about the mysterious manuscripts of the medieval
and early modern worlds.

Speaker 2 (48:57):
My pleasure is really nice to be invited and I'm
chatting with you. It is great, and yeah, thank you
for inviting me onto the show.

Speaker 1 (49:05):
To find out more about Gary's work, you can visit
his website at Garyjshaw dot com. That's Gary with two rs.
His new book is Cryptic from Voyage to the Angel Diaries,
the Story of the world's most mysterious Manuscripts. Before we go,
here's Peter from Medievalis dot Need to tell us what's
on the website? What's up, Peter?

Speaker 2 (49:26):
Hey?

Speaker 3 (49:26):
Hey, Well, I hear that the Chalk Value History Festival
is coming.

Speaker 1 (49:30):
In Yes, so I actually want to tell you what's
going on because the Chalk Valley History Festival is on
right now. I think it's just called Chalk now, but
I absolutely love this history festival. It is near Salisbury
in the UK, so if you're in the UK, go
check it out. Some of my favorite people are going
to be there, and by that I mean the crafts

(49:51):
people who are some of the best in the world.
Can see what they can do and show you medieval skills.
Right in front of you. People are doing like arrow making,
blade making, all that stuff, which is so awesome. So
shout out to all my friends in the crafting area
of the Chalk Valley History Festival. And for people who
are into the medieval world. All your favorite historians are
going to be there this year, including my friend Dan Jones,

(50:15):
our friend Michael Livingston talking together about the One Hundred
Years War. So yeah, it's gonna be so awesome. I'm
so sad I can't be there, But if you're in
the UK, go check out the Chalk Valley History Festival
and tell those blacksmiths I said, hello.

Speaker 3 (50:31):
Now, it's not just Middle Ages, right, they do have
like lesser.

Speaker 1 (50:34):
Histories, right, Oh my goodness, they have everything. They have everything.
So when I'm talking about the crowds people, they're usually
by the Iron Age Roundhouse, which was built for the festival,
so check that out. There are also all sorts of
things about the world wars in the last century, and
then people talking about current events like anything history that

(50:55):
you're into. All of your favorite historians from the UK,
they'll be there.

Speaker 2 (50:59):
It is.

Speaker 1 (51:00):
It is such an amazing experience, so yeah, go check
it out and say hi for me.

Speaker 3 (51:04):
Man, that sounds good.

Speaker 1 (51:05):
Yeah, you're gonna be there just in time to miss it, but.

Speaker 3 (51:10):
I'm flying in that weekends it finishes, but I'll be
at leads if you're at the IMC. Came say hi
to me.

Speaker 1 (51:17):
Yes, what is the IMC, Peter just for the people.

Speaker 3 (51:19):
The International Medieval Congress. So it's the biggest medieval conference
that there is. You're probably the biggest in the world. Now, Man,
I really enjoy it.

Speaker 1 (51:28):
Yes, So maybe you can tell us more about what
you're doing there next week, but for now, what's going
on on the website.

Speaker 3 (51:34):
Yeah, so we took a look at some new research
being done on the Alma Ravids and they're this empire
that kind of rises up in the eleventh century, takes
control of much of like West Africa and Iberia, and
the news research takes a look at how they took
control of gold and their rises all due to money.

Speaker 1 (51:53):
Well, yeah, I mean that makes total sense.

Speaker 3 (51:56):
Yeah. So West Africa was really known for its gold mine,
and by contiking these kind of basically simpler herdsman and
wind up controlling all the trade routes from them, they're
actually able to mint this kind of really good gold coin,
something that was so pure and that was really highly valued.
In fact, long after they were gone, European rulers were

(52:19):
creating imitations of this gold coin.

Speaker 1 (52:21):
Yeah, because it is the finest quality. All of those
West African kingdoms coming up with amazing stuff.

Speaker 3 (52:29):
Indeed, so we have that. We also have a piece
on medieval bee keeping, and there's this wonderful tenth century
Byzantine text that's all about farming and agriculture, but it
has the section on bees is just wonderful. Like there's
this line that says the bee is the wisest and
cleverest of all animals and closest to man in all intelligence.

Speaker 1 (52:51):
Wow. Well, I hadn't realized that bees are the closest
in intelligence. I mean, I think this would be a
surprise for the scientific community.

Speaker 3 (53:00):
Love for the bees. So you give some advice to
like taking care of behavin. One of the things I
really liked was that apparently bees like music, so beekeepers
should clap their hands in rhythm with so to help
the bees get home.

Speaker 1 (53:12):
Bees are known for their dancing, so you can just
clap them all the way home.

Speaker 2 (53:18):
I love that.

Speaker 3 (53:18):
Yes, so we have that. Plus we also have a
look at summertime in the Middle Ages in the classical
origins of King Arthur.

Speaker 1 (53:26):
Ooh again, something for everybody on medievalist dot net this week. Well,
thank you Peter for stopping by and telling us everything
that's going on. Thanks thank you to all of you
out there supporting my work by lending the ads, play through,
sharing your favorite episodes on social media, reading, borrowing and
lending my books, and becoming patrons on patreon dot com,

(53:50):
patrons can access all sorts of awesome stuff like medievalist
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com slash Medievalists for everything from codes to wade. Follow
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(54:13):
Sky at medievalists. You can find me Danielle Sabalski across
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you can find my books at all your favorite bookstores.
Our music is Beyond the Warriors by Geefrog. Thanks for listening,
and have yourself an amazing day