Study Says 15th-Century Mis-Binding Scrambled Voynich Manuscript, Recasting It as 5 Booklets
Updated
Updated · The Guardian · Oct 6
Study Says 15th-Century Mis-Binding Scrambled Voynich Manuscript, Recasting It as 5 Booklets
1 articles · Updated · The Guardian · Oct 6
Summary
A new Digital Medievalist study argues the Voynich manuscript’s pages were bound in the wrong order in the mid-to-late 15th century, potentially explaining why centuries of decoding attempts have failed.
Colin Layfield and Lisa Fagin Davis say the sheets were likely meant to sit as separate “singulions” rather than nested like a normal codex; text-coherence analysis and mismatched illustrations near the gutter support that reconstruction.
The reordered structure does not decipher “Voynichese,” but it shifts the manuscript from a supposed single-author oddity toward a communal teaching object, with paleographic evidence pointing to as many as five scribes.
Carbon dating has already placed the Yale-held parchment at 1404-1438, undermining past attributions to Roger Bacon or Leonardo da Vinci and narrowing the case for what the manuscript could be.
Davis said the new model may fit a collection of women’s folk knowledge—touching on herbal, astrological and reproductive themes—while leaving the language itself unresolved.