Petr Kindlmann
The Making and Afterlife
of the Voynich Manuscript
An unread script. A surviving object.
A history we can begin to see.
A mark. A leaf. A book.
01 / The finished page
Plants beside paragraphs. Stars in the margins. Writing that follows a circle.
Folds, drawings and differences between hands let us compare the work, even while the words remain unread.
Explore the chaptersThe drawing opens into a paper world.
02 / Making and keeping
Books were borrowed, copied, inherited, collected and withheld. A copy could travel while a volume stayed behind.
Letters and catalogues bring people into the story.
Meet the readersWorkrooms. Towns. New readers.
03 / Return to the book
Follow the evidence from a mark on parchment to the lives of the people who made, handled and kept books.
Choose an explorationThe story continues in the book.
The surviving manuscript
A plant and its roots. A circle of signs. The shape of a written stroke.
Begin with the pages themselves.
The question behind the book
Details from manuscript photographs, displayed as cutouts. Select a specimen to see its source page.
The question behind the book
The Voynich Manuscript preserves more than an unfamiliar script. Its parchment was folded, its pages worked on, its volume kept and passed on.
Differences in letter forms help distinguish the work of the scribes. Letters, catalogues and household accounts record how books were bought, lent and copied.
Explore the chaptersOpen a chapter. Try the evidence.
Search a written form. Compare the hands. Follow a sequence of stars. Begin with a detail that catches your eye.
The manuscript / Chapters 1, 5 & 6
A plant occupies the centre of this page. Writing fills the space around it. The transcription lets us find recurring forms across the volume.
Loading the transcription counts…
EVA represents the written signs with Latin characters and combinations.
Open the manuscript reader
Folio 115r · Davis attributes lines 1–12 to Hand 2 and lines 13–45 to Hand 3.
Chapter 2 / Five Hands
Loops, crossbars and final strokes led Lisa Fagin Davis to distinguish five hands. Select a hand to locate its pages in the manuscript.
The map uses page-level assignments, including assignments derived from Davis’s section rules. On f115r, Davis assigns lines 1–12 to Hand 2 and lines 13–45 to Hand 3.
Compare the hands
Chapter 7 / A Routine in Red
Red centres alternate with pale ones beside the final section’s paragraphs. The pattern changes when we cross a page break.
Schematic sequence from Stolfi’s recorded colour classes, read from top to bottom on the original page.
Explore all 23 pages
Chapters 12–15 / After the makers
A letter, a catalogue and a household recollection preserve different decisions about books.
1665 or 1666 · Chapter 12
Marci reports that an earlier possessor copied part of the manuscript for Kircher while keeping the volume. Marci later sent Kircher the book itself.
Chapter 10 / Where the Keys Stop
This other manuscript combines German writing and cipher signs. Its explained practice introduces the chapter’s question: what must a proposed key demonstrate?
First: check the search
The restricted distinct-letter search recovered every observed key and every character of the withheld plaintext in these constructed positive cases.
Inside the book
From the material object to the historical circumstances around it.
From the afterlife chapters
Books were borrowed, copied, inherited, collected and withheld. Letters and catalogues bring people into the story.
What people did with booksPossession, access and understanding are different things. Documents help us see the difference.
From the research behind the chapters
Drawing and handwriting
Changes within a page
How pictures and labels are arranged
An opening passage
An irregular hole opens near the right-hand side of a circular drawing in the Voynich Manuscript. Around it, small human figures stand among stars and short runs of brown writing. Writing is visible above and below the opening, and a curved outline passes to its left. Along the lower edge, a pale rim separates the marked surface from the darkness seen through the opening.
The detail comes from part of the foldout designated folio 72v. Seen in the full photograph, it belongs to a much larger arrangement, with a balance-like drawing at the centre. The figures, stars and writing extend around that centre in successive rings. Some figures face towards the centre; others lie sideways or upside down as the arrangement turns around the page. The hole occupies part of the interval between two rings of figures. Looking more closely returns the eye to the interruption: it can follow the brown signs down towards the hole, then find writing again below it. What happened at this small place is harder to establish than its position in the drawing.
It is tempting to supply a sequence: the opening was already there, and someone fitted the writing around it. That would give the interrupted line a place in the making of the page. Yet the photograph shows the surface as it survives. It cannot establish the earlier shape of the opening, or whether the marks beside it were made before or after it formed. Later damage could also have changed their relation to an edge. Choosing the first story would turn a visible arrangement into an account of a person's response without the evidence needed to connect them.
There is still something to examine. The surrounding marks have shapes, intervals and directions. A short run beside a figure and a longer run following a circle occupy different places in the drawing. Elsewhere in the volume, large plants stand beside paragraphs, figures gather within green forms, and red-centred stars alternate with pale ones down the margins. These arrangements offer comparisons before they yield names for the depicted subjects or meanings for the writing. The question is how far those comparisons can take us towards the work of making the book.
A folded sheet gives one answer. Two leaves can lie far apart in the bound volume while remaining parts of the same piece of parchment. If we compare only neighboring pages, we may miss that connection. The shape of a written sign gives another: a crossbar and a loop can differ in construction even while their value is unknown. Lisa Fagin Davis's proposed hand attributions bring such differences together into a map of the manuscript. The people remain unnamed, but the work can be divided and compared more precisely than an impression of one strange script would allow.
From the Introduction. Excerpt ends after the fifth prose paragraph.
The opening detail is folio 72v (part), Beinecke MS 408, Yale digital image 1006205. From the forthcoming book.
A book by Petr Kindlmann
Unknown Hands at Work
The Making and Afterlife
of the Voynich Manuscript
A study of the manuscript’s material structure, writing, drawings and documented afterlife. Illustrated, with chapter notes and references.
Publication forthcoming. Cover design in development.
