Master Kelley's Big Joke? by Laurie Graham

If you love books and you enjoy a mystery the Voynich manuscript is right up your street. It’s a delicious little book, part herbal, part guide to the cosmos, and lavishly illustrated. The only problem is that no-one can identify any of the plants featured in the drawings and no-one can read a word of the text. 

Wilfred Voynich was a Polish bookseller who claimed to have picked up the mysterious volume at a book sale in Italy in 1912.  As attempt after attempt at deciphering it failed he was accused of fakery but science has eventually exonerated Mr Voynich. The vellum on which the book is written has been carbon-dated to the early 15^th century, the gall ink and pigments are also from the 15th or 16th century. So although it does appear to be an elaborate hoax, it predates Voynich by at least 400 years.

The history of ownership of book is patchy. It seems to have gathered dust on the shelves of a Jesuit college for at least two hundred years, but the trail leads back to Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Bohemia during the 16th century. Rudolf was a dabbler and a collector. He was interested in astronomy and alchemy, he collected plants and animals and well, any oddities that took his fancy. The Voynich manuscript seems like just the kind of thing that would have appealed to him. But how did he come by it?

There have been as many suggestions about the authorship of the book as there have attempts at deciphering it  -  it defeated even the Bletchley Park code crackers  -  but in my opinion there’s quite a compelling case for bringing in Messrs Dee and Kelley for questioning.



Dr Dee

Dr John Dee is famous as Elizabeth I’s astrologer and scientific advisor. Less well-known is Edward Kelley who became Dee’s collaborator in the 1580s. Kelley was a crystal-gazer or scryer, and as John Dee’s stock as a scientist fell he turned more and more to investigating the supernatural. Kelley claimed to be able to commune with angels and to understand their Celestial or Enochian language which he translated for Dr Dee. They made quite a team.


 In the 1580s Dee and Kelley left England to try to make some money  -  there was no job security in Queen Elizabeth’s court. Their travels took them across central Europe and they are known to have visited Emperor Rudolf in Prague.  It isn’t a long stretch to imagine how they might have cooked up a scheme to sell the Emperor something for his cabinet of curiosities: a book in an unknown language.  

Edward Kelley

Kelley had a prior conviction for coining so confecting a language wouldn’t have been a big career move. He was also, by the way, the step-father of Elizabeth Weston. Weston was that rare creature, a published 17^thcentury female poet and she apparently owed her education to her enlightened step-father.

But to return to the Voynich manuscript, it is a singular thing. The script runs from left to right with no obvious punctuation and the language has about 25 characters. The illustrations, sometimes fantastical, sometimes very close to but not faithful images of known plants, are liberally decorated with stars and strange nymph-like figures. There are similarities with the images Hildegard of Bingen drew when she was seeing visions, or suffering from migraines, whichever you prefer.

Emperor Rudolf is reckoned to have paid 600 ducats for the book, which would have been about 2 kilograms worth of gold. Could it be the handiwork of Kelley and Dee? They would certainly have been glad of the money. But the case remains open and I suppose always will. This little book of mysteries now resides at Yale, in the Beinecke Rare Book Library. A cynical, money-making fake or a glorious 16th century joke? I leave you to decide.

THE STARS' TENNIS BALLS by Ann Swinfen

We are merely the stars’ tennis-balls, struck and bandied
Which way please them.
            John Webster (1580?-1625?), The Duchess of Malfi, IV.iv.52 

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
            William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Julius Caesar, I.ii.134

It seems appropriate on this astronomically important day, which sees the spring equinox and an eclipse of the sun, to take a brief look at the relationship between celestial bodies and humankind. 

The two quotations above from near contemporary Renaissance dramatists reflect two diametrically opposed views: is our fate determined at our birth by certain conjunctions of the stars, or is our fate in our own hands? It is the age-old dispute between predestination and freewill, which has torn mankind apart in violent religious disputes. If it is less bitter nowadays, it is perhaps because we live in a largely secular society. 

When for thousands of years humans lived in a world free of light pollution, it is little wonder that they looked up at a night sky peopled by a changeable moon and wheeling stars and believed that their own lives must be inextricably linked to these distant and unknowable bodies. Early peoples developed extensive astronomical knowledge, as demonstrated by their monuments like Stonehenge:

and Maes Howe:

Tales of the gods living amongst the celestial bodies must have existed long before writing and are firmly embedded in the traditions of all early nations. The Greeks saw and named images in the patterns of the stars which we still recognise today in the symbols of the Zodiac.

The wise men, coming from the east, were led to the birthplace of Jesus by a wandering star, which may have been a comet.

Comets, even more than fixed stars, evoked wonder by their seeming visitations from some incomprehensible Elsewhere and by their mysterious transit of the heavens. Surely they must foretell some joyous event or – more likely – disaster. The Norman invasion of England:

Even more terrifying is an eclipse of the sun, when (depending on your religion) the sun is gobbled up and spat out by some monster, or the hand of God blots out the sun as a warning to mankind of His power and mankind’s helplessness. According to Virgil, there was an eclipse of the sun on the day Julius Caesar was murdered:

If our fate is somehow tied up with the movement and positions of the stars, especially at the moment of our birth, then surely a man skilled in reading the heavens can help us make sense of our lives, warn us of times and places to avoid, inform us of appropriate dates for important ceremonies, even foretell our death. The art of drawing up astrological charts was known to the Romans and persisted right through the Renaissance and beyond, until the development of science in the late seventeenth century and the eighteenth century Age of Enlightenment cast scorn on such beliefs.

Simon Foreman

 Simon Foreman, apothecary, alchemist, astrologer and serial rapist was a contemporary of our dramatists Shakespeare and Webster. He made a very comfortable living out of the preparation of astrological charts for his clients, who came from every walk of life. (At any rate, those who could afford his fees.) 

John Dee

Another contemporary, Dr John Dee, mathematician, mystic, book collector, alchemist, astrologer, and amanuensis to angels, cast charts for the greatest in the land. Queen Elizabeth I chose the most auspicious date for her coronation based on his advice, and she was a woman of immense intelligence and learning. It was not merely the ignorant and gullible who believed in the influence of the stars.

Today, of course, we know better. Or do we? Why, then, do magazines and newspapers persist in publishing predictions based, it is claimed, on reading the stars? And it seems that the ancient debate about predestination versus freewill must continue for ever.

 By the way, I’m a Libra, so that must mean that I am a rational, well-balanced person, mustn’t it?

Ann Swinfenhttp://www.annswinfen.com