Voynich Manuscript Author Uncovered

Or at least we’re being pointed in a general direction thanks to the sleuthing of Stephen Skinner, an expert in medieval manuscripts. Skinner believes the author to be a Jewish physician who lived in northern Italy during the fifteenth-century. How does he know? We’ll let Danuta Kean at the Guardian explain:

Writing in the foreword of a new facsimile of the 15th-century codex, Stephen Skinner claims visual clues in each section provide evidence of the manuscript’s author. If proved true, Skinner believes his theory will help unlock more secrets of the coded manuscript.

The scholar draws evidence for his theory of the author’s identity from a range of illustrations in the manuscript, particularly a section in which naked women are depicted bathing in green pools supplied by intestinal-like pipes.

The doctor, whose work includes editing the spiritual diaries of the Tudor mystic John Dee, believes the illustrations show communal Jewish baths called mikvah, which are still used in Orthodox Judaism to clean women after childbirth or menstruation.

Pointing to the fact that the pictures show only nude women and no men, Skinner told the Guardian: “The only place you see women like that bathing together in Europe at that time was in the purification baths that have been used by Orthodox Jews for the last 2,000 years.”

He believes the drawings were of an invention designed by the mysterious author that aimed to ensure an efficient supply of clean water to a mikvah. “I think there is no other explanation for what they are: it is either rank fantasy by the author – which doesn’t really fit with the medical, herbal and cosmological sections of the manuscript – or it is a mikvah,” he said.

Other evidence Skinner uses to support his theory include the lack of Christian symbolism in the manuscript – unusual at a time of deep religious superstition, as the Inquisition enforced orthodox religion and punished any hint of heresy.

If you want to discover the reason Skinner believes the author of the manuscript to be Italian, you'll have to head to the Guardian and do your own sleuthing.