Comparators
The Padua-orbit and Hartlieb-tradition stratum MS 408 is read against
Comparator work asks one question: does MS 408 share architectural features with manuscripts whose date, place, and contents are documented? It does not ask, and does not answer, who wrote MS 408. The substrate carries 599 catalogued comparator manuscripts and 210 named figures; this page is the front door to the stratum the research substrate reads MS 408 against.
What the comparator question is — and what it is not
The central comparator hypothesis is architectural. It states that internal regularities observed in MS 408 are structurally the same class as a documented late-medieval divinatory and computational apparatus — the kind found, fully and verifiably, in the Padua-orbit Latin tradition and in the South-German Hartlieb tradition (BSB Cgm 7958 et al.). That apparatus is built from four recurring component types.
It is a tested structural claim: the four-axis page-habit screen run across 15 witnesses produces a clean gradient, and three VMS folios (f1r / f49v / f88r) land in the gen-1 Latin band, not the gen-2 vernacular band. That gradient is the test the comparator stratum carries. It is not an interpretive reading of the Voynich text. Comparator alignment is on the page-architecture and apparatus-class — not on word-level decipherment.
The four recurring component types
The apparatus the comparator hypothesis identifies is built from four recurring components. Each is independently attested in the dated comparator corpus and hooks into the live substrate via specific findings.
A lunar-mansion ring
A table of 28 lunar mansions — an Arabic-derived (“al-Manazil”) tradition — used as a cyclic index.
substrate finding 140
A weekday-value circle
A circular device assigning numeric values to the days of the week.
substrate finding 142
A name-sum lookup
A procedure that converts the letters of a name into numbers, sums them, and reduces the sum by modular arithmetic.
substrate finding 143
An outcome wheel
A quadrantal wheel that maps a computed result to a verdict or category.
substrate finding 144
All four components, on one folio, running
The multi-ring apparatus surface assembles all four component types onto a single folio and plays the reading out opener glyph by opener glyph, line by line. Substrate-anchored to findings 112, 121, 140, 142, 143, 144. Live, not a screenshot.
The four-axis page-habit screen
A page-architecture screen run across 15 dated witnesses produces a clean gradient. The four axes are register grammar, cycle indexing, calendar-tabular setting, and zone-boundary operator. Each witness scores 0–4; the substrate’s confirmed finding (F-21) is that VMS f1r / f49v / f88r land in the gen-1 Latin band.
| Witness | Score | Band |
|---|---|---|
| BnF Latin 7418 (six folios, MS 408 construction-kit source) | 4/4 | Keystone |
| Bodleian Canon. Misc. 47 (Fontana) | 4/4 | Keystone |
| BnF Lat 7295 (Arnaut / Fusoris) | 4/4 | Keystone |
| Pal.lat.1262 (Montagnana) | 4/4 | Keystone |
| VMS f49v | 4/4 | Keystone |
| Pal.lat.1115 (Cermisone) | 3–4/4 | Gen-1 Latin |
| Wellcome MS 16 | 3–4/4 | Gen-1 Latin |
| Lyon 1498 print | 3–4/4 | Gen-1 Latin |
| Fontana Secretum f.20 | 3–4/4 | Gen-1 Latin |
| VMS f1r | 3–4/4 | Gen-1 Latin |
| VMS f88r | 3–4/4 | Gen-1 Latin |
| Fontana Secretum f.37 | 2/4 | Gen-2 vernacular |
| HAB 79 Aug. 2° | 2/4 | Gen-2 vernacular |
| Fontana Bellicorum | 2/4 | Gen-2 vernacular |
| VMS f57v | 1–2/4 | Lower |
| Berlin mgq 2021 | 1–2/4 | Lower |
| Cpg 311 | 1–2/4 | Lower |
Open a witness. Read the apparatus.
Six witnesses from across the Padua-orbit corpus — manuscript and incunable. Pick a witness; hover the numbered marks on the page (or the matching notes at right) to read what each piece of apparatus is doing. The same four-to-five apparatus components run through the manuscript hand and the print hand alike — the case the central comparator hypothesis carries.
F-CORRIDOR-1 — the documented corridor
The substrate carries one corridor on record: F-CORRIDOR-1, the Wittelsbach-Burgundian / Salerno-Frederick II / Padua-Prague / Upper-Rhine corridor, spanning 1231–1583. Its geographic path runs Salerno → Provence → Bologna → Padua → Prague → Burgundy → Upper Rhine → the Italy/print-era endpoint. Promotion to Confirmed (F-24) hinges on Hartlieb’s Padua doctorate of May 11 1439 plus the 15-witness page-habit gradient.
The corridor and its 153 substrate edges are on the live substrate at /corridors, with an interactive map at an interactive map (invite-only): corridor stops pinned, figures pinned by attested region, manuscripts pinned by holding repository, with filters by name, role and language.
The Hartlieb-tradition cluster
The South-German Hartlieb tradition — BSB Cgm 272 / 288 / 581 / Cod 625 / Cgm 7958, Cpg 558 (Heidelberg), Berlin Mgq 2021 — is the active comparator-dissection wave. Hartlieb’s own career arc (Padua doctorate 1439, Munich court physician, Bavaria-Munich circle) anchors the Padua ↔ Bavaria leg of the corridor.
An open research probe is testing whether the nine rosettes of the MS 408 foldout (folios 85v–86r) overlay the documented Hartlieb-tradition / South-German trade-fair geography. The latest pass (2026-05-23) finds that substrate-derived rules around an Augsburg centre — weighted by Mülich-merchant-circle (F-235), Augsburg printshop continuity (F-205), and trader-distribution channels (F-206) — clear the random-shuffle null distribution. One iconographic gate remains open (the “bath-rosette” assignment), and the probe is held at parked-with-next-step until that gate resolves. This is read-only research, not a claim.
The corridor in time
Three hundred and fifty years of the Padua ↔ Bavaria ↔ print corridor on one horizontal axis. Scrub the year bar to drive the page: the “what was happening” list and the three-row genealogy below both respond to the cursor. Drag, click a marker, or use the arrow keys.
The year is 1439.
Hartlieb takes Padua doctorate.
Johannes Hartlieb, a Bavarian-Munich physician, takes his doctorate at Padua on May 11 1439 — the documented bridge that links the Padua faculty to the German-vernacular Hartlieb compilation tradition.
anchor year · 1439
One faculty, three generations, the press at the end.
Year cursor follows the scrubber. Nodes brighten as the year reaches them.
The Hartlieb-tradition catalog
The canonical Hartlieb manuscripts on the substrate — the South-German compilation tradition that holds the divinatory and computational apparatus the comparator hypothesis identifies. Each row opens to its full substrate record with codicology, language, citations and the findings it touches.
| Shelfmark | Date | Language | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Muenchen BSB Cgm 7958 — Hartlieb compilation (master-alphabet volvelle folio) | 15c | MHG (Bavarian) | — |
| Muenchen BSB Cgm 272 | 1462 | Middle Bavarian | — |
| Muenchen BSB Cgm 288 | mid-15c | MHG | — |
| Muenchen BSB Cgm 261 — Hartlieb Secreta + Trotula (Munich court) | 1460–1465 | MHG (Bavarian Munich-court) | — |
| Muenchen BSB Cgm 581 — Hartlieb Alexander (Augsburg) | 1455 (Augsburg) | MHG | — |
| Muenchen BSB Cgm 328 — Hartlieb Namenmantik | 15c | MHG | — |
| Muenchen BSB Clm 14260 — Hartlieb Kunst der Gedächtnis | 15c | MHG / Latin | — |
| Heidelberg Cpg 116 — Hartlieb Secreta + Trotula | 15c | MHG | — |
| Heidelberg Cpg 408 — Hartlieb Namenmantik | 15c | MHG | — |
| Heidelberg Cpg 558 — medical compilation (Northern Bavaria) | c. 1470–1485 | German vernacular | — |
| Berlin SBB mgq 2021 — Hartlieb Kräuterbuch | c. 1460 | Early NHG (Bavarian-Austrian) | — |
| Wien ONB Cod 5206 — Hartlieb Mondwahrsage + Namenmantik + Gedächtnis | 15c | MHG | — |
| Wolfenbüttel HAB Cod 29.14 Aug. 4° — Hartlieb Mondwahrsagebuch | 15c | MHG | — |
| Wolfenbüttel HAB Cod 50.5 Aug. 2° — Hartlieb | 15c | MHG | — |
| Freiburg UB Hs 458 — Hartlieb Mondwahrsage + Namenmantik (binds 2) | 15c | MHG | — |
| Dresden SLUB M 59 — Hartlieb Buch aller verbotenen Kunst | 15c | MHG | — |
| Coburg LB Ms 5 — Hartlieb | 15c | MHG | — |
| Nürnberg GNM Hs 18792 — Hartlieb Kräuterbuch (Niederalemannisch) | 15c | MHG (Niederalemannisch) | — |
| Nürnberg GNM Hs 2186 — Hartlieb Trotula | 15c | MHG | — |
The Padua-orbit primary catalog
The early-15th-century Padua medical and arts faculty corpus on the substrate — the Latin tradition that the South-German Hartlieb tradition reads against.
| Shelfmark | Date | Language | |
|---|---|---|---|
| BnF Latin 7418 — Florilegium italicum (construction-kit source for MS 408 page-architecture, F-18 Confirmed) | 1301–1325 | Latin | — |
| BnF Lat 6823 — Manfredus de Monte Imperiali | 1301–1350 | Latin | — |
| Morgan M858 — Aristotle, Padua | 1250–1260 | Italian | — |
| Wrocław M 1302 — Salernitan codex (12c Italy, photocopy of lost original) | 12c | Latin | — |
| Bodleian Canon. Misc. 47 — Fontana | 15c (Padua orbit) | Latin | — |
| Pal.lat.1262 — Montagnana | 15c (Padua medical faculty) | Latin | — |
| Pal.lat.1115 — Cermisone | 15c (Padua) | Latin | — |
| Wellcome MS 16 | 15c | Latin | — |
| Wellcome MS 438 — Laufenberg + Bartholomaeus Salernitanus combo (F-7 Supported) | c. 1475 | MHG / Latin | — |
| Fontana — Secretum | 15c | Latin | — |
| Fontana — Bellicorum instrumentorum liber | 15c | Latin | — |
| BnF Lat 7295 — Arnaut / Fusoris | 15c | Latin | — |
Walk the comparator corpus live
Three substrate surfaces are polished enough to walk into.
The Coviewer
The lab's public-facing image viewer. Place a Beinecke MS 408 folio beside any archive image from the allowlisted holding libraries (BSB / BAV / Bodleian / Beinecke / Wellcome / BnF / e-codices / HAB / SBB / ONB / GNM / SLUB / UB Heidelberg / Morgan / Cambridge / manuscripta.at). Invite-gated.
Open the Coviewer ›
The catalogues — invite-only
The substrate's full 599-manuscript catalogue, 210-figure index and 1-corridor map are internal research surfaces. Excerpts appear in the tables above. For full access write to hello@honeycuttailabs.com.