The Codex From Rohonc Project

The Codex from Rohonc Project
A guide
“And he puzzled and puzzled ’till his puzzler was sore.” How The Grinch Stole Christmas, Dr. Seuss
This is not a blog. It is more like a book (in hypertext) about a book (in cyphertext). And you might have guessed that it is about the Codex from
Rohonc (also known as Rohonczi Kodex), the strange little cypher manuscript that withstood almost two centuries the attempts to make sense
of it. With its clumsy writing and simplistic drawings stretching over 200 pages, it managed to titillate the imagination of many while holding
its mystery intact.
Most of those who got involved with the Codex were drawn by the encoded, encrypted, secret script so I decided to focus on the pictures
instead, and determine their content and meaning. Which in return helped me understand at least several elements of the script and build up a
general comprehension of the Codex.
And here I am, offering you a close encounter with the mysteries of the booklet and with my struggles to solve them. What I am not offering are
final answers.
You can immerse yourself in my book and read chapter after chapter or take advantage of the hyperlinks and skip to what interests you most.
You will find more details about the Codex here. The 93 drawings are discussed in 10 chapters named The Story in the Pictures. Probably the
most interesting are The Nativity (here), The Last Judgment and The Ptolemaic Universe (here), The Trinity (here), Constantine and the Angel
(here) and The Archangels (here). If you take the effort to cover them all, you might find others to be of greater interest and, certainly, you will
find out that I have no clue for 25 of the drawings. At the end of these chapters there are some conclusions pertaining the drawings.
A peculiar feature of the manuscript is the presence of seven snakes discussed in Hic Sunt Serpentes, and another one is the consistent
mirroring for which I tried to find an explanation in !rorriM.
My findings regarding the script are organized in two lengthy chapters: Divine Designatorsand If This Script Makes Any Sense.
The Codex is a bizarre collection of paradoxes which annoyed each of those who studied it. I identified some of them in What Makes The
Puzzler Sore.
I profiled the author in Who Dunnit and determined the chronological and geographical coordinates in On When and Where.
Or you can go straight to the last chapter where my detective work and my imagination merge to explain the use and reason of the Codex
in The Probable Use of a Meaningless Object.
Take a look at the Content and you will find some more chapters.
1. Crisis? What Crisis? – or how I got involved in the Rohonc Codex mystery.
2. A Book of Mystery and Imagination – a very short presentation of the book and those involved in its history.
3. On Method and Sources – a bit about how I worked
4. The Story in the Pictures (pages 5 through 18) – identification, analogies for the Codex drawings
5. The Story in the Pictures (pages 21 through 36)
13. The Story in the Pictures (pages 206 through 214), and conclusions
14. The Son of Man Came Eating and Drinking – a collection of recurrent themes from the drawings.
15. Divine Designators – a bit too technical chapter about certain signs which work like sacred names, with some statistics.
16. If This Script Makes Any Sense, Then, … – this and the previous chapter are the account of my deciphering/decoding efforts and their
results.
17. What Makes the Puzzler Sore – musings on ten strange things from the CR. And some more statistics.
18. !rorriM – Everything is backwards. Why?
19. Hic Sunt Serpentes – Some thoughts on the symbolism of snakes and their presence in the Codex R.
20. Beauty Is in the Eye of the Beholder – different people see different things when looking at the same picture. Is my interpretation final,
is any interpretation final? However, sometimes the result is funny. Ha, ha funny.
21. Who Dunnit – exactly. Profile, name, you get it all.
22. On When and Where – pretty self-explanatory title.
23. The Probable Use of a Meaningless Object – If this book was made for a purpose, this should have been it. Take it or leave it, I love it.
(1) Crisis? What Crisis? (or how I got involved in the Rohonc Codex mystery)
Posted on 4 February 2013by DeliaH
This is a page from the Codex from Rohonc. If you don’t understand the writing don’t worry about it, nobody does.
page 187
Ever since it was discovered, in 1838, among the books donated by Gusztáv Batthyány to the Hungarian Academy, the attempts to decipher it
never stopped. The impossible script, the crude drawings or the suspicions about the, how should I say, authenticity or maybe genuineness, of
the book, did not stop the cryptography enthusiasts. No wonder, a good mystery is alluring. And it caught me too. I did not crack the code (I
am proud to say that I deciphered a handful of words) but I studied and understood most of the drawings. In my posts I try to give an account
for everything I found about the Codex, things that I am quite sure that are correct and prove them, as well as my thoughts on more elusive
problems such as authorship and utilization.
Truth is I am not a historian, art historian, linguist, codicologist or anything even remotely related to strange little coded books. But I love a
good mystery, and I stumbled upon one when I most needed it. So how did I meet the Codex from Rohonc and why did I get involved in this
cipher mystery?
I have a long and a short answer. For the short one, just go to the end of this post.
Here is the long one.
As Lehmann Brothers went down and the financial crisis made its debut in 2008, here, in Romania, we thought that we are sheltered from the
problems. We thought that we are so disconnected from the world’s wealth that we cannot be reached by its troubles. The fact that high rank
officials said so, helped maintain this illusion. But not for long. By the end of 2009 we were asked to stay at home three working days a month,
and not be paid.
Somebody enjoyed the extra walks in the park.
The same happened next month, in December. The walks were good, but Santa had a big, flat sack that year.
Well, at least we had the free days. The next year, things got really bad. As the big boys tried to find a way out from the financial nightmare,
they decided to transfer it to us, the little guys. So they started talking about cutting the salaries by 25 percent, massive layoffs and such. The
talks lasted for months. If it was to happen (and it did, I had my salary diminished for two years) was bad, but waiting for the lightning to strike
was worse. And it affected everybody. I was surrounded by tension and frustration, and I needed to escape. Finding another job was close to
impossible at that time.
I have my escapist strategies well in place. I have the books, the TV mysteries, the crossword puzzles and so on. But the pressure was too high,
the bleak thoughts too insidious. My trusted traditional strategies didn’t seem to work anymore. I needed something better.
As tension climaxed (in May 2010) , I got an e-mail (the kind of mail that makes the rounds), about the book written by Viorica
Enăchiuc: “Rohonczi Codex: descifrare, transcriere si traducere” published in 2002, in which she claims to have deciphered and translated the
encrypted content of a little book of uncertain origin and uncertain puropose, known as the Rohonczi Codex (the Codex from Rohonc in
Hungarian). In her vision, the Codex is a chronicle from the 11 -12 century of historically unattested activities of early Romanians, such as
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battles with the Pechenegs and Cumans or diplomatic contacts with the Byzantine Empire, written in a hypothetical Vulgar Latin, with first
seen Dacian letters.
I haven’t heard about it in eight years since it appeared and it seemed to belong to a trend I do not fancy, but I decided to take a quick Internet
survey of the whole story. Apart from a small group of enthusiasts, the general reaction to Enăchiuc’s work ranged from chilling indifference, to
prudent reserve, to harsh criticism. And, in all honesty, the 90-something drawings looked very much religious, even to my untrained eye, not
a bit historical.
The extravagant medley of crosses, stars, suns and snakes made it mysterious and intriguing. Finding the story in the pictures seemed the
perfect little project to distract me from the grim reality. I am neither a historian, nor a linguist, furthermore, my knowledge on religions in
general is scattered and unsystematic. The most I knew about the New Testament came from a combination of “Jesus Christ Superstar” and
Zefirelli’s “Jesus of Nazareth”. I was a teenager in the ’70s, you can tell. I knew as much about the Bible as any person who did not have a
peculiar interest in it, grew up in a communist country, read a fair amount of books and saw a fair amount of movies would know. Some, but
not much. This did not stop me from trying.
My project was to find out what the drawings were about. But the ultimate goal was to understand what made this man, or these men, to
produce such a bizarre document. And years later, I can’t say I do. But I have some ideas.
I was no expert when I started and I am not much of an expert now, years later. I got a glimpse into all sorts of alphabets, a bit of history,
codicology, cryptology, religion and heresy, shorthand writing, paper making and alphabets again. I learned the Cyrillic script which I can read
now pretty well (in Romanian) and the Glagolitic which, unfortunately, I managed to quickly forget, and I saw many, many beautiful
illuminated manuscripts. And all these on the World Wide Web. In short, it was a blast. And it helped me keep my sanity.
That was the long answer.
And here goes the short one: “Because it’s there” (George Mallory)
(2) A Book of Mystery and Imagination

The Codex is at the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Science, donated in 1838 by Graf Gusztáv Batthyány, as part of his library from
Rohonc (now Rechnitz in Austria).
All additional information to the Wikipedia article is from Némethi Kálmán’s work – Rohonczi Codex Tantétel, Budapest, 1892. Unfortunately,
the book is no longer available on-line.
This is how the Codex from Rohonc looks.
from Damadenegro
Here are some basics. It is written in black ink on paper, has 224 folios, 448 pages, one page is 120×100 mm, bound in a leather case. Szabo
Jozsef wrote between the pages in pencil, as he tried to decode it. Jerney János identified the paper based on the watermark (an anchor with a
star) as being manufactured in northern Italy around 1530. Both the leather cover and the pages are heavily worn, as if it was intensely
handled. The Codex consists of 20 gatherings, sewn together to the cover, without glue or signs of craftsmanship. The lack of skills shown in
bookbinding matches the scribe’s poor abilities as illustrator. 4 gatherings at the beginning and one at the end are loose. The pages were
numbered at some point, after it entered the Academy Library, the numbering is consistent with the left to right reading of the book.
The official library description states that it is a 19 century counterfeit.
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In an effort to determine whether the book was in the Rohonc library earlier than the 19 century, an entry was found in the 1743 inventory, for
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a book with the same size and the description “Hungarian prayers”.
The writing is unknown, the graphemes were identified by researchers as Hungarian runes, a Brahmi script variant, Cyrillic or Greek letters,
Dacian script. The number of “letters” seems to be in the range of hundreds.
The pages are illustrated with more than 90 drawings in black ink, with inscriptions. Whereas some are clearly identifiable as scenes from the
Bible, others are not as easily recognizable. The characters are depicted in mystical poses, with lots of suns, stars and crescent moons
displayed.
The text seems to be divided into chapters, the dividers being shaped as snakes in most of the cases.
On request, the administrator of the site Dacia.org got a microfilmed copy from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, which he made available
on-line. The facsimile images reproduce the pages in their succession in the book. The on-line variant misses pages 17, 36, 122, 173-179, 198. It
is there.
The book written by Viorica Enachiuc includes a neat facsimile for each page of the Codex. I don’t own it but I found it at the University Library
in Cluj and I managed to make copies of the pages missing from the site. For some obscure reason I only made copies of the pages with pictures
(I was in Cluj with some other problems and I wasn’t thinking quite clearly). I have at this point 93 pictures of which 10 are dividers: 7 snakes,
two slightly embellished lines and a very elaborate one.
Truth is that it is difficult to say if there are not more dividers – I talk about them more in Hic Sunt Serpentes.
The fate of the book was sealed very early after it surfaced. In April 1839 two agents of the Hungarian Academy, Toldy Ferenc and Nagy Károly,
went to Rohonc to take over the generous donation. That is when they found the Codex and quickly linked it to other artifacts bearing
Hungarian runes, some of them (then) recent discoveries. Among them were the Turoc tables, Toldy being one of their great enthusiasts. Later,
the tables were proven to be forgeries linked to a remarkable character, Literáti Nemes Sámuel. I found some really interesting information on
him in an article written by Kelecsény Ákos, Egy magyar régiségkereskedő a 19. században Literati Nemes Sámuel (1794-1842).
Literati Nemes Sámuel was a controversial figure. A born Székely from Marosvásárhely (now Târgu Mureş in Romania), he was a nationalist
to the core, in a period when nationalism was all the rage, to the point that he considered the biblical personalities to be Hungarians. The man
rummaged over a great part of Europe looking for relics, mainly for his commissioner, Jankovich Miklos, an aristocrat, historian and
prominent books and antiquities collector. In this position, he discovered many valuable manuscripts and books, which found their way into
public collections, preventing them from being lost or destroyed.
Jankovich Miklos – painting by Peski Jozsef – Wikipedia

Literati himself was collecting everything. In a note to his young child, he promises her for Christmas a pretty wooden angel, an intact
mammoth jaw and a giant mammoth rib, the horn of a unicorn, and a turtle. But his true passion was anything related to Old Hungarians. He
was ready for a fistfight if a relic was significant to his people’s history. Once, he got interested in two flags owned by the Saxon Lutheran priest
from a Transylvanian village, flags he would have done anything to procure. The poor priest only escaped a pugnacious encounter because he
was on his deathbed. In his fervor, when he couldn’t find artifacts spectacular enough, he manufactured them. He is responsible for the
wooden book from Turoc and a Hungarian prayer book from the time of András I. Not for finding them, for creating them.
As the interest in the Codex grew, a respectable and exasperated historian, Szabo Károly(by the way, the link on Wikipedia sends to the wrong
Szabo Károly), buried it in contempt, linking it to the ill-famed Literáti.
Research on the Codex did not loose momentum immediately, even the Jirečeks (the son being the creator of the Jireček line concept) got
involved, but as it yielded no results, the hypothesis of a hoax gained more and more credibility. It is understandable. First the association with
Literati, than the repeated frustration of finding no sense in the script. A closer look to the text of the Codex will definitely exasperate anyone.
However, the association with Literati was made because of the alleged Hungarian Runes or Szekely Rovas Iras identified in the script when
first seen. Obviously, the characters in the Rohonc Codex are not straightforward Hungarian Runes, or the script would have been deciphered
long ago. More talk on this in : “If This Script Makes Any Sense” . From time to time, the interest towards the Codex re-emerges, and new
elements or interpretations are given, but nobody have, so far, given the final answer, one to be generally accepted.
Halfway through writing my blog entries, I revisited the Wikipedia article on the Codex, which I haven’t done for quite a while. It shows great
news. Hungarian scholars are making progress in deciphering it. Unfortunately, I did not know of their work and did not have access to it. But,
Benedek Lang has published a book. I knew he wrote an article, which I didn’t find (the way I like it, for free), but I read an interview with him.
So, I ordered the book, but it will take another month before I get it and some more to read it with my poor Hungarian. However, I think his
conclusions are presented in the interview, basically, that it could be a cipher, a shorthand system or an artificial language. Or maybe, all three
of them. For the work done by others, please visit the Wikipedia article.
In the end, the codex is an oddity, an ugly little piece of work. But somebody put a lot of effort into making it, and it meant something to him.
He handled it a lot, as the worn cover shows, so probably it was used for something. And this is the mystery, the appeal of the book, and this is
what I try to find out – what the heck was it made for.
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(3) On Method and Sources

I found the Codex from Rohonc on the Internet and decided on my goals. So what next? To reach these goals I had only my “amazing powers of
observation” and a good connection to the Internet.
I started with what was already known. I tried not to leave any rock unturned (and link unchecked). For every new topic I encountered (and
most of them were new), the Wikipedia article was a start, both as information and as bibliography and links. Looking deeper, I found a wealth
of information and an incredible number of beautiful manuscripts made available on-line.
The Munich Golden Psalter, p.22, from Die Bayerische Staats Bibliothek
I floated from link to link on as various topics as Manichaeism, Bogomil tales, Russian icons, magic and magick, the life and garden of a
Hungarian nobleman, Old Believers, genealogies, Mi’kmaq shorthand and many more, stumbling upon pieces of information that didn’t seem
interesting at the moment but in hindsight they proved to be valuable, making me spend a lot of time trying to retrace my steps to find them.
This is the internet trap: you start looking up the latest movie at the mall and hours later, in an altered state of conscience, you somehow find
yourself reading a very interesting article on Magna Charta. Or vice versa.
As I have no systematical knowledge in any of the sciences to be put to work when studying a mystery manuscript (paleography, codicology,
history, art history, cryptology, etc.), I grazed and nibbled and picked bits of information from everywhere. Of course, the fact that you can
search the internet by topic was of great help. But you need at least to know the words. It was an entire Odyssey just to find out the word
“harrowing”, not to mention that I was completely oblivious to the existence of an episode called “Harrowing of Hell”. One of the drawings is
exactly that (page 58 right). So, basically, I kinda started from very close to zero.
At some point, I had to deal with so much new information andorganizing it was the most difficult part.I made a habit of saving the photos into
my computer and copying the url into the properties. This was very useful.
I have also gathered an unmanageable amount of bookmarks, which I transferred into an Excel sheet, ordered alphabetically, found out that
some are in triplicate, and rechecked each one of them. Of course, many were “things to be read at a later, more convenient time”. Some are
broken or useless by now.
Some of the books I found were only partially available (when it becomes really interesting it jumps a page, or a chapter, or to the last cover). I
know, I should buy them. Sometime, in the future… Old books are entirely available though (Like Thompson’s Paleography or Conybeare’s Key
of Truth on Armenian Paulicians).
In determining the content of the images, in some cases their meaning was obvious even to my untrained eye, in other cases further readings
made me speculate (occasionally over-speculate) and eventually find matches, and then, for a few, I just stumbled upon similar illustrations by
sheer luck. Most of the research work I did consisted in staring and squinting. Staring at the printed Codex drawings and squinting at the
computer screen.I tried to keep an open mind and not hang on to any idea until I cross-checked it in any way I could think of. The mental
image is of juggling with oranges. Every new piece of information, every new connection, adds an orange to be kept in mid-air. A good deal of
them are still floating, but some I was able to put down. Those are the certainties. But I am ready to pick and toss them up again, if new things
should arise. My present understanding was carved by many errors, mostly mine. Based on an overly imaginative interpretation of the
drawings, and and an un-quenched thirst for a sensational finding, at the beginning I saw the manuscript as a Manichaean work, than a
Bogomil one. However, the “heresy” hypothesis is still standing. Each “discovery” I blared to the world, and every time after I exposed them I
instantly found some more information (literally, the same day) that made me reconsider or go a bit deeper (basically, made me feel
embarrassed). So here I am, ready to embarrass myself (yet again) in the name of knowledge.
This is not the work of a specialist. I started it to occupy my mind, for fun, and it worked. But at some point I felt like I really made some
progress and I can contribute to the understanding of the Rohonc Codex, so I decided to post them on my blog.And then the fun ended and the
toil began. Because my knowledge on the Codex grew somewhat like coral reefs, ramified and entangled. Organizing it in a linear and logical
way was, well, harrowing, and I am not sure I succeeded, at the same time suggesting the buzzing exhilaration I felt with every discovery. And
you probably know that other feeling: When you don’t ask me I know, when you ask me I don’t.
While I was writing diligently, the ACTA controversy emerged. Just to be on the safe side, I took many of the images from Wikipedia, thinking
they are in public domain anyway. But for every other image I will ask for permission to use, and hopefully will get it. So far, I cannot but
appreciate the very relaxed attitude of some of the rich on-line databases like the one from the Koninklijke Bibliotheek or Munchener
Digitalisierungs Zentrum. As I said, I have seen a great deal of medieval (in the large sense) manuscripts and books (just to find out that the
Codex from Rohonc is not medieval at all), I gathered images from every corner of the Internet (corner? really?) and I give the links back to the
source for every image I use.Though I garnered a shelf-load of physical books related to the Codex, or so I thought, the main tool for my
research was the computer and its connection to the world. I am very grateful to those who put such an incredible amount of work into such a
volatile environment, making it available for free and for everybody. I bet the American art professor who created a site for his students did not
think that a Romanian restless middle-aged lady will read it with great interest.
Therefore, as all cometh from the Internet, to Internet all returneth.

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(4) The Story in the Pictures (pages 5 through 18)

I compared the drawings from the Codex against similar images from illuminated books, painting, frescoes, etchings or prints, looking for the
same main characters, in similar postures, with alike implements amid resembling architecture. I did not identify all the drawings. Help from
anybody who recognizes them or has a different opinion from mine is welcomed. Truth is, there is a lot of ambiguity and mix-up in them.
Erwin Panofsky writes in “Studies in Iconology” (page 7):
If the knife that enables us to identify a St. Bartholomew is not a knife but a cork-screw, the figure is not a St. Bartholomew.
What if this pattern of “near hits” runs through the entire manuscript: the two tables of the law that let us identify Moses are three, the
supreme judge in the Last Judgment has two options: to send you to hell or to…hell, the Holy Trinity consists of only two personas? Are these
still Moses, the Last Judgment and the Trinity? What is that something else, to quote Panofsky again, that made the author of the Codex
change details of the well known Christian themes?
But, for now, let’s stay with the identification. Since there are 93 drawings, I had to separate them into manageable stacks. Because the
manuscript is apparently divided by snakes and embellished lines into chunks (I hesitate to call them chapters) I use them as such. Therefore,
each post ends with a snake or a line even if I am not completely convinced in their role as dividers.
This is a very small manuscript and many of the drawings are the size of a stamp. Trimming down the number of characters in a scene looks as
a natural option for the CR author: he had a very limited amount of space, not to mention his limited drawing skills. How he selected among
the characters – who stays, who’s cut out – is, on the other hand, intriguing.
Here are some conventions the CR author is using throughout the manuscript:
– shining and light are suggested with dots. The technique was used mainly in the Irish and English manuscripts but here is this Greek
manuscript where St. Paul and his letter to Corinthians (1) are surrounded by dots.
St. Paul in Byzantine Praxapostolos – about 950 AD

– the letter in his hand is in Old Church Slavonic
– from Biblical Data
And the CR:
page 57 Right
– head gear – many characters wear something that looks like a striped turban. In fact is a crossed or cruciform halo. This is quite obvious in
the drawing above but not as clear in others:
page 89 Right
Whereas the plain halo indicates saints and other sacred figures, when crossed, it usually indicates one of the persons of the Holy Trinity,
namely God, Jesus or the Holy Spirit, a rule not clear if consistently followed by the CR author.
Jesus Christ Pantocrator- mosaic from Hagia Sophia – from Wikipedia
– the mountain
page 14 Right
I wondered for quite a long time if this is a road or a mountain. It is definitely (maybe) a mountain.
– the beard – all men have pointy beards (not the children or teenagers)
page 41Right
– dim light – the things or bodies that shine less are ususally darkened
page 38 Right
– various implements held by the characters:

Some I identified:
Globus cruciger
page 95 Left
Some not:
Rattlers
page 16 Left
page 170 Left
or magic wands (probably a candle)
page 108 Right
And now, the first batch.

1. page 5 Left – Binding of Isaac – Old Abraham prepares to sacrifice his only son Isaac at the request of God, on Mount Moriah. At the
last moment, the angel Gabriel stops him from cutting his son’s throat, and offers a ram instead. This nightmarish story has some very
dramatic renditions. The CR has Abraham, Isaac, the angel, the altar and the dove as image of the Holy Spirit. The ram is missing. I needed
three different images to recreate a match to the CR drawing: the orthodox icon for the exact position of the characters, the altar and the
mountains; the Austrian wood icon for the curved blade, the large gesture of Abraham and the semi-circular thingy from where peeks the
angel; the Icelandic page for the dove. But this is the first picture, I am not this thorough for the rest of 90 something.
Orthodox icon from the blog

of Samuel Schuldheisz E-nklings
17th century polychrome carved wood relief,

possibly from Tyrol – from Christies
Historiated initial from a 14th century Icelandic manuscript – from Wikipedia

2. page 5 Right – Matthew the Evangelist with his symbol: the angel or winged man. Saint Matthew writes the Gospel inspired by the
shining angel
Fifteenth century Book of Hours from the Glasgow University Library
And a little glitz.
Fourteenth century Italian manuscript

from the University of South Carolina Libraries
3. Page 9 Right – King Solomon dedicates the temple to God – a king or a priest in front of a building that could be a temple, facing a
floating character. The globus cruciger (the round object with a cross, held by the standing man) shows dominion over the world or part of it, it
is a royal attribute.
Maybe it is a scene from the second chapter of the Book of Revelation (or Apocalypse) – Messages to the seven churches, in which case the
floating figure is Jesus who dictates to John the Apostle a message for each of the churches from Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira,
Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea.
The Bamberg Apocalypse, page 8r – from Staatsbibliothek Bamberg, Msc.Bibl.140
But the standing character is holding a globus cruciger, symbol of power over the world, which indicates a king, probably Solomon, dedicating
his temple:
Solomon kneels in prayer at the dedication of the temple, Picture Bible, fol. 43r, c.1290-1300, from Koninklijke Bibliotheek
The interior of the temple of Solomon, Postilla Literalis, fol. 12r, c. 1450-1475, from Koninklijke Bibliotheek
4. page 10 Right –Three guys with pointy beards. One is blessing the other two and has a crossed halo, he should be either Jesus or God. But
as seen in the first drawing, where Abraham has a similar halo, we can not be sure. The other two seem to have crescent moon shaped
implements in their hands.
Could it be God speaking to Moses and Aaron on Mount Sinai? Telling them how they should eat stuff? Or is it Moses speaking to Aaron and
Joshua? “Sorry Aaron, you are not going to lead my folk into the promised land. Here is this lad (no, Joshua wasn’t that young, but this is how
a 120 year old talks to someone in his nineties), he found the land of Canaan, so let my people go with him.” Eventually, Aaron died before
Moses, Joshua took over the lead, destroyed Jericho, conquered Canaan, and lived to wrote a book about it.
God speaks to Moses and Aaron – Historiated initials – Bible, Paris, cca. 1250-1300 – from Koninkljike Bibliotheek, Medieval Manuscripts
Moses speaks to Aaron and Joshua – Historiated initials – Bible, Paris, cca. 1250-1300 – from Koninkljike Bibliotheek, Medieval Manuscripts
Because of a controversial Hebrew word, some believe Moses had horns (one of them was Michelangelo), others that he had rays of light
sprouting from his head. Unfortunately, the CR writer does not go with either version, which would have made things easier. In fact, there is
nothing in the picture that helps with a conclusive identification. My insistence with Moses looks like I am fixated on him. The reason is the
next picture.
5. page 14 Right – Moses, Aaron and the tables of the law. On the left, with the striped halo is most likely Moses, on the right, his
brother and PR agent, Aaron. (This is a long shot, but notice on his coat, under his arm, something like a crescent.)
Anything interesting at Aaron?
Engraving by Hans Sebald Beham, 1526 – from artvalue.com
And now the most unusual tables of the law. They are unusual in number, (what is with the table in the center?) and they are unusual in size.
Sources describe them as being six handbreadth long. In the Beham engraving above are shown in their standard representation, as two
hinged, round-topped rectangles, with the size of a large book, a very large coffee table book.
Moses receiving the tables of the law, Chagall, 1963 –
Musée national Message Biblique Marc Chagall,
Nice, France – from Wikipaintings
Tables of the law the size of a man seem as an exaggeration. But lo’ and behold, they are not singular:
Tables of the Law from an Italian Synagogue, dated 1671 –

from Jewish Encyclopedia
The original tables had 613 letters for the Ten Commandments. I could not count the letters on the CR tables but they have at least in one place
inscribed YHWH (I will explain in Divine Designators post why I believe these signs stand for the Tetragrammaton)
so, I guess they intend to bear the first commandment:

“I am Lord, your God (YHWH), you shall have no other gods before Me”
or maybe the third:
“You shall not take the name of the Lord your God (YHWH) in vain“.
6. page 15 right – Jesus enters Jerusalem and and casts the money lenders out of the temple

What a good match! At least for the left half.
Jesus enters Jerusalem – Late Gothic (1474) fresco from St. Mary Chapel in Beram, Croatia – from VirtualTourist
Cleansing of the temple, History Bible, fol. 152r.,c. 1430 – from Koninkljike Bibliotheek, Medieval Manuscripts
7. page 16 Left – The Annunciation – on the left is the classic scene of the Annunciation – the angel Gabriel comes to the virgin Mary who
is reading a book near a lily bush. The Holy Spirit descends in the form of a dove. On the right side I have no idea what it goes on. An angel
gives something to somebody on the top of a mountain.
The building and the composition of the Annunciation in Hvalov zbornik are almost identical. The Hval Manuscript, which is housed in
Bologna, at the University Library, is written in Bosnian Cyrillic with several Glagolitic letters and is illuminated by two
discernible enlumineures, probably Dalmatians, who painted in Gothic style.
The manuscript of Krstyanin

Hval, 1404 – from Croatian History
I was unable to find a larger copy, but what seems to be missing are the lily and the book in the Virgin’s hands. Next is an image with every
element in place, even God. (Have you spotted God in the CR drawing? Yes, the tiny head at the end of the rays.)
Speculum Humanae Salvationis, page 26v – from Kongelige Bibliotek Denmark

Still, the CR drawing has an extra character. At the window of the tower on the right, there is something that could be a human silhouette,
probably Joseph.
8. page16 Right – Passover – In the left top corner, again an angel and a man holding the same mysterious object, this time on the roof tops
of a city. In the right top corner are two crossed discs. Among the larger characters, one looks like a priest with a chihuahua. He is a Jewish
priest handling the sacrificed lambs, probably for Passover or “The Feast of Unleavened Bread”. The celebration commemorates the departure
from Egypt and is strictly regulated in the Leviticus 23:5-8. Essentially, lambs were to be sacrificed at the temple in Jerusalem, at dusk, and
eaten that night with flatbread and bitter herbs.
The subject of the next painting is completely unrelated, but the circumcision is performed by a Jewish priest, and look at his hat:
Detail of Circumcision of Jesus Christ by Pellegrino da San Daniele – from The Guardian
Otherwise, I did not find a matching image, but here are two in the same spirit.
Jews making sacrifice to God, table XII,

in Die Miniaturen des Serbischen Psalters, by Josef Strzygowski, on Internet Archive
The Jews ate the Pascal lamb, in A Medieval Mirror, Specullum Humanae Salvationis 1324 – 1500, by Adrian Wilson and Joyce Lancaster Wilson onUC Press E-Books Collection, 1982-
2004
The two crossed discs could be two flatbreads on a table, or maybe something like this?
Pasca – traditional Romanian Easter Cheesecake – from Papa la Ile
9. Page 18 Right – Here comes the first divider. End of part 1.

10. page 21 Left – Adoration of the Magi. Unequivocal, unmistakable and yet, I had a hard time to find a match. One with the Holy
Family under a roof, Bethlehem in the distance, the three kings in a row and the guiding star. Everything is marked with a cross: the shed, the
star and the gifts brought by the three kings.
Pretty close,
Giotto, fresco in the Scrovegni chapel, Padua – from Wikipedia
but, I look for magi with crowns, bearing their gifts in covered chalices .
Searching through the excellent online archive of Koninklijke Bibliotheek I found dozens of pictures meeting the criteria. Alas, when there’s
Joseph, there’s no city, when there’s city, there’s no Joseph.
Book of Hours, c. 1450, from Koninklijke Bibliotheek

Book of Hours, c. 1440-1450, from Koninklijke Bibliotheek
When there’s city and there’s Joseph, there’s no star.
Book of hours, c. 1500 – from Koninkljike Bibliotheek
11. page 24 Left – Another divider. This was a short one.
I can squeeze in another batch.
12. page 25 Right – Circumcision of Jesus (?) A slightly shining baby is passed between two persons of unclear gender, over something
that looks like a font with water, on a mountaintop, between two cities or just two buildings, identified by letters. The pose is common for two
moments in the early life of Jesus: the circumcision, which happened eight days after his birth and the presentation at the temple, where he
was taken forty days after his birth, both episodes described in the Gospel of Luke (2:21 and 2:22-40). None of these events are taking place al
fresco, on a mountaintop, between two cities.
Circumcision of Christ – Fra Angelico, 1450 – from Wikipedia
Presentation at the temple – Hans Holbein the Elder, 1500-1501 – from Wikipedia
In the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy of the Saviour, an apocryphal writing thought to have influenced the Qur’an (controversial), the child Jesus
was circumcised in a cave, the same cave in which he was born. This is the closest explanation to the outdoors setting of the scene. What we
know with certainty from this drawing is that one of the cities, the one on the right, is Jerusalem. And this is easy to prove. Just look at the sign
above it, the one that looks like a bird. And then at the picture from page 29 Right – The Arrest of Jesus (the second next).
13. page 26 Left – Crucifixion of Christ or Adoration of the Crucified Christ. Saint Longinus prays at the feet of the crucified Jesus,
detached from his fellow soldiers, so in position as in attitude and clothing. His spear is wedged at the bottom of the cross and leaning at an
impossible angle that makes it all the more visible and identifies its owner.
Angels collecting the holy blood seems to be a theme that encompassed Europe.
Crucifixion fresco – c.1425 – Lysabild church – from the

Mills-Kronborg collection of Danish Church Wall Paintings
Soldier piercing the side of the Lord – Miniature in he Missal of the Metropolitan Bishop Stephen of Ungro-Vlachia, 17th century – the Romanian Academic Library
The Danish fresco is badly damaged and the bottom part is lost, but I am sure that in its heyday it did not lack the standard characters, the
same as in the following painting, as in the one thousand and one crucifixions I have seen.
Missal from Southern Germany, c. 1485 – from the Schoyen Collection
The Holy Mother of Jesus is always in the scene, sometimes accompanied by other Mary’s, often by John the Evangelist. Yet, they were
expelled from the CR drawing.
14. page 29 Left – This one comes with a quick answer: I don’t know. Obviously, two guys share a meal in a seemingly colloquial way. But as
Jesus is the one who “… came eating and drinking…”(Matthew 11:19), I don’t know which of his shared meals is portrayed here, if he is in it at
all.
15. page 29 Right – The Arrest of Jesus. Three figures on the left, the one in the middle identified by letters as Jesus, under a large tree, a
messy band of soldiers with tall spears, under a starry sky. Another armed group is seen below. The moon is on the left, the sun on the right,
above the spires of a city. And right under the sinking sun, merging with its coiled rays, the letter seen in the picture from page 25. Jesus was
arrested in the garden of Gethsemane, just outside Jerusalem. This city has to be Jerusalem and the bird-like sign must stand for Jerusalem!
This is the drawing where the author of the CR got overambitious. He squeezed into a picture not much larger than a stamp: a garden, Jesus,
two apostles, an indefinite number of soldiers, a city, and a big part of the seen Universe. And missed the one detail that is never missing from
similar pictures, large or small. The betrayal, the kiss of Judas.
Bocatti got them all but made his olive trees look like a pine grove (they have olives though).
The Arrest of Jesus – Giovanni di Piermatteo Boccati, c. 1447, Perugia – from Wikipedia
Fra Angelico gets points for the trees.
The Kiss of Judas, fresco, 1437-1446 – Fra Angelico – in San Marco, Florence – from Wikipedia
16. Page 36 Right – a very elaborate divider. Matthew 26:75 And Peter remembered the word of Jesus, when He said unto him, “Before the
cock crow, thou shalt deny Me thrice.” And he went out and wept bitterly.
17. page 38 Right – Massacre of the Innocents (?) – Four soldiers with different weapons march in a row over a hilly landscape, in the
night, as shown by the shining star and moon. Their commander on horseback watches as one of the soldiers pokes a baby with his spear.
Something is missing from this drawing, it is so aloof and un-dramatic. The massacre of the infant boys right under the eyes of Herod is one of
the most tragic scenes in the NT. The The Coventry Carol – a 16th century Christmas Carol (1:00) tells the story and conveys the drama.
Lully, Lullay
Thou little tiny Child,
By, by, lully, lullay.

O sisters two, how may we do,

For to preserve this day;
This poor Youngling for whom we do sing,
Herod the King, in his raging,

Charged he hath this day;
His men of might, in his own sight,
All young children, to slay.
That woe is me, poor Child, for Thee,

And ever’ mourn and day;
For Thy parting, neither say nor sing,
Lully, Lullay

The Spinola Hours, c.1510 – Master of James IV of Scotland

– from The J. Paul Getty Museum
No painter left out the mothers from this terrible scene, for their grief is the fulfillment of Jeremiah’s prophecy: “A voice is heard in Ramah,
weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.” (Mathew 2:18). But, in
the CR, women are left out.
18. page 41 Right – The Trial of Jesus – but which one of them? Christ was taken to Annas, Caiaphas, the Pharisees, Pilate, Herod Antipas
and Pilate again. Here Jesus is held by a soldier, his hands are free (they are always represented tied, from the arrest on) and he is blessing the
sitting man, who wears a crown and holds a lily, probably Herod. Between them is hanging a shiny spider… or a lamp.
The wall-painting from Broens struck me not only because it is very similar in proportions and composition, with the characters placed as on a
theater scene framed by two columns, but also because of the ceiling ornament – the coiled lilies. Except that the seated character is wearing a
mitre and holding a book.
Jesus presented to Annas – Broens church fresco c. 1525-35

– from Mills-Kronborg Collection (M-K 05-069)
Here Herod holds a scepter tipped with a lily.
Christ before Herod – Kongsted church fresco c. 1430-

from Mills-Kronborg Collection (M-K 15-082)
19. page 42 Left – Nativity – A person is lying on the floor, with a child emerging from her groins, near a basin with water. On the left is
Jesus, as identified by the halo, the blessing hand and the two letters above his head (more about this in Divine Designators) and on the right is
a king, with crown and a lily in his hand.
This is a very interesting example as how in the CR well established themes are re-interpreted in a bizarre way. It is so twisted I don’t know
where to start to explain it. Maybe with this:
Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, mosaic at the Vatopedi monastery – from Orthodoxy Icons
The mother, St. Ann, is lying in bed, while the maids take the new born child and bathe her.
This is the way birth is depicted if it happens under normal circumstances, weather it’s about Mary or John the Baptist.
The birth of Jesus happened in a stable and his mother was assisted only by St. Joseph, they did not have, presumably, midwives, a water basin
or even cloths for the baby. Or did they?
The Nativity, miniature – The Gospels, 1336 by Sargis Pidzak – from Armenica, History of Armenia
Everybody is present, angels, shepherds, kings, Joseph and even three women to help with the baby’s first bath. Had the author of the CR seen
a similar painting and misunderstood the role of the woman with the baby on her lap? Selected only the characters that looked more
interesting to him, where the action was? And didn’t the Universe collapse as adult Jesus attended the birth of baby Jesus?
The Nativity with the Reclining Madonna is typical for Eastern Christianity.
20. Page 44 Left – The Flagellation, Coronation with Thorns and Mocking of Jesus, or rather The Instruments of Passion – each
of the four soldiers have one instrument of torment: the scourge, the purple robe, the long sticks with the crown of thorns and the bunch of
thorns, and, of course, the pillar.
Flagellation – with a scourge and a bunch of thorns

Flagellation of Christ, Ostankino Museum, c. 16-17 century, from Wikimedia Commons
Flagellation in the back, coronation and mocking in the front.

MASTER of the Lyversberg Passion,(detail)
Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne, from Wikimedia Commons
21. Page 45 Left – The Mocking of Christ – The berobed and becrowned Christ is seated on a chair in front of Pilate probably, who is
showing his clean hands.
Pilate is sometimes painted with a crown.

Jesus in front of Pilate, from Mills-Kronborg Collection, Aegerup, (M-K 31-040)
And Jesus is sometimes painted seated in front of Pilate.
Duccio di Buonisegna – 1308-11. Tempera on wood panel. Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Siena, Italy – from Olga’s Gallery
22. page 45 Right – snake

(7) The Story in the Pictures (pages 49 thorugh 67)
23. page 49 Left – Christ Bearing the Cross
There are just a few elements to look for – the crown of thorns and the way Christ holds the cross. A robe with folds would be also nice. And an
adult Jesus would be preferable.
Historiated initial with Christ-child carrying the cross, Book of Hours, fol. 70r, c. 1475-1485, from Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts
Too crowded
Christ Carrying the Cross, c. 1491, Benvenuto di Giovanni, from National Gallery of Art USA
This fits well.

Christ carrying the Cross, c. 1500-5, attributed to Lo Spagna – from The National Gallery UK
24. page 51 Left – Jesus Crucified – The ribs and a really large belly button are shown. The shape of the cross bar is unusual and appears
in the next drawing too.
Time has come to discuss the problem of the nails. How many nails have been used to crucify Jesus? As so many other details, this has been
also matter of debate (see Holy Nails). The question is whether they were three or four. Until the thirteenth century in both Western and
Eastern Christianity, four nails were accepted, one in each limb. In the thirteenth century, Western artists started to represent Jesus with his
feet one over the other, fixed with one nail, while in Eastern art he is still shown, in most cases, with the feet pierced separately.
from Crestin Ortodox
The Crucifixion, Gerard David, c. 1495 – 1500, from The Metropolitan Museum of Art
How many nails are in our drawing? Between this drawing and the one from page 26 Left, I’d say four.
The number of nails might seem trivial but I suppose it was important in the relic business. How many nails can you pass as the original ones?
Apparently, over thirty. This many are venerated at the moment.
25. page 52 Left – The Entombment (?) – Two men on the sides of a tomb, near a deserted cross, holding something like funnels in their
hands. I suppose they are Joseph of Arimatheea and Nicodemus, the two secret disciples of Christ in high places. Joseph claimed the body of
Jesus from Pilate, Nicodemus brought myrrh and aloe and together they buried Jesus in the tomb donated by Joseph.
I could not find anything remotely similar. The absence of the grieving women, not to mention the body, makes it unique.
The Entombment, c. 1415, Robert Campin- from Wikipaintings
26. Page 55 Right – The Resurrection – Three in one. A radiant angel floats over the tomb marked with several signs. Christ rises,
holding the linen sheet he was wrapped in, the angel kneels holding some luminous round object. In a garden Christ appears to a myrrh bearer
as a gardener.
Christ Appearing to Mary Magdalen as a Gardener, 1507, Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen, from Web Gallery of Art
The signs on the tomb show the original owner, Joseph of Arimatheea:
The Ressurection, Prayer Book, fol. 100v., c. 1500, Masters of the Dark Eyes, from Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts
27. Page 57 Right – Christ Triumphant

And he that sat was to look upon like a jasper and a carnelian stone: and there was a rainbow round about the throne, in appearance like unto
an emerald.
And round about the throne were four and twenty thrones: and upon the thrones I saw four and twenty elders sitting, clothed in white
clothing; and they had on their heads crowns of gold. And out of the throne proceeded lightning and thunderings and voices…Revelations 4:2-5
Sure enough, Christ is resplendent and the picture is so loud you could almost hear the thunderings and the voices. But… The elders are seven
and they do not wear crowns. They hold up the orbs of might though.
As these elders hold their crowns.
St. John and the Twenty-four Elders in Heaven, 1497-98, Albrecht Dürer, from Imagiva
Christ and theTwenty-four Elders, Saint Sever Apocalypse, c. 1050-1070, from Counterlight’s Peculiars

28. Page 58 Right – Harrowing of Hell – Christ with the crossed staff in his hand, in front of an empty hellmouth (which has a
surprisingly elegant line). A very popular representation in Northern Europe.
Harrowing of Hell, Speculum Humanae Salvationis, fol. 34v., c. 1400-1500, from Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts
29. Page 59 Left – Ressurection – Christ rising from the tomb with the crossed staff in one hand and the other hand in the sign of
benediction. The tomb is guarded by three armed soldiers.
The resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, Speculum Humanae Salvationis, in A Medieval Mirror,
by Adrian Wilson and Joyce Lancaster Wilson,
UC Press E-Books Collection 1982-2004
30. page 60 Right – Supper at Emmaus (?) – After the Resurrection, two disciples meet Christ on the road to Emmaus and fail to
recognize him. In Emmaus, during the supper they share, the two pilgrims understand who their companion is.
Supper at Emmaus, Book of Hours, fol. 94r, c. 1490, The Masters of the Dark Eyes, from Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts
And now, let’s talk about the elephant in the room. Jesus has wings!
He is an angel. I can understand the logic. By dieing on the cross, the human part was shed and the resurrected Jesus is all divine substance.
He returns to an angelic state, especially for those who believe that the archangel Michael is a precursor to the Christ. Yet, the image of Christ
as angel is very rare and rather uncomfortable for the Western Christian.
In Eastern Christianity there are several representations of Christ with wings:
Before his incarnation in human body – Christ, the Good Silence:

Jesus as Angel of the Great Council
Jesus as the Old of Days
I did not find anything similar in the Western iconography. But maybe Google has failed me.
31. Page 64 Right – Doubting Thomas. Thomas is reaching out to touch the wound of Jesus before being convinced.
Incredulity of Thomas, c.1474 – Jetsmark church – from the
Mills-Kronborg collection of Danish Church Wall Paintings, (M-K 13-019)
32. Page 65 Left – Jeremiah Lamenting over Jerusalem – or maybe Jesus crying over Jerusalem. See the signs (birdies) over the city,
the same as in 25 Right and 29 Right, signs which most likely identify “Jerusalem”.
Speculum Humanae Salvationis, fol. 98r. – from Kongelige Bibliotek Denmark
33. Page 67 Right – either The Fruitless Fig-tree or the Parable of the Mustard Seed, and the end of the batch.
The Parable of the Barren Fig Tree, Gospels, Ms. W. 592, fol. 58a, from The Digital Walters

34. page 69 Left – Probably Jesus holding a lily and a disciple holding a small cross. This is the most I can tell about it.
35. page 69 Right – another shared meal with Jesus sitting at the table with somebody who does not have a halo or nimbus, just a cap. A
cross is floating between them, probably talking business.
36. page 71 Left – Going places
37. page 72 Left – The Great Commission – Jesus with several apostles at a table with a wine pitcher
The first thought was, The Last Supper. Obviously, I looked for a similar …pitcher.
Last Supper, Book of Hours, fol. 23r., c. 1450-1460 – from Koninklijke Bibliotheek
But the orant Christ, showing up two crosses, and the “rattlers” in the apostles hands did not match very well with the somber tone of the Last
Supper depictions.
The story seems to fit best a combination of Luke 24:36-49 and Mark 16:14-18. After the two disciples return from Emmaus, where they met
the resurrected Jesus, they gather with the apostles in a room, behind closed doors, trembling for their lives, sharing the latest news and a
supper of fish, when Jesus, suddenly, appears amid them saying Peace to you. He shows them his wounds and to prove he is not a ghost, he
asks for food. In Mark he says:“Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.”
Duccio di Buoninsegna,
Appearence While the Apostles are at Table, 1308-11, from WebGalleryofArt
38. page 76 Right – Ascension. Does anyone disagree?
It is called “The Disappearing Feet” Ascension, though “The Disappearing Robe” is more accurate in this case, and is, again, typical for
Northern Europe.
Speculum Humanae Salvationis, page 74v. – from Kongelige Bibliotek Denmark

Bible moralisée, fol. 219r., Bruges; c. 1455-1460 – from Koninklijke Bibliotheek
39. page 79 Left – Hell
A Medieval Mirror, Adrian Wilson & Joyce Lancaster Wilson, page. 54, from UC Press E-Books Collection, 1982-2004
40. page 79 Right – Last Judgment – This was a tough one. I suspected that the central character is Jesus (the signs above him are not the
usual ones, they appear in two more circumstances though: The Flogging and the Massacre of the Innocents), but I could not understand why
he has an arrow across his head and his feet stuck into a barrel.
After several lucky clicks, I found out that the arrow is in fact the lily of mercy on the left and the sword of vengeance on the right, while the
barrel is the orb, as in the Dürer engraving. But unlike in Dürer, in the bottom register, instead of the Hellmouth and the Paradise, there are
two hungry beasts, awaiting for the souls of the sinners. Maybe the lily between them is a suggestion of Paradise.
Small Passion, Albrecht Dürer, c. 1510 – from Wikipedia
And it is not the only difference. Who are the guys on the sides (with “rattlers” in their hands)? At the center of this episode is always (as far as
I saw) the Deesis, the triad consisting of Jesus as the judge, Mary, mother of Jesus and John the Baptist, as interceders on behalf of mankind.
But not in our drawing. These guys are most definitely men, with long pointy beards, and one of them has a crown. The one on the right is is
identified by a sign I have seen before:
page 5 Left – Sacrifice of Isaac
He could be either Abraham or Isaac, neither of whom was ever a king. And on the right? The answer could be in this elaborate Russian icon:
Last Judgment, Russian icon, 18th century – from Wikipedia
As customary, Jesus is flanked by the Blessed Virgin and John the Baptist, and a host of apostles and saints. But in the second register, right
underneath them, holding the tables of the law, there is Moses, followed by the Jews, the Catholics, the Turks and other people who do not
deserve salvation (makes me feel uneasy, and I don’t even go into why is Moses there). Opposite to them are the righteous patriarchs and kings
of Israel (needless to say, they were Jews too).
detail
My guess is that in the CR drawing the usual companions of Christ were cut out and two characters from the second register were promoted
one level up, but in a mirrored position. Therefore, the figure standing on the right is Abraham (or Isaac) – the first from the row of patriarchs,
inadvertently crowned as one of the kings, and the one on the left is Moses. This conjecture is supported by the inscription that identifies the
alleged Moses, inscription present also in the drawing with the alleged tables of the law:
page 14 Right – Moses and the tables of the law
41. page 80 Right – I have two possible explanations: Moses receiving the offerings for the tabernacle: (gold, silver, and bronze; blue,
purple, and scarlet thread, fine linen, and goats’ hair; ram skins dyed red, badger skins, and acacia wood; oil for the light, and spices for the
anointing oil and for the sweet incense; onyx stones, and stones to be set in the ephod and in the breastplate)…
Moses collects the valuable offerings for the Tabernacle, History Bible, fol. 73 r, c. 1430, from Koninkljike Bibliothek, Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts
or a usurer, as an image used to illustrate Psalm 14?

The Usurer,
42. page 83 Left – The Ptolemaic Universe represented as gears set in motion by angels. The Universe, according to Ptolemy, has
the Earth at its center, surrounded by the moon, the sun and five planets: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. (I’m really proud of this
one).
Creator as Majestas Domini, Liber Floridus, fol. 76r, 1460, from Koninlijke Bibliotheek, Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts
Ptolemaic system, from DCSymbols
The little guys in the Empireum, the house of God, are angels too.
43. page 84 Left – John the Apostle, on the Island of Patmos, under the moon and with the “rattler” – the only roundel.
John in Patmos, Book of Hours, from artbible
44. page 84 Right – The parable of the lamp under the bushel (?)
Biblia ectypa, Christoph Weigel, 1695, from Pitts Theology Library
45. page 88 Right – Somebody dictates something to somebody
Either Saint Peter dictates the Gospel to Saint Mark:

St. Peter dictating the Gospel to St. Mark, ivory, 5-7th century, from The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Or Saint John, the Apostle, dictates the Revelation to Prochoros:
John the Apostle dictating to Prochorus, Mokvi Gospels, 1300, from Wikipedia
Or Saint Paul dictates a letter:

St. Paul dictates a letter, Historiated initial, Bible, fol. 378r.c. 1250-1300, from Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts
46. page 89 Right – Jesus or an apostle, with the crossed rod, blesses a cleric (with a mitre) and a guy with a funny hat.
47. page 91 Right – Jesus or an apostle blesses a king who holds a lamp.
End of the fifth batch.

48. page 93 Left – Two characters sitting at the table under a leafy canopy, drinking a glass of wine (?)
49. page 95 Left – The Holy Trinity. This is a very disputed concept, and I am always lost when it comes to the subtleties of dogma.
Basically, it says that The Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost are three distinct manifestations of the same God, they are not equivalent among
them, yet they are not independent, each of them exists in each of the other two. It is a difficult idea to grasp but it is at the core of the Nicene
creed and of the majority of Christian churches. These are the Trinitarians. Obviously, that means that other churches are Unitarians or
Binitarians. (I might be wrong though – this is a subject debated for over a thousand years, it lead to several schisms and accusations of heresy
and anathemas were thrown around vigorously on its account.)
While in Eastern Christianity, when on its own, it is represented by three twin figures (see the famous Rubliov icon), in Western Christianity it
is depicted by two men as the Father and the Son and a dove as the Holy Ghost.
What about our CR drawing? It is clear that the source was something similar to the miniature below, yet somehow, the Holy Ghost got lost.
Petites Heures de Jean de Berry, fol. 70

Maître de la Trinité, c. 1385-1390, from BNF, Bestiaire du Moyen Age
If this is not a gaffe but a deliberate option, probably this definition fits (from Wikipedia):
Bitheism, a belief in two separate beings in one “God family” who are in perfect harmony/agreement with each other/one another,
composed of the Father and the Son as two distinct Gods, and the Holy Spirit as not a God, but rather as the living power of God that
flows/emanates between both the Father and the Son.
50. page 98 Right – Ante portas. A high priest and Jesus (or an apostle), the priest has a magic wand, Jesus has a cross.
51. page 99 Right – I’m completely clueless.
I reached a line again but I go on, it was a small stack (and I have accomplished so little).
52. page 100 Left – St. Paul in prison, writing an epistle (?) The character is writing, kneeling at a desk, he seems to be in an enclosed
space. From above, rays of undulating light generate from an aperture in the ceiling. Or they rather generate from a globe with a letter
inscribed, like the Greek “m”. A letter that might be in fact Hebrew, a sign for one of the personae of God, as in in the Weigel drawing.
Paul receives inspiration as he writes the epistle, Biblia Ectypa, Christoph Weigel, from artbible
53. page 102 Right – A very friendly sun shines above a standing roman official (?) and a kneeling man. The standing man has a “rattler”.
54. page 104 Right – Healing a baby. For some time I could not understand what the two men are holding. The one on the right has a lily but
the one on the left looked like holding a giant bug. After carefully counting the limbs and the odds of the creature being an insect, I decided it is
a child.
This is not a drawing, it is a line on page 105 left, the end of another batch.
55. page 105 Right – Scribe presenting the manuscript to king commissioner.
Just for the fun of it : Uther Pendragon and Merlin
King Uther Pendragon conversing with Merlin while Igraine is watching, Chronicle of England, England, c. 1307-c. 1327, Peter Langtoft, from British Library
56. page 108 Right – the magic wand, again.
57. page 110 Right – The lamentation of Jeremiah.
A similar drawing is the one from page 65 Left, which I identified as Jeremiah lamenting over Jerusalem.
page 65 Left
I did not change my mind…

a. Christ Wept over the City of Jerusalem. b. Jeremiah Lamented over Jerusalem.
Speculum humanæ salvationis , Chapter XV. Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, Paris, Ms. lat. 593, in A Medieval Mirror, Adrian Wilson & Joyce Lancaster Wilson, page. 54, from UC Press E-
Books Collection, 1982-2004
58. page 113 Left – David worshiping God – It is an image used in Books of Hours in the Penitential Psalms section.
David praying in Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, fol 48v, Limbourg brothers, c. 1410, from christusrex
(10) The Story in the Pictures (pages 117 though 137)

59. page 117 Right – Five adults on the top of a mountain. Something small, like a baby, maybe, is held over a bowl with water. The baptism
of a child?
It resembles to another CR drawing, which I think is the Circumcision of Christ.
page 25 Right – see in (5) The Story in the Pictures
It could be the same scene. In the Gospels of Tsar Ivan Alexander, when the same episode is told by two or more evangelists, the same drawing
is employed, again and again (like the Baptism of Jesus – four times). The only problem is that the Circumcision and Presentation in the
Temple are only recounted by Luke, a second drawing on the same subject would not be justified, if these are the Gospels.
60. page 127 Left – Angel at the bedpost. Somebody is lying peacefully in his/her bed, while a bearded angel is flapping his wings at
his/her head.
Who is the angel, who is the sleeper? For this to be known with certainty, hopefully the scribbles will be understood, otherwise, let’s face it, we
are talking about a Christian book, angels visiting humans in their sleep is the norm. It is their job.
It happens to Joseph in Matthew’s Gospel, three times: first time he is advised to accept the pregnant Mary, the second time he us urged to
take his family to Egypt and avoid Herod’s Massacre of the Innocents, and the third time he is announced about the death of Herod.
(I only found two out of three in this icon with the early life of Jesus.)
11th Century icon of The Nativity, with Scenes from the childhood of Christ, Monastery of St. Catherine, Sinai, Egypt, from PaperModelKiosk
It repeatedly happened to Peter:

An angel appears to St. Peter in prison, summoning him to wake up, Missal (Dominican use), c. 1390-1400, fol. 204v, from Koninklijke Bibliotheek
And it reportedly happened to Paul (Acts 16:9-10). I just can’t find any image of it.
So far, the visitor was always Gabriel.
The Ethiopian Gondar Homiliary is dedicated to the miracles of Archangel Michael, among which, seven resemble our CR drawing. They are
about healing people, except for one, where the Archangel is admonishing a lazy man.
The Archangel healing a sick man, p.247, The Gondar Homiliary, 17th century, from The Walters Art Museum
The Archangel admonishing the idle man, p. 286, The Gondar Homiliary, 17th Century, from the Walters Art Museum
61. page 128 Left – The Kinship of Jesus and John the Baptist (?) – Two seated couples, each hold a shield, on each shield stands a radiant
man. The two standing men are facing each other and saluting with one arm raised.
The only thing I could think about is a symbolic representation of some sort of relationship between the two men, and the family ties between
Jesus and John the Baptist were the only ones to come to my mind. I could not find anything similar. The theme however exists (comes from
the Gospel of Luke), and sometimes it is presented in a rather unusual way.
Visitation, Christ-child and St. John the Baptist shown ‘in utero’, Speculum Humanae Salvationis, fol. 51r, c. 1400-1500, from Koninklijke Bibliotheek
62. page 130 Left – Huh? Two guys dusting a carpet?

This?
The brass vessel in which the entrants to the temple are washed – A Medieval Mirror, Specullum Humanae Salvationis 1324 – 1500, by Adrian Wilson and Joyce Lancaster Wilson on UC
Press E-Books Collection, 1982-2004
63. page 133 Right – In Hoc Signo Vinces (?) – In this sign you will conquer. A crowned king is seated with a rattler in his hand and an
angel hovers on a crescent object, wings wide open, spreading beyond the frame.
This is one of the pictures that captured my attention and made me speculate the most. None of the googling words combinations ( weren’t that
many) gave any reasonable results and browsing through the on-line manuscript databases was not successful either (imagewise). I had to
read!
There is an episode in the Acts of the Apostles, where Herod Agrippa I (King Herod) has a terminal encounter with an angel. The people of
Tyre and Sidon come and ask for peace and food, which the king (!) gallantly grants, giving them reason for much joy and making them cheer
and say conventional things like: “He speaks like a god not like a man!” Apparently, the king took this cheer too seriously ” And immediately
an angel of the Lord struck him because he did not give God the glory, and he was eaten by worms and died.” (Acts 12:23). Good story, not very
popular though.

An on-line colouring book which I lost track of, gave me another hint. It showed Constantine the Great along with an angel. It is a story I
actually knew since the fifth grade, I just did not know an angel was involved. Emperor Constantine the Great, before one of his battles (some
say the one with Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge, others with the Huns) had a series of visions that lead him to victory and made him convert
to Christianity. As I learned in school, the vision involved a huge bright cross in the sky with the words “In hoc signo vinces”. My history book
made no mention of the Archangel Michael being involved, neither does Eusebius of Caesarea.
Yet, it is a very popular angel story:
he Archangel helping Emperor Constantine against his enemies, The Gondar Homiliary, 17th century, from The Walters Art Musem
Oh, and where’s the sign? The one that leads to victory? The huge cross in the sky, all gold, all shining, resplendent with gems? Above the
king’s head there is a small cross…
I love this explanation and I see a small beard on the angels chin, but the wretched thing under his feet make him look too much like the first
Mondsichel Madonna. It is only fair to mention it:
Woman of the Apocalypse, Hortus Deliciarum, 12th century Encyclopedia, from Wikipedia
I still go with Constantine and Michael.
64. page 134 Left –King David worshiping God YHWH . The king is kneeling in front of the sun with letters inscribed.
Pretty straightforward: here is the king with a Cyrillic lettering which says Tzarul David, while in the sun are the Hebrew letters for YHWH, in
exact this order, I mean from left to right.
David worshiping God, in Psaltire a sfântului Proroc David pre limbă rumânească, 17th century Psalter, CRV 65, p.14 – from the Romanian Digital Library
This is one of my best “catches” in the entire book. As I see it, the implications of understanding this picture are reaching into understanding
the script and the meaning of the entire book. I talk about it both in Divine Designators and in !rorriM.
65. page 137 Left -neat ending line

66. page 142 Right – The Conversion of St. Paul (?) Rays of light pour over a kneeling man who is at the same time receiving a glowing
sphere from a standing figure.
The conversion of St. Paul has two episodes. The first occurs on the road to Damascus and involves a sheaf of light blinding Saul, a cruel
persecutor of Christians, and causing him to fall off his horse. The second happens in Damascus, where the shaken Saul is taken by his
companions, and where a Christian priest, Ananias, commanded by Jesus in a vision, comes to give him back the light of his eyes. Eventually
baptizes the former persecutor, thus creating the most formidable weapon of the Christian faith, the efficient and relentless apostle Paul.
Saul falls from his horse, blinded by the light, Book of Hours, fol.116r. , c.1490-1500, from Koninklijke Bibliotheek
Obviously, the CR drawing has the sheaf of rays but lacks the horse. The healing episode famously involves the imposition of hands and not
handing over something. So, I don’t know. This was my best guess.
Ananias anoints Paul, Syrian icon, 14th century, from Antiochian Orthodox

68. page 148 Left – As the deer pants for streams of water,so my soul pants for you, my God. Psalm 42 W or 41 E (Eastern,
Western Christianity) – A Crucifixion between a man and a stag.
David praying and the stag at the spring,

I was considering the legend of St. Hubertus, who, while chasing a stag, saw a crucifix between his antlers and, subsequently, dedicated his life
to the church. His vision was more like this:
Bottle of Jagermeister (empty)

69. page 153 Right – Jesus crucified between the two thieves.
You can’t say which of them is the good one, they both look so joyous. The bad thief’s name was Gestas. The good thief’s name was Dismas. Or
Dysmas. Or Dimas, or maybe Dumachus, or Titus or Rakh. Or Jobab. See the List of names for the biblical nameless.
Jesus crucified with the two malefactors, Speculum Humanae Salvationis, fol. 27v, c. 1400-1500, from Koninklijke Bibliotheek
70. page 155 Right – spreading the Christian faith?
71. page 159 Right – more spreading ?
72. page 163 Left – Jesus, Peter or Paul with a child. I know, it looks like blessing Aladdin on the flying carpet.
73. page 167 Left – The guardian angel. I spilled everything I know on the subject in the previous batch (see Angel at the bedpost).
74. page 170 Left – Man/saint goes with his rattler to church.
75. page 176 Right – Jesus and the Samaritan woman. A very elaborate drawing, it even has two little medallions in the top corners
with little portraits in them. It looks like it happens on a theatre scene, beyond the arched curtain with the embellished border.
Jesus, tired after a long journey, sits outside the walls of a Samaritan city, when a woman comes to draw water from Jacob’s well. Jesus asks for
a drink of water which leads to a conversation and the woman (with the very big chin) is convinced that she is talking to Christ who promises:
“the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life” (John 4:14)
Jesus with the Samaritan woman, The Gospels in Arabic, fol. 219a, 1684, from The Digital Walters
76. page 178 Right – Maybe the people of Sychar, the Samaritan city, coming to Jesus?
77. page 183 Right – An evangelist. I’d say, John.

78. page 187 Right – The Archangels Michael and Gabriel. If I were to publish a book about the Codex from Rohonc, this picture
would be on the front cover. It drew my attention from the very first moment, it fascinates me still. It tickles my brain. Yes, there are two
angels, most likely they are Michael and Gabriel, however, Phanuel or Metatron are not excluded. But the strangeness… The firm and vaulted
sky to which the sun and the moon are pinned on the inside… The little platforms for the angels… The things the angels are holding…The cross
between two mushrooms… Oh, the implications…
As for the cross, this shape appears in two other images, and, as a pictogram, in the text:
page 55 Right

page 57 Right
A shape that might be familiar, the cross pattee:
Templar Armada, from Knights Templar Vault

Grand Master of the Teutonic Order, from Wikipedia
So, Templars, huh? And the crescent in the angel’s hand – the first thought is Islam. Combine the image of the two facing angels, one with a
cross and the other with a crescent, with the gossip about the Templars’ alleged unhealthy sympathy for Islam (Did I say unhealthy? It was
lethal.) and you have this grandiose image of two major Abrahamic religions united in the skies: Jibraayl, the one who delivered the word of
God, holding the crescent, and Michael, the one who is the word of God, holding the cross.
OK, let’s just stop for a minute, before we rule the CR as the work of an undercover Templar and an ecumenical vision of heaven.
First, the cross pattee is not necessarily Templar. Or Teutonic. Unless the Queen Mother was one of them:
Crown of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, from The British Monarchy
As for the crescent moon…
The sun, the moon and the stars are out there, shining for everybody and anybody who “lifts his eyes and looks to the heavens” (Is 40:26), the
phases of the moon were studied, understood and taken as celestial guide for shaping time long, long before us, the Codex from Rohonc, the
founding of Rome or the Exodus. As symbols, they are unanimously recognized by people everywhere and at any age:
7 year old Jemima’s drawing – from Keep Learning, Keep Smiling
But this is a Christian book, so let’s stick to the Christian imagery. The Book of Revelation is riddled with cosmic images. One of the most
potent, with a huge impact on the Marian iconography, is the pregnant woman who gives birth to the child that will defeat the dragon of evil.
She is clad in the sun, wears a crown of twelve stars and is stepping on the moon.(Rev 12:1-18).
19th century Mondsichel Madonna, Leopold Kupelwieser, from Wikipedia
It is the Gothic Mondsichelmadonna, the Madonna of the Sickle Moon, of lasting popularity. Notice her feet trampling over the moon and the
dragon. Here is a gallery of 139 such Madonnas, and here some more.
At the time when the Revelation was written, the main religions overshadowing Christianity were Mithraism/Sol Invictus and the cult of the
lunar goddesses: Diana and Isis.
Isis, terracotta, 4th century, from Stellenbosch University site, Department of Ancient Studies
Both goddesses were associated with the moon. Both were venerated and both had attributes common with Mary. Diana was the eternal virgin
but Isis was the true competitor, as the Great Mother, the birthgiver, the nurser and protector of a sacred child, Horus. She was surrounded by
a haze of appealing myths that made her incredibly popular. She was “the mother of stars, the parent of times, and mistress of all the world“,
linked to the mysterious Egypt, related to magic and celebrated in flashy processions.
In the “The Golden Ass”, Apuleius gives a colorful description of such a procession (in the eleventh book): men dressed up as soldiers, as
hunters, as women, boys and girls carrying candles, torches, musical instruments, women covered in garlands, spreading flowers and herbs, all
singing, all reciting odes, playing the brass, the silver and the gold instruments. Let’s not forget the bear dressed as a matron, the ape
mimicking a shepherd and the ass with wings glued to his back. And then came the priests, with their lustrous bald heads, carrying the sacred
relics, bright flames, coffers with secrets, the altar of the veiled goddess, and other marvelous artifacts, among them a vessel picturing on its
sides hieroglyphs and “the Serpent Aspis, holding out his scaly neck“, all in honor of the celestial goddess.
It is said that the cult of Isis prepared the antic world for Christianity. It probably did, but it also generated confusion and an urge among
Christians to separate themselves from a religion that could potentially engulf their own. Apuleius places among the priests one“that bare on
his stomacke a figure of his god, not formed like any beast, bird, savage thing or humane shape, but made by a new invention, whereby was
signified that such a religion should not be discovered or revealed to any person.”. Could that be a cross?
I can only imagine the abhorrence early Christians felt at the idea of being linked to such a display of devilish exuberance in honor of such a
sexual goddess.
For John the Revelator, this tremendously popular and officially accepted cult, was the enemy. The vision of the Mother of Christ, wearing the
sun as a cloak and stepping over the moon and the serpent, both symbols of Isis, is a hint towards the imminent victory of Christianity, who
appropriates the powerful solar symbol while overcomes the goddess of the lesser light. And thus, the moon became the symbol of The Other.
And The Other changed, as times changed. The waning moon was affixed to John the Baptist, the last of the prophets of the Old Testaments
and by extension, to the Old Testament itself and to Judaism. Making it a symbol of the Jewish people was a small step to take.
The Presentation in the Temple, Veneto, mid 16th century, from The Fitzwilliam Museum, Collection Explorer
After the fall of Constantinople and the constant and overwhelming Ottoman threat, the crescent was permanently linked to the Ottoman
Empire and Islam, as they happily embraced it (or came with it, sources are not clear).
When used by Christians in a religious context, it is usually placed in a position of inferiority. The domes of the Rizpolozhenia Church in
Kremlin are meant to commemorate the victory of Christians against Muslims in the battle of Kazan.
Church of the Deposition of the Robe, Kremlin, Moscow, 17th century, from Wikipedia
In the CR drawing, however, the cross and the crescent are facing each other, on the same level, as equals.
I am in favor of the idea that they represent the two parts of the Bible: the Old Testament is the crescent while the New Testament is the cross.
Oh wait, then it is the vision of two major religions united!
And after all the work, here is an unexpected piece of information:
“The sign was sometimes used to represent the archangel Gabriel in Cabbalistic mysticism.” (from Symbols – An Encyclopedia of Western
Signs and Ideograms)
Symbols are a tricky business.
79. page 192 Right – Presentation at the Temple – A berobed and bebearded figure holds up a baby. Facing him is a becrowned
character, with her arms extended. Behind him is another person, and behold, she has a magic wand.
Forty days after his birth, Mary and Joseph took baby Jesus to the Temple in Jerusalem, where they encountered the very respectable and very
old Simeon and Anna the prophetess, who were both happy to recognize the promised Christ in the infant. Mary hands her baby over to
Simeon, and she is probably the character on the left, with the crown. Anna is often depicted with a scroll, an attribute of the prophets.
Duccio di Buonisegna, Presentation at the Temple, 14th century, from Wikipedia
But quite as often she is represented with a magic wand. Not really, she holds a candle.
Presentation in the Temple, Les Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry, Folio 63r – the Musée Condé, Chantilly, from Wikipedia.
The event is commemorated on Candlemas Day . Oh ye of little faith, The Groundhog Day (February 2nd).
If Candlemas Day be fair and bright
Winter will have another fight.
If Candlemas Day brings cloud and rain,
Winter won’t come again.
If Candlemas Day be dry and fair,
The half o the winter’s to come and mair;
If Candlemas Day be wet and foul,
The half o the winter’s gane at Yule.
Now that we revealed the mystery of the magic wand and if this identification is correct, we still have a big problem. Why, oh why are all shiny
and holy just the characters on the right? Why is the mother of Jesus left out in the shadows, when even the prophetess shimmers? It’s true,
the flame of a candle can light up only so far. So what, is this the Book of Physics?

81. page 194 Right – Party. The seated character on the right is Jesus. He has the right halo and the inscription above him (which I explain
in The Divine Designators).

The guy on far left has a funny hat.
82. page 196 Right – Let the little children come to me, and bring their rattlers along.
Let the children come to me, The Gospels in Arabic, fol. 188b, 1684, from The Digital Walters
83. page 197 Left – ?

84. page 199 Left – The tent with the ark of the covenant (?) Lilies sprouting out of something that looks like a tent.

The Ark of the Covenant, Speculum Humanae Salvationis, fol. 13v., c. 1400-1500, from Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts
85. page 199 Right – Rudolph, the red-nosed angel.

86. page 203 Right – ?
87. page 204 Right – snake, sort of
88. page 206 Right – angry snake

(13) The Story in the Pictures (pages 206 through 214) and conclusions
89. page 206 Rigth -Another feast
90. page 210 Left – Curing the ill.
The Gospels in Arabic, 1684, from The Digital Walters
91. page 210 Right – The Devil ? A monster trampling over a snake? And a man hiding in the tree.
c. The Marriage of Adam and Eve.
d. The Temptation.
Speculum humanæ salvationis , Chapter I.
Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich, Clm 146, fol. 4 recto., from Wilson, Adrian, and Joyce Lancaster Wilson. A Medieval Mirror. Berkeley: University of California Press, c1984
92. page 212 Right – The Calling of the Apostles Peter and Andrew
Calling of Apostles Peter and Andrew, Duccio di Buonisegna, from US National Gallery of Art
93. page 214 Right – converting the court jesters?
This was the last drawing. After all that matchmaking efforts, some successful, some not, after seeing all the illuminated manuscripts, printed
books, icons, church paintings and plain paintings, here are some conclusions, based on the best similarities I found:
1. The Codex from Rohonc is undoubtedly a religious book, with Jesus as its central character. Don’t take my word for it, just see the
results of some basic arithmetics. Out of 93 drawings 9 are dividers of some sort. 25 fall in the “Dunno” category. 32 are related to the New
Testament or to other part of the Bible, and I found good and sound analogies. For the remaining 27 I found an explanation consistent with
a religious content, but you might say they stretched my imagination to various degrees. Out of these 27, seven are populated with angels
or crosses, or both, and even more with characters with a halo. I’d say, it is safe to say it is a Christian book.
2. The most popular Western religious books are the probable inspiration source, such as Books of Hours, Lectionaries, Speculum
Humanae Salvationis.
3. The North Western (late German Gothic) influence is traceable in the vast majority of the drawings. Not only the setting and
architecture but some of the themes: The Ascension and Harrowing of Hell are represented in the manner specific to English, Dutch,
Flemish, German and Scandinavian paintings.
4. Certain elements and themes have the mark of surprising Eastern influences: Jesus with wings, The Last Judgment, The Nativity with
the (missing) reclining Madonna.
5. With both Western and Eastern influences, the book is still Catholic, as shown by the blessings Jesus is passing out in most of the
drawings. His fingers are quite precisely drawn in the position specific to Catholics. But… There are some issues which make me question
the genuineness of the author’s Catholicism. Apart from the Trinity where the Holy Spirit was left out, which could be a mistake, Mary, the
mother of Jesus is constantly and intentionally replaced by other characters, as in The Last Judgment (page 79 right) or The Crucifixion
(page 26 left). Even if she is present and crowned, as in the Presentation in the Temple (page 192 right) she is left out of the shining halo
that encircles baby Jesus, the priest and the prophetess. Dissing the Holy Mother is very un-catholic. It might show the influence of a
heresy that denies a central position to the Virgin Mary, and there are plenty of them. My guess goes to Paulicians or Bogomils. The fact
that they survived, somehow under the radar, until very late, that the believers were specifically instructed to pretend they accept any faith
imposed upon them, their poorly structured church, their wide and insidious influence over the Balkans and further North, up to Russia,
the Cyrillic letters in the Codex, make me think of them. But it would be truly paradoxical to determine the content of the Codex from
Rohonc as Paulician or Bogomil based on its drawings, since they were iconoclasts. Anyway, the signs of some sort of deviation from the
Catholic dogma are quite clear.
(14) The Son of Man Came Eating and Drinking

This post started with the title. When I found this line in Matthew 11:19, I liked it so much, I felt I have to build something around it. I already
had a bunch of drawings with people seated at the table, eating and drinking, which I couldn’t identify exactly, so I thought I’d group them
together under this line. Then I came up with some more categories. Here they are: 1. The Son of Man came eating and drinking; 2. Lilies; 3.
Odd round-shaped objects; 4. Winged guys; 5. Guys with crowns; 6. Guys with mitres; 7. Soldiers; 8. Scribes.
1. The son of man came eating and drinking
pages 29, 60, 69
pages 72, 194, 206
2. Lilies
It is debatable whether the plants in 16, 42 and 79 are lilies. However, in 79, The Last Judgment, from the head of Jesus sprouts a sword and a
lily, or so it should. In the small drawing from page 71 it is more likely the hand of Jesus, extended in blessing
pages 16, 41
pages 42, 69, 71
pages 79, 104, 199
3. Odd disc-like objects
Some of this objects are obviously orbs or globis cruciger (like in 9, 21, 57, 95), but what are the rest?
pages 9, 16, 16, 21, 57
pages 55, 79, 91
pages 95, 133, 142, 170, 212
4. Winged Guys
pages 5, 5, 9
page 16
pages 55, 60, 79
pages 83, 127, 133

pages 167, 187, 199
5. Guys with crowns
pages 21, 41, 42
pages 45, 79, 88
pages 91, 105, 113
pages 133, 134, 192
6. Guys with mitres
pages 16, 52, 57, 89, 98
and what the heck wears this one?
page 214 Right
7. Soldiers
pages 26, 29, 38, 41
pages 44, 45, 59
And a very martial guy,
page 102 Right
8. Scribes – they are four, like the evangelists.
page 5, 88, 105, 183
(15) Divine Designators

In the mind-blowing diversity of the CR script, several signs or strings stand out. They caught my eye either because they “sparkle” with dots or
because their context allowed me to guess their meaning. In both cases, I presume the signs or strings of signs stand for divine names or
sacred objects or places. The special treatment they got, the special meaning they have and an urge to classify coming from the depth of my
biologist self made me gather them in this post under the name of Divine Designators. I could have used the Nomina sacra (sacred names)
phrase, used by scholars for the shortened notation of certain words in Christian manuscripts. But I don’t want to misuse terms, at least not
when I know what they mean. I have my concerns of identifying the CR special signs as nomina sacra because they do not follow the graphics
of a nomen sacrum (do not have a cross-bar) and probably cover slightly different meanings than the fifteen nomina sacra. I coined this
Divine Designators phrase for the sole purpose of naming the “special words” from the CR.
When the 72 legendary creators of the Septuagint, the first Greek rendition of the Old Testament, faced the problem of including the most
sacred name of God into their translation they preferred to transform it into Kyrios (Lord) or Theos (God).
Traduttore, traditore you may say, but the alteration was justified by their reverence to the divine name. They had to save it from being
wrongfully used by those who might not know or follow the Jewish tradition which says that the personal name of God is not to be spoken,
unless special circumstances.
The law abiding people of Israel knew that the four letters, the Tetragrammaton,
standing for the personal name of God are not to be pronounced according to their phonetic value: YHWH, which supposedly stand for
YaHWeH. Instead, the devout reader will say aloud Adonai, which means master or lord.
All Christian Churches , except for Jehova’s Witnesses, restrain from using the secret name of God to this day.
Most High, omnipotent, good Lord,
All praise, glory, honour, and blessing are yours.
To you alone, Most High, do they belong,
And no man is worthy to
pronounce your name.
(“Canticle of the Sun” by St. Francis of Assisi – from The Encyclopedia of Magic and Witchcraft, by Susan Greenwood)
Kyrios and Theos are very frequent words both in the Greek Old Testament, which is a translation, and in the New Testament, which was
originally written in Greek. At some point, scribes started writing Kyrios and Theos in a contracted form with an overstrike, creating the
first nomina sacra

Who, when, where and why started this custom is not clear yet. (Larry Hurtado – The Earliest Christian Artifacts).
Somewhere along the first centuries of Christianity, this model of contraction inspired the scribes to shorten the most frequent holy names, a
practice that became general. The original nomina sacra were in Greek but corresponding abbreviated forms were created for the Latin texts
too.
It is an ongoing debate whether these shortened words had a special pious meaning or were used for practical reasons: to create visual anchors
for the less proficient readers or to save time and space when writing easily recognizable terms, frequently used by Christians. (see Larry
Hurtado – The Earliest Christian Artifacts).
Paleographers identified 15 such words, with their declensions:

The Tetragrammaton is not part of the list, because it was not included in religious manuscripts, at least, not usually. (Eric Francke -The
Tetragrammaton and The Christian Scriptures). The refrain from using it and the uncertainty on how it should be voiced (which is real and not
definitively elucidated) fed the popular belief that it has a tremendous power and explains why it appears in magical texts. This, and the legend
according to which Solomon, the archetype of the wise and powerful magus, controlled the armies of demons and angels with the help of a star-
shaped ring, engraved with the Tetragrammaton.
Actually, this belief was embraced by philosophical movements too. For the Kabbalists and those inspired by them, the four letters contain all
the Sefirot (the ten attributes of the eternal creator) and are the origin of all things created. “The Masters of the Name”, those who knew the
combinations of the letters that represent the divine manifestations of the Sefirot, could work miracles.
The Kabbalist and the ten Sephirot, Portae Lvcis H[a]ec est porta Tetragra[m]maton iusti intrabu[n]t p[er] eam Augustae Vindelicoru[m] 1516 [VD16 J 954] – Giqatila, Yôsef Ben-Avraham,
from Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München
Mainstream religions may be shy about using the secret name of God and the Tetragrammaton but the Codex from Rohonc is quite different.
The powerful Tetragrammaton appears in the sun,
a match to the popular portrayal of King David in Books of Hours and Psalters.
King David in prayer before God, 17th century Psalter Psaltire a sfântului Proroc David pre limbă rumânească, translated by Dosoftei, Metropolitan Bishop of Moldavia, CRV 65, p.14,
from Romanian Digital Library
But the Tetragrammaton appears in the text as well
page 189
And not only once. In several variants, probably due to scribal sloppiness, it turns up over 100 times in the entire manuscript, 17 times in the
first 100 pages.
This is peculiar (unless you are a Jehova’s Witness), but the next Designator is the equivalent of the ubiquitous Christogram.
IHC XC – is an alternative of the Nomen Sacrum of Jesus Christ in the form adopted by Western denominations.
I should explain how I identified it.
page 21 Left
Maybe everyone recognizes the scene above at the first glance. I didn’t. I had to break it into elements: three kings, a city in the distance, three
human figures sheltered under a roof, one of them smaller. And a big star above. Aha! When it dawned on me, I tried the same way to see what
text would fit in the box. “The birth of Jesus Christ” was my best guess. (In retrospect, it wasn’t the brightest one, “Adoration of the Magi”
would have been more accurate.) I tried it out in several languages (with a little help from Google translate), hoping to find a good equivalent
for the first string of signs, the ones on the right. I didn’t. Than I had another Aha! moment. In most of the languages I sampled, the word
order can be the same (Hungarian is the exception), hence the last signs could mean Jesus Christ.
A similar string, very likely to stand for “Resurrection oh Jesus Christ” is in the picture from page 59 Left
Let’s take a look at the two strings
Top Birth of Jesus Christ, bottom Resurrection of Jesus Christ. I’d say it supports my theory.
For a long time I read it IC XC, as typical for Eastern Christianity

Jesus Christ – detail from Deesis mosaic, Hagia Sophia, Istanbul, from Wikimedia Commons
The crossed hook with the c attached was somehow suggestive. This little diagram is not as much about how the writer made up the sign as it is
about how I decomposed it.
This implies that the small, appended c stands for the –s ending.

What if
is also a sign with an appended c?

This is supported by the fact that the sign exists on itself in the manuscript:
Which made me take into account the possibility that

means IHC.
In Western manuscripts both forms, IHS and IHC, were used. They stand for I E sou S.
The letter H (eta) was pronounced [ɛ] in Ancient Greek and is pronounced [i] since medieval times. Accordingly, in Eastern Christianity, the
name is written Iisus and pronounced with a long I [i:].
The Cyrillic alphabet was created in the 10 century, derived from the Ancient Greek script from which took over the letter H-eta with the value
th
[i]. In time, the shape changed into И. In Cyrillic script, this Christogram is I И C.
And this is how I think the CR cryptographer came up with his personal version of the Christogram:
If my conjecture is right, than “N” stands for I (like in York), the small appended “c” stands for the –s ending, and the “I” could be either [e], if
the creator of the script was a classicist, a short [i] if he had links with Eastern Christianity, or an H if he took the letters at face value.
This brief explanation can hardly convey the major shift it caused in my approach of the CR. For over a year I searched for correspondences of
the drawings strictly with Greek and Slavonic manuscripts and icons. When I accepted this possibility, I expanded my search to Western
manuscripts, and it was quite a productive opening. It also shows just how little I knew about religion.
Here it seems to identify one of the table companions as Jesus.
page 194 Right
The string is very frequent in the manuscript. All my statistics are for the first 100 pages.
I did not count the [N] and is not in the table, since I consider it one of the “ordinary” signs, when on itself.
The third combination from left is mainly used to mark the pages from 31 to 49 – probably the Passion pages (32 of 36 occurrences).
page 46
The singular appearance of
is probably a scribal mistake.
I was baffled by the high frequency of
though, which I would have considered a “special” sign, part of the string. I have no explanation for its use as a single character.
These were the two Divine Designators I am sure about.

The next one is a puzzling string, which, I have doubts about its place among the Divine Designators.
page 41 Right
And again
page 45 Left
It would suggest that it is XC written in reverse.

I have problems with it because inside the text is independent or separated from
by several other signs. It shows up 62 times, but mainly on pages from 39 to 54 (the pages around the drawings above). Maybe it identifies the
other character, Herodes or Pilates.
Another tricky string is
which is quite frequent in the text but appears only in two images
page 38 Right
page 44 Left
and slightly modified here

I don’t know its meaning.
Then, there are the sparkling signs. The most abundant one is
The dots suggest radiance, as in this drawing with Christ in glory.
page 57 Right
The sign appears 169 times, sometimes in the combination
Could it be the substitute for Kyrios and the string above means Lord Christ?
The following one is really intriguing:
It clearly got the special treatment but what outstanding name or word is in the New Testament formed by repeating parts. I was considering
for a while Albanian as the possible language of CR and thought that it might signify nënë – mother. I could not corroborate this though, and
later I found that the triangle stands for [i] or [y]. So, is it sisi, mimi, nini? It appears 30 times only in the first 100 pages.
Had I studied only the first 100 pages, I wouldn’t have found this variant (10 occurrences), one of them mixed up.
These are all the special, haloed signs
The signs with 0 occurrences appear only in the pages from 100 to 248.
And a singular firefly on page 49 :-).
While the ones on the first column might be simply pictograms standing for candles, as in this drawing
page 192 Right
it is anybody’s guess what the rest stand for.
Finally, here is a table with the strings or signs I think are the Divine Designators, even if for some of them the divine meaning is still a
mystery:
(16) If This Script Makes Any Sense, Then, …

This is to be read in front of any conjecture I made about the script. Does it convey uncertainty and mistrust with a hint of frustration? Good.
Because that is how I feel whenever I get deeper in the code cracking business. There is a good reason why it resisted all efforts until now.
For a survey of the attempts made to decipher it, please see theWikipedia page.
It is not just an elaborate code (if it is), but it mocks you. Whenever you think you found some (common) sense in it, things change. Whenever
you think you are finally familiar with the signs, the signs change. They appear and disappear like the blue tigers in the short story by Jorge
Luis Borges (it starts with “A famous poem by Blake …”). And yet, it was deciphered as many times as I quit smoking last year. Some did it
reading it from left to right, top to bottom, some from right to left, bottom to top, some found not only the key but also a completely new old
language. But most of those who got involved with it probably felt like I do at times, that somebody, somewhere is laughing, so pleased to have
fooled so many. MUHAHAHA.
And then I go back to the drawings, and they look so clumsy and candid…
One Saturday afternoon, in May 2010, I decided I will decode the manuscript. I had several printed pages from the Codex, the Latin-Romanian
edition of St. Augustin’s Confessions (it seemed appropriate) and E. A. Poe’s Gold-Bug (for the cryptology know-how). What can I say? If you
want to be successful in this business you will have to be far better equipped than that. So were Konstantin Jireček or Gyürk Ottó(who cracked
the Gardony Geza diaries) and still failed.
After that I promised to keep away from the script. It was the reasonable thing to do, considering my (lack of) expertize in paleography or
cryptography.
Despite all the sound arguments, eventually I couldn’t resist the temptation to give it a go. Every now and then.
Here is a summary of what I found:
1. Fluxus – about the direction of writing

2. Similarity to other alphabets
3. Charting the signs
4. Minor cracks in the code
5. Concordance between text and drawings
6. Some thoughts, or rather doubts, concerning the script
1. Fluxus
It is generally accepted that the script goes right to left, but there is no consensus on whether it goes top to bottom or bottom to top. Miklos
Locsmandi suggested that it should be read from the bottom cover. M.K. Singh deciphered 24 pages reading it left to right while Viorica
Enachiuc did it to the entire book reading it right to left, bottom to top, starting at page 1.
At first I did seriously consider the bottom to top variant, mainly because of the first page. The “word” at the bottom right looks like a good
place to start the text.
page 1
Another argument is on the second page, where a glitch on the eighth line from the top seems to cause a large gap in the line above. This would
have supported the Enachiuc flux.
page 2
But a closer look reveals a different situation. In two successive drawings the same string turns up but, as in the second drawing it did not fit in
one row, the left half was written underneath.
page 176
page 178
Or, here, one of the often recurring strings,
which on page 100 shows up on the left side in one row, while on the right side is written on two rows:
page 100
I think this closes the case: the writing is right to left, top to bottom.
But the CR still has a surprise. Almost by accident, I found that the page order is somewhat particular. Bear with me for a moment.
Here is the right side of page 85, with a long string I highlighted:
page 85 Right
Now, here is the left side of the the same page. At the bottom of the page I highlighted the signs that appear to be the exact match for the
starting part of the string above.
page 85 Left
But does it continue? Check with the top of the right side. No match. No match on the previous page either. But on the next page, 86, there it is,
the rest of the string:
page 86
I am confident now that the script goes:

I verified it on several pages, and it appears to be consistent. Of course, for this I needed to find strings I was familiar with.
It was a very depressing finding. I was elated at first and went through page after page, “reading” them in the right order, expecting them to
suddenly start making sense. They didn’t.
(I rechecked the Wikipedia page and Gyurk Otto found the same thing. Darn, I thought I am the only one who knows this. Well, at least I stand
proof for him.)
However, it made a significant change in the order of the drawings. This is the reason why I labeled them with Right or Left instead of any
other sort of numbering. Therefore, the very first drawing of the manuscript is on the right side of page 5, the evangelist Matthew with his
symbol the angel, or winged man.
page 5
The second drawing is the one on the left, the Sacrifice of Isaac, maybe an illustration to the genealogy of Christ, with which Matthew’s Gospel
starts. Could this be the first part of the Gospel according to Matthew?
2. Similarity to other alphabets

Each of those who studied the manuscript saw similarities with another writing system. Let’s see: Hungarian Runes, Cyrillic, Brahmi. Did
anybody mention Hebrew? I guess I saw on a forum.
The first ones to see the manuscript noticed the characters alike to the Hungarian Runes.
Here they are, on my husband’s T-shirt. He got it from Magyarorszag (Hungary).

Find out what it says, and remember, right to left.
There are obvious similarities, but so are with Cyrillic, Brahmi, Old Turkic, Greek, Latin, Iberian, Hebrew, and some other.
This is an image of a minute Albanian manuscript, written in an alphabet invented probably in the 18th century named the Elbasan script, after
the Albanian city. The pages are 10/7 cm and the alphabet is original, adapted to the Albanian language, showing some Slavic and Greek
influences. Doesn’t it look a bit familiar? However, the Elbasan script has a “normal” amount of signs, and it is well understood, in fact on the
site where I found it there is a full transliteration and translation.
The Elbasan Gospel, written in 1761 by Gregory of Durres, from Robert Elsie’s site Albanian Literature in Translation
Here are the links to some of the sources I used for comparing scripts:
Every type of script

Omniglot
Old alphabets from Abur to Zapotec
Pantographia by Edmund Fry
For Cyrillic and Glagolitic cursive script (and Elbasan)
Die albanesischen und slavischen Schriften by Leopold Geitler
Croatian History – a site created by Darko Zubrinic
For various others
Turkic alphabet
Proto-Bulgarian
Iberian
On the main line for Hebrew
Shorthand
Tironian Notes of Karl Eberhard Henke
The Mi’kmaq script
An Introduction to Latin and Greek Paleography by E. M. Thompson
Warning: Should anyone indulge into comparing scripts, be aware. It is like reading a medical encyclopedia. You end up suffering from 42
unrelated and rare diseases.
Best proof, the following resemblance I found, thanks to Omniglot:
chav’belu’ = victory
Codex Rohonc = unknown meaning
In case you have not recognized it, the top line is Klingon (language and alphabet).
Mr. Worf
And in the end, is there any benefit in comparing the Rohonc script to known writings? Are these similarities relevant in any way?
The following example would suggest that it’s a futile work. Here is the little 8, present mainly in the second half of the manuscript and also
present in a number of alphabets:
From Edmund Fry’s Pantographia here are several phonetic values for the exact same character: in Chaldeean 17 is “S”, in Charlemagne 3 –
“L”, in Coptic 1 – “I”, in English 19 – “G”, in Etruscan 1 – “PH” while in Etruscan 2 – “H” and Etruscan 3 – “F”. Take your pick. Not to mention
that in cursive Glagolitic writing, “I” is a standing 8 (sort of) when it’s at the beginning of a word as seen in the Istrian Book of
Boundaries (Istarski razvod).
Probably many of the signs from the Codex have twins in some alphabet. But are any of these similarities deliberate or mere accidents? The
simplest explanation for the coincidental letters is that if anyone invents a writing system with so many signs, inevitably, some of them will
have lookalikes in existing (or yet to be invented) alphabets.
Szabo Karoly, the same one who purported the counterfeit hypothesis, commented on the script “If I want them to be Cyrillic they are, if I
don’t want, they aren’t”. Now, here is where I beg to differ.
Whereas resemblance to various alphabets might be fortuitous, two characters in the Rohonc script are not just alike Cyrillic letters but they
are actually the Cyrillic letters mirrored, with their original phonetic value. I am talking about И (if you do not see it in your browser – the
inverted N) standing for “I” and C standing for “S”. I’ll get to this a bit later in 4. Minor cracks in the code.
And then there are a large number of graphemes strikingly similar to Cyrillic letters,
page 15 Right with a sign similar to a reversed Cyrillic “YU”
or to Glagolitic letters.
The Baska tablet – 12th century Glagolitic inscription from the Croatian island of Krk – from Wikipedia
First, notice the letters highlighted in yellow. They are both “M”s, showing that there was fairly common to use letters from different alphabets
within the same text.
Then, take a look at the reddish sign, which according to the transliteration by Darko Zubrinic , stands for the sound śća. And here is its CR
twin (also in red). The greenish Glagolitic letters from the Baska tablet have several possible similar signs in the CR, oriented the same way or
mirrored, while the blue one is identical.
page 85 Left
page 53 Left
page 169 Left
The Glagolitsa on page 169 is my favorite. It is very neat and very rare in the Codex. While on page 169 is carefully drawn, check it out on page
204. It looks like the same sign but traced by a hand familiar with the trajectory of the letter. A hand that couldn’t have become familiar with it
from the CR, since it only appears twice (with a third maybe).
page 204 Left
And an excerpt from another famous Glagolitic rounded script, Codex Zographensis, comes with the same letters (the purple sign, which is an
A, looks like a plus (+) sign, very common in CR).
Another similarity, this time with the Hebrew alphabet is with the signs that clumsily imitate the Tetragrammaton. The intention is to make
them look like the letters for YHWH and they mean YHWH (see in Divine Designators).
This pattern of “mock” letters, interspersed in the script raise serious doubts about the script as a whole.
3. Charting the signs

I tried to make an inventory of the “letters”, but gave up after the first 100. Signs, not pages.
Then I found on-line Nemethi Kalman’s book (which is no longer available but here is a copy I made of his list ). He identified 800 separate
signs, however, some of them seem normal variations of the same sign.
They are awfully many for us, used to alphabets consisting of 25 to 30 signs. But cryptology books mention nomenclators, a system combining
both code and cipher (go figure, these are not synonyms), consisting of substitutes for each letter of the alphabet plus special signs that could
mean entire words, names or parts of words (the definition I found in Code Breaker – The History of Secret Communication, by Stephen
Pincock and Mark Frary). You could, for instance, decipher the “heavily” encrypted text below if you knew the key (which is to replace each
letter with the following one),
Xf uppl pvs gsjfoe # up uif ipvtf pg gbuifs $ ofbs @.
but you still need my nomenclator to find out who or what #, $ and @ stand for.
Such nomenclators, which appeared in the 14th century, grew from several coded words to several thousand by the 18th century, the heaviest
ones being created in Russia. It is up to the cryptographer to select how many words will have a specific designator. 800 signs don’t seem so
many anymore, do they?
Identifying and isolating the signs is a problem in itself.
I found Miklos Locsmandi’s article on his site and worked my way through it, struggling with my poor Hungarian, a better fit for reading
goulash recipes than computer based analysis of an old manuscript, as he did. He recreated the signs on the computer but stopped at the first
five pages. He also ranked the graphemes by frequency, identified the most frequent strings, determined that it is not gibberish, and that the
language is unlikely to be Hungarian.
But charting the signs of only five pages does not cover the disturbing diversity of the “letters” in the Codex. And by the way, what qualifies as a
“letter”? This puzzles me still. Some of the graphemes clearly stand on their own, other seem to aggregate to form more elaborate units.
When I counted and identified the signs for some statistics of my own, I regarded the little circle as one of the five letters in the string but as
part of a complex sign in the next one.
In the case of
should I count two sticks, a “T” and an inverted “c”, or is it a single sign? I opted for the single sign in this case.
Another difficulty in charting the signs is the careless handwriting. In many cases is difficult to tell the signs apart. Are these different “words”
or the same “word” in a faulty transcription?
Only the first and third characters of the five letter word are identical. Are they different words?The examples of confusing
handwriting are abundant.
So here is an arbitrary classification:
a. singles
b. compounds
c. ligatures
d. pictograms which probably work like this
Certain signs look more graphic, or they stand out from the lines, these were the criteria I used in selecting them. In the table they are
accompanied by the page number where they are located.
The first one (from page 44) appears opposite to the flogging scene and could be a whip. The second is obviously a cross. The ones on pages 84
and 181 could be the sun, while the ones on pages 142 and 163 could be the moon. Calling them black suns is so tempting, but I have examples
suggesting that the darkening means lesser light, like the candle in this drawing.
page 84 Right
The one on page 96, if it is not Kermit, could be the Hellmouth. No idea what the rest of them are.
e. neumes – the text might include indications on how to voice the words. The first combination from below might be accentuated or the
sound might be pronounced longer when written this way:
I also had the confuse and confusing thought (trying to find a justification for the diversity of signs) that maybe musical notations are mixed
among letters. Since the waving dots on page 212 look pretty much as some sort of chanting indication, this idea could be put to rest. And when
I think about all the neumes, Hebrew and Slavonic cantillation marks I stared at (I can’t say I studied).
page 212 L
This is how musical notations look in a beautiful illuminated manuscript

‘Missus est Gabriel’, leaf from a choirbook, Germany or northern Netherlands, about 1250.
Museum no. 1519 Victoria and Albert Museum
And here they are in a Russian manuscript
The text is accompanied by znamenny marks in a Russian lubok – from Wikipedia
The book written by Viorica Enachiuc (Rohonczi Codex – Dechiffrement, transcription et traduction) has a CD attached with the recording of
the song reconstructed based on the fragment from page 212 of the CR.
Unfortunately, I did not find it, but here is the next best thing: a song recreated from a knife.
f. starters and enders – Miklos Locsmandi proposed as a sentence starter the quite frequent
I am not convinced but I don’t have a better idea.
Two slash lines at the end of the row turn up throughout the manuscript, but not at the end of each row and not to mark the end of a sentence.
The already familiar string below is separated
page 91
Or the longer repeated string on page 93.
page 93
If it were a sentence or paragraph ender, it shouldn’t be placed in two different positions of the same string. It is more likely a void filler.
g. numbers – as identified by Gyurk Otto – see Locsmandi’s article, page 15.

h. firlefantz – the signs of the manuscript usually fit between two parallel lines, with some of them emerging above the upper line by a little,
but never descending under the bottom line.
There are some singular signs though, which are unexpectedly exploding in the interlinear space, like the gesture of a twitching hand. Here are
some of these firlefantz.
page 128
page 133
i. signature – yes, the work is signed, on page 222, not quite at the end, there are three more pages after the signature, a colophon maybe?
page 222
In the enormous diversity of the signs which appear and disappear, I tried to see which ones are constant. To this purpose I took ten random
pages (with no drawings) and listed all the signs for the left and the right side of each. I compared the results for each page and then compared
the ten short lists resulted. This is the final product.
Six characters, one of them the omnipresent inverted c. Apart of which remain five signs, like in the basic five vowels? And, as we will see, one
of them is a proven vowel.
4. Minor cracks in the code

The obvious place to start the code cracking (or cipher deciphering) was the standardized inscription (Titulus Crucis), always the same (or so I
thought), the acronym that appears on crucifixes: INRI (Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum – Jesus from Nazareth, King of the Jews), that would
provide three certain letters, since the first and the last should be the same.
page 26 Left
Surprise!
They are not. The acronym appears to be, as I composed it with larger signs taken from the text:
How can this be? If this script makes any sense, and the Titulus Crucis consists of four different letters, I needed to find a plausible
explanation. Actually, I found two:
a. In Eastern Christian (Orthodox) countries, the Titulus might use the initials of the text in Greek:
INBI – Iésous o Nazóraios o Basileus tón Ioudaión (king of the Jews)

which, sometimes is augmented to:
INBK – Iésous o Nazóraios o Basileus tóu Kosmou (king of the World)
INBD – Iésous o Nazóraios o Basileus tis Doxis (king of Glory)
The acronym for both will have four different letters.
b. What if it comes from the translation into some vernacular?
Hebrew – Yeshu’a HaNatserat Melech HaYehudim

Polish – Jezus Nazarejczyk Król Żydowski
Bulgarian -Исус Назаретски, Цар Юдейски
Croatian -Isus Nazarećanin, kralj židovski
Lithuanian – Jėzus Nazarietis Žydų Karalius
Hungarian -Názáreti/Nazoreus/Nazireus Jézus, a zsidók/júdeaiak királya
Romanian – Isus din Nazareth, Regele Iudeilor/Jidovilor/Evreilor
The cross in the altar of St. Vitus Church in Ellwangen – from Wikipedia
In Hebrew the first and last word start with the same letter, I think. The rest of the languages would provide four different initials. I must
admit that I never saw a Titulus written in this way before. But then again, I have never really looked before.
All these variants (except for Hungarian) support the idea that the first letter is “I” or “J”. The second should be an “N”, but the letters in the
drawing are nor clearly readable.
The other drawing that can give some hints is also partly readable and confirms only the first sign.
page 52 Left
This left me with only one letter identified which happens to be the inverted sign for the letter “I” in the Cyrillic alphabet, hence the only
confirmed similarity I was talking about.
This one letter was the hint that helped me in recognize the Christogram I wrote about in the Divine Designators. Another identifiable
inscription is on the drawing with the Sacrifice of Isaac. It stands most likely for Abraham, Isaac or Sacrifice.
page 5 Left
It appears again on the Last Judgment drawing above the head of one of the companions of Jesus
page 79 Right
Obviously, it identifies a character, meaning either Abraham or Isaac. It probably stands for Abraham, but I cannot stop seeing it as Isaac.
It should be Abraham. He was the first patriarch, the first one to make a covenant with God, the one who started worshiping a single god and
made a major difference in the life of his people by doing so. His name appears 74 times in the New Testament, in 27 different places, often in
phrases like “the people of Abraham” or “the God of Abraham”. In the Codex, the string appears 48 times: on pages 5 – 5x (1 drawing), 6 – 4x,
27 – 3x, 62 – 6x, 79 – 1x (drawing), 85 – 1x, 90 – 9x, 91 – 2x, 106 – 5x, 107 – 1x, 209 – 5x, 215 – 6x (and 2 maybes).
Now, take a look at the character on the left. He is probably Moses, the other great Hebrew who made a covenant with God and who lead his
people to the promised land. (I explained in the chapter The Story in the Pictures, pages 69 through 91). He is also identified by a string, the
same as the one smudged in the drawing with the (three!) tables of the law.
page 14 Right
Therefore, the script is

And there we have a second inverted Cyrillic letter: the c standing for “S”. (Of course, I noticed the resemblance of the first letter with the
Hebrew “Shin”).
Moisi or Moisie is not uncommon in Slavic or Romanian inscriptions of the name.I was a bit disappointed by the outcome for the little triangle.
Based on its high frequency, I was convinced that it stands for “E”.These are my minor cracks in the code/cipher, here is the seed of an
alphabet/nomenclator
The signs for I and Ij might be reversed.For the graphemes signifying Jesus Christ and YHWH, please see my post about the Divine
Designators. And I forgot about the birdie that means Jerusalem.
Back to the “mock” letters theory. I was wondering what might have inspired the CR author in “designing” the very frequent triangle letter. So,
here is an inscription with the name of Moses (Moyses) in a Danish church painting.
Moses and Aaron, Keldby church wall painting, Mills-Kronborg Collection (14-028)
Just a thought.
5. Concordance between text and drawings There seems to be a match between several drawings and the surrounding text.The script above
the Sacrifice of Isaac drawing shows up on the same page four more times
page 5
and five times on the next page
page 6
In the text opposite to the flogging scene, the pictograms suggest a scourge. This particular pictogram is nowhere else to be seen in the Codex.
In three drawings, the cities in the distance are identified by certain signs. You might think that hovering over the city on the right is a bird, but
is the code sign for Jerusalem. The “birdie” occurs in the script in several places (pages 11, 12, 13, 22, 28 …) just not opposite to this image.
page 25 Right
Neither to the next one.

But there is a flock of them in the third (and last) place where it appears above a city (or building).
page 110
6. Some thoughts, or rather doubts, concerning the script

These are some of my observations pertaining the script. There are so many more issues, like the special page with underlines,
page 54
or the insane number of different Z’s.
page 50
Despite the fact that I found the equivalents for several signs, I am skeptical about the chances to decode the entire Codex. The more I look
into it, the less it looks like a meaningful script. A large part of the characters change every several pages. Not to mention the paradox of the
insane diversity of characters associated with the insane number of repetitions of one sign or one string of signs within the same page (see also
inWhat Makes the Puzzler Sore).
The script is believed to be a complicated ciphertext. Yet, the few letters we know the meaning thereof are ordinary Cyrillic letters (for I, S, O),
mock Latin letters (the triangle) or mock Hebrew letters (the Tetragrammaton). And they are not mere decoys, like in the Copiale cipher, they
have a central place in the manuscript. I don’t know much about ciphers, but this looks a bit suspicious.
However, if this script has a meaning, I find it hard to believe that the creator of the Codex is also the creator of the cipher. We have on one
hand a notebook with painfully unsightly drawings, clumsy handwriting and unskilled binding work. On the other hand we have a complicated
and sophisticated cipher. How likely is it to be produced by the same person?
Therefore, if it is not the product of a feeble mind, I think the script might be copied from another source. And if it is a copy, we cannot know
how accurate it is. We know so far that the scribe made corrections by either deleting or adding signs.
If you have a cipher or code, or a combination of both, of such complexity, it is serious work to transliterate an ordinary text in ciphertext. But
how about reading it? Imagine that you have the cypher, the code, the meaning of each and every one of the 800 signs. It would still be a
painstaking effort to read the text, hardly a lecture to be made during the everyday prayer and impossible in front of an audience.
Maybe the Codex was not meant to be read the way reading is understood, letter after letter, sign after sign. Maybe the Divine Designators
work as benchmarks (as Christopher Tuckett implies about nomina sacra), catching and guiding the eye of the reader through the text he
already knows so well. The Designators, in conjunction with the drawings and the pictograms may work rather as a map of, than a thread
through the labyrinthine script.
In my opinion, the Codex wasn’t meant as much to be read as it was to be written. The act of affixing the signs to the paper transformed a
bunch of ordinary leaves into an extraordinary object with meaning but also with power, empowering its creator in the process.
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(17) What Makes the Puzzler Sore

The Codex from Rohonc delivers a good number of paradoxes and mysteries when first examined and they pile up at a closer look, making it
worthy of the name given by Bernhard Jülg. The eminent linguist and professor from Innsbruck was asked to examine the document, soon
after it was discovered, but to no avail. He returned the booklet calling it the Vexier Codex, a name that expresses his feelings. I don’t know
what specifically vexed him but here is what vexes me:
1. Why the secrecy? The content is obviously religious, specifically Christian. Even if there are some peculiar elements in the pictures that
complicate the identification of the exact denomination, it is nonetheless a Christian book, where Jesus, angels and YHWH are key figures. The
basic texts of the Christian faith were well known to the flock of believers, even by heart, some of them. Why hide them in an over the top
complicated cipher? Does it contain elements of heresy, as suggested by some of the drawings? Then why give them away by illustrating them?
With the little evidence at hand, I can presume that there is a concordance between the drawings and script, therefore, the drawings are not
intended as a mere deception.
2. Why the complicated mirroring? It is obvious not only in the writing but also in the drawings and pagination. When you already have a killer
cipher, you really do not need to write things in reverse just to hide the content. I tried to find an answer in the chapter !rorriM.
3. Omissions and alterations of the pictures. Many of the drawings follow identifiable patterns, observing the traditional representation of
Bible scenes. However, some of them show inexplicable (to me) alterations, which in some cases may be mistakes, but in other cases are
obviously deliberate. Where are some of the important characters? As long as I did not identify all the pictures, it is premature to say that
specific characters are completely missing from the CR. It is not just that icons dear to the Christian world are missing, such as the Baptism of
Jesus or the Coronation of the Virgin, but important figures were eliminated from pictures where their presence is customary.
page 26 Left
The composition, with the angels collecting the blood from Christ’s wounds, resembles Giotto’s Crucifixion from the Scrovegni Chapel,
therefore, the differences are all the more obvious.
Crucifixion of Christ – Giotto, Capela Scrovegni, Padua – from WebGallery of Art
The most usual depiction is with the distraught Maries at the feet of the cross. In Giotto’s fresco they are with John, the disciple entrusted by
Jesus to his mother with the words “Woman, behold your son”. The soldiers taking his clothes are a counterbalance to the group on the left and
among them is the centurion Longinus who speared the side of Jesus to see if he is still alive. The scene is mentioned as such only in the Gospel
of John (19:26-34). In the Codex, the place of Mary Magdalene is taken by the kneeling centurion Longinus, his spear almost as big as the
cross. Both pictures are inspired by the same Gospel, they have some similar features, but what important characters the author of the Codex
chose to leave out! If he wanted to simplify the composition due to its small size, he could have left out the group of soldiers.
Longinus piercing the side of Christ – a fresco by Fra Angelico – Wikipedia – St. Longinus
Instead, he chose Longinus over the Holy Mother. At first, I thought he had a thing with women, as I noticed how sparse the female characters
are and how they were deliberately omitted throughout the CR. I thought that maybe the author shied away from drawing female figures. I
have heard of this before. The intricate fresco in the Slovakian castle from Orava includes many portraits of men, and only men. There are two
damsels, rather hinted then depicted, one hidden in a tower and one behind a tree. The reason? The artist could not paint women.
Fresco in Orava castle – the picture is from the OravskeMuseum site– sorry, could not find the contact tab in the menu to ask for permission. I only know two basic Czech/Slovakian words:
pivo and zmrzlina.
But, the author of the Codex left out the author of the Gospel too, so this can’t be just idiosyncrasy to women. In fact, this composition must be
quite rare, since I saw hundreds of Crucifixions in my unsuccessful attempt to find an exact match. Longinus appears in many, either before or
in the act of piercing the side of Jesus, never in the stance from CR. Saints or commissioners adoring the crucified Christ are not uncommon,
Crucifixion with Saint Dominic – Fra Angelico – WikimediaCommons
but, in my opinion, the presence of the spear in the CR drawing suggests rather unequivocally that it is Longinus. In the mainstream pattern,
John, son of Zebedee, is comforting Mary as he gets a special place in the family of Christ, being appointed by Christ himself as son to the
Blessed Virgin. In the CR rendition, the secondary story of the picture changes. Here, the repenting centurion takes center stage, the one who,
according to tradition, testified “In truth this was the Son of God” and converted to Christianity, later being sanctified as Saint Longinus. Had
the author a reason to sympathize with repenting soldiers? Or did he place in central position the ordinary man who got firsthand knowledge
on the divine nature of Jesus?
Rabbula Gospel, 6th century Syriac Gospel Book, first to mention the name Longinus – WikimediaCommons
Another drawing significantly straying from traditional iconography is the Last Judgment. Here is the usual depiction in Western Christianity.
Masters of the Dark Eyes, Last Judgment, Book of Hours, fol 52v., c. 1490, from Koninklijke Bibliotheek
Christ is resting his feet on the orb, a lily and a sword project from his head, flanked by two angels. The Virgin Mary and John the Baptist are
kneeling in prayer for the souls to be judged. At the bottom is a huge monster, the Hellmouth, where the damned souls are led, while the
righteous are shown by angels into the light. In orthodox (Eastern Christianity) icons, the central group is the same, but the composition is
larger showing the fate of various groups of people, shall the Day of Judgment come.
Last Judgment – Russian icon from the 18thcentury – Wikipedia, LastJudgment
And here is the CR drawing
page 79 Right
I ventured to explain (here) who the characters flanking Jesus are, based on the Russian icon above. On his left, with the crown, is Abraham
(or Isaac) and on his right is Moses, which in the Russian icon are the first figures in the register below him, only in switched positions. The
presence of the Virgin Mary and the John the Forerunner at the feet of Jesus, the Judge of All the Earth, is a key feature in Christian faith and
a source of solace for the Christian believer. The essence of this universal event, the Judgment Day, that amasses the living and the dead, is to
decide who will spend eternity in Heaven and who in Hell, based on their merit. John the Baptist and the mother of Jesus are there to ask for
mercy, to intervene on behalf of the mortals, and give them hope that the objectionable parts of their life will not throw them in the undying
fire. Why did the author of the Codex make this extraordinary replacement is a mystery to me. Another mystery, quite a frightful one, is the
hopeless and unbalanced vision of two hungry Hellmouths at the bottom of the CR drawing, with no room left for Heaven, no alternative for
the righteous. In the name of a misplaced love for symmetry, did our author sacrifice the chance to redemption? What sort of Christian does
that? This is the most disturbing alteration, a mistake that has no sense in any of the numerous branches of Christianity, not to my knowledge.
An interesting omission is in the small icon of the Trinity.
page 95 Left
I found several similar representations in Books of Hours, but this one is closest.
Maître de la Trinité – Petites Heures de Jean de Berry – Bibliotheque nationale de France (beautiful interactive books in their Exposition virtuelles)
The picture is about the Trinity, the three personas of God: the Father who generates, the Son who is begotten and the Holy Spirit who
proceeds. Except that in the CR picture the Holy Spirit is missing. Is this a mistake or a deliberate omission, reflecting the author’s beliefs? He
drew doves as impersonations of the Holy Spirit in other circumstances:
The relationship between the three hypostasis of God is subject to debate from the beginning of
Christianity, but the position of the Holy Spirit is the most argued upon. The subtleties of this debate are far beyond my power of
understanding, so is the position of various churches. For instance, nowadays churches of snake handlers are some Trinitarians some not. But
it is worth keeping in mind that Balthazar Batthyany (the great grandfather of the donor of the Codex) harbored a group of Antitrinitarians on
his estate from Güssing in the 16 century, as mentioned by Dora Bobory in her book The Sword and the Crucible, dedicated to this open-
th
minded aristocrat, interested in gardening and alchemy. All these peculiarities might be explained by an affiliation to or influences from a
heresy that denies a central role to the mother of Jesus, cultivates respect for the Bible patriarchs but does not accept the New Testament saints
as intercessors and has an original position regarding the Holy Spirit. Paulicians and Bogomils fit the bill. But I get lost between strange words
such as adoptionism, docetism, homoousion on one hand and on the other, the very strange Bogomil legends. (One is about creation of man.
The evil Demiurge shapes the body and then breathes spirit into his mouth. But the spirit escapes on the hind-side. Then, he tries to blow the
spirit from behind, but the spirit escapes through the man’s lips. And so on.) I wish somebody who knows his sects and heresies would take a
look and give a verdict.
4. Violence, or the absence of it. Here is a brief consideration concerning the drawings as a whole. They seem to have been influenced by
popular books, such as Books of Hours or the Speculum Humanae Salvationis, as well as paintings and icons. All these probable sources have a
great number of very brutal pictures. Violence is inherent to many Bible stories and there is a keenness in depicting human pain, in
augmenting violence in already violent themes that is disturbing today, if you are not a Texas Chainsaw Massacre fan (take a look at the bottom
register of the Russian Last Judgment icon from above).
The Massacre of the Innocents – Kerald, master of Codex Egberti – Wikipedia, Massacre of the Innocents
Saint Lucia – The Nueremberg Chronicle on Beloit College Morse Library
Le Miroir de l’humaine Salvation, Chapter XXXVI.The Hunterian Museum Library, Glasgow, Ms. 60, fol. 59 recto – from the California Digital Library
In some instances, the popular gusto for seeing both saints and sinners tortured encouraged the artists to constantly take it up a notch , until
they reached the point where high rank clerics ordered the “various horrors” (sexual themes included) to be erased or whitewashed. (J.P.
Himka – Last Judgment Iconography in the Carpathians, p. 182).The Codex from Rohonc, despite the crude rendition of the drawings and
poor penmanship, that implies a lesser educated hand and mind, avoids as much as possible any cruel imagery. The author of the Codex had a
wide array of holy brutalities to choose from, had he wished to represent any. Instead, he decreases the atrocity of scenes traditionally
atrocious. The Crucifixion, which basically depicts a horrible torture, is mellowed by representing Longinus not in the act of stabbing the side
of Jesus but in prayer at his feet. The Massacre of the Innocents (if this is it) is barely recognizable. The Last Judgment is reduced to a few
characters, none of them in torment.Probably the most wicked drawings are the Flogging and the Hell.
This is the entire inventory of cruelty and violence. And another

peculiarity. No hooves, no horns. No devils.
Devils gathering the sinners – Color pictures of Last Judgment icons from the Carpathians , illustrations to Last Judgment Iconography in the Carpathians by J.P. Himka
5. Odd distribution of signs. The Codex script (in)famously has about 800 different signs. Some of them are enormously frequent such as the c
and the triangle, others appear only a few times . The set of letters seem to change, there are pages dominated by certain signs or combinations
thereof and then they vanish or their frequency diminishes dramatically. Like this embellished reverted K which pops out throughout the
manuscript, not on each page, but quite often, at a rate of one, two or three, maximum five on a double page. And then there are the
exceptions: pages 77 (14 occurrences) 78 (18), 118 (18) and 208 (18)
page 78
And here is another example, the one that is responsible for my biggest disappointment. Because of this particular string, I kinda lost faith that
the script is actually a script. After identifying the drawing that illustrates Psalm 42: As the deer pants for the water brooks,/So pants my soul
for You, O God This is what I found
page 148
And looking for a possible starting point, this is the previous page
page 147
Actually, the madness starts on page 144 left, with a high on pages 146 and 147. The final count for the string shows a total of 62 repetitions,
sometimes 3 in a row, within 5 pages. And then comes page 149
page 149
Surprise. None. I was too disappointed (and disgusted) to check the entire Codex for this particular string (I noticed one on 152 though), but it
is not a staple, and there is no other section where this particular sequence to be so frequent. Regardless of the drawing that might be correctly
identified or not, what the heck is this? Does that look like a possible language? But if it is just gibberish, why make corrections? Just go back to
page 78 above (with the reverted Ks) and look at the fifth row from the top on the right side. A missed sign was added between the lines. Such
corrections show concern for accuracy (?) and they were made either to fill in or to delete signs.
page 94
Additions are yellow .
page 15
An entire row obliterated. Back to the wretched three sign string, my mind is relentlessly searching for a solution. If my ratiocination was
correct in the chapter “If This Script Has Any Sense”, the first sign (the two facing brackets) stands for “O” and the last one (the triangle)
stands for “I”. The circle in the middle is also in the middle of the ligature that stands for Abraham (see the Last Judgment drawing above). It
could possibly stand for “H”. OHI is NO in Greek. Wild guessing.
6. The small number of combinations of signs. In a written language, the number of letters is fairly small, while the number of words,
respectively of combinations of letters is huge. Romanian has 31 letters and about 70.000 words, Hungarian has 40 letters and about 110.000
words while English has 26 letters and about 250.000 words. The Bible as a whole has 14.564 unique words, the Old Testament having a richer
style with its 10.867 words and a more repetitive New Testament with 6.063 words. This proportion is not applicable to the Codex. Whereas
the number of signs is in the range of 800, the number of discernible distinct combinations of signs is comparatively small. Moreover, some of
the signs are used in only a few combinations.
Take for instance this dumbbell grapheme. In the first one hundred pages appears 57 times, all the combinations being in the table below (read
the tables from right to left – I found it easier to work this way) Table 1
The variations are highlighted. Table 2
And finally, one that looks like a playful permutation of the almost same elements.
Table 3
7. The dividers that don’t divide. The snakes and various other lines and drawings look like separators of sections of the manuscript. However,
at least in one instance the script continues beyond the presumed divider
page 193
The string is common for the dumbbell sign, see table 1 above, level 2 variant. Such being the case, where does a section start and where does it
end? Are there any sections?
8. How many writers? The manuscript is not the work of a trained scribe, one whose hand is steady and whose calligraphy is consistent, who
carefully changes quills or stops to sharpen them as they wear down. It was suggested that there are two writers, but in fact the writing shows
more variety. Since my own handwriting looks very different, depending on how I tilt the page, whether I wear or not my glasses or just my
mood and there is one signature towards the end of the Codex, I will assume there was one scribe and the differences in writing are the result
of his poor penmanship.
9. The partial drawing – The missing part of the cut drawing is not in the codex.
page 57
This is vexing as concerns the persona of the author. It crossed my mind that the codex is the result of an impulsive act of religious enthusiasm.
The writing and drawing skills show that the author is unsophisticated and untrained. He got his hands on a notebook in some (miraculous)
way and filled it, page after page, with a pretend writing, meantime drawing what he remembered from church paintings, icons, maybe books.
Or the half drawing suggests that he made the codex the traditional way, more or less, filling the pages at least with the drawings, before he cut
them. And that takes serious planning. Imagine you make an eight pages pamphlet, size A5. You assemble the text and pictures on the
computer, print it on both sides on two A4 papers and then staple them in the middle. If you are not using a special program, it takes a lot of
thinking and flipping the papers to see what goes where, so that in the end it makes sense. Now, think of doing the same by using A3 sheets,
which means that, on top of everything, you will have to cut the paper. The making of a manuscript in codex form consisted of several steps:nIf
the content was not original, getting hold of the material to be copied was not an easy or cheap task. Neither was supplying the tools of the
trade: vellum, or in our case paper, quills and ink, as well as the materials for binding. Determining what goes where on the sheets of paper is
the part I find most difficult. In doing this, the scribe had to bear in mind that the sheets will be cut into smaller pieces, the folios will be folded
into gatherings, how many folios will go to each gathering, and that the content has to run logically from page to page, from gathering to
gathering. I suppose there were good algorithms set in place for this stage, since the number of flawed manuscripts is surprisingly (to me)
small. I guess the best method was to unbundle the original and copy it following its exact setting. (But somebody had to make that original.)
The professional scribes then decided on the number of columns, the number of lines on page, and the font to be used. Copying the text usually
followed the original, the scribes flipping and changing the sheets of paper as they progressed through the text. They also left space for the
embellished letters and the miniatures. The illuminators or limners took over next, first outlining the drawings, then applying the golden
decoration and afterward painting them in colors. The last stage was the binders work. The sheets of paper were folded, cut and organized in
gatherings. Each gathering was sewn, and then the gatherings were all sewn together in various techniques. The corpus of the book was finally
fastened in a wooden or leather cover. Those involved were more or less specialized in one of these activities. The author of the CR obviously
skipped the gold leaf application. The order in which he performed the activities is probably: draw, write, cut, group the folios, sew the
gatherings, sew to the leather cover. The drawings being made before the script is apparent from at least one place where the script continues
into the drawing.
page 42
It is not exactly the traditional order and not the easiest way to do it. The question arising is if the order of the pages is correct, or better said, if
it is the order intended by the author. The Passion sequence is fairly well assembled, starting with page 29 – capturing Jesus, to page 64 –
Doubting Thomas. However, three pictures are inserted, that are probably not in the right place
10. The colophone – The CR is signed, but it doesn’t end with the signature.
page 222
The badly damaged script continues on pages 223, 224 and the final 225. In any given book of the past, the extra pages, following the
signature, usually contain technical data. The ones I read were addressed by the author to the reader and in short said: The illustrious X
commissioned this book, the skillful Z printed it, and humble me wrote (translated) it, sorry if I made any mistakes, God bless y’all. If this is a
colophone, what is its purpose, since nobody can read it?
This is the account of the vexers and puzzlers as I found them in the Codex from Rohonc.
(18) !rorriM
Both the drawings and the script reveal, after analysis, the central character of the Codex: it is Jesus Christ. But, after you get to know them
better, they suggest yet another theme, a self-imposed rule that is followed by the author: to do things in reverse. And these are the elements to
support my observation:
1. The script – The entire CR is written right to left. Since there are writing systems for which this is the norm, it can be argued that it is simply
inspired from Arabic or Hebrew script. But…
2. The page order is mirrored too – I have shown in the chapter “If This Script Makes Any Sense…” that in the open Codex, the page on the
right is to be “read” first, then the one the left (first recto, then verso).
3. The Christogram – Even the elements of the Christogram were flipped in the author’s design
4. The Tetragrammaton – Now let’s take a look at the curious case of the secret name of God.
page 134 Left
The four letters that make up the Tetragrammaton are YHWH, and when rendered in Hebrew letters, they are, of course, written from right to
left, like in the Hollar engraving of the third day of creation.
Wenceslaus Hollar, Genesis 1, Wednesday, University of Toronto
Or maybe not.
David worshiping God, in Psaltire a sfântului Proroc David pre limbă rumânească, 17th century Psalter, CRV 65, p.14 – from the Romanian Digital Library
If you know the Hebrew alphabet like me (not), you probably do like I did, rub your eyes and ask yourself if it is the same inscription. In fact, it
is. The Hollar engraving is correct, observing the rules of Hebrew writing: right to left. In the Psalter, the same letters are written in reverse.
First, I thought that perhaps it is an engraving mistake and they are plainly mirrored. They aren’t. I suppose the illustrator caved in to the urge
to write the letters in the “proper” order, from left to right.
Where does the Rohonc Codex stand? Clearly, the script is in mock Hebrew letters. Let’s take a closer look. A and B, as they are. C and D,
mirrored. Third line, Rohonc Codex.
I think it is pretty obvious. And the winner is… D. The Tetragrammaton scribble in the Codex is the mirrored version of the four letters written
from left to right.
5. The Last Judgment – I don’t know many Christian images where left and right are so important as in The Last Judgment representations,
where everything has its place in relation to Jesus: the Hellmouth on his left, the Paradise on his right, the righteous on his right, the sinners
on his left. In Eastern Christianity, the people of the wrong faith (Turks, Catholics, and Jews) are among those damned, therefore they are
placed on the left. The Jews invoke their great ancestor, Moses, to save them, and he is shown in the lead. Nevertheless, the entire party is
doomed.
Moses and the people of the wrong faith – Last Judgment, Voronet Monastery, Romania, from Wikipedia
On the other side are the patriarchs and kings from the Old Testament.
In the CR they are reversed. With Jesus in central position, the labels identify the crowned character as one of the patriarchs (Isaac or
Abraham) and the one facing him as Moses.
Last Judgment – page 79 Right
That the author did not know his left from his right is not a sufficient explanation. In conjunction with the script and the page flow, it rather
shows a deliberate action, the author had an agenda. But what was it?
In looking for the answer, I will resort to two quotations that best summon the possible explanations:
1. Esoteric movements see the creation as a reflection of God. “He turns toward Himself and seeks Himself, God looks at Himself, contemplates
Himself, in a divine Mirror which is the Word, engendered in the first act of reflection, and which is also the mirror of creation. God there
discovers the soul, and the soul will there discover God.” (Antoine Faivre – Theosophy, Imagination, Tradition: Studies in Western
Esotericism, p.54)
Mirroring back the word of God might be an attempt to reach Divinity. Pretty grand ambition for such a modest little book.
2. “A familiar characteristic of magic is the injunction to do things in reverse, to walk backward, to put one’s clothing on backward, to throw
things behind one’s back. The same principle applies in incantations, and Talmudic and medieval Jewish charms amply illustrate its operation.
Biblical quotations were often recited both forward and backward, mystical names were reversed; sometimes the words were actually written
backward as they were to be uttered, so that it requires considerable mental agility not to be taken in by the unnatural rendering. Phrases that
are capable of being read alike in either direction were especially highly prized. The purpose was to capitalize the mystery of the bizarre and
unfamiliar, and the power that is associated with the ability to reverse the natural order of things.” (Joshua Trachtenberg – Jewish Magic and
Superstition, p.116)
The quotation is from a book about Jewish magic, true, but with the constant cross-pollination between different strands of the mystic and the
occult, it is perfectly conceivable that a Christian author would use mirroring as a magic tool.
And here is another interesting example from the same source. When “a woman was convulsed in labor pains, the Scroll was brought in and
laid upon the sufferer to alleviate the pain.” (p. 105) At the same time, a womb-exhortation spell was said to help her give birth. The word and
the object, both are put to work, both have the power to work miracles.
page 42 Left
Either way, this is not just another book of prayers. The copious presence of the Tetragrammaton in the CR (I counted 140 occurrences in the
entire manuscript) points in the same direction. We have serious reasons to believe that the author of the Codex from Rohonc was seeking
powers beyond his human abilities.
(19) Hic Sunt Serpentes

The Codex script is apparently divided into chapters, probably fourteen. The ambiguity comes from the difference between various supposed
dividers. Whereas one is very elaborate
some are slightly embellished,
others are mere lines of uncertain function,
or something that could be either a box, a divider or both.
But the ones that really caught my attention are the snakes. Seven of them:
For our modern sensibilities, this looks like an odd choice for a book with Christian content.The meek lamb, the noble horse, the loyal dog.
Man not only named the animals, man has a definite and sometimes simplistic opinion on the animals. Where does the snake stand?
This is my personal opinion about all snakes:

Such campaigns are unfortunately necessary because we live in a culture that loathes snakes. From the Bible to Harry Potter, these slithering
creatures are the sign of evil, darkness and cunning. They are irrationally feared and, among the most common phobias, fear of snakes is in top
ten, only one other animal being capable of inspiring comparable dread. The Giant Panda. Of course not, it is the spider. However, these
phobias are very likely culturally induced.
In Abrahamic religions, the snake is the tempter who offered knowledge of good and evil to Adam and Eve but failed to offer immortality as
well, becoming the symbol of deception and the reminder of Paradise lost.
The snakes in Codex from Rohonc drew my attention and resonated with the faint memory of a dark novel by Lawrence Durrell I read many
years ago, the first one from the Avignon Quintet (note to myself: I should read the other four too). The image of a huge serpent coiled on a
throne in a black room lurks in my memory. The characters in the novel are Gnostics and for some of the Gnostics the serpent that seduced Eve
gave humanity access to knowledge of a greater spirituality, thus being a positive force. He is the symbol of rebellion against the material
world, and in his portrayal with the tail in his mouth he represents the spirituality that encircles and dominates the material world. Further on,
the Gnostics believe pleasure was gifted along with knowledge, as the snake literally seduced both Eve and Adam, deflowering them and
introducing them to sexual life. This so well matches Freud’s interpretation of snakes in dreams as phallic symbols.
And because I mentioned Freud, here is C.G. Jung’s take on the subject. For him, snakes are the wisdom of nature. Their waving motions show
how things should be done, “for the too direct way is not the best way”. In his “The Unconscious as Multiple Consciousness”, Jung makes a
reference to Ignatius of Loyola. The founder and first Superior General of the Order of Jesus (the Jesuits), reveals in his autobiography that,
during a long illness, he had several times the vision of a luminous snake with thousand eyes, a vision that offered him much solace.
Nevertheless, he eventually identified it with the devil as opposed to the vision of a bright sun-like disk that hovered in front of his eyes in
which he recognized Christ.
In some of the churches in the American Appalachian Mountains a bizarre (and even illegal) practice that started in the 1930s survives to these
days. The church attendants show the strength of their faith by confronting evil with their bare hands. And the evil is…rattlesnakes.
Snake handling at the Pentecostal Church of God, Lejunior, Kentucky, 1946, photo by Russell Lee from Wikipedia
They base their practice on a literal interpretation of a line in Mark’s Gospel (here is why they do it and why they shouldn’t do it, a
comprehensive article, and the Snake Handlers’ own site, it looks snaky).
The Slytherin House didn’t produce only villains and outlaws.Two ancient gods and their respective emblems made their way into Medieval
Europe and survived and thrived up to present days as health related symbols.
The two coiled serpents on the caduceus of Hermes (or Mercury) together with the rod and the wings represent the god, the planet and the
metal (quicksilver).
Hermes carrying a caduceus in each hand – from The Ambrosia Society
Hermes is the patron god of occult knowledge, hence his patronage over alchemists, but also over merchants, travelers, public speakers and
thieves. Nowadays, in USA he is also the symbol of the medical profession.
(I have absolutely no right to use this. But it looks so cool.)

The ancient God of medicine, Asclepios, also carries a rod with one coiled snake whose primary meaning is related to health and healing. His
ability to renew itself by shedding his skin made him the symbol of rejuvenation. He is related to life and death, sickness and health, just as the
healer or physician in his work.
But for centuries, the snake was not only the symbol of medicine. He was the medicine.
Bowl of Hygeia with coiled serpent in pharmacy window. And me.
The flesh of the poisonous viper was the key ingredient of theriac, the panacea described in the second century AD by Galen. The preparation
started with four vipers cut into small pieces, continued with boiling the pieces in wine, maceration with 55 herbs, powdering, mixing with
copper, bitumen and beaver secretion. Opium was added. The entire process took about 40 days. But it was not ready. Not yet. It took another
twelve years for maturation. But once it was ready, it could cure everything, from poisoning to bubonic plague. Of course, if it did not work, the
manufacturer did something wrong. The faith in the all-healing powers of theriac started to fade only in the 18 century, when William
th
Heberden wrote a venomous pamphlet against:” this medley of discordant simples . . .made up of a dissonent crowd collected from many
countries, mighty in appearance, but in reality, an ineffective multitude that only hinder one another”. And thus, the snakes lost their
farmacopeic charme for a while. (Information on theriac comes from the article Venetian Treacle, J.P. Griffin.) They are back now, along with
other stinging or biting creepers, a source of inspiration for new, really powerful drugs.
It is curious after all, how in the same culture, the same animal, is both the embodiment of the devil and a positive, health related figure.
Probably, because the healing snake was not unfamiliar to the biblical tradition. In the Old Testament, Moses heals the afflicted Israelites (who
had been set upon by fiery serpents) by holding up a staff with a bronze serpent sculpted on it. (Numbers 21)
Crucified serpent -from The Alchemy Website
The snakes dual character is strikingly apparent in the words of John Donne: “… That creeping Serpent, Satan, is war, and should be so; The
crucified Serpent Christ Jesus is peace, and shall be so for ever. The creeping Serpent eats our dust, the strength of our bodies in sicknesses,
and our glory in the dust of the grave. The crucified Serpent hath taken our flesh, and our blood, and given us his flesh and his blood for it.”
Images of snakes are not uncommon in religious books. The twisting and twirling bodies decorate many illuminated manuscripts, apart from
where they have the center stage. But usually, the marginals of the beautifully adorned manuscripts are often a sort of luxuriant zoo, with many
more creatures. I did not find religious books with snakes singled out as ornaments. Their fantastic relatives, the dragons, are much more often
to be seen. They also appear in church decorations.
Church decoration – Oestofte, Denmark – from the Mills-Kronborg Collection, Oestofte, M-K 30-087
Are the Rohonc Codex reptiles serpents or dragons? As far as they have no legs, no wings and there is no sign of fiery breath, they are probably
snakes.
According to one of my sources, the snake is also a symbol of the apostle Paul. I have a problem though. My source is reliable (it is in very fine
print at the end of a Romanian Bible, Biblia cu ilustratii diortosită, redactată şi adnotată de Bartolomeu Valeriu Anania, Editura Litera,
2011) but I cannot corroborate the information as I could not find any other source in the whole WWW to ascribe the apostle the snake
emblem. The apostle shipwrecked on the island of Malta and was rescued by local fishermen. As they gathered around the fire, Paul picked up
a bundle of brushwood and a viper hiding inside fastened to his arm and bit him. The islanders were appalled by the idea that they rescued the
worst criminal, whom the goddess Justice insists on punishing, and after drowning was not successful because of their interference, she sent a
viper to execute him. But the apostle remained unharmed and the locals celebrated him as a god, especially after he took care of the sick and
healed them by prayer. So, there is the connection between Paul and the snakes and so did he become the saint protector against snake bites.
Saint Paul throwing the snake into the fire, Canterbury Cathedral, from Wikimedia Commons
And let’s not forget the recently decoded Copiale Cipher document, a secret document of a secret society of optometrists (YES, why not, only
masons may have secret societies?) “…the three snakes, which are placed in a hieroglyphic and mystical way, stand for nature, justice and
bravery” (page 101).
Quite impressive, the variety of jobs the snake got. He is the good, the bad and the ugly, he stands for death and life, sexuality and healing, and
justice, and bravery, and quicksilver.
What meaning did it have to the author of the Codex? Are the Rohonc Codex snakes a reminder of the lurking evil, are they bearers of higher
knowledge, symbols of rejuvenation, healers? Or maybe another, completely different meaning, one I did not even talk or think about.
Before moving on, to the next topic, let’s take a final look at one of our snakes
Constellation Hydra, Liber Floridus, fol 74 v., from Koninlijke Bibliotheek

(20) Beauty Is in the Eye of the Beholder
There is no point in discussing the aesthetic of the Codex. Somebody called it the”ugly duckling” of the undeciphered manuscripts. The
drawings are unsightly on the verge of ridiculous. The script doesn’t look much better. I think we can settle on the conclusion that it is a
painfully ugly piece of work, and I cannot imagine the beholder who would challenge that.
However, many splendored things lie in the bedazzled eye staring at a mystery manuscript. Not just the perception of beauty is biased from
within. Great expectations, or pride and prejudice, or momentary lapses of reason can take you far and astray.
“If this baby held its secret for so long, it is time to reveal it to me, and it would rather be worth the trouble.” No matter how humble you are in
your approach, this thought crosses your mind at some point, if it wasn’t the working hypothesis from the beginning.
Even with the the most candid of attitudes, what we know prepares us to see and understand things in our own way, and our knowledge can be
the very seed of our deception. Ioan Culianu warns about creating a vicious hermeneutic circle “thanks to which we ultimately find in Gnosis
exactly what we have put into it.” Replace Gnosis with the Codex from Rohonc, and it is exactly my concern.
Because when I saw this:
My first thought was this:
Korean historical drama running on Romanian TV – Jewel in the Palace
It ultimately made Toldy and Zriny (the Hungarian academicians who first found the Codex in the Batthyany library) see Hungarian Runes,
made the Indian Mahesh Kumar Singh decipher 24 pages from the manuscript as a Hindi text in a Brahmi script, and made Viorica Enachiuc
see a killer combo of Dacian script, fantasy Vulgar Latin and elusive medieval Romanians. Here are some of her interpretations.
(The analogy I found: king Solomon dedicates the temple to God)
page 9 Right
This is what Viorica Enachiuc published (Codex Rohonczi: Déchiffrement, transcription et traduction) as an explanation for miniature no.3 (I
did my best to translate it): “Young Blaks pledge on the cross to defend the western part of the Blak territory, guarding the fortification from
Ineu; meantime, they pledge to reject the unchristian religion of the old Dacian temple (behind the young warriors is depicted the vertical
section through the old Dacian temple, with the interior compartments, having on top the ideogram of the sun; the image of the wooden
temple is the first drawing of a Dacian temple known to this day).”
Or another:
(Preparations for Passover or the Feast of the Unleavened Bread)
page 16 Right
“The miniature is based on a representation of the St. Andrew Cross, which on the right side, on the upper part, is doubled by the Christian
Cross; The Blak bishop, Sova Trasiu, together with the warriors gather provisions for the upcoming campaign against the Uz people; top left –
in all the cities, protected by fences and ditches – it is announced the conscription to army to stop the danger.”
And a last one:

(Crucifixion)
page 26 Left
In short: the Blak king, Vlad, prays at the feet of crucified Jesus, his spear ready to be grabbed, his army prepared to go to war.
Fortunately, I only have several pages copied from the book, or I’d go on and on.
Viorica Enăchiuc is not the only starry eyed and mystery-struck in the field. Within a week from downloading the Codex, I knew I hit the
jackpot. I found the Manichee’s lost Evangelion. The tall angel floating in front of the king got a strong grip on my imagination. It made perfect
sense.
(King and Angel – maybe emperor Constantine and the archangel Michael)
page 133 Right
Mani had a twin who was an angel and who visited him from childhood and kept helping him. The explanation I proudly found was obvious “…
a local shah and his court were so impressed by Mani’s preaching and by two impromptu appearances of the twin that they became Manichees”
(Albert Henrichs, The Cologne Mani Codex Reconsidered, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, vol. 83, p. 342).
Or
(Baptism on a mountain top?)
page 117 Right
“In 216, Mani’s father Pattik, joined a baptist sect in the marshes of southern Babylonia and arranged to have his infant son brought to him”
(ibidem, page 339)
or
(Moses receives donations for the temple)
page 80 Right
“In my private life I was seeking to be purged from these corruptions of ours by carrying food to those who were called “elect” and “holy”,
which in the laboratory of their stomachs, they should make into angels and gods for us, and by them we might be set free.” (St.
Augustine, Confessions, book 4, chapter 1)
And so on…
Then I did some maths and decided that 12 centuries (or so) are too long a spell for an extinct religion to resurface. I changed my focus to the
Bosnian Bogomils. I had my reasons: the Cyrillic and Glagolitic influence on the script, strong connections between the Batthyany family and
Bosnia and Croatia, the omission of key scenes (like the baptism in the river Jordan) or characters (like the Virgin Mary).
(Sacrifice of Isaac)
page 5 Left
And this is the neat Bogomil legend I assigned to it: God had two sons, the elder Satanael and the younger Michael. Satanael rebelled against
his father and raised his sword against him, whereas Michael was devoted and the true bearer of the Holy Spirit.
(Moses, Aaron and the tables of the law)

page 14 Right
In return for the permission to use the earth as a source of food, Adam sold himself and all his posterity to Satanael. The covenant was written
on clay (stone) tablets.
(Preparations for Passover or the Feast of the Unleavened Bread)
page 16 Right
The archangel Michael taught the true believers to be vegetarians and they banish all food that has been alive because it is unclean.
I still believe there are heretic elements in the drawings, and a Bogomil or Paulician influence is quite possible, but I have to admit that I went
overboard with the meaning of all my examples (and I have even more outrageous ones, which I decided not to share).
For a similar situation, please check the Book of Abraham, one of the canonical books in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. It is
well worth a look.
These explanations are funny when you put the CR drawings in the context of popular religious books, but I did not write this post to make fun
of Viorica Enachiuc or myself (maybe just a little). I did it to show that alternative interpretations of the images are possible, they can be
connected in different stories, and as long as the script is not deciphered, we can only guess their meaning. The fact that in many Codex
drawings well-known Christian themes are vague and corrupted (by ignorance or an ulterior motive) makes things more difficult. Nonetheless,
the effort to understand the Rohonc doodles will ultimately help to understand the Rohonc scribbles.
Until then, a fitting chorus. Ladies and gentlemen, Mumford and Sons
(21) Who Dunnit
Honourable Judge, respected Members of the Jury,
The person who created this abomination, this distorted instrument of worship, is still at large. The reputable organizations Heretics for the
Stake and Hexenhammer have not succeeded to produce the cunning scoundrel to your fair trial yet. But time is running short for the heretic
and I am here to cut it even shorter.
I am ready to give you a profile.
1. The document bears a signature and one only. Therefore, we will assume a single perpetrator.
2. For those who are not convinced that fowl play is involved, I pray their reason will see that one who does things backwards, thinks
backwards and, alas, he is an evil doer of some kind.
3. He is a man, under the equal opportunities directive, since we executed already seven women for witchcraft in the past fortnight. Besides, as
we know, their devilish tools are the cauldron, weeds and the black cat or other familiars, and they keep away from higher means of divination,
such as books.
4. His knowledge of the most sacred images makes us believe that his countenance mingles in the crowd in churches and the drawings traced
by his raven quill show access to the sacred books. He possibly studied Horariums, Mirrors of Human Salvation or Psalters, as they are
popular books to be found not only in the hands of the most noble gentlemen and gentlewomen but in respectable gentry homes too. Is he one
of them? Nay. His rough skills bear witness to his humble origin. Does he own the books? Very unlikely. Then, of course, your question is how,
where, who made it possible for him to lay his hands on such books?
5. The first thought is that he could be a stray member of the clergy or a monk. We know that, sadly, our men of the cloth are not all Toma
D’Aquino or William of Baskerville and seldom their knowledge equals their faith, but this humble product of a disturbed mind displays not
only lack of respect for the dogma, but also revolting ignorance. Who would depict The Holy Trinity with only two Holy Sides as shown in
exhibit A – page 95.
page 95
or, horror of horrors, deny us, his righteous peers, eternal life in Heaven (exhibit B – page 79) if his mind ever met the truth?
page79
The evidence of his little understanding is so overwhelming that we have to say he is a lay man.
And maybe he is one of those wolves in sheep’s clothing, meek and pious, but preying on his simple-minded neighbors, deceiving them with
false teachings such as “Christ is not God but the Son of God and our only Intercessor”, “Ye shall know Christ alone and the Father.” “We reject
the intercession of any saints and even of His mother, as she was not holy and virgin”*, as the exhibits bear evidence to, because, remember, on
the hour of the Final Judgment we, the true believers, rely on the intercession of the Holy Mother of God and John the Baptist, who wickedly
were left out. Yet, he presents himself as a true Catholic. Best proof, look at the hand of the blessing Jesus.
Orthodox, Old Believers and Catholic benediction
6. Of course, you might ask how disturbed is his mind? Is he insane? Anyone who fiddles with the sacred name of God, with the story of our
Savior, has to have a feeble mind. But is he functional? Probably yes, yet socially awkward. He lost his path in his unhealthy aspiration to
apprehend the mystery of mysteries, the secret laws of Creation, seeking for the unfindable, reaching out for the untouchable. He is beyond
reason and madness, he is an exalted mind. **
7. I would like now to present exhibit C
page 58
We can imagine this lost soul doing something he never did before: drawing. Struggling from one picture to the other he encounters the
frightening image of the Beast. Unable to put his quill on the paper, he stares at the blank page, as a hand from behind comes to the rescue, not
without a warning: “I help you only this time. You have to do it yourself”. This is why the Beast, the Hellmouth, is the only image with some
artistic merit. And here comes our inference, the ugly truth: he has a master. Conspiracy, I tell you!
8. Then is his master responsible for the content of a book the, and this master of his gave him most likely paper, ink and quill and taught him
his ways.
9. We make our churches and our books beautiful to glorify God. But our perpetrator is completely oblivious to such consideration. He made
no effort to make his drawings pleasing for the eye, as he made no effort to honor what they stand for. He was not so casual about the script.
This infernal gibber jabber, which has no rhyme or reason, still makes some reason to him, or else he wouldn’t have made corrections. And this
again makes me say he copied, both the drawings and the script.
10. He might suffer from bouts of a crippling disease or is occasionally intoxicated. Malaria or arthritis or toxic fumes make his hand shaky and
alters his writing from time to time but won’t deter him in his quest.
11. His effort to hide the message in such an extravagant manner could make you believe that he is a poor Christian in hiding. Too many of our
own have to conceal their true faithfrom fear (or for lesser taxes), living under heathen oppression. But then, may I ask, why did he give away
his Christianity, as mistaken as it is, in pictures of the Crucifixion of our Savior? He is not in hiding, but he is hiding something.
12. We can only wonder on that urge, so strong, so irresistible, that made him so eager to finish and prevented him from stopping, even when
his quill needed badly sharpening, as so many pages testify.
page 62
13. Finally, and this will undoubtedly hasten his apprehension, Honourable Judge, Members of the Jury, his name is Johann. Or Ioan, Janos,
Ian or Ivan. Or maybe Joseph, Julius or Isaac, as proven by our final exhibit:
page 222
* Depositions of 19th century Armenian Paulicians – from The Key of Truth, by Fred C. Conybeare, (pages xxiii to xxvi)
** I fiddled with the words of Madame de Stael from De L’Allemagne , page 558. The book was finished in 1810 and the page refers to
theosophists, whom she defends. However, the last execution on the grounds of heresy took place in Spain in 1826. The last woman killed for
being a witch was lynched in 1836, in Germany. As far as we know.
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(22) On When and Where

The Codex was found in 1838, in Count Gusztav Batthyany’s library from his Rohonc estate, after he donated his 30.000 books to the
Hungarian Academy. The town is now called Rechnitz, is in Austria, close to the Hungarian border.
The inventory made in 1743 has one entry about a Hungarian prayers book, in one volume, size duodecimo (Magyar imádságok, volumen I. in
12.) It was thought to be about the CR. Even if the size and the content fits the Codex, it is hardly a conclusive identification, since it does not
mention anything else (like the obvious unknown writing) and prayer books are usually small and handy.
The anchor and star watermark in the paper was identified in the Briquet catalog as characteristic for Italian paper produced in Venice in the
first half of the 16th century. The paper could have been used later, though, or it could even be a knockoff, since Venetian paper was very
popular.
With so little at hand, I started looking for clues in the drawings. Like the vase of lilies placed near the Madonna in the Annunciation scene,
becoming popular in pictures from the 14th century.
page 16 Left
I gathered bits and pieces of such information until I noticed how particular is the picture of David praying to God. The particularity is that I
could not find a match in any illuminated manuscript.
page 134 Left
Koninklijke Bibliotheek has an excellent searchable archive of medieval manuscripts. None of them matched the CR drawing because,
regardless of how similar were in other respects, in the illuminations God has a face.
Psalm 38 (‘I said, I will take heed to my ways, that I sin not with my tongue’), Bible Historiale Complétée, fol. 256r, c. 1320-1340, from Koninklijke Bibliotheek
I turned to another excellent digital archive, this time of printed books, The Pitts Theology Library, which lists the search results
chronologically (THANK YOU!). I looked up for both “David” and “Creation”. What I found might be a good dating benchmark.
In the Middle Ages throughout the sixteenth century, in various representations God has a human form. By the turn of the century a more
symbolic depiction starts to be favored. He becomes a bright light.
Creation, Biblia, das ist, Die ganze Heilige Schrifft dess Alten und Neuen Testaments, c. 1600, from Pitts Theology Library
Later, this symbolic representation is supplemented with the Tetragrammaton.
This is how it changes from the middle of the 16th century to the middle of the 17th century:
Creation, Historien und Bucher, Flavius Josephus, 1569, from Pitts Theology Library
God appears twice, once in the clouds and second creating Eve.
A hundred years later, it looks a bit different.
Creation, Biblia, das ist: Die gantze H. Schrifft, Altes und Neues Testaments teutsch, Martin Luther, 1670, from Pitts Theology Library
You can play “Where is Waldo” but you will not find the old man with a tiara. God is the three clouds with the Tetragrammaton inscribed.
It doesn’t mean that the figurative images of God have not been used anymore. But the trend of replacing the physical appearance with the
sacred name became common for the books of both the Reformed and the Catholic faith.
Accordingly, the first engraving to be a good match is from 1658.

King David, Bible. O.T. Psalms, 1658, from Pitts Theology Library
I think it is safe to say that this type of representation became popular during the second half of the 17th century. Since the Codex from Rohonc
is hardly a trendsetter, more like the copy of the copy of a copy, the end of the 17th – beginning of the 18th century is the earliest date when it
could have been manufactured.
I know I saw only a figment of the “David praying to God” images and that my dating might be flawed. So, take it with a grain of salt. Or even
better, please contribute with information.
This was my best answer for WHEN.
And here is the WHERE.
The drawings are definitely of Western Christian inspiration. In many of them Jesus appears blessing with the fingers clearly in the position
specific for the Catholic church. Some of the motifs are recognizable North Western: the disappearing feet, the Hellmouth. But there are
undeniable Eastern influences too: Jesus with wings (on page 60 Right), the modified Nativity with the reclining Madonna (page 42 Left) or
the Last Judgment (page 79 Right). And let’s not forget the possible Paulician or Bogomil influences: the two sided Trinity, the absence of the
Virgin Mary from key scenes such as the Crucifixion, the Deposition, the Last Judgment.
It might look like I insist on the Eastern influences, but the Western tradition of the book is so obvious it seems pointless to stress it
furthermore.
I have tried to find elements which could help narrow down the geographical area where the author might have lived.
I stopped at Moses. For two reasons. First, unlike in the vast majority of Western representations, in the Codex Moses has no horns. And there
is the inscription identifying him which I read “Moisi”, a variant I have seen in Eastern sources.
The horns on Moses’ forehead first appeared in 11th century English manuscripts and “… became increasingly popular in the art of the
Western Church. They were retained in England throughout the Middle Ages, spread through northern Europe during the twelfth through the
fourteenth centuries, and seem to have reached Italy during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries… The Eastern Church had neither a horned
Moses in text or art nor a horned mitre.” (The Horned Moses in Medieval Art and Thought by Ruth Mellinkoff, University of California Press,
page 139). The horns are later replaced with sprouting beams of light, and, in the general, some sort of outgrowth on his head remains
significant in the Western European Art.
The author of the CR paid sufficient attention to details as to carefully draw the hand of Jesus in blessing with the fingers properly positioned
for a true Catholic benediction but missed the horns of Moses. Twice. In the drawings of the Tables of the Law (page 14 Right) and the Last
Judgment (page 79 Right).
I am aware of the logical trap I am in. The identification of Moses in both drawings is problematic, and now I rely on it to attribute an alleged
Eastern influence.
Besides, here is this über-cool Moses in a German Bible. Notice the obsolete genitive in “…das dritte Buch Moysi…” – the third Book of Moses.
Moses writing the Leviticus, Bible, Alsace, 1441-1449, from Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg
Instead of getting into grammar issues (genitive vs. nominative) I rather shift attention to something else.
I thought about using architectural details as indicators of the possible area of origin. The buildings are tall and narrow in most of the
drawings.
Annunciation in the Codex from Rohonc and in the Hval Gospel
The Annunciation scene from the CR and the Hval manuscript are so close in many respects, composition, architecture, decorations on the
spires. The Hval illuminations are cathegorized as Dalmatian Gothic. Yey, I would say hurriedly, the codex comes from Bosnia or Croatia: all
those seemingly Cyrillic and Glagolitic letters, with the Bogomil church surviving in Bosnia until late, according to some well into the 19th
century, with the Batthyany’s historical ties to Croatia and Bosnia (several of Count Gustav Batthyany’s ancestors were governors).
As much as I like it and as well as it serves me, unfortunately I cannot rely on the drawings in this respect.
Let’s take the skyline of Jerusalem in the betrayal scene with all those spires adorned with crosses, stars and crescents
page 29 Right
And now, look at the church painting from Aagerup, Denmark. The same vision of a Jewish city.
Temptation of Christ, Aagerup, from Mills-Kronborg Collection of Danish Church Paintings, MK 31-029
Basically, what I am saying is that I failed to find a conclusive element, one that can pinpoint the geographical area where the Codex might
have been made.
I believe the drawings were copied and “adapted” from other books, more specific, from printed books. Maybe it was not as straightforward,
maybe they were drawn from memory, or some of them were inspired by church paintings or icons. Regardless, the main sources of inspiration
are books. Or books travel fast, and travel a lot. Martin Luther’s 95 Theses, once printed, spread like wild fire. In two short weeks, they were all
over Germany, within a couple of months, all over Europe.
Moreover, spreading the word of God was not only a matter of faith. It was also a business. And a very lucrative one. Painters, engravers,
printers, traveled from country to country and as a consequence, themes, styles, schools, intermingled.
This amazing quote tells us just how far influences travel and how counter intuitive they might be:
“Cross pages ornamented with interlace designs are a feature of later Hiberno-Saxon manuscripts ( cf. the famous Book of Durrow, Dublin,
Trinity College, Ms. 57) and Bober (1967) has suggested that the spectacular development of seventh-century Northumbrian art may have been
based, in part, on Coptic sources.” (Age of Spirituality: Late Antique and Early Christian Art, Third to Seventh …, edited by Kurt Weitzmann,
page 494)
The Codex is a document that plays on strangeness. To understand it better, it should be established the author’s matrix, what is domestic from
what is exotic. The fact that he preserved the Cyrillic letter for “I”, even if mirrored, makes me believe that he is at home in the Cyrillic
alphabet. This letter has a double significance for him: it stands for the name Jesus in the Christogram and is the first letter in the author’s
name. Also, the inverted “c” seems to stand for “S”, like in the Cyrillic alphabet. Sheer speculation, I know.
The cultural background revealed by the drawings seems to be that of a “melting pot”, maybe a place where Western and Eastern Christianity
meet, where the Cyrillic alphabet was in use.
I would say that its probable point of origin is somewhere along the line that goes from Belorussia through Ukraine down to Bosnia and
Albania. That means, Transylvania is included. There, I said it. I brought it home.
(23) The Probable Use of a Meaningless Object
This is what I know to this point about the Codex from Rohonc.
The drawings show a Christian content, with Jesus as main character, blessing everybody, his tormentors included. Even if the themes are
recognizable, in many cases they stray away significantly from the customary representations, with an idiosyncratic avoidance of showing both
the Madonna and John the Baptist. The most obvious traceable influence is North-Western Catholicism but some themes were borrowed from
the Eastern tradition. All in all, the modifications to the traditional drawings might be in line with the teachings of the Paulician or Bogomil
faith.
The use of snakes or dragons as embellishments is not unheard of but it is still strange. They might have been used as a reminder of evil, in
relation with the Apostle Paul or as a symbol of health and rejuvenation. Or just because snakes are cool.
The script, even if it has a meaning (as suggested by the corrections made) and the cipher is known, it should be extremely difficult to read, due
to the hundreds of characters. The most unnerving feature is the huge number of different signs but the small number of combinations which
involve one sign.
Some of the drawings might illustrate narrative sequences in the script, but large portions of it contain often repetitive strings, which are
consistent rather with other types of text like prayers, chants or psalms. The script is riddled with divine names, with the unusual plentiful
presence of the Tetragrammaton.
The underlying theme of the Codex is mirroring or doing things backwards, which in conjunction with the Tetragrammaton’s presence in large
numbers suggests magic. I am thinking about theurgy, or the Working of God, as opposed to goetia, or the occult sciences which resort to
demonic means, as explained by Saiyad Nizammuddin Ahmad here. The author of the Codex probably retorted to the occult technology of
solving problems by magic which consists in the ritual use of the divine names (or texts).
The earliest probable date of manufacturing is late seventeenth – early eighteenth century. The 1743 inventory might give us a terminus ante
quem, unfortunately, it is too vague to be conclusive, so I’ll stay with the date of its identification, 1838.
I presume that one signature means one author, somebody who is under the joined influence of Eastern and Western Christianity and does not
care or does not know much about the differences between them.
The Codex shows signs of wear and tear. The pages are torn and stained, the leather cover is eroded as if it was handled a lot. It was used for
something, but for what? Why did somebody toil over it, somebody who did not have much skills for such an endeavor? I think this is the most
exciting question the “Vexier” Codex arises.
Is the information I garnered enough to find out what the booklet was used for, without knowing its exact content? Maybe not. But I won’t let a
kill-joy adage such as “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent” spoil my enthusiasm.
So, let the dilettante lady speak out her mind.
1. It is a hoax. Almost everybody seems to be convinced that Literati Nemes Samuel is the forger. He produced other notorious creations. What
motivated those fabrications is easy to understand. A forgery is made for a reason. Either for money, for fame, for patriotic reasons, or to
ridicule somebody. Examples are plenty for each case. Literati was a fierce patriot. His known “works” are in line with his feelings, they
glorified Hungarian history. In this respect, the Codex from Rohonc is a poor instrument of glorification. It created interest because it has
several characters similar to Hungarian runes. Well, it has similar characters with Joseph Smith’s script too, or should I say caractors.
Joseph Smith’s caractors from Book of Mormon Archaeology
I am sure a keen eye will find the similarities. It is not more Hungarian runes as it is Elbasan, Hebrew, Klingon or whatever script. In fact, I see
a stronger resemblance to Slavic scripts, Cyrillic and Glagolitic.
Had Literati wished to pass it as an ancient Szekely work, he should have laced it a bit more with Hungarian Runes. And after all that effort:
get the old paper, invent a script which shows some structure and consistency, make corrections here and there, he could have made it a bit
easier on the eye. The discrepancy between the effort put into it and its poor looks is striking. Such a modest booklet does not serve too well for
the exaltation of national pride.
Forgery is associated with some level of sophistication. How the same mind came up with the idea of such an elaborate hoax and at then create
this appearance of uncultivated simplicity is beyond me. And again, the pesky question: to what avail?
Now, this is a forgery:

Fourteenth century Gospel of Mark – Nineteenth century forgery – details
As for the Codex from Rohonc, “Its authenticity is proven by its insignificance” to quote Antoine Dondaine. He was speaking about another
controversial document: the Niquinta Charter. Dondaine’s quip did not resolve the problem, the authenticity of the charter is still debated.
Nothing of what I say is capable of restoring the reputation of the Codex or disconnect it from Literati, even though there is really no evidence
they ever shared the same space. In all honesty, I have my doubts about the Codex. But here are some possible uses that might indicate that
the author had, more or less, genuine intentions.
2. It is a hoax. Another kind of hoax. One made for social status. Books, even after the invention of the printing machine were not available for
everyone. As the main social gathering was the Sunday service it was an excellent opportunity to impress the congregation by displaying a book
of prayers of your own. Let’s imagine young John going to the church with his new status symbol fabricated for the pretty eyes of the pious
Mary.
 J: Hi Mary! (as he thinks: I love you and I want to marry you).

 M: Oh, hi! (That goat herder again. But where is George? I hope he’s not with Jane, the little fortune-hunter.)
 J: Look fair Mary! I have my own Bible, and it has pictures.
 M: Oh, John! (You don’t look that bad after your monthly bath. And you greased your hair nicely. And look at those strong arms.) Nice
book. Hmm, the drawings are not so nice though. But show me the name of our Lord and Savior.
 J: Look Mary (I really want to marry you) it’s all over the place. See, Je-sus-Christ.
 M: But, John! It’s backwards!
 J: Huh?
 M: The name of our Lord Jesus is backwards!
 J: No, it’s not! Oh, wait, it is?
 M: Oh, the horror! You cunning penniless spawn of the devil, perish you Archgoat! George! Oh, George!
It probably would have been easier to carve one from stone.
Stone Bible – from University of Newcastle Cultural Collections
3. It is the depository of the secret teachings of a religious cult. I keep coming back to this idea because of the blatant anomalies in some of the
drawings, as in “What Makes The Puzzler Sore”. I can imagine a small community in the Albanian or Bosnian mountains. They are Christians
but they have been for many years under the Ottomans. The ties to their church are loose and they struggle to keep their faith but many of the
subtleties of their teachings have been lost. Besides, they are exposed to the Bogomil myths and the Catholic missions are very active in the
area. A rough handed djed (elder) concocts the Codex using distant memories from books seen in his younger years, mixed with the various
influences he was exposed to. Familiarity with Arabica (Bosniak version of Arabic alphabet) makes him write right to left, and he throws in
random Cyrillic and Glagolitic letters. This could explain the clumsy drawings, errors and all. Or maybe it is a discreet Paulician group and the
snakes are meant to be symbols of the Apostle Paul as “the name of the Paulicians is derived by their enemies from some unknown and
domestic teacher ― but I am confident that they gloried in their affinity to the apostle of the Gentiles” (Gibbon, “The Decline and Fall of the
Roman Empire”, V. 386).
But somehow it doesn’t add up. Something is out of place. Besides the oddity of adjusting Catholic drawings to the purposes of heresies which
at their beginnings were iconoclasts. It does not justify the mysterious and unpractical writing. It does not justify the mirroring. And if the
Antitrinitarianism, the irreverence towards the mother of Jesus were to be concealed with the over-elaborate cipher, why give them away with
the drawings?
4. It is the tool of a trade. And the trade is magic.

In Eastern European tradition, a rural Magus roams the countryside. He controls the weather, unleashes storms and hail or abates them at his
will. He can summon a dragon from the bottom of a lake and ride it in a mad race above the clouds. One of his names in Romanian is
“Solomonar”. The Solomonar is one of the few, chosen to attend a special school, in the deepest cave, where he spends seven years learning
the tricks of the trade and writing his own book of magic. This book is one of his few belongings and nobody else can read it. But no, I do not
believe that the Codex from Rohonc is a Solomonar’s book. They were astrologers and weather magi and their books must have looked more
like an almanac, with astronomical symbols and charts.
Jakob Honiger. Almanach in der hochebreysten Hochen Schule zu Erffort… from US National Library of Medicine
But I can imagine a similar congregation, where the attendees learn under the guidance of a master, a heretic who knows a most sought-after
trade. Each of them creates his own book to hide and preserve the knowledge, scribling the signs after the master’s copy. The serpent becomes
a part of the power harnessed in the book, as a symbol of wisdom, as Christ said “be wise as serpents yet harmless as doves” (Mat. 10:16)
They might never read it again, because having it, showing it, touching it will do the job. The act of making the book is magic, the book itself is
magic, every sign is power and all that power comes from God JHWH by intercession of his son Jesus. The entire So what would be that trade,
what would be that special power that our author wants to share with Jesus? As flamboyant as it is to walk on water or as crowd pleasing is to
transform water into wine, the most coveted power of Jesus was the power to heal. And this, my friends, is what I believe our John, or Joseph,
or Jeremiah, gave up to the hands of the Batthyány family and to our awe: the Heretic Healer’s Codex.
I tied together in this scenario the most striking elements of the Codex from Rohonc: the apparent secrecy due to the cipher, the snakes, the
YHWH signs interspersed in the text, the fact that it was handled a lot. But it is just one of many possible explanations. Most likely, it is just
another prayer book, written by its owner, as there are so many, even after the spreading of the printed copies. Of course, that does not explain
the effort made to conceal the meaning of it in such an extravagant manner. But I don’t recall to have found any explanation for the efforts
made by Gregory from Durres when writing the Elbasan Gospel manuscript. He translated the Gospel into Albanian in 1761 and wrote it down
in an invented alphabet he made up for this task only. Why? He probably felt that the standard Greek or Cyrillic alphabet were not good
enough. Similarly, our author might have been looking for a better way to convey his enthusiasm, maybe for the angelic alphabet, or even the
angelic language. Others have done it, before him. Maybe his religious fervor crossed the line into madness and this is the work of a lunatic
which only keeps up the appearence of consistency and structure. But this would take away all the future fun, because there still is plenty to
look for.
Regardless of his agenda, I learned to respect his effort.

Theriac jar, 1641, from Science Museum, Science and Society Picture Library (by permission)

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Here is the long one.

Somebody enjoyed the extra walks in the park.

(2) A Book of Mystery and Imagination

Jankovich Miklos – painting by Peski Jozsef – Wikipedia

(3) On Method and Sources

Therefore, as all cometh from the Internet, to Internet all returneth.

(4) The Story in the Pictures (pages 5 through 18)

St. Paul in Byzantine Praxapostolos – about 950 AD

– various implements held by the characters:

page 170 Left

or magic wands (probably a candle)

page 108 Right

And now, the first batch.

Orthodox icon from the blog

17th century polychrome carved wood relief,

Historiated initial from a 14th century Icelandic manuscript – from Wikipedia

Fifteenth century Book of Hours from the Glasgow University Library

And a little glitz.

Fourteenth century Italian manuscript

Anything interesting at Aaron?

Engraving by Hans Sebald Beham, 1526 – from artvalue.com

Tables of the Law from an Italian Synagogue, dated 1671 –

so, I guess they intend to bear the first commandment:

The manuscript of Krstyanin

Speculum Humanae Salvationis, page 26v – from Kongelige Bibliotek Denmark

Detail of Circumcision of Jesus Christ by Pellegrino da San Daniele – from The Guardian

Jews making sacrifice to God, table XII,

Pasca – traditional Romanian Easter Cheesecake – from Papa la Ile

9. Page 18 Right – Here comes the first divider. End of part 1.

(5) The Story in the Pictures (pages 21 through 36)

Giotto, fresco in the Scrovegni chapel, Padua – from Wikipedia

Book of Hours, c. 1450, from Koninklijke Bibliotheek

When there’s city and there’s Joseph, there’s no star.

Book of hours, c. 1500 – from Koninkljike Bibliotheek

11. page 24 Left – Another divider. This was a short one.

I can squeeze in another batch.

Presentation at the temple – Hans Holbein the Elder, 1500-1501 – from Wikipedia

Crucifixion fresco – c.1425 – Lysabild church – from the

Fra Angelico gets points for the trees.

Thou little tiny Child,

O sisters two, how may we do,

Herod the King, in his raging,

That woe is me, poor Child, for Thee,

Thou little tiny Child,

The Spinola Hours, c.1510 – Master of James IV of Scotland

Jesus presented to Annas – Broens church fresco c. 1525-35

Here Herod holds a scepter tipped with a lily.

Christ before Herod – Kongsted church fresco c. 1430-

Flagellation – with a scourge and a bunch of thorns

Flagellation in the back, coronation and mocking in the front.

Pilate is sometimes painted with a crown.

And Jesus is sometimes painted seated in front of Pilate.

22. page 45 Right – snake

This fits well.

27. Page 57 Right – Christ Triumphant

As these elders hold their crowns.

Christ and theTwenty-four Elders, Saint Sever Apocalypse, c. 1050-1070, from Counterlight’s Peculiars

In Eastern Christianity there are several representations of Christ with wings:

Before his incarnation in human body – Christ, the Good Silence:

Jesus as the Old of Days

Speculum Humanae Salvationis, fol. 98r. – from Kongelige Bibliotek Denmark