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RE: Edward Kelley...?

Hi Joe,

At 07:27 14/08/01 -0500, Joseph H. Peterson wrote: 
I agree there is some resemblance between Kelley's handwriting and the
foliation numbering in VM, but the numeral shapes are very common for the
1500's.  I agree Kelley's 8's appear to begin and end in the middle, while
VM at the bottom.

Variation in handwriting is often down to the effect of the pen's finishing point on the starting point of the next character. You can see this in pairs of numerals (luckily enough, as this is all we have) such as 40, which with Kelley's small "0" looks like 4o ... kind of familiar... no, couldn't be... :-/

As I said, a palaeographer ought to do a better job than me: but I did try hard to be systematic.

Also, Kelley's 2's look more rounded to me, but there is
a lot of variation in both manuscripts.

The VMS foliation was also done with a more obviously italic quill: my guess is that this may account for the slightly more angular nature of the VMS numbering. Italic documents with numbers written by Kelley should form an even better comparison - something to add to my challenges list.

 Note Dee's handwriting varies so
much you might suspect him of having multiple personalities!

Whether the VMS foliation is Kelley's or not, it looks to me like the identification with Dee was (as Rafal Prinke indicated) probably wrong.

Having said that, Dee and Kelley did work together for a period of years, so having one rather than the other putting in the VMS foliation needn't necessarily affect the overall VMS narrative much: except that it perhaps makes it more likely that it was owned by Kelley rather than Dee, and that hasn't really been examined seriously to date?

Here's what Dee's Mysteriorum Libri say about the Book of Dunstan (all
quotes and translatins from my forthcoming edition):

BTW: do you have a publisher for your book? If so, when is it due out? Having seen the Liber mysteriorum up close, I'd like to know more about it. :-)

Cheers, .....Nick Pelling.....