Thoughts on colour...

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi everyone,

While idly flicking through my copy of Brewers today (as you do), I found 
the entry for "rubric":-

	Rubric (Latin rubrica terra "red earth").
		The Romans called an ordinance or law a
		rubric, because it was written with vermilion.

		The liturgical directions and titles in a Prayer
		Book are known as the Rubrics because these
		were (...) printed in red.

(...which linked to...)

	Red-letter day
		A lucky day; a day to be recalled with delight.
		In Almanacs, and more commonly in
		ecclesiastical calendars, important feast-days
		and saints' days were printed in red, with
		other days in black.

Glen Claston recently directed me to look at almanackes that were usually 
found as part of bibles of the period - this lead me to "golden number" 
moons (AKA the Metonic cycle), which were represented in those almanackes 
by being drawn in gold (or yellow).

ISTM that information structuring and indexing in medieval manuscripts 
often relied on colour... of which we have plenty in the VMS. :-)

So, today's question is: has anyone tried to definitively catalogue - apart 
from as part of the main interlinear document - the use of colour in the 
VMS? Given the above, this would surely seem to be the first place to look 
for evidence of code-tables, cribs, and/or hints - possibly written in a 
separately decodable language.

For example: to my eyes, the circular 12-entry ring of red-letter text on 
f67r seems to be structured quite differently from similar label-like texts 
elsewhere in the VMS. And the red symbols on f1r are also very curious.

And finally: Galen associated Sanguine <--> red, Phlegmatic <--> white, 
Choleric <--> yellow, and Melancholic <--> black. Are there any diagrams or 
images in the VMS that seem to arrange these colours in an 
information-bearing way? (Aside from the red/yellow stars beside the many 
short undiagrammed paragraphs towards the end of the VMS).

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