VMs: RE: VMS Quires

["John Grove" <4groves@xxxxxxxxx>]

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-voynich@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:owner-voynich@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Rene Zandbergen
Sent: Friday, July 26, 2002 7:12 AM
To: Voynich Ms. mailing list
Cc: r_zandbergen@xxxxxxxxx
Subject: VMs: Re: VMS Quires

A real problem is posed by the foldouts.
Why are they there in the first place?
Did the author only have some leftover pieces of
vellum that could not be cut to the proper size?

	No, I don't think these are leftovers -- they were meant to
be long complete sheets by the author and were folded into the book.
The foldout pages are quite interesting in their context compared
to the rest of the manuscript and probably were a quick reference
to technical details.

	First fold-out (quire 9) is the cosmo one that is messed up in its
order with the quire number starting the quire instead of ending it.
f67r1 should be the last verso page of this foldout.

	Quire 10 - is the first of three zodiac quires that are all fold-outs.
	Quire 11 - next one
	Quire 12 - last of the zodiacs -- most of it is missing, but I (maybe just
me)
		strongly believe that f74 is a continuation of the zodiac fold-out style.

	*Quire 13 is the bio and returns to *standard format.

	Quire 14 is the large map fold-out.
	Quire 15 should in my opinion be a Herbal A quire with the Pharma removed;
however
		if the pages do all belong together - It is a combination of large Herbal
A
		& pharma pages that could be used as a quick reference.

	*Quire 16 is probably a very large foldout but is completely missing.
	Quire 17 is a mixture of large Herbal A & B
	*Quire 18 is either missing or 19 is misnumbered.
	*Quire 19 is an all pharma fold-out that should probably include the pharma
from 15.
	Quire20 returns to standard format.

	It seems to be that these large fold-out pages all have a rather
significant 'content'
that the author wanted to be able to see 'in a glance'.

This first 7 quires in the book are normal. The
next one is abnormal, in that it has 5 bifolia,
not 4. BUT:
- 3 of the 5 are missing. We're only relying
  on the foliator here.

	I'm beginning to thank that oaf for fouling up the numbering. It gives us
some hard
evidence that the pages were there despite the overall order, and that the
pages were bound
when he numbered them because he didn't bother to unfold them from the
book - he just merrily
went on numbering the top right corner of every recto page as he flipped the
corners to mark
them.  85 & 86 along with the odd place on the v2 pages are proof of this.
He was consistent
in his task through-out which means that quire 16 might be another huge
fold-out with a quire
number and two page numbers.

In the following quires the situation only
gets worse... Is this evidence of different people
being involved???

	I don't think so. I think the pages weren't necessarily in the right order
when the
foliator did his job which makes it difficult to measure where the
transition in language
sets may have actually taken place. I think we have evidence of one author
(okay I'll give
a little on that), one quire-maker (possibly the author), and one foliator
that couldn't read
the thing he was marking - and wasn't working under the supervision of
anyone that could read
the book either.

John.