RE: VMs: Bifolios and Smudges

["GC" <glenclaston@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Yet another weekend gone, and I won't be able to get back to the VMS for a
few very busy days, so I thought I'd leave a note or two to set some 'minds
athinkin'.

The study I did this weekend has yet to be verified, so I won't offer it as
completely objective until I'm certain of what I've been looking at -
nevertheless, here's the gist:

We have the suspicion that bifolios in the herbal section have been
reshuffled, and the physical evidence of [hb] bifolios inserted where they
don't seem to belong.  It seemed logical to check the bifolios for
consistency, and notice any changes or apparent order that would signify
progression of whatever system was involved in their construction.

The [hb] bifolios, as I've already posted, are mostly in order according to
my data, with only a few exceptions.  Why they were inserted where they were
is a matter for speculation, maybe.

I was surprised when I extended the study to the [ha] bifolios however.  As
I noticed in transcribing, going from page to page (in many cases this is
also going from bifolio to bifolio) there was sometimes a "feeling" that
something had changed from one to the other.  I also have a real thing for
f1r, as I "know" it wasn't written at the beginning, although it holds that
place.

If my interpretation of the data is anything close to correct, the author
did some major reshuffling before the binding into quires took place, for
whatever reason.  Alphabetical, subject matter, curatives, whatever the
reason, they're not in the correct order.  Later [ha] bifolios are more
consistent in "language", and [hb] bifolios are more consistent still.
Later [ha] bifolios have more words in common with [hb] bifolios, while
earlier [ha] bifolios demonstrate more "transition", for want of a better
term at the moment.  For instance, bf2, bf3 and bf5 are "early [ha] and in
order, but should have bf19 inserted instead of bf4.  bf4 is so far down the
list from these bifolios it's not funny.  (Again, remember that I've yet to
find a "check-and-balance" to verify these findings).

What gets me is that I didn't expect bf1 to exhibit the same properties as
the early bifolios, but I didn't think it was that far out.  I thought f1r
was an "afterthought" in some sense.  I need to find out yet how much f1r
throws off bf1 from the other three folios on this bifolio, but right now
I'm reading that bf1 should be placed between bf22 and 25, which are in
order.  Incidentally, bf23, an [hb] bifolio, currently holds the position
I'd assign to bf1.

This is not a fully objective study at the moment.  Some arguments are
already brewing in my mind - one argument I hear already is "can the same
method be applied to standard text to determine its order, or are you simply
sorting by subject matter?"

If this were real language this would be an argument, but I'm not of the
mind this is language.  I am of the mind that this is in fact an herbal
reflected in the herbal section, and as such, the subject matter would
follow a general structure.  I've already pointed out that over 50% of the
words on these pages are unique to that page, and this is more than enough
to account for specific terms applied to any single plant, apart from the
standard repetitive phraseology.  In a  fairly limited system, these
repetitions would demonstrate themselves as repeated words in sections where
the system is similarly aligned. [hb] bifolios 21 and 23 for instance, share
84 unique words with 390 total occurrences of these words.  This is a huge
amount of conformity between these two bifolios, especially when the average
herbal page contains 100 words or less.

The one argument I have against my own study is that the folios, and
therefore the bifolios, are too small a sample to make positive
determinations.  There are other elements, such as "mutants" and weirdoes,
that can add a flavor and spice to the study, but it will not be completely
satisfactory.  What in the VMS is "solid"?

Still, I've gained some knowledge this weekend I didn't have before.  I now
know that the [hb] folios do not belong to this set, as I had earlier
thought.  They are the later result of a "transition" in a system.  I know
that f1r is not the first page in the construction scheme, by any means.  I
now have something as an addendum to back up the physical evidence that the
herbal bifolios have been reshuffled.  I don't think this was done in a
later rebinding, but before the initial binding into quires took place.
Someone mentioned that usually the first owner was the one who foliated the
pages, which if generally true would back this up.  (Other bifolios might be
out of place due to later rebinding, especially those toward the middle of
the book, as those are the ones I'm always careful of in my 16th and 17th
century printed volumes.)

I haven't gotten to sections beyond the herbal as yet, so I can't compare
one against the other, a good test for my current methodology.  As an
observation however, I think the later bifolios are generally in their right
order, with some exceptions pointed out by John Grove based on physical
evidence, and some doubts expressed by Nick Pelling on others.  I think the
herbal is where it all came together for the author, where he started to
formulate a plan over time, to reshuffle and get his thoughts in order.  The
herbal section was also the easiest section to manipulate, since it's not
very obvious from one drawing to another that they're out of order.

I'm quite interested to see if any of the later herbal pages should properly
be located in this section, or if they were indeed later works.  The one
thing we should glean from the fact that there are [hb] herbal pages, is
that the author continued writing herbal pages even after he "progressed"
into the [hb] system that is used for more lengthy text.  If I am correct in
my surmise that the author didn't attempt binding into quires at first, then
some of the herbals located later could also have been reshuffled.  Rene has
indicated that these are generally different than [ha], but are they
different because of "early" [ha] stats, and are they more in compliance
with "later" [ha]?   I guess I'm going to have to jump ahead a bit and find
out, since I seem to be missing at least three "later" [ha] bifolios.

This would be very significant in terms of making a determination as to
"when" (in the timeline of construction) the decision was made to bind into
quires.  One naturally assumes when presented a book that whoever
constructed it had a general plan, sat down and followed that plan, and you
are presented with the finished product, and this is how many of us have
viewed the VMS for many years.  After over two years of studying herbals and
"working herbals", this is not how an herbal was constructed.  They were
constructed in the order of life's opportunities and experiences in the
field of medicine.  They were hand-written, so the pages couldn't be marked
for printing in an alphabetical order.  Today it's a case of the sleeping
sickness, tomorrow it's a wealthy patron with a case of the dropsy.
Vellum's expensive so you fill in the blank sheets before buying more.
Three sheets of high quality for 3 pence, (in England), but 3 pence could
buy a small printed book in 1550 (unbound).  The vellum here is medium/poor
quality, with holes and tears and ragged edges.  One who had a hard time
finding a free 3 pence when needed, I'd suspect.  Not one who had a whole
stack of blank bifolios in front of him to choose from, I'd wager.  A work
of devotion.

Something like this is not "copied" out of other books, where logical order
can easily be made in the presentation.  That's probably why we see the [hb]
folios out of their proper order, and why there's evidence of other
reshuffling.  But when did the "plan" come together?  When did the author
decide to finally write a book, and not just an herbal?  Others with a
broader view might answer this question before I reach the other sections,
but it does beg for an answer.

High pay in England circa 1550 for a school teacher was 10-12 pound per
annum, he was expected to maintain the school house and pay an assistant out
of his own pay, an expected cost of 4 pound per annum.  A "monk" was
allotted 2 pound per annum, taken from charity, and another 4 pound for
"service to the church" paid from the bishop's coffer, depending on his role
and usefulness.  I find nothing recorded on the wages of an average
physician, but since there were few in practice at this time that were not
also clergy, this is not surprising.  Unless appointed as physician to a
knight, a duke or other position of authority, their trade was most probably
more barter than cold hard cash.  Let's face it - physicians didn't heal too
many people back then, and the few that did gained a bit of fame and fortune
from the fortuitous circumstance.

I used to think that order didn't matter, and accepted that the VMS was
written in the order it was presented.  Bang your head against a wall long
enough, you start returning to basics.  Order is important.  It determines
what pages "transition" into other pages.  The concept of a bifolio being
written in its entirety is not only important, but backed up by physical
evidence.  You can't just go from one folio to the other and expect to find
common ground in the herbal section.  It just doesn't work that way.  Even
if other sections are in their proper order, you may not be able to go from
page to page, even when they appear to be fully structured.  If the drawings
were done first and the text filled in later, the same problem with
progression would still exist.  (And as Nick has observed, many of these
later bifolios appear to have been completed before binding.)

BTW, Jeff, if you've been listening, don't try to "crack" f1r.  It's a
composite of paragraphs, not a continuous piece of text in the same system.

GC




> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-vms-list@xxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:owner-vms-list@xxxxxxxxxxx]On
> Behalf Of GC
> Sent: Sunday, July 27, 2003 10:40 AM
> To: vms-list@xxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: RE: VMs: Bifolios and Smudges
>
>
> Nick, I agree the quality of the images leave a lot to be
> desired, even when
> I'm checking against three separate sources.  Still, it is interesting to
> note that some quires don't have these smudges at all, and some bifolios
> within the "smudged" quires were hardly affected by whatever damage this
> represents, while both bifolios on either side demonstrate similar damage.
>
> As to the anomalous [hb] folios in the first 7 quires, there is a high
> correspondence of common words in bifolios 18, 21, and 23, and if
> they were
> put together, they'd probably be in the right order, with 21 in
> the middle.
> bf17 has the highest correspondence with 18, so it's probably in the right
> place as well.  bf14 is a bit of a mystery.  bf26 and bf27 want to go with
> bf17 and 18 respectively, but 14 just doesn't want to fit comfortably
> anywhere.  bf14 may be out of place, and here's why - it's
> highest-to-lowest
> correspondence, by bifolio:
>
> 23 21 18 17 26 27
>
> This is a backward image of the order the other bifolios want to
> fall into,
> making the order of bifolios 27, 26, 17, 18, 21, 23, 14.  The
> only ones that
> could flip in this order are 26 and 27, which would retain their positions
> at the first, but flip thus: 26, 27, 17, 18, 21, 23, 14.
>
> Certainly not the only way of determining order, but an interesting look
> anyway.  I'd wager that 18, 21, and 23 are in the correct order however.
>
> GC
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: owner-vms-list@xxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:owner-vms-list@xxxxxxxxxxx]On
> > Behalf Of Nick Pelling
> > Sent: Sunday, July 27, 2003 3:38 AM
> > To: vms-list@xxxxxxxxxxx
> > Subject: Re: VMs: Bifolios and Smudges
> >
> >
> > Hi GC,
> >
> > At 23:50 26/07/2003 -0500, GC wrote:
> > >Following the "bifolio" thread for awhile, I just ran a study
> > that indicates
> > >a strong association between bifolio 21 and bifolio 23.  That would be,
> > >bf21= 41r,41v,48r,48v, and bf23= 43r,43v,46r,46v.  These two
> > bifolios share
> > >84 words in common, one of the highest counts between bifolios
> > in the herbal
> > >section, and several of the words are unique to these two
> bifolios only.
> > >Both are [hb] bifolios that appear to be out of place.
> > >
> > >I was going through the images at the same time to look for
> > Nick's "smudge"
> > >evidence, and noticed something odd about the smudges at the
> > tops of certain
> > >folios.  Like a water stain that changes shape as it soaks
> through pages,
> > >the smudges do the same, leading me to think these are water
> > damage of some
> > >sort.  Most seem to be in the right place, but some just don't add up.
> > >
> > >I'd hate to jump to any conclusions on this without having
> others look at
> > >the same progressions.  I will however say that I would
> > personally place the
> > >smudges from bifolio 21 in a different order, and that order
> > would probably
> > >be somewhere in the proximity of bifolio 23.
> > >
> > >Keep in mind that "water damage" is sheer speculation on my part
> > and there
> > >could be other reasonable explanations.
> >
> > Having looked at both the CopyFlo and the no-ip scans for this kind of
> > feature, I have to say that while (like you) I'm reasonably convinced
> > there's a little water damage at the top of a few pages, I don't
> > think the
> > quality (and type) of the scans we have isn't really high enough to make
> > particularly strong inferences from. :-(
> >
> > Having said that, I'm completely comfortable with your idea
> that bifolios
> > 21 & 23 were next to each other when the (predicted) water damage
> > occurred. :-)
> >
> > Cheers, .....Nick Pelling.....
> >
> >
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