VMs: Some thoughts/observations on some other thoughts/observations....

["Maurizio M. Gavioli" <mmg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 10:53 20/02/2004 +0000, Nick Pelling wrote:
> The question also arises as to why they would use a character set which is 
> unsuited to fast writing with a quill (this would seem to be a very poor 
> decision),

Hmmm... why do you say that? Actually it seemed to me quite easy and fast 
to write with a quill, like most of the derivatives of _littera moderna_ 
(of which the Vms writing is one). In any case, not slower than any 
University ms. of the XIII c. Derivatives of the _littera antiqua_, which 
seem more familiar to us, because it is ultimately our writing (and then 
probably look 'faster' to us), are actually significantly slower to write.

> [...] and I find it even harder to imagine a faker using a barely-writable 
> character set

As I have already noted, the Vms writing is *completely* within the 
late-medieval, _littera moderna_ Latin writing system and technique: it is 
*very* writable.

At 17:03 20/02/2004 -0500, John Grove wrote:
> What remains
> unfortunately consistent is that almost all VMS characters are constructed
> in a very regular pattern. I'm not talking about looking for hidden pieces -
> I'm talking about looking at an 's' and and 'r' in the VMS and seeing they
> look identical except for the initial stroke being either curved like a 'c'
> or straight like an italic 'i'. The same goes for 'b' and 'n', 'g' and 'm',
> 'cth' and 'ith', etc...

This is exactly what_littera moderna_ is all about! Stroke assimilation. 
Look at any average ms. of, say, XIII-XV c. (by 'average' I mean a ms. 
which is neither an over-crafted dedication copy, which usually re-styles 
the writing, or a scrapbook like St. Thomas' autographs, where cursivity 
takes over) and you'll find exactly the same assimilation, in exactly the 
*same* character parts.

This has been theorized by early-modern writing teachers (like Vicentino or 
Tagliente) when they describe the _littera moderna_ (by then a relic of the 
past, at least in Italy) as made by only three elements (namely: _testa_, 
_traversa_ and _taglio_ ["head", "crossing" and "cut"], but their precise 
identification is less important than the fact that they are only three and 
allow to construct all the characters).

(Note: The above datings are quite broad, because the change from _moderna_ 
to _antiqua_ happened at different times over Europe; it started during 
late XIV / early XV in Italy and took almost a century to reach Burgundy 
and Germany. In addition, in Northern Europe it only applied to Latin, 
vulgar being still written in some _moderna_ variation, like _lettre 
bastarde_ or _fraktur_. To make things even more complex, Irish writing in 
the North and Beneventan writing in the South showed stroke assimilation as 
early as IX - X c.)

At 19:10 20/02/2004 +0000, William Edmondson wrote:
> Re VMs there are three options.
>
> 1/ complete gibberish [...]
>
> 2/ completely genuine [...]
>
> 3/ forgery/fake in the sense that it is readable if you know the key, but 
> probably banal/meaningless in actual content.[...]

The difference between 2. and 3. seems to me 'simply' in the cultural value 
of the text. Either there is an underlying text or not: this is the main 
distinction. The relevance of this text is a second-level distinction 
(which may have several grades, not only two).





 Maurizio M. Gavioli -  VistaMare  Software
 via San Bernardo 5, I-16030 Pieve Ligure, ITALY
 http://www.vistamaresoft.com/

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