Re: VMs: dating the VMs

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Maurizio,

At 18:53 23/02/2004 +0100, Maurizio Gavioli wrote:
> 1) Normally you don't write a *book* from scratch. Either you copy it from 
> an exemplar (if it is somebody else's work) or you assemble it from notes, 
> minutes, etc.

It seems likely to me that the chancery practice around normal 
(letter-sized) ciphertexts would be to have a clerk encode or decode them 
on a wax tablet (circa 1400-1500), before making a more permanent copy for 
the diplomatic archives. It also seems likely to me that the production of 
the VMs may have involved a scaled-up version of this same kind of process.

Any evidence for or against this idea would be welcome! :-)

> The absence of ruling surprised me. I have to confess that I cannot 
> correlate this with a date (mainly because of my ignorance); I would have 
> assumed that vellum ruling was the norm (with possible, rare, exceptions).

Don't forget there are some apparent rulings on f67r2: as Philip Neal 
points out, the bottom line appears to be more constrained by the *top* of 
the rulings (look at the top of the gallows) than kept in line with the 
bottom, which seems (to me) to be an unusual feature for European mss.

        http://www.voynichinfo.com/microfilm/f67r2.jpg

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


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