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Re: VMs: F66r

Hi Rene,

At 03:53 14/06/2004 -0700, Rene Zandbergen wrote: 
--- Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> (1) We have a document which appears to have been
> bound out of order.
> Evidence: the well-known plumbing mismatch in the
> balneo section,

... as mentioned before, and the strongest single
piece of evidence. Still, it could just be a little
practical joke by the author....

As I mentioned, there are other indications within that same quire that it has been bound out of order.

> .... and from
> the Currier A/B bifolio mixups throughout the herbal
> section -

Before jumping to conclusions: they may just have
been written/composed out of order - another valid
explanation.

Sure - but put the mislaid quire signatures, the out-of-order balneo section, and the "apparently" mixed-up Currier A/B folios together, and you're starting to accumulate a good body of consistent evidence that somewhere along the way, someone who couldn't read the text got into a tangle with the rebinding. :-)

Oh, and the evidence *against* this is... what, exactly?

I like to think that the second folio should have
been the first (it is text-only). Then the nine
'bullets' could refer to the nine following
illustrated pages (an as yet unexplored possiblity).
Again, there is counter-evidence against this
proposals namely the quire number on
the outer bifolio. (I see now that my original
E-mail was a bit too "condensed").

Again, this is not a problem if the quire signatures came later. :-)

I'm not so sure that this is necessarily any
evidence. Bleed-through only started after the
book was bound and the pages pressed together.
Much more cannot be concluded I think.

Perhaps you might benefit from looking more carefully at bleed-through...

> (3) The VMs' alphabet is strongly influenced by
> Tironian notae, and not
> influenced by Arabic numerals at all. Evidence: the
> word-initial and
> word-final EVA <y> seems a direct steal, and EVA
> <d>, <q>, <o> and <y> were
> plainly not conceived as numbers.

Pure speculation, in my humble opinion.

...also based on the progression of the cipher alphabets in the Tranchedino ledger, FYI. :-)

There is no doubt that the foliation was done after
all the pages were in the current order, and folded.
There is also little doubt that the quire marks
are earlier. But why write quire marks when the
pages are already out of order?

Perhaps if the quires were individually bound but loose, quire marks might be useful? As per my previous email, I think this would be consistent with the mislaid signature on quire 8.

> (A) Pre-1500, a document is constructed. Only a
> little colour is used
> (though perhaps some colours faded, but might still
> be detectable by  different scanning techniques?)

It may have been incomplete and not yet bound.
evidence for the separate stages in colouring
is not that clear to me.

The first (detail) paint was integral to the design (such as the nymphs' mouths and cheeks), and so had to have been done by the original authors.

I contend that the heavy painter bleed-across happened after the VMs was (incorrectly) bound into its current order: and hence that it was done by a separate actor in the VMs' drama.

> (B) The document is rebound

Or bound for the first time.

True, though I don't think it's particularly important: but physically examining the binding stations should be able to resolve this question.

> (D) Post-1500, the document has quire signatures
> added

Adding quire marks after binding is odd. And in that
case it would have made far more sense that they
were all in the same place (lower corner of last
folio in quire), which they are not.

Whether it would have made sense or not, what happened happened - and now we must make the best use of that which remains in our inferences.

The scenario you present is largely plausible,
but it is not the only plausible one, I would
say.

Not only do I see a lot of evidence which supports it, I don't see any evidence which directly contradicts it. True, there will always be other conceivable scenarios (the Quine-Duhem thesis in a nutshell) - but ATM I don't see any body of evidence to support them (beyond "he-said-she-said").

Of course, a hoax proponent would say that a sophisticated hoaxer would have simulated all this, in order to give the ms its unique "provenential charm". But take care - if you go too far down that line, you start running into "The Matrix"-style arguments, where reality only makes sense if it were a giant simulator running on a mega-computer. :-o

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

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