Re: VMs: Repeats and Blitherings

["Barbara Barrett" <barbarabarrett@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> John Jotted;
> One problem with the blank journal notion is the existence of rather
> sporadic foldouts of varying sizes. If the journal was a pre-constructed
> booklet that the author scribbled in then the varying length foldouts
> wouldn't have been necessary except for perhaps the Rosettes.

Barbara babbles;
It doesn't follow that they wouldn't have been *necessary*. The author could
have
composed them - knowing they needed larger pages than those in the book, and
inserted them loose. Which could have been another motive for someone trying
to
tidy up the book in the manner I described.

> As for tidying up the
> blank pages and re-ordering you're forgetting the pages were numbered
after
> they were bound in the current order with the missing folios having been
> removed since this last binding.

No, I'm not. Someone adding pagination at a later date would have discovered
places where pages should have been (those pesky blanks removed by an
earlier
re-binder) and assumed missing pages and number the pages accordingly. The
present assumption is that the missing pages were removed after pagination -
but that need not have been the case. The paginator, finding what he assumed
to
be missing pages, he would have included them in the numbering. In other
words
that the missing pages were removed after pagination is an assumption -
either
scenario could be true.

 > One thing that still bothers me... if the quire signatures were not
> those of the author, then by what means did the author keep the
pages/quires
> aligned?

Not needed if writing was done into a bound blank book. And, as the last
page of
each quire would change with each added bifolio, not in the least useful for
keeping
the bifolios in order or even together until that quire was finished. Quire
marks
would not be added until after the mss was dismantled for rebinding and not
before
because until that time there would be no need for them!

> Quire signatures or ... what the heck are those words called again -- the
> last word on one page is the same as the first on the following page.
> Anyway, they aren't apparent in the VMS, so quire marking is the next
> best thing for keeping some sense of order to a group of bifolios.

You're forgetting that a bifolio, written on both sides of one half, doesn't
have
a straightforward succession of pages; to add two written pages to a quire's
end one automatically adds two more blank pages preceding the section.
And that could best be done while the mss was unbound. A very untidy way of
doing things <ugh>.

Writing on unbound bifolios, in something that was one day to become a book,
and keeping the order of pages straight  is a real headache - I've done it -
it is a
total pain in the tits. Much easier to writ into a prebound blank, and then
remove
the unwritten pages, and then rebind the book; much much easier. and the
standard practice in private document hand works are far as I can recall.

> Foliation is obviously an excellent step in page-ordering if it was done
> right (when the pages were in a specific and well defined order to begin
> with). Unfortunately, we know it was done after the current binding order
took
> place but before the missing pages were cut out or lost, so once again the
> author didn't seem to use any form of pagination - I think that was common
> practice though  wasn't it?

Correct , but not exactly right. Pagination , pagination was first invented
in Italy,
Venice to be exact, by printer/typographer Aldus Manutius for his
revolutionary
"pocket editions", sometime in the 1490s. The idea caught on in european
printing and mss; adding pagination by hand to old mss did become
commonplace
also. However, pagination was unknown before that time. A very simple idea,
but
no one had thought of it! But, in consequence, any pagination one sees on a
medieval
mss was always added at the earliest in the late 1490s as the practice just
did not exist before the 1490s.
(See; 500 Years of Printing, S H Steinberg, Pelican, ISBN 0-402-0343-5)
So it wasn't exactly "common practice" not to paginate, it simply wasn't a
practice
at all before the 1490s

In the case of the VMS *if* is a renaisance document (genuine or hoax) we'd
expect the pagination to have been done by the author and for there to be
similarities
in penmanship between the pagination and the voynichese text. But there are
not.
The VMS author on what I've seen uses heavy up strokes and diminishing
pressure
down strokes, whereas the paginator uses heavy down strokes and light
upstrokes
- a difference in mediaeval and renaissance styles. So the paginator was a
different
person from the author.

As Maurizio M. Gavioli and I have shown the superficial connections between
"humanist hand" and Voynichese are the same ones that Humanist Hand was
 based upon; Carolinian minuscule (and which "humanist hand" was
*deliberately*
based upon) -  which predates Humanist hand by 800 years. Although there are
elements of both Carolinian Minuscule and a drop of the hat towards earlier
Merovingian Minuscule too, there is a much greater similarity with litera
moderna
(aka Black letter, Gothic) styles (quill angle, stroke usage and
connections) which
Humanist replaced.

Also a point to remember is that the VMS should not be compared to Book
Hand,
but to everyday Document Hand - the modern but not quite exact analogy would
between Calligraphy and Handwriting.

Also the secondary labels in the astrological section seem or the B/W jpegs
to
be Litera Moderna. If this turns out to be the case then these labels could
were most likely added when litera Modera was either contemporary with, or
followed, the creation
of the vms, which in turn would date the additional labels to before the
late 13thC, and
the MSS older again.

Granted there were areas of europe where litera Modern survived, longer,
even up to
the 20thC in Germany (although more in printing than handwriting - book or
document
hands) so any dating by document hand styles while being a very strong
"possibility",
isn't, and can never be, proven fact. But added to the circular cartography
(a medieval signature) and the medieval T-O maps. I think the evidence is
mounting up for a medieval origin of the VMS.

But just for a moment to return to the Prof I originally quoted. All
Medieval Mss
eventually fall apart and need to be rebound many times during their life
time.
Several rebindings in an mss is actually taken as a mark of the genuineness
of
a medieval mss. It would be suspicious if it didn't happen. This of course
is
something that a really good 19th/20thC hoaxer would incorporate - or if it
is a failed medieval hoax then the passage of time would provide the
rebindings anyway.

A hoaxer probably wouldn't goof up the quire marks or page order, he/she
*knows* the right order even if its gibberish, whereas a genuine rebinder,
who can not read the mss, is almost certain to missorder pages and
misidentify quires.

So I conclude that as the vms has *apparently* got quires and pages out of
order, the mss was rebound several times by different folk, during a long
existence. From this in turn I conclude that the vms is likely to be much
much older than the renaissance. And if it is a hoax (which I really doubt)
then it is a very old *medieval* hoax.

Barbara











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