Re: VMs: VMS: OOPS!

[Nick Pelling <nickpelling@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Erni,

At 16:27 09/08/2004 -0400, Erni Lillie wrote:
> Perhaps some of the "missing pages" were actually removed by the author to
> cover errors, spilled ink, girlie pictures doodled by the apprentice, or
> whatever. Of course this would also require the pagination to have been
> done before the text went in.Just a thought.

There currently seems good reason to suppose that the foliation and quire 
signatures were added in good faith as valid representations of how the VMs 
was bound at the (respective) times.

To my mind, the foliation, binding, and handwriting evidence all come 
together to strongly suggest that the VMs was rebound by someone who was 
unaware of the content's intended arrangement, and that the foliation 
happened yet later. As to the question of whether the quire signatures are 
original: I'd suggest that this seems generally inconsistent with 
VMs-as-tricky-cipher hypotheses - why go to the (considerable) trouble of 
making it all so baffling, only to add "prim9" etc?

Apart from the bifolios lost circa 1930, there is a definite kind of logic 
to the other missing pages. Personally, I'm more than comfortable with the 
image conjured up of Baresch pruning different types of pages (one herbal, 
one zodiacal, etc) from the VMs to send through to Kircher. It would just 
be nice if those other pages were suddenly (almost magically!) to turn up 
folded into an otherwise forgotten corner of Kircheriana. :-)

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


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