The Voynich Ninja

JKP,

what you write is clearly correct. Unfortunately, it isn't really possible to see how this à looks on the Voynich MS.
I could easily imagine that the "a" is written differently when it just follows another letter (the capital J in Jacobi) or when it is the start of a word.

When Voynich sent a picture of the signature to the Prague archives in 1921, it was also not clear, and the answer suggested that the writing was: "Jacobj ð Tepenecz". (Hope that curved d with a stroke through it comes through).

In any case, the example of the Voynich MS is the only one we have that is on parchment, and I can imagine that this also makes a difference.

I can see why someone might read that middle letter on the VMS as ð. Besides the signature not being very clear, it's a very common abbreviation for "de" (and occasionally other short d-words) in medieval script. It is frequently written as "d" with a tickmark to the right side of the ascender (when written as a ligature, the "e" is nothing more than a brief stroke and almost disappears).


As for the à on the Dialecta Aristotelis book, it's quite a different shape and out of character with the other Jacobi "a" shapes, even for a letter written by itself. I'm not suggesting any conclusions about this, only pointing it out. You can't really tell much from one occurrence.