(25-01-2020, 12:00 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Ah, OK thanks.
Yes, it is entirely reasonable that this would be the last 'original' entry in the MS.
There aren't many entries in the MS that can be called 'later' with any confidence.
I think these few cases are:
- the quire marks. logically, these would only be added after the MS was completed and ready for binding.
- the month names in the zodiac area.
- the folio numbers
- much more recent annotations that seem to be in pencil: 'a' 'b' and 'c' above some of the cosmological pages
- the cover and anything written on it
I think you are right with (maybe) the exception of the zodiac month names, I would put them nearer to the middle of the 15th c., not that it matters much
(25-01-2020, 12:17 PM)Helmut Winkler Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I think you are right with (maybe) the exception of the zodiac month names, I would put them nearer to the middle of the 15th c., not that it matters much
Maybe it doesn't matter much, but it's still interesting. In the "later writing" we have Germanic, perhaps Latin (portas..?) and French. Do their scripts belong to different periods? How precisely can those be dated? Do they overlap? The more precisely we can date these things, the stronger statements we can make.
For example: between ... and ... inscriptions are in Germanic and Latin. Between ... and ..., the MS was held by someone who wrote in a Romance dialect. Between .. and .. someone added page numbers. And so on.
If we keep in mind that you can date Medieval mss. with some confidencee only within let's say 50 years I would like to add two more datings:
In the 17r marginalia the script (and the style of the illustration?) look like (contemporary to) 116v
The quire markings look very much second half of the 15th c. and I think rather nearer middle of the c. and the foliation could be late, maybe even 17th c. (Prague)
And I think one could build a timeline in the development of the illustrations and the script, whicch would mean there is likely one person responsible for the ms. and we don't need a bunch of hands and scribes and illustrators.
The swallowtail merlons could be dated at least from their first appearance in architecture (in northern Italy ?). I did some research on them some time ago, but I can't find the notes.
This is exactly what I've been working on for the last 12 years. At this point, I have searched more than 10,000 manuscripts, collected and organized more than 3,000 relevant samples for the column numbers, folio numbers, quire numbers, 116v text, etc.
A palaeographer can tell at a glance the approximate dates of each of these, but I now have data to back it up. A lot of it. This is important because an expert has already said that John Dee did the foliation. I wanted to find evidence to support or refute that claim (I don't care what the answer is, I only care about finding the answer).
Last night I put some effort into figuring out a way to present it (this has taken a long time, it's not easy data to organize for a lay audience) and finally came up with something I think might work. I don't know if it will be the final form, but it's something someone without palaeographic experience could look through and (hopefully) understand.
By the way, I agree with Helmut that the dating of the script won't help us much in terms of deciphering the text, but I have a personal and professional interest in fonts and typefaces, and in the process of searching for matches I get to read a lot of manuscripts (and find other things along the way), so I feel it is worth my while.
Reading is absolutely essential to collecting script samples. You have to be absolutely sure you are sampling the correct characters.
(25-01-2020, 02:08 PM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.A palaeographer can tell at a glance the approximate dates of each of these, but I now have data to back it up. A lot of it. This is important because an expert has already said that John Dee did the foliation. I wanted to find evidence to support or refute that claim (I don't care what the answer is, I only care about finding the answer).
Exactly. The tricky part is to find those specific things which are clearly present in the VM
and can be found only in other works within a certain date range.
For the bag sleeves, the impulse to look deeper into it came from the fact that the date for the oldest of the Devonshire Hunting Tapestries had been adjusted to 1430, because after that bag sleeves would have been out of fashion.
It would be most interesting if other details can be dated this way.
(25-01-2020, 02:08 PM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.This is important because an expert has already said that John Dee did the foliation.
Which expert?
I don't know if John Dee did the foliation but it has probably been done in the middle of the sixteenth century, in my opinion.
However the VMS was written in the middle of the fifteenth century. (I'm not an expert).
(25-01-2020, 08:33 AM)davidjackson Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.That's something I've always wondered about. If nick P is correct about many of the nymphs being 'updated' by a later scribe, was this person just trying to make the nymphs look more modern and less antiqued?
The nymphs being updated does not mean they were updated by another person. I don't remember if Nick put forward any argumentation in favor of that, or if that was the point he was really putting forward. I consider it like the same person updating his own imagery at a later time. (Like the crowns related to the succession of kings, as I proposed).
(25-01-2020, 12:41 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I've already posted a tentative timeline for the column text on the right-side of 1r.
Yes, and we discussed that somewhere in the forum. The significance of this dating is that it sets the upper margin of the date when the VMS was already possessed by someone who could not understand it.
Regarding other objects for dating, there are also arabic digits from 1 to 5 written by the original scribe, I forgot in which folio.