What are the clues/hints/part of the VMS that struck you as completely unexpected?
Perhaps things that are even against what youd expect to find in the time period or against your own preconceptions about the VMS?
Or maybe they coincide with your ideas but this clue was still unexpected?
My greatest unexpected hint is in the middle of the book, hidden under plane sight.
Okay, Pyth -- I'll bite.
Keep in mind I'm coming up on my one year anniversary at this problem that is the VM, so I am still a newbie, but here are my impressions/opinion on this topic.
I am coming to realize that there is really nothing in the VM that is truly "unexpected," only avenues of investigation that haven't been fully researched. Or perhaps, if they have been fully researched, the extensive amount of time since the manuscript was written (and the attitudes prevalent during that intervening time about the possible "evils" of written work) or the vagaries of academic scanning means that the materials needed to see a particular aspect of the manuscript as "expected" are just not available.
That's not to say there there is nothing unusual or even unique about the manuscript, just that the great, great majority of what is there can be found elsewhere, in parallel forms. Given the situation it is going to be very difficult to ever definitely say that any part of it (including the text and its characteristics) are somehow telling "clues" to who, what, where, when and why than merely saying its the product of the times (which I see as the 15th century).
Of course, I would love to be wrong about this and have some sort of document show up that allows a really good match -- whether it's some sort of Zodiac-like cycle that shares so many parallels that it must be a source, or the holy grail of some sort of "key" to the text.
I know how "privileged" I am in being comfortable in making such a conclusion -- and I am well aware that such a conclusion was not available at times when people on this board were actively studying the VM. But I do think that seeking that "unexpected" clue is likely not to bear fruit and will merely be reflective of a misunderstanding of a culture that was so far in the past from ours.
You can say I'm being semantic -- but really and truly I don't believe any of this is "unexpected."
I readily admit that this realization was a process and the hardest one for me to let go of is the seemingly complete lack of a "consistent" pattern to the text that could allow it to be transformed into the plaintext of a language that has the similar traditions as the imagery. But again, this is completely consistent with the times -- where spelling was optional and very fluid, cryptography (and the downsides for not using a pattern) was likely still not universally understood, and it was routine to just leave off letters from words because everyone "knew" what they were from context. Alternatively, we may have to wait for computer technology to reach a point where so much information loss can be filled in -- but there are obviously practical limits to this no matter how much computing power you have.
So, there it is -- research whatever aspects of the VM that seem "unexpected" to you -- but keep in mind, if you keep at it hard enough, you will likely find that such aspect is an expected result of the times and may be much less "telling" to answering the open questions than you would prefer.
Why do I feel like this thread exists mostly to tell us about the "greatest unexpected hint in the middle of the book, hidden under plane sight"?
What is hidden in plain sight? And what is hidden by deception? That depends of the reader's perception. Take any topic that would have been familiar to an educated person living in the mid-European culture of roughly 1400 to 1450, and ask yourself how well your familiarity with events, history, and tradition compares with that of the images produced by the VMs artist. Does the reader know the difference between the Aristotelian and Ptolemaic representations of a geocentric cosmos or about the inverted T-O representation of the Earth? Does the reader know heraldry well enough to find it in the initial VMs Zodiac illustrations?
The greatest unexpected clue, on the basis of the dual interpretations of the heraldry on VMs White Aries, is that the two interpretations were put there intentionally, and it is the disguised and hidden version that is the one with a significant historical interpretation borrowing a specific heraldic situation within the traditions of the Catholic church - the history of Pope Innocent IV and the origins of the cardinal's red galero.
Dual interpretation is one form of disguise. The combination of paired images is another way that things are obfuscated. This deception is a sort of game, like a test of the reader's familiarity with the social media of the artist's lifetime, historical, scientific and traditional knowledge and events. Things have been hidden. And unfortunately as it generally turns out, these are things where many initial VMs investigators lack familiarity. [The Fieschi blazon; the name, definition, and purpose of the nebuly line; the details relevant to the fashion of clothing; [font=Verdana]the name, definition, placement and purpose of the papelonny tincture; the variations of Melusine;, the Agnus Dei of Liège (1313); the diagrams of Shirakatsi; and many others.] We need to know the "social media" of the era in order to understand what is presented in the illustrations. We need to follow the path of pairing that has been provided in the VMs. We need to take the bridge from illustrations to language indicated by Stolfi's 'start here' markers because of the connection with heraldry.[/font]
Yeah, I know that sounds a bit loopy. What I'm saying is: we need to realize what the VMs creator is *potentially* doing. We need to use the clues that have been provided. We need to recognize that things are intentionally different in appearance, yet identification is confirmed by the retention of a common structure - after the rediscovery of the best comparable example. We need to follow the trail of clues, particularly those that are validated by shared provenance, but first we need to learn how to find them. The knowledge accumulated in recent years is bringing that picture into clearer focus. The now and then, one-off, potshots at linguistic interpretation continue to provide a distraction.