(27-01-2026, 01:14 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Then again, a non-illustrated MS on paper would still have been a lot easier to make, and a lot less expensive.
Yeah, that is a good question: why did the Author chose to put the thing to vellum?
He must have had that material on paper first, either as unorganized notes or as a more organized paper book or set of booklets. That should have been enough for his own use, if he had any.
But, a you say, he would not need the decorative illustrations, or made-up plant drawings.
My guess is that he decided to make a vellum copy in order to "monetize" those personal notes and booklets, by selling them to some curious scholar, or collector of peculiar books. I imagine that a book on vellum would fetch a much higher price than the same contents on paper. Surely more than the cost of the vellum.
That could also explain the echoes of Pharma in the Herbal. I imagine him trying to sell the book without the Herbal, but being told "You call
that a herbal?
This is a herbal, see: it has one plant per page, with a full drawing of the plant, and at least a long paragraph of text..." Then he going back home and starting to expand his Pharma notes into that format...
But maybe instead it was a vanity project -- he wanted to see his beloved notes set in a prestigious form, like other books that people treasured.
Or maybe he wanted to leave the book to his heirs, and thus chose vellum for its supposed durability.
All the best, --stolfi
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Even though universities switched to paper early on (from 1350 onwards) (reusability), paper was not available everywhere. Germany, for example, had around 10 paper mills in 1450.
The idea that paper was easily available to everyone, especially in rural areas, is an illusion.
(27-01-2026, 03:19 AM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Surely, this means it would have been expensive.
As was already said: expensive is relative.
For most people it would have been very expensive.
As illustrated manuscripts go, it is on the 'less expensive' side of the balance.
If you believe that the MS was created by a certain bishop, then undoubtedly he would have been able to afford it.
I also believe, like Lisa Fagin Davis, that the Voynich Manuscript was created by a community. In a monastery or a university. I don't think there are many other possibilities.
I'm more inclined to believe it was a medieval university because of the scarcity of religious images in the codex. It's a book that has a certain scientific component, provided one understands the close relationship between medieval science and natural magic.
Quote:Even though universities switched to paper early on (from 1350 onwards) (reusability), paper was not available everywhere.
Exactly.
I don't understand why everyone assumes that paper was an option.
If VM was made in early 1400s as our mainstream view claims then paper was at that time a total novelty or unknown thing in many places.
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Papermaking then spread further northwards, with evidence of paper being made in Troyes, France by 1348, in Holland sometime around 1340–1350, and in Nuremberg, Germany by 1390 in a mill set up by Ulman Stromer. This was just about the time when the woodcut printmaking technique was transferred from fabric to paper in the old master print and popular prints. There was a paper mill in Switzerland by 1432 and the first mill in England was set up by John Tate around 1490 near Hertford, but the first commercially successful paper mill in Britain did not occur before 1588 when John Spilman set up a mill near Dartford in Kent. During this time, paper making spread to Austria by 1469, to Poland by 1491, to Russia by 1576, to the Netherlands by 1586, to Denmark by 1596, and to Sweden by 1612
Today new things spread immediately. One year ChatGPT appears in USA and the same year people are using it in Tadjikistan. But in the 15th century it was different. There could be some workshop producing paper in Nuremberg but it didn't mean that paper was known in some small town 50 kilometers far from Nuremberg.
Paper may have been available, but yes, in the early fifteenth century it was not yet in common use and would have been more expensive than parchment.
As for the cost of the parchment, we can say for certain that - as in all markets - higher-quality goods cost more than lower-quality. Ergo the Voynich Manuscript's parchment, which is inarguably low-quality, would have been less expensive than the finer parchment used in higher-quality manuscripts.
That is not a judgement about the manuscript's importance or value TO US. It doesn't mean that it COULDN'T have been produced by or for a wealthy patron. But it does broaden the possibilities to include a less-wealthy community of origin.
Quote:Ergo the Voynich Manuscript's parchment, which is inarguably low-quality, would have been less expensive than the finer parchment used in higher-quality manuscripts.
I would have a very beginner question.
And yes, I am not ashamed to admit that physical aspects of manuscripts aren't my forte.
Lisa, do you use "vellum" and "parchment" terms interchangeably?
Was Voynich Manuscript written on vellum or parchment?
Is vellum a kind of parchment? Or parchment a kind of vellum? Or are they separate things?
It would be nice if someone knows of research into the likely cost of the materials needed to produce the manuscript.
Lisa says: "The Voynich is not an expensive object...the opposite, in fact."
Rene says: "For most people it would have been very expensive."
These statements appear to be at odds with one another.
I have not researched this question of the cost of the materials needed to produce the Voynich. Maybe someone else knows of some definite research into this. The position that Rene states has been the one that I have typically heard from other Voynich researchers.
Lisa states: "No one knows what the literacy rate was"
I quote the figure of 90% to 95% illiteracy which are the numbers I found online and which Lisa seems to disagree with. Has anyone done research into the best estimates that we can come up with?