The Voynich Ninja

Here's how: if the manuscript had been created by an isolated community, they would have slaughtered their own animals to make the parchment. By the way, it's definitely NOT "vellum" even though it's calf: "vellum" is a very particular type of VERY fine, thin parchment made from newborn or even unborn calfskin. This is calf, but not vellum.

There are LOTS of manuscripts made of terrible parchment.

Also, the McCrone report identifies the ink as Oak Gall, so nothing unusual there. On p. 3 of the report, "All of the inks used for text and drawing were identified as iron gall inks."

It seems to me that someone trying to make their own parchment would try first with the first of their animals to be slaughtered after they came up with the idea? If it is a do it yourself project, it seems to have done quite well.

I'm asking out of curiosity and only because I've only been back on the Voynich Ninja site for a month after not participating for years, to avoid repeating the discussions: has research already been done on the Voynich parchment sheets based on Gregory's law of vis-à-vis?

@ LisaFaginDavis
We once had a discussion about the size of books from the Abbey of St. Gallen. (Number of leaves per calfskin)
I could imagine that this is a case of offcuts. Since the VM is relatively small, it might have been made from scraps that were already too small for other books.

Image
[attachment=15199]

Here, the ink has bled through the parchment due to moisture. f116. Mirror image.
Question: Can this also be seen under UV light?
I’m thinking about how deeply the ink penetrates the parchment. I don’t think normal wear and tear would make it disappear, no matter what kind of ink it is.


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(19-04-2026, 11:24 PM)Bernd Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.By the way, voynich.nu states:

Quote:The parchment was identified in 2014 by a team at the University of York to be made of calf skin, so it is vellum in the strict sense of the word.

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Rene, do you have a source for this? You only list a methodological paper (Fiddyment et al. 2015) but where can we find the analysis itself? What is it now? Young Calf or older animals? Bad source material or bad processing?

I possibly need to review that part of the page, but here are the facts as I know them:

- the tests done by the university of York determined the species of the animal, not its age. The actual report said "cow". These tests were requested by Sterling lab (Yale) and/or Beinecke, and I was in copy of some of the exchanges. I guess that the formal publication of these results is the Yale photo facsimile.
- I wrote calf, not cow, because parchment is usually made from younger animals. I cannot recall any instance where I saw parchment referred to as cow parchment. (Again, the York result was reporting the species).
- The question parchment/vellum is old, and will probably never stop. Whether a particular sheet of parchment
should be called vellum, depends on the country, and on the time period. Usage in the UK and the US is different, and present usage is different from past usage. This includes cases where parchment not from calves was called vellum, which now most people agree is incorrect. I did not make this up. I was told exactly this by the very respectable MS expert Abigail Quandt of the Walters, back in 2014. I am also not trying to contradict Lisa here. I understand that modern usage (at least in the US but perhaps elsewhere), is to reserve the term vellum for high-quaity parchment from calves. I try to consistently use "parchment", and I was a bit surpised to see this case of "vellum" quoted from my web site ...
- While the parchment quality of the MS is low, it has been prepared with significant care, because the flesh and hair sides of the leaves in the Voynich MS can barely be distinguished. This was attempted by several experts again in 2014. 

On that last point, regardless whether the raw parchment material was raised by the authors, or bought, they would have had limited choice. Their own stock or affordable parchment. However, it would be their choice how much effort they put into preparing it, and apparently they cared enough to do that thoroughly.

On parchment vs vellum: when I joined online Voynich research 10 years ago, I was only familiar with the general word "parchment". However, there was some pressure at the time to use the word "vellum", so I think a lot of people internalized that name. That's why you still see it used a lot in the context of the VM. I'm happy to use the term "parchment" though, if only because of its familiarity.

Regarding flawed parchment, there are indeed many instances: think of the famous holes and their creative repairs. Top-of-the-line skins shouldn't have (or easily get) holes in them. But could we really say that bad parchment was exclusively used by isolated communities? This sounds like there wouldn't be any lower-tier parchment available in urban environments. But shouldn't we expected writing substrates to be available in different qualities, just like any other commodity?

We had a very similar parchment vs vellum discussion a few months ago:
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This subject seems to return from time to time. Why would anybody write nonsense on so expensive medium as parchment/vellum and so on.

We had several superstitions about Middle Ages and still have some. They were very pious, didn't wash themselves, believed that the Earth is flat and so on. While many of these superstitions were debunked, one closely related to Voynich Manuscript remains.

We tend to believe that parchment/vellum was very expensive. Ask any AI and it will tell you so. And it just repeats what people have written.
For example Gemini told me a moment ago:
A mid-sized devotional book could cost as much as a small house or several years of a laborer's income.

I agree, we miss good articles that would prove the existence of cheap manuscripts. But I feel they existed and Voynich is one of them.

Another thing discussed here is the access of Voynich authors to another books. Nothing is 100% sure but it seems that they had access to some full library - herbals, astronomical books, De Balneis, Taccola and probably more. The isolated, self-sustainable community living in some remote mountain village doesn't really fit here.

In my other thread I proposed that Voynich Manuscript could be made by some "naughty" students or monks like goliards or clerici vagantes.They didn't have to own source manuscripts, they could check them at library or even borrow them for a while. It would explain low quality of VM going together with lots of inspirations in it.

(20-04-2026, 04:07 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Regarding flawed parchment, there are indeed many instances: think of the famous holes and their creative repairs. Top-of-the-line skins shouldn't have (or easily get) holes in them. But could we really say that bad parchment was exclusively used by isolated communities? This sounds like there wouldn't be any lower-tier parchment available in urban environments. But shouldn't we expected writing substrates to be available in different qualities, just like any other commodity?

Yes, I think this is worth researching.
But as I said, the issue is that as soon as paper made from rags became widely available (which varied by region), it was of better quality and significantly cheaper than bad parchment and easier to work with. So what was the market for bad parchment in the early-mid 15th century? Legal documents were often required to be written on parchment but sheep was preferred because it made it hard to hide erasures. Calf parchment had the highest status. This may be the reason the VM was made on this sort of parchment instead of paper or goat / sheep skin. Because the author wanted to for personal reasons. Or we are looking at a place / time where paper or goat parchment was not available or affordable but I find that less likely.

Another thing I'd like to point out - if the author was so poor, why did he fill the manuscript with huge illustrations? Cheap manuscripts had no illustrations at all to save cost of material and labor. He could easily have compressed the text on half the parchment with smaller or less imagery. But he didn't. On the contrary, the images are disproportionally large and numerous. Either their function was crucial (which I doubt), or cost of parchment was not an issue.

(20-04-2026, 05:07 PM)Rafal Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.For example Gemini told me a moment ago:
A mid-sized devotional book could cost as much as a small house or several years of a laborer's income.

We forget in the age of cheap prints that craftsmanship (calligraphy, decorated initial letters, illustrations) costs much more than parchment.

One other important aspect is that the most popular, most viewed and most digitised manuscripts are the illustrated or beautifully illuminated ones. These are strongly biased towards using the finest parchment or, indeed, vellum.

There are ten times more 'pedestrian' manuscripts that are text-only. While I know that several users here have been poring over these to look at the handwriting, probably less attention went to the state of the parchment, and I dare to predict that these will on average use a much lower grade of parchment.