The Voynich Ninja

I had this thought experiment lately. Assuming that the VMS was not written in a scriptorium (i.e., not in an "official" place filled with dozens of professional scribes where one could easily notice that someone is writing a hundreds of pages of secret text in broad daylight), we could assume that it was written in a more secluded place, outside the scope of prying eyes. 

One way to do so could be to take the vellum from a scriptorium using theft, and then write the MS in a "safe place". After all, iron gall ink was not difficult to make "at home", so all that was needed for writing the manuscript DYI-style was a lot of vellum.

So I wonder, how easy would it be to steal 100 sheets of vellum from a scriptorium, and whether such a theft would go unnoticed (are 100 sheets "a lot" or "a little" in the scope of a professional workshop)? Would such a theft be recorded in the inventory of a scriptorium?

(17-04-2026, 07:43 AM)JustAnotherTheory Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I had this thought experiment lately. Assuming that the VMS was not written in a scriptorium (i.e., not in an "official" place filled with dozens of professional scribes where one could easily notice that someone is writing a hundreds of pages of secret text in broad daylight), we could assume that it was written in a more secluded place, outside the scope of prying eyes. 

One way to do so could be to take the vellum from a scriptorium using theft, and then write the MS in a "safe place". After all, iron gall ink was not difficult to make "at home", so all that was needed for writing the VMS DYI-style was a lot of vellum.

So I wonder, how easy would it be to steal 100 sheets of vellum from a scriptorium, and whether such a theft would go unnoticed (are 100 sheets "a lot" or "a little" in the scope of a professional workshop)? Would such a theft be recorded in the inventory of a scriptorium?

I began researching the use of parchment over the centuries after the discovery of one of the most important pieces in my collection: the parchment print of Raphael's "Madonna of the Fish" (including mine; another example exists in the English collection of R.H. Keynes, with different coverings
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pages 18-19. Still on the same publication, I recommend reading from page 44 onwards the text by Theresa Fairbanks concerning the history of the creation of the parchment), engraved by Marcantonio Raimondi and/or his student in Rome, Marco Dente da Ravenna "il Ravennate."
From my research, parchment was readily available in Europe until the advent of paper and Swiss paper mills in the 16th-17th centuries, especially in Italy, France, Spain, England, and the Holy Roman Empire of Habsburg (Eastern Europe). Although expensive, there were many artisan workshops that prepared it and sold it to convents, religious copyists (in this case, almost always made in monasteries), artisan copyists, scholars, universities, lawyers, and private individuals who used it for their own purposes. Parchment had varying costs depending on the type of leather, the imperfections it contained (being an organic material), the shade, the thickness, and the quality and importance of the craftsman who crafted it. With the advent of paper, the use of "virgin" parchment was abandoned, becoming an even more valuable and rare material. Thus, the practice of reusing less valuable parchments, which were treated with various processes and reused for overwriting, became widespread.
There was also a black market for parchment.
However, availability at all levels was simply a question of price, not of lack of support.
This is just a short and simple summary because the discussion is much broader.

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The VM parchment / vellum (what is the correct term now?) is generally of rather poor quality. If it was stolen, it was not a huge loss. I could also imagine this was given to someone for practice. Overall, the poor quality fits the poor artistic skills and overall 'provincial' feel of the VM.

Either the creator could not / did not want to spend more on higher quality material, or this was all he could acquire (by whatever means). But yes, if someone 'took' it, the disappearance of low quality sheets would raise significantly less eyebrows than 100+ premium sheets being gone. However, we do not know over which timespan and from how many sources the author acquired the sheets.

It would be interesting to investigate in which kind of environment parchment / vellum of VM quality would be most likely encountered. On one hand, the VM artist must have had access to a high level collection of imagery from different sources, something one would not expect in a poor or simple place. More from a premium workshop, university or even royal library or a wealthy collector. Remember, lavishly illuminated manuscripts were luxury products, not work books. On the other hand, the quality of the VM itself is unexpectedly low. I am still having trouble to reconcile these two facts. Poor artist in a posh place?

You make a lot of great points @Bernd.

(17-04-2026, 02:37 PM)Bernd Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I am still having trouble to reconcile these two facts. Poor artist in a posh place?

Maybe a scribal apprentice in a large scriptorium with a rich library?

But then again, the writing was made by at least 2 different sets of hands. So several people must have been involved, or known about such a theft. Perhaps brothers/siblings/family members?

Wladimir D has put forth the hypothesis the the sheets were originally much larger and cut only after drawing. I can't say how realistic this scenario is but it would drastically change the size and number of the 'acquired' sheets.
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(17-04-2026, 03:18 PM)Bernd Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Wladimir D has put forth the hypothesis the the sheets were originally much larger and cut only after drawing. I can't say how realistic this scenario is but it would drastically change the size and number of the 'acquired' sheets.
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This is a very interesting discussion I hadn't considered before. So:

1. The vellums were filled in,
   
2. Then cut into their current size.
   

Then perhaps the Rosettes were also meant to be trimmed in such a way?

Anyway, this changes the "theft" hypothesis quite a bit. Because now it seems that the thief/thieves could simply take a large vellum and scroll it up. It's much easier to steal. Since this reduces the complexity of thieving quite a bit, its likelihood increases.

EDIT: does vellum crease when folded or scrolled? If so, theft is actually more unlikely than likely, because we don't see crease marks in the VMS.

The parchment (not "vellum"; "vellum" is a specific kind of parchment made from very young calves, which this isn't) used for the VMS is extremely poor quality, thick and full of flaws and holes. It is also untrimmed. This kind of parchment would not have been produced in or for a professional or monastic scriptorium. I suspect that the parchment was made by and for whatever community produced the manuscript - not purchased, and not stolen.

(17-04-2026, 04:57 PM)LisaFaginDavis Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The parchment (not "vellum"; "vellum" is a specific kind of parchment made from very young calves, which this isn't) used for the VMS is extremely poor quality, thick and full of flaws and holes. It is also untrimmed. This kind of parchment would not have been produced in or for a professional or monastic scriptorium. I suspect that the parchment was made by and for whatever community produced the manuscript - not purchased, and not stolen.

That is very insightful, thank you. It's quite a blessing to have actual experts chime in.

So when you say "I suspect that the parchment was made by and for whatever community produced the manuscript", are you implying that the tanner him/herself had knowledge of what the parchment would be used for? I.e., he/she was "in on it"?

In the 15th and 16th centuries, the highest-quality parchment was usually produced in Italy, France, and Spain, because artisans used lamb, goat, or calf skins (usually stillborn animals or fetuses, hence the term "uterine parchment," although today the theory of stretched skin is more prevalent). The lowest-quality parchment was typically produced in Northern Europe: Germany, England, Scandinavia, Czechoslovakia, Sweden and so on, where ox or cow skins, or at least those of adult or older animals, were used. This resulted in larger, more irregular hair follicles, which made writing more difficult and less fluid. The parchment was thicker, yellowish in color, and therefore required more invasive cleaning processes, which ultimately affected its quality.

(17-04-2026, 07:43 AM)JustAnotherTheory Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Assuming that the VMS was not written in a scriptorium (i.e., not in an "official" place filled with dozens of professional scribes [...])

The VMS was definitely not produced by a "professional" scribe or in such a "manuscript factory".  The VMS Scribe apparently had some experience preparing and handling a quill pen and writing Latin or Vernacular, but did not have the basic know-how for producing a "commercial quality" manuscript. 

He did not score text rails (margin lines) or baselines, and thus his text lines are all crooked and unevenly spaced, often with irregular or slanted rails.  

He let the quill run almost dry before recharging it, and possibly did not "prime" it on some scrap paper to remove excess ink before starting to write again; so that the loops on characters like o, d, Ch etc often became black blobs. 

We can see that he had a compass with ink point, and a ruler;  but the sizes of the circles are not uniform, and often they fail to close -- as if the compass was not very solid, or the vellum was not firmly pinned flat to the table.  He apparently did not know how to divide a circle into four equal parts, much less into 6 or 12 (as needed by some Cosmo diagrams) or 5 or 10 (as needed in the Zodiac).  And he did not plan the positions of the nymphs, so they often ended overflowing the space between circles and had to be drawn on top of them.

And he did not use iron-gall ink -- whether out of ignorance, or for other reason, we can't tell.

The point is that the Author apparently could not afford a professional scribe, just as he could not afford good quality parvechellument.

I doubt that he would have been desperate to the point of stealing the vellum.  I think he just went around parchment makers, traders, and "manuscript factories" haggling and begging for the cheapest stuff they had.  I think it is possible that some of them gave him the contents of their "reject" bins for free.

Or maybe he just scavenged his and other libraries for books with blank bifolios, or blank double-size folios that could be folded into his bifolios.

The only estimate for the price of vellum in today's money that I have seen so far was about US$ 2 per folio.   Is there a better estimate?  From the prices of Gutenberg's Bible we can deduce that paper was about 1/5 the price of vellum, or less.  But that is for good-quality material...

In spite of his hardships at the time, the Author must have known better times, since he probably was educated and owned some number of "scientific" books -- like Taccola's, Oresme's, the Balneis, etc.

All the best, --stolfi