Quote:Keep in mind that the printing press meant a huge shift in book culture and was one of the most transformative events in human history. Menocchio was tried 150 years after the VM was written. In between them is the introduction of movable print to Europe and the whole incunabula period. So we're already well beyond the early adopters now and moving towards a situation that's much more recognizable by today's standards.
I can't dispute the influence of the printing press, but we know that parchment had already become affordable and literacy was widespread. Moreover, the VM and these other works were not meant for public consumption, so it is questionable whether they were part of the "book culture". The Ottoman Empire had very little printing, but the increase in wealth and foreign connections alone led to the appearance of private literature among the lower-middle class. Was there nothing similar in 15th-century Italy? We already know that monks had been producing such works for hundreds of years.
[img]Although, do we know for certain that they made it themselves? Did parchment makers have different qualities available?[/img]
Isn't this what Lisa Fagin Davis has been arguing?
(14-06-2026, 02:58 PM)Pierre Dumont Himself Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.All this happened in the Ottoman Empire, where the literacy rate was less than 5%, perhaps only half of that, and functional literacy barely existed.
I would think that literacy in the Empire varied enormously from region to region. People in Arabic-speaking countries may have been more likely to read Arabic script, because of the Quran. Wasn't the Arabic script taught in the Madras? What percentage of boys would go through them?
All the best, --stolfi
We are very offtopic here, but to me, the elephant-in-the-room question is: Why parchment at all?
Paper would have been readily available in all but the most remote regions or confinement situations, cheaper and easier to work with. Why did the author choose this inferior calf parchment over paper?
In my opinion, parchment was purposely favored over paper for a specific reason. Maybe even the bad parchment, to give the VM a certain ancient and mysterious look. That doesn't mean it has to be a hoax, more of an art project, but I think the author wanted to create his own version of the source manuscripts he had seen. And those were on vellum. If you think about it, isn't the VM a persiflage of a richly illuminated manuscript collection? It appears to follow the typical scheme, containing a herbal, astronomical and astrological sections and a bit about apparent balneology cobbled together. Compiling such a collection from existing works wasn't unusual.
So I've been thinking recently, call it a hypothesis rather than a theory - what if the author had seen all those famous and lavishly illustrated manuscripts, was fascinated by the images, but could barely understand the content (and generally lacked common sense)? So he came up with the wild idea to re-create something similar for himself. His personal manuscript. For the sake of the look, not the content. He copies the imagery in his own weird style, but since he's unable to copy the text, he has to create some lorem ipsum to fill out the blanks and make it look like a proper manuscript. Not necessarily to deceive anyone, but for his own satisfaction. In his usual style, he copies glyphs he likes and makes up some on his own and somehow generates a mechanism for Voynichese. I admit it is pretty much insane to write Q20 for the looks, but this person certainly was special.
Why not a hoax?
Too long, way too much detail. The same effect could have been achieved with considerably less work. Which means the author probably wanted to create the VM like that, not because he had to in order to achieve a goal.
I am certainly not convinced by this, but I am not convinced by any other of the myriad of theories either. In any case, I don't think the VM was a practical tool to store and recall relevant information. As said, the imagery is unnecessarily large and detailed for someone who struggled to obtain quality writing material. The VM must have been created to look the way it does, not because the information it contains requires it to look like that. This probably also includes the parchment.
(14-06-2026, 09:05 PM)Bernd Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.We are very offtopic here, but to me, the elephant-in-the-room question is: Why parchment at all?Paper would have been readily available in all but the most remote regions or confinement situations, cheaper and easier to work with. Why did the author choose this inferior calf parchment over paper?
Even after paper became available, the combination of iron-gall ink on parchment was still used for important documents and books because it was water proof, more resistant to wear and tear, and could not be erased without physically scraping away some of the vellum together with the ink.
I read somewhere that Gutenberg's Bible was sold in both versions, paper and
parchment vellum some kind of skin; and from the prices one could deduce that the vellum itself was about five times as expensive as the paper.
So my guess is that the Author did write the book on paper initially, but at some point decided to have it copied to vellum. Perhaps because he intended to sell it, and expected that a vellum version would be easier to sell for a good price. Perhaps because he saw the book as his legacy to his heirs or to the world, and thus wanted it to be in a more durable medium...
All the best, --stolfi
(14-06-2026, 03:23 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Although, do we know for certain that they made it themselves? Did parchment makers have different qualities available?
The bit we are missing is whether the Voynich MS is 'typical low-quality' or 'unusually low-quality'.
We don't know whether the book creators made it themselves - this is a hypothesis.
(14-06-2026, 11:30 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (14-06-2026, 03:23 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Although, do we know for certain that they made it themselves? Did parchment makers have different qualities available?
The bit we are missing is whether the Voynich MS is 'typical low-quality' or 'unusually low-quality'.
We don't know whether the book creators made it themselves - this is a hypothesis.
I asked the same question here in the vellum / parchment thread:
You are not allowed to view links.
Register or
Login to view.
Lisa responded on quality:
(19-04-2026, 08:57 PM)LisaFaginDavis Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I don't think the parchment was "scrap", I just think it was poorly made. Much depends on the health and age of the animals whose skin is used. Younger, healthier animals produce finer parchment. Old, sickly animals result in poor parchment
Parchment production is labor intensive. So answering which business (if any) commercially made parchment of such low quality and for what purpose seems crucial. The issue here is that quality correlates with age of the calf. The younger the better. But the younger the animal is slaughtered, the less meat it produces. So there is a trade-off between meat and hide production. Also the processing of diseased and naturally deceased animals was frowned upon for disease prevention. So from the livestock owner's perspective, the option was either to monetize a very young calf for vellum (sic), with little meat as by-product, or use an older one for meat if that was a priority - with low quality hide as by-product.
For the parchment maker, high quality vellum yielded higher revenue than bad quality parchment, but production would have to be dependent on supply and demand. Surely less care would be used in the treatment of a low quality source, but I had hoped that it was possible to determine if the VM parchment was, independent of the initial hide quality, product of professional or amateurish treatment.
However, Lisa argues that, while the quality of VM parchment is not unusually low for manuscripts, it is badly worn.
(22-04-2026, 01:53 PM)LisaFaginDavis Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.All of the parchment is of similar quality. There is no difference in quality from one section to another. And - to respond to an earlier comment - the parchment is so worn that it is nearly impossible to distinguish hair side from flesh side
It would be interesting if we could determine if this wear happened pre- or post binding which would help answer if the VM saw heavy use by its original owners or only by later ones who likely did not understand the content (as it was mis-bound).
(15-06-2026, 11:01 AM)Bernd Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Parchment production is labor intensive.
And it also requires special equipment (stretching frame, cords, buckets, flesh and hair scraping knives, etc), special materials (lime, tannin, pumice, etc), and special skills. Nothing too fancy, but still not things that everyone would have in their kitchen cabinet.
And it also would require some space, and distance from other people who could have complained about the smell.
And time. The VMS has, what, 60 bifolios? That must have been at least 20 animals. One skin at a time, it would take six months or more...
Thus I think it is extremely unlikely that the Author(s) made the vellum themselves. Even if they were poor and isolated in the middle of nowhere, buying it would make more sense.
[quote]So answering which business (if any) commercially made parchment of such low quality and for what purpose seems crucial.[quote]
I am guessing that the supply of skins was always larger than the demand for vellum/parchment, so vellum makers could always choose good skins. But some defects would not be visible until the process was well underway.
And anyway the finished skins had irregular shapes and sizes, so when they were cut into rectangular sheets for sale there would be pieces that included poor areas near the edges of the skin, or that fell short of the "standard" size and shape. The makers presumably would sell those bad and irregular cuts at a lower price, rather than throw them away.
All the best, --stolfi