The Voynich Ninja

Anyone seeing Rene's title post in green fill?

Yep, I am too Anton.

These days the quirks of MyBB seem to be almost as mysterious as the Voynich itself...

Let's check if it's related to the number of thanks. I'll remove my thank you for that purpose, and then return it back.

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Ah yes, it is. Must be some new feature of the plugin, I did not see that previously. Probably the number is configurable.

OK, sorry for this off-topic intervention.

Thanks Anton and Rene 

So to sum up.

1.  After having ascertained that the reason the manuscript has no signs of prick-marks in the outer margin is NOT because the quires were trimmed during a subsequent rebinding (though there's sign of a bit shaved off the odd folio here and there)...
2. I researched where and when bifolia of the same dimensions are known, and found these precise dimensions to be unusual: only 2 exact matches in the entire manuscript collection of the British Library. (and to be clear, I recorded dimensions for covers and the book-block separately, and for folios and text-boxes separately too).  Only 2 exact matches.
3.  When matching just one measurement, the long side found other manuscripts having the same to be overwhelmingly Jewish works.
4. Paper and mebrane sizes were researched and the results show conscious effort to have them correlate.

5. The regions in which the two exact matches were made agree with what (a) has been said about the manuscript by early evaluations, namely that it agrees with English works and (b) north Italian, which agrees with the body of research done by Nick Pelling first and by me thereafter. Pelling said 'Milan'; my opinion is Padua or, slightly less probably, the Veneto.

For all these conclusions, I published a fair part of the informing research and data. 
 
As an entirely separate matter, in a powerpoint slide slow in 2010, Rene had shown profiles of relative sizes for herbal manuscripts made in medieval Europe.  No dimensions were given; the slide was only an illustration that herbals were made in smaller, medium and large sizes relative to one another.   Perhaps some inferences were drawn by Rene from that information at the time, but I wasn't at that talk and no-one since then has said anything about it.

The codicological issue of manufacture for bifolia is (as I said) an issue wholly different from whether there were 'big' 'not so big' 'medium' and 'small' format herbals.

I guess each of us deserves credit for the type of work done, the sources used and the inferences drawn.  No problem.

Anyone who has seen the original MS (or the recent facsimile), or, in fact, has taken more than a passing look at the online scans will see that no two folios are of the same size. They are only approximately rectangular, and many are not even nearly rectangular. Differences occasionally are several cm.
It is therefore obvious that the dimensions given by Beinecke are some approximate average.
Comparing them at the millimeter level with other manuscript is meaningless.

By the way, my powerpoint file was not meant as a presentation. I used powerpoint because it allowed me to draw rectangles of which I could specify the exact dimensions on a 1:10 scale.

Without entering into the codicilogical argument, I back Rene up on his observation upon the trimming of the folios. No attempt was made by the maker to cut them in a regular fashion, the tops and bottoms are rarely regular.
There's also the subject of the foldouts, which AFAIK bear little resemblance to any known codex (but are similar to a homemade informal European tradition of roughly making workbooks for professionals, which is in accordance really with the rest of the Voynich hardware).

Postscript - I might also remind members that the idea that the botanical folios form a 'herbal' is entirely a product of speculation; efforts to find matches in the fairly limited range of Latin European herbals (as Tiltman noticed half a century ago) produces none which contain enough comparable examples to  prove such an intention.  What we have, at best, is  evidence that plants were drawn in a not-dissimilar manner in some cases in some herbals.  

The reasons for this not-terribly-close similarity in those instances has rarely been investigated in any depth.  To be honest, I don't know of anyone else who has ever looked into it, and I can't claim my own studies to be exhaustive, but I have published on that subject, in connection with inferences drawn from the codicological evidence.

If that's of interest.

(07-12-2017, 09:25 AM)Diane Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view....

The reasons for this not-terribly-close similarity in those instances has rarely been investigated in any depth....

It would probably be more accurate to say has not been published in any depth. What people are investigating is not always known or made public until it has reached a certain level of advancement or certainty.

David - sorry, our posts crossed.

I'm not sure how much you know about codicology but an important aspect of provenancing concerns the form and materials as such - regardless of what is written on it. 

My thinking ran: if there is no sign of pricking or ruling out, this manuscript is extremely unusual for a  manuscript supposed to be an expression of Latin European culture and habits.

With regard for various other historical events and incidents - which I won't repeat here, but which I have already written about one -  we know that the less fine manuscripts made in various parts of Europe during the early fifteenth century were not made (as they had been in monastic times), by folding and cutting sheets of membrane in-house, but were purchased in prepared quires or bifolia from stationers who were licensed to operate - often near a university.

Second point:   if Beinecke MS 408 was prepared from ready-made bifolia, as is likely from the historical evidence,  and  since there is  also no sign that the block-book was ever sliced down to size, either after the first making or later during a re-binding (as there isn't), then we must assume until we see the inside folds there never was any ruling out of the bifolia before inscription.  Most unusual, but not unknown among Jewish works.

Separately: by  mapping where and when we find the same fairly unusual dimensions for standard bifolia, we ought to be better able to narrow the range within which (and perhaps even by which part of the population) the present manuscript's manufacture and inscription should be attributed.

That in mind, I then turned to  survey the entire collection of manuscripts in the British LIbrary (inviting any readers who cared to help,  to survey another library collection of their choice... none did).  As I've said the results were that (a) the dimensions are indeed unusual; (b) they indicate a narrow period for manufacture; © they offer a strong suggestion of Jewish input.

This input, in terms of the bifolia, could be supposed no more than the merchant's supply of membrane in ready-made bifolia...because (as I found and explained) Jewish parchminers had a European network so efficient that it had been the means by which the Papal library records and documents had been copied in short order for the return to Rome from Avignon in 1375.  (again, I've written and published on that matter).

So now, looking more widely at this question of Jewish works and paper production (because works on paper often had no ruling out, just as the VMS does not) I then did the necessary weeks of work and found, in the end, that the line led back to earlier Cairo and what had once been a standard dimension for paper produced there.  

My hypothesis then is that some Jewish parchminers continued to produce works in those dimensions (so rare in Latin Europe so far as I can discover), but that not many did; most adopted the official standards enforced in e.g. Bologna.

As I said, I found only two works with precisely the same dimensions; many more with the long dimension and of those the vast majority were Jewish works.

Rene's intruding or introducing the little diagram he presented in a slide show, in 2010, to an audience which did not include me seems to be either due to his failing to see the great difference in our aims, or as an effort to claim credit for my work (which is hardly likely to impress, and I shall not suspect him of it), or it is one of those distractions constantly dropped into the middle of any reasoned or evidence based discussion which shows fairly clearly one of the great many holes in one or other theoretically-constructed history for the mss, usually 'central European' in some way.

I really don't know why he included it in the thread.  But perhaps others see his motives more clearly.

Anyway, let's end the thread here, shall we?