Quote:The points that have been presented in relation to the order of production of the MS may now be summarised.

• The MS was produced in a bifolio-per-bifolio manner, with the drawing outlines inked first, followed by the inking of the text;
  
• The quire numbers were added before the folio numbers;
  
• The page order has been disturbed, and this happened before both sets of numbers were added;
  
• The painting was done before the present binding;
  
• The quire and folio numbers were added before the present binding;
  
• Some of the painting appears to have been done after the folio numbers were added;
  
• Twelve of the fourteen missing folios were lost after the folio numbers were added, but before the present binding.
  

This leads to the following tentative reconstruction:

• All bifolios of the MS were prepared: the drawing outlines and the text were added in ink;
  
• Sometime after this, the planned order of the bifolios was disturbed. The bifolios were stacked anew in an incorrect order (implying that the person who did this was not the original author) but the set was still complete. (The interesting task of identifying the original page order has not been completed, and has mainly been driven by Nick Pelling);
  
• The quires were numbered first, the MS may have been bound, and the folios were numbered after that. (This initial binding is not necessary but would explain the inconsistency of the quire and folio numbers of quire 9);
  
• At this point, the book had all folios including the now missing ones, and was not painted, or only partially painted. Folio 42 would not have been painted yet;
  
• The MS was disassembled and painted (or the partial painting completed). Six bifolios were lost or removed at this point;
  
• Shortly after the painting, the MS was rebound in the same order, but with the six bifolios missing. Folios 12 and 74 would have still been there. Especially the blue paint transferred on opposite pages;
  
• Folios 12 and 74 were cut out sometime later
  

• There is a hidden semantic connection justifying to join together bifoliae like that, and the quirer understood the language (very unlikely, as Lisa Fagin Davis' work tends to suggest that quiring itself was a misunderstanding of the book, which should have stayed as a collection of loose leaves, or should have been quired as a thick pile of singulions)
  
• The missing bifoliae contain drawings and text bridging the gap (possible, but unhelpful)
  
• Q8 was from the start a patchwork quire, gathering everything that doesn't fit (this indicates that q16 and q18 were bigger than a sigular bifolio without foldouts each, as else they could have been joined into q8 and the resulting quire would still not have been thicker than q20, which by its existence, shows that quires this big are practical ; it doesn't explain, though, why it would have been numbered this low, rather than being put at the end)
  
• All quires were initially this big and we shouldn't read into 8's length (not really realistic, as it means 7 bifoliae are missing, one in each of the first 7 quires; the most probable outcome would have been to have unequal quires at the start)
  

(10-12-2025, 04:48 PM)Cuagga Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Then, for which reason would the first preparator prepare uneven quires (I can see two of them, but none can apply to q8 : either a clear semantic/stylistic link, which explains q20 but q8's remaining bifoliae aren't clearly semantically tied, or the physical unwieldyness of long quires with foldouts, which explains q14 through 19 but can't explain LONGER than usual quires) ? q8 is longer than all other quires (except q20, with its very different text layout than the rest), and as long as q13, which is stylistically coherent, but f57, 58, 65 and 66 are quite different to each other, and they aren't even consistent recto to verso (f57r and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. can be in the same section, but they are clearly different from the pair f57v-f66r). Currier finds both Language A and Language B in this quire, and the images look to belong in different sections, which indicates one of the following :

• There is a hidden semantic connection justifying to join together bifoliae like that, and the quirer understood the language (very unlikely, as Lisa Fagin Davis' work tends to suggest that quiring itself was a misunderstanding of the book, which should have stayed as a collection of loose leaves, or should have been quired as a thick pile of singulions)
  
• The missing bifoliae contain drawings and text bridging the gap (possible, but unhelpful)
  
• Q8 was from the start a patchwork quire, gathering everything that doesn't fit (this indicates that q16 and q18 were bigger than a sigular bifolio without foldouts each, as else they could have been joined into q8 and the resulting quire would still not have been thicker than q20, which by its existence, shows that quires this big are practical ; it doesn't explain, though, why it would have been numbered this low, rather than being put at the end)
  
• All quires were initially this big and we shouldn't read into 8's length (not really realistic, as it means 7 bifoliae are missing, one in each of the first 7 quires; the most probable outcome would have been to have unequal quires at the start)
  

The most probable outcome, for me and for now, is the proposition 3 : q16 and q18 were longer than one standard bifolio each, but all the unnumbered ones were lost between quiring and foliating. I still don't have a good idea of why the quirer would create distinct-length quires in the middle of the book rather than counting the extra leaves at the end of the quiring process, but that might be tied to the process itself, in which case I'd love an idea

' Wrote:[*]The MS was disassembled and painted (or the partial painting completed). Six bifolios were lost or removed at this point;
[*]Shortly after the painting, the MS was rebound in the same order,

(10-12-2025, 05:02 PM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(10-12-2025, 04:48 PM)Cuagga Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Then, for which reason would the first preparator prepare uneven quires (I can see two of them, but none can apply to q8 : either a clear semantic/stylistic link, which explains q20 but q8's remaining bifoliae aren't clearly semantically tied, or the physical unwieldyness of long quires with foldouts, which explains q14 through 19 but can't explain LONGER than usual quires) ? q8 is longer than all other quires (except q20, with its very different text layout than the rest), and as long as q13, which is stylistically coherent, but f57, 58, 65 and 66 are quite different to each other, and they aren't even consistent recto to verso (f57r and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. can be in the same section, but they are clearly different from the pair f57v-f66r). Currier finds both Language A and Language B in this quire, and the images look to belong in different sections, which indicates one of the following :

• There is a hidden semantic connection justifying to join together bifoliae like that, and the quirer understood the language (very unlikely, as Lisa Fagin Davis' work tends to suggest that quiring itself was a misunderstanding of the book, which should have stayed as a collection of loose leaves, or should have been quired as a thick pile of singulions)
  
• The missing bifoliae contain drawings and text bridging the gap (possible, but unhelpful)
  
• Q8 was from the start a patchwork quire, gathering everything that doesn't fit (this indicates that q16 and q18 were bigger than a sigular bifolio without foldouts each, as else they could have been joined into q8 and the resulting quire would still not have been thicker than q20, which by its existence, shows that quires this big are practical ; it doesn't explain, though, why it would have been numbered this low, rather than being put at the end)
  
• All quires were initially this big and we shouldn't read into 8's length (not really realistic, as it means 7 bifoliae are missing, one in each of the first 7 quires; the most probable outcome would have been to have unequal quires at the start)
  

The most probable outcome, for me and for now, is the proposition 3 : q16 and q18 were longer than one standard bifolio each, but all the unnumbered ones were lost between quiring and foliating. I still don't have a good idea of why the quirer would create distinct-length quires in the middle of the book rather than counting the extra leaves at the end of the quiring process, but that might be tied to the process itself, in which case I'd love an idea

I'm not very familiar with all these topics, but I have one question: given you find that the present arrangement requires some explanation, is there an alternative arrangement of the existing folios that you would call definitely more logical?

(10-12-2025, 05:07 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

' Wrote:[*]The MS was disassembled and painted (or the partial painting completed). Six bifolios were lost or removed at this point;
[*]Shortly after the painting, the MS was rebound in the same order,

Sorry, what is the evidence for the un-binding before painting, and rebinding afterwards?  Why couldn't it have been painted while bound?

All the best, --stolfi

(10-12-2025, 07:10 PM)Cuagga Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.And her preliminary results seem to indicate that at least for q20, the intended reading order should have been to unbind all bifoliae and read one completely, front (both halves) and back, before starting another one. If the whole manuscript follows this formula (and it looks like it does), then binding is a mistake that someone understanding the text wouldn't have done

(10-12-2025, 07:23 PM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(10-12-2025, 07:10 PM)Cuagga Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.And her preliminary results seem to indicate that at least for q20, the intended reading order should have been to unbind all bifoliae and read one completely, front (both halves) and back, before starting another one. If the whole manuscript follows this formula (and it looks like it does), then binding is a mistake that someone understanding the text wouldn't have done

Are there historical examples of large collections of texts that were written on individual bifolios and were supposed to be kept as separate bifolios and read bifolio after bifolio? Seems like a strange arrangement to me.

Note that with a few exceptions that could very well be designed for centerfolds, texts and designs do not cross the centerline of bifolios, which to me suggests that these were likely intended to be bound.

(10-12-2025, 07:10 PM)Cuagga Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.And her preliminary results seem to indicate that at least for q20, the intended reading order should have been to unbind all bifoliae and read one completely, front (both halves) and back, before starting another one. If the whole manuscript follows this formula (and it looks like it does), then binding is a mistake that someone understanding the text wouldn't have done

(10-12-2025, 09:02 PM)RenegadeHealer Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Evidence that the manuscript’s creators ever intended for their creation to become a codex is wanting.