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Masterpiece? - Printable Version

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Masterpiece? - Koen G - 27-07-2020

I was browsing around and came across this quote on Claus Schmeh's site You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. : 


Quote:[Rene] could also imagine that the manuscript is someone’s masterpiece, to be used to enter one of the secret societies that existed at the time.

It's the first time I remember hearing of this practice. Was this done in the early 15th century? What kind of societies would we be talking about? Or is this purely hypothetical since they would have been secret?

I find this idea intriguing but know very little about it.


RE: Masterpiece? - -JKP- - 28-07-2020

I had not thought of that possibility (that it might be a presentation-style manuscript created to enter a secret society). I have sometimes wondered if it was created by someone already in a secret society, but I never thought that it might be to demonstrate worthiness to enter a society. That seems like a reasonable possibility. It could be difficult to get into those societies if you were not part of the elite.


My thinking was along different lines, but maybe not too different... I was thinking maybe a family project... maybe created as a "résumé" to get eldest son (or some other family member) into an apprenticeship or into a guild/scriptorium. Apprenticeships and memberships could be challenging to procure, especially in a town far away from the person's place of birth. Maybe it was a presentation project to win patronage from a king or other high noble.


Creation of the VMS demonstrates stamina (a very important trait for a scribe), drawing skills, various forms of textures, plants, design motifs, planning skills, use of a compass, etc., etc., ability to work with larger sheets of skin (foldout pages).

If the person looking for the apprenticeship were in his or her teens (there were a few female scribes), then the fact that it's not perfect would not matter, it would demonstrate that the person is trainable.


There is one fairly big problem with this idea. A book of cipher-like glyphs could be perceived as being related to the occult arts and if someone reported it, it could get you thrown in jail (or worse). So it doesn't seem like something you would show to anyone you didn't know well, especially in another town.


I have also wondered whether a small group of university students made it... perhaps as a thesis project.

There are small hints that it was never finished. There were several waves of plague in the 15th century and numerous wars... Polish, Frisian, Burgundian, Bavarian, Lombardic, Praguian... maybe something interrupted the process when it was near completion.

Or perhaps it was good enough for whatever purpose it was intended to serve as is.


RE: Masterpiece? - Koen G - 28-07-2020

My problem is, if it was made for someone to enter a university or any public institution, why not a more standard script? If there was an audience that was supposed to be impressed by the MS (as opposed to merely bamboozled), then this audience should have been in the know about its inner workings.

So in that case, the audience actually expected or desired something like the VM. This could be a (secret) society with certain interest. Or an established educational context of which the makers were already part, perhaps.


RE: Masterpiece? - davidjackson - 28-07-2020

Secret society is, perhaps, a misnomer here. The term in the late middle ages is used to denote the master guilds. Such guilds, especially the German ones, would often insist that to become a master craft man you had to produce an exceptional piece of work, and often they produced private how to books to help and train initiates. But the usual ideas we attach to such a thing - guttering candles, hooded robes in shadow, you get the idea - probably didn't exist! 
This tradition is visible in the 16th century kunstbuchlein, a series of popular printed works that drew on earlier private manuscripts from the guilds and was the first self help range of books.


RE: Masterpiece? - ReneZ - 28-07-2020

Helmut already pointed out that these societies appeared a bit later.

For guilds, I wonder which type of guild could be attracted by this 'master piece'.

I have to say that this remains not very high on my list of possibilities. That list is virtual - I never made it - but it is not short.


RE: Masterpiece? - -JKP- - 28-07-2020

It depends on the age of the person presenting it. It would not be impressive from a trained adult. But what if it has been done by a teenager looking for an apprenticeship to learn these skills at a higher level? They were looking for apprenticeships in their mid teens


RE: Masterpiece? - Koen G - 28-07-2020

Right, but then why the strange script and not rather some well known text or one that would please the guild?


RE: Masterpiece? - -JKP- - 28-07-2020

Lorem ipsum.

Or, if the text is meaningful, perhaps for the same reasons as Giovanni Fontana. To showcase skills.


RE: Masterpiece? - -JKP- - 28-07-2020

I actually like the university students idea better because I think whoever masterminded the drawings may have seen an alchemical manuscript and I'm guessing that one of the exemplars may have been in a university library or in the hands of a university professor, possibly in northern Italy.

I don't think the plants are copied, I think they are mostly original, but I think the idea of how they could be done was influenced by a certain amount of exposure to existing manuscripts.


RE: Masterpiece? - Helmut Winkler - 28-07-2020

Since everyone else gives his opinion, I state again my opinion that theg VMs is made up of notes on different subjects by a student, most likely a M..A.  aspiring to his doctorate, most likely in mediccine, notes bound together similär to our loose leaf books. And I think Padua is a likely Place.That is why I like Hartlieb

About guilds: You had to produce something masterly  of the things your guild was producing, e.g. apiece of jewelry in the case of a goldsmith, no writings, and this became customary later, like secet societies.

And the Script is not strange, you only have to read it like an ordinary ms. and not like a collection of ciphre symbols