An interesting observation on Quire 13

[Diane]

If we suppose it was made (as separate bifolia)
then at some stage bound
then at some stage (as Rene posits might occur) disassembled, painted and re-bound

but the current binding is 15thC Italian (as per Alain Touwaide's opinion)

then all this activity would have happened within a short space of time, given the radiocarbon dating of the parchment to the first decades of the fifteenth century.

Plus, we have to consider the variations in the hands that wrote the quire-numbers, which to me suggests that it wasn't a case of one volume being disassembled and re-bound - else why wouldn't the quire numbers have been added in the same hand when it was first bound?

Is there anything about this manuscript which is normal?

[Sam G]

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Of course, it is also possible that the book was once bound without the painting, then disassembled, painted and rebound. This might explain a couple of things, e.g. the fact that the new binding was done with some of the paint still fresh enough to leave an imprint on the facing page (like in the above example).

It seems the only color to transfer onto the adjacent page like that is that particular type of dark blue.  Either that one color was added at a later stage or there's just something about that particular pigment that has caused it to transfer like that after 500 years of those pages being pressed together.  The latter seems more likely especially when you consider that the painting is in the gutter like that - it would have had to have been assembled quite rapidly after painting for the paint to have still been wet.

[Oocephalus]

There also seems to be a faint bleed-across from the roots of 42r to 41v (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.), which was noted some time ago on the mailing list. This suggest that this color was also added after or immediately before the rebinding, as f41 is Currier-B while f42 is Currier-A.

[MarcoP]

There is one serious consideration which seems to have been forgotten here.

If the scribe indeed went for the bifolio model, with the bifolios not to be bound on the folio-basis, then why does the text not follow this model and is put down as if the stuff needs to be bound on the folio basis?

There is a good example of f101, where the text flows across two adjacent folios of a tri-folio, both in the recto and verso sides.

Hello Anton, Minta Collins discusses a herbal which apparently was for a long time kept as a collection of unbound bifolios:

"Two further ninth-century Italian manuscripts were probably taken to the Abbey of St. Gall almost immediately after they were copied since they are compilations of medical texts which may be among those listed in the the ninth-century catalogue entries of the library: 'Libri medicinalis artis volumina II e I parvus; Item libri III medicinalis artis in quaternionibus' (i.e. unbound). 
St.Gall Stiftsbibliothek Cod.217 certainly fits the latter description. .... [Bischoff] deduced from the vertical fold down the centre of the manuscript that it had been carried unbound, almost like a roll, with the outer folio (page 252) serving as a cover."

In this case, the manuscript was folded twice: on the central fold that was later bound and on a second fold running between the two columns of the text. The second fold is still visible on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
This example seems to me a hint to the fact that even unbound manuscripts were written without crossing the central fold. Voynich f101 is an exception to this rule, but the fact that in the other bifolios text does not run through the central fold seems consistent with the common practice for manuscripts "in quaternionibus".

[Anton]

Hi Marco,

I think we should distinguish between two cases:

a) a manuscript is written as if it is to be bound, and it is intended to be bound in some future time (no matter whether this intention comes to reality or not)

OR:

b) a manuscript is written as if it is to be bound, but it is intended to be never bound.

It is not clear from your description whether the case was a) or b). If it was really b), then that's indicative indeed.

In other words, I mean that unbound manuscripts just may have failed to get an occasion to be bound, but they were designed with binding in mind.

[MarcoP]

Hi Marco,

I think we should distinguish between two cases:

a) a manuscript is written as if it is to be bound, and it is intended to be bound in some future time (no matter whether this intention comes to reality or not)

OR:

b) a manuscript is written as if it is to be bound, but it is intended to be never bound.

It is not clear from your description whether the case was a) or b). If it was really b), then that's indicative indeed.

In other words, I mean that unbound manuscripts just may have failed to get an occasion to be bound, but they were designed with binding in mind.

Hello Anton, Collins does not say if St.Gall 207 was meant to be left unbound or not. She writes that it was bound later and that "the chapters are out of order and have been so since at least the fifteenth century".

The St.Gall library site says that the last part of the manuscript is "a medical-pharmaceutical compendium, ....  parts of it badly bound, [it] consists of the folded reference manual of a wandering physician from northern Italy, the so-called St. Gall Botanicus, and the St. Gall Bestiary".

From this description, I understand that the manuscript being unbound and double folded is interpreted as intentional, so that the wandering physician could more easily carry his text around.

The fact that it is badly bound is apparent if you look at some consecutive pages:

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. belongs to a bifolio written in sepia and single column

60 pages in two columns, sepia and red, with spaces for plant illustrations (that were never painted) are then inserted from You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. to You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. 
334 is the end of a chapter.

At You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., the single column text restarts mid-sentence.