The value of imperfection

[Diane]

Manuscripts on secular, "scientific" subjects are very often Sammelhandschriften. They group various works of one author on various subjects, or different authors on the same subject. Or they even group fragments from various sources on seemingly unrelated subjects. It all depends on the available sources and the specific needs of the client.

I do agree that the VM is a Sammelhandscrift, and that its sources were diverse. As Nick has pointed out, for example, the human figures in the central zodiac emblems are cut from a different cloth than the standard nymphs. The plants are from a different source than the nymphy sections, and the astro diagrams must have been gained from yet another.

What makes the VM hard to interpret as a Sammelhandschrift is that the distinct ingredients have been topped with the same sauce: the script and certain stylistic aspects. Now when a collection of different works is copied (one or more times), any stylistic differences will obviously fade away. Though they can still be spotted by the keen eye.

There was no author who invented all the Voynich sections from scratch all by himself.

Koen,
I'm so delighted to see that an opinion I expressed on the old mailing list back in 2012, and which then evoked a massive eruption of flaming... namely, that the work was a composite work from a number of disparate sources... has now come to be articulated by so many others - including, unless I mis-remember - one or two of those who most virulently disputed the idea back then.

Great to see.  And, of course, I haven't changed my mind either. 

I do think the manuscript would have been completed, though there are signs of haste in the finishing... usually a sheet which had pigments added would be hung to dry before being laid by the next, or stacked into a quire or signature.  Nick Pelling long ago pointed out the folios on which we see contact-transfer of pigment. 

Perhaps it was originally without the 'heavy painting' though - what do you think?