"BTW, who wrote "abrival" (surely meaning April) below the ram?"
That's not a "v", no one wrote v like that in medieval Gothic cursive. And there's no "a" at the end. Look at the "a" at the beginning, how big and round it is.
It's aberil. There's no dot on the i at the end, which is quite common. It was frequently omitted.
Inserting the subscripted shape after the "b" was common. It stands for a missing letter.
There's a small possibility that it's abiril, but it's less likely as the dots on "i" were never drawn like a "c" or "e" shape.
So aberil or abiril and yes, it means April.
Who wrote it? The handwriting and ink do not match anything else in the VMS and it is disrespectfully written over parts of the drawings, so probably a later addition (marginalia). The style of the writing and form of abbreviations are consistent with handwriting from the 15th and very early 16th centuries.
That's not a "v", no one wrote v like that in medieval Gothic cursive. And there's no "a" at the end. Look at the "a" at the beginning, how big and round it is.
It's aberil. There's no dot on the i at the end, which is quite common. It was frequently omitted.
Inserting the subscripted shape after the "b" was common. It stands for a missing letter.
There's a small possibility that it's abiril, but it's less likely as the dots on "i" were never drawn like a "c" or "e" shape.
So aberil or abiril and yes, it means April.
Who wrote it? The handwriting and ink do not match anything else in the VMS and it is disrespectfully written over parts of the drawings, so probably a later addition (marginalia). The style of the writing and form of abbreviations are consistent with handwriting from the 15th and very early 16th centuries.
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