(21-06-2018, 07:20 PM)Koen Gh. wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Given our current knowledge, can we best describe Voynichese script as a mix of 15th century abbreviations and ligatures on the one hand and habits from legal writing on the other?
And if so, might it be a good forum task to collect some more legal documents and try to get a better view on the evolution and geographical distribution of relevant scripts?
Litterae elongatae are common in legal documents (it gave them more "presence" and made it harder to forge them since you needed good calligraphic skills to draw them) but they are by no means restricted to legal documents. There are many books on various subjects that include them, especially on the top line.
The geographical distribution is everywhere. Scribes traveled, just as doctors and teachers used to travel. It was an itinerant lifestyle. They took their scribal habits with them. Documents from London look very much like those from Vienna or Naples, there are only small differences, like the direction in which a tail swings, or whether the e is a loop or a c-shape. They all used the same basic abbreviations, even when writing in the vernacular. Many manuscripts written in Gothic cursive sit in repositories with question marks next to the place of origin even after paleographers have tried to puzzle them out. The early Italic/Humanist styles are easier to place up until the 16th century, when they were widely adapted in place of Gothic cursive (it was more readable), then it became harder to know where they were written, but generally those in Italic/early humanist style were from the region bordering Lombardy down through central Italy.