Koen, I've been collecting samples of scripts similar to the VMS marginalia and the VMS main text since 2008.
I have about 1,000 sampled texts that are similar to the marginalia (a total of about 35,000 individual character samples), rated on a mathematical scale for similarity, chosen from thousands of manuscripts. About 200 of them score high on the "very similar" scale. Many of them use the same conventions for Latin abbreviations as occur in the VMS main text.
I have fewer for the main text, because it's more difficult to find similarities when you only have a few glyphs that can be confidently compared (e.g., "o", EVA-y, and the swept-back tails). I have a feeling the back-leaning letters are deliberately leaned rather than being the scribe's normal handwriting. I only have about 100 or so that I feel reasonably confident about.
So, if you are looking for matches, all I can say is that you'll probably look through the same thousands of manuscripts I did and will probably come up with similar choices.
Can you see how it's difficult for me to post what I have? It's a MOUNTAIN of data. It's all searchable, sortable, I have it narrowed down to the best choices, but presenting it all is a bigger job than it might seem.
As for the time-frame for the marginalia, it is probably in the same century as the main text. I don't think there's a big gap between them. They use the same conventions as were common in the 15th century (from about 1390 to about 1520), and it's even possible that they are close in time. That's one of the reasons I don't think it's a modern hoax. You would need quite a bit of paleographic knowledge to create something this authentic-looking.
I have about 1,000 sampled texts that are similar to the marginalia (a total of about 35,000 individual character samples), rated on a mathematical scale for similarity, chosen from thousands of manuscripts. About 200 of them score high on the "very similar" scale. Many of them use the same conventions for Latin abbreviations as occur in the VMS main text.
I have fewer for the main text, because it's more difficult to find similarities when you only have a few glyphs that can be confidently compared (e.g., "o", EVA-y, and the swept-back tails). I have a feeling the back-leaning letters are deliberately leaned rather than being the scribe's normal handwriting. I only have about 100 or so that I feel reasonably confident about.
So, if you are looking for matches, all I can say is that you'll probably look through the same thousands of manuscripts I did and will probably come up with similar choices.
Can you see how it's difficult for me to post what I have? It's a MOUNTAIN of data. It's all searchable, sortable, I have it narrowed down to the best choices, but presenting it all is a bigger job than it might seem.
As for the time-frame for the marginalia, it is probably in the same century as the main text. I don't think there's a big gap between them. They use the same conventions as were common in the 15th century (from about 1390 to about 1520), and it's even possible that they are close in time. That's one of the reasons I don't think it's a modern hoax. You would need quite a bit of paleographic knowledge to create something this authentic-looking.