Quote:DONJCH: JKP, the VMS has no religious imagery so the Carthusians would be a red herring.
I wasn't referring to content, I was referring to layout. I thought that was clear from my post.
As I mentioned, some of the Carthusian manuscripts were very professional, while others were very humble, with rambling text (not prelined) and many marginal drawings (but not small ones like one sees in Bibles, larger ones like one sees in the VMS). The humble ones were below professional quality and yet had a sort of charm. It's difficult to find manuscripts with the same layout qualities as the VMS and yet quite a few of the more humble Carthusian manuscripts have the same look-and-feel.
Now, if you look at the geographical origins of the Carthusian manuscripts, it appears that some of the more professional ones come from the Slavic areas, which were nearer to larger centers like Vienna and Prague, seats of government, while a number of the more "humble" ones come from geographically distant locations such as North Yorkshire.
Perhaps there's a common theme here. The VMS is "different" in a number of ways and the Carthusian manuscripts from the more remote areas (for the time) were also "different" in some of the same ways.