medieval references to roundels

[-JKP-]

Often there is no cross-reference at all for diagrams in medieval texts (they were simply placed near the associated text), and no contents or index. Even if there is a table of contents, often there were no page numbers, just a list.

It was very common for someone to come along and add these things 20 or 50 years later. The same with the foliation. A high proportion of the time the foliation is in later handwriting, sometimes a century or two later (as in many of the Vatican and Lorsch manuscripts, which were foliated much later).

As a reference for diagrams in Greek texts, there were frequently numbers (which are the same as letters).


But I can guess where you are going with this... I've looked into it myself and I think it's a very reasonable possibility for the VMS labels to be cross-references rather than nouns. The assumption that they are nouns (a very widespread assumption) is not the only possibility and doesn't fit very well with how they are structured. They could be verbs (highly abbreviated) or linguistic or numeric cross-references (this seems to me more likely).