Morten St George Theory

[Morten St. George]

I don't know why you keep disagreeing with me on very simple aspects of reading medieval manuscripts. I read them every day. You haven't even learned to recognize the basic letters yet. You need to learn some fundamentals before you start trying to read the text. In the long run it will be more satisfying than making it up as you go along and wasting so much time going down the wrong road.

It's true that I wasn't very good at reading medieval manuscripts a year ago but I'm much better at it now. You've taught me well.

You acknowledge that the handwriting on the top of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is the same as seen on f116v, and everyone agrees that the marginalia on page 116 is a mixture of Latin letters and VMS symbols. Then, why are you so vehemently opposed to the possibility of VMS symbols appearing on page 17?

Did you ever ask yourself why the author decided to put marginalia on the top of page 17 and not on some other page? Are you able to link anything whatsoever in that marginalia with the plant drawing below?

The answer has to be the great big number "17" just to the right of the marginalia. Seventeen is the number of symbols in the transliteration alphabet repeated four times on f57v. Thus, in a debate on whether the characters under the bar are Latin letters or VMS symbols, I'd choose the VMS symbols without question.

Here's your "cm" (under the bar) followed by the two glyphs (from the transliteration alphabet on f57v) that I believe was the author's true intention:



Cryptographic handwriting was extremely rare in the late Middle Ages because virtually everything was written by Roman Catholics who, being in charge of the Inquisition, had no reason to be deceptive or evasive. Thus, you should realize that you might not have as much relevant experience as you think.