(13-03-2019, 11:37 PM)nickpelling wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.There is good codicological evidence (that I presented at Frascati in 2012) that the bifolios had already been misordered / shuffled by the time that the quire numbers were added (certainly from Q13, but I think elsewhere too). This would run counter to the suggestion that the quire-adding owner was able to read (or even parse) the manuscript in any way.
The quire numbering style (abbreviated longhand Roman ordinals) is extremely unusual, and so far we have found examples (as I recall) only from circa 1470 or so in Switzerland / Lake Constance. My inference is that the manuscript had by this time probably entered some kind of Swiss monastic library: but I see no sign that anyone had the faintest idea what it was saying.
Quire numbers, in and of themselves, are unusual. They are either trimmed off or hidden inside the binding. Those from the 14th century are usually Roman numerals. Those from the 16th century are usually the early modern numbers.
I've been collecting palaeographic samples since about 2008.
- So far I've collected more than 1,000 that bear a reasonable resemblance to the 116v text (the parts that look like they are the same hand).
- I've located about 300 that bear some resemblance to the main text—a daunting task since we can only trust the "o" and the tails to be somewhat similar to the scribes' hands. The backleaning is artificial, I believe, part of the way the glyphs were designed.
- I have a couple of hundred that somewhat resemble the column text on 1r.
- I have about 400 that resemble the folio numbers, with about a dozen that are very close.
Of the samples I have so far, three are in the same basic style as the VMS quire numbers. One is from Switzerland, two from other locations. Of the two that are most similar, one is from c. 1400, the other c. 1435 (the other is c. 1440 but it's only partly similar).
Yes, I will write them up with samples when I can.