John Wycliffe Latin ms letters and Voynich characters

[-JKP-]

It's normal Gothic text, Geoffrey.

I have more than 1,300 samples (more than 40,000 individual glyphs) that I have collected over the last decade, that were chosen specifically because they are similar to VMS text (both the text on 116v and the main text).

Except for a couple of the "gallows" chars and the benched chars and a couple of rare chars (which are more similar to Greek than Latin), all the VMS characters are part of the Latin scribal repertoire. Even k is a normal (and common) Latin abbreviation, as are all the glyphs with tails.


I've tried to blog about this, as I have time, but I've posted less than 1% of what I have. Nevertheless, here are some of the blogs:

Intro to y, c-with-tail, etc.: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Latin cc/er/ec/ce ligature: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Latin "tails" and is it dain or ain: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Greek/Latin pilcrows & capitula symbols: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
The VMS q glyph: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Indic-Arabic numerals commonly used in the Middle Ages: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Indic numerals and Greek benched numerals: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Examples of highly abbreviated Latin text: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
ris/tis/cis VMS m: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Examples of Latin "s": You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Latin chars in diplomatic ciphers, and the qo combination in Latin text: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Latin ligatures in the context of the claim of Nahuatl: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Older and newer forms of the "squiggle" abbreviation (Latin abbrev.): You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

I have much much much more info. I'll post when possible.

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This is just what I could grab quickly for ONE style of abbreviation (the end-tails). The tail was not an embellishment, it was an abbreviation symbol (like an apostrophe) that represents missing letters. Even though this is a small number of examples, it illustrates how this convention was used in a variety of languages. Most of the examples I grabbed are Latin, German, and French, but this convention was also used in Italian, Czech, Spanish, and English manuscripts:



Take a look at the very first example (upper-left). It includes three kinds of abbreviations, the y symbol at the beginning to represent "con", a curved macron in the middle (represents missing letters, like an apostrophe), and the tail at the end (also missing letters). This is not uncommon, to find two or three abbreviation symbols in a single word.