24-08-2019, 02:32 AM
(23-08-2019, 05:47 AM)-JKP- wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
MORTEN, the one on the bottom right is a COMBINED SUPERSCRIPT. It is the superscript t plus superscript 9. Another scribe would combine m9 the same way this scribe combined t9. It just depends which language they are thinking in when they write it, Latin or their own language. Ordinals are slightly different in different languages. Just as we use 4th and 1st in English, they use different ordinal suffixes in French, German, Italian, Czech or Latin.
Pray tell, JP, in which language do you think the VMS quire numbers were written if not in Latin?
Though it was possible in Latin to combine a "9" with other letters in superscript, ie. "t9" for "tus", apparently the "9" was never combined with an "m". It's easy to see why: the "m", like the "9", was itself a very common superscript (an abbreviation of "um" found at the end of many words) and it would surely be confusing to put them together and especially so for a word like "undecimus" which does not include an "um".
To my thinking, s<sup>m9 would make sense as an abbreviation of "sumus" but for that I see they opted for a subscript "x" on the last leg of the "m".
Conclusion: Since, as yet, no one can demonstrate a historical precedent for 11<sup>m9, it becomes necessary to acknowledge the possibility of manipulation for cryptic objectives.
(23-08-2019, 05:47 AM)-JKP- wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Instead of insisting it's some kind of coded message, why don't you just ask yourself, which language uses this style of ordinal? You would get a better answer.
Are you now insinuating that the use of 11<sup>th for eleventh was commonly seen in 16th-century English? I didn't know that.
Redaction by an Englishman aside, your theory still requires us to assume a careless mistake, namely, a writing of the "9" so messy that it could remind someone of the tail "n" to the left of "mich" on the last line of the VMS.
Overall, I think your theory is far-fetched: redaction by an Englishman who was familiar with the Latin "9" abbreviation yet ignorant of the Latin "m" abbreviation is simply not credible.