Morten St George Theory

[Morten St. George]

The distinction between capital and lowercase wasn't super important in the Middle Ages. Many scribes barely bothered with capitals (or only used them at the beginnings of paragraphs), and many scribes omitted punctuation, as well.

In regular script (script written by the average person, not by professional scribes), there were still people who didn't use capitals or punctuation in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (this is something I was surprised to see while reading old letters when I was helping someone with genealogical research).

The better-quality manuscripts often had capitals, often beautifully embellished or rubricated capitals, but books written by students or professionals for their own use didn't always have them.

Thanks JP. I was able to see that neither Geoffrey of Monmouth in the 12th century nor Berengario Ganell in the 14th century made much use of capital letters. However, the only thing that is really important is what the prophecies say. Those prophecies self-proclaim themselves to have been written in the sixth century, which brings us a lot closer to classical times when both small letters and capital letters were in common use.

In sharp contrast to the thirty-nine prophecies which were translated into French, it looks like the decoders decided to leave the Incantation in its original state. In the Anver publication of 1590, only a blank space was left for it, so perhaps they were still debating whether to translate it or leave it in Latin. In the expanded Caors publication, also dated 1590, we find it unnumbered following stanza VI-99:



As you can see, it employs capital letters both at line starts and internally for certain words; it seems safe to assume the same for the translated prophecies as well.

Of course, having the original text of a passage that underlies VMS encryption can be enormously helpful, much more helpful than a translation, provided we can locate that passage within quire 20 (and I have an idea about that). It may allow us to figure out the precise mechanism of VMS encryption (and decryption thereof) merely by trial and error. Naturally, I'm going to have a lot more to say about the Incantation later on. To a certain extent, I'm counting on it for quick success in my decoding efforts.