[split] Line padding, layout, Currier's "groups of letters"...

[MarcoP]

We have evidence that the scribe was choosing little groups of letters to fill out the line to the margin. Or to say it with Nick Pelling words: the "text goes right up to the line-ends, often deteriorating in the last few characters, in much the way that I'd expect nulls to (Currier noted as much)" (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). This can only mean that the text as well as the text layout and even damages to the vellum were copied or that the text was generated during writing.

Apparently it is not well known that some scribes mostly used abbreviations at the end of lines. There are cases (such as You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., 1460 ca) in which some symbols appear at the end of lines more than 80% of the times - ballpark figure, but browse a few pages looking for 3-like (-m) and 9-like (-us) glyphs.

While maybe we can say that the scribe of the Vatican ms "was choosing little groups of letters to fill out the line to the margin", I don't know if I would define these abbreviations as fillers: they clearly have the function of contracting the last word of the line to make it fit. The whole Latin text can then be seen as a filler, since it does fill the manuscript?

I think we can safely exclude that the scribe of Vat.Lat.410 was copying "the text as well as the text layout and even damages" (though he was certainly copying the text).
Saying that "the text was generated during writing" is closer to the mark, but possibly too strong, unless we only mean that the scribe was free to choose when and how a word was to be abbreviated. Vat.Lat.410 is the Latin translation of an older Greek text and the manuscript is a luxury copy (made for Pope Pius II, Enea Silvio Piccolomini) of the pre-existing Latin translation, see You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. I think that the one who generated the text was the author of the Latin translation (Pietro Balbi) rather than the scribe.

PS: attached details from 19v and 35r