[split] Rich SantaColoma's comments to Lisa Fagin Davis

[LisaFaginDavis]

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Thank you so much for these thoughtful and extensive comments. I hope you noticed that I was, and am, very cautious in speaking about the XRF testing on the inks and pigments - I didn't say the inks and pigments ARE medieval, I said they are CONSISTENT with medieval recipes. Certainly those results, and the C14 dating, are not sufficient to absolutely prove that the VMS is not a modern forgery. But there is so much additional physical evidence that needs to be considered. When you consider not only the inks, pigments, and parchment but also the layers of use and provenance and history (missing leaves, Tinapius signature, later foliation, later quiremarks, later annotations, bifolia bound out of order, evidence of multiple bindings, wormholes, waterstains, the Marci letter, and on and on), the idea that the VMS is a modern forgery becomes less and less convincing. It's one thing to convincingly forge ancient writing and illustrations on old parchment,  but it's quite another to successfully forge all of the codicological and historical evidence. It's not 100% IMPOSSIBLE, but it is so unlikely as to be ESSENTIALLY impossible.