Mark, I've been trying to be patient and fair and to give you time to become more acquainted with medieval scribal conventions, but it still appears from your posts, and from your chart, that you are not familiar with medieval character sets.
Almost everything you posted in this chart that you are trying to use as an argument for some direct relationship between the Tranchedino codes and the VMS is found in Latin manuscripts. Since they are sourcing the same scribal conventions, they may be coincidentally similar. There's no evidence in the glyph similarities that there is a direct relationship because these are almost all common to Latin.
There's NOTHING UNUSUAL about most of the characters you posted. They are normal and most of them are common.
Crossing ascenders (similar to benching) is even sometimes used for long macrons in Latin manuscripts (although it is not typical to bench and also connect characters on either side in Latin). However, benching ascenders is COMMON in Greek, which is why I keep pointing out that some of the glyphs may have been inspired by Greek stacking conventions.
Chi-Rho and Pi-Rho are classic examples of "stacking" or overlaying concepts. This way of monogramming chi on top of the rho ascender, or pi on top of a rho ascender is very common in Greek. It is found in manuscripts, on Greek coins, and in some of the Greek numeral systems (they have more than one). I've repeatedly pointed this out in blogs and on the forum. There were numerous Greek communities in Europe in the 15th century, in Marseilles, in the Veneto, in Florence. The libraries in these areas are full of Greek manuscripts. Latin scribes were familiar with Greek conventions even if they didn't know Greek, especially those in communities where there were many Greek scribes, or where they were translating Greek manuscripts into Latin.
Many Latin scribal ligature and abbreviation concepts are borrowed directly from Greek.
.
The ciphers collected by Tranchedino draw heavily from Latin characters/ligatures/abbreviations and also from Latin paragraph-reference markers (which use a lot of dots, small "o", and crosses). They also draw from Greek, mathematical, and astrological symbols.
The Italian diplomatic ciphers needed a huge storehouse of characters, many more than can be created out of a single alphabet. So, to create new symbols, they took standard characters and added an extra tickmark or line, or they overlaid them in the Greek manner.
I wasn't sure of the best way to comment on the individual examples in your chart so I overlaid the chart with colored text rather than trying to create a complex cross-reference post:
Almost everything you posted in this chart that you are trying to use as an argument for some direct relationship between the Tranchedino codes and the VMS is found in Latin manuscripts. Since they are sourcing the same scribal conventions, they may be coincidentally similar. There's no evidence in the glyph similarities that there is a direct relationship because these are almost all common to Latin.
There's NOTHING UNUSUAL about most of the characters you posted. They are normal and most of them are common.
- The g and m symbols are COMMON Latin abbreviations.
- ch is common in Latin-character manuscripts.
- ccc is COMMON in Latin-character manuscripts.
- The long-c is common in Latin manuscripts.
- Adding a small "o" (sometimes superscripted) is COMMON in manuscripts with Latin chars to create abbreviations like "g[rad]o" or "m[od]o" or quarto.
Crossing ascenders (similar to benching) is even sometimes used for long macrons in Latin manuscripts (although it is not typical to bench and also connect characters on either side in Latin). However, benching ascenders is COMMON in Greek, which is why I keep pointing out that some of the glyphs may have been inspired by Greek stacking conventions.
Chi-Rho and Pi-Rho are classic examples of "stacking" or overlaying concepts. This way of monogramming chi on top of the rho ascender, or pi on top of a rho ascender is very common in Greek. It is found in manuscripts, on Greek coins, and in some of the Greek numeral systems (they have more than one). I've repeatedly pointed this out in blogs and on the forum. There were numerous Greek communities in Europe in the 15th century, in Marseilles, in the Veneto, in Florence. The libraries in these areas are full of Greek manuscripts. Latin scribes were familiar with Greek conventions even if they didn't know Greek, especially those in communities where there were many Greek scribes, or where they were translating Greek manuscripts into Latin.
Many Latin scribal ligature and abbreviation concepts are borrowed directly from Greek.
.
The ciphers collected by Tranchedino draw heavily from Latin characters/ligatures/abbreviations and also from Latin paragraph-reference markers (which use a lot of dots, small "o", and crosses). They also draw from Greek, mathematical, and astrological symbols.
The Italian diplomatic ciphers needed a huge storehouse of characters, many more than can be created out of a single alphabet. So, to create new symbols, they took standard characters and added an extra tickmark or line, or they overlaid them in the Greek manner.
I wasn't sure of the best way to comment on the individual examples in your chart so I overlaid the chart with colored text rather than trying to create a complex cross-reference post:
![[+]](https://www.voynich.ninja/images/collapse_collapsed.png)