28-04-2016, 11:08 AM
(This post was last modified: 29-04-2016, 10:39 AM by nickpelling.
Edit Reason: I should have instead pressed the "Report" button, as per the rules of the forum.
)
(27-04-2016, 02:40 PM)Helmut Winkler wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.(27-04-2016, 11:12 AM)lelle wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Nick Pelling argues both in his blog (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.) and in his book (the curse of the Voynich) that the aiir/aiiv -groups in the vms might be "fake" medieval page references. I have never encountered any page references looking anything like the aiir/aiiv groups in any medieval texts. How did one provide page references in the 15:th century? Does anyone have examples to share of page references looking anything like these groups?
Thanks!
Medieval writers did not quote by page, how should they have done this when every transcription or copy had different page numbers if it had page numbers at all? If they did not just say e.g. Aristotle in de caelo, they gave book and chapter e.g. lib. vii, chap. 12, a custom which was common at least into the 17th c. They had page numbers and even numbering of columns, but not for references as we do them, they only had a reference for themselfes. You will not find references the NP way and I don't think he was able to give an example, but he is one of the great medievalists of our times, of course ...
As I recall, I first read about these in one of Malcolm Parkes' books: there is also a reasonable-sized literature on intra-document referencing methods from the medieval to early modern period. I have examples from a range of documents, which I will blog about on Cipher Mysteries as soon as I manage to reassemble my home PC *sigh*. I didn't realise that this was something anyone seriously doubted, but apparently this would seem to be the case from Helmut's comment.