Mark Knowles wrote:As an example text one could in a English context consider the Magna Carta, this is a well defined text. Or maybe the Lord's Prayer or some standard universal Christian text. Or standard political/governmental text like the Declaration of Independence.
Mark, you are describing a cipher system where the lookup in the external reference is used to decode each unit in the VMS. These kinds of ciphers definitely existed.
But I had something else in mind, something a bit simpler that existed in the early 15th century...
I have seen manuscripts where labels and numbers are used to reference information in other manuscripts (not a cipher, simply a reference). Bible verses are one obvious example (when they are paired with a concordance or canon table in another manuscript), but I have also seen it in other kinds of manuscripts.
In other words, you don't need the other reference to decode specific parts of the VMS—in fact, it wouldn't help in terms of reading the VMS text. You DO need to decode the VMS to see what the deciphered reference in the VMS points to in the external reference. For example, suppose a label next to a plant is a reference pointer rather than a plant name. It might refer to page xx in the external reference. The external reference might include additional information about the plant (or basic information about the plant if the VMS text does not provide that).