Linda wrote:Sometimes i think maybe some missing pages aren't missing at all, and the page numbering anomalies are clues to the restitution of the original layout. Or maybe just evidence of mistakes? Like, let's say it is foldouts that are missing in quire 8, but they forgot to put them there and number them because they were already thereafter given new places in other quires by mistake, while the placeholder note had yet been left behind to make room for the 12 pages, likely because they were foldouts, and thus needed some extra attention upon binding.
FYI, page numbering almost never occurred at the time of manuscript-creation in medieval society.
Bookbinding was done by hand, like picture framing.
If you buy a painting directly from an artist, it is often not framed. Then you pick out a frame that goes with your taste and your decor at a framing shop.
This is how binding worked in the Middle Ages. You received a manuscript like you received a painting, in its "unframed" form. Then you picked out a design or price range to choose the binding (or you left it unbound).
Usually the purchaser or the bookbinder's assistant added the folio numbers.
A very large number of manuscripts lay unbound for decades or sometimes even centuries. The style of the folio numbers is often a century or two later than the style of the manuscript.
In the case of the VMS, the quire numbers are in a style that was common in the first half of the 15th century. The folio numbers are in a style that was common in the 16th century. The transition between these two styles (in the latter 15th century and early 16th century) was gradual.