Masterpiece?

[RenegadeHealer]

I find it interesting that some of you guys are arguing the VMs is too coarse to impress a trade guild or school, and others are arguing it's too extraordinary for this purpose. I'm not trying to be dense, I can see that there's not necessarily any contradiction here. It could be too coarse in all the ways that refinement mattered, and at the same time too extraordinary in all the ways that familiarity mattered. Either way the point is clear: the VMs is *not typical* of masterpieces produced for entry into groups of skilled or learnèd people in the middle ages, at least according to the historical record as we know it.

On the subject of secret societies, I've always had the sense that the most successful ones either leave no trace in the historical record, or only their false front makes it into the historical record, with no good evidence for the group's real covert purpose. Therefore, I wouldn't rule out the possibility of a secret society, with demands on new initiates, that resembled nothing else historically documented. I'm not a historian, though, and will definitely defer to Helmut on this.

@Helmut, after reading Paul Weiler's book, I'm very much open to the idea that the VMs was a learnèd person's notebook, written in an idiosyncratic system of shorthand that only the author could read. They could be a teacher's lecture notes or a craftsman's trade secrets, in either case only to be disclosed to paying students or clients.