27-08-2020, 03:06 PM
JKP,
this question has been addressed quite a few times, especially by people who had some interest in arguing that the MS could have been written a long time after the dating of the parchment.
Already at the time of the C-14 dating, people knowledgeable about medieval practices said that parchment was mostly prepared for immediate use. For the purpose of the dating of the Voynich MS, immediate could mean anything less than 10 years. This is because the uncertainty of the date of the parchment is even larger.
Did you ever find any reference at all to long-time storage of parchment at all?
The other point is the assumed relationship between introduction of printing and the production of parchment. A lot of mistaken views have been presented about this already.
Paper was gradually replacing parchment already before the introduction of printing, but it was not very popular. Even while it had become cheaper than parchment, it was considered to be of inferior quality.
By 1420 or so, when the Voynich MS was written, the MS could very well have been written on paper, and this would have been cheaper, but this seems to have been a choice by the MS composer. This implies that he opted for durability.
It took quite some years from the first successful printing jobs, for it to become a viable way of producing books in mass. Early prints were also made on parchment.
However, there was no way that the parchment production could keep up with the demand, and paper, which could be more mass-produced, gradually took over the role.
However, manuscripts (on paper and on parchment) were still being produced in parallel well into the 16th century.
this question has been addressed quite a few times, especially by people who had some interest in arguing that the MS could have been written a long time after the dating of the parchment.
Already at the time of the C-14 dating, people knowledgeable about medieval practices said that parchment was mostly prepared for immediate use. For the purpose of the dating of the Voynich MS, immediate could mean anything less than 10 years. This is because the uncertainty of the date of the parchment is even larger.
Did you ever find any reference at all to long-time storage of parchment at all?
The other point is the assumed relationship between introduction of printing and the production of parchment. A lot of mistaken views have been presented about this already.
Paper was gradually replacing parchment already before the introduction of printing, but it was not very popular. Even while it had become cheaper than parchment, it was considered to be of inferior quality.
By 1420 or so, when the Voynich MS was written, the MS could very well have been written on paper, and this would have been cheaper, but this seems to have been a choice by the MS composer. This implies that he opted for durability.
It took quite some years from the first successful printing jobs, for it to become a viable way of producing books in mass. Early prints were also made on parchment.
However, there was no way that the parchment production could keep up with the demand, and paper, which could be more mass-produced, gradually took over the role.
However, manuscripts (on paper and on parchment) were still being produced in parallel well into the 16th century.
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