25-05-2016, 05:23 PM
Rene,
NO 'expert' is able to date a ms. by looking at it, including Mr. T. You can say first half of the 15th c. or something except in the cases where a ms. is dated by the scribe or when you have some other reasons, like a patron whose life span is known. It is one of the worst tricks of the art historians to tell you they are able to date things by style criticism, no historian is going to accept this. And when you have a C14 dating and the other criteria are fitting, as JKP pointed out, you can be quite sure you have a dating of 1420/30 for the VMs.
NO 'expert' is able to date a ms. by looking at it, including Mr. T. You can say first half of the 15th c. or something except in the cases where a ms. is dated by the scribe or when you have some other reasons, like a patron whose life span is known. It is one of the worst tricks of the art historians to tell you they are able to date things by style criticism, no historian is going to accept this. And when you have a C14 dating and the other criteria are fitting, as JKP pointed out, you can be quite sure you have a dating of 1420/30 for the VMs.