Was the Voynich manuscript unusual for the time?

[Mark Knowles]

I think that if someone calls the MS "conventional", they are probably doing so as a reaction to someone claiming that it has nothing in common with other 15thc manuscripts. This is obviously not the case. But especially if we are talking about the contents alone, I would say that it is much more unusual than conventional.

It's reassuring that you feel the same way.

To take an example that has been of particular interest to me, namely the Rosettes folio, I have long thought it to be a map, so much so that I met up on more than 1 occasion with Professor Paul Harvey author of "Medieval Maps". Now it has been said that it doesn't look like any map of the time. It is noteworthy that Professor Harvey did not think it particular unusual. But anyway let's say it is unusual, well it seems to me that if the Voynich is unusual then it should not be so surprising that it contains an unusual map. (During the period to which the Voynich is dated it was not strange for people to create distinctive maps in Northern Italy.)

Also the more inventive the Voynich the harder it will be to find one of Nick Pelling's block-paradigms, which is I think in general a very sensible thing to search for.