Core conundrums?

[bi3mw]

On first impressions we have a medieval herbal with an astrological section and, it seems, recipes for herbal preparations. Nothing unusual in any of that (until we look closer.)

One can describe the VMS at a first view actually with this simple content specification. That is why it is all the more astonishing that someone has developed an encoding or a writing system for such a relatively banal content. Unless the text has little or no relation to the illustrations and contains an explosive content that should not be readable by everyone. On the other hand, the text may be just an intellectual gimmick and the VMS is indeed what it seems to be, namely a late medieval composite manuscript with the named sections (despite all the idiosyncrasies of the illustrations ).