about pages out of order

[LisaFaginDavis]

I've written about the relationship between the scribes, topics, and structure of the VMS here (see Table 1 in particular):
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Also:
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

And of course the essays in Clemens, ed. The Voynich Manuscript

Here are my conclusions about the codicological history of the manuscript:

1) manuscript written and bound, exact sequence of bifolia uncertain (the quiremarks are likely original, so we can roughly tell the original order of topics by looking at the bifolia that have quire numbers)
2) catastrophic water damage early on requires the MS to be rebound; at some point in this early period (not clear whether before or after the water damage and rebinding), the month names were added to the Zodiac pages;
3) during rebinding, some of the bifolia are misbound (e.g. 78/81 was almost certainly originally the center of its quire; the foldout 68/69 has been reoriented; and the botanical bifolia by scribes 1, 2, and 3 were mixed);
4) after rebinding, the folio numbers were added (likely 17th c.);
5) rebound slightly later for a second time.

- Lisa