Collection of Manuscripts

[Koen G]

Thanks! I did not read much of the second text - it is very dated, entertainingly so. The first link is very interesting though. Robert F. Berkhofer III has investigated medieval forgeries for his book. Examples he gives are all of the "white collar crime" type:

"Of course, forgers can take advantage of this to present documents which LOOK LIKE what the old boss granted, but might be subtly (or not so subtly) changed to their advantage when confirmed by the new boss. Consequently, there are a lot of forgeries of the acts of Edward the Confessor (and about as many survive as genuine ones)."

In this case, we are talking about forged official documents. Note that I did not capitalize"LOOK LIKE" myself. Essential to the forgery and the fake is that something very specific is expected, and the fake is not a genuine version of this thing. This cannot be the case with the VM, since as far as we know, there is only one thing like it. Something so unique cannot be a fake. It is genuine by definition - a genuine version of itself. 

For those who are not yet convinced, another quote from the article:
"Medieval forgeries were designed to imitate the genuine, and so can be quite difficult to detect then and now."

If the Voynich is a medieval forgery, which "genuine" does it imitate? Which features make it hard to tell it apart from the genuine? Where can I find these genuine items the VM is a fake version of? What exactly makes it more fake than medieval books about magic?