07-08-2025, 08:36 AM
It is quite possible that there were multiple scribes. If the VMS was composed in parts separated by several years, the Author could have recruited different Scribes for different parts.
On the other hand, it seems unlikely that he used the services of some "industrial" outfit, like a monastery or a "fast copying" enterprise like that which you describe. The physical nature and layout of the VMS is distinctively "artisanal", if not "looney crackpot" level. A professional service presumably would have care more about the visual quality, e.g. requiring their scribes to use straight guiding lines for margins and baselines.
Moreover, every scribe would have to be trained in the alphabet. It is easier to see such training taking place with a privately hired scribe (or perhaps a secretary or even a relative) than with half a dozen staff or subcontracted scribes of an "industrial" outfit.
As for the scrambled folios and stains, those accidents almost certainly happened a long time after the manuscript was finished. It has been established that the book was bound and then re-bound centuries after that, and some stains clearly happened after the last re-binding. Some parts may originally have existed for a while as separate bifolios or unbound quires, but that does not imply that it was produced by multiple scribes working concurrently.
On the other hand, it seems unlikely that he used the services of some "industrial" outfit, like a monastery or a "fast copying" enterprise like that which you describe. The physical nature and layout of the VMS is distinctively "artisanal", if not "looney crackpot" level. A professional service presumably would have care more about the visual quality, e.g. requiring their scribes to use straight guiding lines for margins and baselines.
Moreover, every scribe would have to be trained in the alphabet. It is easier to see such training taking place with a privately hired scribe (or perhaps a secretary or even a relative) than with half a dozen staff or subcontracted scribes of an "industrial" outfit.
As for the scrambled folios and stains, those accidents almost certainly happened a long time after the manuscript was finished. It has been established that the book was bound and then re-bound centuries after that, and some stains clearly happened after the last re-binding. Some parts may originally have existed for a while as separate bifolios or unbound quires, but that does not imply that it was produced by multiple scribes working concurrently.