The Modern Forgery Hypothesis

[Jorge_Stolfi]

We also have no way of knowing if any bifolia were lost before the foliation was added.

That has always been a "known unknown".  Before it was bound, the VMS may have had any number of additional bifolios that went their own way and have not been found yet.  MS408 could be just the only surviving volume of a 50-volume encyclopedia...

Just reconstructing the layout of the current bifolios on the original hides is all we can hope for now, but it will be already a great advance.  If most of the bifolios of a quire can be traced to a small number of hides, it would suggest that the Author bought them from a small-scale maker.  But it is possible that the Author bough cheap second- or third-grade vellum pieces from a large-scale maker or trader that were downgraded due to defects or irregular edges.  In that case, we should expect almost one bifolio from each hide...

And, in the first case, if the final layout for a quire turns out out to require a few more hides than the minimum, it would suggest that there have been other bifolia, now missing.   

Makes sense?

All the best, --stolfi