[split] Jorge's Retracer Thread: darker ink, retracing of text and drawings

[oshfdk]

To restate what should be obvious, I am fully convinced by now of my Massive Retracing Theory (MRT): that much of the text and large portions of the figures were retraced, with more or less care, decades or centuries after the original scribing.  

And I think that everybody should be aware of that, because many people have drawn very wrong conclusions by assuming that every stroke they see was penned by the Scribe (or, worse, by the Author) when he created BL MS 408.  As far as I know, there is absolutely no evidence or argument supporting this alternative to MRT, the Everything's Pristine Theory (EPT).

I'd say the alternative is not EPT, but MIO - Most of the Ink is Original. I haven't seen what I would consider strong evidence of later writing anywhere in the MS, except the folio/quire numbers and maybe some marginalia, but even if there are a handful of places where retracing took place, this won't significantly affect any research into the manuscript, so for practical purposes MIO and EPT are probably the same.

I have never looked into evidence for EPT, because for me this would be a little like trying to prove that there is no well camouflaged live elephant hidden in my living room, perfectly blended in with the furniture. But I can try.

For example, it has been noted (I think I read this in a post by @pfeaster) that on some folios there is what looks like a problem with the quill that caused tiny gaps and slits in the middle of the strokes. Looking at the examples from You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. below, I can see that this equally affects dark and light strokes, as if all these strokes were executed with the same quill. This is unlikely to be later damage to the page, because the slits consistently appear in the same parts of the strokes. How does MRT explain this? EPT easily explains this by saying that everything on this folio was executed with the same bad quill.