A name to attach to the origins of the manuscript

[LisaFaginDavis]

Hi, Mark, 

Sorry, but I disagree with nearly everything you've written here. In the fifteenth century, literacy was on the rise, especially among women and those beyond the nobility. The Voynich is not an expensive object...the opposite, in fact. The parchment is low-quality, the pigments are the most common and least expensive types (no lapis, no malachite, etc.), and the artistic quality is very poor. All of these qualities point to an amateur collaboration, not a professional workshop. Also, "unknown" doesn't equal "peasant," and there are more strata in medieval society than simply noble vs. peasant. To me, the illustrative content suggests folk-knowledge and women's wisdom, not "learned" science. Of course it is possible that we will someday be able to attribute name(s) to the authorship or writing or decorating of the manuscript, but given the kind of manuscript this appears to be (low-quality, communal, relatively inexpensive to produce), the odds are not in our favor in that regard. If we ever manage to associate any names with the production of the manuscript, I think it is more likely that they will be gleaned from the manuscript itself when we can finally read it, not from external research.

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There are tens of thousands of named scribes, including thousands of women. Here's some recent extrapolation:
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