27-01-2026, 02:17 PM
(This post was last modified: 27-01-2026, 02:21 PM by Mark Knowles.)
(27-01-2026, 01:56 PM)LisaFaginDavis wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Asking "how much" anything cost 600 years ago in today's currency strikes me as not the right question, as it is truly unanswerable. If a sheet of parchment cost (I'm making this up) 20 guilders in 1450 Antwerp, or 150 florins in 1350 Florence, how does that help determine how much it cost in an unidentified location in the early 1400s? Was the parchment purchased with coin? Or traded for? Or given? Or homemade? What was a 1450-guilder worth fifty years earlier? What was a 1350-florin worth fifty years later? And how much are those worth in today's currency? It is really not knowable in a concrete way.
It seems that by trying to quantify this we can be more specific. It seems to me that if we can compare say the average monthly income of a medieval person in Europe to the cost of all the less-expensive vellum needed to produce the Voynich that would give one an idea of how it expensive it really was. Of course this would be a guesstimate, but still better than being completely non-specific it seems to me. Of course, wages and prices will vary by region as they do today, but that doesn't stop us making comparisons about the relative costs of objects today. Historical statistics about the past are widely used, if even we can't always be certain of their accuracy.
Someone could find or steal the highest quality vellum and inks, but that doesn't mean that wouldn't have a price on the free market. A very poor person can be given a Lamborghini, but that doesn't mean a Lamborghini is not expensive.