Elephant in the Room Solution Considerations

[MHTamdgidi_(Behrooz)]

This seems to contrast the low cost materials used in producing the manuscript. Wouldn't it be disgraceful for a Bishop and his team of scribes to use low quality vellum for the legacy work of his late patron?

Thanks for your question.

In my view, the question about where the vellum was produced and by whom and at what cost are secondary and tentative to my finding. I was just speculating and trying to acknowledge contributions others had made on this forum as a plausible explanation; if you can offer a better alternative for my finding’s narrative, I am all ears. It could have been done by others and in a different setting in early 1400s. I don’t think the vellum is a disgraceful work of art at all, and it has proven its worth despite your claim, substantively and physically, over centuries, and any such judgments you are making are subjective and not necessarily based on a knowledge of the resources available at the time.

So, I am open to any other considerations you or others may have regarding the vellum production. But, the notion of supposedly “very low quality” of vellum being a determinant of the overall finding is in my view not a reasonable way of going about evaluating my finding about the authorship of the Voynich manuscript, since it was no longer in Margaret’s hands to decide who did it, as I think it was legally decided and arranged to be done posthumously. You can’t blame the deceased author and her intentions based on what those carrying out her will actually did.

That thread discussion about the “very low quality” (or not) of the vellum seemed in my view to be somewhat directed in a way to fulfill other narratives. As far as I know, the Yale edition is clearly offering a range defined in terms of more to less expensive, rather than expensive vs. cheap. There is no question in my mind about what the Yale edition was stating. Those who are leaning on the “cheap” narrative now I think are revising the published and established assessments in favor of their own views and need to explain why they are doing it. Below is from the Yale edition. If they now disagree with this, they need to be saying so.

“While it is not of highest quality for the time, the parchment that makes up the text-block, particularly the large foldout pages, was still expensive. In consultation with a practicing parchment maker, researchers have estimated that the volume required the entire skins of fourteen to fifteen calves, especially to yield the foldouts of such quantity and size. Foldouts and unusual page designs certainly existed in the Gothic period and were used in calendars, volvelles (rotating paper wheels used for prognostication among other things), and vade mecums (folding handbooks often worn on a belt by a doctor to allow quick reference). As described above, the construction of the foldouts in the Voynich Manuscript varies, from those that are long (as many as five leaves) sewn through their first fold, to double-spread pages, to one that opens out and up into a sheet six times the size of the volume itself. The quantity and size of the foldouts in the Voynich Manuscript are very unusual for the time period. …” (p. 27).