100 sheets of stolen vellum

[Bernd]

Certainly. But following Lisa's comment about old and sick animals, under which circumstances would a parchment maker even choose such animal hides, knowing the result will be poor? The effort is the same if not higher than for decent quality skins, yet the product will inevitably turn out inferior and thus fetch a lower price. This seems counter-intuitive from an economical perspective, at least since paper became significantly cheaper than parchment. The demand for low grade parchment must have plummeted even further, making it unprofitable to produce it. Why buy bad parchment when you can get good paper for a lower price? The only answer I can think of is - where no paper is available.

Maybe it is possible to determine if the VM parchment quality was affected by inferior source material or inferior treatment? I guess there must be a way to determine the approximate age of the animal. Yet there may have been a shortage in suitable hides for parchment, because calfs needed to be very young, in comparison to sheep or goats which could also be used as adults (see below).

By the way, voynich.nu states:

The parchment was identified in 2014 by a team at the University of York to be made of calf skin, so it is vellum in the strict sense of the word.

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Rene, do you have a source for this? You only list a methodological paper (Fiddyment et al. 2015) but where can we find the analysis itself? What is it now? Young Calf or older animals? Bad source material or bad processing?

From Fiddyment et al. 2015

Aside from local availability of livestock and preferences in meat consumption, parchment production in medieval Europe was limited by logistical challenges. Parchment production was presumably located close to the point of slaughter, because skins deteriorate within days, resulting in poor quality and spotty membranes. Hides can be preserved by salting, but this process would be prohibitively expensive in Northern Europe

In addition, the prestige and value of particular types of skin played an important role. Fourteenth-century accounts from Beaulieu Abbey show that calfskin was more highly valued than sheepskin. The importance of the hide as a source of revenue is repeatedly evidenced by the abundance of skinning marks on animal remains, the range of decrees and bylaws restricting the flaying of animals that had died of diseases, and the lengths the authorities went to prevent these skins being used

Although the species of animal used would reflect local livestock availability, the age of the animals was limited by the craft production. La Lande’s book Art de faire le parchemin, written in 1762, indicates that calfskins suitable for making parchment should not be taken from an animal older than 6 wk of age. The skins of young calves, although suitable for parchment production, are already several times thicker than the skin of adult goats or sheep. Although adult goats and sheep can be used for the production of certain types of parchment, adult cow skins are too thick for parchment production and are instead used to produce heavy, durable leather. However, Clavel notes that calf bones are rarely found in 13th and 14th century sample collections [in France] and comprise only 2–5% of all cattle bones from excavated sites, appearing with greater frequency in later periods. Veal calves were typically slaughtered at around 6 mo of age, but the bones of very young cattle have rarely been found in French medieval archaeological sites.

Although the use of genuine uterine vellum cannot be discounted, our results suggest that its availability was not a defining factor in medieval parchment production. Instead, our findings would seem to emphasize dependence on a highly specialized craft technique rather than the supply of a particular raw material. A more likely explanation for the production of fine parchment is the use of relatively young animals and the deployment of specific finishing techniques that enabled the corium to be ground to the desired thickness. The density of collagen fibrils in calf and goat parchment, compared with a more open weave and higher fat content in sheep parchment, favors the former two species; nevertheless, it is evident that parchment makers had the skills to make the finest parchments from all three.

The paper unfortunately only deals with France, Italy and England and not the alpine region, Switzerland or Germany. My preliminary take on this is the following:
The VM sheets were made from calf and not goat skins, which would likely have been cheaper and more widely available as even older animals can be used. At least in southern Europe.
In the North, cattle dominated.
The bottleneck for vellum (sic!) production was the availability of calves slaughtered at a sufficiently young age. Something that was not very profitable for the livestock owner instead or raising them for veal meat.
The flaying of diseased animals was prohibited but that will have varied by region.
Skilled parchment makers were able to make high-quality sheets from all species and even from slightly older calves - but not from adult cattle.

So why this inferior (older) calf skins for the VM?
Slaughtering very young calves was a luxury that may not have been viable in very poor regions or times. Younger calf skins might not have been available at the time and region the VM was made. That still leaves goats as option, but the author of the VM might have felt that even bad vellum (as in calf) was more appropriate for his work that goat skin or paper - which might not have been available in remote regions at all.

But honestly, I'm running out of excuses and I find it hard to imagine the creator(s) had no other choice than using this low quality parchment, especially if we assume the VM was created over a longer time period. The author may simply have felt that parchment was more appropriate than paper - and that this crude parchment gave the VM a more mysterious and ancient look. There's evidence the tears in the parchment were even incorporated into text and imagery in a playful way. It almost looks like the author tried to create something that looks like an ancient manuscript - for whatever reason. This however doesn't explain the improvised ink and pigments.

Lisa, do you know manuscripts of comparably bad parchment quality?