(22-04-2026, 01:53 PM)LisaFaginDavis wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.All of the parchment is of similar quality. There is no difference in quality from one section to another. And - to respond to an earlier comment - the parchment is so worn that it is nearly impossible to distinguish hair side from flesh side, so we can't ascertain whether it follows Gregory's Rule or not. I'm fairly certain it doesn't, especially since if the manuscript was indeed intended to be a loose pile of un-nested bifolia (i.e. singulions), the distinction between hair and flesh sides from one bifolium to the next would be irrelevant. There is no evidence to suggest the manuscript was produced over a long period of time.
It feels to me like the quality of the parchment and the singulion hypothesis may be related. That there is some goal, distinctly other than making a fine codex, which explains:
1) why bifolia were designed as units
2) why parchment (durable?) was preferred over paper sheets
3) why the parchment (and everything else) did not need to be of the finest quality
I imagine that loose, folded papers might quickly deteriorate when they are taken out repeatedly. Folded parchment sheets would be much more resistant to repeated handling.