Why is there no more Voynichese in any other manuscript?

[Mark Knowles]

1) not EVERY surviving manuscript in the entire world has been digitized for us to examine, much less catalogued to be findable in a database, so we can't say FOR SURE that no other examples exist. Only that they haven't been found.

2) only about 5-10% of all manuscripts produced in the Middle Ages have survived to the present day. So there MIGHT have been other examples, they just haven't survived.

3) In a soon-to-be-published article, Colin Layfield and I argue that the manuscript was likely not meant to be bound at all but was a loosely-stacked pile of unnested bifolia. If it hadn't been (mis)bound between wooden boards later in the fifteenth century, it would likely not have survived at all.

We have no way of knowing what we haven't seen or what doesn't survive. I think it's LIKELY that the Voynich is unique, but we just can't say for sure. There are other manuscripts that are just as unique in text, writing system, or artistry.

I think it is important to remember that the only surviving medieval documents are not just manuscripts. There are many other documents that survive in archives in Italy and elsewhere such as letters, decrees, etc. When I was researching in the Milan State Archives I was looking through numerous sheets of loose documents of which they have many. I say this as if one were to read the Voynich forum one might have the impression that manuscripts are all there is when in fact they just constitute part. And it is clear to me from experience that so little of these other documents have been studied in any detail that there could easily to be something amongst them to be found. Also I wonder what percentage of surviving manuscripts have not been digitised and so may be largely unknown to Voynich researchers.