Was the VMS artist a fan of Michael Scot?

[Jorge_Stolfi]

We are very offtopic here, but to me, the elephant-in-the-room question is: Why parchment at all?Paper would have been readily available in all but the most remote regions or confinement situations, cheaper and easier to work with. Why did the author choose this inferior calf parchment over paper?

Even after paper became available, the combination of iron-gall ink on parchment was still used for important documents and books because it was water proof, more resistant to wear and tear, and could not be erased without physically scraping away some of the vellum together with the ink.

I read somewhere that Gutenberg's Bible was sold in both versions, paper and parchment vellum some kind of skin; and from the prices one could deduce that the vellum itself was about five times as expensive as the paper.

So my guess is that the Author did write the book on paper initially, but at some point decided to have it copied to vellum.  Perhaps because he intended to sell it, and expected that a vellum version would be easier to sell for a good price.  Perhaps because he saw the book as his legacy to his heirs or to the world, and thus wanted it to be in a more durable medium...

All the best, --stolfi