The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

[Jorge_Stolfi]

Well, the VMS itself is a highly unusual Medieval manuscript.

I see its uniqueness, probably in its individual and rather careless style. But otherwise, for me, the VMS style is not much different from an ordinary school notebook.

It is uniqueness is mostly in the script and in the structure and statistics of the text.

But it is also seems to be unique in several details of the illustrations, 

• The plant drawings.  According to Baresch, the doctors in Prague could not recognize them.  While the Alchemists´ Herbal (AH) also has non-existent plants, and some of them may have been coped into the VMS, the VMS herbal section as a whole is not simply another copy of the AH.
  
• The Zodiac with 30 (always 30) named "things" per sign.
  
• The Nine-Rosette fold-out.
  
• Some of the Astro/Cosmo diagrams, divided into odd numbers of sectors (like f67v1 with 17 sectors, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. with 28 "Logs", f70r1 with 9 "mouths", the 4x17 sequence of f57v.  Also the "spiral arms" on f68v3. 
  
• The bizarre "tubs", "pipes", and "organs" in some Bio pages.
  
• The labeled jars on the margin of the Pharma section.
  
• The fact that the vast majority of the human figures is naked little women in mostly stereotypical poses.  Also the hats and "tubs" or "barrels" of the Zodiac nymphs.
  
• The marginalia in Latin letters and in a different but equally mysterious language.
  

We now know that several details were copied from other European books, apparently without understanding.  But the variety of these sources itself seems to be rather unique.

[The lack of scored margin and base lines] can be explained by the fact that the author had no reason to write in huge Gothic letters and to carefully craft each letter. He had no reason to put in the effort.

What I mean is that a professional book copyist wold have used scored guide lines by default.  Just like a professional wall painter would use spackle and masking tape, without the client having to ask for them.  Even with the same handwriting and letter size, it would result in a much nicer book.

A more experienced scribe would also plan the space better, so that the Zodiac nymphs would end up evenly spaced (without those "overflow" nymphs at the top), the plant roots would not extend into the bottom margin, etc.

Chinese theory truly explains only the text and the red symbols. The rest is in question (including astrology with European features).

The Chinese Origin theory includes the claim that the physical BL MS 408 was scribed in Europe by an European Scribe, on European vellum, based on a draft provided by the Author, with the illustrations partly specified by the draft, partly "inspired" on other European manuscripts, partly invented by the Scribe on his own.   

So it does explain the illustrations too.

All the best, -- stolfi