VMS author from big data
byatan > 25-07-2021, 07:29 PM
VMS author(s) (or at least scribe(s)) apparently learned to write some time (many years) before the ms was written. So there is the non zero chance that additional writings from at least one person who created the ms survive.
Additional support for this might be found in the possible application of crypto to the ms writing--it is not hard to imagine that the author could have been employed at some point by the type of organization with big archives.
The creation of the vms was probably extremely expensive for its day, so the author is probably more likely than most to have corresponded privately with the types of bigwigs who might also keep archives.
One point against is the vast amount of written documents from that area presumably lost. Are there any estimates for how many documents (define it as you will) might survived out of all written in 15th century europe? I could not find this on google.
So, what we could envision happening is a mass-digitization and aggregation of basically everything written that still exists from the time period and region most likely encompassing the author's life. Then automatically ML looks for handwriting matches to the vms. This might turn up some information about the author.
I understand very few of the relevant documents are currently digitized. Is this because there is a comparative, if not general lack of interest and funding in this field or are other things involved?
edit: while writing this I had forgotten that the MS was rebound and is missing pages. Additional impacts of a "total old documents digitization" project might be finding these missing pages, or even other totally separate documents with related writing.