RE: Voynich Manuscript Day 2025 Recording on YouTube
N._N. > 11-08-2025, 04:47 PM
There is of course no binary formal-casual, but a continuum as you said, and I agree that it is hard to judge how different one scribe's handwriting might be depending on circumstances. However, from experience with historical documents, I am quite positive that it was common for anyone writing regularly (i. e. professional scribes, scholars etc.) to have different modes which may influence the particular elements you are looking at here. For example, the closed x looks like something you might avoid when writing something more formal.
I would also not expect these kind of everyday legal documents we see on top of the list to be particularly formal in style, since they were not really meant to be read often or displayed for representative purposes. In most cases, they would just disappear in some ledger, maybe used once again (on repayment) unless there are legal issues. If the document is legible, the visuals are of minor importance.
Of the Top 10, the two from Fulda are a receipt for payment and a loan, three more Hessian documents are sales proceedings, the fourth is a debt obligation. Which raises the question: Is there actually a cluster from Hesse where this script was particularly common, or just a cluster of digitized manuscripts of this kind where the script is common that happend to be available from Hessian archives (while it was actually used in most of southern Germany, for example)? In any way, my point is: I think the list could benefit from a more detailed category distinguishing what kind of manuscript it is. But I fully understand how much work that would be.