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How quickly did the VMS leave the possession of those who understood it?
- How quickly did the VMS leave the possession of those who understood it?
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RE: How quickly did the VMS leave the possession of those who understood it?
Jorge_Stolfi > 28-11-2025, 03:38 PM
(28-11-2025, 12:06 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Did the person who added the month names understand the MS?
I don't know of any solid evidence for either answer.
However, the sign icons were almost surely drawn by the same artist who drew the rest of the diagrams and text, in the 1400s. Thus whoever wrote the month names did not need to understand the text. And aren't the letter forms of the month names from centuries later?
All the best, --stolfi -
RE: How quickly did the VMS leave the possession of those who understood it?
rikforto > 28-11-2025, 03:42 PM
(28-11-2025, 03:14 PM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Many changes in the character statistics and in the character shapes at the same time between A and B may be explained by using a different encoding with two distinct characters sets (typical A t and B t as two different codes) instead of saying that these are two different scribes that use two slightly different languages or codes for some reason.
The variation is much more extreme than that. The formation of the calligraphic building blocks and the distance between them varies quite significantly and predictably between Currier A and Currier B. For instance, we can be reasonably sure, based on how other medieval scripts were conceived, that a minim in Currier A is the same conceptual stroke as in Currier B, yet they vary predictably from each other. The same is true of the distance between letters, weights on the strokes, size of the strokes, qualities of lines and paragraphs like slope and break size, and a few other qualities that do not usually distinguish letters within a script. In this way the script is not "totally unknown"; it fits, albeit somewhat mysteriously, into the known craft of the time.
The VMS being what it is, I cannot totally rule out a single scribe (including a forger) having deliberately manipulated their letter formation to some end. But they are doing so in a way that looks an awful lot like standard handwriting variation in a group of distinct scribes, and Occam's razor cuts hard here, I think. -
RE: How quickly did the VMS leave the possession of those who understood it?
LisaFaginDavis > 28-11-2025, 04:05 PM
The hypothesis I'm working on is that the manuscript was originally meant to be an unbound stack of bifolia, rather than nested quires. As the original poster noted, there is significant evidence that the current structure is a mis-binding:
1) mixing of scribal bifolia within quires;
2) the multiple examples of illustrations on a verso crossing the gutter to emerge on the recto of the non-consecutive conjoint (e.g. the two streams that cross from 78v to 81r);
3) the mixing of pharmaceutical and herbal bifolia in quires 15 and the two out-of-place herbal bifolia of quire 17;
4) the data analytics conducted by Colin Layfield and myself (explained in my Toronto lecture and hopefully soon to be published)
...among other evidence. But there is also no evidence of a complete re-sewing, which means this is the first and only sewing structure, which means in turn that the first binding was itself the mis-binding. (again, explained in my Toronto lecture)
The sewing structure is fifteenth century - three sewing stations of double-cords with the extended endband structure that developed in the fifteenth century. The quire numbers and the month names are (likely) fifteenth century as well.
Putting it all together, we end up with a manuscript from ca. 1420 whose creators didn't intend for it to be bound. Later in the 15th century, someone who didn't understand the manuscript but wanted to preserve it created the nested structure we see today and secured the quires between wooden boards, which is when the quire numbers would have been added.
The current limp vellum covers are nineteenth century, but it was only the covers that were replaced then...the sewing structure remained intact, except for a few alterations during various conservation treatments in the 20th century. Rene has shown that the current covers are in the style of other manuscripts and books bound by the Jesuits in Rome, so it seems likely that the VMS was re-covered by them as well. The 19th-c. paper spine-liners (tiny scraps of paper adhered to the outside of the quires, between the sewing stations) support this idea.
To answer the original question, then, if my work is correct, the manuscript had left the possession of those who created it by the time it was bound, sometime in the fifteenth century. Unfortunately, there is no real way to know precisely when that happened...could have been 5 years later, could have been 50 years later, but definitely by ca. 1500. -
RE: How quickly did the VMS leave the possession of those who understood it?
Rafal > 28-11-2025, 05:12 PM
Out of curiosity, could DNA dating be done on sewing like it was done on the pages?
Are these threads organic, made of hemp or something like that? -
RE: How quickly did the VMS leave the possession of those who understood it?
LisaFaginDavis > 28-11-2025, 05:19 PM
I think you might be able to carbon-date the cords, although I sincerely doubt the Beinecke would be willing to take those samples, as it could weaken the sewing significantly. -
RE: How quickly did the VMS leave the possession of those who understood it?
oshfdk > 28-11-2025, 05:46 PM
(28-11-2025, 03:42 PM)rikforto Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The variation is much more extreme than that. The formation of the calligraphic building blocks and the distance between them varies quite significantly and predictably between Currier A and Currier B. For instance, we can be reasonably sure, based on how other medieval scripts were conceived, that a minim in Currier A is the same conceptual stroke as in Currier B, yet they vary predictably from each other. The same is true of the distance between letters, weights on the strokes, size of the strokes, qualities of lines and paragraphs like slope and break size, and a few other qualities that do not usually distinguish letters within a script. In this way the script is not "totally unknown"; it fits, albeit somewhat mysteriously, into the known craft of the time.
Well, I disagree on all the conclusions. To me the script is totally unknown in the sense that if it encodes information, we don't know how. Take a simple example of a grille, which is only slightly anachronistic. I've just tried encoding the same text using the same grill two times (I didn't finish the filler in the bottom variant in the right part, each iteration starts with a capital letter, going top down left to right). Note that I made absolutely no effort to change my handwriting, frankly I was too busy checking the alignment of the grill and making sure I apply it correctly to pay any attention to the lettering. This all resulted in many sloppy and weird letters. The choice of how many characters per slot to use in this encoding can actually be dictated by what appears in the second slot (the first is always just a single capital letter), if it's some narrow letter, you would normally want to add another letter in this slot, and then you will get somewhat smaller letters. If on the other hand it's a wide letter, you would start with one letter per slot and may decide to continue in this manner. To avoid making the grill obvious, once you start with a certain letter size, you have to follow it. In the end for the top variant I tried squeezing 2-3 characters per slot, while in the bottom example I decided that there will be only one character per slot. Both versions are perfectly readable with the grille, but there are variations in the handwriting, sizes, qualities of lines, etc, just dictated by my choice of how exactly to use the grill. With a quill this will also affect the quality and the width of strokes.
By the way, choosing how many letters per slot to use will certainly affect the statistics as well as the shapes, (edit: ) so this could work as a model for A vs B.
So, to repeat, I see no strong hard evidence that would beyond reasonable doubt prove that A and B are two different scribes. They could very well be, but for me it's not a certainly. There are countless other possibilities that could explain the difference between hand A and hand B.
I hereby declare the above NOT a solution for the purposes of allotment of candidates for the LIST
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RE: How quickly did the VMS leave the possession of those who understood it?
Rafal > 28-11-2025, 07:24 PM
Quote:I think you might be able to carbon-date the cords, although I sincerely doubt the Beinecke would be willing to take those samples, as it could weaken the sewing significantly.
Maybe you could steal a bit while examining the physical manuscript?
Okay, I wasn't saying that
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RE: How quickly did the VMS leave the possession of those who understood it?
Bernd > 28-11-2025, 10:19 PM
(28-11-2025, 04:05 PM)LisaFaginDavis Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The hypothesis I'm working on is that the manuscript was originally meant to be an unbound stack of bifolia, rather than nested quires. As the original poster noted, there is significant evidence that the current structure is a mis-binding:
I think a plausible scenario is that upon death of the author(s), the bifolia got into someone else's possession who did not understand what was going on but for obvious reasons found them interesting / potentially profitable. So he had them (mis)bound to a book and sold the resulting manuscript.
1) mixing of scribal bifolia within quires;
2) the multiple examples of illustrations on a verso crossing the gutter to emerge on the recto of the non-consecutive conjoint (e.g. the two streams that cross from 78v to 81r);
3) the mixing of pharmaceutical and herbal bifolia in quires 15 and the two out-of-place herbal bifolia of quire 17;
4) the data analytics conducted by Colin Layfield and myself (explained in my Toronto lecture and hopefully soon to be published)
...among other evidence. But there is also no evidence of a complete re-sewing, which means this is the first and only sewing structure, which means in turn that the first binding was itself the mis-binding. (again, explained in my Toronto lecture)
The sewing structure is fifteenth century - three sewing stations of double-cords with the extended endband structure that developed in the fifteenth century. The quire numbers and the month names are (likely) fifteenth century as well.
Putting it all together, we end up with a manuscript from ca. 1420 whose creators didn't intend for it to be bound. Later in the 15th century, someone who didn't understand the manuscript but wanted to preserve it created the nested structure we see today and secured the quires between wooden boards, which is when the quire numbers would have been added.
The current limp vellum covers are nineteenth century, but it was only the covers that were replaced then...the sewing structure remained intact, except for a few alterations during various conservation treatments in the 20th century. Rene has shown that the current covers are in the style of other manuscripts and books bound by the Jesuits in Rome, so it seems likely that the VMS was re-covered by them as well. The 19th-c. paper spine-liners (tiny scraps of paper adhered to the outside of the quires, between the sewing stations) support this idea.
To answer the original question, then, if my work is correct, the manuscript had left the possession of those who created it by the time it was bound, sometime in the fifteenth century. Unfortunately, there is no real way to know precisely when that happened...could have been 5 years later, could have been 50 years later, but definitely by ca. 1500.
I do not believe the VM was intentionally created as a hoax. Wouldn't you rather create and bind a book than a large number of loose bifolia? Also the quality of drawings and text is too inconsistent, the whole corpus is unnecessarily large and detailed. And think of all the weird properties of Voynichese. Cui bono? Nobody in the 15th century would have noticed most of them. You could easily get away with a fraction of the work. This means the bifolia likely had have been of personal importance for the people who created them, for whatever reason. They probably were not intended for a larger audience hence the meaning likely died with its creator(s) -
RE: How quickly did the VMS leave the possession of those who understood it?
Skoove > Yesterday, 12:21 PM
(28-11-2025, 10:19 PM)Bernd Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.You could easily get away with a fraction of the work.
I have sometimes thought of this as well. The major basis of someone trying to sell the VMS circa 1430 would have been the unusual script since (as VMS researchers have discovered over the years) many parts of the VMS weren't that strange for someone familiar with manuscripts in the 15th century. During that time (since they didn't have the internet), one wouldn't be able to tell that it was not a pre-existing script. They would just be able to tell that it was not a common European script that they had seen.
My point is that if they wanted to sell it, it would be much easier to make it crazier and make it largely readable for the potential buyer so that they could comprehend the uniqueness of it. -
RE: How quickly did the VMS leave the possession of those who understood it?
Bluetoes101 > Today, 12:17 AM
Going a tad off-topic, but as you are the thread creator I hope its ok
This is someone else's suggestion, I can't remember who now.. but I think it is my favourite along the lines of "a thing made to sell".
It was commissioned as a prop for a shop. It wasn't made to sell, but to sell other things, a loss-leader of sorts. Spend money to make money.
I think this idea works best if it is something meant to be from "far away" with very valuable knowledge.
I'm not sure the "to sell" line of solutions is the most likely, but I thought this idea was more interesting than the "sell to a rich guy!" ones.