(17-04-2026, 10:49 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(17-04-2026, 07:43 AM)JustAnotherTheory Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Assuming that the VMS was not written in a scriptorium (i.e., not in an "official" place filled with dozens of professional scribes [...])

The VMS was definitely not produced by a "professional" scribe or in such a "manuscript factory".  The VMS Scribe apparently had some experience preparing and handling a quill pen and writing Latin or Vernacular, but did not have the basic know-how for producing a "commercial quality" manuscript. 

He did not score text rails (margin lines) or baselines, and thus his text lines are all crooked and unevenly spaced, often with irregular or slanted rails.  

He let the quill run almost dry before recharging it, and possibly did not "prime" it on some scrap paper to remove excess ink before starting to write again; so that the loops on characters like o, d, Ch etc often became black blobs. 

We can see that he had a compass with ink point, and a ruler;  but the sizes of the circles are not uniform, and often they fail to close -- as if the compass was not very solid, or the vellum was not firmly pinned flat to the table.  He apparently did not know how to divide a circle into four equal parts, much less into 6 or 12 (as needed by some Cosmo diagrams) or 5 or 10 (as needed in the Zodiac).  And he did not plan the positions of the nymphs, so they often ended overflowing the space between circles and had to be drawn on top of them.

And he did not use iron-gall ink -- whether out of ignorance, or for other reason, we can't tell.

The point is that the Author apparently could not afford a professional scribe, just as he could not afford good quality parvechellument.

I doubt that he would have been desperate to the point of stealing the vellum.  I think he just went around parchment makers, traders, and "manuscript factories" haggling and begging for the cheapest stuff they had.  I think it is possible that some of them gave him the contents of their "reject" bins for free.

Or maybe he just scavenged his and other libraries for books with blank bifolios, or blank double-size folios that could be folded into his bifolios.

The only estimate for the price of vellum in today's money that I have seen so far was about US$ 2 per folio.   Is there a better estimate?  From the prices of Gutenberg's Bible we can deduce that paper was about 1/5 the price of vellum, or less.  But that is for good-quality material...

In spite of his hardships at the time, the Author must have known better times, since he probably was educated and owned some number of "scientific" books -- like Taccola's, Oresme's, the Balneis, etc.

All the best, --stolfi

That's right, Jorge. I like to think of the author, or authors, or assistants of the autor, as a "doctor, herbalist, apothecary, alchemist, adventurer" of the time who traveled through little-known Europe and wrote down his thoughts, knowledge, and experiences. Perhaps he (or they?) took notes on paper during the day, then transferred his knowledge to parchment (which is more durable over time; this is also why the manuscript has no obvious corrections, second thoughts, or erasures). He corrected on paper, and the parchment was the definitive medium. He wrote in the evenings or when he could spare a moment, leaning on a table, a stone, or on his own lap, which is why he couldn't be precise. Perhaps he (they?) bought parchement where he could during his trips. At first glance, it looks to me like the parchment sheets are different in color and thickness, but perhaps it's just a scanning defect.
I work from my imagination.

All the best, Fabrizio.
   

Thanks for your insight, Lisa!
I think the important part here is that if the VM parchment was produced in an amateurish process and from inferior base material, we can rule out is was leftover / rejected scrap material in a professional setting like a workshop or scriptorium. You would not even find such material in this environment. Why would they have DIY parchment of bad quality to begin with? So the VM author(s) could not have stolen it or been given it for free as it was of no use. It simply would not have been there. If the quality was so bad that it was basically unsellable, we are indeed dealing with a DIY product, which fits the ink and pigments. And the overall quality of the VM work. I think this is important.

As far as I understood, Lisa does not agree with Wladimir D on the trimming / cutting of parchment pages. I believe we should look into this more and see if we can sort out this dispute.

(17-04-2026, 10:49 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.In spite of his hardships at the time, the Author must have known better times, since he probably was educated and owned some number of "scientific" books -- like Taccola's, Oresme's, the Balneis, etc.

I agree with the rest of your assessment, Jorge,  but I would rule out that the VM creator personally owned these - or any - reference books. Illustrated manuscripts would have been worth a fortune and unless a compilation including all VM imagery sources existed, he would have needed a small library, something one would not find with any average man, especially a poor one who had to resort to making bad parchment and ink. And then there's the 'elephant in the room' - BNCF Palatino 766, Taccola's personal notebook De ingeneis III-IV created for Emperor Sigismund of which no known copies exist. In contrast to the other VM references, (and Taccola's other works), as far as we know, this was never a book one could simply acquire as a copy, even when putting a huge amount of money on the table. In fact, we do not even know if this specific book ever reached a wider audience. It even widens the gap between the necessary quality of the illustration source and the DIY character of the VM.

Following Lisa's assessment of the parchment as basically scrap, I wonder why someone would even go through the process of making 100+ bad parchment sheets, which obviously was a lot of work. Why not use paper? I see several scenarios:

1) Lack. The VM was created in an environment where parchment / paper simply was not available. Secluded in a rural place or during a severe crisis, in exile, ...
As Lisa suggested, the author or a community may have produced all materials including ink and pigments DIY style. This is however hard to reconcile with the necessary reference imagery, unless the artist drew everything from memory. Which might explain some (but far from all) oddities. On the other hand, some imagery looks to have been copied relatively faithfully.

2) Allegory. The author determined, the purpose or content of the VM required it to be written on this poor material for religious, philosophical or magical reasons, even if he could have used better quality parchment or paper. The author took this seriously and also used poor ink and pigments. Almost impossible to test as hypothesis.

3) Hoax. The VM was deliberately created on the poor quality parchment to give it a certain old and mysterious look. Especially in combination with the hypothesis that the text contains no meaning, this should not be ruled out.

(19-04-2026, 10:54 AM)Bernd Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.As far as I understood, Lisa does not agree with Wladimir D on the trimming / cutting of parchment pages. I believe we should look into this more and see if we can sort out this dispute.

The pages are of uneven shape and uneven size. This strongly suggests that there has not been any even moderately consistent trimming at the time of MS creation.
As I wrote in the post I quoted yesterday (about MS sizes), in very few places one can see more modern cuts, which stand out somewhat as the parchment is lighter at these cuts.
 
Manuscripts that were trimmed after creation, (almost) look like modern books. The difference is very clear.

(19-04-2026, 12:38 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(19-04-2026, 10:54 AM)Bernd Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.As far as I understood, Lisa does not agree with Wladimir D on the trimming / cutting of parchment pages. I believe we should look into this more and see if we can sort out this dispute.

The pages are of uneven shape and uneven size. This strongly suggests that there has not been any even moderately consistent trimming at the time of MS creation.
As I wrote in the post I quoted yesterday (about MS sizes), in very few places one can see more modern cuts, which stand out somewhat as the parchment is lighter at these cuts.
 
Manuscripts that were trimmed after creation, (almost) look like modern books. The difference is very clear.

But does that rule out the folios were cut from larger sheets of equally uneven size and shape?

(19-04-2026, 10:54 AM)Bernd Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I agree with the rest of your assessment, Jorge,  but I would rule out that the VM creator personally owned these - or any - reference books. Illustrated manuscripts would have been worth a fortune and unless a compilation including all VM imagery sources existed, he would have needed a small library, something one would not find with any average man, especially a poor one who had to resort to making bad parchment and ink.

But my theory is that he had seen better fortunes before, at which time he assembled a good library of the kind that a well-to-do educated man would.   But by the time he decided to put his notes  to vellum he was old and living on a stretched budget.  And yet he would have kept his library, as much of it as he could.

IIUC, that is what happened to John Dee himself .  Before his crazy adventure on the Continent, he was rich enough to assemble a large library, including several Bacon books.  When he returned to England his mansion had been taken (IIRC) and his library had been dispersed.  His friends got  him a professor job somewhere, and some of his books were returned by the "borrowers"; but (IIUC) he was no longer a rich man.

(I am reminded of the scene in the movie The Ninth Portal where Depp visits an impoverished nobleman who has sold all his furniture, but still keeps his books neatly lined up on the floor of his decrepit manson.)

Quote:And then there's the 'elephant in the room' - BNCF Palatino 766, Taccola's personal notebook De ingeneis III-IV created for Emperor Sigismund of which no known copies exist.

Well, just because we do not know of any copies we cannot conclude that there were none.  I have seen estimates that only 10% of the manuscripts that existed in that era have survived to this day.  And i suspect that it is an optimistic estimate.

And there are hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of manuscripts sitting in libraries of convents, schools, state archives, and private individuals which have not been cataloged, or whose catalogs are not publicly available.

Quote:In contrast to the other VM references, (and Taccola's other works), as far as we know, this was never a book one could simply acquire as a copy, even when putting a huge amount of money on the table. In fact, we do not even know if this specific book ever reached a wider audience. It even widens the gap between the necessary quality of the illustration source and the DIY character of the VM.

Many old manuscripts were made in "factories" to be sold. But many were also made by individuals who borrowed a book that they liked and made a copy themselves, or hired a scribe to make one.

I suppose that even books in an imperial library were often lent out, or made available to visitors.  Otherwise, what would be the point of creating such libraries?  

IIRC, Fr. Petersen made a hand copy of the whole VMS by visiting Wilfrid, Krause, or some library for months on end.

Is BNCF Palatino 766 really Taccola's original notebook?  I imagine that his real notebook would have had all sorts of scribbles, stupid ideas, bad drawings, etc; so he would not have dared to just send it to the Emperor.  I rather think that he hastily made a clean copy for that purpose. 

Quote:I wonder why someone would even go through the process of making 100+ bad parchment sheets, which obviously was a lot of work.

No scholar made his own parchment.  Turning animall skins into parchment is a laborious, messy, and stinky process, that requires non-trivial know-how and equipment, as well as special materials such as slaked lime, tannin, pumice, limestone, sandarac, ...

The quality of the final product varied a lot. The hide could have scars, wrinkles, botfly holes, calluses, etc that could not be removed by the maker.  Scraping and stretching could create tears or other defects by accident .  But the maker would still sell bad sheets at a discount, rather than throw them away.

Quote:the author or a community may have produced all materials including ink and pigments DIY style.

Vellum, parchment, and paper could have been self-made by a large community, like a large monastery.  But normally they would be bought.  

Inks and paints were usually made as needed by the users themselves.  Lampblack could be easily made by anyone.   Any mineral pigments (like ocher, sienna, azurite) would have to be bought.  Some binders (like gum arabic) would be bough too, but DIY alternatives (like egg yolk) would have been available.

Quote:Why not use paper?

 

Indeed I assume that the draft of the VMS was created on paper, which at the time apparently was 1/5 of the cost of parchment, or less.  Most probably with lampblack (india) ink or some other simple ink like watercolor.   

Vellum and parchment, with iron-gall ink (IGI), were generally used when one wanted the result to be resistant to wear and tear, humidity, and accidental exposure to spill or rain.

So the Author presumably decided to have his paper draft put to vellum because he wanted to preserve its contents for posterity.  Or maybe because he thought that a vellum copy could be sold for a better price than a paper one.

A more intriguing question is why the VMS is not written with IGI.  This fact is clearly shown by the (non)appearance of the ink in the infrared images, and by how easily text and drawings got rubbed off or washed away (as on page You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and under that "ketchup" stain on f103r).  

Maybe the Scribe had no experience with vellum, and neither he nor the Author knew that he had to use IGI? Or the Scribe used a washable ink on purpose, because he anticipated there would be many mistakes that would have to be corrected?  Or maybe the Author was so poor that he could not even afford the ingredients (oak galls and green vitriol) needed to make IGI?  

Or maybe those ingredients were not available where the vellum copy was made? They should have been easily available in any European town where someone used vellum/parchment -- meaning any town that had a notary, lawyer, monastery, etc.  But outside Europe, where vellum/parchment were not used, it may have been impossible to obtain them.


All the best, --stolfi

(19-04-2026, 10:54 AM)Bernd Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Following Lisa's assessment of the parchment as basically scrap, I wonder why someone would even go through the process of making 100+ bad parchment sheets, which obviously was a lot of work. Why not use paper? I see several scenarios:

1) Lack. The VM was created in an environment where parchment / paper simply was not available. Secluded in a rural place or during a severe crisis, in exile, ...
As Lisa suggested, the author or a community may have produced all materials including ink and pigments DIY style. This is however hard to reconcile with the necessary reference imagery, unless the artist drew everything from memory. Which might explain some (but far from all) oddities. On the other hand, some imagery looks to have been copied relatively faithfully.

These are good questions to ask. Were there maybe places in the first half of the 15th century where paper wasn't all that common yet? Or harder to come by than low quality parchment? 

I can see the appeal of a "self-made" argument. The preparation and application of the pigments also displays low quality and skill, but still sufficient to get the job done. 

I don't think any supposed access to sources is a problem. Access doesn't mean ownership. And even if people, families or institutions owned a number of books, that doesn't mean that they still have the means, ability or desire to buy high-grade materials. It's possible for an individual or institution to have limited financial means, but also have a library: from past acquisitions, inheritance, donations...

(19-04-2026, 02:29 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I suppose that even books in an imperial library were often lent out, or made available to visitors. Otherwise, what would be the point of creating such libraries?

They were a display of wealth, knowledge and power as well as a collection of valuables (and gifts). Luxury manuscripts (most of the ones that survived the times) were collectibles, not literature to be used frequently. Certainly it was possible to access these works, but not for commoners who couldn't even afford decent parchment. 
Also such works were not copied from libraries. They were compiled in workshops that had text on scrolls and stock imagery, usually on wooden boards (Pinakes). Hence the often substantial differences in text and imagery between copies.

(19-04-2026, 02:29 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Is BNCF Palatino 766 really Taccola's original notebook?  I imagine that his real notebook would have had all sorts of scribbles, stupid ideas, bad drawings, etc; so he would not have dared to just send it to the Emperor.  I rather think that he hastily made a clean copy for that purpose.

Actually Palatino 766 itself is exactly that, full of doodles and and not befitting for an Emperor. Yet there is no evidence the Emperor ever received a better copy, and most likely he didn't get Palatino 766. But there is strong evidence Taccola did not possess the notebook after he completed it. Exactly because he liked to doodle in his notebooks and amend them. He would have continued to draw in it if he had it and re-use the imagery in his later works. None of that happened. That's what makes De ingeneis III-IV unique. His other works were copied and recompiled all over. Palatino 766 was not - except vaguely in the VM. According to literature, it's believed Taccola was not in possession of Palatino 766 shortly after he finished it, but that it remained in Siena. What happened then for the following centuries until it ended up in BNCF is as much of a question as the whereabouts of the VM. That doesn't mean Palatino 766 was never copied, but these copies certainly were never widely available - or even known to exist. Still I'm not 100% certain Palatino 766 has to be a definitive source for the VM. Taccola heavily copied from Konrad Kyeser, and a Kyeser copy might have also been a source for the VM. But Taccola's organic half-humanist style fits the VM better that known Kyeser copies with their purely medieval strict and straightforward art style.

(19-04-2026, 02:29 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Vellum and parchment, with iron-gall ink (IGI), were generally used when one wanted the result to be resistant to wear and tear, humidity, and accidental exposure to spill or rain.

So the Author presumably decided to have his paper draft put to vellum because he wanted to preserve its contents for posterity.  Or maybe because he thought that a vellum copy could be sold for a better price than a paper one.

A more intriguing question is why the VMS is not written with IGI.  This fact is clearly shown by the (non)appearance of the ink in the infrared images, and by how easily text and drawings got rubbed off or washed away (as on page You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and under that "ketchup" stain on f103r).  

Maybe the Scribe had no experience with vellum, and neither he nor the Author knew that he had to use IGI? Or the Scribe used a washable ink on purpose, because he anticipated there would be many mistakes that would have to be corrected?  Or maybe the Author was so poor that he could not even afford the ingredients (oak galls and green vitriol) needed to make IGI?  

Or maybe those ingredients were not available where the vellum copy was made? They should have been easily available in any European town where someone used vellum/parchment -- meaning any town that had a notary, lawyer, monastery, etc.  But outside Europe, where vellum/parchment were not used, it may have been impossible to obtain them.

Yes, I agree. Either an environment where you could neither buy paper, vellum nor IGA - I'm not saying it has to be outside of Europe, but certainly not a wealthy place. Some alpine valley maybe or a crisis-ridden area, of which was no lack in the early 15th century. Or - a deliberate decision to write on poor vellum (hoax?). But then why not use IGA?

(19-04-2026, 02:51 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I don't think any supposed access to sources is a problem. Access doesn't mean ownership. And even if people, families or institutions owned a number of books, that doesn't mean that they still have the means, ability or desire to buy high-grade materials. It's possible for an individual or institution to have limited financial means, but also have a library: from past acquisitions, inheritance, donations...

I find this very hard to believe. The cost of more decent parchment would not have been prohibitive, not to speak of IGA. Or just use paper! I stand by my point that whoever made the VM had access to a vast and top-level source of imagery. Something of enormous value that does not fit the poor materials of the VM at all. Extremely wealthy collector, university or Royal Court. Which would also fit with Taccola's elusive De Ingeneis III-IV. For a long time my favorite hypothesis was that the author did not get the imagery from books at all - but from the stock image collection of a workshop. Images from a myriad of sources without context which he adapted and / or misinterpreted. But this does not fit with the low-grade parchment and ink quality - and Taccola's copy-less De Ingeneis III-IV.

I believe this is why an expert on parchment could help to answer the key question:
Who made parchment of VM quality and in which environment was such parchment most likely to be found?

My guess from Lisa's comment is that a professional workshop would not even produce VM quality sheets as a by-product or because something during processing went wrong. If the skins used were inferior to begin with, this means the parchment was not produced by a quality parchment maker, rather an amateur. But this is what we should look into. As Fabrizio said, overall parchment quality appears to have declined throughout Europe from Southwest to Northeast

I don't think the parchment was "scrap", I just think it was poorly made. Much depends on the health and age of the animals whose skin is used. Younger, healthier animals produce finer parchment. Old, sickly animals result in poor parchment

(19-04-2026, 05:37 PM)Bernd Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.They were a display of wealth, knowledge and power as well as a collection of valuables (and gifts). Luxury manuscripts (most of the ones that survived the times) were collectibles, not literature to be used frequently. Certainly it was possible to access these works, but not for commoners who couldn't even afford decent parchment.   

All I meant is this: even if Taccola's notebook was in the imperial library, that does not imply that no copies were made.  Someone with good enough standing in the Court could have been allowed to make a copy, either in situ or by borrowing it. 

Even if the VMS Author could not do that himself, he could have obtained a copy of that copy. 

But I gather from your comments that it is highly dubious whether that notebook was indeed ever in Sigismund's library.   So this point may be moot anyway.

The Standard Provenance theory says that Rudolf gave the VMS to Jacobus out of gratitude.   But I gather that there is a variant where Jacobus would have borrowed the book from Rudolf, but when Rudolf died he "forgot" to return the book, and added it to his own library.  (This variant might explain why neither Baresch nor Marci mentioned Jacobus: they feared that the Court would demand the book back, if it was identified as such.  And so Baresch himself would have erased Jacobus's ex-libris from f1r.)  

Anyway, this variant would be an example of someone with good standing at the Court borrowing a valuable book from a royal library.

Quote:Also such works were not copied from libraries. They were compiled in workshops that had text on scrolls and stock imagery, usually on wooden boards (Pinakes). Hence the often substantial differences in text and imagery between copies.

That was the case for most copies that were "industrially" produced, either for sale on the market or under commission from people with enough money.  The majority of manuscripts that have survived are of that class, both because they were the majority to begin with, and because they had better chances of surviving due to their better quality.

But there were also many manuscripts created outside of those "factories".  If a scholar saw an uncommon book in the library of a colleague, monastery, university, etc., and wanted to have a copy, he would not hunt for it in the marketplace.  He would borrow the book and make a copy himself, or recruit a scribe to do so.  Students would do that by borrowing from colleagues, professors, or the school's library. 

Check these You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..  I suppose that the Cambridge and Vatican copies were produced "industrially" for sale on the textbook market.  But the others look like they were made privately for the owner's own use.  

The Paris one is interesting because it has space for ornate capitals, but not the capitals themselves.  I suppose that it was made by a professional scribe who was hired to copy the text only, but he left those spaces because it was his modus operandi.

The Erfurt one is interesting also because, even though the execution is terrible, it uses a different font for the first line of each section/paragraph.  Which reminds me of the use of puff gallows on the VMS...

Quote:The cost of more decent parchment would not have been prohibitive, not to speak of IGA.

The only estimate for the cost of vellum that I know, based on cost of living, is still the equivalent of US$2 per folio.  Thus 100+ folios would have been US$ ~200.  That could have been way too much for an old unemployed scholar.

The ingredients for iron-gall ink would have cost much less than that -- if they were available at all. 

Quote:Or just use paper!

The VMS Author surely wrote the book on paper, before he decided to make a vellum copy.

Quote:I stand by my point that whoever made the VM had access to a vast and top-level source of imagery.

I agree, except for the "vast".  We have identified less than a dozen books so far as plausible sources for the imagery.  Those may have been all the books that the Scribe had available to serve as "inspiration" for his drawings.   It does not seem like he had to find the right book among a thousand...

Quote:Who made parchment of VM quality and in which environment was such parchment most likely to be found?

AFAIK, vellum and parchment were made in what were basically specialized tanneries.  The process is very much the same as that for making leather. (And would stink just as bad.)  Since it is a labor-intensive process, there must have been thousands of "cottage industries" all over Europe, each churning out a few large sheets per day, on average.

There would not be a shortage of raw hides to fill the demand for vellum, so vellum makers could be picky and reject hides with large visible defects.  But some defects may have been revealed only during manufacture, or could be accidentally created by the stretching, scraping, and polishing.  So I bet there would be some amount of low-quality vellum available in the market, for a discount price.

And there may have been second-hand vellum on the market that had been bought in bulk by a "manuscript factory" but was not used because it got damaged by humidity or whatever.

And then there is the possibilty that the Author scavenged blank folios or bifolios from other books...

All the best, --stolfi

Certainly. But following Lisa's comment about old and sick animals, under which circumstances would a parchment maker even choose such animal hides, knowing the result will be poor? The effort is the same if not higher than for decent quality skins, yet the product will inevitably turn out inferior and thus fetch a lower price. This seems counter-intuitive from an economical perspective, at least since paper became significantly cheaper than parchment. The demand for low grade parchment must have plummeted even further, making it unprofitable to produce it. Why buy bad parchment when you can get good paper for a lower price? The only answer I can think of is - where no paper is available.

Maybe it is possible to determine if the VM parchment quality was affected by inferior source material or inferior treatment? I guess there must be a way to determine the approximate age of the animal. Yet there may have been a shortage in suitable hides for parchment, because calfs needed to be very young, in comparison to sheep or goats which could also be used as adults (see below).

By the way, voynich.nu states:

Quote:The parchment was identified in 2014 by a team at the University of York to be made of calf skin, so it is vellum in the strict sense of the word.

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Rene, do you have a source for this? You only list a methodological paper (Fiddyment et al. 2015) but where can we find the analysis itself? What is it now? Young Calf or older animals? Bad source material or bad processing?

From Fiddyment et al. 2015

Quote:Aside from local availability of livestock and preferences in meat consumption, parchment production in medieval Europe was limited by logistical challenges. Parchment production was presumably located close to the point of slaughter, because skins deteriorate within days, resulting in poor quality and spotty membranes. Hides can be preserved by salting, but this process would be prohibitively expensive in Northern Europe

Quote:In addition, the prestige and value of particular types of skin played an important role. Fourteenth-century accounts from Beaulieu Abbey show that calfskin was more highly valued than sheepskin. The importance of the hide as a source of revenue is repeatedly evidenced by the abundance of skinning marks on animal remains, the range of decrees and bylaws restricting the flaying of animals that had died of diseases, and the lengths the authorities went to prevent these skins being used

Quote:Although the species of animal used would reflect local livestock availability, the age of the animals was limited by the craft production. La Lande’s book Art de faire le parchemin, written in 1762, indicates that calfskins suitable for making parchment should not be taken from an animal older than 6 wk of age. The skins of young calves, although suitable for parchment production, are already several times thicker than the skin of adult goats or sheep. Although adult goats and sheep can be used for the production of certain types of parchment, adult cow skins are too thick for parchment production and are instead used to produce heavy, durable leather. However, Clavel notes that calf bones are rarely found in 13th and 14th century sample collections [in France] and comprise only 2–5% of all cattle bones from excavated sites, appearing with greater frequency in later periods. Veal calves were typically slaughtered at around 6 mo of age, but the bones of very young cattle have rarely been found in French medieval archaeological sites.

Quote:Although the use of genuine uterine vellum cannot be discounted, our results suggest that its availability was not a defining factor in medieval parchment production. Instead, our findings would seem to emphasize dependence on a highly specialized craft technique rather than the supply of a particular raw material. A more likely explanation for the production of fine parchment is the use of relatively young animals and the deployment of specific finishing techniques that enabled the corium to be ground to the desired thickness. The density of collagen fibrils in calf and goat parchment, compared with a more open weave and higher fat content in sheep parchment, favors the former two species; nevertheless, it is evident that parchment makers had the skills to make the finest parchments from all three.

The paper unfortunately only deals with France, Italy and England and not the alpine region, Switzerland or Germany. My preliminary take on this is the following:
The VM sheets were made from calf and not goat skins, which would likely have been cheaper and more widely available as even older animals can be used. At least in southern Europe.
In the North, cattle dominated.
The bottleneck for vellum (sic!) production was the availability of calves slaughtered at a sufficiently young age. Something that was not very profitable for the livestock owner instead or raising them for veal meat.
The flaying of diseased animals was prohibited but that will have varied by region.
Skilled parchment makers were able to make high-quality sheets from all species and even from slightly older calves - but not from adult cattle.

So why this inferior (older) calf skins for the VM?
Slaughtering very young calves was a luxury that may not have been viable in very poor regions or times. Younger calf skins might not have been available at the time and region the VM was made. That still leaves goats as option, but the author of the VM might have felt that even bad vellum (as in calf) was more appropriate for his work that goat skin or paper - which might not have been available in remote regions at all.

But honestly, I'm running out of excuses and I find it hard to imagine the creator(s) had no other choice than using this low quality parchment, especially if we assume the VM was created over a longer time period. The author may simply have felt that parchment was more appropriate than paper - and that this crude parchment gave the VM a more mysterious and ancient look. There's evidence the tears in the parchment were even incorporated into text and imagery in a playful way. It almost looks like the author tried to create something that looks like an ancient manuscript - for whatever reason. This however doesn't explain the improvised ink and pigments.

Lisa, do you know manuscripts of comparably bad parchment quality?