31-01-2018, 12:08 PM
(31-01-2018, 01:09 AM)-JKP- wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Quote:Morten St George:
I'm confused: Are you insinuating that the script on the last page of the VMS, in contrast to the drawings of animal and woman, was not made by the original author but was added at a later date?
It's not the same handwriting as the main text, so the text on the last page is probably marginalia.
Whether the person who wrote it knew the people who created the manuscript is a completely different question. The handwriting is consistent with script from the early 15th century (I have determined this through my own research after collecting thousands of samples), so it's possible whoever wrote it lived at approximately the same time as the manuscript was created.
As for the images, they look like they were drawn by the same person who drew the illustrations in the main text.
If the script on the last page is marginalia, then it becomes almost certain that the last page is a signature page, that is, that the depicted animal (which is not a cow) was used for parchment and that the depicted woman was the author.
I do believe that it is possible to date certain quirks in handwriting, such as an isolated q with a crossbar through it. And if you see an s that looks like an f, you can say that it was likely written prior to the 18th century. There may also be some regional quirks that can be dated. But for many of the basic Latin letters, I see a lot of consistency across the past one thousand years. In fact, parts of those month names look like something I myself could have written.
Per my theories, it is impossible for the marginalia on the last page to be in the handwriting style of the 15th century, so I think you are allowing the carbon-dating results to influence your thinking. It can only be handwriting of the early 13th century or of the late 16th century because the author of the VMS would have been the descendant of people who fled persecution in Europe around the middle of the 13th century. They would have had no further contact with Europe or with how handwriting evolved there.
I think someone is trying to claim that something on the last page was written in German. Is that true?
Per my theories, the only person to have been in possession of the VMS in the late 16th century, and whose native tongue was German, was the linguist John Florio. Do you have a sample of Florio's handwriting to compare?