Is the VM an autograph or copy?

[Stephen Carlson]

Stephen: misguided bookworms aside (they don't like vellum), holes in vellum aren't abraded, they happen in manufacture when the sheet is under tension and a tiny flaw in the skin goes 'pop'.

It is the fact that this specific hole is abraded that is the challenge here. That's exactly how vellum doesn't work.

Maybe it was to enlarge a pre-existing hole?

I suppose one question I have for this scenario is why would a scribe think that such a feature would be worth copying? How often are defects in the medium copied as defects? (I'm aware of marginal comments about defects in the physical exemplar.)