03-05-2021, 12:59 PM
I intend to catch up on the very interesting discussion of the linguistic details of the presumably German (?) phrases as soon as possible ("gas"), but in the meantime I do wish to add one more argument to my suggestion above that an English author could have deliberately chosen to write marginalia in German, even in semi-proficient German, rather than in English or French, for security reasons:
If scholars have believed that the ms is of Central European origin, might it not be the case that this is precisely the impression that the English author of the ms intended to create, just in case it fell into the wrong hands of Henry IV or an official in his court? The Duke of York could then plausibly and believably have said, "This is just an exotic manuscript I acquired while I was serving on embassy in the Count Palatine in Heidelberg."
Geoffrey
If scholars have believed that the ms is of Central European origin, might it not be the case that this is precisely the impression that the English author of the ms intended to create, just in case it fell into the wrong hands of Henry IV or an official in his court? The Duke of York could then plausibly and believably have said, "This is just an exotic manuscript I acquired while I was serving on embassy in the Count Palatine in Heidelberg."
Geoffrey