Is the VM an autograph or copy?

[Scarecrow]

Don't forget that a massive amount of documents has been lost to history. This should be especially true for documents like the VM, which could be interpreted as containing magic, witchcraft, herecy or other forbidden subjects. 

Yes, that is absolutely true. Books are the silent victims of the times, wars, revolutions. I am not so sure about any miracle, but luck has been a great factor for VMS to survive. My thinking is that if VMS is a product of en exclusive group of people and the intended audience was also equally restricted, the other books they might have made using the VMS method should also have had the same possibility to survive. I could believe they took quite care of those products. At lease VMS was lucky to get in the right places and hands at the right times. So, while miracles might happen, I still believe there are better true reasons of why VMS has survived. Luck has been a factor surely, but I have a feeling there are better reasons why the VMS was handled well. If they did do more than one MS, why just one survived. Miracle,as you say, can be called in. But is that the only possibility?

I'm not so sure someone would have taken VMS as magic or heresy just by looking it, and maybe that's the raison d'etre of the illustrations, to create that safe impression, but of course it could have been like that, if there was a reason to do so. Especially if the group behind the VMS was, well, suspicious, in any way.