Is the VM an autograph or copy?

[geoffreycaveney]

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. 

I will just toss my own personal hypothesis out there, so that you can see how it fits into the thoughts you express here, and judge for yourself:

I think it was an English document in the possession of the Duke of York, and when he was killed at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, it came into the possession of some Frenchman in the confusion of battle after he was killed. Thereafter it was merely an "exotic" document of unknown meaning that circulated on the Continent and eventually came into the hands of Rudolf II almost 200 years later. I think its disconnection from its original context may actually have helped to save it: Since no one on the Continent could possibly know what it was, its survival posed no real risk to anyone. In England on the other hand, its discovery might have eventually posed a risk either to the House of York or to the House of Lancaster, and it may have been more likely to have been destroyed, either by the supporters or the enemies of the viewpoints expressed in its contents and illustrations. Also, in England it could well have been destroyed during the English Civil War in the 17th century if not before or after that time. But when it accidentally fell into hands that could not possibly understand any of the English context of it, nor particularly care about such things, it had no political "friends" nor "enemies" in the area of its new home. Thus its safety and chance of survival were greatly enhanced.