Humanist handwriting in the MS?

[nablator]

I am not a paleographer, but it seems reasonable to me to call Voynichese 'humanistic' just because of the distinctive one-stroke 'c'.

If we are considering a single feature as a possible indication of influence, Voynichese a is sometimes difficult to distinguish from o because of the curvature on the right side that is more or less normal for an o, the only difference being a small tail on the bottom right. Available transliterations mostly identify this ambiguous letter as an o but the presence of the tail makes the identification doubtful. This reverse curvature can actually be found in bastarda:

   

"exaltari" written with two different "a", the first one angular and curved to the right, the second curved to the left like an "o".

Sometimes there is straight stroke, without any curvature on the right side, which also happens a lot in Voynichese, leading to random a/o identifications in transliterations.

   

"artis" I guess, not "[h]ortis"

Source: Gotha, Forschungsbibl. der Universität Erfurt, Cod. Chart. B 372 [last quarter of the 15th c.] You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Note: o can be written slightly open, making a small tail as in the example here: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

I don't think these o/a ambiguities ever occur in humanist[ic] scripts. Not sure if it is an absolute rule, but reading is usually less problematic.