10-12-2025, 08:41 PM
The actual and intended binding of the manuscript are not really my area of interest, a lot of people much more knowledgeable than I am put a lot of effort into researching this, so I just prefer reading the conclusions. As far as I understand, without known medieval traditions of keeping texts in separate bifolios, this doesn't give us any new ideas for the possible contents of the manuscript, even if it was intended to be unbound.
I've checked the paper on ResearchGate, it appears that the known unstitched manuscripts, in any location, are from the XVII century on, and the existence of earlier examples, including in West Africa, is only a conjecture: "Unfortunately, there is no evidence of the loose-leaf type in the central lands of Islam during the period of early contact with sub-Saharan Africa, from the ninth to fourteenth centuries. But it is not impossible that unstitched binding existed outside West Africa, as suggested by Duncan Haldane. Nuria de Castilla and Karin Scheper also pointed to the existence of unsewn binding in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, respectively. And if loose-leaf form occurs in the seventeenth-century manuscripts, why should it not exist in earlier times?"
Given that it's quite easy to identify an unstitched manuscript by the absence of stitch holes, I guess if they were widespread, they would probably be quite known.
What's your opinion, are there any implications for the possible contents of the Voynich MS, if it was designed to be unbound?
I've checked the paper on ResearchGate, it appears that the known unstitched manuscripts, in any location, are from the XVII century on, and the existence of earlier examples, including in West Africa, is only a conjecture: "Unfortunately, there is no evidence of the loose-leaf type in the central lands of Islam during the period of early contact with sub-Saharan Africa, from the ninth to fourteenth centuries. But it is not impossible that unstitched binding existed outside West Africa, as suggested by Duncan Haldane. Nuria de Castilla and Karin Scheper also pointed to the existence of unsewn binding in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, respectively. And if loose-leaf form occurs in the seventeenth-century manuscripts, why should it not exist in earlier times?"
Given that it's quite easy to identify an unstitched manuscript by the absence of stitch holes, I guess if they were widespread, they would probably be quite known.
What's your opinion, are there any implications for the possible contents of the Voynich MS, if it was designed to be unbound?