Would a NEW Voynich Manuscript be valuable?

[Jorge_Stolfi]

But if [the person who commissioned the book] was rich then why did he accept such a low quality drawings?

Even if there was such a patron, maybe he did not accept the result.  We don't know...

Or maybe he commissioned the books because of the contents ("I heard that you found some very interesting medical and herbal books in that Zoroastrian monastery that you visited on Mount Havergal.  Would you make me a copy? I will pay five ducats for the set.")  Then he may have been disappointed by the "artistic quality" but not enough to refuse the result.

vellum was much more expensive than work hours of the scribe.

 

Was it?  Based on other posts, and considering the poor quality of the material, I would guess that the cost of the vellum was the equivalent of ~$1 per page, adjusting for cost of living.  Each page must have taken about 1 hour on average.   For $1 per hour, I suppose one could get only a starving student, or the notary public of a 50-home village, or a junior monk from the St. Outinthebunnies Monastery... 

So "done on order" option strongly suggests for me that the text is meaningful. Which brings a lot of problems

Does it? On the contrary, it avoids the many problems of the "gibberish" theory...

[For people like Georg Baresch or Athanasius Kircher] the VM was roughly the same as it is for us - relic, antiquity, riddle, treasure, enigma, sphinx which probably wasn't for medieval people

I don't quite agree... for starters, those thing you listed are quite diferent concepts:

• a relic or antiquity is a physical object that is valuable because of its physical history, including who made or commissioned it and what it went through. Like the helmet of Sutton Hoo or the toothbrush of Marilyn Monroe. 
  
• riddle, enigma, or sphynx is interesting because of its contents, irrespective of its physical realization.
  

A relic is a concept distinct also from an art piece, a physical object that is valuable largely or mostly for its aesthetic qualities.  Like the Sistine Chapel or the Hello Kitty design.  The difference is evident in the way the things are treated.  A relic must be preserved intact, just as it was first found, minus dirt; replacing any parts, even damaged or missing, would be a mortal sin.  And only the original has any value; copies are practically worthless.  In contrast, an art piece is expected to be restored, with any lost bits replaced by fake ones, so as to preserve its good looks.  And copies of an art piece can be as valuable as the original, to the extent that they look the same.

Medieval manuscripts are now treated as relics, like archaeological finds. Beinecke would not even think of "restoring" the VMS like a museum would restore a painting.  The mere idea of plugging the worm holes with new vellum and rewriting faded parts would be sacrilege.  

But this view of medieval manuscripts as relics seems to be rather modern.  I doubt that it was common in the 1600s.  Maybe a manuscript written by Roger Bacon in his own hand would be treated as such.  But most manuscripts were written by anonymous and unimportant scribes anyway, so why would people care for them as physical objects? Only the contents mattered.  And indeed Jacobus wrote his ex-libris on page 1, Marci or someone else scribbled tables of letters in the margins,  someone wrote the month names and marginalia of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and f116v, someone crudely painted it over, someone BEEP...

[People in the Enlightenment] had different mentality [about books] than people from Medieval Ages.

Not sure I agree here, either.  Many "scientific" books were written in Europe before 1400, and the Caliphate alchemical and mathematical books were avidly sought, translated and circulated.   When Pope Clement heard of Roger Bacon's research, he ordered the Friar to put them on writing, which resulted in several large books being sent to Rome.

I am not sure sure that people expected to find in VM some "big stuff" like recipe for philosopher's stone, ways to communicate with angels or meaning of life.

I think that Barschius's letter gives some clues about this question.  Medicine then was a big thing, but its treatments were notoriously unreliable.  Barschius guessed that the book contained medical knowledge obtained in "Egypt or other oriental parts" and unknown in "Germany", and thus its decipherment could yield new remedies that could cure diseases for which European doctors had no cure.

Speaking of Rudolph, I feel that John Dee and Edward Kelley were somehow involved. In the past I considered that it was them who faked it but now I think they were just involved.

Their involvement was just a theory created and pushed by Wilfrid, who needed a plausible story for how a Roger Bacon original could have ended up in Rudolph's hands.  Dee was from Oxford, where Rober Bacon had been too, and he was know to be a collector of Bacon's books.   Dee and his sidekick Kelley did spend some time in Prague, but AFAIK there is no evidence that Dee ever sold Rudolph anything, much less a Bacon original.  

The two had left England in a hurry, on (false?) rumors that charges of heresy ware being prepared against Dee. They traveled with their spouses from France to Poland and then to Prague in a large cart, sort of the equivalent of our mobile home.  I doubt that there was much space in it for Dee's library.

They perfectly realized that VM is not English, found it somewhere else and cheated Rudolph assigning it to a famous man for a better price. Does it make sense?

It is quite possible that Widemann did that, alone or with Kelley's help.   He was an antique book dealer, a profession that is not famous for its high moral and ethical standards.  And Kelley was a fraudster and con-man through and through.

But I doubt that Dee would have engaged in that sort of thing.  From his diary, he seemed to be genuinely honest and religious.  And, besides, Rudolph got such a dislike of him on their first and only meeting that Dee was banned from Prague and spent all his stay at the estate of a friendly Count.

All the best, --stolfi