16-06-2026, 07:45 PM
(This post was last modified: 16-06-2026, 07:48 PM by stopsquark.)
Agreed- my other thought is that as we go earlier and earlier in history, books become rarer, so it becomes more likely that the VMS is either in a known library (e.g. St. Gall Abbey, the Bibliotheca Palatina, etc.) or the personal library of someone who was both wealthy and interested in collecting herbals (e.g. Clusius/Rauwolf/Gessner) during these windows. Obviously this isn't a good way to definitively trace provenance- it could have been forgotten in an attic somewhere for all we know- but understanding who owned similar books, when, and why can help us get a better sense of what kinds of historical trajectories are more or less plausible.
Additionally, there's quite a lot of correspondence from this era that hasn't been translated or explored in-depth for specific mentions of unusual manuscripts. It's not unreasonable to think that perhaps there's a mention of an enciphered herbal tucked away somewhere in a letter that just hasn't been read for a few hundred years.
Agreed- my other thought is that as we go earlier and earlier in history, books become rarer, so it becomes more likely that the VMS is either in a known library (e.g. St. Gall Abbey, the Bibliotheca Palatina, etc.) or the personal library of someone who was both wealthy and interested in collecting herbals (e.g. Clusius/Rauwolf/Gessner) during these windows. Obviously this isn't a good way to definitively trace provenance- it could have been forgotten in an attic somewhere for all we know- but understanding who owned similar books, when, and why can help us get a better sense of what kinds of historical trajectories are more or less plausible.
To your point about the VMS being tucked away in the castle of some noble- if this is the case, then getting a sense of which nobles would've collected books like the VMS is also useful!
Additionally, there's quite a lot of correspondence from this era that hasn't been translated or explored in-depth for specific mentions of unusual manuscripts. It's not unreasonable to think that perhaps there's a mention of an enciphered herbal tucked away somewhere in a letter that just hasn't been read for a few hundred years.
Additionally, there's quite a lot of correspondence from this era that hasn't been translated or explored in-depth for specific mentions of unusual manuscripts. It's not unreasonable to think that perhaps there's a mention of an enciphered herbal tucked away somewhere in a letter that just hasn't been read for a few hundred years.
Agreed- my other thought is that as we go earlier and earlier in history, books become rarer, so it becomes more likely that the VMS is either in a known library (e.g. St. Gall Abbey, the Bibliotheca Palatina, etc.) or the personal library of someone who was both wealthy and interested in collecting herbals (e.g. Clusius/Rauwolf/Gessner) during these windows. Obviously this isn't a good way to definitively trace provenance- it could have been forgotten in an attic somewhere for all we know- but understanding who owned similar books, when, and why can help us get a better sense of what kinds of historical trajectories are more or less plausible.
To your point about the VMS being tucked away in the castle of some noble- if this is the case, then getting a sense of which nobles would've collected books like the VMS is also useful!
Additionally, there's quite a lot of correspondence from this era that hasn't been translated or explored in-depth for specific mentions of unusual manuscripts. It's not unreasonable to think that perhaps there's a mention of an enciphered herbal tucked away somewhere in a letter that just hasn't been read for a few hundred years.