Missing folios

[Jorge_Stolfi]

A further question is negative evidence: do any surviving descriptions, inventories, letters, photographs, or early examinations record the manuscript’s physical extent before Voynich acquired it? Even brief notes on leaf count, thickness, loose quires, or binding state could help constrain the timing of removal.

As far as I know, between Marci's 1666 letter to Kircher and Wilfrid announcing it to the world after 1912, there is absolutely no mention anywhere of any book that could be positively identified with the VMS.  

There is a list (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.) of 294 books that the Jesuits supposedly sold to the Vatican Library in 1912 that includes an extremely succinct entry 

Miscellanea, c.m.[codex membenacaeous] s.[saeculae] XV

However a dozen of the books in that list, including this "Miscellanea", are not at the Vatican Library.  Some of these somehow somewhen ended up in Wilfrid's possession (which would have been a crime by the Italian laws of the time) and were re-sold by him over several years after 1912.  

It has been generally assumed that the "Miscellanea" was the VMS, and suffered the same fate.  But that conclusion requires one to assume that Wilfrid did acquire the VMS from the Jesuits by diverting it from that sale to the Vatican Library.   Una storia mal raccontata...

Anyway neither that "Miscellanea" entry nor the description of the book in Baresch's letter, allow us to tell whether the missing folios were already missing or not.

All the best, --stolfi