116v

[Jorge_Stolfi]

There’s nothing wrong with the fact that we can’t find an equivalent to the spell. Given the specifics of VMS, it is possible that this spell was known to some conditional Chinese Nestorian who passed it on to the author, who then recorded it.

But the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is not just the pseudo-Latin spell/charm.  There is also the recipe with German-sounding words, which has the same problems as the spell: distorted letters, unrecognizable words, invalid grammar.  Would that "Chinese" Nestorian be German?  Why would the Author write it down with distorted letters? 

Stolfi’s criticism seems to me to be aimed at refutation, because everything boils down to confirming Big Spill. Good criticism should refute the statement in and of itself...

Sorry, I did not understand this comment.

The Big Wipe theory depends on two assumptions. The first one is

• (1) Originally there was a three-line paragraph of Voynichese text on f116v, written by the same Scribe(s) who wrote the rest of the book.
  

This assumption is at least possible.  The UV images show a big water spill on f116v, and the stains on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. show that the VMS ink was not waterproof.  That would explain how that text disappeared.  

In fact, the two Voynichese words at the start of the last line -- written in the same clear and firm handwriting as the rest of the book -- are evidence that supports this assumption.   By their position, they could easily have been missed by the spill.

If we make assumption (1), then the fact that there are only two words of Voynichese left implies that most of that Voynichese parag was erased and replaced by the "anchiton" text that we see today.  Here the Big Wipe theory needs a second assumption:

• (2) The person who wrote the current text of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (except the two Voynichese words) intended to restore the lost text, based on the scattered bits of glyphs that had survived the erasure.
  

I already explained why this assumption is plausible, and even likely.  

Call this person the "Repairman".  From the result of his efforts we can tell that he did not understand Voynichese, did not know the Voynichese alphabet, and was not aware that the lost text had to be entirely in Voynichese script.
This is quite possible, since it takes a lot of study of the VMS to acquire that knowledge.  

Moreover, we can see that he guessed that the lost text was a recipe in some Germanic dialect that included a Latin-based charm.  Which means that, probably, he spoke some Germanic dialect.

We can see also that he tried to use a style of letters that was current in Central Europe roughly between 1400 and 1500.  That reinforces the deduction that he was a "Germanisch" speaker.  (But it is not possible to conclude that the repair happened in that time frame, since the Repairman may have intentionally used an "old" letter style because he knew that the book was old.)

However, the bits of Voynichese that remained forced him to "reconstruct" many words that were not valid in Latin or any Germanic dialect (like "potpfer" and "pbrey"), and did not occur in any existing charm.  And the few reconstructed words that were sort of valid "Germanisch" did not make up any meaningful sentence.

All the best, --stolfi