The small compass rose at the base of the manuscript attracted my attention almost from the first moment I saw it.

Here we have a parchment that has been crafted with the utmost precision, care and planning and yet this small design appears to have been hastily scribbled. Notice how the diagonal lines do not pass evenly through the centre of the circle. Also the circle has been drawn almost in the form of a square. If anyone is going to scribble a design like this, drawing a quick circle and adding a couple of crossed lines is far and away faster and easier than trying to execute this design.  This is definitely not a hasty piece of work. The author put time, effort and thought in to it and I am sure it has meaning.

If you analyze what has been done and exaggerate the strokes you end up with a pattern something like the following:-

I doubt that Bigou was a campaigner for Nuclear disarmament so it  must be assumed that he made this mark to convey some other meaning. Possibly it is a clue as to how to connect certain elements in the parchment? One aspect of these lines became apparent to me when I was connecting up the accented letters of line 21 with those on line 10 and the  arrangement of the indicated lines below are what caught my eye:-

If you join the last accented E on line 21 with the first and last accented E's on line 10 the angles formed with the horizontal (ie line 10) are exactly the same as in the diagram on the manuscript. Another possible match occurs with the indicated line below:-

This line forms exactly the same angle that you obtain by joining the D and the M of the tiny letters REX MUNDI. This all set me to thinking that possibly what the author was trying to convey was the actual arrangement of bearing lines which can be extrapolated from the parchment, maybe even a map of sorts! What if the line across the middle of the diagram was meant to represent Line 10 of the manuscript.   Line B begins on line 21 and runs to line 10. Line C joins the M and the D of REX MUNDI, both of which are actually below line 10.

 

Unfortunately the only good match obtained with lines A and B on the parchment corresponds to the line from the 1st accented letter in line 21 to the middle accented letter of line 10 and the last accented letter on line 21 to the 1st accented letter on line 10. The crossing place is line 15. With this arrangement the line through the M and the D of MUNDI is no longer in the right place. However the line joining the N and the I is and what's more it also forms the correct angle. The following is how these lines appear when overlaid on the parchment.

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What also occurred to me was that the author of the parchment wanted to show the reader a particular arrangement of bearing lines. If you look at the horizontal line running across the page and the two diagonals through it, this certainly seems to indicate a junction. Perhaps such a junction on a real map forms the location for something important?

Finally, if you connect the dot between Medela and Vulnerum to the last accented E on line 10 you will form a rectangle very similar in shape to the one formed by connecting the crosses and pictogram in parchment 1.

All this could be nothing more than pure coincidence but if it is not then why would the author of the parchments duplicate this information? It may also be possible that I am trying to read more into this small design at the bottom of the manuscript than actually exists. Having said that, the parchment was the product of a considerable amount of hard work and there is a very high probability that at least 99% of what we see on it today was planned beforehand and subsequently executed with precision. I am sure some connection will become apparent from this after more research.