€400 Reward

[Mark Knowles]

I recently received the following message from the Milan State Archives:

“the document transcribed by Osio on pages 286-287 of volume II of the Diplomatic documents taken from the Milanese archives is not confirmed by our institute, as verified in folders 8 and 10 (which contain documents from the Visconti period) and 1591, 1597 and 1598 (which contain ciphers and cipher letters) from the Carteggio Visconteo Sforzesco collection. Osio does not mention the institute for the conservation of published documents, it is therefore likely that, having drawn from various archives, as per the title of the volume, the letter you reported is at some other Milanese institution. In this regard, it should be noted that material from the Sforza period is kept in the Historic Civic Archive of the municipality of Milan (Castello Sforzesco, Piazza Castello 20121, e-mail address You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.).

Much of the documentation of the 1591, 1597 and 1598 folders mentioned above is undated: it is therefore possible that among the numerous papers there is something from the first half of the fifteenth century. In this regard, it should be noted that in the 1591 folder an undated cipher was found (and probably in a later copy), whose shirt bears the date 21 August 1439 and the title ‘Visconti decrees’.”

Well I will certainly following up the possible “1439” cipher.