Archive Proximity

[Mark Knowles]

I am quite interested in which ciphers survive in the Vatican Apostolic Archives.(There are Urbino cipher ledgers that survive in the Vatican library). I have photoreproductions of some cipher key material from this archive. However, I suspect there are enciphered letters here. I know that in 1431 the Papacy intercepted Milanese enciphered letters sent to the Milanese Ambassador to the Pope. If these survive they would be of great interest to me. There appears to be quite a lot of Ducal correspondence in the Biblioteca Bonetta in Pavia from the early 15th century and I think therefore it is very possible that there might be one or two enciphered letters amongst this material(Unfortunately, the inventories are not detailed enough to tell and the archivists there don't know what they have).

Of course, the difficulty is that ciphers can turn up almost anywhere in the world. There is an Italian Sforza enciphered letter from 1449 in the St.Peterburg Archive in Russia. However, the archives of Northern Italy seen to be the best places to search.

More information to follow...