Archive Proximity

[Mark Knowles]

Pavia is a 3 hour drive from me, so yeah not really nearby, but it’s only a 45 minutes drive from Milan (which I do visit often, at least twice a year). Do you have anything specific you’d like to search in Padua? Which archives are worth looking into in your opinion?

As a start to thinking about archival research you might want to have a look at the following link to the inventories of the Archivio di Stato di Padova->

Inventari della Sala di Studio - Archivio di Stato di Padova You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

So, for example, you can download the 1st Inventary here->
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(For some reason the archive websites tend to be unavailable in the late evening or night Italian time.)

Archives generally provide an idea of the dates that certain collections of documents cover such as "1420-1441". I am only generally interested in late 14th century or 15th century documents as I doubt the likelihood that documents that are much earlier or much later could have any relevance to the Voynich manuscript.

As most ciphers were used in diplomatic communication diplomatic documents in particular diplomatic letters are more likely to contain ciphers. So, I tend to look for references to "Lettere Ducali", "Cancelleria", "Diplomatico", "Ambasciatori" for possible places to look for ciphers.