Archive Proximity

[Mark Knowles]

The problem with those letters is the date. We have great riches of examples of Milanese ciphers from the 2nd half of the 15th century. We have lots of enciphered letters in the Archivio di Stato di Milano and we have the Tranchedino Cipher Ledger in Vienna(and the Albertoni Cipher Ledger in Cremona). However, in large part due to the 1447 fire in the Chancellery in Milan we have a poverty of examples of Milanese ciphers from the first half the 15th century. There are a few examples, but you can count them on the fingers of at most 2 hands. I suspect also that ciphers were probably used less often in the Milanese chancellery in the 1st half of the 15th century than in the 2nd half of the 15th century when Francesco Sforza became Duke and Cicco Simonetta his chancellor. The examples we have from the first half of the 15th century are: the 1397 enciphered letter in the Sercambi book, the 1424 enciphered letters in the Florence Archives and a few from 1440 onwards. I am very interested in seeing examples of Milanese ciphers from between 1425 and 1439 especially from the period 1425 to 1433 when Francesco Barbavara was head of the Milan Chancellery given that I associate the Barbavara with the Voynich. The sophistication of the 1424 cipher justifies an interest in Milanese ciphers of this period.

I can look into Barbavera. Just a cursory search and selecting two top results, I found a JStor article and a Wikipedia entry on a possibly different Barbavera from the late 1300s but died before 1415:
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"The most revealing of these materials is the dedication of the Supple-
mentum to Francesco Barbavara (died c. 1445), secretary of Filippo Maria
Visconti (1392-1447), duke of Milan."

It's possible the Wikipedia entry has it incorrect if it's not a different one. There is only a single language, so notes may be limited. 

Edit: This covers the minister of Milan: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

I know a lot about the Barbavara family. In fact I have met the surviving members of this family. There are two different Francesco Barbavaras from the 15th century. The first ran the government of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, Duke of Milan. There is a cipher key in the Cipher Ledger of Francesco Gonzaga in Mantova headed "Francesco Barbavara" from around 1400(I forgot to mention this). The second and the person I am more interested in was Ducal Secretary and Head of the Chancellery to Filippo Maria Visconti, Duke of Milan, from 1425 to 1433. One can also find enciphered letters written by his brother Marcolino Barbavara from the 1440s in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in the Library in Paris. Of course, the ciphers I refer to here can be found in my archive. I particularly associate the Voynich manuscript with another brother Abbot Antonio Barbavara who collected rare plants and had an interest in medical and scientific matters.(The first Francesco Barbavara was the uncle of the second Francesco Barbavara.)

I really appreciate your assistance. I think the most useful things you could do, in my opinion, would be to study the inventories available online for the Turin archives and/or any other archives in towns/cities you might be able to visit nearby. You might then be able to determine if they have early 15th century documents than might include ciphers.

Alternatively, I increasingly think a useful exercise would be to go through the cipher ledgers for Lucca and Mantova in my archive and identify who all the correspondents were and who those correspondents worked for. These involves the difficult, but not impossible task of, trying to read the handwriting and then researching who that person was. For example, as I said, one of the cipher keys in the Mantova Ledger is headed "Francesco Barbavara" if I didn't know who that was I could research him with Google and discover that he worked for the Duke of Milan.

Anyway, anything you can do to advance our knowledge of early 15th century cryptography would be of value. However, I daresay you have other responsibilities to take your time, so you must not do more than is feasible for you.

Also, if you need any support or help in this research let me know and I will do my best to be of assistance.