Barbavara Ciphers

[Mark Knowles]

As I live in Oxford in the United Kingdom I could go to the Bodleian Library to see if I can find all the articles referenced by Aina as well as all the other articles I have referred to. Then I will need to study their text for more information about Antonio Barbavara and especially what they list as sources for this information. Then I need to track down these sources and study them accordingly. Ideally with the hope of finding specific references to early 15th century archival documents associated with Antonio Barbavara. If I find a specific precise reference to a document in an archive then I can request a photoreproduction from that archive. However, probably I won't be able to track down all the original archival sources for this information and so the only way to do that would be through time consuming research in archives in Lombardy and Piedmont. Of course, if Antonio Barbavara is not the author of the Voynich this work will be of little general use. Whereas researching early 15th century ciphers is of more general use and arguably of use to the study of the Voynich manuscript. And, the research that I have done into early 15th century ciphers has proved valuable in relation to my authorship hypothesis as it has made it seem much more plausible than when I first formed this hypothesis as I had no idea of the Barbavara family ties to the most advanced known ciphers of the time.