Perhaps because of its geography (spanning a mountain range) or its powerful neighbours (France, Milan), Savoy is one of those nebulous, hard-to-grasp historical regions with a perimeter seemingly made of rubber.
Here’s a map of 15th century Savoy courtesy of the very useful sabaudia.org: as landmarks, you can see Milan, Turin, Genoa and Lyon – just off to the lower left are Marseille and Avignon (home to antipope Clement VII and antipope Benedict XIII between 1378 and 1403, at which time the latter escaped to Anjou following a five-year siege by the French army). The green shapes mark mountain passes:-
The same site also has a nice timeline for Savoy events (in French), from which I’ve summarized a few points of interest between 1350 and 1450 below. The initial historical context is that Amadeus VII is ruling the House of Savoy, with the separate Savoy-Achaia line ruling over Piedmont (but please don’t ask me to summarize the history of Achaia and how it’s linked here, that might well bore you to death):-
- 1385: Amadeus VII acquires the Barcelonnette region.
- 1388: Amadeus VII loses Nice to Jean Grimaldi.
- 1401: Amadeus VIII acquires the County of Geneva after the last Count Humbert dies childless.
- 1403: Louis of Savoy-Achaia moves the House of Savoy’s capital to Turin, and creates the University of Turin as part of the first State of Savoy.
- 1406: Amadeus VIII receives the homage of the Seigneur de la Brigue and negotiates with the Count of Tende to establish a direct route between Nice and Turin.
- 1411: Amadeus VIII buys Rumilly, Roche, and Ballaison, the House of Geneva’s last remaining possessions.
- 1411: The Savoyards briefly occupy the Val d’Ossola to ensure control of the Simplon pass (though the Swiss Confederates subsequently drove them out in 1417).
- 1416: after a magnificent reception at Chambery, the Emperor Sigismund, visiting Amadeus VIII for the third time in four years, grants him the ducal title – the House of Savoy become the Duchy of Savoy.
- 1418: following the last Savoy-Achaia’s death, Amadeus VIII regains control of Piedmont.
- 1427: the Visconti yield Vercelli to Amadeus VIII.
- 1434: Louis of Savoy marries Anne of Lusignan in Chambery, a union which binds the Savoy royal family to the Lusignan kings (from Cyprus and Jerusalem) & hints at an Eastern policy for the Duke.
From this, you can see the shadow of the Holy Roman Empire hanging over the legitimacy of the House of Savoy’s 1416 transition to become the Duchy of Savoy: so it is should be no surprise that if you look at the rear of Turin’s Palazzo Madama (which was started by the Savoy-Achaia line in the 14th/15th century), you can still see make out its swallowtail merlons embedded just below the top of its towers.
Now all this historical framework is in place, you should be just about able to make some sense of this hideously overcomplex historical map of Savoy (from William Shepherd’s Historical Atlas of 1923-1926), courtesy of the University of Texas at Austin.
For my own Voynich Manuscript research, what has become clear to me from this is that rather than Savoy in the larger sense, it is probably Piedmont (as gained by the Duchy of Savoy in 1418) I should be specifically interested in. But what Piedmontese historical archives should I be looking at? Questions, questions, questions…
Some of the potentially interesting archives were possibly lost with the 1904 fire at the library of Turin. The sources mostly talk about the lost manuscripts, archives being considered less interesting…
What’s the oddest context you know in which a manuscript has been preserved? I’ve read an account of an inscribed scroll that was found in the marshes of lower Mesopotamia – and put back in the water.
(Thesiger – Marsh Arabs)/ I’ve also read an account of a man going fishing in Ireland, only to see that the boatman was passing the time by reading a beautifully illuminated ms perhaps eight centuries old, which had been in their family most of that time.
Sorry I can’t remember the source for that one – read it too long ago.
If it were me, I’d start with reports of courier services: who carried what, where, and were there regular ‘posts’ of any kind at all? Accounts of objects being entrusted to merchants? Reports of passage: for itinerant peddlers, jews, gypsies, tradesmen, pattern-sellers (e.g. for carpets and embroidery..) that sort of thing. If I were considering savoy in the fifteenth century.
What’s the oldest record for transport of horses from the Camargue by sea?
Diane: probably the right place to start would be the literature focused on East Mediterranean trade in the 14th and 15th centuries, particularly with a Savoyard bias (because many seem to build their cases around what is to be found in the Genoese notarial archives). I’ve got Braudel in a box upstairs, I should probably have a look at him too. 🙂 All the same, building up a useful bibliography on XV century Savoyard ports will take a little time, for sure… 🙁
Diane, w.r.t. post #2, there are some interesting stories related to Poggio Bracciolini ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gian_Francesco_Poggio_Bracciolini ) who unearthed a respectable number of otherwise unknown or only partly known classical texts, even if it meant endangering his own life by crawling into dark holes. I don’t remember where I have seen the details, unfortunately.
Interesting that Poggio invented italic style, as we use it today.
“Savoy Truffle” was the Beatles song I’ve been trying to remember in this connection. 🙂
A movie has been made about Italy’s ancient and medieval coast-watch towers
entry for November 20th 2009 at
http://wooleypeterwooley.com/category/moviesandtelevision
Looks as if our positions are moving a little closer, Nick. I’m now considering a Genoese as first compiler of the extracts.
PS “many seem to build their cases around what is to be found in the Genoese notarial archives” – could you clarify?
Nick: Interesting. I need to learn more about the political dynamics west of Novara in the first half of the 15th century.
Nick: Did you make any progress on this? Vercelli, the transfer of which I have read about elsewhere, becomes of interest to me and I am trying to figure out the precise dynamics of events in the Alessandria area. Who were the local political players a diplomat might be dealing in the first half of the 15th century? Savoy, Genoa, Mantua ??? The Wars in Lombardy seem complicated.
For those who are of the opinion that the Voynich is of Northern Italian origin and who believe the carbon dating to be accurate I think it may be worth knowing a little about the Wars in Lombardy.
First of all like much of Italian politics at the time this is not simple as there are many players with their own agendas. The central players in these conflicts were the Duchy of Milan and the Republic of Venice both with territorial ambitions.
These conflicts were fought by hired mercenary armies.
Venice was lead by the Doge Francesco Foscari – the Doge was the title of the most senior member of the government elected for life by the aristocracy of Venice
Milan was lead by the Duke Filippo Maria Visconti – the Duke as the name suggests was a hereditary position
Other Important Players:
Republic of Florence was lead by Niccolò da Uzzano who was the Gonfaloniere of Justice (succeeded by Rinaldo degli Albizzi)
Kingdom of Aragon of which Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica where part was lead by King Alfonso V of Aragon (in modern Spain)
Duchy of Savoy was lead by the Duke Amadeus VIII who subsequently gained some support as an Antipope(named Pope Felix V at the Council of Basel). An Antipope was someone who claimed to be the rightful Pope, but never assumed to position of Pope and is now viewed as not being a true Pope.
Kingdom of Naples was lead by Queen Joanna II
Papal States was lead by Pope Martin V and later Pope Eugene IV
Holy Roman Emperor was Sigismund
Republic of Genoa was controlled by the Duchy of Milan
Marquis of Montferrat was lead by the Marquess John Jacob
Lucca was lead by the Lord of Lucca Paolo Guinigi (the Republic of Lucca was dissolved at this time.)
This gives you an initial overview if the kind of complexity we are talking about here. More to follow soon…
Note: Given the political situation during the Wars in Lombardy, at the time, I would expect there to have been a lot of cipher communication between Milan and other states, its armies etc.
By contrast I would have thought that it would be the case that with the signing of the Treaty of Lodi and Lombardy having entered a more peaceful era there would have been less need for enciphered communication. It seems to me that ciphers are used more in a time of war than a time of peace. So whilst, on the face of it, given that there appear to be many more cipher records from after 1454 I hope that there still remain significant numbers of records from the time 1415-1435 that I am focussed on.
Other people from the period of the Wars in Lombardy to mention:
Marquis of Ferrara and Reggio was lead by Niccolò III d’Este
Urbino was lead by Count Guidantonio da Montefeltro
Marquis of Mantua was lead by Marquess Gianfrancesco I Gonzaga
Lordship of Forli was lead by the Ordelaffi famiily before passing to the Papal States (Significant as he was the trigger for the Wars in Lombardy).
Note: I am sure I have got some things wrong, I am still learning about the politics of the first half of the 15th century in Northern Italy.
I was wondering what the political relationships were between the Duchy of Milan and the land to the North, which we now term Switzerland.
Now I have read that the Battle of Arbedo was fought in 1422 between the Duchy of Milan and the old Swiss Confederation. I believe specifically the conflict was between Milan and the old Canton of Uri for the control of Bellinzona. Now given my interest is in enciphered diplomatic communication, I wonder how diplomatic relationships were conducted. Would Milan have conducted diplomatic communication directly with the Old Swiss Confederacy or the Canton of Uri and most importantly to whom or where would that communication have gone? i.e. In which Swiss archives might I find Milanese enciphered letters in.
Archive of diplomatic communication with the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund:
Now it seems difficult to work out where enciphered letters to the Holy Roman Emperor might have gone. I believe Bratislava Castle in Bratislava, Slovakia, was the main residence of Sigismund. So would such communication be found in a Bratislava archive?
The Duke of Savoy apparently lived in the Castle of Ripaille in Geneva, so presumably enciphered communication would have gone there. So might there be enciphered diplomatic communication in the Geneva archive?
Mark: I think you may be slightly misunderstanding how encipherment was used in practice during the fifteenth century. Its most common political use was not between city states but between city states’ political leaders and envoys that had been sent to other city states. It was therefore usual to send a message not to a distant leader but to your envoy located in that distant leader’s city for the envoy to decipher and hand to that distant leader. However, before the Treaty of Lodi, there were only a relatively small number of envoys: hence only a relatively small amount of enciphered political communication (as I understand it).
Nick: You make a very good point. You are right my understanding of the practical use of encipherment is not what I would like it to be. I was aware of your point regarding communication with envoys rather than state to state; though I am not 100% sure that direct state to state communication did not occur where specific envoys were not present. I mention this regarding my impressions from reading about communication between King Alfonso V and the Duke of Milan who he had lived with at one time.
Nevertheless you are right I would like to develop a much clearer picture of the day to day mechanics of enciphered communication.
For example the Duke wants to send a secret diplomatic message to another state, so he tells someone like one of his Ducal secretaries familar with ciphers to send the message to a state he specifies. That Ducal Secretary looks up the appropriate envoy to that state, say John Smith living at 1 Bury Road, Rome, envoy to the Pope. He then looks up the cipher key that they are using with that envoy. He then enciphers the message using the cipher key.
Then I would guess, though I don’t honestly know, that he sends a highly trusted courier(s) to ride by horse to the destination and drop off the message to the envoy. (I assume there was no primitive postal service.) The envoy then refers to his copy of the same cipher key and procedes to decipher it. The envoy then communicates directly with the Pope.
However I wonder, myself, if it always worked like that. The Storia Patria Genova letter has raised some questions in my mind. Whilst it is the case that I have not yet seen the actual letter with cipher symbols, there is a translation provided. The letter is certainly a diplomatic letter, but I haven’t yet fully made sense of how it fits or not into the communication model I have described.
How did the process of updating the cipher keys work? Was there a courier send to deliver the updated cipher just as he would a letter? Were cipher keys as a rule always generated centrally by the Chancery or did envoys on the ground someones make their own for the purpose of communications?
If I get a new bank account the bank posts me my new bank card and then in a completely separate letter they post me my PIN number for that card. Obviously this is so that if one or other is intercepted then the nasty person who have done that still can’t get at my money. I wonder if this is conceivably the kind of thing that might sometimes happen with the kind of diplomatic communication we are discussing i.e. I want to send a letter to X so I will send 2 different messagers one with the cipher key and the other with the enciphered letter.
Mark: enciphered political letters were folded up small and then fastened with a wax seal (these are sometimes still attached to ciphered letters in the archives), which I described in Curse. It was widely known that even tampering with the seal of such a letter would have brutal consequences (never mind actually trying to break the cipher).
Though there were no rules about how cipher keys were initially generated, they were always held by the city states’ Chancery department, usually in ledgers held in multiply locked boxes in securely sealed (and well-guarded) rooms. Changing cipher keys was a pain in the a**e back then, much as it has been ever since. :-/
Nick: Thanks a lot for that very useful information. I still feel I have further to go to reach a point where I can feel confident that I have pretty clear idea of what was precisely going on with enciphered communication.
Obviously all this is a means to an end, by knowing who the protagonists were and how communication happened I hope it will give me a better idea as to where are the best places to look for enciphered letters or keys and so the cipher alphabets that I seek.
I thought I would say something about the Council of Basel which was a very important political event in addition to the Wars in Lombardy during the period I have been discussing. (There is certainly more to be said about the Wars in Lombardy in the future.) In fact the Council of Basel has entered my research in various different contexts.
The Council of Basel was what is termed a Papal Council or a general council of the Roman Catholic church. It lasted from 1431 until 1437 and took place in what is now Basel, Switzerland. Papal Councils were assembled at particularly times and in particular cities in order to discuss contemporary religious issues of importance. However religion and politics at that time being intertwined it was also a significant political event. It was attended by various religious figures of varying status such as Abbots, Bishops and Cardinals. It was also attended by political representative of different states; though often religious figures also acted as political representatives. The issues that were discussed was the so-called heretical movement of Jan Hus and issues related to papal succession and so who was the true Pope and not an Antipope, i.e. a false claimant to the Papacy. The previous Papal Council was the Council of Constance which occurred from 1414 to 1418 in the city of Konstanz by Lake Constance, South West Germany near Switzerland. The Council was beset by conflict between those supporting the succession of the antipope and the pope, so much so that when in 1437 the Pope refused to have any more involvement with the Council it continued with some remaining members in his absense. However the Pope initiated a new Council in Ferrara to discuss amongst other things a reconciliation with the Greek Orthodox Church.
As anyone who knows my analysis of the 9 Rosette foldout page will be aware of my identification of the Top Left rosette as representing the Council of Basel and so this one very important reason for my interest in this Council. The purpose of the author’s journey being the attendance of the Council, to me, helps make sense of the page. Note that my identification of that rosette representing the Council of Basel came late in my analysis, but fit geographically with the rest of my analysis of that page as well as other visual details.
I should say that given my analysis I would of course date the 9 Rosette page, f86v, to between 1431 and 1437. This doesn’t offer a clear cut dating for the other pages of the manuscript. I would guess that they were written near the time that the 9 rosette page was, but I can’t prove it. In fact my guess is that the 9 rosette page was written around 1431-1433.
Nick: I was thinking about our discussion on envoys. Now the question I asked is why when you send enciphered letters do you suddenly need an envoy. I assume non-ciphered letters were being sent as otherwise how would communication take place. Could not a member of the State you wish to communicate with decipher the letter using a cipher key that you had previously agreed on and then transmit the deciphered message to the head of state? Now clearly an envoy or even an ambassor would be preferable, so as to facilitate the subtle process of diplomacy; you might want to communicate directly to your envoy what you require them to do as regards negotiations. Therefore it also makes sense that when an envoy is present enciphered communication would be more frequent. So clearly having an envoy is useful to smooth and coordinate the process of diplomacy, but it seems to me not a prerequite for secret communication between states.
In addition do we know or can we find out to which states in the first half of the 15th Century the Duke of Milan had envoys or ambassors? This might give one an idea as to where enciphered communication could potentially be found.
On the Council of Basel and the Duchy of Milan I thought the following might be worth tracking down:
“I prelati lombardi e l’ esperienza del concilio di Basilea by Cristina Belloni” which the title implies is about prominent religious figures, such as Bishops, in Lombardy and their attendance of the Council of Basel.
Just a comment, the transfer of Vercelli from the Duchy of Milan to the Duchy of Savoy was as part of peace treaty designed to ensure that given the conflict between Milan and Venice there was no potential for Milan facing a war on two fronts. I believe that many prominent figures from the Duchy of Savoy owned property in Vercelli, so this transfer fitted with many of their interests. The “podesta” of Vercelli, which was the name given to the chief government administrator there similar to a major, named Nicolino Barbavara, was transferred to become “podesta” of Crema.
On Apostolic Protonotaries – A brief summary taken from wikipedia(ah!?)
In the Roman Catholic Church, protonotary apostolic (Latin: protonotarius apostolicus) is the title for a member of the highest non-episcopal college of prelates in the Roman Curia or, outside Rome, an honorary prelate on whom the Pope has conferred this title and its special privileges.
In late antiquity, there were in Rome seven regional notaries who, on the further development of the papal administration and the accompanying increase of the notaries, remained the supreme palace notaries of the papal chancery (notarii apostolici or protonotarii). In the Middle Ages, the protonotaries were very high papal officials and were often raised directly from this office to the cardinalate. Over time since the sixteenth century the role has changed.
So it sounds like a very important position in the church in 15th century. So it appears they were based in Rome.