Regular Cipher Mysteries readers will know that I’m pretty good at digging historical things up, at shining lights under long-unmoved archival rocks. Well… my challenge this week was to find some mid-Quattrocento Milanese enciphered letters, and though I’ve possibly got most of the way to an answer, I’ve ended up a bit stuck, and would really appreciate some help from all you good people!
The starting point was that I was sure that the Archivio di Stato in Milan contains a vast number of documents from the period I’m most interested in (Milan’s Francesco Sforza era, i.e. 1450-1465), so that ought to be the first place to look for these. But (as is normally the case) relevant manuscript catalogues are few and far between online, so I initially drew a blank.
Then I (somewhat luckily) stumbled across a 1995 book online called “Fifteenth-century Dance and Music: Treatises and Music” by A. William Smith. Page 6 of its “Fifteenth-century Italian Dance Sources” chapter mentions a letter: “26 July Archivio di Stato milanese. Potenze estere. Napoli 1455. in cifre from Albrico Maletta, Sforza ambassador in Napoli to Duke Francesco Sforza in Milano.” Interestingly, f20v of the famous Tranchedino cipher ledger is marked as “Cum Francisco Maleta” (though this is sandwiched between a 1458 cipher and a 1459 cipher, so might well have been entered into the ledger later than 1455): all the same, it would be interesting to compare the two. But how to find the manuscript reference for this?
The first thing to note is that “Potenze Estere” is actually the name of a large set of documents within the Milanese Carteggio Sforzesco archive. Obviously, I then searched like crazy for (I’d guess a scan of a 19th century) inventory of this, but without any luck. So where next?
Then I remembered Aloysius Meister’s “Die Anfaege Der Modernen Diplomatischen Geheimschrift” (1902): p.30 contains a (surprisingly complex, I think) Milanese cipher key and nomenclator dated 14th March 1448, with the reference “Mailand, Staatsarchiv. Pot. Est. Cifre Fasc. 2 Nr 5.” There’s also a 1483 cipher (p.31) noted as “l. c. Fasc. 1 Nr 15” (interestingly, this contains a “4o” composite character (for ‘z’) but with the ‘o’ attached to the downstroke of the ‘4’), and a 1530 cipher key (p.32) listed as “l. c. Fasc. 4 Nr. 53 Grofs 4o”.
(I should add that Meister 1902 also lists ciphers for Modena, including one [p.35] dated 23rd June 1435 “In Milano” which fascinatingly contains “4” for ‘Q’ and “4o” for “Qua”. [“Canc. duc. Arch. Proprio Mappe II. Nr 1.”]: and for Florence, he lists the Cifra di Galiotto Fibindacci da Ricasoli 1424, which similarly uses “4o” for “Q” [p.50])
So there you have it: it seems that the Carteggio Sforzesco’s Potenze Estere archive contains several specific bundles of cipher documents (“Cifre Fasc[iculus/-i]”) that sounds like what I’m looking for. But then again, Meister was writing over a century ago and much may well have changed there: specifically, here’s a link to the best listing I could find for the pre-1535 part of the Potenze Estere archive, but note that there is no obvious cipher bundle or subset to be seen. And that would seem to be the end of the line – though I’d expect the 1455 letter from Naples listed by Smith is probably filed in the Napoli section of the Pot. Est. archive (which is more or less entirely arranged geographically).
At the end of all that, I don’t know whether I’m really close or really far away. Are the cipher bundles Meister referred to still in the Potenze Estere, and what do they contain? Or have they been moved, split, stolen or lost at some point during the last century? Regardless, where do I need to go to see them and what should I ask for? Any pointers you can turn up to help me answer these questions would be much appreciated! [Please leave comments on the page below, or email me at the normal address]. Thanks!
Update: I subsequently found a more detailed listing on p.927 of this sizeable inventory: it says that the Atti Ducali (1392-1535) section of the Archivio Sforzesco contains “Cancelleria segreta 1450-1535, scatole 11. Raccolta di documenti relativi all’attività quotidiana della cancelleria: sommari, cifrari, occorrenze (carta, inchiostro ecc.), archivio, documenti relativi alla biblioteca del castello di Pavia.” So perhaps the cipher documents Meister saw were later moved over to this Atti Ducali section?
Alternatively, the Carteggio Sforzesco’s Potenze Sovrane archive also holds a section marked “Cancelleria segreta – Chiavi e cifrari (scatt. 1591, 1597 – 1598)”, which is what Lidia Cerioni relied on for her book “La diplomazia sforzesca”, and might instead be what I’m looking for (it’s hard to tell). Oh, and just a few bundles away, the same archive has the intriguing-sounding scat. 1569: “Miscellanea, astrologia, occultismo, superstizione etc.” Really, what historian of mysteries could resist sneaking a peek? 😉
Hi Nick! Just a comment in general. Have you ever contacted David Kahn? He has a web site, and it’s possible he’s studied some of this sort of thing. And what about contacting Cryptologia journal for possible contacts?
I have a few FB friends in Italy, most likely the same ones as you, who might conceivably be helpful. it’s good to have correspondents on the spot, or as nearly as possible, like news services do.
Not exactly enciphered but I think relevant to the Vms
A Yemeni tax list of the Mamluk era found in Milan.
Cahen, Claude and Serjeant, R.B., ‘A Fiscal Survey of the Medieval Yemen Notes ..(etc.)’ Arabica , T. 4, Fasc. 1 (Jan., 1957), pp. 23-33.
-available through JSTOR –
hello,
I see I’m not the only one studying milanese ciphers. I’m writing a thesis for my Master 2 in italian language and litterature about the work of Lydia Cerioni “La diplomazia sforzesca…” and i need some information on the author, who is she? where is she working? etc. If you have any information to share about these books and about the milanese dutchy in the 15th century in the Sforza’s court in general i’ll take it, I can share information too if you need but i’m in the beginning of my thesis…I’m french by the way…
Regards
I may be completely off-track, but: several weeks ago I came across a piece of art-work that portrayed one of the Sforza family Popes. In the background of that portrait painting was anoither painting that supposedly portrayed that particular Pope as being the hero that saved the Italian naval ships in the battle that took place in the harbor (Venice?Milan?).
I hope I’m not leading you all astray!
Oh, I just now recall the name of the website: Rome Art Lover
Don’t be put off by the rather “commercial” venture of the website’s tour-guide. He does a fair dialogue for each of his presentations.
The subject of Aloys Meister has cropped up in the Voynich mailing list.
Hope you don’t mind but I’ve referred everyone to this post.
Diane
Nick: Another interesting blog post. I am only just starting to get to grips with the daunting task of chasing up the information that I am looking for or specifically one or two nuggets of gold. Any assistance if you have any time based on your experience would be of great value.
I was googling for Milanese ciphers from the era of Fillipo Maria Visconti. I could not easily find anything, although I came back to a review I had seen before, on a different search, by Doctor Catherine Fletcher of “Carteggi degli oratori sforzeschi alla corte pontificia I: Niccolo V (27 febbraio 1447–30 aprile 1452). Gianluca Battioni,ed”. I quote from this:
“Beginning with the death of Pope Eugenius IV in February 1447, the letters recount the process through which Sforza and Nicholas maneuvered toward their respective political triumphs of 1450: the former’s entry into Milan and the latter’s successful jubilee. These were early days for resident diplomacy in Rome, which was still not officially tolerated, though among Sforza’s representatives, Nicodemo Tranchedini (1413–81) soon came to take a central role. As with any series of diplomatic letters, this carteggio gives us a sense of the ruler’s priorities. Early on, the concern is with establishing Sforza’s position, and there is a wonderful juxtaposition of the envoy of Marcolino Barbavara’s part-ciphered dispatch suggesting to Sforza ways of encouraging “these priests” to contribute to his expenses with Sforza’s letter to the College of Cardinals, describing his desire for the health, well-being, peace, quiet, defense, and growth of the Papal States. Other correspondence underlines the importance of secrecy. One entry in a diplomatic memorandum notes that certain matters are not to be disclosed to the vicechancellor. Filippo Maria Visconti, sending a cipher to his agent in Rome in a letter a couple of months before his death, reassures the man that he will not be tasked with anything that might weigh on his conscience.”
In this instance the letter from Filippo Maria Visconti sounds interesting to me as part of an attempt to fill in the gaps in the Milanese cipher record.
Nick: I have downloaded Meister. As you say there are ciphers from 1424 and 1435 which use the 4o character.
Nick: Unsurprisingly it would seem that given the destruction of the Milanese records most examples of Milanese ciphers prior to 1450 are best found in amongst correspondence with other states and so a good place to look is in amongst the archives of letters in Florence, Venice, Vatican as well as others. I think some other people have carried out some of this research and hopefully they should be able to give me some idea of their findings.
Nick: One simple a probably very obvious thing->
What was the procedure in practice for cipher communication?
Presumably in person or by letter the rules of a particular cipher were agreed upon for subsequent communication or would the cipher be different for each communication and so obviously transmitted separately each time? I would imagine that there would be different cipher rules dependent on who was being communicated with, so one cipher for communicatiion witb Venice and another for communication with Savoy. Was the cipher the same both ways? i.e. messages to Savoy used the same cipher as messages from Savoy. I would guess that every say 2 years the cipher was changed. I would assume the message would have been hand transmitted by a different trusted individual each time. How would generally a messsge be intercepted, a disloyal member of staff or the physical capture of the messenger? Before the days that there was a cipher secretary would one secretary, in practice be responcible for the production of all ciphers amongst their other duties? Or would this work be spread over many secretaries for each different state one was communicating with? To what extent were cipher used for communication within a state?
There are probably other questions to ask, but these are the first that occur to me.
@Mark
Is that a general question? Because with the VM it would not help.
Since the cipher is useless without a book, and without a cipher, you can not read it.
This is different from a normal conversation where information tiled back and forth
Peter: It is a general question which only relates to the Voynich indirectly. I am talking about diplomatic cipher communication not the Voynich itself. However it relates to my Voynich research.
Nick: When it comes to enciphered letters do we tend to know who wrote each letter or normally is it the case that it is written on behalf of someone without any clear about who prepared or implemented the cipher.
Do we see->
Your Sincercely,
John Smith on behalf of Filippo Maria Visconti
Or->
Filippo Maria Visconti
So we may or may not know who had the cipher expertise.
Mark: as far as I know, we almost never see the name of anyone who wrote a letter for someone else, whether enciphered or not. So this whole area remains murky, with only occasional flickers of light. 🙁
Nick: What do you think the fate was of intercepted letters? So supposing a Milanese enciphered letter was captured on route to its destination then would we find the letter in the archives of the intercepting power? I wonder if this is somewhere else to look for Visconti era ciphers.
Nick: The “4o” character is regularly mentioned for understandable reasons. In general to what extent are characters reused in new cipher alphabets? And to what extent are completely new characters invented each time? The reason for my question is that I am interested in seeing whether it is possible to find another distinct Voynich character in a non-Voynich text.
I am in the process of trying to track down various Milanese enciphered letters from the letters of Marcolino Barbavara to the earlier intercepted letters of Guarniero Castiglione to the Duchy of Milan dated 1432.
My hope is that with examples like these and with luck earlier Milanese enciphered correspondence I might find some identifiable character of feature which parallels something we see in the Voynich.
It is true that the author could have created all the significant characters excluding the “4o” from his/her own imagination without drawing on other known characters.
So I wonder if inventing completely new cipher alphabets is a standard thing to do or if it is very unusual. Obviously the Voynich falls into the category of very usual, but I like to believe it has some similarities to ciphers of the same time and place even if only superficial rather than technical. Do tell me what you think?
Nick: I wonder about the evolution of cipher alphabets. So for example a character in one alphabet may resemble a character in an earlier alphabet even though it is not the same. Obviously I am trying to establish links betweem the symbols of one cipher alphabet and another and thereby looking to see if I can establish a link between the Voynich alphabets and that of a different cipher. Again my focus is much more on purely visual similarities rather than functional similarities. Again, do tell me your thought. Thanks
Nick: I should say that I don’t believe the identification of common cipher characters will necessarily make it any easier to solve the cipher. However it clearly has another value in that it helps pin down more precisely time periods and potential location.
At the moment the “4o” character, which is also in the Croatian Glagolitic alphabet, is a loose common thread between the Voynich and Northern Italian ciphers.
In addition, if we are honest, I don’t think we can be confident associating the “4o” with specifically Milanese ciphers.
I am not saying that I am doubting the Milan connection or that we are dealing with a cipher, merely that the connection is more tenuous than I originally thought.
Nick: A question I ask myself and perhaps you is: Why is the “4o” character the character we see in the Voynich rather than others? Was it a particularly commonly used character? Are they other similarly complex characters that were as commonly used?
Nick: What do you think was the level of knowledge about ciphers outside of the diplomatic world?
My understanding is that ciphers were really only used for diplomatic communication.
I would have thought that prior to Cicco Simonetta’s text there would have been widespread ignorance of ciphers as there would have been a significant effort to prevent the dissemination of such knowledge for fear it fall into the hands of the enemy, so that innovative cipher techniques remained hidden from rivals as long as possible. I think the same is true of intelligence agencies today who I am sure guard their cryptographic methods extremely carefully.
I know it is hard to guess how widespread cipher knowledge was, but I would have thought that given it was a tool with very narrow practical appilcations to the field of diplomacy it would be largely unknown to people outside of that world.
Your thoughts would be of value. Thanks!
Mark: ciphers were widely known throughout Europe during the Middle Ages (Roger Bacon had famously described them), and were used in trade as well as in diplomacy. Florentines were famous for preferring codebooks to ciphers, but both were probably present in just about every North Italian city around 1400 and beyond. They became even better known after the Treaty of Lodi, but that’s another story. 🙂
Nick: I ask, because I have been researching the who’s who of the Visconti government, in particular the government of Filippo Maria Visconti. I have noted that I can find references to 4 people who look to have been involved in cipher work in this period. 2 of these people are very close relatives of the person that I am interested in. 1 was possibly a close aquaintance of his.
Given that my identification of authorship was not done by connecting him to ciphers it makes me want to ask what the probability a person in his position would have had such a connection.
I could look at many people in his position at this time and calculate the frequency of similarly strong connections to the cipher world, however this seems like a task I don’t particularly want to undertake as it feels like a bit of a digression, though I would if absolutely necessary. I would of thought the people who were precursors to the cipher secretaries would be the most advanced writers of ciphers at that time. I suppose much of the public would be familar with the Caesar cipher, but presumably the diplomats would ensure that they were using the most advanced techniques.
I may be reaching, but it doesn’t feel like it.
As far as sources for Visconti ciphers go I have 2 separate lines of enquiry, though I don’t know quite when I will set my eyes on the different Visconti enciphered letters that I seek. I have other relevant lines of enquiry that I am pursuing simultaneously which are progressing slowly.
Mark,
I’ve been reading your comments here and find it difficult to work out the questions which are driving your research – could I ask you to clarify. I mean, are you working on the question of where the object was made? or what language informs the written text? or the origins and/or provenance of the imagery? or the intention behind the last? Clarity about cultural/religious context? Or perhaps a name that could be attached to an author? attached to an author?
Or all the above? 🙂
Mark, I am not convinced that “4o” is a character in the VMS. The 4 occurs by itself without the “o”, and “o” is frequently at the beginning of tokens, which means the 4 is perhaps prepended to “o” words in a way that makes it look like “4o” when it fact it might be 4 + o-word.
Also, 4o is regularly found in alchemical and astrological manuscripts as an abbreviation for quarto and for 4th grado (degree), so the shape itself was generally known. It’s not common until the mid-15th century and later, but it does exist in earlier manuscripts back to about the third quarter of the 14th century (I have examples somewhere in my files, perhaps even 1 or 2 from earlier in the 14th century).
So “4” or “4o” occurs in various medieval sources (including ciphered documents) and may be inspired by more than one line of thought.
.
The 4o shows up in the mid-16th century as a combined character in a simple substitution code in the letter of Gabriel de Luetz d’Aramon. I would love to think that maybe the originator had seen the VMS, but the de Luetz 4o has no positional component or other characteristics comparable to the VMS, and thus may have been inspired by the abbreviation for quarter (4o) which was common by this time rather than any connection to other ciphers.
Mark,
much has been written about the topic. Philip Neal has made a summary of one of the important sources on this topic on this page:
http://philipneal.net/voynichsources/bischoff_summary/
This gives a good indication just how widespread the use of ciphers was throughout the middle ages and throughout Europe, even just outside of diplomatic use.
Nick: I should make it clear that I am interested in the family connections, as I wonder, if I happen to be correct about authorship, how the author began learning about ciphers.
An older brother already working for the Visconti writing diplomatic ciphers would be an ideal person to convey that information.
Also given that there is the “4o” in the Voynich doesn’t that make an influence from the diplomatic world more likely than other different kind of cipher usages, as it is in diplomatic correspondence that this character frequently occurs?
Rene, J.K and Diane:
Thanks for the comments!
I should note that of course I made my earlier comment before reading your replies to the comment preceding it.
If I pick 20 randomly selected Northern Italian/Italian bishops or Abbots of around the period that the Voynich was written in and research the connection between their surname and ciphers of the period to determine the extent to which my authorship candidate stands out then I hope that might be a useful test. I must admit I do not relish it as it will be some work without an obvious side benefit, but if it is necessary then I guess that is that. I guess I could choose those in other professions than bishops, however selecting random individuals would be more difficult. I would be happy to list those individuals who I selected, so others could verify my results. I could randomly select bishops outside of Italy, but then I would have to wonder how far to cast my net. A sample of 20 should be large enough to give meaningful results. Many more than 20 would be too much work to make it feasible. I suppose if there is a cipher connection the nature of that connection would be important.
It seems to me that in the case I am considering there is a disportionately close connection to the world of ciphers, but a test such as I have described unfortunately seems a more rigourous way of ascertaining whether that is the case than an anecdotal approach.
Any suggestions for methodical improvements would be appreciated.
Mark,
It is true, as Rene says, that other people have noticed, or speculated, or offered informed comments on the ‘4o’ combination, but take heart. If you provide new insights to the linguists and cryptographers, they’re likely to respond with intelligent interest.
I daresay Rene assumes you’ll know some of the better-known opinions, such as Nick’s, but Nick has also fairly represented views opposed to his own and they’re worth considering too e.g. (Tony Gaffney’s opinion, quoted within Nick’s post here ( June 14th., 2009).
I have no opinion on the question, only more questions which I hope the cryptographers and linguists and statistics guys may answer one day … such as whether the frequency of ‘4o’ in the Vms is close to the frequency of a similar looking but reversed ‘o4′ shape in medieval Latin texts – which last, I must add, is an abbreviation and not actually meant to be read as “o”-and-“4’.
Rene: From this list can we not exclude many of the items as not being akin to the Voynich i.e. to start with all ciphers not using invented alphabets which would reduce the list a lot.
Then I would imagine that looking at the result list we can shorten it further by other sound criteria.
Also, presumably diplomatic ciphers would be the most advanced ciphers of the time and so would be the closest parallel to the Voynich.
Rene: Do you know if the list is available as an excel file, csv or similar? This would make the process of pruning the list much quicker.
Does anyone have any suggestions for improving the test that I have described in the “January 2, 2018 at 11:36 am” comment on this page?
Mark,
the manuscripts listed by Bischoff all include simple ciphers.
Whether the text in the Voynich MS is a cipher remains open.
It certainly is not a simple cipher.
Some of the ciphers in Bischoff’s list (but certainly not all) are based on ‘invented alphabets’.
Invented alphabets were not only used for ciphers. They were also used for invented languages or for meaningless text.
Rene: From your list it seems that “Invented alphabets” is the applicable section, of course other features could be incorporated, but this is an absolutely necessary feature and we have no idea if any of the other features listed are applicable.
So this it seems is the list to work with.
Rene:
Wolfenbüttel Weiss dates from the 8th – 9th century, so is hardly relevant. So I think all manuscripts like this should be excluded.
I would also think manuscripts with very simple ciphers should be excluded.
In fact ciphers of similar or greater complexity to the diplomatic ciphers of the early 15th should be the central focus.
This should trim down the “Invented Alphabets” list a lot I would imagine.
Then I would think the remaining cases could be compared with Voynich and diplomatic ciphers of that time to see if there are any valid alternative sources.
Rene:
I note that Nick’s focus has been almost exclusively, from what I have seen from his posts, on diplomatic ciphers having been the predominant influence on the Voynich. Would you agree Nick?
Rene:
As is often the case your comment was posted whilst I was writing mine, so I did not see it until afterwards.
Obviously there is the language versus cipher debate. Other people have tackled this debate to my satisfaction, so I won’t revisit it.
So if all the ciphers are simple then given the Voynich cipher is clearly complex does it not follow that by far and away the most likely influences are diplomatic ciphers which have a much greater level of complexity?
Mark, to avoid that this discussion goes round in a circle, let me get back to the point where I brought up the list of Bischoff.
You wondered whether the fact that some relatives of your candidate had to do with ciphers was too much to be a coincidence.
My purpose was just to give an example of something that Nick had also said in that context, namely to show that ciphers were ubiquitous.
Whether the Voynich MS should actually be considered a cipher remains an unanswered question. This is not at all a given.
The safest thing that can be said is that the MS includes some symbols that have also been used in diplomatic ciphers. However, the overlap is not great.
What’s more, the textual statistics of the MS do not at all fit with the application of a standard diplomatic cipher à la Tranchedino. This already fails the most basic statistic, namely the count of different symbols.
Rene: I only think trying my experiment is what is left. I will generate a list of all the persons of the same profession in Lombardy, excluding the person that I am interested in, who were in this profession during a period at least partially overlapping 1404-1438; there were not so many in this profession as I am sure you know. I will select the first 20 in alphabetical order of their surname. I will then research their connections to the world of ciphers and count those who have a similar or greater link. I will also look at the degree they would have been connected to herbal and/or astrological manuscripts. I will not be putting in a lot more effort to search for connections than I put into my candidate as that seems reasonable, because I must set a time limit to how long I spend on each person.
I would be happy to provide you with a list of the individuals that I am considering.
I will assume we are dealing with ciphers here, for the purpose of the experiment. If it turns up positive results then I will consider the need to justify that it is indeed a cipher. For me this is like the “Is it a map?” or “Is it a hoax?” questions, which I already have a strong opinion on.
The purpose of this experiment is as much for my benefit though I would welcome the opinion of others on the results. It is useful for me to see at this stage of my research if my identification of a close correlation between my candidate and the Voynich, independent of the 9 rosette foldout, is justified.
Given that my identification was not based on a connection with ciphers and so independent of it I would be interested in looking at whether this individual stands out. I could look at other attributes such as their connection to herbals and astronomy. Asking directly, do they fit better as a candidate for the Voynich is a more nebulous and non-specific question, so is not easily tackled.
As I think you know, I prefer the numerical approach, where possible and as rigourously as it can be made, over the more subjective approach. The Voynich is not an ideal framework to work within and there is often some subjectivity left over, but keeping subjectivity to a minimum through numerical methods is better I think than not.
Rene: When you say “This already fails the most basic statistic, namely the count of different symbols.” can you elaborate?
Mark,
the Italian diplomatic ciphers tend to obfuscate language characteristics by using several different symbols for frequent (or all) plain text characters, additional characters for nulls and doublets, and characters for some nomenclator words. The result is a character set of well over 50 for each cipher.
There are a few (not many) scans of Tranchedino’s ledgers online, but D’Imperio (which is fully online) has some clear examples in Fig.39 (p.117).
The Voynich MS only has some 25-35 different characters, depending how one counts the composites.
Rene & Mark: here are Petr Kazil’s scans from many years ago:
http://www.nickpelling.com/voynich/Tranchedino1970.zip
http://www.nickpelling.com/voynich/Meister1902.zip
http://www.nickpelling.com/voynich/Meister1906.zip
Nick:
Thanks a lot for that. It is really appreciated!
I second that!
Rene & Mark: don’t forget that as well as documenting the Milanese Tranchedino (diplomatic) cipher ledger, Lydia Cerione also documented the Milanese state cipher ledger, which consisted of hundreds of non-diplomatic ciphers from the second half of the fifteenth century.
Nick: When you say “non-diplomatic” ciphers what exactly do you mean? Are you talking mostly about ciphers used for sending messages such as between political or religious institutions/individuals or are you mostly talking about something else? If so what kind of ciphers are you refering to?
Nick & Rene: Regarding the test I proposed, I noted when researching the many individuals connected to the Filippo Maria Visconti government from the period the Voynich has been dated to that only a tiny minority seemed to have any recorded or implied connections with the writing of ciphers. 4 individuals were recorded as having any connections with ciphers where 2 of them were closely connected to the person that I am interested in.
My hypothesis is that were I to choose a randomly selected sample of people in the same profession from the same period in the same geographical area as my suggested author I will find it rare for the individuals to have the same level of connection to the cipher or obscure language world.
Do you think that can serve as a valid test? Can you suggest any methodological improvements?
I would be happy to list the people in question, so that anyone can check the results.
I am not excited about carrying out this test as it will involve some work on my behalf and I am not sure what other enlightenment it will provide.
It is important at this stage for me to have some confidence in what I perceive as a pattern really is one, especially as my research looks like it will more and more rely on me putting in considerable effort in tracking down primary sources.
However if you think the test is flawed then that leaves me back where I started.
I am not claiming this can serve as a proof, but it can serve as a useful support for my authorship hypothesis.
Nick: Where did you see the Cerioni book? It appears not to be available for purchase or held in any libraries in the UK, but I could be mistaken.
I believe it is held in the library of Tortona and I could certainly get them to scan pages and email them to me, but that could work out quite expensive for the whole book. The library of Alessandria already emailed me some pages from a different book I was interested in, but I knew which 4 pages I wanted, so this didn’t cost much.
Nick: Looking through the Tranchedino I noticed the following character occurs often as it does in the Voynich. It may be incidental, but I thought it worth mentioning it, if you haven’t already done so youself ->
_
^
(The top line should be touching the ^)
Nick: The character also occurs in Meister. I wonder if one could look at the frequency of common Voynich characters like the 4o and the above character and even more simple common characters in ciphers to determine within which region, era and sphere they are most commonly associated, given available sources. So for example if these kinds of symbols are found most commonly in Milanese diplomatic ciphers of the mid 15th century that would tell us something even though it wouldn’t prove anything directly.
Nick: What the frequencies are of early 15th century Milanese ciphers has yet to be determined.
We also see the:
_
^
Character in the “In Milano” cipher mentioned above.
In addition we find:
“a”, “8”, “8 minus bottom like simple and symbol”, “? minus the dot”, “S reflected on the horizontal”, “cc possibly a coincidence”, “^” and “One other difficult to describe which may be a coincidence”
I haven’t checked all other Meister or Tranchedino ciphers for the letters, but in this cipher there does seem to be quite a bit in common.
I think the ? without the dot is reflected horizontal, so this may be less significant.
A closer examination of the symbol may point out other similarities.
It would be interesting to compare the commonality of the symbols with other ciphers. They may all be relatively common or particularly noticeable in this cipher.
I very much look forward to the time when I will see some Visconti ciphers to compare with the Voynich.
Mark: the difficult thing about ciphers is that whereas a few of the cipher ledgers have survived (e.g. the Tranchedino ledger, which was actually the third iteration of a well-used single ledger), hardly any cipher letters have – once decrypted, they were usually destroyed. So if you want to find any Visconti-era ciphers, the first place to look would perhaps the Urbino cipher ledger, which I’ve written about several times before, e.g. http://www.nickpelling.com/voynich/codiceurbinate998.html .
Nick: Thanks a lot for that link, really appreciated as always. I have downloaded it and I will certainly study it in more detail.
The examples I am looking for at the moment are:
1) The intercepted letters address to Guarnerio Castiglione who was a Milanese papal envoy. The interception of the letters caused a bit of a diplomatic incident. I hope these might be somewhere in the Vatican Archives.
2) The letters of Marcolino Barbavara who was a later papal ambassador under Filippo Maria Visconti and then under Francesco Sforza which are referred to in various places, so hopefully avoided destruction somehow. There are other reasons why I would like to see these letters.
Finding these is non-trivial and I think it will be easier with the Marcolino Barbavara. However the Castiglione letters date from about 1431 whereas the Barbavara letters date from the 1440s onward. I am not yet aware of other candidates for suitable letters. I would guess intercepted letters is an area to further research, but not the only area.
I have a possible idea of how I might, if lucky, find some letters in the hand of the author I am interested in. However again this probably won’t be easy, but I would like to do a handwriting comparison.
Do you have an idea of how many pages the Lydia Cerioni is? Have you seen it? I am contemplating requesting a library in Italy to scan and email me it, possibly only the pages with ciphers on. However depending on the number of pages it might be rather expensive. I would naturally be happy to make the scans available to whomever would like them.
Nick: I can find references online to->
“La Diplomazia sforzesca nella seconda metà del Quattrocento e i suoi cifrari segreti” by Lydia Cerioni
However I haven’t yet spotted a reference to a list of non-diplomatic ciphers. Are they in a different book?
Nick: I see volume 2 of this book. I found one of your email threads.
Nick: Your thread says the book is in the British Library, so the internet lied to me or more specifically Worldcat did. I wonder if it is in the Bodleian. Otherwise I guess a trip to London may be in order.
Nick: It seems one version of it is available in Oxford and London and all the other versions are not available in the UK.
Sorry for the hassle. I will do my best to scan as much as possible, so that I can share it with you all in electronic format. I hate paper books, but unfortunately not everything is available as an Ebook or equivalent.
I have spotted a symbol which looks like a lowercase greek letter sigma, which is in the Voynich, in one of the other ciphers. I haven’t checked if there are more ciphers which contain this. Again something like this could be coincidental, but put together the appearance of multiple of the simple symbols in the Voynich in specific ciphers could act as some kind of pattern.
I could be curious to see how similar the non-diplomatic ciphers are to the Voynich.
It is worth noting that the characters that represent a specific word or thing in the non-Voynich diplomatic ciphers appear to almost always represent a place/person like Milan, Florence, Pope, Modena etc. For standard diplomatic ciphers these are relevant. Given the different subject matter of the Voynich these would be very much superfluous and the motivation for having them would not exist.
Out of curiousity I looked at Hildegard of Bingham alphabet and Rudolf IV alphabet in Meister and I could see 0 symbols in common with the Voynich. I looked at for example the “In Milano” alphabet and I see lots of symbols in common not just the “4o”.
I have not seen a wide range of non-italian non-diplomatic ciphers alphabets, but it seems questionable if there are far fewer similarities in these with the Voynich that there is no evidence of a pattern here.
Nick: I downloaded and looked at the Urbinate ciphers. However there does not seem to be quite as much in common with these alphabets and the Voynich compared to the “In Milano” cipher. I probably ought to look through all the other ciphers and record their similarities.
I suppose I could investigate what exactly “In Milano” means. Does it mean a cipher sent from or to an envoy in Milan? Does it mean a Milanese cipher?
Ideally I would like to find a Milanese cipher from the 1430s i.e. the era of Fillipo Maria Visconti. However any Milanese cipher from the reign of Filippo Maria Visconti would be great. I would be very curious to see the amount of differences and similarities of these ciphers and the Voynich.
Milanese ciphers from the reign of Gian Galeazzo Visconti would also be of interest though significantly less interesting.
It is a lot to ask, but I will do my best to find examples of these kind ciphers.
I have looked at the “In Milano” again and I noticed there is also a “u” shared with the Voynich and also another character which is difficult to describe is shared. I have not yet looked carefully through the extended Voynich character set, so there may be even more commonality.
Now characters like “a”,”u” and “^” are not particularly remarkable characters. However these characters combined with the more distinctive shared characters make for what I think is a significant amount of commonality. I will certainly scour the other Meister and Tranchedino ciphers for alphabets with a greater amount of commonality. Nevertheless from my researches there seem to be significantly less commonality amongst natural alphabets or non-diplomatic cipher alphabets that I have seen. I should see the Lydia Cerioni soon to check what the level of similarity there is between the Voynich alphabet and the non-diplomatic cipher alphabets.
There could be a case for giving each alphabet a score as to how much commonality there is with the Voynich. This could either be a simple count of the number of common characters or a weighted count with the more distinctive characters given a higher weighting.
Having a measure for comparison could be useful.
Mark: since I don’t have the time to read your numerous blog posts in in detail I’d like to ask you some few questions.
You seem to be convinced of a certain authorship, a candidate of Milanese origin connected with some of the ruling families. Who should that be and why?
Wouldn’t it be much easier for you to just name your candidate and see what others can contribute to that idea? To compare diplomatic and non-diplomatic medieval cyphers is not the way to the authorship unless a previousely undiscovered cypher would be revealed and could be linked to your candidate beyond doubt. I’s not absolutely impossible, but highly improbable.
Btw.: it was Hildegard von Bingen (and not “of Bingham”) who invented her own alphabet (lingua ignota) for her mostly private use and contemplation.
In theory if one calculated a comparion score for each cipher alphabet or non-cipher alphabet with the Voynich, one could use these statistics to study the patterns of commonality by geography or era or type or anything else of alphabets.
In the event that some ciphers have different distinct characters in common with the Voynich from others we could use this to hypotheses about unknown parent alphabets from which the two may be partially derived.
I believe that many of the characters in the Voynich are of the author’s own invention, most probably the most complex characters; despite this I think there is still a lot of scope for looking into commonalities amongst the other characters.
Charlotte: As far as the name of Hildegard, I apologise; to be honest I have not given her much thought as I don’t see any connection with the Voynich, so you will have to forgive me for getting the name wrong.
As far as authorship I would not use the word convinced as it is a very strong word. However I have had a hypothesis for some time which I haven’t been able to shake off and which to me makes more sense than any other that I can conceive or anyone else has to my knowledge proposed.
I think you have not completely understood my motives behind the comparison of cipher alphabets. I am not proposing in my case that comparing diplomatic and non-diplomatic medieval cyphers is the way to the authorship; though rather a way of checking whether the link I see holds up. Having said that I do think comparing the similarities of cipher alphabets could help to narrow down the geography and the kind of influences of the author.
I have my own specific hypothesis, but I am also interested in exploring broader questions such as those of geographical origin.
My authorship hypothesis derives solely from my analysis of the 9 rosette foldout most of which I have presented in great detail on this website. Recently I have been focused on exploring and looking for evidence which supports or undermines it. I think I have seen evidence of the author’s connection to the world of ciphers which is beyond coincidental.
I believe the author to be Italian, but as is clear from my 9 rosette foldout I believe the author had travelled in Southern Germany and Switzerland.
I think your area of research, if I remember correctly, is on the basis that the manuscript is solely German in origin; correct me if I have got your hypothesis wrong. So I would think there would be little commonality between our research paths as we having quite different starting points. My theory and line of research is probably closest to Nick’s, although there are so very significant differences.
If you are interested in collaborating drop me an email at:
[email protected]
Mark: thank you for your answer.
My working hypothesis is of course on the basis that the VM is of German origin, but this doesn’t mean the German language or Germany in general. I also see my starting point in Northern Italy, namely in Tyrol, under the historic circumstances as they were in the early 15th century. This is quite different.
One point in your approach irritates me a lot: what do you think is the underlying language? The world of cyphers was the world of Latin, and Italian (i.e. in Northern Italy) as a written language was not very developed or common those times. As a consequence from your point of view, Latin would be the most probable language to be encyphered by your special candidate. Is that your assumption?
It is perhaps worth pointing out that english ‘irritate’ and german ‘irritieren’ are so-called ‘false friends’. The words sound the same but have rather a different meaning. I strongly suspect this affected Charlotte’s wording. German ‘irritieren’ basically means ‘to confuse’.
Rene: Thanks for the reference.
As you have no doubt read I am very interested in how one might measure the degree of similarity between any 2 alphabets.
Questions such as:
What is the likihood that the similarity between any 2 alphabets are coincidental?
What the probability that they have a common root?
Now these are clearly difficult questions to answer. However I think they can be approached.
As a question, if I grabbed someone off the street and I asked them to produce a list of 40 symbols imposing some kind of limit on the complexity of the symbols then how similar to the Voynich alphabet would those symbols be?
Is there some way of modeling the process of creation of symbols?
Again these questions become more difficult and could really be developed more precisely and I don’t propose to answer all of them. However I believe there is sound way in theory at least of measuring the similarity between human generated alphabets and whether they are independent of one another and how related they are.
I am inclined to the view that the similarity between these Italian diplomatic ciphers and the Voynich are significant. The question becomes how can one best attempt to prove this.
I am obviously not an expert on human visual symbol formation psychology, in fact I don’t know what the proper name of this area of research is.
Charlotte: I appreciate your reply and interesting questions.
First of all at this stage I wouldn’t like to say what the underlying language or languages was. It is worth noting as it states in Cicco Simonetta’s paper on this invaluable website that more than one language could be used to confuse the person trying to decipher the message. So there could be more than one language.
You are right Latin would be a plausible choice, but there are other languages the person I am interested did or may have known.
Unfortunately I am far from being at the stage of identifying the underlying language; in fact I would think that this would be done at near the very end of the process.
At this stage I have an authorship hypothesis that I would ideally like to prove or disprove. If I have correctly identified the author I hope further research may provide some clues as to some aspects of the workings of the cipher, so making the process decipherment a bit easier.
I have some ideas as to lines of research I would like to pursue into the Voynich cipher, but at this stage my main focus is on authorship.
Dear Rene,
thank you very much for your kind help! Your explanation of the confusing ‘false friends’ in my wording is absolutely right.
In general I am really keen, where possible and as far as positive, to move from subjectivity to objectivity.
So rather than being faced with a question where person A says connection X exists and person B says it doesn’t, to, if possible, trying to approach the question in an objective way and so get closer to a definitive answer.
Now I know “the Study of History” is not an exact science, but I think, certainly, in the context of the Voynich there is a scope for the application of scientific/numerical/statistical methods not just in the anslysis of the ciphertext.
I, personally, get very frustrated by the morass of claims about the Voynich which are very much one person’s perspective against another’s without any move towards resolution and consensus. And I firmly believe there is scope for escaping this situation though there will envitably be some questions for which this is not possible.
Resolution might be a good goal but I have my doubts about consensus. Most human achievements and most of human progress were not arrived at by consensus.
-Jkp –
I’m with you on one point, at least. The notion that we can ‘decide by consensus’ what is, and isn’t historical fact is fairly bizarre if there’s no sign that the pronouncers have the slightest knowledge of historical studies or the slightest desire to open a book and study.
We’ve seen the utter fiasco which can result from pushing this notion that ‘consensus’ is all there is to historical study: I mean the positively crazy decision to issue an ‘authoritative Voynich herbal’. Utter madness which endured for almost two years.
No matter how many people agree that it says ‘Moo’, a frog will never be a cow. (Genetic-engineers apart).
Diane: why read a book when you can click to vote in an online poll? 🙁
Maybe consensus is too much to much to hope for. I like to think consensus amongst intelligent reasonable people is feasible i.e. the people who think the Voynich was written by aliens are beyond hope. There is an overwhelming consensus on certain questions already, so it clearly has been achieved in some areas.
We all have a propensity to be reticent to change our mind in spite of the evidence as I have discussed elsewhere.
It is the case that the physicist Max Planck said, “a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” Which is a rather depressing outlook, but people can be very much invested in their theories and unwilling to give them up despite the evidence to the contrary. Unfortunately whatever the truth is we all have to accept it like it or not; who wants to believe a lie?
I do think questions such as is alphabet(I) more similar to alphabet(II) than is alphabet(III) is a reasonable question to answer and amenable to a rigourous scientific approach, it only becomes very difficult in the case of alphabets that are very close in their degree of similarity to the comparison alphabet.
As someone with a Mathematician background I think a consensus on a theory which has been rigourously proven is unavoidable amongst people with an ability to understand the proof or respect for those who do. Whilst in practice many historical questions are not open to the same level of rigourous formal arguments I think it has to be something that is worked towards.
I must admit I have not studied historiography, but I have some basic familarity with it.
Those who are interested in reading books might be interested in:
“An Introduction to Quantitative Methods for Historians” by Roderick Floud
Whilst I am not deeply immersed in this area of research my sister-in-law is a political historian and almost all her work revolves around the use of statistical techniques. That is not to say I don’t value other approaches providing they are as rigourous of they reasonably can be.
So as Nick points out well, amongst the general public there is no consensus on basic questions such as Evolution, Climate Change or even in some cases whether the world is flat, but I like to think that we as serious people can do better than that. And amongst academics there is a lot of consensus if even if not so with the general public.
I would like to say that the carbon dating of the Voynich was I think the most important advance in the Voynich research, which is of course a technique that comes straight out of science. I have discussed elsewhere other potential scientific advances in our understanding of the Voynich.
Mark: it may well have been someone other than me who pointed out the lack of consensus “amongst the general public”, that doesn’t sound like one of my arguments. 😉
As far as Voynich research goes, I’ve long given up on the idea that any kind of meaningful consensus could be formed – even the radiocarbon dating range seems to me to be slightly inconsistent with the kind of Art History dating I’m personally most comfortable with (though only by a couple of decades), so even the hardest of hard sciences isn’t yet enough to force an absolute consensus.
Nick: Sorry I was trying to reflect what I may have misunderstood you to be saying when you mentioned voting in online polls. I thought you were pointing out that the results of online polls taken by the general public are not a reliable source of truth and that this kind of approach to consensus forming is unlikely to lead to enlightenment.
Well my raising this subject came about from discussing the relationship between alphabets. Rene mentioned, I believe, that similarities between the Voynich alphabet and, for example, certain Italian diplomatic cipher alphabets are not really significant. I believe this question is amenable to analysis and we don’t have to be left with an argument where one person is saying “Oh, yes it is!” and other person is saying “Oh, no it isn’t!” back and forth.
Otherwise what is the point in advancing an argument at all if there is no scope for persuading anyone?
Mark: the specific difficulty of historical persuasion is that it has (in recent years) come to rely almost entirely on close reading of evidential texts, which is the one thing we don’t have here.
Putting everything else aside, your primary challenge would seem to be to build up some kind of picture of the Visconti regime’s cryptography, something which I suspect currently has effectively no literature on it at all. In some ways, this is a good thing, because it means you get all the glory at the end: but it can also be a hard slog. :-/
You might ask Professor Andrea Visconti (a cryptography Assistant Professor in Milan) if he knows of anything, it might possibly be something he has previously heard of or stumbled over, or he might happen to know someone. Asking is free! 😉
https://homes.di.unimi.it/visconti/
Mark: p.94 of http://www.storiapatriagenova.it/Docs/Biblioteca_Digitale/SB/396b22c37e8bbc6c44c30828fc127900/3c59bc5396598ee5c9a9d619604d062d.pdf has an enciphered 1422 letter from the Archivio Capitolare di San Lorenzo di Genova (ACSL) [which is now at the
rather better-known Biblioteca Medicea-LaurenzianaArchivio Diocesano di Genova (housed in the Museo Diocesano on Via Tommaso Reggio) ], cartella 391, n. 37:Mark wrote:
“Rene mentioned, I believe, that similarities between the Voynich alphabet and, for example, certain Italian diplomatic cipher alphabets are not really significant.”
This is perhaps not very accurate. These ciphers are one of four apparent sources that could have influenced the person creating the Voynich MS alphabet. Of these four, the “alchemical symbols” are the least likely.
What I did mean to point out is that the text statistics of the Voynich MS text are not compatible with the product of applying one of the (say) Tranchedino ciphers to a European plain text in Latin or some well known vernacular.
Rene: it is entirely true that fifteenth century ciphers known from the historical record do not help us decrypt Voynichese. Yet if you look at the way number shapes are used, these are very typical of Milanese ciphers from the pre-Arabic digit phase of cipher alphabets (i.e. ciphers that don’t have 10, 20, 30, as cipher shapes). As such, I suspect this comprises much of the similarity Mark is looking for.
Mark,
Consensus among persons *capable* of being intelligent and reasonable has been responsible for most of the horrors in history – because against the individual’s capacity for reason is the very human drive to become and remain one of the group they consider the majority. It is not an urge to conformity, but for identity and is our very deepest human drive – for which individuals will surrender everything else, including their own lives. Why else would someone prefer to die than to be given a little white bird-feather? If you know – and who cannot – the response which has met all those who maintained opinions other than that the manuscript’s content was entirely the creation of some European Christian male, or that its language was other than the sort of language known to such a person, then you will perhaps see why Voynich studies not only attracts highly intelligent, competent and properly qualified persons – such as Stolfi, or ‘Sam G’ or any number of others – but why so few remain in the arena for long.
If I may give you one pointer… when someone makes an authoritative sounding assertion, mentally put “in my opinion…” in front of it; then ask to see the body of their own, original research from which they drew that conclusion… and read it critically… and finally if there’s no such body of research ask the person the simplest of all questions, ‘How do you know?’.
In the case of the Milanese ciphers, I understand that the research was actually done by Nick Pelling (though he may correct me on that). Certainly the only intelligent discussion of the pros and cons which I’ve read has been Nick’s. And though his book is now oop, some posts to this blog explain his evidence and reasoning.
I’m not qualifed to comment on ciphers, and not much interested in them, but that’s not my area so it doesn’t much matter.
Diane: please use your own blog for straw men arguments, I’m getting a bit tired of hearing about this supposed European Christian male theory hegemony.
Nick: It is difficult that we do not have the kind of evidence that we would really like. However I think we must make use of what evidence we have and take it as far as we can go with it.
You are right it looks like a hard slog, but as is always the case, if it were easy it would not have quite the same value. In general at the moment the different threads of my research are hard going, though progressing slowly, due to the lack of easily obtainable information and this is very much the case with Visconti ciphers, though without the internet everything would be 100 times harder. (I suppose increased digitisation of historical documents and better means of searching within them and through them over time will make things easier. Still even these days the wheel of progress in this area turns slowly.)
As usual you have been very helpful in mentioning Prof. Andrea Visconti I will certainly follow up with him. Again the Genose cipher reference is really appreciated; I will follow that up too.
I will be looking at the Lydia Cerioni non-diplomatic ciphers soon to make a comparison with the Voynich. Maybe I will find a non-diplomatic cipher alphabet more similar to the Voynich. I am perfectly prepared to change my mind if the evidence justifies it. It is often more interesting to change one’s mind and embrace a new perspective, so I am not averse to it. However of course one shouldn’t change one’s mind for the sake of it and at the moment I am most persuaded by my perspective as it is.
I really appreciate your support and encouragement, it has genuinely been invaluable:)
Rene: I was responding to your comment “The safest thing that can be said is that the MS includes some symbols that have also been used in diplomatic ciphers. However, the overlap is not great.”
Specifically your point that “The overlap is not great.”
I was addressing how the question of whether the overlap was significant or not might be answered. So as to say what the probability is that the Voynich alphabet and the Italian diplomatic cipher alphabet(s) both had a common ancestor(s). I was discussing how methodically one might rigourously test such an assertion. If for example one could say the likelihood is very high that would be a very important breakthrough.
Each time a new cipher alphabet was implemented a wholly original set of symbols was not generated, but rather some pre-existing characters were reused again and again though most probably with a different interpretation each time.
I would think that each symbol was introduced by someone for the first time in a diplomatic cipher at a certain point in time and subsequently reused. And of course at some point that symbol ceased to be used in ciphers.
On that basis it would seem reasonable to assume that the most similar cipher alphabet to the Voynich dates from around or not long before the creation of the Voynich.
To say whether the cipher is similar or different is hard to say. There may be 1 or 2 significant innovations in the Voynich cipher which account for those statistics you observe. It is self-evident that the Voynich cipher is distinct from any diplomatic cipher we know, but I think it is fair to ask where we see the greatest similarity as it is also not like to any other cipher/language. The visual appearance of the alphabet is a simple straightforward point of comparison. Not only the question of the number of identifical unique and common symbols shared between the two, but also in the way the symbols are formed is I believe important i.e. things like whether they have smooth flowing lines of hard straight lines.
I studied many alphabets before looking at ciphers when I first developed an interest in the Voynich. I spotted in the Croatian Glatolitic alphabet that there is also a 4o symbol. However I cannot say I saw any alphabets more similar to the Voynich than what we with the diplomatic cipher alphabets.
It is important to note that the 4o character is not the only distinctive Voynich character we see used again and again in diplomatic ciphers. Once I have worked out the standard code used by the Voynich community to define each of the characters I will list the shared characters and my comments on each.
My hypothesis is that there should be the greatest similarity with Milanese diplomatic ciphers from the years 1415 to 1435 and the Voynich alphabet. Unfortunately these ciphers are very difficult to locate as records from that period for Milanese ciphers are hard to come by.
If my hypothesis is true by so doing I can establish a link to close family members of my suspected author which I personally think it would be hard to deny a connection, though in these circumstances I am sure many would. Frankly merely a link to Italian diplomatic ciphers becomes I believe highly significant.
I should say that suspect that the gallows characters are a completely original creation of the author of the Voynich and to be found nowhere else. This may well be the case for other “families” of characters. I think one can expect the greatest commonality to be with the distinct isolated characters as I believe that they are the most likely to have been inherited from pre-existing cipher alphabets. So I very much doubt I will find any identical alphabet to the Voynich in any diplomatic ciphers.
Mark: cipher alphabets were not identical to each other, that they were different was kind of the point – but it is likely that individual cipher makers reused shapes and preferred cipher tricks, so there may well be family resemblances out there waiting to be found. 😉
Though I broadly applaud the direction in which you’re trying to move, History is at its best when it is able to stay a primarily evidential activity, and so far you haven’t yet collected together and analyzed any actual ciphers from the time and place you’re interested in. But this isn’t really your fault, it’s a lacuna in the whole Voynich research field – nobody has yet tried to collect together ciphers from 1400-1450 (aside from the Urbino cipher ledger, which I’ve already mentioned but have never actually seen for myself) in any obvious way. This might well be because researchers are only now starting to come to terms with the radiocarbon dating. :-/
In fact, I’ve been thinking about trying to make this an activity all Voynich researchers could contribute towards: I’ll be posting about this very shortly.
Nick: I think I must of not made myself clear, I was not saying that cipher alphabets were ever identical to one another and I fully appreciate that the purpose was to change cipher alphabets regularly.
Having looked through the Tranchedino and Meister cipher alphabets I have noted some common characters with the Voynich other than the 4o and I was going to email you a list with the images for each character and comments. I wanted to investigate this out of curiosity and I think it helps to support the thesis that there is a relationship between the Voynich and diplomatic ciphers, though not exclusively my specific claims in terms of dating.
I agree I have yet to analyse the ciphers that I am looking for and I fear it will take some time before I have, unfortunately, but I am on the case.
Ants. I do not want to take illusions. But on each side of the manuscript, it is written : that is written in the Czech language. 🙂
@Nick and every other person who is really interested: I suggest you get a copy of Busbecq’s Letters . Publisher: Aramco World issue 201502 : “The Busbecq Letters” .htm
Today, my toppling pile of downloads ended upside down. Just a few moments ago, my husband found my reference to a very interesting book I’ve been recently reading. I hope you will be able to find a copy of the book:
“Lords of the Horizons” Written by historian, journalist and travel writer, Jason Goodwin — . Goodwin also wrote: “On Foot to the Golden Horn” . Mr. Goodwin, in 1993, received the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in 1993.
Fabulous reading — I’m on page 259 of a 336-page book which includes a chronology – and a glossary. I have reluctantly put down the book — so I can sit down at the dinner table (like a civilized person) and enjoy the meal my husband prepared for us.
bd
Nick: I will email you as soon as possible, but for the time being I thought I would mention something that you may or may not have noticed.
When we see a character, including the gallows characters: if there is a top left loop we have the number 4, if we have a top right loop it is often, though not always, an italic “p”. This process of combining characters joined up to form new characters in this way is standard in the diplomatic ciphers, though the Voynich alphabet takes this approach further than any other cipher alphabets that I have seen especially when it comes to the gallows characters.
We, of course, also see the combining of joined up characters in the case of the 4o character. Adding an italic letter “p” joined up to the right of a existing character is a very very common practice in cipher alphabets, this is particularly obviously when looking at the simplest Voynich characters with a top right loop, especially as these specific characters are particularly common amongst cipher alphabets unlike the unique gallows forms.
I think both the 4 and italic “p” make the Voynich alphabet fit within the diplomatic cipher alphabets that I have looked at.
I hope I have made this clear. More to say on cipher alphabet comparisons, but I wanted to put this out there as I think it is a particularly striking parallel with the Voynich.
Nick: Worth noting the italic “p” may sometimes appear as a non-italic “p” both in diplomatic ciphers and the Voynich, I imagine this tends to be the case where the “p” at an italic angle does not fit as neatly.
Nick: I think what makes the gallows characters stand out is that you have as an example a “4P” character combined with a cccc style character below to make one mega-character. With diplomatic ciphers for example you might have a “4P” character underlined or with a line through it or a number above it, but to have quite such a complex character is non-existent. Then given that the Voynich is, I think, a diplomatic cipher on steroids it is not surprising that it has to have the most complex characters.
Nick: The four “italic” p ending characters that are common to the Voynich and diplomatic ciphers in order of frequency of occurrence in diplomatic ciphers are:
HP
cP
rP
4P
I have written them in the best way I could using normal letters. Obviously all characters need to be joined up to the middle of the P. For the “HP” the right most line of the H is the same line as the vertical line in the P.
Other common characters that we see in the Voynich and Diplomatic ciphers:
c~ (Joined – straight top not curly. Can sometimes have a dot ontop.)
8 on it’s side (The infinity symbol)
co (joined at the top)
c
ccc (joined at the top)
Mark, I think what you are seeing is Latin scribal conventions that found their way into diplomatic ciphers and into the VMS. There doesn’t have to be a direct connection between diplomatic ciphers and the VMS for these shapes to be found in common.
For example, the shape that looks like Italic p is the Latin appreviation for “-is” (usually used as a suffix), which is also used to indicate “-em” for words like “Item”, and which is occasionally used in place of the more flourished “-rum” character.
Also, the letter c, in languages that use Latin scribal conventions, is very commonly written as a ligature (joined to the next letter), probably moreso than any other letter. When you see two of them (sometimes three) joined at the top, this is the Latin scribal abbreviation for several different combinations, including cc, cr, rc, er, re, rt, ct, cer, ter, etc. This is because the old-style “t” was written almost the same as “c” and because there were forms of “r” and “e” that are written like “c”. Thus the cc bench character in VMS and in diplomatic ciphers is morphologically the same as a very common Latin general-purpose ligature which was ubiquitous to writing styles of the late 14th and early 15th centuries.
I believe from looking at the extended Voynich characters that there is character which looks like the letter “a” to the power of “0”; this is typical of many diplomatic cipher characters. Also it appears there are characters like the 4o with a line ontop or 4o with dashes ontop this is typical of how diplomatic cipher characters are built up. Again putting a “.” ontop of a character as we see with some extended Voynich characters is not usual in many diplomatic cipher characters.
Originally I was going to write that with diplomatic ciphers the similarity of two characters visually has of course no relationship to their meaning: so for example “c” and “ccc” whilst similar visually would have no relationship in meaning. However one thing that I noticed was that some cipher writers, possibly as a result of laziness could for example label consecutive letters as for example f = “1P” g=”2P” h=”3P” i=”4P” . It is conceivable the Voynich writer might have done something similar, though hard to believe given the seriousness with which he took his cipher.
JKP:
Can you provide examples of what you are refering for comparison purposes as I find it a little suspicious? If you can show me text that fits the same format as the Voynich characters that are shared with diplomatic ciphers then I will be very interested.
JKP: I have looked at the page on your website on “Latin scribal conventions” and I see some very very loose similarity to the Voynich alphabet; there are much greater similarities with the Voynich alphabet and the Tranchedino cipher alphabets.
JKP: I think you are confusing joined up writing and joined up characters. The “4P” is just a “4” joined to a “P”; well we all know the number “4” and the letter “P” in their own right, so what’s the big deal? Well “4P” is a character composed of letters joined together not joined up writing of separate characters.
JKP: I have read your article carefully and it is well written and has some interesting things I didn’t know in it. Unfortunately it differs widely from my perspective, “Gujarati” sounds quite a romantic language for the Voynich to be written in, however it is a very different line of thinking from my own.
I am a bit unsure whether you think each character is a word in its own right or more like a single letter.
No, I am not confusing joined-up writing and joined-up characters. I am specifically talking about ligatures (I have professional expertise in this area and am well informed about the difference).
Mark, I’m glad you looked at my blogs, but I have only documented about 5% of the most common Latin scribal conventions due to lack of time. There are many more that can be found in both the VMS and in diplomatic ciphers and also in several natural languages.
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Also, I never said that the VMS was written in Gujarati. My article is about scribal similarities and abbreviations found in *both* the Indic and Latin languages in the Middle Ages, that no longer exist. The overlap disappeared when modern Latin moved away from Medieval scribal conventions. These overriding concepts are important not only in researching glyph shapes but also in understanding how expansion of certain glyphs was a common practice in diverse medieval cultures.
JKP: All I can say is that what you have presented in your blog appears to have a rather limited correspondence with the Voynich. I can only comment on what you have written down not what you haven’t.
It is good you have professional expertise in the area, but that doesn’t make what doesn’t resemble the Voynich begin to do so.
I meant just to point out that from my perspective the links between Indic languages and the Voynich are tenuous.
Rene: One thing I don’t understand is that you said that the Voynich has fewer characters than cipher alphabets. However having looked at lists of Voynich characters that does not appear to be the case.
As I pointed out elsewhere I think the habit of using a single character to represent an individual city state has little relevance in the context of the Voynich, so the habit of using a single character to correspond to a single word is probably unlikely to have carried over.
It seems perfectly logical that some characters appear only rarely.
Mark,
I hope your ‘suspected author’ had extraordinary knowledge of astronomical systems other than Ptolemy’s, or that your theory only has him compose or encipher the text’s written part.
This because Crux is certainly pictured on one folio (though there the drawing is later than the rest, so with a bit of wiggling your might get through), and just as certainly referenced on two other folios.
Pace JKP whose effort to re-work this information by claiming the cross is Gregory of Tours’ (in Cygnus), the testimony of the primary evidence is both plain and consistent: the figure is meant for the South marker and if it isn’t exactly our Crux, it can only be the ‘false crux’ which also remained wholly unknown in that form to European astronomers until about a century after our ms was made.
It was a constellation very well known to the southern hemisphere, and especially to the mariners – in which context (just btw) I once illustrated a mariner’s loh that was inscribed in Gujerati. The author of the academic article which included that picture was kind enough to permit re-use, and to interpret the nearly incomprehensible script as a list of place-names. The problem about Gujerati is that it was a mercantile script which didn’t really come into use until after the Vms was made. I admit I was disappointed, but theories are meant to be disposable tools, not credos. 🙂
Mark,
I put numbers in the relevant post. It is not clear from your message which ones you don’t agree with.
Rene: I suppose I should start by saying that I have spent time studying the cipher alphabets in the Tranchedino in great detail to look at the variety of characters shared with the Voynich, of which there are quite a few examples. I have also looked at the way that those characters are composed out of simpler characters. I say this so you understand my perspective.
When you include the typical as well as the rare characters which appear on different lists for the Voynich alphabet there seem to be a sizeable number of characters indeed. I haven’t attempted to count them all, but I would be interested in you telling me how many characters you think there are.
Coming from the perspective of the diplomatic cipher alphabets, clearly we know there are differences in the ciphers, so this is just a parallel, characters can correspond to rare symbols or rare double letters or infrequently used null characters or infrequently used letter substitutes. So I would think one could potentially expect there to be quite a few rare characters.
Rene: You say “The result is a character set of well over 50 for each cipher.” when refering to diolomatic ciphers. However when referring to the Voynich you say “The Voynich MS only has some 25-35 different characters, depending how one counts the composites.”
The number of characters you give for the Voynich seems a gross underestimate from what I have seen; maybe I have missed something. In fact a figure of over 60 seems plausible.
Nick: If we were talking about diplomatic ciphers the much more frequent occurrence of the “4o” at the beginning of words could merely reflect that it maps to a letter that is more likely to be found at the beginning of a word or I suppose it could be a null the author often placed at the beginning of a word.
As I have repeated there are clear differences with a diplomatic cipher, but that would be my interpretation looking through that lens.
Mark: the piece of the puzzle you seem to have missed out is that there are a number of different ways the Voynichese shapes can be pieced together (e.g. is EVA cth 1, 2, or 3 letters? etc), and there is no consensus about which way is likely to be the correct one – indeed, I think it would be fair to say that if there was a consensus, we would probably have solved the mystery a century ago.
So when you present your thoughts based on the particular way of piecing the Voynichese shapes together that seems best to you, you’re assuming that everyone else buys in to that particular way, which they don’t. From one perspective, Rene Zandbergen would be right to say that Voynichese uses too few letter shapes compared to typical diplomatic ciphers of 1440 onwards (which is essentially what we have evidence for, from the Urbino cipher ledger onwards): but from a different perspective, if you accept the radiocarbon date range as being very close to the truth, you’d be more interested in comparing it to ciphers in the 1400-1440 date range, of which we currently have only a few. My own perspective is different yet again. 😉
Nick: I am sure other people may not share my perspective, especially if they doubt the diplomatic cipher connection. I am really only giving my interpretation based on a close examination of diplomatic cipher alphabets and how the characters are constructed.
In the “In Milano” cipher alphabet, which I pick as one that has common characters with the Voynich though there are many in the Tranchedino that do as well, we see a large number of characters in the cipher alphabet and of course this is dated 1435. So the question becomes before 1435 rather than 1440, I guess. Certainly broadly speaking I think it is fair to say that earlier ciphers one would expect to have smaller numbers of characters in their alphabet. My point is that I doubt that the Voynich alphabet is as small as Rene says, this statement is not based on any assumptions of the number of characters in cipher alphabets prior to 1435, but rather the different Voynich characters listed by a variety of people and their consistency with my own framework for character construction.
I am telling it as I see it at this time with no expectation that others will automatically agree with me.
As a quick review I would say many characters in the Tranchedino are the same as the Voynich. Few characters in the Urbino are shared with the Voynich. In the Meister there is only one cipher alphabet I believe that has a few characters in common with the Voynich characters and that is the “In Milano”.
Nick: The 1424 Florence cipher alphabet in Meister has a quite a lot of characters though only a few in common with the Voynich.
Nevertheless I am still focused on finding early 15th century Visconti ciphers as this, as you know, is where I expect to see the most in common with the Voynich cipher alphabet.
Mark,
if you look at the Eva tables in http://www.voynich.nu/transcr.html#Eva , then keep in mind that all ‘extended Eva characters’ occur less than 10 times, in a text of around 160,000 characters. They play no role in the statistics. It is as if a Tranchedino-type cipher was used in such a way that for each plain text character, always the same cipher text character was used. This effectively reduces the cipher to simple substitution, and that won’t work.
That is only one reason why this principle was not used for encoding the Voynich MS text. The next simplest statistic is the single character frequency distribution, which also should look very different if a Tranchedino-type ciper were used, and the same holds for character pair statistics.
The best one can say is that these tables *may* have inspired the creator of the Voynich alphabet.
However, there is another fundamental point, which is quite hard to quantify, namely that the Voynich alphabet allows to write the text as a flowing script. This looks like the consequence of a deliberate design effort.
Most (but indeed not all) encrypted texts using ‘funny’ symbols look like a string of symbols, not flowing text.
If you browse through this (well-known) manuscript:
http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/cpg597/0001/thumbs
you get some good examples.
Mark wrote: “I meant just to point out that from my perspective the links between Indic languages and the Voynich are tenuous.”
Oy. Again you missed the point.
I was pointing out the correspondence between Medieval Latin scribal abbreviations and Medieval Indic scribal abbreviations and how they were written and expanded in the middle ages, not positing a direct link between the VMS and Indic languages.
As an example I illustrated the Latin “ra” and the Indic “ra”, which are the same glyph with the same general sound correspondence, AND one cannot ignore this because the VMS also uses the same glyph *and* its variations and might, in fact expand in the same way as was characteristic in the 15th century, in both Europe and the Middle East (and parts of western India).
To understand *Medieval Latin glyphs* (which were used to write more than 20 different languages) and how scribes THOUGHT about glyphs and ligatures and abbreviations, it is wise to acknowledge how common this mode of thinking was across diverse cultures and alphabets.
Mark wrote: “I am really only giving my interpretation based on a close examination of diplomatic cipher alphabets and how the characters are constructed.”
I’m sorry, Mark, but comparing the VMS glyphs to diplomatic cipher glyphs without learning Latin scribal conventions is like comparing two similar-looking people and trying to determine if they are brothers without looking into their family histories.
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I have a copy of Tranchedino, by the way. Even if the VMS borrowed glyph ideas from these ciphers (which is not at all certain since the glyphs almost all derive from common sources such as Latin, math and astrology symbols and, to a smaller extent, Greek), there is no resemblance whatsoever between the structure of the VMS text and the diplomatic ciphers.
JKP:
You say “Comparing the VMS glyphs to diplomatic cipher glyphs without learning Latin scribal conventions is like comparing two similar-looking people and trying to determine if they are brothers without looking into their family histories.”
Frankly that is nonsense.
To say that the symbol which looks like a:
_
^
for example, in the Voynich exactly resembles symbols looking the same way in diplomatic cipher alphabets requires no knowledge of Latin scribal conventions. Moreover it even requires no knowledge of the Latin alphabet, maybe even no knowledge of any alphabet.
Seeing a symbol in the Voynich alphabet and observing a symbol which looks the same way in a diplomatic cipher alphabet requires reasonably good eyes nothing more.
The brotherhood analogy is a flawed one as genetic inheritance works quite differently and gene manifestation is very complicated and genetic difference may not be obvious. Of course you can determine if two people are brothers by comparing their DNA without looking at their family history.
Rene: I think you have misunderstood me; I am not saying that the Voynich cipher is the same as any diplomatic cipher I am aware of. What I have focused on is the parallels between the Voynich cipher alphabet and the diplomatic cipher alphabets. I think is important at first to separate those two things:similarities in the alphabets and similarities in the cipher.
If you want my current guess, it is that we have a diplomatic cipher with 1 or 2 significant innovations which are responcible for the statistics you observe. So the author had knowledge of diplomatic ciphers and familarity with their alphabets and had learnt how to write them; then he/she developed these ciphers further to corporate his/her own encipherment ideas.
However what I have been focussing on here is the significant parallels in the alphabets; this can be treated as a separate question I think.
Referring to the character which I describe as “4P”, but others might think looks like a “qp”. When I first saw this character in the Voynich alphabet I guessed that it was supposed to be symmetrical about the vertical which it pretty much looked as though it was, without staring carefully at it. So when looking for shared characters with diplomatic cipher alphabets I naturally looked to see if I could find this character; it does occur in some cipher alphabets though it is less common than some other shared characters. When looking at this character in the diplomatic cipher alphabets I thought it looked more like a “4P”than a “qp”; this also seemed to make much more sense as prefixing a “4” to the start of a character was much more normal than having “q” at the start in the characters in diplomatic cipher alphabets. So a “4” at the start of the character made sense visually and logically to me. So I returned to look at the character in the Voynich cipher alphabet and was surprised and gratified to see that the start of the character was clearly angulated exactly like a “4” and not curved like a “q”; in fact on closer inspection it was a “4” just as it was in the diplomatic cipher alphabets. This further affirmed in my mind my notion that the Voynich alphabet is related to diplomatic cipher alphabets.
Not only was it clear to me in the “4P”, but also looking closely at the gallows characters it was clear the top left character was also angular like a “4” and indeed was a “4”. Similarly some people may view the “4o” as a “qo”, but in the context of diplomatic cipher alphabets that makes little sense.
I should make it clear that this is my analysis and that I am aware it is not universally held.
JKP:
If you want to make your case that all the commonalities between diplomatic cipher alphabets and the Voynich can be found in Latin Scribal Conventions then you need to provide examples. On your blog there are very few examples. I know you said that you had provided only 5%, but without more your case looks weak to me.
Win a lottery for me, Mark, and I’ll post them all. I’m running two businesses. I work 90+ hours a week.
And looking only at the shapes and comparing them, once again, means nothing.
If diplomatic ciphers and the VMS took their inspiration from Latin/math/astrology/Greek, then there is not necessarily a link between them, and studying the original inspiration (Latin scribal conventions) may be more enlightening than studying the superficial similarities between them.
Either way, ignorance of the underlying Latin conventions does not give one a full deck from which to evaluate whether the similarities between the ciphers and the VMS might be causal or coincidental.
JKP: You think the key common ancestor of the Voynich and the diplomatic cipher alphabets is the Latin Scribal Conventions, that is why you think they are so important and crucial to understanding the Voynich. However you don’t provide the evidence to support your assertion. Hence this is why I do not find an understanding of Latin Scribal Conventions important.
If you thought the source of the Voynich was the Georgian language then that would be crucial to understanding the Voynich and you would be telling that I need to understand that to understand the commonalities between diplomatic cipher alphabets and the Voynich. Since I don’t think Georgian was the source, understanding Georgian becomes of not so much less importance than understanding Latin Scribal Conventions.
I wanted to convey the idea that for me the subject of Indic languages was very much a digression from the question of the Voynich.
Rene: When you say:
“The best one can say is that these tables *may* have inspired the creator of the Voynich alphabet.”
That is exactly the issue that I was raising: “How do we determine objectively if there is a relationship between the Voynich alphabet and the diplomatic cipher alphabets other than coincidental?”
You use the word “*may*”. However one could use that word with so much to do with the Voynich. The more interesting and challenging question is that of the likelihood that this or that explanation is correct as this forces one to analyse the hypothesis more carefully and thoughtfully. To say something “*may*” be the case in this context is so noncommittal as to be almost superfluous.
I thought I would give a few examples of how I would represent some Voynich characters including gallows characters:
c4scc
c4P
.
c9
These are obviously only visual representations not capable of being spoken. For me personally this could serve as useful in determining what a specific character is when it is unclear and so a step towards creating a framework for all character representation based on diplomatic cipher character representation. Naturally these are my opinions.
I have largely finished my analysis of diplomatic cipher alphabets until I have some more material to work with.
JKP: Repeating that the key is Latin Scribal Connections isn’t any more persuasive than repeating that the connection is Sanskrit, repetition doesn’t make it so, evidence is the key and I guess until you win the lottery we are not going to get any.
If you don’t have the time to work on the Voynich don’t do so, but don’t use it as an excuse to justify a flimsy theory.
JKP: I am reallly not trying to be rude, but you commented on my theory saying you are an expert in this area and that I know nothing about this subject. But you present a theory with next to know evidence which unless you win the lottery or someone else win’s the lottery on your behalf you are not going to provide any more of.
I find this more than a little exasperating. Rather than commenting on my theory I would advise you to put the spare time you have available to work on the Voynich on getting your evidence out there.
Sorry again for my brusqueness it seems possible to me that Latin Scribal Conventions had a loose influence on some of the character set it the Voynich and diplomatic ciphers. However I think you are very far from demonstrating that everything they have in common is also shared with Latin Scribal Conventions.
Mark,
you were in the process of arguing that the observation that some relatives of your candidate MS writer had to do with Visconti ciphers, was a potentially important support of your theory.
So, the logical step is to wonder how much these diplomatic ciphers have to do with the Voynich MS.
The fact that the Voynich MS was certainly not encrypted using such a method is highly relevant for this question.
My observation that such ciphers *may* have inspired the creator of the alphabet isn’t saying very much, but it is exactly as far as I would go.
Finally, I am afraid that you desperately underestimate the accumulated knowledge of JKP with respect to this topic….
Rene:
The point for me is this one: Amongst which alphabets cipher or otherwise are there the most commonalities with the Voynich?
If the answer is diplomatic cipher alphabets then that implies there is more likely to be a connection between the Voynich and those familiar with diplomatic cipher alphabets than anything else, everything else being equal, so we can approach the question without any knowledge of the precise details of the Voynich cipher.
This would imply that there would very likely be a connection between the Voynich and those writing diplomatic ciphers as they would be the most familiar with diplomatic cipher alphabets.
Therefore this would support the idea of a very close connection between the author and those writing diplomatic ciphers, especially if the cipher alphabets they were writing were the most similar, to that we see in the Voynich, of all the cipher alphabets. So for example Milanese cipher alphabets look to be generally much more like the Voynich alphabet than those of other Italian States, from what evidence I have seen, implying potentially a link with Milan.
My hypothesis is that of Milanese cipher alphabets we will see the most commonality with Visconti cipher alphabets of very roughly around 1420 to 1430.
If my hypothesis proves true this would appear to imply a significant link between the Voynich cipher alphabet and the very close relatives of the person that I am interested in.
Given that my identification of authorship had nothing to do with ciphers this would seem to be very strong support of my authorship hypothesis.
To reiterate I see no need to get bogged down by the specifics of the Voynich cipher, which nobody understands, in order to potentially establish a very strong link to diplomatic ciphers or more specifically their alphabets.
As far as JKP goes he may have a vast accumulated knowledge, but I have seen little relevant evidence of it in this specific context. I am much happier with appeals to evidence rather than appeals to authority. If JKP can provide evidence to support his assertion which is, as best I understand it, that the commonalities between the Voynich and diplomatic ciphers are shared with Latin Scribal Conventions that’s great. If however I am supposed to take it on trust on the basis of his supposed expertise that is not how I operate; I apply that perspective to anyone working on the Voynich as I would expect others to apply to me.
Rene:
Additionally if the Voynich author has a connection to those writing diplomatic ciphers it is not unreasonable to think that as well as being influenced by the diplomatic cipher alphabets the author could quite likely have been influenced by diplomatic ciphers themselves.
Regarding JKP, I am sorry if I seem a bit rough, but appeals to authority over argument or evidence I find really frustrating. When it comes to the Voynich I prefer to analyse things myself and decide on that basis. That is not to say I am not prepares to listen to others when they present arguments and evidence, but if they only say “Believe me I am an expert.” I am much more reluctant.
Mark,
I has always seemed to me a basic mis-step in the history of this study that no-one had ever done what you seem to be doing: that is, to seek if one can discover the most elegant explanation for the choice of glyphs (if it was a choice). Obviously all alphabets are likely to have an ‘o’ in them, but such universal forms apart, if you can account for all the Voynich glyphs using just a couple of alphabets and/or cipher systems it is likely to be a helpful pointer to where (and when) the written part of the text was formulated.
I’ve often wondered why this seems not to have been done, given the computing power and enormous amount of available data and technology. Perhaps it’s science fiction, but I’ve often wondered what would happen if a few hundred manuscript-pages from different times, language and so on were fed in as a sort of ‘face recognition’ data-set and then a scan made of some pages of text from the Vms. To adepts that might seem a foolish exercise, but you never know; it might even work. 🙂
Mark, you are asking for advice and opinions, so you get them…
The entire topic of the writing has of course been looked at over many decades, by many people. Not all of that has been written down, and parts have been written down in places that are not easily accessible.
D’Imperio already summarised this in a way in the late 1970’s. Nothing conclusive of course. Both the diplomatic ciphers and the Latin abbreviations are equally likely sources.
In the context of the former you have looked at Tranchedino, but have you looked at Capelli?
I don’t see any “decision” or conclusion coming out of this general area of investigation, but lots of opinions. Maybe not even after (if ever) the text can be read.
Rene: Of course advice and opinions are always welcome, I just can’t promise that I will automatically agree with them.
I would be very happy to look at Capelli. I have tried to find the characters online, but all that I can see is a dictionary with abbreviations, but not showing any actual images of the text corresponding to those abbreviations. And also I have seen one image with what look very vaguely like extended “4P” or “qp” characters.
However to make a real assessment I would think it is vital to see more real images of characters illustrating the Latin abbreviations. It would be great if someone has the link to where I might find them, so I can make my own analysis and comparisons with the appearance of the actual Voynich characters.
I am perfectly happy to compare evidence in favour of the two hypotheses, in fact I think that is important.
Mark: I know you’d be “perfectly happy to compare evidence in favour of the two hypotheses”, but it’s not hard to notice that that would currently only highlight your current lack of any Visconti ciphers. Having said that, the Voynichresearch world seems to be almost entirely populated by stone-throwing glass-house-dwellers, so please just take it as a provocation to try to reduce the glassfulness of your walls. 😉
Mark, René made a very good point when he asked if you have looked at Capelli.
I second his suggestion. It would give you have a broader base from which to assess whether the diplomatic ciphers might be directly or indirectly similar, but make sure you look at the full version, not the abbreviated version.
I just discovered someone has indexed the Capelli abbreviations to make them easier to search:
http://www.hist.msu.ru/Departments/Medieval/Cappelli/
Capelli did an excellent job for his time, it’s a must-read book in paleography, but even this doesn’t cover all the common abbreviations. It is, however, a good starting point.
Nick: Quick update on the Genovese enciphered letter.
I contacted the archive you mentioned and it has been moved again. I was told that Sandra Machiavello from the University of Genoa would know where the letter was, so I have emailed her. I have also contacted Storia Patria Genova to see if they also can help me track down the letter. I explained that I would like a scan or photo of the letter.
As far as finding more examples of Visconti era enciphered letters I wonder how you found out about this letter as I might give me clues as to where to look for other enciphered letters. Is it just a question of systematically looking at listing of letters from various archives? It doesn’t matter if it is laborious I am happy to it. Do you have any other thoughts as to where to look? I have other avenues to explore, but the more the better.
I have emailed Andrea Visconti, but haven’t heard back yet.
Nick: I note the letter was an invitation to the marriage of Filippo Maria Visconti. I wonder if you think that other wedding invitation letters are likely to be something to look for.
Mark: I just Googled italian cipher keywords, nothing too clever. The following should find a few more for you, particularly if you search in Google Books:
“gian galeazzo visconti” OR “filippo maria visconti” “in cifra”
Rene & JKP:
So returning to the question->
Are the Latin Scribal Abbreviations a more likely direct source of the Voynich characters than the diplomatic cipher alphabets?
The first thing that strikes me is that the convention unsurprisingly in most of the Capelli abbreviations is to have a shortened word, maybe with some symbol, superscript or equivalent added, which is obviously very different from what we see in the Voynich. I would have thought if Latin Abbreviations were the root then we would have seen at least one Voynich “character” which appeared as a shorten word, yet done are like this. Now not all the abbreviations are of this form how, but I wonder if the author really only selected abbreviations that were represented in a way like that which we see in the Voynich.
If the Voynich “characters” corresponded to real abbreviations then translation should be easy as we should in some cases be able to identify the words. If the abbreviations have no relationship to the meaning then in what sense are they abbreviations? It would seem strange to take abbreviations with a definite meaning and assign a completely different meaning to them.
By contrast the diplomatic cipher characters have no intrinsic advance meaning. The meaning is assigned largely arbitrarily for a given cipher by the encipherer.
Rene & JKP:
We have no idea as to how much or how little the Voynich cipher has in common with diplomatic ciphers as we can’t decipher it. Clearly it seems markedly different from any diplomatic cipher we know certainly in its output if not its mechanics. However despite this there may actually be a lot in common; we just don’t know.
It seems someone with the mind/brain and interest to write ciphers whether similar or not would be far more likely the kind of person who would have written an enciphered document than someone with a knowledge of latin abbreviations to write an untranslatable document.
Rene & JKP:
Obviously we could get into precisely which “characters” are in common between the Voynich and Latin Abbreviations relative to the “characters” in common between the Voynich and Diplomatic Cipher Alphabets. We could count the number of these and possibly their relative frequencies amongst the overall set of which they are a part.
We could discuss how characters are constructed from smaller parts in the diplomatic ciphers and how abbreviations are normally formed.
This could be done though getting into this detail may be time consuming.
Rene & JKP:
To say that diplomatic cipher alphabets and the Voynich alphabet were both influenced by Latin Scribal Conventions is plausible, but to say that everything they have in common is shared with Latin Scribal Conventions is something quite different. In fact to say Latin Scribal Conventions have more in common with the Voynich than diplomatic cipher alphabets is a third thing. I doubt both the second and third statements are true.
Rene & JKP:
In conclusion I am unconvinced that Latin Scribal Conventions were the direct source or influence on the script we see in the Voynich. Clearly the Latin alphabet and the Arabic numerals play a significant part, but there are characters which do not come from either of these and I believe were essentially made up characters with no direct origin.
Rene & JKP:
I should say that regarding made up characters, I don’t mean that these were necessarily made up by the author of the Voynich, though some characters may have been, but rather that were made up by earlier diplomatic cipher writers and were inherited from them.
I’d just like to add a little comment on the Capelli, and a question about the Visconti cipher(s).
The so-called Capelli is a huge collection of Latin and Italian abbreviations (and ligatures etc.) and as such an invaluable help for paleographers in the field, but has nothing to do with ciphers per se. That doesn’t necessarily mean that a single abbreviation would never have served as a single glyph in an enciphered text, and some of them may appear here and there in diplomatic and non-diplomatic ciphers, but as a system it’s more than unlikely. Otherwise it would be well known and documented. So far, the study of the Capelli might be a good introduction for amateurs to get familiar with late medieval writing systems, although it’s not of much help for the comprehension of the VM.
If it comes to the supposed enciphered Visconti letters: as far as I konw there is no physical evidence left of them, they are only mentioned by some early 20th century authors (as an outcome of their studies of the Visconti). Am I wrong / badly informed? If yes, I would appreciate it very much if someone could name me a reliable source for the existence of these ciphers.
Charlotte:
As far as the Capelli, I agree with you, I merely researched them, because Rene and JKP stated that they might be/are the source of the Voynich script.
On the subject of the enciphered Visconti letters, most Visconti records were destroyed when the Castello di Porta Giova was destroyed. However I know of some letters intercepted by the Papacy. I have read of other letters.
But more importantly Nick has directed me to a letter in the Genoa archive, see Nick’s link above, which I have contacted and with luck they will email me a photo/scan next week of this particular enciphered letter on the marriage of Filippo Maria Visconti. I have also been researching other archives to contact. If you are interested I would certainly value someone else’s assistance.
The VMS includes glyphs that are morphologically consistent with Latin letters (a, o, i, possibly u, c…).
It also includes glyphs that are morphologically consistent with Latin abbreviations and ligatures (EVA-m, EVA-r, EVA-s, EVA-y, EVA-ch, gallows-k and the tail on dain).
.
Scribal abbreviations were an integral part of a scribe’s mindset and of the Latin “alphabet” in those days. And not just Latin scribes… Indic scribes applied many of the same concepts, as well. It’s difficult to find a page and sometimes even a paragraph or sentence that does NOT use Latin abbreviations in 15th-century manuscripts.
Thus, I think Capelli is very relevant to the study of the VMS. If the scribes who penned it were familiar with Latin letter-shapes and Latin abbreviation-shapes (which they clearly were), then it’s possible some of the glyphs are intended to be expanded in the same general way, and no amount of 1-to1 substitution is going to yield useful information about the text.
Researchers who don’t understand the concepts in Capelli are not going to recognize which glyphs are part of the common Latin repertoire. They will see only the VMS vowel-shapes and EVA-e as Latin and will wrongly assume the others are foreign characters when most of them are not.
Mark,
not sure if I can answer all the questions, but Charlotte is right. The point of referring to Capelli is that, similarly to the Tranchedino (and other) cipher alphabets, the symbols that have been used for these scribal abbreviations may have inspired a person into putting together the Voynich alphabet.
Whether the cipher symbols were more important than the abbreviations, or the other way around, is something I would not want to argue. For one thing, there is an even larger group of characters in the Voynich alphabet that look like ‘plain old’ letters or numbers.
At one point you asked for an example of a text with abbreviations. My favourite one is a MS in the Vatican called Vat.Lat.869:
https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Vat.lat.869
I think it is Latin but I can’t read anything.
Vat. Lat. 869 is a very good example what Beinecke 408 is, highly abbreviated and using its own set of abbr., but B. 408 is a scientific, not a theological ms., you can compare it with the abbr. sets the legal mss. are using., it is the same technique.
Rene: yes, Vat.lat.869 is in Latin. It is a philosophical discourse of the soul (de anima) and the animated body, and I can read it. No, to be honest, I have a transcription of some of the most important parts of it before me. I couldn’t read anything either without a little help from old Capelli, and even with the Capelli a good part of it would remain unreadable to me since I’m not trained for that kind of mss. At least it would be a tremendous piece of work to get it transcribed myself.
JKP: on the contrary, it is absolutely not “difficult to find a page and sometimes even a paragraph or sentence that does NOT use Latin abbreviations in 15th-century manuscripts”. There are thousands of mss not using Latin abbreviations just because they are not wirtten in Latin, but in German, French, Italian and other languages.
It is clear that most of the scribes got their education in monastic scriptoria, and were of course trained in Latin as the main language not only for books, but also for documents, correspondence and administration. Nevertheless, with the increasing amount of vernacular mss they also got trained in writing their native language as well – by still using the Latin scribal system/alphabet. From a serious paleographic point of view it is therefore not possible to generalize the use of Latin letters, symbols and/or abbreviations and ligatures.
Rene & JKP:
I think unfortunately we need to break this down:
The source of the Voynich alphabet could be medieval algebra or the result of someone musing as they look at the different shapes their spagetti makes as they twirl it on their plate. However the question is what is the most likely source for the shapes we see? I, of course, unlike Rene think this is a question that we will know the answer to.
I think systematically someone would need to go character by character of the Voynich alphabet and try to explain the origin of each character in terms of either the Latin Scribal Abbreviations or the diplomatic cipher alphabets; I also see no reason not to include the rare characters as part of this process as long as they are clearly readable. In the case where there is no direct analog with the Voynich alphabet there needs to be an explanation provided as to how that character might have been arrived at. I have done and can do this for the diplomatic cipher alphabets, but I have not seen anything of the kind done for the Latin Scribal Abbreviations.
Rene & JKP:
Obviously someone could say that the author made up all the characters from his/her own imagination without any source of inspiration. This is possible, but the question is what is the likelihood of any explanation being true?
What is the source of best fit?
Again I think this can be amenable to more rigourous analysis by considering frequencies and probabilities. Question like how common a certain abbreviation was and how common a diplomatic cipher character was as well as how common a Voynich character is, are worth asking.
JKP:
So to clarify, do you think that the Voynich characters were derived from Latin abbreviations whilst not retaining the meaning of the abbreviations and subsequently used as arbitrary characters in a cipher?
Or do you think it is not a cipher?
Mark,
I am not trying to stop you in any way, but it is important to be aware all the time of the difference between knowing and thinking/suspecting.
Mark,
I really don’t want to offend you, but I’m afraid that your obvious lack of paleographic experience will lead you into the wrong direction. There is no such alternative as “either the Latin Scribal Abbreviations or the diplomatic cipher alphabets” because this would exclude most characters which are simple “plain old” Latin characters, as Rene mentioned them above. Even the so-called Gallows have a clear origin and purpose. An explanation of the origin of the Voynich alphabet is not needed at all because every experienced paleographer can recognize its origin at a first glance. The secret of the writing system of the VM lies in the use of the characters and not in their origin. Plain and simple.
Sorry for writing this, but I hope it will help you to see the undeniable paelographical facts a little clearer now.
Good luck for your Visconti research!
Rene:
I understand, but I feel in your approach you do not view things in terms of probabilities, which can make this terminology rather vague.
What do “knowing”, “thinking” or “suspecting” mean in a scientific context? I am not quite sure.
When you say X “may” be true, “may” covers all probabilities from it is true to it is not true. So the statement is virtually a tautology i.e. without wishing to cause offense, almost not worth saying at all.
Whilst this is not a pure science I think we must try to keep our eye or aim on how we can resolve these questions pertaining to the Voynich rigourously. It may not always be possible, but rigour should be our goal in trying to determine which theories are more or less probable. We need to analyse arguments and the assumptions on which they are based and I think by doing these things progress can be made.
I feel your “it could be this or it could be that who can say” approach is almost a barrier to progress as it tacitly implies that these question are like great philosophical/existential mysteries which can never be resolved.
I am not trying to be hard on you, but I think we all need to positively try to think of ways we can start to resolve these many questions rather than shrugging our shoulders.
Mark asked: “So to clarify, do you think that the Voynich characters were derived from Latin abbreviations whilst not retaining the meaning of the abbreviations and subsequently used as arbitrary characters in a cipher? Or do you think it is not a cipher?”
I think that the majority of the characters were derived from the 1) Latin alphabet, and 2) Latin scribal abbreviations/ligatures/symbols, and 3) a smaller percentage of Greek and math.
Note that there are many many overlaps between Latin and Greek scribal abbreviations. Latin scribes adapted many of the Greek conventions and even some of the specific shapes, so some of them are indistinguishable from one another. The VMS leans toward those used in Latin.
I do not think the VMS characters necessarily retain the same meaning as Latin scribal conventions (Latin conventions were used to write dozens of languages and scribes sometimes massaged the meaning of the abbreviation or ligature to fit the local language). The creator may have borrowed the concepts of expansion without the specifics.
The structure of the text does not fit the patterns of natural language. In addition to a very high level of repetition, there is a high preponderance of certain glyphs occurring only in certain positions in the word—in far higher incidences than western languages or even eastern syllabic languages.
If it is a cipher of a natural language, then the spaces might not be spaces, the vowels aren’t necessarily vowels, and some of the shapes that look similar but have small variations might represent different symbols (which would partly explain the entropy), otherwise it’s hard to see any correspondence to a ciphered language.
If it is based on numbers, then it is not simple substitution from numbers to letters (if it were, it could be decrypted as easily as letters-for-letters codes). If it’s numbers, some kind of positional precedence is at work (as we might see in Roman numerals, for example, where position influences meaning).
If it is a synthetic language that uses (or does not use) Latin conventions, then it is unique and likely to keep us busy for some time.
Charlotte:
You certainly do not offend me! Thanks for caring.
I must confess to being more confused.
First of all, of course I realise that standard letters of the alphabet and numerals appear in the Voynich as they do in the cipher alphabets; whilst technically they are not “abbreviations” I assumed others would realise their inclusion, as to say “latin abbreviations and normal letters of the alphabet and numerals” is very long to write.
When you say “The so-called Gallows have a clear origin and purpose” to me that is obvious. Of course they have an origin and of course they have a purpose. So I am not quite sure what you mean by this.
When you say “An explanation of the origin of the Voynich alphabet is not needed at all because every experienced paleographer can recognize its origin at a first glance.” Can you tell what its origin is then as that would clear it up?
When you say “The secret of the writing system of the VM lies in the use of the characters and not in their origin.” I think this depends on what you mean by ‘secret’. In addition knowing their origin may well lead one to uncover the secret of how the characters funcfion in the Voynich.
I do appreciate your comment Charlotte, but what you describe as “the undeniable paelographical facts” seem to include statements that are obvious and statements which are just not true.
For me finding the precise origin of the Voynich alphabet is of vital practical usefulness as it can be used to determine the time and place from which the Voynich originates; different cipher alphabets were used at different times and in different places. The reason I am looking for the Visconti letters is precisely for the purpose of determining if the hypothesis that the same characters used in the Voynich were more commonly used in Filippo Maria Visconti’s Milanese ciphers ,than any other ciphers of a different time or place, is true or not. This is also where the debate over whether “Latin Scribal Abbreviations and letters of the latin and greek alphabet and arabic numerals” or diplomatic cipher alphabets are the source from which the Voynich characters originate directly or were inspired by, fits in.
I hope I have made the motivations and directions of this specific research more transparent.
Mark:
The BNF has Visconti letters in cipher, f.e. this one (Galeazzo Visconti):
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b9060156p/f188.item.zoom
You can find more (“visconti”, “chiffre”) here: http://archivesetmanuscrits.bnf.fr
Thomas:
Thanks a lot for that your assistance is really helpful, I will investigate!
Thomas: Unfortunately if I understand it correctly the letter you mention is with reference to a Galeazzo Visconti who was an envoy to Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor i the early 16th century.
Anyway I will search the website as you suggest for other possible letters, so your assistance has still been of value.
What I am most interested in is enciphered letters linked to Filippo Maria Visconti, Duke of Milan from 1412 to 1447.
Charlotte & JKP:
With regard to diplomatic cipher alphabets one doesn’t really need to rely on other sources. They often use the symbols that we find in the latin alphabet, arabic numerals, the greek alphabet as well as other sources. But what is important is the diplomatic cipher alphabets used in for example Milan was generally different to those used in Florence. Similarly the cipher alphabets used at the beginning of the 15th century were different from those used at the end of the 15th century. Because of this I contend that by looking at the Voynich alphabet and comparing it with diplomatic cipher alphabets we can isolate the time and the place where Voynich symbols were most commonly to be found in diplomatic cipher alphabets.
Of course the difficulty that this presents is that we have relatively incomplete cipher records for certain times and places. Hence my particularly interest in enciphered letters from the time of Filippo Maria Visconti, ideally within roughly the era 1418 to 1433, as letters from this period I would expect to have most symbols in common with the Voynich.
JKP: I feel the only way you can bolster your case is going systematically through the Voynich characters identifying their point of origin. Otherwise it just becomes such a vague amorphous argument that it is hard to support or deny.
You say: “it’s hard to see any correspondence to a ciphered language”, well if it was easy it would have been solved by now.
Diane:
Sorry for not replying to your comment until now. What you have said is really interesting.
When I first got interested in the Voynich I wondered which alphabet it was most similar to, so I as I imagine many other people did looked at lots of alphabets online. At the time the idea of a cipher was not in my head, mainly because I had no awareness that complex cipher alphabets were created and used in the medieval/renaissance. I have some knowledge of moden encipherment techniques which operate in a very different way. Of all the alphabets that I looked at the Glatolitic alphabet seemed to be the most visually similar to me. So I wondered if the Voynich alphabet was one of the many variants of the Glatolitic alphabet. In fact the Croatian Glatolitic alphabet has a symbol like the 4o in it. However I did not manage to find evidence of a form of the Glatolitic alphabet which seemed to fit more closely. In addition at that time my interest was in the Eastern Mediterranean which fits with the area in which the Glatolitic alphabet would have been used. I should say that this was in the very early days of my research. Anyway I felt this line of research was really going nowhere mainly as I could not make sense as to where I thought the Voynich “map” corresponded to. Now, I should say, I believe the connection to the Glatolitic alphabet is slim to none.
Moving swiftly on my analysis became heavily influenced by Nick’s which has lead to my interest in cipher alphabets more recently. Having learnt more about these cipher alphabets there seemed to be a much stronger connection than that with the Glatolitic alphabet especially on close inspection. It is not just that we see dinstinctive symbols in common, but much more importantly the way that characters are constructed fits very neatly with the Voynich. There may be other alphabets which are a better fit, but I haven’t seen them yet, though of course there are many obscure alphabets. So without further evidence the diplomatic cipher alphabets seem to me the best place to look.
The kind of thing that you suggested is very broadly speaking along the lines of my own thinking.
I find it frustrating that questions that can be resolved are left unresolved. If someone says “Oh, well, it looks like the Cyrillic alphabet to me” we ought to be able to in someway validate whether it looks more or less like the Cyrillic alphabet than for example the Hebrew alphabet. These comparisons can be broken down and analysed and in some cases I think there is scope for the use of image recogintion related techniques. Otherwise we are left with “I say the symbol looks like this drawing and you say the symbol looks like that drawing. And who is to say who is right?” There are definite ways to determine to what extend one character looks like another or not.
Everyone has a different approach and there are very many angles that you can approach the Voynich from. I have focussed most heavily and in great detail on the 9 rosette foldout. My knowledge and study of many other parts of the Voynich have been very limited at best. My study of the 9 rosette foldout has probably been in more depth than anyone’s. The origin of the characters is something that I have taken interest in.
The Voynich is such a long and rich document that I have not got to grips with all of it. However I am not even sure that is an advantage at this stage as it could clutter my vision.
Mark,
thank you for making your point more transparent to me.
I could, of course, answer your questions in detail, but please accept that I don’t have the time to do so. I’m actually writing a comprehensive paleographic analysis of the VM (including a lot of pictures and examples) that will be published on my website. Any short explanation (without illustrations) here on Nick’s blog wouldn’t get you anywhere.
Nick:
I have read the following->(GOOGLE TRANSLATED)
“But some examples are found earlier, in correspondence with the Duke of Milan Filippo Maria Visconti, of the period in which the Aragonese and negotiations to open the way to its expansionist aims. In one case we read the annotation at the end of the document fuit expedita in cifra 21, and Alfonso himself apologized to the duke for the delay with which he wrote because he had wanted to personally process the cipher, a sign that such communications were of a very confidential nature and secret that the risk of leaking the slightest detail could not be allowed.”
21 Reg. 2650, f. 27
This was written by Vilia Speranza at the University of Barcelona
I believe these letters are in the Archivo de la Corona de Aragón.
—-
Now multiple letters are referred to and this section of the paper refers exclusively to enciphered letters, though only one is described in detail from King Alfonso to Filippo Maria Visconti. I assume Alfonso -> Filippo was a different cipher from Filippo -> Alfonso. Is this true or would they use the same cipher for their communication between themselves? If not I hope amongst these letters there are letters from Filippo to Alfonso.
I will chase these up. It looks like the letters are dated to around 1438. Whilst 1438 is not exactly my “sweet spot” is terms of it not being around the 1420s Milanese enciphered letters from the period are still very much worth seeing.
Charlotte:
I await your analysis. Thanks
Mark wrote: “JKP: I feel the only way you can bolster your case is going systematically through the Voynich characters identifying their point of origin. Otherwise it just becomes such a vague amorphous argument that it is hard to support or deny.”
I don’t need to bolster my case. I’m interested in solving the VMS, not giving free lessons. I’ve already identified each one to my own satisfaction. Those who know Capelli recognize the shapes instantly. For those with a background in this area, I don’t have to write anything at all. I’ve written several blogs on it out of a sense of courtesy, to give something back to the Voynich community, not to convince anyone of anything.
I don’t think you realize how time-consuming it is to learn paleography. What takes years to learn cannot be explained in five minutes, just as one cannot teach someone to play a violin in five minutes.
It takes me hours to write up each letter so that the evolution of the shape and its use are clear to someone who 1) doesn’t know how to read Latin text 2) doesn’t know how to read MEDIEVAL Latin/French/German/Italian/Spanish/Czech/Middle English (all of which use Latin scribal abbreviations) 3) doesn’t know how to read medieval handwriting, and 4) doesn’t know how to recognize or expand Latin abbreviations (which are sometimes expanded differently, depending on the language).
I saw you steering a course without considering one possible origin of both the VMS and diplomatic ciphers and I thought I might be able to help. If you don’t believe me, that’s your prerogative. I don’t need to say more about it.
JKP:
It is clear your line of enquiry is a lot of work. It is fortunate for me that identifying links with diplomatic cipher alphabets is so very much easier.
If you are not interested in giving free lessons you should probably not encourage someone to investigate a line of research which you are unable or unwilling to back up. It will save you time and them.
If you are satisfied with your own analysis that is great.
I must say I have looked through Capelli and I don’t recognize many of the Voynich shapes there. I don’t see how having a background in this area will change my eyesight.
I am not particularly focused on the origin of writing. I am sure that it is fascinating to learn Cuniform or other ancient scripts, but as far as Voynich research goes is largely irrelevant. Similarly I am interested in which script directly influenced the Voynich. If that direct influence is diplomatic cipher alphabets it doesn’t matter what some of the original influences on diplomatic cipher alphabets might have been.
It is not of much help to dangle an idea in front of someone and then at the moment that person asks you to justify or explain your idea you refuse.
I’m sorry you see it that way.
To each his own.
D’Imperio’s view, broadly speaking, was that the Voynich script was derived from Western European alchemical symbols, mediaeval Latin abbreviations (she also cites Cappelli), and perhaps some ‘Arabic’ numerals.
Is the general consensus here that this is basically right?
SirHubert:
I would say no.
I think it depends what one means. I believe the script was directly derived from diplomatic cipher alphabets, but the extent to which those diplomatic cipher alphabets may have been influenced by Western European alchemical symbols, mediaeval Latin abbreviations (as in Cappelli), and perhaps some ‘Arabic’ numerals is a whole other debate and obviously one I am somewhat less focused on. Some others may think the script was directly derived from Western European alchemical symbols, mediaeval Latin abbreviations (as in Cappelli), and perhaps some ‘Arabic’ numerals and that diplomatic cipher alphabets had no influence.
As Rene has pointed out there is not a consensus and it is a geninue debate.
Nick: I am waiting to hear back some time this week on the Genoa letter.
I have begun trying to track down the enciphered correspondence between Filippo Maria Visconti and King Alfonso of Aragon, Sardinia, Corsica, Sicily & other territories in what we now call Spain. These are in the Archivo de la Corona de Aragón. Coincidentally my brother is in Barcelona at the moment doing research so he may be of use in tracking them down.
Still looking for other correspondence. I will also try and chase up the intercepted letters to Guarniero Castiglione and the letters from Marcolino Barbavara.
JKP: No hard feelings. I hope I didn’t offend you. I just like to get to the bottom of things, so the merits of both theories can be analysed in detail rather than be left in the nebulous area of “I say, You say”.
However if you don’t want to explore the subject in more detail that is all fine by me. I am very happy to leave it be.
Mark wrote: “I just like to get to the bottom of things, so the merits of both theories can be analysed in detail rather than be left in the nebulous area of “I say, You say”.
However if you don’t want to explore the subject in more detail that is all fine by me. I am very happy to leave it be.”
Mark, on the one hand you say you like to get on the bottom of things and explore them in detail, and then on the other hand you said you looked at Capelli and didn’t see any commonalities. It’s not possible to just look at Capelli.
If you like to explore things in detail, then spend a couple of months with Capelli so you can learn to recognize the most common scribal conventions. They are not just odd shapes that have to be memorized—it is a system of concepts that can be applied in a flexible way once it is learned.
Once you begin to grasp the conceptual basis of the ligatures and abbreviations, then it’s possible to recognize them as they are used in different languages and different scribal hands. Scribes made judgment calls on how to apply them, but they could read each other’s texts. As I said before, EVA-ch, EVA-y, EVA-k, EVA-r, EVA-s, the double-c shape, and the tail on dain, are all common Latin scribal conventions. Very common.
The similarity between the VMS and the scribal conventions is not accidental. EVA-y, for example, is sometimes drawn inline with the text and sometimes superscripted, and usually occurs at the end, but sometimes at the beginning, and the very same thing happens in the VMS. EVA-r is sometimes written with a loop, sometimes with a crossed leg (they have different meanings) and the same thing happens in the VMS. Also, 4o is a Latin abbreviation for quarto, 4th degree, and a couple of other meanings and yes, it did show up in the 14th century, prior to the VMS—not often, but since the shape has its roots in Indic-Arabic numbers which were already in use in the 12th century, this form of “4” occurred in scientific texts (especially compotus and astrology texts) sooner than in mainstream and religious texts and was reasonably well-known by the 15th century.
JKP,
you wrote: “Once you begin to grasp the conceptual basis of the ligatures and abbreviations, then it’s possible to recognize them as they are used in different languages and different scribal hands.”
This is not at all correct because Adriano Capelli only collected Latin and Italian abbreviations in his “Dizionario di abbreviature latine ed italiane”, and nothing from different other languages. Furthermore is there no such thing as a conceptual basis, but a variety of conventions as they appeared in the Middle Ages together with the development of the (more fluent) cursive writing and the increasing use of paper instead of parchment. So the Capelli is only a tool and a source of examples, and nothing more.
As I said before: “So far, the study of the Capelli might be a good introduction for amateurs to get familiar with late medieval writing systems, although it’s not of much help for the comprehension of the VM.”
To understand the conceptual development of writing during the ages, i.e. the Middle Ages, takes more than to flip through the Capelli. Referred to the VM it is also useless to look for similarities as long as neither Latin nor Italian (or a mixture of both) has been identified as the underlying language.
JKP:
Quoting you “you said you looked at Capelli and didn’t see ANY commonalities.”
What I actually said was “I have looked through Capelli and I do not recognize MANY of the Voynich shapes there.”
Your statement is just a straw man of what I actually said.
JKP: For someone not fond of giving “free lessons” you are very keen to expound on your theory when it suits you.
However when you are challenged then “you will only reply if you win the lottery or won’t give away your secrets or you don’t provide free lessons” and so on with other excuses, as you say you are just doing this as a courtesy to give back to the Voynich community. Please!
You presented your theory as a criticism of my own not vice versa. I cannot justify spending time researching all the other theories independently where I am already inclined to the view that they are not correct, especially when it is unclear what the complete theory actually is, due to in potentially being able to incorporate a limitless number of scripts or sources for characters. I asked you as it is your theory and I thought it would help if you could justify the source of each character to pin down the specifics. If you are unwilling to elaborate on your theory then it proves well nigh impossible for me to second guess your reasoning. It seems you are working from a seemingly infinite source of abbreviations and other sources, so it is not really surprising that you find some which look very similar to Voynich characters. By contrast the diplomatic cipher alphabets represent a much more streamlined and tight source for Voynich characters as opposed to the loose amorphous and ever expanding range of sources you seem to be drawing on.
Given this all I really think this topic is not worth persuing further and we would both be better off leaving it be and just saying “we agree to disagree”.
Mark,
you wrote earlier:
“… I feel in your approach you do not view things in terms of probabilities.”
Quite the contrary. You may read at this page:
http://www.voynich.nu/solution.html
and in particular also the link to “Classification of solutions” just how much my views on the MS are based on probabilities, and the fact that we cannot really estimate them. It also answers your questions on the meaning of “knowing”, “thinking” or “suspecting”.
My concern is that people try to force a solution on questions that cannot (yet) be answered, based on assumptions and hypothesis that are not really confirmed.
It’s better to have an unanswered question, which forces one to keep searching, than to assume a wrong answer, and stop searching.
I believe that the last has been happening on a rather large scale, and this, combined with the fact that there clearly isn’t a simple answer, is responsible for the lack of success in explaining the Voynich MS text.
Ants. Search for abbreviations is wrong. Manuscript 408 are not abbreviations. Second. Ants do not know what the character is ilke. You can not correctly identify the letter that manuscript is written in. And that’s very bad. You are always at the beginning. Everything you write here is bad.
As I wrote to you years age.
Michal Hadbank Voynich writes very clearly in the letter. The book is a Czech book.
Michal worked on the manuscript for 16 years. He also found part of the code. Of course, he discovered a possible author of the manuscript. Everything is written in a letter to Yale ( Beinecke ).
The manuscript has nothing to do witch Italy. 🙂
Charlotte Auer wrote: “Furthermore is there no such thing as a conceptual basis, but a variety of conventions as they appeared in the Middle Ages together with the development of the (more fluent) cursive writing and the increasing use of paper instead of parchment. So the Capelli is only a tool and a source of examples, and nothing more. ”
We are on the same page, Charlotte. You and I agree on this.
Maybe I didn’t word it clearly enough, but I was not saying that Capelli was showing the conceptual basis. Capelli is examples, exactly as you say.
What I was trying to say is that the scribal conventions themselves are conceptual. They follow a set of conventions that can be learned even if one has not seen all the examples, which is why scribes can apply them differently and yet still read each other’s texts.
I should have put a an extra line-space between sentences to separate the Capelli examples information from what I said about the conceptual underpinnings of the scribal conventions so as not to make it look like I was trying to equate them—I wasn’t.
Rene: (I sent you an email prior to reading your message)
First of all I think I should say that in practice I haven’t really broached the questions you raise in your “Classification of solutions” as your solutions are really focused on the contents of the text, a subject I am yet to attack.
My approach has been broadly speaking:
Analysis of 9 Rosette Foldout Page -> Theory of Authorship and Geographical Basis for the Manuscript
Authorship & Geography -> Diplomatic cipher alphabets
I have then merely conjectured that if the script relates to diplomatic cipher alphabets the author was most likely acquainted with ciphers and that it is most likely the case that the manuscript contains a cipher even if it is distinct to an unknown extent from the precise way in which diplomatic ciphers were enciphered.
So in some sense my tree is very different from any described in your list.
I think probabilites can and must be estimated. I think this can better be done by drilling down into the details of each argument and considering the likelihood of each scenario. It is better to make conscious explicit estimates of probabilities than subconscious estimates, which one is otherwise left doing.
Obviously your theory or more properly metatheory is a not unreasonable framework to work in.
One assumption, a little similar to the one you outlined, that I have made is that the 9 Rosette Foldout contains a meaningful drawing.
But questions such as this can be explored by considering things like:
Contemporary Precedent For Manfactured Meaningless Texts
Human psychology of the Production of Meaningless Texts
An investigation of the history of meaningless texts and how well that fits with the context of the Voynich
Frequency of Manufactured Texts, are they very rare or quite common?
And more.
(These ideas are just off the top of my head, but I am sure with thought there are other lines of enquiry to be explored.)
Your tree obviously can be broken down into sub-branches and sub-sub-branches etc. drilling into each question in more detail until you are at a stage where you have a good idea of realistic likelihood estimates.
I am concerned by your can’t estimate probabilities approach as I feel it can lead to stagnation as you are presented with a myriad of possibilities one of which you are unwilling to say is more likely than the next. The idea that probabilities can’t be estimated except when the end solution is realised, which will of course be given a probability of 1, leads one with no guide to explore the solution space. This lack of direction of exploration inevitably leads to stagnation.
Obviously you have expressed a theory about the 9 Rosette Foldout which relies on the same assumption as mine that the drawing is meaningful. In fact your theory relies on a lot of assumptions as does mine. So you are operating in the same way as I am in that regard. Making assumptions is fine as long as one attempts to justify them to one’s satisfaction.
Rene: I should say that your approach is good for someone overseeing the research of others and giving advice. I think is bad for a researcher as it leads to stagnation as I have already stated. So I guess it just depends what you see your role as. Both roles are valid.
Mark,
I just wanted to point out to you that, generally speaking, I am much more careful when it comes to placing value on assumptions. This applies as much to questions about details as to the larger questions.
There’s a great risk of thinking in circles, and self-fulfilling prophesies, if one uses the same assumptions in the definition of hypotheses and in testing them.
I never said that the Voynich MS symbols were *not* inspired cipher symbols, but I am skeptical about how certain one can be about that. Whether this means that the Voynich MS author was closely involved with diplomatic ciphers is therefore a rather weak argument. It is not evidence, but a further hypothesis with an unknown probability of being true.
Nick,
concerning your call for help, I just remembered that Paul Oskar Kristeller’s “Iter Italicum – A Finding List of Uncatalogued Or Incompletely Catalogued Humanistic Manuscripts of the Renaissance in Italian and Other Libraries” might be one of the bibliographical sources you’re looking for.
This is the most comprehensive list of that kind of mss that I’m aware of, but it’s really not much of fun to work with. At least as I remember boring hours spent in libraries long ago.
Fortunately the whole edition is available online here, including search functions I’d have dreamed of those days:
https://www.itergateway.org/resources/iter-italicum
Charlotte: it’s a really fantastic resource, but one that’s behind a subscription paywall. 🙁
Nick: Quick Update->
I am still waiting on the Genoa letter.
However here are more details of the other document (s) I am waiting the here on:
Archivo de la Corona de Aragón, Barcelona
Real Cancilleria
Registros Alfonso el Magnanimo
Curiae 1-22
Registri 2650 Folio 27
These are the details of the location of an enciphered letter from King Alfonso V to Duke of Milan Filippo Maria Visconti. However I have read that there are other examples of enciphered correspondence between to two there though I don’t know which precise folios they would be in, but that is explained in my request.
I would assume that the same cipher was used from Alfonso to Filippo as was used from Filippo to Alfonso. Do you think that should be the case?
Other references which may be of interest to someone looking for diplomatic ciphers:
Cryptographie by Jean Richard, in L’Histoire et ses méthodes – Ençiclopédie de
la Pléiade, Parigi 1961
Cryptographie dans l’Antiquité et le Haut Moyen Age by Jean Richard
Gallimard, 1961
Something which might be of interest:
Crittografia Fiorentina by Pietro Gabrielli, Raccolta manoscritta, Archivio Secreto, Firenze.
Nick: I have uploaded more of Volume I of Lydia Cerioni and I think what I have uploaded now in the folder “Letters” is likely to be of most interest to you.
I have scanned everything that I think I need to. However I may scan what is left in “Volume I” just in case.
I could probably benefit from some of your input regarding a few questions that I have regarding some of the entries in Cerioni.
Perhaps surprisingly I haven’t yet studied in detail everything that I have scanned, preferring to get the scanning done before I have to return the books. Organising these scans has been a very tedious and time consuming progress, however I think a worthwhile one as I think it is very likely that I will want to be able to refer to these books in the future. It has slightly postponed other aspects of my research, but I think justifiably.
Anyway have you managed to download the scans?
Thoughts on extended or rare characters:
It has been argued that the Voynich does not have a comparable number of characters to the diplomatic cipher alphabets.
I have given one explanation is the superfluous nature of the single word characters that we see in the diplomatic cipher alphabets in the context of a herbal manuscript.
I have also pointed out that when the extended/rare characters are included one arrives at a much larger character set. However it has been pointed out that some of these characters are very rare. So what function do they serve?
Well looking through the lens of the diplomatic cipher alphabets they could be used to further obsure a word the author thought might otherwise be spotted i.e. they could represent nulls or more likely an alternative to a given letter. It is conceivable that some went out of use as the author decided they were unnecessary. Given the complex nature of the cipher the author only needed to use these characters occassionally and the rest of the cipher was sufficient to obsure the meaning. I should say that I have noticed some of these characters occuring often in diplomatic cipher alphabets.
Mark, I can’t speak for all diplomatic ciphers, but a typical Tranchedino cipher, included about 80 characters.
Plus, it isn’t just the sheer variety of characters that is important… substitution codes have a certain “look and feel” because they are composed the same way as natural languages, even when tricks are used to obscure the correspondence of the letters to the symbols.
In the systems collected by Tranchedino, there is significantly more variety in the positioning of the characters than in the VMS. This effect is increased (rather than decreased) by the one-to-many nature of the basic cipher alphabet.
Take ten minutes and write out a couple of sentences in any of the Tranchedino systems. You can find an example here:
http://voynichportal.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/TranchedinoCode.png
The “look and feel” will be far more more similar to the Copiale cipher than to Voynichese.
JKP: I am not saying the Voynich is precisely the same kind of subsitution cipher that we see in the Tranchedino; of course it is not. But it has a lot in common with regard to the characters/symbols used. And I speculate that it has probably inherited some features of the kind of substitution cipher one sees in the Tranchedino. As far as the number of characters used given the dating of the manuscript to the early 15th century as opposed to the Tranchedino which is dated to the later 15th century one would expect that the number of characters used overall would be lower.
However one thing I wanted to mention in this regard is Nick’s quote:
“I remembered Aloysius Meister’s ‘Die Anfange Der Modernen Diplomatischen Geheimschrift’ (1902): p.30 contains a (surprisingly complex, I think) Milanese cipher key and nomenclator dated 14th March 1448, with the reference “Mailand, Staatsarchiv. Pot. Est. Cifre Fasc. 2 Nr 5.”
I do think Nick has generally underestimated the sophisticated of pre-sforza Milanese ciphers.
So in conclusion I believe the Voynich has inherited features of early 15th century diplomatic ciphers, however the cipher has in addition at the very least one very novel aspect to it which accounts for the differences that one sees.
JKP: It is a little while since I made a vague guesstimate of the number of characters in the Voynich. How many Voynich characters do you believe there are in total?
As I mentioned, the early diplomatic ciphers documented by Tranchedino include a huge number of characters and even though each of the ciphers used the same basic system of substitution, they constantly varied the character mappings, which means they used almost every shape conceivable at the time (Greek, Latin, astrology, alchemy, imaginative). In other words, they don’t just overlap some of the Voynich glyphs (most of which are Latin), they overlap with pretty much every other western cipher in terms of basic shapes.
—
As for how many characters comprise the VMS set, it depends how one interprets them. Are benched gallows one character, two characters, or three?
I would say there are about 17 basic characters and another dozen or so, depending on how (and if) one breaks down characters that resemble ligatures and abbreviations. If the length of tails is interpreted as meaningful, then there are more, but they do not provide the kind of variety found in the diplomatic ciphers (or any natural language), because they are always in the same position in the token.
I don’t think the novelty of the VMS is based on some unique addition to other common methods. I think there is something unique about the basic structure of the VMS that sets it apart from other systems.
JKP: That is where you are wrong the Tranchedino cipher alphabets show a significant overlap with the Voynich whilst, as I have stated previously, cipher alphabets for other time periods and other states do not.
So when you say: “they used almost every shape conceivable at the time (Greek, Latin, astrology, alchemy, imaginative). In other words, they don’t just overlap some of the Voynich glyphs (most of which are Latin), they overlap with pretty much every other western cipher in terms of basic shapes.”
you are incorrect.
I have listed some of the common shared shapes before, although without using images it makes it a little difficult to illustrate that.
Well my perception is that there are a significantly larger number of characters than you suggest; when I have a moment I will do a count.
Well, I’m not going to argue it verbally. It’s a waste of time. It has to be done with pictures or the conversation is meaningless, and I don’t have time to create charts right now.
Also, in terms of counting individual VMS characters, there are a handful that are so rare, they are almost not worth mentioning, and even if one includes them in the count, the rare ones are, like the others, Latin and Greek. Even the really unusual one (the one that looks like a landscape/mountain with a little dot/hook above it) is a Greek scribal abbreviation and the one that looks like an “a” without a crossbar with a stem across the top is both Latin and Greek.
I just did a rough count of the characters on the cipher system documented by Tranchedino on folio 1r. There are more than 240 glyphs, a high proportion derived from Latin and Greek letters and abbreviations.
There are Latin abbreviations for -is -em per pro con-/com-/-us/-um et on about a third of the characters. Some are numbers, some are Latin and Greek letters, some are math symbols, a few are runic. Many are combinations of two symbols. That covers most of them.
The cipher documented on the next page, folio 1v, is similar in overall shapes, but the individual shapes and combinations are different. It includes almost 220 characters.
.
There’s a great deal of Latin and Greek influence. There doesn’t appear to be any Arabic or Indic influence (other than Indic numbers that were in general use in Europe by that time).
So, in just two of the more than 320 documented ciphers, there are almost 500 different characters or character-combinations. It’s inevitable that there will be some repetition in such a large number of ciphers, but they did a pretty good job of coming up with new ideas for shapes for a significant number of them. There are thousands of glyphs.
JKP: As you say without your charts it is a largely pointless discussion. I have not seen the commonality you describe with the abbreviations.
I have already stated that there are repeated similarities with 15th century Milanese cipher symbols and Voynich characters that I have not seen elsewhere.
So we are back to where we started. Until you have provided your evidence then I think it is pointless revisiting this discussion as I think my energy would be best used elsewhere.
Just downloaded the following paper as a pdf:
IL TESTO E LA CIFRA PER LO STUDIO DI UN MODO DI TRASMISSIONE DISTURBATO’ (Due messaggi cifrati diretti a Francesco Sforza)
by FRANCA PETRUCCI NARDELLI
Franca Petrucci Nardelli is someone who I was aware of before as she wrote various biographies that I am interested in on http://www.treccani.it I have not read the paper yet, but I note it has some interesting references.
I found the following very interesting in giving insight into the Chancery of Filippo Maria Visconti->
La cancelleria e gli atti cancellereschi dei Visconti, signori di Milano dal 1277 al 1447
by Maria Franca Baroni
Nick: I have scanned all of Volume I of Cerioni. So I have uploaded all of Volumes I and II, except for the pages already in the Peter Kazil scans. Please download them and keep a local copy as I know it would have saved me a lot of hassle were someone else able to have shared these scans with me.
Rene:
I have been meaning to reply to your comment here for some time.
Regarding circular reasoning:
Based on Nick’s identification of Milan in the 9 rosette foldout I pursued the hypothesis that there is a connection between the Voynich and Milan, though I developed my own approach with respect to the 9 rosette page. Nick’s Milan hypothesis was influenced in part maybe by the presense of the “4o” character and possibly other characters in the Tranchedino cipher ledger, though I have now probably looked at the extent of the commonality of a range of characters in more detail. As far as Nick’s reasoning goes he does not explain his precise thought process, so this is my guess as to some of the steps which led him towards his conclusions.
I would argue that this is not a case of circular reasoning, though maybe mutually reinforcing evidence. I started with the Milan hypothesis which lead me to subsequent evidence which supported the idea of a link to Milan. I have also discussed the subject of circular reasoning elsewhere and its relevance in the context of uncertainty.
I wanted to discuss the spreading of cipher symbols and how specific symbols can be more closely connected with certain places and people and periods in history.
Some of these arguments could be broken down further:
One could ask what the extent of the dissemination of diplomatic cipher knowledge and more specifically precise cipher alphabets was from the professional diplomatic cipher writers to the public at large
My hypothesis is that there was not much. This is supported by many, though not all, distinct cipher symbols used being used by different Italian city states at that time. For example compared with the earlier cipher keys, up to about 1470, in the Tranchedino there are much fewer symbols in common between the Voynich and the cipher keys from states other than Milan in “Die Anfange…” by Meister, except for the Modena “In Milano”, and even fewer in common in 16th century cipher keys in “Die Geheimschrift…” by Meister also other than the “4o” there is relatively little in common with the Codex Urbinate.
I have previously listed quite a few characters other than the “4o” shared between the Voynich and the Tranchedino, though there are more.
As an example the following character is one I have recently more enamoured by as it is quite distinctive and not one of many characters of the kind. (The lines are joined up, note the dot)
| .
|__
|
|
I don’t know how rare this is, but as long as it is common enough for one to confident that the character has that appearance I think that is sufficient.
NOTE: THE CIPHER SYMBOL HAS NOT BEEN DISPLAYED CORRECTLY. THE BOTTOM VERTICAL LINE(S) SHOULD CONNECT WITH THE RIGHT NOT LEFT OF THE CENTRAL HORIZONTAL BAR. (SO IT IS MORE LIKE A ZIG ZAG SHAPE.)
I should add I have not noticed the commonality of symbols with non-diplomatic cipher alphabets. Also again I have not seen similar commonalities in symbols from natural languages.
I am awaiting evidence of JKP’s supposed commonality of symbols with the latin abbreviations.
I speculate that there were relatively few people who were in the habit of using certain symbols. For diplomatic ciphers there were certain people in a city state’s chancery who were involved in the production of ciphers. I imagine different designers of cipher alphabets had different preferences for symbols. So cipher alphabets were to some extent down to the individual. So if that commonality exists between the Voynich symbols and the cipher symbols of a given city state, at a given time then that would imply some kind of link between the Voynich and the individuals in the chancery of that state at that time. Provided the spread of those precise symbols to people outside the chancery was low. Given the distinct regional and eras of the very distinct ciphers alphabets one might, as I have already mentioned, be inclined to the view that the spread of specific cipher symbols was minimal.
So the key task that I am engaged in is determining if my hypothesis that amongst all cipher alphabets the Milanese cipher alphabets between 1415 and 1435 were the most familiar. I have formed this hypothesis for a variety of reasons:
1) The similarities of the Voynich alphabet with the earlier Tranchedino cipher symbols and also the 1435 “In Milano” Modena cipher symbols. The dearth of Milanese cipher records from this period I am trying to bridge.
2) The Carbon Dating.
3) My own dating based on the 9 rosette foldout and my identification of authorship.
It happens that the person I identified as the author, purely on the basis of my analysis of the 9 rosette foldout, had many family members tied to the chancery of Filippo Maria Visconti, some of whom definitely wrote ciphers. If this is coincidence it is a really unusual one.
Rene is right one has to be very wary of building up probability on probability.
I thought I would list some of these probabilities:
P(A): Probability Voynich alphabet is derived from diplomatic cipher alphabets
P(B): Probability Voynich alphabet is derived from Milanese diplomatic cipher alphabets
P(C): Probability Voynich alphabet is derived from Filippo Maria Visconti cipher alphabets.
P(D): Probability Voynich alphabet is derived from cipher alphabets written by close family members of suspect author.
That gives us:
P(D) = P(A) x P (B given A) x P(C given B) x P(D given C)
Guessing at these probabilities:
P(A) this has been subject to debate with JKP. I think this is high.
P(B|A) very high Tranchedino/”In Milano”
P(C|B) very high/to be determined current research into finding enciphered Filippo Maria Visconti letters. supported by carbon dating.
P(D|C) few other people working in a similar capacity and almost certainly alphabets shared. Very high.
Nick: I will make enquiries about the “Atti Ducali” letters you mention, as I imagine you didn’t manage to see them, though of course my interest is in the earlier enciphered letters.
I think it would help if I/we created a directory of known encipher letters locations for the 15th century. This means converting the references in Meister into a list, as I assume Meister only included a selection of ciphers from each location rather than all of them, and then the list needs to be translated from German into Italian; I appreciate that they may have moved over the last 100 years, but that is a starting point. I have a few other the locations that I know of contain ciphers due to suggestions from others and my own research.
Obviously I hope to use that list to see if I can find Visconti letters intercepted or otherwise in various archives, but of course others could use that list for other purposes.
I will, of course, add to the list as I discover new locations. Rene could possibly put such a list on his website if he wants to making such information readily and easily available.
Nick: I have received my FIRST requested scanned document from the Milan State Archives.
When you say:
‘Aloysius Meister’s “Die Anfange Der Modernen Diplomatischen Geheimschrift” (1902): p.30 contains a (surprisingly complex, I think) Milanese cipher key and nomenclator dated 14th March 1448, with the reference “Mailand, Staatsarchiv. Pot. Est. Cifre Fasc. 2 Nr 5.”’
In fact I think the level of complexity in this cipher key is not atypical for the pre-sforza era.
I am awaiting more scans from the Milan State Archives, which I will happily share with you.
So I think that you may have underestimated the sophistication of ciphers from the era of Filippo Maria Visconti and assumed this sophistication did not emerge until the era of Francesco Sforza and Cicco Simonetta.
It is not clear who was responsible for the cipher innovations in the Chancery of Filippo Maria Visconti, though of course I have my suspicions.
Nick: I assume that you did not chase up the ciphers you mention in the “Atti Ducali” section. If you didn’t I may well follow those up myself. Let me know how far you got with that.
Nick: If we measure the complexity of the cipher key by the number of distinct characters used I am not sure that we can say there has been a significant increase in the complexity of diplomatic ciphers from the end of the Filippo Maria Visconti era and through the later half of the 15th century; at all times there were cipher keys with few characters and cipher keys with many characters. The key for me is to assess the degree of increase in complexity throughout the reign of Filippo Maria Visconti.
Nick: I have been looking online at the inventories of different Italian state archives. It looks like Lucca has a large cipher archive from the 15th century, surprisingly.
To what extent do you get the impression that Meister collected just a small sample of the cipher keys that he found from each city state? If so I don’t know what motivated his selections other than having a range of dates. Paolo Preto gave me some idea of the places to look in the Venice Archive.
At the moment I am waiting on scans from the Milan archive.
Nick: Do you remember seeing homophones for letter pairs before?
So for example there are two different characters for “et” and two different characters for “el”.
Mark: there are plenty of early ciphers in the Tranchedino ledger that use multiple “letters” (i.e. in a fake covertext alphabet) to encode individual plaintext letters or tokens, i.e. verbose ciphers. I would need to have another look to see when verbose ciphers first started to appear: but as I recall the 4 / 4o verbose trick does appear before 1450, for one.
Nick: I have been looking at the scan I have received from the Milan State Archive of quite a complex cipher key dated from 1447. From the Tranchedino ledger often a character is used to encode letter pairs. So there might be a character corresponding to a letter pair such as “et”. However in this case for some character pairs there appears to be two alternative characters. I have seen homophones before for individual letters, but not for letter pairs. This cipher key, as well as the others from the 1440s I have requested scans of from the Milan archive, was not included by Cerioni as I understand a full decipherment of the letter(s) was not made.
It seems to me that deciphering coded letters must be quite hard, especially identifying the interpretation of single character words like “Duke of Milan”.
Mark: as I understand it, Cerioni’s focus was more on uncovering the social networks implicit in the Tranchedino cipher ledger (e.g. via the names in the nomenclator), rather than on cryptography per se. I don’t recall that she looked far beyond the two Milanese ledgers, but perhaps my memory is playing tricks on me.
Fully decrypting this 1447 letter would be a far better test of cryptographic mettle than just about anything else, and so I look forward to seeing it and sharing it. 🙂
Nick: Thanks for your suggestion. I think that is a good plan.
I am making concerted efforts to compile relevant cipher keys. Many archives seem to be happy to email images of documents, for a fee, but that works out much cheaper than me visiting in person. The main issue is that the inventories that I can find, naturally, don’t provide detailed lists of all documents, so that I hope that the relevant archivists are happy to root around in the cipher archive(s) for the kind of thing that I am looking for.
The wheels turn slowly as far as people getting back to me from the archives, but they seem to eventually.
It looks like the Lucca State Archive is pretty rich when it comes to encipher letter in the first half of the 15th century what is termed the “Primo Quattrocentro”.
Two sources of these enciphered letters are the archive of Paolo Guinigi, who was Lord of Lucca in the early 15th century, and the second volume of the Chronicals of the History of Lucca by Giovanni Sercambi who was at one point his secretary, I think.
I have been assured that there are enciphered letters between Milan and Lucca amongst these, there may be some intercepted communication between Milan and other states as well.
The British library has detailed texts covering the archive of Paolo Guinigi, but whether they contain copies of the enciphered letters is unclear to me.
I hope to have more specific information soon.
I have made an effort to work out from Meister “Die Anfange…” the locations of different cipher archives. Meister lists these in German and often in abbreviated form which I find makes it more difficult to identify where in the archives he is referring to. In addition as Meister was writing more than hundred years ago location of these records may have changed. Here is brief list that I have compiled, more specific details can be found in Meister. I have produced a longer list not included here.
For Pisa:
Codex: Spedali, Opera della Spina. Memorie e documenti filza No. 1895
Clemente Lupi, Manuals di Palaeographia delle carte Firenze
For Genoa:
Cifrarii d’lstruzioni a ministri. Mazzo 9A N.G. 2716
For Modena:
Cancellaria Ducale, Archivio proprio. Folder 1: Principi Estensi; Esteri
Florence:
Archivist Abbot Pietro Domenico Gabrielli compiled the ciphers in this archive it appears.
Find more information in Meister.
I am gradually getting better at navigating the online inventories for the archives of different Italian city states, though there definitely room for improvement.
The SIAS (State Archives Information System) has directories of the State of Archives for every town or city that has such an archive in Italy. It is relatively convenient to browse and allows you to drill down with those archives, though it doesn’t have the level of detail one would ideally look for i.e. a complete list of documents in each part of the different archives. The listing for some archives is less detail than that. Still it is definitely useful. The website address is:
http://www.archivi-sias.it/
State Archives often have pdf files of different inventories for different parts of their archive. Some of the Milan inventories are not as usable as I would like as they are scans of older documents, so you can’t search inside them.
I downloaded other inventories, but am not yet as adept at finding things as I would like to be. Nick Pelling may well be a bit more clued up, I am not sure.
I hope this helps someone.
I should add there is also a website:
siusa.archivi.beniculturali.it
which does have inventory information.
Unfortunately the different sources for archival inventories do not appear to be integrated, so one or other source may be more detailed.
Maybe Nick or someone else understands better than I do how to navigate the archive systems. There may be other sources of inventory listings that I have not mentioned.
@mark, I did not read everything here, but what exactly are you trying to find?
I’ve worked through Meister. You are active on several fields, do you have a own website? If you want I can also set up a special area on a forum for you, to store details and to help you with a systematical approach.
Davidsch: That is incredibly kind of you. I have tried to keep my reply as short as possible.
I do not have my own Voynich website and I chose right or wrongly not to setup my own Voynich site. When my research gets to a stage where I feel that it has:
1) Reached a dead end
Or
2) I believe I have reached a stage where to continue my research would require me to spend a lot of time in Italy and possibly Switzerland searching archives, which wouldn’t be feasible for me at this time.
Or
3) Much much less likely I have resolved every issue and question about the Voynich.
I will produce a full writeup including quite a bit of content I have already put on this website. I hope by commenting here I can ask questions and learn more, but also importantly leave a record of my research experience which may be useful for others in the future.
Summary of my research:
What really attracted me to the Voynich manuscript was a documentary that I saw and in particular the 9 rosette foldout which looked like some map of part of Middle Earth in Lord of the Rings with castles and other buildings and cliffs and water etc.. However my strong impression, partly influenced by the suggestion that the castle with swallow battlements corresponded to a real castle, was that it constitutes a map. So in a very non-serious way I set about trying to figure out where this was a map of. Without going into specifics I came to a very detailed analysis that the “map” represented a precise journey through Northern Italy and Switzerland to the Papal Council of Basel. I identified a location on the page which I think corresponds to the start of the journey and the place the author came from. From this I identified who I think the author is. Nick already had already suggested a link to Milanese diplomatic ciphers. I noticed that the person I identified as the author had very strong connections to that world. Recently I have two lines of research 1) Learning more about my suggested author to better confirm or exclude him as a candidate. 2) Learning more about his cipher links to the Milanese Chancery by getting a deeper insight into the ciphers of the Chancery.
For more details read my many comments.
This research more and more will require documents from Italian archives. Some information can be obtained from the archives by correspondence. I have been intending to visit archives in Italy once I know precisely where I need to go and exactly what I need to look at, so as to use my time really efficiently.
I suppose I should say, where my argument could fall down, for those people who think I may not have considered this:
1) The 9 Rosette foldout does not represent a map. For example it represents an astronomical diagram as Rene Zandbergen suggests.
2) It does not represent at all the geographical area that I think it does.
3) It only very loosely represents the area I think it does. Say for example in the case where Nick Pelling’s analysis is correct, but mine worse or no better.
—If I am at this stage my theory has passed beyond current knowledge.
4) Whilst my map has some accuracy many important locations are not identified correctly.
5) My map is accurate in many ways, but my identification of the place that I have associated with the author is wrong
6) I have identified the place correctly, but not remotely correctly the author.
–If I am at this stage then my theory is hugely important.
7) I have narrowed down the author correctly to 2 or 3 individuals.
8) I have identified the author correctly and the important parts of my map analysis correct.
—————– Move to cipher analysis
9) I have identified correctly some of the author’s background in ciphers, namely the Milanese diplomatic ciphers, given what I have discovered about the author. Though there could be other cipher influences of which I am not yet aware. (If my identification of the author is correct then this is almost certainly true.)
If it was demonstrated that the Voynich is not written in any kind of cipher that would do significant damage to my theory.
I have done my best to justify each step in the argument, but it is clear that I have gone down a specific and if certain steps are wrong then it is likely that my analysis has little value, though even if my map analysis is wrong it is possible that my analysis of the Milanese diplomatic ciphers is useful
So I acknowledge the scope for issues with my theory, but also state that these potential problems tend to confront most or all people developing Voynich theories. It is a distinctive theory with a significantly unique research path, which does not make it correct, but which if there is some elements of it that a true it is of value.
Lord of the flaming rings is pure fantasy! Is that what this has come down to in the end?…though I guess it could work out; after all, you’ll recall ‘Flight of the Condor’succeeded against all odds and helped us (some of us) win the WW2 gold medal.
Flight of the Phoenix it was then; nothing to do with wartime belligerents at all. Hardie Kruger was a German model airplane enthusiast charged with getting a wrecked aircraft up and flying, for the crew to avert certain death from exposure or at the hands of bloodthirsty Ubangi savages. The Yanks and Brits (Jimmy Stewart & Dick Attenborough) did not share the chap’s enthusiasm to say the least, but to his eternal credit old Hardie stuck with the task and got what was left of the lads up and away. Perhaps Nobby with his never say die attitude can have a similar successful outcome.
@mark. I already have set up the forum. You could simply enter your messages in a private area or a public area. That way your information is readable and in a chronological flow.
Your theory that the rosette represents a physical map we can discuss (privately), but, I do not agree. On the cipher possibilities, perhaps I can test things.
There are so many things that I’ve already done, but not going to share in the open. And I’m still eager to coop with someone, but 99% of the people are loners or prefer to work alone. Yet, Internet was invented to cooperate, nevertheless it seems nowadays Internet is used for shouting and to “push” information. Working together on the same information and goals is much more efficient.
Davidsch: Thanks for your comment. I would be perfectly happy for you to copy my messages to your website, when and if you wish. I don’t want to stop commenting on this site. Unfortunately my thoughts are not always in a chronological flow, but certainly a site like yours or Voynich ninya could help to structure one’s thoughts.
I like the link on your website to a theory related to Thomas More’s Utopia; I had thought about his book. Rene Zandbergen has also referred to a fantasy drawing of John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. However I do not believe that it is fantasy map however fantastical it appears to the modern eye. From my research from that period of time most if not all maps represented real places, even if very inaccurately.
I take your point about cooperation, two people cooperating potentially halves the work for each of them. The problem with cooperating on something like this is when both people have very different opinions on certain aspects, so one needs to persuade the other that their theory is correct. If there are areas of agreement there is room for cooperation. In this situation, I like many people, have a very specific theory, so unless someone else agrees with a large part of that theory it seems hard to imagine how cooperation would be possible. So I think cooperation would be great, but unfortunately it would only work if we have significant agreement and I fear you disagree with much of my theory. If you can suggest an efficient way of working together on this I would be intrigued, but I can only see this working if one of us us prepared to adopt the other’s ideas.
@mark. let us start discussing a particular subject. for example here or send me an e-mail. (i do not have yours)
http://www.voynich.chat/forums/forum/voynich-text/
Davidsch: I have put a post on your website on the 9 Rosette foldout. I think it would be interesting to explore the question as to whether it shows a map of a real place. I have thought carefully on the subject.
The following is a listing of the Paolo Guinigi Archive:
http://www.archiviodistatoinlucca.beniculturali.it/fileadmin/template/allegati/biblioteca/fumi_lazzareschi.pdf
A quote from
Fifteenth-Century Diplomatic Documents in Western European Archives and Libraries (1450-1494) by Vincent Ilardi
“Another important collection of miscellaneous nature is the great mass of documents and papers that constitute the Archivio di Castel Sant’Angelo or Archivum Arcis in Arm. I-XVIII. This collection was formed by Sixtus IV and Leo x, who sought to preserve their most important papers within the walls of the Roman fortress from which the collection received its name. These archives are therefore particularly important for the history of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. As in the case of the Miscellatlea, the Archivum Arcis has important diplomatic and political documents czf all types except dispatches of papal envoys. It includes a useful collection of ciphers used by papal diplomatic agents from the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries.
This is cod. C.1176 entitled Cifre antiche e moderne ad uso delle nunziature dal sec. XIV al XVIII in sillabe e in parole. For a detailed description of the contents of the Archivus Arcis see Inventari nos. 1001-1012 in the Index Room.”
I don’t know what precisely there is in that Codex, but it appears to be in the Vatican Archive.
Although the Ilardi paper’s title states 1450 onward there are some references to pre-1450 ciphers in the paper such as those in the Florence State Archive.
Ilardi says with regard to the Modena archive:
“Two envelopes of cipher keys used in correspondence with envoys and rulers have survived.”
“Cifre con Principi Estensi ed Esteri, B. 2 (xv-xviii centuries), and Cifre con Ambasciatori e Agenti Estensi all’Estero, B. 4 (xv century)”
There seems to be some similarity with Meister’s description of the location of ciphers in his book “Die Anfange…” though they are not identical.
Ilardi says:
“Last century the Abbot Pietro Domenico Gabbrielli collected two volumes of keys to secret codes used by the Signoria, the Dieci di Balia, and the Otto di Pratica in their correspondence with Florentine ambassador”
“Vol. 1, Alfabeti che servono a spiegare le lettere in cifra del Carteggio dei Dieci di Balia dal 1424 al 1530”
Though this probably doesn’t contain a lot more than Meister describes in his book.
I think I ignored Ilardi a bit up until now as he states that he was writing about diplomatic documents post-1450 which is later than I am really interested in, so I didn’t expect the number of references to earlier documents.
Ilardi wrote another book called: “Dispatches with Related Documents of Milanese Ambassadors in France and Burgundy, 1450-1483”
Maybe this has interesting references to pre-1450 ciphers.
“The French Descent into Renaissance Italy, 1494–95: Antecedents and Effects”
edited by David Abulafia
Has lots of archival references, so there may possibly be one or more cipher reference not included elsewhere. (I would think that my interests are in “Antecedents”)
I have been in touch with the Vatican archives and they indeed have a codex, which they describe as:
A. A., Arm. C 1176
This should be the one I have described as entitled “Cifre antiche e moderne ad uso delle nunziature dal sec. XIV al XVIII in sillabe e in parole”
I assume the A.A. standards for either “Archivio Angelo”, but more likely “Archivum Arcis” in line with the location of this codex that I described previously.
Apparently they have 4 folios of ciphers from pre-1450 with the earliest being from the 14th century. How many cipher keys this totals to is unclear to me, I would expect at least 4 and probably less than 16(though if there is more than one cipher page and they have filled every page it could be significantly more). I don’t know how they are distributed they could be mostly from the 14th century.
One thing I think worth noting is that if my memory serves me well the Gabriel de Lavinde cipher ledger was written for the anti-Pope, i.e. an avignon pope, so these may be quite separate meaning they are true Papal ciphers and not anti-papal ciphers.
I thought I ought to clarify Gabriel de Lavinde’s cipher ledger was produced on behalf of Pope(Antipope) Clement VII, as he was named, who was born in 1342 and died in 1394. (Not to be confused with Pope Clement VII who lived from 1478 to 1534). Antipope Clement VII was an Avignon Pope who was elected by the French Cardinals. There was a contention as to who was the true Pope at that time. The other claimant was based in Rome. Such as Pope Urban VI who was Pope from 1378 to 1389, the period from which the Gabriel de Lavinde cipher ledger dates(1379). Despite Clement VII not being regarded as a true Pope it is clear that his cipher ledger still found it’s way to the Vatican Archives.
Nevertheless it is still a perfectly valid diplomatic cipher ledger. However there would have been another different Papal cipher ledger in Rome at that time presumably.
One thing I think I will add is that it is slightly confusing as I believe D’Imperio lists what she calls a “Cipher of Parma from 1379”. However I think it could be unclear what she is referring to. This cipher key I believe is from Gabriel de Lavinde’s cipher ledger as she refers to it coming from Meister’s book on Papal ciphers. Now Gabriel de Lavinde is referred to as Gabriel de Lavinde de Parma, presumably indicating that he originated from Parma. However describing it as a Parma cipher could lead to a bit of a misunderstanding as it was part of Antipope Clement VII’s cipher ledger and presumably written in Avignon, France, where he resided.
(I am not trying to “trash” D’Imperio, but rather to add some necessary clarity I think.)
Is it more likely that Mary D’imperio meant ‘Prosciutto dI Parma’, either to add some extra spice to an otherwise boringly obscure subject, or else referred to meat treats on offer during visits to her ancestral home in pleasant days of yore.
John Sanders: Sorry if it is a rather dull topic for you. It is just quite relevant to my research and I thought it would be useful to clarify some things that others seem to have missed for anyone conducting research on similar lines. I understand that for most people it is hardly relevant.
Mark: Thanks for your courtious somewhat unexpected response. Dull topic does not necessarily mean unworthy topic for it’s not so tedious content is obviously directed towards a certain type of scholarly opinion more perceptive to intellectual comprehension of medieval Papal? cipher keys and such. Over the years you have made no bones about your belief that the 9 Rosette page holds the key to final understanding of the greater whole, a view held by many others including our moderator no doubt. My views don’t for most part run contrary to such a wide ranging display of sign posted medieval wonders dominated by heavenly bodies, earth fissures and castles in the air for exampke; but I’ll concede that my interest is more directed towards suspicious cast pipe bundles and other out of place inclusions to be encountered throughout the manuscript (if one dares to look). Whereas some commenters have politely referred to these as mere aberations, I see them as being direct primary evidence of either deliberate interference with the original medieval artistry or else, accidental insertion of post era inventions by a modern hand unaquainted with dates of introduction….A little advice on how to keep readers glued to your propositions, if I may be so bold Mark. Why not do a bit of name dropping here and there on the premise that at some point you will likely include details pertinant to your long awaited nomination for identity of the VM authorship. Cheers js
The mystery of the 1424 Florentine Cipher Keys. I have obtained some cipher keys from the Florence State Archives generated from enciphered letters for the year 1424 and they seem quite advanced for 1424. There is one in Meister “Die Anfange…”. As these cipher key were generated from letters they could not have been added to later, though they could be incomplete.
Two of the cipher keys though dealing with different correspondents are the same. They seem to include the kinds of substitutions that we see in later keys, although they may not have as many in number as we find later. It would be intriguing to look into who may have been responsible for those cipher keys.
One of the cipher keys is headed Zaninus & Conradinus I think it is likely these refer to:
Zaninus Ricius
&
Conradinus Vicomercatus(?)
Zaninus Ricius I think must Zanino Ricci, who was Ducal secretary to Filippo Maria Visconti prior to Francesco Barbavara.
So if my identification is correct then this cipher key would also have been found in the Cipher ledger of Filippo Maria Visconti.(All roads lead back to Milan.)
Who was “Galiotto Fibindacci da Ricasoli “?
Often cipher key or enciphered letters were addressed to specific individuals other than the Duca or the Doge etc. and it helps a lot to know who those people were and most importantly on who’s behalf they were acting.
It looks like at first glance that the Fibindacci da Ricasoli family were Florentine, though that doesn’t seem to clarify anything in terms of the agency of Galiotto.
Mark: the 1424 Galiotto Fibindacci da Ricasoli cipher is (of course) particularly interesting because it uses “4o” to encipher “Q”. 🙂 It’s also mentioned on the Internet by a Dutch academic as being one of the earliest ciphers to include a nomenclatura: https://hansvandermeer.myqnapcloud.com/pubs/syllabus-minor-s.pdf (figure 3.11)
It’s also mentioned in a 2016 article by Judit W. Somogyi that summarises a number of 14th century (Trecento) and 15th century (Quattrocento) ciphers:
http://www.verbum-analectaneolatina.hu/pdf/verbum17-1-2-2016.pdf
More generally, there’s a 1421 letter to Bindaccio Fibindacci Ricasoli mentioned here:
http://sa-toscana.beniculturali.it/fileadmin/risorse/inventari/BarbolanidaMontauto.pdf
29 [124]Roma, 1421 mag.29
Breve di papa Martino V con la concessione a Bindaccio Fibindacci Ricasoli di far dire messanella sua casa sua
Foglio membranaceo n.124. Con sigillo mancante.
According to the Internet (*sigh*), the Ricasoli Fibindacci family was long associated with both Chianti and the strategically-placed Castle of Meleto (what we see today is the 1480 version):
http://www.florenceapartmentstorent.com/castels-of-gaiole-castello-di-meleto/1468/
https://www.beni-culturali.eu/opere_d_arte/scheda/-stemma-gentilizio-della-famiglia-ricasoli-fibindacci–09-00283308/406506
Nick: Thanks a lot for your research!
Things are getting more interesting. With luck I should have the complete Paolo Guinigi cipher ledger in my hands in the next week/fortnight and it appears to be quite long. It is hard to know what will come out of other archives that I am waiting on Vatican, Pisa, Barcelona Cathedral. I am still waiting on the Genoan Diocesan Archive for those enciphered letters that you spotted online a long time ago. Their archive has been closed for a number of years pending relocation, after hassling them a bit they say that they have a plan to open the archive in a year’s time, so maybe then I will actually get to see these letters. Determining what lies is the myriad smaller Italian archives seems like searching the depths of the ocean for new forms of life.
In your original question you ask about finding enciphered letters. As you suggest Lydia Cerioni lists enciphered letters and contains cipher keys generated from those letters. I believe she also matches up enciphered letters with the cipher keys in the Tranchedino. In Venice, Luigi Pasini, and in Florence, Abbot Pietro Gabrielli are known as the archivists who in the 19th century systematically deciphered the enciphered letters in their archive to find the corresponding cipher keys. However I don’t know if there was an equivalent person working in the Milan archive doing the same thing as it is not clear to me who generated these cipher keys we see in Lydia Cerioni. One hopes that the references in the biographies that are provided in Volume I of “La diplomazia…” by Cerioni are such that they might help locate the enciphered letters corresponding to the associated individual. There are a few letters listed in Volume I that it appears were not possible to decipher, though why in each case is not clear(too short, too damaged, too complicated); it is possible, however, to find the attempted cipher key in the state archives, despite Cerioni not including them, nevertheless finding the original enciphered letters is a laudable goal.
The way I see it, each cipher key that I am interested in is point on a graph/chart, where the X-axis runs from 1390 to 1448 and the Y-axis has a series of bars representing each city state. In an ideal world I would like a representative cipher key for every 5 year period for each city state, so that I can easily compare and contrast the level and nature of the ciphers used for each city state over time. Then I could determine which state(s) was/were the leader(s) in cipher advances and when those advances occurred. I would also be able to make comparisons of the symbols used in different cipher keys.
As a case in point, although pre-1447 cipher records in Milan were destroyed. I think I can say that so far I can add a few points to this graph. Sercambi includes what I understand are Milanese cipher keys from 1397? The Gonzaga cipher ledger has a cipher key addressed to Francesco Barbavara who worked for the Duke of Milan. There is cipher key generated from enciphered correspondence in the Florence archive with Zanino Riccio who worked for the Duke of Milan. There are enciphered letters addressed to Filippo Maria Visconti dated to 1447. (The Modena “in milano” cipher key is also worth mentioning. Meister thinks this is indicative of the relative sophistication of Milanese cipher clerks and I see no reason to disagree.)
I think what I can safely say based on the evidence that I have that Milan was one of the more advanced states in cipher development pre-1447. To say that it was the “most” advanced would rely on evidence that I don’t yet have and may not survive if it existed.
Apart from the 1411 Venetian cipher, I believe most Venetian cipher records for this period were also destroyed in a fire. Though again missing Venetian cipher keys may possibly be found in the archives of their correspondents as we find with Milanese cipher keys.
There is only a partial picture for Florence, which indicates some degree of advancement relatives early on in 1424, but later 1430s cipher keys are very simple.
I will have to see what evidence from the Vatican Archives brings forth.
Another question that interests me is what if anything I can say about which city states tend to use symbols more similar to those found in the Voynich and which less so.
More data to come…
For me an interesting question is in each case who is behind the design of a cipher key, of course. Take the Zanino Riccio cipher key, was that designed in Florence or was that designed in Milan or was that designed in partnership between the 2 states. If it was designed in Milan was the key designed by Zanino Riccio or some other person in the Visconti government?
It is noteworthy that in the Gonzaga cipher ledger the key for King Rupert of Germany is quite distinct, this says to me that it was designed in the administration of King Rupert and sent/given to Gonzaga administration for use in communication. When a cipher key stands out in a cipher ledger for a city state it seems reasonable to imagine that the design of that cipher key was provided by the correspondent, though it is possible that there is more than one person in the state’s administration designing cipher keys.
What of ambassadors? In the King Rupert and Zanino Riccio it appears that there were on neither side ambassadors acting as intermediaries. Is that because envoys and ambassadors did not act in that capacity or is it because widespread use of ambassadors did not happen until later? Maybe with Papal Ambassadors being an exception.
“the Ricasoli were able to aspire to be appointed to the highest offices of the state, so much so that between 1393 and 1413 in the register of the standard-bearers of justice of Florence” according to wikipedia
There is a Galeotto Fibindacci Ricasoli from this period. “Galeotto” is presumably the same as Galiotto.(The variability in medieval names spellings are trying.)
It seems to me that IF the Voynich is written in cipher the author(s) must have had some familiarity with pre-existing ciphers of some kind. To invent a complex cipher out of thin air seems hard to imagine unless we are dealing with an Archimedes/Da Vinci level genius, in which case we would almost certainly know of that person.
If the author was familiar with ciphers then they must be “nichtdiplomatischen” or diplomatic or both. It looks like diplomatic ciphers were in much more frequent usage than non-diplomatic ciphers and more advanced, so on the face of it they might seem to be a more likely influence. But for thoroughness I will have to explore the non-diplomatic cipher influence hypothesis. It would certainly make sense if there were different and distinct influences. The more the author knew about ciphers the more scope for designing a complex one.
I think some of the questions I am trying to answer are as follows:
To what extent the Milanese foreign office was an engine of cipher innovation from 1415 to 1447 in and of itself and also in comparison to other city states?
To what extent Milanese cipher symbols were similar to what we see in the Voynich in and of themselves and also in comparison to other city states?
To what extent is the individual that I associate with the bottom right rosette of the 9 rosette page is connected to cipher advances in the Milanese foreign office directly and indirectly through close family members? (It is important to note that when identifying the individual I associated with authorship I was not aware that he had any family connections to the world of ciphers and yet over time I have uncovered very close ties to this world. This could be coincidental it is very hard to assess. It seems to me more than a coincidence, but that could be my bias.)
Looking at the backdrop to the 1424 cipher keys and the 1st war in Lombardy. To summarise:
In May 1423 Imola invaded Forli as a result of a dispute of the line of succession in Forli. Milan came to the defense of Forli. Florence reacted by declaring war on Milan. Florence hired condottiero Niccolò Piccinino. Florence suffered a series of defeats against Milan and then condottiero Niccolò Piccinino and condottiero Francesco Sforza were hired by Milan. In the end Florence was soundly defeated by Milan. In December 1425 Florence signed a pact with Venice.
By all appearances it would seem that Galeotto Fibindacci Ricasoli was on the side of Florence. It looks as if he was loyal to the Republic and not a paid mercenary. This would be consistent with the cifra keys generated from letters:
1) Galeotto Fibindacci Ricasoli – Florentine cipher in origin
2) Zanino Riccio – Milanese in origin
The fact that the 2 ciphers are significantly different in design would fit with them being the product of two different chancelleries.
Nick: I am gradually drawing towards the end of my list of ciphers to get scans of from archives. I haven’t yet fully processed them to my satisfaction, details such working out who all the correspondents on the different cipher keys were and even more importantly who they worked for and in what role, remain. Now there must be primo quattrocento enciphered letters out there that I am not aware of and possibly cipher keys as well.
You did a really excellent job some time ago of finding a reference on the Storia Patria Genova website to enciphered letters from Archbishop of Genoa Pileo de Marini from 1400 to 1429. I have not yet seen them, because frankly their archive has been closed for some time and it has taken all my effort to persuade them to get their act together and organise the relocation that they say they need in order to reopen it, even so they think it will take them a year to do so. (I suppose this is one of the perils of small archives.)
My point is that you might have some ideas as to the best strategies to track down other enciphered letters that are out there. I have relied heavily on other texts like Meister, Ilardi and Cerioni to find things, but there may be enciphered letters unknown to any of them. I plan to get back in touch with Professor Senatore to share the results of my research and ask him if he has any idea as to whereas I should look.
I tried emailing a few other Italian state archives on spec to see if they thought that they might have early 15th century enciphered letters or cipher keys. The general response is that they didn’t or that they would need a more specific reference. There are a lot of state archives and plenty of smaller archives.
I will probably get back in touch with the archives from whom I have received ciphers and see if they can recommend other archives to look into or strategies to employ. The Vatican archives are a whole other question; I have suspicion based on nothing really that they must have some early 15th century enciphered letters somewhere, but without being able to specify where precisely they are not of much use.
Non-Italian archives ahg! I haven’t made much effort to investigate British, French or other archives. What Ekaterina Domina’s condottiero Francesco Sforza enciphered letter shows is that these things can find their way anywhere including Moscow.
It is worth noting that there is a pre-1447 condottiero Francesco Sforza enciphered letter(s) in the Milan archive which is quite advanced. So condottiero Francesco Sforza and his entourage Simonetta, Tranchedino etc. were writing more advanced ciphers even before he became Duke.
In the 1435 Modena cipher key in “Die Anfange…” by Meister it says:
“Ugutioni de Abbatia segretario ill. dom. Marchionis Extensis.”
I was keen to determine who this refers to.
In “Vestigia. Studi in onore di Giuseppe Billanovich” it describes this event as happening in 1435 below:
This is the historical picture that forms the background to the brief correspondence between Cardinal Branda of Piacenza and Cosimo de ‘Medici. Once the sentence was issued and the ratification took place, Cardinal Castiglioni, after a few weeks, left the Curia and headed for Milan to meet the Duke and finalize the agreements. As soon as he arrived in Milan, on 17 September 1435, Castiglioni wrote to Cosimo “communicating to him the news of the arrival and also that of the death of a very dear nephew, who can be identified with Bartolomeo Castiglioni.” The day after his arrival, the cardinal is received by Duke Filippo Maria, whom he finds well disposed. Uguccione de ‘Contrari, adviser to Niccolò III d’Este, is also in Milan, but he does not participate in the meeting with the duke due to health reasons. In the last part of the letter, Castiglioni gives the news that the bishop of Lodi Gerardo Landriani is about to leave for Florence, summoned by a letter from the pope, and recommends him to Cosimo. Eugene IV, in the brief preserved in the Vatican Archives and published here, affirms that he is summoning the bishop of Lodi because he wishes to benefit from his work in the affairs of the Church. However, we know that Gerardo Landriani had a pending issue with the Curia, having been transferred to the bishopric of Tortona on 7 June 1435 and not having accepted this transfer. At the same time, on 13 June 1435, Giovanni Barbavara from Novara was elected bishop of Como. From the copy of a letter from Eugene IV to Filippo Maria Visconti dated 6 November 1435, preserved in the Vatican Archives, it emerges that the election of Barbavara the seat of Como was not appreciated by the duke, who, through Cardinal Branda, had pressed for one of his candidates to be elected. At this point we can put forward the hypothesis that Landriani went to the Curia also to discuss his transfer to the seat of Tortona and at the same time to be the spokesperson of the duke’s needs regarding the Como seat and continue the pressure so that the electus Cumanus, Giovanni Barbavara, was moved. The fact is that about two years later, on March 6, 1437, Barbavara was transferred to the Tortona headquarters and at the same time Landriani was transferred to that of Como.
So was “Ugutioni de Abbatia” “Uguccione de ‘Contrari”. Well why the different surname??
(This passage is also intriguing to me for other reasons.)
For those interested the Biblioteca Statale di Cremona holds cipher keys from 1444 onwards.
Amongst the cipher that I have assembled some stand out more than other as they show features not visible in other ciphers. Some interest me, because they are associated with Milan. One cipher key that illustrates both of these is the Zanius & Conradinus cipher key and the Johannes cipher key, which are both the same though clearly generated from different enciphered correspondence.
This is distinctively simple in a some ways:
1) It has no nulls
2) It only has homophones for vowels(not out of keeping with some cipher keys of the previous decade, but not very advanced for the time)
It is distinctively complicated in some ways:
1) It has letter pair to 1 symbol mapping, another example of which I have not seen until 20 years or more later.
2) It has a large vocabulary mapping some of which may correspond to specific rulers or regions as in a standard cipher glossary, but many of which appear to correspond to common words. It appears to have an abnormally large vocabulary of common words(syllables?).
This was a cipher key presumably for communication between the Florentine Republic(the cipher key is in the Florentine archive) and the Duchy of Milan(the correspondents are members of the Milanese government).
There is another cipher key from the same time for communication between a Florentine envoy and presumably the Florentine government. This cipher key is very different from the other, which makes me think the first is Milanese in design and the second is Florentine in design.
This cipher key has the following properties which if not typical at the time were so relatively soon(see Modena cipher key from 1435). They are:
1) Many nulls
2) Homophones for all letters
If one were to combine the features of both of these cipher keys then one would end up with the kind of complexity that we typically associate with post-1450 cipher keys such as in the Tranchedino, which given the Florentine were using both would not be difficult for them. Now it is clearly the case that such cipher keys were in existence before 1447. However I think it is not a wild conjecture that they may have been in existence by 1430 and very probable that they were in use before 1440. In other words I think is a very reasonable possibility that these kind of cipher keys existed during the period from which the Voynich is carbon dated.
However the Zaninus Ricius & Conradinus cipher key has all these substitutions that we don’t seem to find in earlier or later cipher keys.(Maybe I have misunderstood this key, which wouldn’t be the first time for this kind of thing) So this stands out I think as an indication of how innovative the Milanese chancery was in terms of its cipher development)
What I really need is/are Milanese cipher keys to fill the gap 1425 to 1447, probably earlier rather than later in that range. A Milanese cipher of around 1432 would be particularly interesting I think. It would be interesting to see how their ciphers evolved from 1425. Of course finding such a cipher key would most likely be extremely difficult.
I wanted to write something about the question of reconciling Voynichese with the kind of substitution ciphers that we find in contemporary diplomatic ciphers. I have in my own mind the opinion that the Voynich manuscript was written in the 1430s(Based on the fact that my theory of the rosettes page dates the writing of that page to 1430 onwards and the guess that the rest of the manuscript was likely written around the same time.) Now it is clear that I have relatively little evidence as to what diplomatic ciphers in the 1430s, in particular in Milan, were like. The Zanius cipher key implies a specific cipher key design tendency in Milan, but where that tendency went from 1425 on can only be a matter of speculation at this time.
Nevertheless, the problem with reconciling the Voynich with those diplomatic ciphers that I currently have evidence of, is that there appear not to be a sufficient number of common symbols in the Voynich manuscript. The natural way to resolve this would be to map sequences of Voynich symbols in the way that we map individual symbols in diplomatic ciphers. This means a verbose cipher. Now who knows there may be an example of a 1430s verbose diplomatic cipher of that kind or it may have only be an innovation of the author.
A verbose mapping could cover everything: homophones, nulls, glossary, vocabulary, letter pairs, letter strings
(Which would allow the possibility of the null words I have speculated about.)
Similarly I have been thinking when it comes to matching Voynich cipher symbols with diplomatic cipher symbols there are clearly quite a few matches, however I think the only really telling match would be a benched gallows character as such a character is so unique and specific as to make a chance match very unlikely. Though I think it very probable that the benched gallows could be an invention of the author and occur nowhere else except for the Voynich manuscript, but in truth it not possible to say.
Going forward it is worth trying to increase the number of examples of early 15th century ciphers that I have with the hope of finding something illuminating. However I think it is a lot to hope that I can find much more evidence of Milanese ciphers from 1426 to 1444. So probably this avenue of research will try up soon unless I find a lot of time to travel Italy visiting archives personally.
Mark: in films and novels, archives are typically treated as magic boxes that save the hero’s day by coming up with a single perfect document that explains everything. Probably unsurprisingly, I don’t buy into that kind of Hollywood b.s. at all. :-/
In real life, archives tend to give you a mass of information that, while broadly related, isn’t really the stuff you’d choose if your search was being guided by Dan Brown. The only guiding principle I can offer is that the stuff in archives is only there because it randomly happened to dodge the rubbish collection (several times over), so you have to be grateful for whatever you can get. :-/
You’ve already done a really great job in finding cipher keys from what I found to be a difficult period of history to cover, and I’m sure you’ll do just as well at finding enciphered documents from this same date range. However, I think you also need to start to think about how you can systematically look at the cipher tricks being used in what you have got, to see if you can glimpse anything anywhere that overlaps (however thinly) with what we find in the Voynich.
About a month back, I passed you a link to a long-ish article discussing 14th and 15th century ciphers, which tried to offer a framework for looking at ciphers from this period (by categorising the kinds of cipher tricks they used). Did you try to read that? That might prove useful to you.
Nick: Thank you so much for your comment and your support in my endeavor. I will think about what you have said and write you a reply once I feel I have thought through what you have said with some degree of clarity.
Nick: When you say: “the stuff in archives is only there because it randomly happened to dodge the rubbish collection (several times over)”
That seems to me an excellent way of putting it.
I think you are right when you say it is a difficult period to cover as although I have made no effort to research diplomatic ciphers post-1450 there seems to be quite a lot more diplomatic material and so presumably cipher material that survives from the second half of the 15th century than the first half and before.
I hope I can do as good a job at finding enciphered documents from the early 15th century as you suggest though I don’t quite have your confidence about my ability in that respect. Although I have learnt and are continuing to learn about doing archival research and specifically in the area of diplomatic correspondence held in Italian archives. I suspect there will come a point when I know that there is nothing more that I can find when it comes to diplomatic ciphers from that period without spending a lot of time on the ground in Italy.
I think your point about what can be learnt from the cipher tricks used in the cipher keys and enciphered letters I have collected is an interesting and important one. Really, I ought to decipher all the letters that I have collected for which I don’t have cipher keys obviously as otherwise I won’t be able to assess those ciphers. I think in this context it worth mentioning again that the evidence that I have seen does not lead me to conclude that the kind of diplomatic ciphers that we see in the late 15th century were not in use during the period from which the manuscript was carbon dated. Although I have no example of such a cipher key from before 1438 the two cipher keys from 1424 together encompass all the features that we see in these later cipher keys and so there is nothing new or innovative about the post-1438 cipher keys.(It is possible that they just combine features of different cipher traditions such as say Milanese and non-Milanese, but that is a highly speculative statement.) As far as other tricks, I have yet to make a full assessment of what I would term the “distinctive” cipher keys, those are keys that have some unique or distinctive features, so I can get a sense of the breadth of cipher techniques employed. I would like to make an assessment of the Zaninus and Conradinus/Johannes cipher key to see what is going on with it and I will probably have to chase up with the Florence archive the original enciphered letters from which the key was derived to get a clear idea of what is going on, but there appear to be some intriguing substitutions that I haven’t seen elsewhere. The Zaninus and Conradinus/Johannes cipher key has 165 substitutions, which is quite a lot for 1424; there are no so many cipher keys in the Tranchedino with more substitutions, though of course there are some. And as this key was derived from letters we need to say “at least” 165 as there may be nomenclature or something else not used in the letters, but which were to be found in the original key. As you wisely have pointed out it is important also to get a sense of how cipher keys were implemented in practice when writing letters in the case of the use of nulls as well as all other features, something that I need to study.
Given that I think the “Milan” track is an interesting one to explore, yes according to my hypothesis, but also because of the somewhat distinctive aspects to the Zaninus Riccio(1424) cipher key, I would, if possible, find it very intriguing to see how the Milanese cipher keys from 1426 to 1444 differed to see what features emerged and/or disappeared over that period, especially given that the Zaninus Riccio cipher key has features that do not appear to be there in the post-1450 cipher keys and so must have been discarded by cipher key designers. My guess is that the Voynich cipher’s closest relative is a diplomatic cipher that was used probably in the 1430s and that diplomatic cipher had features that did not survive in the later diplomatic ciphers, probably as they were deemed impractical for ordinary diplomats to implement in normal communication. And in some ways the Voynich is like an evolutionary dead end. It is like a species that went extinct due to its impracticality in diplomatic communication, though great beauty, and its closest, though distant, relative that survived the pre-1450 cipher upheaval is the kind of cipher that we see in the Tranchedino. However that is not quite my opinion as I think the Voynich almost certainly has features that were never found in any diplomatic cipher and which the author added. So more precisely my guess is that the Voynich was derived from an extinct diplomatic cipher. Of course this is pure speculation. Now as you say, so much, especially in the case of pre-1450 Milanese ciphers, has been lost. However I will do my best to fill as much of the 1426 to 1444 Milanese cipher gap as I reasonably can, though it will be very hard/virtually impossible to make a lot of progress in that area, but any progress I can make would be good.
More to come…
I feel obliged to mention the follow source that some might not be aware of:
http://www.library.yale.edu/Ilardi/il-home.htm
Vincent Ilardi, an Italian-American academic who died in 2009, visited a number of Italian archives, his interest being in diplomatic documents. He produced Microfilm of a very large number of documents, 1800 reels worth of microfilm. (I will repeat the colossal number of 1800 reels). These 1800 reels of microfilm are kept at Yale University Library. From the above link one can find out what is held on each reel.
Now Ilardi’s interest, sigh, like so many, was post 1450 diplomacy. However he did microfilm many documents from before 1450. I can say in all candour that were I in the vicinity of Yale at the moment, I would not be rushing to the Beinecke to get a glimpse of the Voynich manuscript, but rather scanning through Ilardi’s microfilm to see if I could find anything of interest for my line of Voynich research. Whilst seeing the original documents in the Italian archives would be preferable, the fact that Ilardi collected documents from many different archives, including the Vatican, all in one place serves of some value to researchers. Amongst these there are enciphered letters and cipher keys, as one would expect from a collection of diplomatic documents. I am already aware of many of the primo quattrocento enciphered letters and cipher keys included by Ilardi, but there are likely some that I have missed. Anyway I have no plans to visit Yale University any time soon.
I have been thinking about archives and I decided to put down some thoughts.
Destruction of archives:
Many of the records from the Venetian archives were destroyed in a fire in 1483. So only the Michele Steno’s 1411 enciphered letter survives as a record of the state of Venetian ciphers in this earlier era. Paolo Bonavoglia has gone through this archive with a fine toothcomb and that all he could find. However, it is possible that some of that earlier history of Venetian ciphers can be partially reconstructed on the basis of enciphered letters and cipher keys in other archives.
As I before mentioned the Milan archives were largely destroyed in 1447 in a fire, so almost no cipher records survives from before this time in that archive. However as I have found, some effort can be made to reconstruct that record on the basis of evidence from other archives.
So both archives for the 2 main city states in Italy were both largely destroyed for the first half of the 15th century and so little or no cipher records survive.
My understanding is that the Vatican archive was in flux as the papacy moved location, so there appears not much to have survived for the early 15th century. Though there are enciphered letters headed “Roma” is the Mantua archive, maybe if deciphered they will illuminate the situation more clearly.
So, anyway, we are reliant on the smaller archives for this time: Mantua, Modena, Lucca, Siena, Urbino(the Codex Urbinate was transferred to the Vatican), Florence.
It is not clear to me what if anything survives when it comes to ciphers from the Kingdom of Naples or the Kingdom Aragon(Ruling over Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica and later Naples), but if anyone knows Professor Senatore, who is based in Naples, would. (I haven’t yet asked him.)
I wonder where the records for the Holy Roman Emperor, for this period, are to be found, if they survive? The Holy Roman Emperor was heavily involved in Italian politics, so he would certainly be communicating in cipher with Italian city states. I know the emperor Sigismund was closely tied with Milan.
An archive in Prague would be my first guess, but in reality I think there are a lot of cities where such an archive could reside probably depending on which Holy Roman Emperor we are considering. Again little may survive.
Of course there were many correspondents other than the main states.
@ Mark Knowles
A tremendous amount of the records of the Emperors of the 15th c. survive, many of them are published and are online, but either you are not able to find them or are too lazy to look
Helmut Winkler: In my searching for these records of the Emperor I have not found what I am looking for, but it is not an easy task despite your claims otherwise. However as has been pointed out to me by an expert in the subject, records of the Holy Roman Emperor are distributed across many different archives and so locating what one is looking for is not a trivial task. Anybody who knows how much effort I have put into this subject and others would hardly call me lazy, so thanks for insulting me in that way. However I really hope you are right that there are lots of enciphered letters or cipher keys amongst the records of the Holy Roman Emperor, if true that would be wonderful, although my suspicion is that you have no idea and this is merely a fly-by-night attack. Why don’t you see if you can find any for the period that I am interested in and make me look foolish? Given the tremendous records you speak of you are sure to find some. If you can find any enciphered letters from between 1426 and 1444 and addressed to the Duke of Milan or a member of the Milanese chancellery or a different representative of the government in Milan then I am sure I will end up with egg on my face, but also the evidence I crave.
I have been informed by an expert on Emperor Sigismund that:
“The bulk of Sigismund’s correspondence is preserved in the Reichsregisterbücher now in the Haus-, Hof und Staatsarchiv, in Vienna. But other items of his correspondence are scattered across archives in Europe, from The National Archives in Kew to the Archvio Segreto Vaticano in Rome, from the Archiva de la Corona de Aragon in Barcelona to the Geheimes Staatsarchiv in Berlin.
A good sense of its dispersal can be appreciated by looking at Wilhelm Altmann, Regesta Imperii: Urkunden Kaiser Sigmunds (Innsbruck, 1896-1900), and also the more recent volumes of the Regesta Imperii for Sigismund’s reign completed (in the last decade) by Petr Elbel and Premek Bar”
I must say a more helpful comment than Mr Winkler’s.
Having looked at the Zanino Riccio cipher key and if I have understood it correctly, I aim to lay my hands on photoreproductions of the original letter, then I wonder if we could have a situation where a Voynich triplet of glyphs maps to a triplet of real letters. As an example in English:
abc -> “ing”
adc -> “ion”
abe -> “ugh”
bbd -> “ght”
These are all common word endings.
So for example for Voynich glyphs, “ota” could map to a completely different 3 letter string than “opa”. So we could find not just pairs of Voynich glyphs mapping to pairs of real letters, but also triples mapping to triples. One thing which is slightly frightening about this is that it could imply a very sizeable lookup table. On the basis of the rapid increase in the number of substitutions in Milanese cipher keys it is not inconceivable to me that we could have of the order of 500 different mapping. If so, it seems to me, identifying each individual mapping would seem to be frighteningly difficult, but then maybe I have missed something.
I refer to the rapid increase in the number of substitutions in Milan as about the year 1400 we see a substitution alphabet with homophones for vowels, nothing more. Then we have about a decade of rule of Giovanni Maria Visconti where most of the experienced men in government were thrown out and where governance was very poor and Milan lost much of its territory. It would seem most likely that there were not significant, if any advances in the cipher techniques in Milan during this period; without evidence one cannot say definitively, but it seems to me that a government that was incompetent in all other respects was likely to be incompetent when it comes to making advances in the cipher techniques used. So we have about a decade of the rule of Filippo Maria Visconti before the Zanino Riccio cipher key. It would seem to me that at the beginning of that period we have cipher keys like those of 1400 and by the end we have a hugely more sophisticated cipher key. That to me implies rapid cipher development over the first decade of Filippo Maria Visconti’s reign. Now given that there is no evidence, as yet, until much later, of other states using the same kind of substitutions that we see in the Zanino Riccio cipher key and some that I am not aware of in any other cipher keys before or since for any state including Milan then one can speculate that over the following decade the magnitude of cipher developments was of the same degree and that there were also developments not found in later cipher keys. This lays open the possibility that in the early to mid 1430s there were in use sophisticated cipher keys the like of which were not found in use before or in later decades. All this speculation leaves open the path to a connection between Milanese ciphers of the 1430s and the Voynich manuscript.
I thought I ought to mention, if I have not already, for anyone who reads this and is in the slightest bit interested that there is a recently discovered cipher ledger dated from 1444 to 1479. This is in the “Albertoni” manuscript in the State Library Archives of Cremona(Biblioteca Statale di Cremona). Note this is quite separate and not the same as the State Archives of Cremona(Archivio di Stato di Cremona).
Unfortunately, for me again this is dated too late to pique my interest. However for those who are interested in this later period this is a proper cipher ledger with quite a lot of cipher keys in it. I have not studied it in any detail given it falls outside my range of interest.
It is a cipher ledger conpletely unknown to most people, if only it were a decade or two older.
At this time the Albertoni cipher ledger is not available online I think, but I believe one can request photoreproductions free of charge.
I have recently seen 2 cipher keys described as:
“Cifrari segreti Corrado Trinci(dal Codice F. 257, ee. 34/r e 35/v, della Biblioteca Communale di Foligno”
They are included in the Bulletin of the History of the Homeland for Umbria Volume 55 Perugia 1958 in the article by Maria Virginia Prosperi Valenti entitled “Corrado Trinci ultimo signore di Foligno”
Corrado III Trinci was Lord of Foligno from 1421 until 1439, so I think the cipher keys date from this time.
The cipher keys are relative unremarkable for the time, although one has a list of number substitutions, which are not normally included in cipher keys of that time.
It appears that the Corrado Trinci cipher keys date from between 1427 and 1432. Corrado Trinci had lots of dealings with the Papacy, so it could well be a Papal cipher. The main cipher key fits fairly well with those of that date. It has homophones on all letters, vowels and consonants, and tironian notae. It has nulls and a glossary. It has a list of number substitutions. It doesn’t have any letter pair substitutions such as duplices and consonant-vowel pairs. So it fits fairly neatly into the timeline for the evolution of diplomatic ciphers.
It is not nearly an interesting cipher key in the way that the Zanino Riccio cipher key is, but nevertheless it is a useful data point.
I just received the following message from the Milan State Archives:
“the document transcribed by Osio on pages 286-287 of volume II of the Diplomatic documents taken from the Milanese archives is not confirmed by our institute, as verified in folders 8 and 10 (which contain documents from the Visconti period) and 1591, 1597 and 1598 (which contain ciphers and cipher letters) from the Carteggio Visconteo Sforzesco collection. Osio does not mention the institute for the conservation of published documents, it is therefore likely that, having drawn from various archives, as per the title of the volume, the letter you reported is at some other Milanese institution. In this regard, it should be noted that material from the Sforza period is kept in the Historic Civic Archive of the municipality of Milan (Castello Sforzesco, Piazza Castello 20121, e-mail address [email protected]). Much of the documentation of the 1591, 1597 and 1598 folders mentioned above is undated: it is therefore possible that among the numerous papers there is something from the first half of the fifteenth century. In this regard, it should be noted that in the 1591 folder an undated cipher was found (and probably in a later copy), whose shirt bears the date 21 August 1439 and the title ‘Visconti decrees’.”
Well I will certainly following up the possible “1439” cipher.
Nick: I hope to have more news soon from archives.
I just received an email from the Florence State Archives regarding a folder of enciphered letters. I was referred to the following->
“Lettere Varie
Inventario
A cura di Susanna Gori
2004”
In this fund under Num. Vecchio “14”/Num.
Nuovo “11” there is listed “Dispacci diplomatici, lettere citrate, decifrate e in francese”
In this folder there appear to be listed numerous enciphered letters. The details of the contents of each letter are described rather briefly nevertheless there are some which reference Milan. With descriptions such as “Lettera cifrata dell’oratore di Milano”
I intend to request photoreproductions of enciphered letters that appear to be of interest to me.
In the folder the following items look the most interesting either as they refer directly to Milan or just because their description is sufficiently general that they could be relevant.
n. 25
n. 38
n. 45-47
n. 90-91
n. 92
n. 103
n. 140
n. 145
n. 152
n. 156
n. 157-158
n. 207-208
n. 217-220
n. 223
(They emailed scans of page 99 twice. Did they miss page 100?)
So I will likely requested photoreproductions of some or all of the preceding items.
In the previous folder “10”
n. 206-209 is listed as “Lettere Cifrate”
I have been told that “Carteggio degli oratori sforzeschi alla corte pontificia, IV. Pio II (7 agosto 1458-22 gennaio 1459)” which is kept in the Vatican archives contains a number of enciphered letters. Unfortunately that is too late for my interest.
However we can see that this is Volume IV. Before that we have:
Carteggio degli oratori sforzeschi alla corte pontificia, II Niccolò V (1 maggio 1452 – 26 dicembre 1453)
Carteggio degli oratori sforzeschi alla corte pontificia, I. Niccolò V (27 febbraio 1447-30 aprile 1452)
Now I do not know if these two earlier volumes contain ciphers or not. Unfortunately what I really want is “Carteggio degli oratori visconteo alla corte pontificia, 0. Eugenio IV (1431-1447)
Of course volume 0 is a fantasy of mine. However enciphered correspondence from the court of Eugenio IV may have survived elsewhere.
I am waiting on some enciphered letters from other sources which may well be interesting, however I am still keeping an eye on the Vatican archives with the hope that there may be something interesting lurking there.
Mark – it would be interesting to see how western religious rendered the local languages in regions to which they’d been sent between c.1290-c.1350.
The Franciscans and Dominicans especially – as the two main preaching orders might somewhere have devised systems for rendering local languages, whether i n Roman script or in some script of their own devising.
Just a thought, while you’re hanging out at the Vatican libraries..
Nick: I have sent you a link to where you can download some enciphered letters from a fund called “Lettere Varie” in the Florence State Archives. In Folders 10 and 11 there are some enciphered letters amongst others things. I requested photoreproductions of letters that from their descriptions were or could be Milanese and could be early 15th century. I was keen to see if I could find the original Milanese enciphered letters from which the 19th century archivist Abbot Pietro Gabrielli generated the 1424 Milanese cipher keys he includes in his collection. I should add that I am yet to study these letters.
Nick: As far as I can tell the enciphered letters that I am looking for do not appear to be part of this collection.
Nevertheless there may be something of interest there. I will share then with Ivan Parisi, as he seems to enjoy deciphering letters and so may be interested in deciphering these. According to the inventory the last item is a letter from Milan.
The problem is, the original letters that Gabrielli used may not have been in the Florence State Archives, if so who knows where they are. I think despite world wars it is unlikely they would have got destroyed in the last 150 years.
Anyway there is more to come from the Milan archive.
I have learnt that they are more enciphered letters in the Archivio di Stato di Firenze at the following locations:
Dieci di Balia:
No. 2->
c. 72; c. 171;
No. 3->
c. 21; c. 96; c. 97;
No. 7->
c. 59; c. 61; c. 66; c. 70; c. 71; c. 102;
No. 8->
c. 82; c. 111; cc. 127-131;
No. 9->
cc. 172-174; cc. 181-194;
No. 22->
c. 243-244;
Carte Strozzlane:
Series I, No. 23, insert;
Miscellanea Repubblicana:
No. 11, insert 292;
No. 157, insert 2, insert 3.37, insert 4.2 and 4.3;
Naturally I am requesting photoreproductions of these enciphered letter. When I will receive the photoreproductions I do not know. Hopefully soon.
Needless to say I am waiting on ciphers from Milan as well as some others though I don’t know how long it will take to receive them; the wheels can sometimes turn slowly in the archives.
I sometimes feel like I am one of a very few Voynich researchers who have any interest in ciphers from the time from which the manuscript has been carbon dated. And there are certainly a number of Voynich researchers who state that they believe the manuscript to be written in cipher and a number who think it might be.
Yet really I have only found the following people to have made some effort in this area: Nick Pelling, David Scheers and Michelle.
Why is there so little interest in this topic? I find most interest amongst people who are interested in 15th century ciphers, but are not particularly interested in the Voynich. Occasionally someone pops up with the “discovery” of a 16th century cipher, as though it were a major breakthrough.
Mark Knowles: I suspect that many lose faith in the idea that Voynichese is indeed 15th century cryptography when the details prove to be far more complicated and tangled than they had at first hoped. I think it’s safe to conclude that Voynichese is not a trivial example of any category you could name, and may well indeed be an overlapping mixture of different categories all at the same time.
Nick: The Florence State Archives tell me that they have found the letters I seek and hopefully I will get the photoreproductions by the end of the week. I hope they are as interesting to me as I suspect. The Milan State Archive are being rather slow and awkward at the moment, but with time I think they will give me what I have asked for. Still, I think I should make a concerted effort to trawl through their archive to find anything more that remains of early 15th century ciphers. I still have to devise a strategy for how to approach the Vatican Archives to track down their early 15th century enciphered letters. I would love if if the Milanese 1431 intercepted enciphered letters have survived there. Fortunately I have made a very close contact in Dr. Ivan Parisi who is based in Rome and he has offered to help me. So I feel like there is still plenty more work, hunting, to be done.
I have been asked to give an academic presentation on the subject of early 15th ciphers; I cannot say this excites me as it will require some work with probably no reward, but who knows. By now I can say I know more than anyone about early 15th century ciphers, certainly I have formed the largest collection since the 15th century, excluding the Voynich manuscript as that is an unknown; that is not much of an achievement admittedly given that it is a pretty small slice of history, however I think it is highly relevant to the Voynich.
Nick: I have learnt a lot about early 15th century ciphers, but I am conscious of how much I don’t know and how much will never be known due to so many historical records being lost. There is certainly a lot of work that could be done absorbing and fully understanding the implications of the ciphers I have already collected, there are even some that I have not attempted to decipher and which appear not to have been deciphered by anyone else in modern times.
I have collected a lot of ciphers, so one might conclude that so much survives, however the reality is that so little has survived and I am left trying to locate the few remnants of the ciphers of the time. Finding early 15th century Milanese ciphers may be very hard, but it appears like locating early 15th century Venetian ciphers is even harder. So in short there is still a lot more work for me to do, before I can say I have realistically done all I reasonably can do.
One thing have got a better understanding of is how much history has been lost. Maybe less than 1% of the original cipher records from the early 15th century survive.
Mark Knowles. You have a lot of effort. You’ve been trying to figure out how many different ciphers for many years. I can write to you here that there is a lot of cipher. A scientist to go crazy about how many ciphers there were in the Middle Ages. But keep studying. You are doing a good and deserving job. One day you’ll find out how the Voynich manuscript is encrypted. So I keep my fingers crossed for you.
It would be great to hear if you got a response from Vatican Archives, in particular if something can be extracted from the Codices Hebraici section.
Josef & Nick: My research has been admittedly very narrow in focus. I tend to have studied only a small number of aspects of the Voynich, but studied them for longer and in more detail than anyone else. This is a different approach from many who I am aware of on the Ninja forum, who from my perspective often seem to flit from topic to topic without staying on any long enough to actually learn something about it. The manuscript is a very long document with so many aspects to it that studying everything in great detail is not possible for one individual. I don’t believe the Voynich will be deciphered and understood by having a good general knowledge of the manuscript, but rather by finding the chink in the armour which enables one to crack open the manuscript.
My current goal is to find the closest surviving relative to the Voynich cipher. In my opinion this would be a Milanese diplomatic cipher of the 1430s. Given the scarcity of surviving Milanese ciphers, as you know, this is a non-trivial task. Of course, apart from the ciphers I have collected so far, and the ciphers I am waiting on, I don’t know what of that less than 1%, I have spoken of, survives and where it is located and what is lost to history’s fires and rubbish bins and so very much is lost to history’s fires and rubbish bins, but some stuff survives so I guess I can’t complain. Of course, I imagine what applies to ciphers applies to other historical documents of the time, though maybe ciphers were more likely to be destroyed than other documents.
My cipher research can either strengthen or weaken my original authorship hypothesis. So far I would say that it has very significantly strengthen it, but who knows what the implications of my further research into ciphers of the time will be for my theory; naturally I hope it will be to further strengthen the theory, but further evidence may make my hypothesis look less secure, that is beyond my control.
Mark Knowles. I don’t want to take the wind out of your sails. But according to everything I’ve found out about the manuscript, it has nothing to do with Italy. It will be very difficult for you to find someone last who knows something about the manuscript and its cipher. About the complex Rosenberg cipher. The last Rosenberg, Petr Vok, died as the last family a long time ago. He was the last of the family to know how to encrypt. So making a hole in your armor will be very difficult for you. It also took me a while to figure out how the manuscript is written and encrypted. I can write to you here that it has not been a few hours. But I left a lot of work on the manuscript. Thousands and thousands of hours. And that’s why I can advise you. And not just you, but everyone. Consider when the text of the manuscript reads, for example: Czech words and or: I write in Czech. So it is logical that the manuscript is written in the Czech language. As for the cipher itself. So this is a Jewish cipher. very complicated thing. Jewish substitution is very complex and complicated. To top it all off, you need to know the history of the Rosenberg family. Different dates when someone was born or died. etc.
But as I write: I do not want to take your faith and wind out of your sails. I can only show the way and advise.
There is one decisive difference between a diplomatic cipher and this script. A diplomatic cipher was written for a concrete recipient to pass an information and the recipient had a key for it, it should be read. VMS isn’t written for a concrete recipient who was in possession of a key. VMS is a sealed “heretical” word for all and nobody.
Darius: I don’t suggest that the Voynich manuscript is a diplomatic document intended for diplomatic communication. So you could say that the Voynich manuscript cipher is a “diplomatic influenced” cipher. I do believe the Voynich manuscript had a key, but it was a key for the benefit of the author(s) so they knew how to write the book and to read it. Of course they kept the key separate from the manuscript. I believe the author(s) knew a lot about the latest diplomatic cipher techniques and used that knowledge to design the Voynich cipher. I hope that is clear.
@Mark
I don’t think you’ll hit the bull’s eye in your search for the key.
I think it’s more about the possible applications and systems of the time that gives you a sense of how it was developed.
I also don’t think it can be too complicated as it should be understood by several other writers.
If I assume that it was probably written by doctors and pharmacists (possibly in training), then I also don’t assume a diplomatic cipher.
I rather think of a normal writing system with a new arrangement in combination. Whereby the dialect of the region is decisively involved.
According to linguists, the languages Latin, Italian, French, German and also Slavic are involved. Which does not exactly make things easy.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/307446526_Die_Position_des_Ratoromanischen_und_seine_Beziehungen_zum_Deutschen_Franzosischen_und_Italienischen
Agasul: Whether I hit the “bull’s eye”, as you put it, is greatly dependent on what surviving documents I can find from the time.
You say: “I think it’s more about the possible applications and systems of the time that gives you a sense of how it was developed.”
What precisely do you mean by this?
You say: “I also don’t think it can be too complicated as it should be understood by several other writers.”
Why do you think this?
You say:”If I assume that it was probably written by doctors and pharmacists (possibly in training),”
Why do you assume that?
You say:”According to linguists, the languages Latin, Italian, French, German and also Slavic are involved.”
Where did you read that?
Mark Knowles: from my own Voynich cipher research viewpoint, there are many possible cryptographic bull’s eyes that what you’re doing could hit. A cipher using gallows characters, or a similar set of verbose cipher pairs, or aiir / aiiv groups, etc – all/any of these would be terrifically interesting, and potentially very revealing indeed. Keep going! 🙂
The book itself says one thing. It doesn’t exactly look like a Bible, Psalter, hymnbook, or travelogue.
It looks more like a medicine book.
It is also quite unlikely for me that several diplomats would draw such a book about flowers, astronomy and some ponds as a hobby and then encode it elaborately.
It makes no sense for me to use a complicated decryption procedure just to find out how to make cough syrup. It is not a declaration of war where troops are secretly assembled.
That’s the way it is with languages. It is the region where the book points out the predominant dialects. It is a crossroads of languages. See the link.
Mark, I know, you don’t suggest that the Voynich manuscript is a diplomatic document and naturally, a key existed, it’s prerequisite for the assumption of a meaningful text. This is, what I try to find and complete (not only me). The interesting question is, if a separate document ever existed, in which the decryption key was recorded and explained. If we knew that, we came closer to the comprehension of the intentions behind the encryption. The inner circle, the scribes and other insiders, knew the text. They would need a document with a definition how to encrypt in a homogenous way.
Should anybody else know about the content? If yes, such a decryption-key document was reasonable. But even with a documented key the reading without notes etc. would be extremely difficult. In my opinion the plaintext is Aramaic, so alone this would be an insuperable obstacle. In fact, I think probably the most of the contemporary Biblical Aramaic experts in Italy were involved in this “project” – an extremely small group. My estimation is – such a decryption- key document didn’t exist.
However, for many reasons what you’re doing is very useful and fascinating, no doubt!
Darius:
The question as to why the Voynich was written in cipher, I do not know or need to have a theory behind it at this stage. The simplest guess I can make is that they could. If you or a very close friend or relative were to write a scientific text like the Voynich and you also happened to be the top cryptographer in the world at that time in your professional capacity then I think for some the temptation to write that text in cipher would be high, maybe even creating a more advanced cipher than you would use in your work capacity, though based on those ciphers that you use in your work. I think also a supposedly cutting-edge scientific text might also be used to showcase cutting edge cryptography. Whilst the cipher is very much simpler I do think Giovanni Fontana’s work is a good parallel to the Voynich and I am inclined to think that his motivation to write his manuscript in cipher was somewhat similar. However this is all speculation and as I say at the moment it doesn’t impinge on my research.
Anyway, good luck with your Aramaic theory:)
Agasul:
My inclination is to think of the Voynich as a scientific text/notebook, or what passed for science at that time, created by amateur/hobbiest scientists outside their professional lives. I do think you are right that the contents appear to be primarily medical, but may not be exclusively.
You say: “It is also quite unlikely for me that several diplomats would draw such a book about flowers, astronomy and some ponds as a hobby and then encode it elaborately.”
I wrote: “So you could say that the Voynich manuscript cipher is a ‘diplomatic influenced’ cipher.”
These are two different things.
If multiple people were involved in writing the manuscript, such as, for example, a group of say 5 or 6 brothers, then only one would need to have a diplomatic background, the others might have backgrounds or interests more closely related to the contents of the manuscript.
Darius,
I’m puzzled about things you’ve said about Aramaic. Could you explain what you mean by ‘Biblical’ Aramaic? Are you saying that the Voynich text must be only about ‘biblical’ matters, or do you mean that what we’re seeing is a form of Aramaic script characteristic of the 1st-2ndC AD?
Or perhaps that this is classical Aramaic/ Syriac written with a previously unrecognised Aramaic script?
Also – concerning these “contemporary Biblical Aramaic experts” I understand you mean not people living in those early centuries, but in the early fifteenth-century. So have you included scholars of the fifteenth century Italian Jewish community?
As I see it, the further back in time you go. the more widely was Aramaic used, but equally the less likely it is that a text will have anything to do with Christians.
I don’t say you’re wrong but at present I can’ see how the primary evidence can support your theory.
@Mark
Diplomatically influenced, possibly.
I think your search may reveal an unusual type of encryption. Something that may never have been thought of before.
Wrapping a strip of paper around a piece of wood is also unusual, but it has been done.
I think that the content of the VM is preceded by a higher knowledge in plants and the application in medicine than it can be considered as a hobby.
As I said, I am not thinking of a direct hit (the actual key) but rather of new findings or a hint at a detail of the encryption.
” Not everything is medical”
I think so too. The astrological part is only related to medicine. I have to say that if you read other old books, it becomes clear that the power of a plant is limited in time. Here I would rather take into account farmers’ rules. Zodiac and astronomy.
In any case, I will keep an eye on your work.
Greetings Aga Tentakel….Agasul 🙂
NP: one possible cryptographic ‘bulls eye’ that derives from old Milano around Visconti’s time I think, would be the letter ‘o’ as in omicron for eye, which may also represent numerals 15, 70 and 0 (blank in ciphertext), though not associated with Voynich’s Manuscript far as I know. Only other decent thing I can think of ever came out of modern day Milan would be the Grand Prix racing curcuit at nearby Monza.
Diane, the term Biblical Aramaic is not clearly defined. As I understand, the biblical researchers mostly point to the books in the Hebrew Bible (Book Daniel & Ezra) written in Aramaic as the norm for Biblical Aramaic. Other use this term for Aramaic being used in the Hasmodean times and in the 1st-3rd CE. That is what I think is the plaintext of the VMS. Written Aramaic of letter periods, like Syriac, which is not more Old Aramaic but Middle Aramaic, is already somehow vocalized. Normally you see in later scripts dots and other small signs around the Hebrew/Aramaic letters to indicate how to pronounce and what is the following vowel. When you take e.g. ב (beth) so depending on the dagesh (the dot inside) it’s b or v and with one, two dots or a T below is then bee, bey, ba, vee, vey, va. I can’t see any of these signs or potential substitutes in Voynich vords (if we assume Aramaic as plaintext) therefore I think it’s BA. I don’t think they de-vocalised the original deliberate. But having only a plain ב in the text (for me EVA-o) we have a bigger ambiguity of the words and e. g. the flexion is not more visible, which is mostly regulated by the vowels. However, for this kind of text you would need experts for correctly reading and encoding – it was not the Aramaic or Hebrew written at medieval time. They could come from Jewish communities, why not, but scholars from the east (Byzantian emigrants) and from the west are thinkable as well. I don’t believe, the encryption was a “Jewish project”. I think the Church supervised it.
I’ll write about the Christian hypothesis in a separate post…
Early Christianity, so much is going on here, research, publications en masse!
I find the view of scholars like James Tabor very convincing. When I get him right, he argues there are 3 pillars of Early Hebrew Christianity: the ‘so to say’ Jesus Movement, the Jerusalem Church of James the Just and the Essenes. All 3 have a lot in common, but other things, which make the distinction. All are deeply rooted in Judaism – what else? All love Isaiah and the other prophets, the Books of the Hebrew Bible, their holy city is Jerusalem and the holy place is the temple. All are messianic, apocalyptic, and regard Heaven to be a place for the eternal life, for the ‘real’ life after a short, insignificant period on earth – to say it short and simple…
All respect the Sabbath and most of the other rules, but here are already some differences. E. g. Essenes (most associated with Qumran) would never leave their Camp on Sabbaths, as you shouldn’t travel on Sabbaths, you shouldn’t leave your place (some scholars claim they even didn’t go to the latrine, which was placed outside the camp/complex as this were regarded as ‘leaving the place’). In that they are very Jewish Orthodox. James would probably agree with the tradition to regard whole Jerusalem as one place and allow to move inside the city walls and Jesus said, that ‘the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath’. So, you see these early discrepancies. James is naturally incorporated into the later orthodox Christian heritage (even as Jesus’ half-brother) but somehow degraded in the synoptic gospels. So, it’s very surprising to find words like:
‘The disciples said to Jesus: We know that you will depart from us; who is it who will be great over us? Jesus said to them: Wherever you have come, you will go to James the Just, for whose sake heaven and earth came into being’
in the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas. Essenes are not mentioned in the gospels but the more in the external contemporary literature (even external to Qumran). Flavius Josephus, the Jewish historian working for the Flavians, mentioned them several times, probably incorporating all the groups into one movement. To make them comprehensible for a Roman emperor of that time, he describes them as a kind of Hebrew Pythagoreans. Ebionites or Nazarenes, other groups considered to be early Christians, seem to be connected to the Church of James the Just. But generally, we don’t know much about them and their interconnectivity with other groups.
Now to VMS, sorry for the very brief outline, there are tonnes of literature and hours of lectures as video on youtube or elsewhere about it. Regarding Christian VMS, I can only argue with the text. When you read e. g. in the plaintext of 17v:
-confess the lamb-
-the assembly of the poor-
-don’t make yourself a burden of cleanness (of animal meat) to be sated-
and so on – that can’t come from Pharisees or Sadducees, which would be the only alternative candidates.
Darius – yes, you’re right. Context defines what is meant by ‘biblical Aramaic’.
You assume the context is religious and Christian, but apart from entirely hypothetical/allegorical invented narratives, you have a difficulty when you attempt to argue the Voynich manuscript’s imagery has anything to do with the Christian religion. What such narratives fail to do is to pay attention to the fact that a great deal is known of early Christian, and of Jewish conventions in art, and their varieties and changes over time. As with so many Voynich theories, this one seems to think nothing more is needed than an internally-consistent storyline. There’s a whole world of scholarship beyond the Voynich bubble, and Voynich theories would do well to test their theories against that objective standard. You mention Isaiah – show me where there is record of any illustrated text of Isaiah or of Daniel or anything else that looks like images in Beinecke MS 408. You’d also have to prove, from the historical record, that people of that time and environment knew Aramaic.
PS – in this context: no need to re-do comparison of images in the Vms with copies of the Beatus. I spent some time on that and will happily pass on a summary of that work to anyone who cares to email me.
The big problem, for anyone wanting to tie Spanish ms of the Beatus to an Aramaic theory is the absence of any knowledge of Aramaic among the people who made those mss. Conversely, the problem for those wanting to argue a Spanish-Christian ‘Beatus’ link with the Vms is that the stylistics and page-layout of those mss is not exclusively Christian.
Diane, you like to see Isaiah in word, symbol and image? Ok – let’s come back to the T-map on the foldout 85v/86r. You see there 3 vords, which tell us about the ‘second coming’:
אָתָה ‘athah בּוֹא bow’ אַזָא ‘aza’
heat is going to arrive
Jeremiah 17:8
They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green.
Isaiah 66:15
See, the LORD is coming with fire, and his chariots are like a whirlwind…
אֲבֵדָה ‘abedah אַיִל ‘ayil
the terebinth tree (is) a lost thing
(alternative: wicked folly comes to an end)
Isaiah 1:29
For they shall be ashamed of the terebinth trees Which you have desired
בָּזָה bazah
(to) hold in contempt/disdain/to despise
Isaiah 32:6
For fools utter contempt, and their minds plot wrong things:
practicing ungodliness, spreading lies about the LORD,
leaving the pangs of hungry people unsatisfied, and depriving thirsty people of drink
The letters in Hebrew handwriting Tet(⎿), Nun(|) and Kaph(⏋) compose a T and build then TNK and living water to drink from streams inside. Thus, Tanakh is your refuge in these times (tell us Isaiah, the prophets & the authors).
Do I need to divulge every secret? 😉
Darius,
No, but the map’s information will remain a secret so long as you can’t see it.
I’ve had enough experience to know there are people who really, honestly, and truly cannot see what is drawn on a page. Their brain seems to be over-active in imposing on what is there some other sort-of-but-not-quite similar item from their memory. I wouldn’t call it pareidolia, exactly, but it’s something not unlike that.
Try taking a copy of that little drawing from Isidore, and taking a copy of what you’re calling a ‘T-O’ diagram in the Voynich map. Then put them side by side and write down – use separate columns if you like – items are that ‘similar’ and items that are ‘dissimilar’ between the two.
It’s a pretty basic exercise designed to encourage pre-reading skills.
The fact is that there is NO ‘T-O’ diagram in the Voynich map. *sigh*
About your interpretation
אָתָה ‘athah בּוֹא bow’ אַזָא ‘aza’
heat is going to arrive
I have no comment to offer you. The written part of the text is not my field although I will say that I prefer Young’s Concordance and the NIV interlinear version and, separately, that if ‘Heat is going to arrive’ proves a connection to the text of Isaiah, then you’d have to say the same of every almanac’s description of the year, its seasons, weather and winds.
Still, for all I know it might be a fair rendering of the Voynichese, even if wildly off-base about the drawing. You’ll have to ask the linguists.
When it comes to the locating of early 15th century enciphered letters in the Vatican archives the following seem to be the best places to look in:
1) Miscellaneous collections of the Archivum Arcis
2) Instrumenta Miscellanea
3) Collectoriae series of the Apostolic Camera
For the “Instrumenta Miscellanea” the following publications partially describe them:
1) S. Pagano, “Additiones agli Instrumenta Miscellanea” (https://www.archivioapostolicovaticano.va/content/aav/it/attivita/ricerca-e-conservazione/pubblicazioni/collane-editoriali—collectanea-archivi-vaticani–cav-/cav-103.html)
2) C. Burns, “Sources of British and Irish history in the Instrumenta Miscellanea of the Vatican Archives”, in «Archivum Historiae Pontificiae» 9/1971, pp. 7-141
3) Manuel Milián Boix, “El fondo «Instrumenta Miscellanea» del Archivio Vaticano”, Roma 1969
For the “Archivum Arcis” the following publication partially describes it:
C. Burns “Sources of British and Irish history in the Archivum Arcis collection of the Vatican Secret Archives” (855-1789)
For the “Collectoriae della Camera Apostolica” the following publication partially describe it:
“Rationes Decimarum Italiae”
However to study the complete inventories one just needs to go to the Vatican Archives and study them on site.
I have had the following link referred to me:
https://archivesetmanuscrits.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cc10584q
I have had a superficial glance at this and spotted quite a few enciphered letters from 1447 amongst the other letters. However it would be nice if there were some from significantly before this time, maybe I will find some or maybe this will lead me to find some elsewhere in the BNF. I have not investigated the BNF before now, but this could be a promising lead.
Nick: I have just received some Milanese ciphers dated to 1439. I think they are certainly interesting. I would like to check the dating, though I have no reason to believe it is not correct as they share similar features. One of them, as far as I can tell, would count as being a verbose cipher as it uses combinations of arabic digits to represent a large number of different substitutions.(I am never quite sure how people are defining a “verbose cipher”, maybe you could define it.) It has a sizeable number of substitutions. I think it further supports the statement that I made previously that there was no increase in the sophistication of Milanese diplomatic ciphers from the death of Filippo Maria Visconti in 1447 until the end of the 15th century and beyond. With the 1424 Milanese ciphers I have seen it is clear again that this was a period of significant change and evolution of ciphers. It would be nice to plug that gap further and see Milanese ciphers from between 1424 and 1439 to see how they evolved over that period. How difficult it will be to locate ciphers from that period I don’t know.
So to restate the time period from which the Voynich has been carbon dated corresponds quite neatly with a period of rapid change and innovation in diplomatic ciphers when compared with the periods before and after.
Nick: In the 1424 cipher we see Roman Numeral substitutions whilst in the 1439 cipher we see Arabic Numeral substitutions. It is striking that the 1439 cipher has no invented symbols. Though in the 1445 Marcolino Barbavara cipher we see invented symbols return as in the ciphers in the Tranchedino.
It seems to me most probable that what we see in the Voynich is more similar to Roman Numeral substitutions. Some of the final Voynich glyphs do look like some kind of counting.
Nick: If one has a cipher where:
top -> #&@
tar -> #&*
tune -> #&%
….
What do we call that?
It is not really verbose as the original number of characters is not less than the final number of characters. It also not an abbreviation as the original number of characters is not more than the final number of characters.
If using the English language we substitute as follows:
s -> &
str -> %&*
th -> %&#
ing -> 11
aw -> 12
ong -> 13
sing = s + ing -> &11
saw = s + aw -> &12
song = s + ong -> &13
string = str + ing -> %&*11
straw = str + aw -> %&*12
strong = str + ong -> %&*13
thing = th + ing -> %
thaw = th + aw -> %
thong = th + ong -> %&13
This kind of cipher is the best guess that I have at the moment of what is going on with the Voynich. It is not really a verbose or an abbreviation cipher.
English like most languages is directional at the level of character sequences.
Lots of words start “str” but no words end with this sequence. Lots of words end “ing” but very few words start “ing” (ingot). So really natural languages tend to have much more of a pre + suffix structure than one might think which makes them much more like Voynichese than one might think.
I have come to a conclusion:
Archivists and researchers don’t know what is really in the archives they administer or study.
This is based on my experience. However from my point of view in some ways this is a positive sign.
In Meister’s book “Die Anfange…” he states that the earliest Milanese
cipher in the Milan archive is dated to 1448; this is patently false as numerous different examples testify. The archivists in the Milan archives have told me that the only early 15th century ciphers they have are dated to 1439, 1440 and 1447. However I know that there is the Marcolino Barbavara cipher dated to 1445 and Lydia Cerioni includes a number of early 1440s ciphers in the Milan archive in her book(though they are mostly Condottieri Francesco Sforza ciphers). The 1427 Milanese enciphered letter referred to in Osio, it has been suggested by the Milan State Archives is probably in another Milan archive. However they point out that they have many undated 15th century ciphers. Lydia Cerioni does not include in her book the 1439 ciphers. So all the different sources Meister, Cerioni and the Milan State Archivists give an incomplete and contradictory picture of what 15th century ciphers they have in their archive. I therefore conclude that none of them really know what early 15th century Milanese ciphers there are in the Milan State Archives or in other Milan Archives or in other Italian Archives for that matter. Overall I think authors like Meister and Cerioni did a great job, but when one looks into it, it becomes clear that they missed things out. Meister did not include or identify the 1424 Milanese cipher in the Florence State Archives though he must have seen Gabrielli’s cipher key(I think he almost certainly didn’t recognise the correspondents as Milanese and thought it looked unusual so didn’t want to include it). The Vatican Archives don’t seem to have much of a clue as to where early 15th century Papal diplomatic documents might be in their Archives, which makes be think the archives must be very disorganised. I have quite a few other examples illustrating how archivists don’t know what ciphers they have in their Archives. So if an archivist or author tells you they don’t have any ciphers from a given period in their archive be prepared to doubt that as they may well be quite wrong.
In some ways I think this bodes well as it makes in more probable that I may be able to locate more early 15th century Milanese ciphers in the Milan State Archives and elsewhere. I was of the impression that all Milanese ciphers where destroyed in the 1447 fire, I am beginning to think that much more may have survived than I originally thought.
Don’t take my remarks as an insult directed at archivists. It is probably wholly reasonable that archivists don’t know what they have in their Archives given the size of the archives and the limited human resources they have to administer them. Also they have probably inherited archives that were already very disorganised.
Nick: I think it likely, if I continue following the track that I am, that I will at some stage be able to answer all your questions in this blog post, even though your questions are not my questions. I am keen at the moment to obtain scans of the inventories for 1591, 1597 and 1598.
I was thinking about “Google” DeepMind and Voynich decipherment. Given the recent news about AlphaFold’s identification of protein structures and also having myself recently watched again the documentary on the match between the world Go champion and AlphaGo DeepMind’s program I wonder if an “AlphaVoynich” program could be possible. This would be something much more sophisticated than what Greg Kondrak attempted.
I mention DeepMind not as some AI silver bullet which could supposedly solve all problems, but rather having thought about how Voynichese could be deciphered in the absense of a good crib/block-paradigm if it is the kind of cipher I suspect it is. I was trying to think about how an algorithm would explore the space of the vast number of possible substring substitution mappings to find the correct set. This problem then sounded very reminiscent of the kind of problems that DeepMind’s machine learning algorithms are good at solving.
If Abbot Gabbrielli, the Florentine archivist, had not been dead for well over 100 years I would be very curious to ask him what he made of Voynichese.
Mark, it‘s an intriguing topic, how AI could be used to recognize or verify transcriptions. In my opinion, it‘s, at the moment, a non-reachable utopia. Only one point: how would you feed your algorithm? With EVA translitaration? I guarantee, this would lead nowhere, like it did so far… I wrote in many posts how badly the glyphs are recognized. One example more: above the double-c‘s, the connected c’s, there is often a small glyph. Do you think, it‘s always the same glyph? I think we have here not only one same glyph but a few different. And I don‘t even start with semantic problems, once you had a perfectly correct input
Darius: Even if the transcriptions are not that good one could still measure how well a given decipherment fits a given transcription. If you imagine scoring a given decipherment mapping then some decipherment mappings will score higher than others even if none are 100% perfect due to transcription errors. In fact it may well be possible for the algorithm to suggest what might be transcription errors. This could be tried with a range of possible underlying languages. I would think that there would need to be some reasonable bounds on the possible ciphers that could be considered.
My preliminary observations on Lettere Varie, Filza 11, Item 223 in the Florence State Archives:
It is described in the inventory as being a Milanese enciphered letter.
There appear to be invented symbols as one would expect with a cipher. What is noteworthy is that sometimes ontop of symbols there are other symbols or shapes. Looking closely, we often see the same symbols/shapes ontop of the same other symbols which makes it look like they function as a unit. This makes me think that we have vertical glyphs that sometimes have space or gaps between different parts, such that they are not drawn joined up. So, whilst they are not connected, they operate as though they were. This reminds me of the complex gallows glyphs we see in the Voynich. It also makes me think of the idea of verbosity, where multiple vertical symbols map to one text value. If the different parts of the glyphs were arranged horizontally, rather than vertically, we could have something like what we have in the Voynich where multiple separate symbols could be functioning as a unit. Of course, this is speculation.
It would be good to isolate and identify the separate glyphs.
What is particularly interesting to me is when it dates from. Is it early 15th century or does not late from a later period?
Then ideally one could try to decipher it, however I am not confident in this regard as it is quite a short-enciphered letter, so it may be too short to fully decipher. Of course, if it is deciphered this would help a lot with the dating as one can look at the context of the letter and the people and events referred to.
The dating on this letter is important as if dates to the time of the Voynich manuscript then it is much more interesting than if it dates much later. Despite all my efforts in locating early 15th century Milanese and other ciphers there are so far very few to compare with this. However it is clear this was a period of rapid change and experimentation. It does not look like any of the many late 15th century Milanese ciphers that we see it the Tranchedino or other sources. On the subject of 16th century Milanese ciphers I have relatively little familiarity, so it is hard for me to say that it belongs there, however other documents in this folder do not date from that late period. So it seems very plausible that it is early 15th century, but without being able to date it one can’t be certain. I may contact the Florence archive to say if they have any more information that could help in the dating. It might be help if someone with familiarity with 16th century Milanese ciphers were able to tell me if it resembles any of those. It seems very unlikely that it dates from the 14th century as it seems much too complex for that period when compared with late 14th century Milanese ciphers and again there are no other 14th century documents in that folder. So it seems most likely it is early 15th century, but I would like to be much more confident on that matter.
Nick: I have requested scans from the Milan State Archives of the inventories for Carteggio 1591, 1597 and 1598. Once I have received those inventories I will share them with you. I will then request any ciphers that I have not excluded as being post-1447 or that I have already seen or that can be found in Lydia Cerioni, Meister or elsewhere. Once I have done this I will then try to determine if there are any 15th century ciphers elsewhere in the archives. Of course I don’t know how long this will take as the archive doesn’t process requests particularly quickly, but they will get there eventually.
For interested, apparently:
Carteggio 1591 contains 87 documents
Carteggio 1597 contains 197 documents
Carteggio 1598 contains 160 documents
That gives a total of 444 documents
I would think however that that amounts to more than 444 pages as I assume some documents are longer than 1 page.
The following contains some enciphered letters:
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b100373864
The above document contains lots of enciphered letters as well as non-enciphered letters all dated to 1447. This is a little late for my interest. It also appears like they may all use the same cipher key.
Looking through the documents in:
https://archivesetmanuscrits.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cc10584q
They are listed as dating from 1433 to 1500. At the moment I am interested in ciphers dated to before 1439. These seem on the surface to being very slim picking as there seem to be very few documents from this time and of those that are they may not be enciphered letters.
Some items have not been digitised and the document that is probably earliest amongst these is one of those. So I may need to make enquiries.
Surprise discovery:
Gallows like characters observed in a cipher key dated to 1470 in Bibliothèque Nationale de France.
https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b10037392r/f31.item#
This letter is from a manuscript described as
Cote : italien 1592
Archivio Sforzesco. Documenti originali (cart. e membran.) dal 1433 al 1500
Which can be found at:
https://archivesetmanuscrits.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cc10584q/cd0e198
Going through the manuscript in this BNF collection:
Manuscript 1597 dates from 1439 to 1446
Manuscript 1612 dates from 1441 to 1452
From my overview these don’t appear to contain any ciphers.
Ideally someone should go through all these manuscripts and work out what dates each manuscript covers and which ones contain ciphers and on which pages.
I think I will probably have to investigate what is in manuscript 1583 starting by emailing the BNF to determine the dates of the manuscript(presumably 1433 to 1446) and whether it has any documents in it that look like ciphers such as in manuscript 1584.
Well, looking at the following inventory:
http://emeroteca.braidense.it/eva/sfoglia_articolo.php?IDTestata=26&CodScheda=113&CodVolume=773&CodFascicolo=3927&CodArticolo=60479
It does seem that manuscript 1583 contains enciphered letters. However the earliest one that I could see listed was dated to 1446; though there are quite a few enciphered letters dated to 1446. Given their late date I can see the only purpose of seeing these letters would be in order to confirm that Milanese ciphers at the end of the Visconti era were as advanced as Milanese ciphers were right up until the end of the 15th century. However I think I already have enough evidence to conclude that.
It turns out that Manuscript 1584 contains some enciphered letters of Marcolino Barbavara dated to 1447. I have included the link again for the manuscript, below:
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b100373864
In the inventory:
http://emeroteca.braidense.it/eva/sfoglia_articolo.php?IDTestata=26&CodScheda=113&CodVolume=773&CodFascicolo=3927&CodArticolo=60479
It lists which letters are from Marcolino Barbavara in Manuscript 1584.
These Marcolino Barbavara letters could not have been altered to make the cipher more complex at a later date. So this supports my thesis that the first half of the 15th century was a period of rapid advancement and experimentation in diplomatic ciphers and the second half of the 15th century was a period of stagnation and little advancement in diplomatic ciphers. This is not the way cipher history, particularly that of Milan, is often presented.
In general, I would question the idea that cipher keys were often added to at a later date. Wouldn’t it be better just to start over with a new cipher key?
History going backwards?
Looking at the 1440 “Visconti Decrees” cipher key, it contains roughly 250 substitutions in addition to it using arabic numerals. I think there is a case for arguing that it is more advanced than the ciphers in the Tranchedino Cipher Ledger. I think using arabic numerals is more sophisticated and modern than made-up symbols. It is has all the same standard substitutions as well as some which are not standard.
All the features we see in the Tranchedino Cipher Ledger are either to be found in the 1424 Milanese cipher that I have referred to or the 1424 Florentine cipher in Meister’s book, so these were far from being new innovations by the late 15th century.
I can see this phenomenon being confusing even disconcerting. One’s natural expectation would be a continuous process of increasing sophisticated in 15th century diplomatic ciphers. Whereas history appears to show a rapid increase in the sophistication and complexity of ciphers in the early 15th century and then a stagnation or even decline in their sophistication and complexity in the late 15th century. (I suspect that this may have confused researchers in the past such that they were lead to doubting the dates on early 15th century Milanese ciphers, because their sophistication was so out of kilter with their expectations). The late 15th century was supposedly the age of the great cryptographer Cicco Simonetta, however this evidence paints him in a different light. So what the explanation?
I am still inclined to the view that the rapid advancement in ciphers in the early 15th century was due in large part the levels of military conflict in Italy. Whereas by comparison after the peace of Lodi the late 15th century Italy was largely free of conflict.
I think the structure and nature of the ciphers used was standardised in the 1440s, such as we see in the Tranchedino where all the ciphers conform to a standard template. I think it was recognised that it is not only necessary that ciphers are hard to break, but also that they are easy to use and so some of the more complex features of early 15th century ciphers were eliminated on grounds of practicality.
This historical situation is one, I think, where a cipher like that of the Voynich could easily exist. However the historical void needs to be bridged, which means locating more ciphers from the period that I am researching.
I have been trying to get a handle on what and in which locations in the Vatican Archives Papal diplomatic correspondence from the time of the Voynich(and after 1417), this being Pope Martin V and Pope Eugene IV, is to be found. So as to have some idea where to look for enciphered letters or cipher keys from this era I have been trying to locate whatever relevant inventories I can find. I have found some indications, but this looks like a relevant paper.
Jeannine Fohlen “LA BIBLIOTHÈQUE DU PAPE EUGÈNE IV (1431-1447)”
Even if at some point the only thing left to do is visit the Vatican Archives and search, I will want to do as much preparation as possible in narrowing down where to look and so finding the best inventory information I can get seems vital.
Treccani lists the following on the subject of Pope Martin V:
Vatican Registers 347-358
Vat. Reg. 347-351 (called Officiorum) relating to the concession of different offices
Vat. Reg. 352-355 (called De curia), the Reg. Vat. 356 of the secretary, or of Poggio Bracciolini
Vat. Reg. 357-358 (called Expectativae)
Vat Reg. 359 contains briefs by Martin V. and his successor Eugene IV
Vat. Reg. 187-301, all from the Apostolic Chancellery, broadly cover the pontificate of Martin V
Of course, I have no idea if any of these contain diplomatic letters and if so which.
For Eugenio IV Treccani does not list any references to the Vatican Archives in particular, but rather to specific texts written about this Pope.
It should be noted that Antipope Felix V, also Duke of Savoy, has a number of documents in the Vatican Archive. I don’t know whether the bulk of documentation pertaining to him is kept there or whether that is to be found in Turin or Geneva or elsewhere.
So there is potentially a lot of material in the Vatican archives; 2 Pope’s and 1 Antipope. Whilst I am not very interested in material dated to before 1417 I would imagine they have material related to Pope Gregory XII, Antipope Benedict XIII, Antipope Alexander V and Antipope John XXIII in the Vatican Archives. Material prior to 1417 could help to illuminate the jump in complexity of ciphers that we see in this period, so it is not of no value to me.
Referring to Ilardi’s listing:
ARM. XXXIX: REGISTRA BREVIUM
Reg. 1 to 6?
ARCHIVUM ARCIS
No.1001, fols. 497v-98 (1418-1501).
No.1003, fols. 191v-92v (1436-95).
No.1011, pp.192-94 (1431-16th cent.).
And of course: Arm. C.1176: Cifre antiche e moderne ad uso delle Nunziature dal sec. XIV al XVIII
MISCELLANEA
ARM II
Vol.2 (14thcent.-1585?)
Vol.7 (13thcent.-ca.1492)
Of course Ilardi’s interests were primarily late 15th century, so it is very probable that he did not include many early 15th century references.
@Mark, I read about your Barbavara-theory (in Wiki). But I was missing any statement about the plaintext. You don’t think it’s a diplomatic cipher, do you? And which plaintext language is present? Were he and his helpers then capable to read and code this language?
There is a new statistical, mathematical analysis about the VMS plaintext by Orlov Yurii Nikolaevich of Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics of Russian Academy of Sciences, can be you heard about it. One of the findings is, the plaintext is most probably an abjad. Even if they used EVA as basis, which I do criticize, because I see a couple of more different glyphs in the VMS than EVA and similar alphabets do (I simply can’t believe that scribes spending half of their lives with writing are so slovenly that they sometimes write an ‘a’ widely open at the bottom, sometimes not, which EVA assumes to be one glyph etc.) I think their finding are somehow solid. If they used a more differentiated alphabet, I think their results would be even more distinct. But with an abjad plaintext, in my opinion, a Latin plaintext hypothesis (or other European language) is pushed a bit aside.
However, I see Eugene IV or/and his north-Italian entourage at work and, in my opinion, without insight into the ciphers of the Vatican archives any final conclusion can be driven. This wouldn’t rule out the participation of Barbavara as he (or his brother?) was a member of a papal chancery, wasn’t it?
Regarding Antonio Barbavara, do you have any graphological evidence? I have one more question, but no time today…later.
…so without plaintext examination you give an assessment about the authorship, very bold…
Here is the second topic, can be you know it. There is a book by Tullio Colombo: German translation “Die Erscheinungen der Venus”, oh, I see there is an English translation as well “Night Visions under Venus”. Short story, 76 pages: two tourists visit Abbazia dei Santi Nazario e Celso. Instead of the missed guide Antonio Barbavara shows up, catapulted from 15th century into our times, and takes the two on a mysterious tour in his abbey (Italy – everything can happen)
Darius: Thanks for referring me to that book. I didn’t realise that Antonio Barbavara had made his way into literature. I don’t imagine knowing about it will help my research, but still it is intriguing. It highlights that my authorship candidate(s) given that they lived 600 years ago were fairly well known individuals. Admittedly they are far from the Leonardo Da Vinci’s or Nicolo Machiavelli’s level of fame, but also they are much more well known than your average medieval peasant.
Darius: The normal underlying language used in diplomatic ciphers of the time in Italy was Latin, so my first guess would be that the underlying language is Latin. It doesn’t look like Latin, but then that could very easily be due to the encipherment. I suppose there are other possibilities such as the regional language Lombard. I am not sure of the other languages that they might be sufficiently knowledgeable of to use. But to repeat I think Latin is the most likely option.
Mark: so the possibility of an abjad text (typically in a language with abjad literature) is left out of consideration? In my eyes a big mistake. I‘m not talking about the authorship (here we had to distinguish between the authors and coders anyway in my opinion) but the plaintext as such. You called in one post for a computational analysis. But some of these computational, statistical breakdowns suggest exactly this: a vowelless text
Darius: I would be foolish to rule out any possibility including an abjad text, however if my authorship hypothesis is correct I find it hard to imagine how the underlying language or text is an abjad just, because it doesn’t seem to be part of the clear background of my authorship candidates. Nevertheless, I am prepared for surprises and I expect there will unexpected findings in general, so I don’t want to exclude that It also seems like the idea it is a cipher and an abjad combined might be overkill. I am inclined to the view that the closest relative to the Voynich cipher is a Milanese diplomatic cipher of the 1430s, however I suspected that the Voynich cipher is even more complicated than its closest relative, as there were likely to be more practical restrictions in a diplomatic cipher used by ordinary correspondents than one used by a small number of enthusiasts/specialists. What I am endeavouring to find, assuming my theory is correct, is the closest “surviving” relative to the Voynich cipher.
In Italy the language for official documents was Latin until the 15th century. There was a gradual shift to Italian from the 16th onward.
Italian dialects, or regional languages as they are incorrectly called today, were hardly used for written documents, since they were (and are) town languages more than regional languages.
A diplomatic report is meant to be read and consulted by different people, from different towns, from different times: it is most probably written in a standardized language, like Latin, or Italian after the end of the 15th century, especially after Bembo (and Machiavelli).
Personal letters between fellow citizens could be written in some local dialect, but that is unlikely for all other letters.
Darius
I’d be interested to read the paper by Yurii Nikolaevich. Do you know where it can be seen?
About abjads etc. I also have reservations about use of EVA for statistical analyses. The form which EVA reads as ‘q’ appears in as many as three variations – for three different letters – in some scripts, with the differences in their appearance so slight that it takes a trained eye to certainly know which is which.
Stefano: Thanks for clarifying that. I think the default assumption for me has to be that the underlying language is most likely going to be Latin. I think many people have argued that the statistical properties of the text are not consistent with Latin, however that could be a function of the encipherment.
Stefano,
What you say about ‘regional languages’ versus ‘dialects’ is true enough if the overall context is as you have defined it, but if the basic unit is larger – the Byzantine empire, or the Latin west, or the Islamic world, then ‘regional languages’ is acceptable because describing different areas – such as France, or Germany within Europe, as ‘regions’. Same with the Islamic empire, where Coptic is a regional language in that context, or with the Byzantine empire..
Diane: here to find it in Russian htpps://keldysh.ru/future/2021/11.pdf 😉, you can Google- translate it. It’s technical, I skimmed over the text. Essentially, he stripped off vowels from European languages and got a good statistical conformity with Voynichese strings.
sorry, got the wrong paper. Here is the right one:
https://keldysh.ru/future/2021/20.pdf
“Crivelli learned Greek at Milan while working as a secretary to Archbishop Francesco Pizzolpasso (d. 1443) and actively supported the appointment of Konstantinos Lascaris as tutor to Ippolita Sforza (1446-1484), daughter of Duke Francesco.”
What do we know about the techniques used for secrecy in Byzantine diplomacy and keeping technical secrets? Did they use any?
There is a summary inventory for the Visconteo-Sforzesco section including a summary inventory for the cipher section at the following address:
https://www.archiviodistatomilano.beniculturali.it/getFile.php?id=144
However I have checked and the Milan State Archives do not have a more detailed inventory for cipher folders: 1591, 1597 and 1598
The best they have is to refer people to Lydia Cerioni. Cerioni is very useful, however she does not include some ciphers e.g. the 1439 Visconti Decrees amongst others and she only includes cipher keys and not enciphered letters. So her excellent books do not constitute an inventory or complete photoreproduction of these cipher folders. Therefore the only way to be fully aware of the cipher holdings of these archives are for someone to visit them and go through them one by one. Some will be dated others need to be read in order to determine their context and so deduce their date, this should be not too difficult if they have already been deciphered.
There are a few references to Scipione Barbavara, who also has a cipher key in the Tranchedino Cipher Ledger. He was the son of Marcolino Barbavara, so of much less interest to me as he is from a significantly later era than I am interested in.
Mark, you wrote: my Rosettes folio analysis illustrates a circular journey to and from the Council of Basel
Sorry to take some winds out of your sails but you run here, in my view, into the wrong direction (not only my view, e. g. the revelation theme was recognized on Rosettes folio by the ninja colleges too so I expected – to make use of the contemporary popular language – a cognition offensive, but this offensive didn’t start so far… however, I have my own text and findings about it).
These geographical recognitions were so often postulated for different places on earth! This shows you one, probably every region on earth can be pressed into this interpretation and thus it’s almost sure false.
In my personal view, the central rosette is the vision of the Heavenly Jerusalem at the beginning of the revelation. I admit, they didn’t have good cartographers, which made the journey to and back, so they had to guess a bit… (I hope you don’t mind)
Darius: Do not worry, you haven’t taken the slightest bit of wind out of my sails. It is true there are some individuals who associate the Rosettes folio with relevation, but there are plenty who do not. Certainly there have been a number of different cartographic interpretations of the Rosettes folio, but not as many as you suggest. It is very far from being the case that all possible interpretations have been considered.
Nick: I have emailed you something which may have answered the question in this post.
Nick: I have had a cursory look through the documents I have shared with you, but it will take me a significant amount of time before I can say that I fully appreciate what is there. There is a question after that as to what cipher records remain in Milan. Is there anything more in the Archivio di Stato di Milano? Is there anything in other Milan archives like the Biblioteca Ambrosiana? Where is the 1427 cipher letter described in Osio?(It could be in the collection that I shared with you.)
The Archivio Storico Diocesano Milano might have ciphers in it, I don’t know. Archivists often don’t know if they have ciphers in their archives or not, so the best way to determine if there are any ciphers is just to go there and search it appears.
Mark: I’m reading it right now… 1591 seems to be from the 1520s-1530s, so a little late for us. 1597 is much more interesting, though…
Nick: The collection dates up until 1530 I believe.
I am very far from coming to a clear conclusion as to what exactly we have in this collection. There are a few things that I noted as curious in my superficial look through the documents.
The later cipher keys have a format such as we see in the 1530 cipher key in Meister.
Of course the enciphered letters may require a lot of work. I will cross reference with Lydia Cerioni and internally with the cipher keys we have in the collection and with the BNF Archivio Sforzesco.
As a side note in the 1597 collection the cipher key, if that is what it is, number 174 looks 14th century to me. As it was not unusual to have cipher keys that were essentially word substitutions, so:
Milan->Madrid
Venice->Vienna
Duke->Knight
Visconti->Vincenzo
….
etc.
I was told before that they didn’t have any 14th century Milanese ciphers. I think the truth of the matter is, I suspect, the archivists have very little idea what is in this collection; that is not intended as a criticism.
There are lots of ‘4p’ or eva-t that I have spotted as well as ‘lP’ glyphs or eva-k so these seem to have been in very common usage in the same way that the ‘4o’ was.
There seem to be quite a few cipher keys with the name Sciphone Barbavara(son of Marcolino) as the correspondent, at least 2 in this collection and 1 in the Tranchedino, I believe.
‘cp’ is quite common in these and other ciphers and also occurs as one of the glyphs we find around one of the astrological circles in the Voynich where there appear to be a variety of rare glyphs which probably correspond to numbers.
This habit of creating glyphs by appending a ‘p’ shape to a number or letter is quite common.
Page 133 of Collection 1597 is very odd. And I am inclined to doubt this is a cipher at all. It looks more like an East Asian language. The characters are completely different from the style of glyphs that we see in other cipher keys or enciphered letters.
Mark: page 133 looks like Japanese to me – the second column starts ici (ichi) ni san sci (shi) etc, which are Japanese numbers 1 2 3 etc.
Mark: 4p etc does occur, but not in the systematic gallows way we see in Voynichese. It’s a fascinating collection of cipher stuff, but having gone through all 600-odd pages I’m not seeing anything that structurally reminds me of Voynichese. To be fair, though, it’s going to take several passes through to really get it all in perspective, there’s an awful lot to digest. :-/
Nick: Once I have got my head around this collection I will let the archives know what I think e.g. what is and is not a cipher in this case. I will let them know about when I think certain cipher keys date from, if it is not clear e.g. if I can be confident the cipher key I mentioned is 14th century. Dating cipher keys is not so easy as it depends on the features, but there is not always a completely consistent pattern e.g. “are there homophones for consonants?”. I suspect the style of the cipher key depends to some extent on the predisposition of the cipher secretary and the degree of secrecy believed to be required for a given correspondent. However I think grouping ciphers should be possible and so dating is feasible.
I wonder which letters have been deciphered and where the decipherments are.
Nick: In terms of stuff that is structurally similar to Voynichese I would be inclined to agree. When it comes to the enciphered letters, frankly without having a decipherment it would be difficult to say if there is anything with structure in common to Voynichese.
Given the angle that I am approaching this subject from, my hypothesis is that the most similar Milanese ciphers to Voynichese I expect to originate from the early to mid 1430s. To prove or disprove this hypothesis I have been seeking Milanese ciphers from after 1424(When the Milanese letters intercepted by the Florentines date from, that I am particularly interested in) and before 1438. So the question I have been approaching this collection with is “Do any of these ciphers date from between 1404 and 1438?”. On the face of it the answer to this question may be “no” due to the 1447 fire, but without more careful study I may not be able to determine, especially in the case of the enciphered letters.
Nick: What I would really appreciate is your assistance with the cipher key that I have produced from the 1424 Milanese enciphered letters. The cipher key produced by the Florentine archivist Gabrielli seem to be partial and incorrect in places, despite his experience, so I have worked with some assistance on a much better cipher key. Nevertheless I would appreciate your opinion and if you can spot any mistakes in the cipher key or the decipherments. I am working on a paper on this 1424 Milanese cipher and I want to make sure that I have got everything spot on. I have also written another paper based on the presentation that I did last year for which the 1424 cipher is key point of reference.
Nick: For me my approach to these documents will be to try to date the documents, possibly with the help of Lydia Cerioni or other sources, and then exclude documents on the basis of the dates that I am interested in. This may leave some, one or none for the time period that I am focused on. I am curious to track down the reference and text in Osio to a 1427 enciphered letter, the original may survive in a Milanese archive. Professor Beata Megyesi, who I have dealt with a lot, is going to the Vatican Secret Archives in September to look for ciphers and I have mentioned the 1431 intercepted Milanese letters, so hopefully she might look for them or other ciphers of interest.
Hi Marek. You once wrote your name: Mark Zucker…. So I still don’t know, is your name Zuckerberg?
If you were Mark Zuckerberg, I would advise you. See how he encrypted the Italian family ” ORSINI “. The Italian family was a great friend of the Rosenberg family. Rosenberg rode a horse to Italy. And Orsini rode a horse to Bohemia to Rosenberg Castle.
For general information I would like to make it known that I am not Mark Zuckerberg and I have no responsibility whatever for Facebook(Meta). I think it is also worth pointing out that the person who runs the ciphermysteries website is called “Nick Pelling” not “John Pelling”.
Josef: The Orsini were condottieri.
Nick: What do you think we have on Page 150 of collection 1598? Is that a much later cipher?
It would be nice if the Milan archives could do a quick carbon dating on all the ciphers as there are some I think probably date from the early 1440s that appear very advanced, though not in the Voynich way, I think this chiefly as they are similar to cipher keys dated to 1440. However it is possible that those have been incorrectly dated.
Mark: (page 151) that’s just a code table with the alphabet in reverse on each line, offset by a certain amount. The handwriting looks late 16th century to early 17th century to me. The previous page (a code) has an entry (168) for (Cardinal, later Saint) Carlo Borromeo, who was the Archbishop of Milan from 1564 to 1584, so that’s a likely dating for both, I’d guess. (In fact, this may well be Carlo Borromeo’s personal codebook, because his name appears upside-down by the fold – “Ca. Sig. Conte. Carlo Borromeo”, or something very close to it.)
Mark: as far as dating goes, you’re highly unlikely to get a quick carbon dating on anything, so you’ll just have to do it the old fashioned way and look for a date in the top line (MccccL die etc), or look for dateable names in the nomenclatura. 🙂
Nick: I haven’t seen any enciphered letters or cipher keys that look just like Voynichese amongst these ciphers. However it is perfectly possible that there are amongst the enciphered letters some with structural parallels to Voynichese as without seeing the decipherment of the letters these could be very hard to spot. It doesn’t look like there are any cipher keys with clear structural parallels.
I suspect that many of the enciphered letters have been deciphered or have matching cipher keys in this collection or the Tranchedino Cipher Ledger. I need to eliminate them, if I can locate the key, and then see what’s left. If there appear to be many undeciphered I may need to enlist other cipher researchers like Dr. Ivan Parisi or Dr. George Lasry to sort through them.
Nick: Regarding (Page 151) that demonstrates that this collection is very disorganised as with the Japanese thing.
I was joking about the carbon dating. I will do my best on the dating. Yes, dating a name in the nomenclature often is the best way. But also assuming they are all Milanese it should be possible to group some keys together based on similarity. I can see a few main types of cipher keys in this collection and then a few anomalies like the Japanese, possible 14th century, code table etc.
Mark. Orsini was a Roman cardinal. Which confirmed the kinship. The charter is well known.
It is written in the deed. I, Cardinal Latino Orsini, confirm the kinship of John of Rosenberg with the Italian family of Orsini. March 22, 1469 in Rome.
It is further written:
Cardinal Latino Orsini and his relatives confirm John of Rožmberk and his sons as their true relatives and members of their house. And he urges everyone else to consider John of Rožmberk and his descendants using the same coat of arms as the first members of the Ursino house.
Mark. Why isn’t John?? And try those Orsini. Cardinal Latino Orsini. He was a friend of the Rožmberks. I can also write you Mark. That even the King of Rome and Bohemia, Sigismund of Luxemburg, was interested in it.
I think the clues to classifying and dating the cipher keys into groups seems to come down to the following features:
1) Are there homophones for consonants or not?
2) Are substitutions made with invented symbols, Arabic numbers or a symbols which include Arabic numbers within them?
Other features which may or may not help with dating, but could just reflect the sophistication of the cipher from any era, are the following:
1) Are there any homophones?
2) Are there duplices or letter pair substitutions?
3) Is there a large nomenclator?
4) How ornate or complex are the invented symbols used?
Mark. You have been writing the same way for many years. So your research is wrong. You are constantly trying to find some cipher. As it seems, you certainly have a lot of time. Still trying to find some cardinal in the Vatican. And at the same time, you don’t even know that an important friend of the Rožmberk family was Cardinal Latino Orsini. He also knew how to encrypt. Cardinal Latino even had some land in Bohemia. He kept going here and there.
You are looking for homophones and vowels and consonants. I will advise you, my friend. What you’re looking for, don’t look for it. As you must have known. So your search is going nowhere. Focus on the text of the manuscript.
I want a lot of help from you too. You rightfully deserve help. Because you work tirelessly on the code. This is of course good. This shows that you have a great yield. And there, every scientist should certainly appreciate your efforts. I have been following yours for a long time too. Many years. I used to watch Blue Eye. That one was good too. But the eye disappeared. I don’t know what’s wrong with him. But of course it doesn’t matter. I want your help too. I help everyone. That’s my goal. I like smart people. And you are one of them. Diane, it’s getting worse. He can’t see well anymore. But what right does he have? She is already an old scientist.
So dear Mark. The advice is Find out what the Jewish code is. Then you will surely have success. And you won’t have to wait until September for him to send you some sheet music from Rome.
I have found one useful and troubling thing for dating that is where it is written:
“Duca di Parma” or equivalent
As far as I understand the first Duke of Parma became Duke in 1545. If this is so any document which refers to the Duke of Parma must date to after 1545. This makes it appear that the Milan archive’s dating of some documents is incorrect. Actually this isn’t for the first time.
Actually if the Voynich is connected with Milanese (and other) diplomatic ciphers then it falls in precisely the right century given the use of invented symbols in this century that seem not to have been used in later centuries. Likewise the simplicity of the 14th cipher scripts make them rather inconsistent with the Voynich. The more difficult question is when the use of complex cipher symbols(like we see in the Voynich with the benched gallows) were most popular. Clearly towards the end of the 15th century the use of Arabic Numerals became more popular.
The cipher key that I think is 14th century contains a reference to the Duke of Burgundy. The last Duke of Burgundy died in 1477. So the cipher key must date to before then. Which given it does not look like the cipher keys of the 15th century and does look like cipher keys of the 14th century it supports the idea that it is 14th century. My instincts are that it is probably mid-14th century. The question is whether there is any evidence that it is Milanese, being found in the Milan archive is not enough to prove it I think. I suppose the only way to do it would be to workout all the references and see whether they fit the Duchy of Milan’s priorities. However there may not enough to determine this.
It would be nice to have found a mid-14th century Milanese cipher. It won’t make any difference to my Voynich research, but it would be a nice discovery.
There is a reference to the Duke of Savoy. However the first Duke of Savoy was in 1416. Which would lead one to conclude that it is dated to after 1416. The plot thickens…
Well it looks nothing like a Milanese Cipher and would be a real step backwards for Milan. Possibly it could only represent part of a Milanese cipher. However I suspect that it may not be Milanese. There are Papal cipher keys like this and they may date from the early 15th century.
Friend Mark. My advice is: If a scientist wants to decipher a text. So he must see. In each character – a number.
This is the basis of success. Voynich is based on 8 numbers.
And those 8 numbers contain the entire alphabet.
And have you already studied Cardinal Latina Orsini?
Nick: I have been sorting through my virtual collection of documents from 1591, 1597 and 1598. Essentially I am try to completely reorganise this very disorganised collection by type and what I see as roughly the most likely dates. Once I have done so I will see which letters I can match to which cipher keys either in this collection or the Tranchedino or possibly the BNF Archivio Sforzesco (or other collections e.g. the Albertoni cipher ledger). Then I will look at the unmatched enciphered letters and depending on the number and nature of the letters I will decide what to do about decipherment. Once I have finished this I will write to the Milan State Archives explaining what I have discovered about their cipher collection.
Nick: If just one of the encipherment letters turns out to be early 15th century then that will be success as far as I am concerned. If there aren’t any early 15th century ciphers then I won’t be deterred, I will just have to look elsewhere for them.
@Mark
Why don’t you look at the receiver?
You know that until 1400 the lords of Milan were the Visconti and later the Sforza. But they were also the lords of Bellinzona and Visconteo Castle for a while.
Since both were in administration for over 100 years, it is possible that military documents can still be found there.
Maybe you can find something in the Swiss archives.
Another little help in the search for people.
https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/search/category?f_hls.lexicofacet_string=3%2F000100.121100.122900.123200.&text=*&sort=score&sortOrder=desc&collapsed=true&r=1
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellinzona
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castello_Visconteo_(Locarno)
Peter M. Dear colleague. You should rather look for the letters under Eliška. And don’t give advice here to scientist Marka Knowles. He certainly doesn’t need your advice. Smart is certainly dot. And you unnecessarily distract him in the search for homophones and consonants.
Mark has certainly studied more about ciphers than you.
Peter: Thanks for the message.
It is certainly a very sensible approach to look for the receiver.
I have considered the Swiss archives and contacted a few such as the Bellinzona archives. One problem is that often archivists don’t know what they have in their archive unless they have a large collection of ciphers. Also there are many archives in Switzerland, so knowing where to start is not easy. In addition I don’t know that there was a lot of diplomatic communication between the Italian City states and Switzerland.
I have offered a prize of €400 to anyone who gives me information which leads me to find a Milanese diplomatic cipher from between 1425 and 1438, so if you can help me track one down that would be greatly appreciated.
Mark: you did see the two cipher keys for Filippo Maria (Visconti) in the 1597 set, right?
Nick: I did indeed. But thanks a lot for mentioning them. One dates from 1446 to 1447 and I think the other fits within that time range. The two cipher keys appear to be generated cipher keys on the basis of enciphered letters. In the Bibliothèque Nationale de France – Archivio Sforzesco collection that I have referred to previously one can see enciphered letters that correspond to the more complex of the two cipher keys. I suspect, though I will have to check carefully, that there are also enciphered letter(s) in this Milan State Archive collection that corresponds to these cipher keys. I don’t know when the portion of the Archivio Sforzesco was transferred to the Bibliothèque Nationale de France and whether the generated cipher keys predate that transfer.
In fact the Milan State Archives omitted to send me all the cipher in these folders, I hope they just didn’t bother to send me copies of documents they had sent me before and not failed to copy documents that I haven’t seen. Amongst one of the documents that they sent me before is a generated cipher key headed “Marcolinus de Barbavarjis”, this is in fact the same key as the larger Filippo Maria Visconti key.
So whilst I wish they were earlier these keys demonstrate the level of complexity of cipher being used in Milan at the end of the reign of Filippo Maria Visconti and before the Ambrosian Republic and Francesco Sforza becoming Duke. In fact these cipher keys are parallel and have essentially the same kind of structure as we see with the cipher keys in the Tranchedino Cipher Ledger. This contradicts the traditional notion that there was a jump in the complexity and sophistication of Milanese ciphers with the arrival of the administration of Duke Francesco Sforza. In fact the ciphers are very similar. My focus is on how Milanese ciphers changed and evolved throughout the reign of Filippo Maria Visconti and this is where the 1424 cipher that I often refer to is important.
So those keys are very interesting however at the moment I am hoping to find something a decade or two earlier. However I certainly appreciate your input as you may well spot something that I haven’t.
Nick: In fact the “Filippo Maria Visconti”/”Marcolinus de Barbavarjis” cipher key appears to have been used to communicate with then condottieri Francesco Sforza, which may be how the letters survived to find their way into the Milan archives as clearly some predate the 1447 fire by months.
Nick: I asked the Milan archives for a photoreproduction of the Filippo Maria Visconti cipher keys a couple of years ago as they were referred to in Lydia Cerioni, Volume I although not included in Volume II. So these specific cipher keys were not a surprise to me. It is only just now that I requested the whole damn lot from the Milan archives on the off chance that there might be something of interest there, which I haven’t yet determined particularly in the case of the enciphered letters. Although, I have spotted a few minor things of interest to me so far. I would love it if the 1427 enciphered letter is amongst them, but I am not holding my breathe. I am curious about what happened to the 1427 enciphered letter referred to in Osio.
Nick: What really is striking to me about the 1424 Milanese cipher is that in some important ways it shows a sophistication that we don’t see in later ciphers such as the “Filippo Maria Visconti” cipher key that we have been referring to. This very much leaves open the question of how Milanese ciphers evolved or even devolved in the years from 1424 to 1446. My hypothesis is that the 1424 cipher evolved in sophistation and complexity over the following decade with Francesco (II) Barbavara as head of the Visconti Chancellery until they were deemed too complicated for the use of ordinary diplomats and so were simplified and standardised as a result into the later form we see. My hypothesis is that the Voynich cipher is most closely related to Visconti ciphers before they begun to be simplified. However I would suspect that the Voynich cipher is even more complicated than the most complicated Visconti cipher as there would have been scope to make it that bit more complex given the more limited and probably less practical usage by people with a greater cryptographic ability than ordinary diplomats. Nevertheless I suspect that the most important features of the Voynich cipher would be found in Visconti ciphers at some point in the 1430s.
Comrade Mark. 400 euros is not much. How much for a Voynich key? Siloe sells copies for 6,550 Euros.
I don’t want to buy a facsimile of the Voynich manuscript; I am quite happy with the scans. However I would really be happy to see a Milanese Cipher key from between the years 1425 and 1438. So far I only know of a 1427 Milanese enciphered letter referred to in Luisi Osio, Volume II. However I don’t know where that letter is yet. There is also a reference to 1431 Milanese enciphered letters intercepted by the Papacy, which I would be very happy if they survive in the Vatican archives and I can locate them. These are the only leads that I have so far, but who knows there may be other possibilities.
1597, p.9: Raphael de Pugnellis cipher key. Even though the writing here isn’t 15th century, Raphaele Pugnelli of Cremona was very much a mid-15th century person. So I guess this is a (later reconstruction of a) cipher key based on one or more enciphered letters from Raphaele found in the Sforza archives.
Incidentally, there are 57 letters from from Francesco Sforza to Raphaele (and Biagio) Pugnelli online, typically signed either “Cichus” (which I expect is Cicco Simonetta) or “Johannes”: https://www.lombardiabeniculturali.it/ricerca/?current=1&q=Pugnelli
More generally, all of the ciphertexts with the ornate “Cichus” (e.g. 1597 p.182) are almost certainly letters from Francesco Sforza.
As an aside, register #1 contains letters from Francesco Sforza as early as 1447:
https://www.lombardiabeniculturali.it/missive/registri/1/
For fun, I did try to read off the enciphered text at the bottom right of 1597 p.64, it read (or seemed to read) “CIFRA CUM LAURENTIO CASTANEA”, but I wasn’t able to work out who that was.
Nick: Yes, quite a few cipher keys are what I tend to term “generated cipher key”, although as you write “reconstructed cipher key” may be a better term. So it should be possible to match up these cipher keys with enciphered letters in this collection or in the BNF Archivio Sforzesco collection.
Nick: Yes, I saw the “Cichus”. I also assumed that was Cicco Simonetta.
The enciphered letter referred to on pages 286 and 287 of Volume II of Luigi Osio’s work “Diplomatic Documents Taken From the Milanese Archives” is written to the Duke of Milan, Filippo Maria Visconti, from Lodovico de Sabini, who was a Milanese Envoy to the Holy Roman Emperor, Sigismund, and dated to 12th March 1427. Osio contains the text of the letter in Latin. Now, it is possible that only the deciphered text survives and not the original cipher. However it seems very possible that the original ciphertext survives. Given the time it was written the ciphertext of this letter would be very interesting to me. Osio does not specify where or in which Milanese archive this letter survives, it may be the Milan State Archives, but it could also be in one of the smaller archives like the Biblioteca Ambrosiana. This letter may indeed be somewhere in the collection I am studying now.
I should state what is probably obvious, namely that I believe the Voynichese cipher and script was designed specifically for the Voynich, just in the way that each cipher key has its own unique set of glyphs and to some extent its own specific cipher implementation. However this clearly does not exclude the possibility of there being cipher glyphs shared between different ciphers such as the oft mentioned “4o”. Nevertheless I would not expect to find an example of text identical in glyphs and structure to what we see in the Voynich unless it is a missing page from the Voynich. This means that when looking at enciphered letters it may not on the face of it be obvious whether they have anything structurally in common with Voynichese unless those letters are deciphered so as to reveal the underlying structure. It is certainly worth looking for glyphs in common with Voynichese amongst other ciphers, though shared glyphs doesn’t necessarily mean shared structure.
And I would just add that Francesco Sforza knew Cardinal Latina Orsini. As can be seen from its encrypted documentation.
Friend Mark Knowles. “4o”. This is such a special treat. Which was used a lot in cipher text. To confuse a potential code breaker. Here it is important to look at how the number 4 is written.
Nick: On page 211 of Volume I of Lydia Cerioni’s “La Diplomazia…” she discusses Raphaele Pugnelli and related documents.
Nick: I have look a little into who “LAURENTIO CASTANEA”. I have found reference in the 15th century to Pietro Castanea and Cristoforo Castenea. Cristoforo Castenea is described as the Baron of Castel Leone. Castelleone is in the province of Cremona, so I don’t know if it refers to that place. Possibly this could be a different way of spelling Castiglione, though this is starting to feel like a bit of a stretch. (A number of Castiglione served the Duke of Milan at different times.) I suppose “Laurentio” can become “Lorenzo”. The possible different spellings of names in Latin or Italian can sometimes make tracking someone down difficult, especially when they may be a very minor historical figure. However I can look into this.
One thing I wonder is if there are any enciphered letters to Pier Candido Decembrio surviving somewhere. He was heavily involved in the administration of Filippo Maria Visconti as well as being an author and I know a number of letters to him and maybe from him have survived.
The following are references in the Vatican Secret Archives:
Bonifacio IX (1389-1404, obbedienza romana) 50: Reg. Lat. 25, ff. 182r-183v 51: Reg. Lat. 90, ff. 122r-123v 52: Reg. Lat. 109, ff. 36v-37v
Benedetto XIII (1394-1423, obbedienza avignonese) 48: Reg. Aven. 333, f. 679v 49A, B: Reg. Aven. 347, f. 662rv 81: Reg. Suppl. 100, ff. 141v, 143r
Innocenzo VII (1404-1406, obbedienza romana) 53: Reg. Lat. 120, ff. 168v-169r 54: Reg. Lat. 125, f. 6rv 55A, B: Reg. Lat. 125, f. 73rv
Gregorio XII (1406-1415, obbedienza romana) 56: Reg. Lat. 132, f. 70rv
Alessandro V (1409-1410, obbedienza pisana) 57A, B: Reg. Lat. 136, ff. 49r-50r
Giovanni XXIII (1410-1415, obbedienza pisana) 58: Reg. Lat. 175, f. 42r
Martino V (1417-1431) 25: Reg. Vat. 348, ff. 54v-55r 59A, B: Reg. Lat. 208, ff. 131v-132v 82: Reg. Suppl. 145, ff. 275v- 276r
Eugenio IV (1431-1447) 26: Reg. Vat. 374, ff. 59v-60r 27: Reg. Vat. 374, f. 94v 60: Reg. Lat. 304, ff. 258v-259r 61A, B: Reg. Lat. 340, ff. 110v-111v 62A, B: Reg. Lat. 387, ff. 67v-68v 63: Reg. Lat. 428, f. 52rv 83: Reg. Suppl. 381, ff. 116v-117r 84: Reg. Suppl. 404, f. 165r
I am interested in ciphers in the archives of Pope Martin V, Pope Eugene IV and Antipope Felix V. These references may help in locating those.
Given that the Vatican moved around at that time is it possible that Papal documents are in archives out of the Vatican?
Mark,
Have you thought of submitting a paper to Cryptologia about your work on 15thC ciphers?
I’ve been interested to see the comments you’ve made here, and though cryptology’s not my thing, I’d like to know more.
I did a presentation to academics interested in historical ciphers last Thursday the 4th of May. The title of the presentation was “Surviving 14th and 15th century ciphers in archives and documents”. This will be appearing as an academic paper in the near future and will probably constitute part of a book that I am writing on cryptography in this period as will the contents of a different presentation that I did last October entitled “Rewriting the History of 15th Century Cryptography in Italian Diplomacy”
The presentation provided an overview of the location and nature of the very many different ciphers surviving from the 14th and 15th century that I am familiar with.
Mark,
Congratulations. I hope that if you decide to publish “Surviving 14th and 15th century ciphers in archives and documents” before the book appears, you will remember to say here that you’ve published it. And the book too.
Thanks for replying.
I also really like academics. And I would also tell them something interesting. The academic is about as smart as I am. And that’s good. The academician scientist is constantly doing various cipher researches, so that’s a good thing too. In the case of the voynich manuscript mystery, academics need to work harder and then it will be good too. So I’m keeping my fingers crossed for the academics. So I wonder if the academics know Cardinal Orsini. Cardinal Orsini was also a good cipher.
I have posted a reward on the Voynich Ninja forum of $400 or €400 or equivalent currency value to anyone who gives me information that results in the location of a cipher of the Duchy of Milan from between the years 1425 and 1438
I have yet to see such a cipher and would be very interested in knowing about one. The only references that I know of is in Luigi Osio’s work to an enciphered letter dated to 1427 and to some enciphered letters dated to 1431 intercepted by the Papacy. I don’t know if any of these letters survive though it looks quite likely that the 1427 letter survives somewhere, probably in a Milanese archive.
For 400 euros, a scientist won’t even get out of bed. Let alone working on the code. For 4,000 euros, a scientist and academic will start thinking about a cipher. And maybe he will work already. The scientist and academic worked hard at school for a long time, so his work must be well balanced with a reward.
Mark,
If you’ll accept the suggestion – save your money to pay for two weeks’ stay to do the research in Italy, or check back-issues of Cryptologia to see if anyone has recently contributed a relevant article – and write to them. At the very least, an experienced researcher whose interests more-or-less coincide with yours might be able to suggest specific archives and/or sections of archives where you might find what you’re looking for.
From my experience, and it’s only mine, an online group might help fellows build a preferred theory, but otherwise are unlikely to exert themselves. I guess if I were you I might ask for any advice the editor of Cryptologia might feel able to give; then (since it’s about Italy), I might ask if Marco Ponzi felt able to offer advice – perhaps he knows an historian of Milanese history or a cryptography buff, or one of the Vatican archivists… you never know. But while the best scholars will gladly offer what advice they can, simply from empathy and/or love of learning itself, I can’t think that offering money will be a game-changer.
Diane
It is correct that offering money hasn’t yet yielded results, but it is there as an offer on the off-chance someone might know something.
I don’t think you are quite aware how far I have gone down this particular rabbit hole. The truth is, sadly, without wishing to blow my own trumpet it seems that, from what I know, I am the most experienced researcher in the world in the area of early 15th century cryptography. I don’t say this with glee, because if I wasn’t then there is someone that I can learn from, which I would really appreciate. However whilst overall I may know more than anyone else in this area, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t other people who know specific things in this area that I don’t and from who I can learn. For example, I was informed about the collection of enciphered Milanese letters in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France not so long ago, by someone researching Milanese diplomatic correspondence in this area, although the earliest of the enciphered letters date to 1446 this was a big and very pleasant surprise for me, especially given that there were many from Marcolino Barbavara, who I am very interested in. I have been making contact with academics working in this broad area and nosing around for any clues.
I won’t be asking Marco Ponzi for advice, as apart from the fact that he lives in Northern Italy he really doesn’t know anything about this subject.
I am looking to get some funding to research in Italian and Vatican archives. Still the offer of a financial reward for information is still out there just in case someone doesn’t find a clue that I was not aware of; who knows an early 15th century Milanese enciphered letter could have found its way to an Australian archive, highly unlikely, but just about conceivable, after all there is a Sforza enciphered letter in a Russia archive in St.Peterburg.
Mark,
When I suggested seeking advice, I never meant to imply ‘tutoring’ sort of advice. It’s more that someone interested, say, in Napoleonic-era correspondence might have noticed, in their own work, a stack of enciphered 15thC letters in some archive or other. No use to them, but if they keep a research-log, the hypothetical researcher could, in theory, point you to a specific archive and provide you, in advance, with all the details you need to at least start asking help from the archivists.
By ‘advice’ I meant more – suggestions about earlier research, or where you might get more specific directions. May sound unlikely, but over the years in relation to work not related to the Vms, I’ve constantly been given, and given in turn, advice of that kind.
It was just a thought.
Diane,
I would certainly be happy to be put in touch with such a researcher. I have made a number of academic contacts and that has helped in some cases, though most of the academics that I have been in touch with haven’t known of any such ciphers. However it is difficult to know in advance who might have certain knowledge of ciphers that they have not documented it in a way that can be found through Google searching. I do my best to make new academic contacts who might know something. I am still endeavouring to increase my contacts amongst possibly relevant academics. It is clear that there are some areas where there is a lack of expertise.
I would be very interested in making contact with someone who knows about the Vatican’s early 15th century holdings, especially the diplomatic correspondence of Popes Martin V and Eugene IV. I have been in touch with a Vatican archivist who has been able to give me a little guidance, however someone who has researched in this area could potentially provide significantly more help.
So if you know anyone who might be able to help you are welcome to suggest them.
Write directly to the Holy Father in the Vatican. Something along these lines. Dear holy father. I wish you a nice day . I have 400 euros saved up and I would like to send them to you. But I have one small condition. I need to solve an old manuscript and therefore I need quick access to the Vatican archives. So that I can find out how encryption was done in the Middle Ages, because I don’t know much about ciphers yet. I hope you will help me and I will immediately send you the check for 400 euros.
The Pope will surely be happy and help. What he wouldn’t do for his sheep.
Just an idea. What if it works out? Then you will surely like Mark. So try it tomorrow and write him to the Vatican.
Josef: Yes, I could ask him all he knows about Eliska Rosenberg and Jewish ciphers. Though on second thoughts I would rather rely on the insights of a fake professor.
Mark,
All the best with your application for funding. Only cryptologist-historian interested in Italian ciphers that I know of is Nick Pelling – and I assume that since you’re here, you’ve already asked his advice on doing that kind of research.
If you ever find yourself looking at the Vatican’s archive of 14thC -15thC diplomatic correspondence, I’d love to know how the language problem was dealt with.
Did each writer use his own language and just presume the other would have a resident interpreter, or were interpreters sent with the letters? Were letters ever written in both languages or as a sort of interlinear text? Did the distant rulers write in Latin, or did the Pope send his correspondence in e.g. Arabic? During negotiations with the Syrian churches, or the Greek Orthodox, are letters written in Greek, Arabic, Syriac etc.? Was there ever a system where, as with modern Romanisations and writings by medieval Jews, you find one script used for another as a kind of phonetic rendering?
So many questions, so little time. 🙂
Diane,
Thanks for the suggestion. You are right in thinking that I am familiar with Nick Pelling. Nick has certainly been of great help in the past.
When you are afraid to write to the Holy Father. So try writing to his secretary. He’s good. His name is Gonzaleso Aemilius. And since his grandmother is Jewish, he might also know something about Jewish encryption. In his youth, his grandmother must have taught him the Jewish substitution cipher. When she read to him from the torah. Surely he would dig something up in the archives.
I doubt that anyone holding the plaintext of the VMS in their hands would be able to recognize it. Firstly, the letter patterns would be different. We would need to normalize the Voynichese, I call it so, and then the strange, unknown language. No chance of recognition, even with free access to the entire Hebraica collection of the Vatican. However, according to the colophon, the collection has been burned anyway.
Darius,
“according to the colophon, the collection has been burned” – obviously you don’t mean the Vatican’s entire Hebraica collection has been burned. You mean there’s something in the Vms saying that the collection to which *it* once belonged was/has been burned? Any idea if the fire is supposed to be, say, an accident, or a result of war, or some specific act of destruction?
I wrote AI Bing. Do you want to know how the Voynich manuscript is encrypted?
AI wrote: yes yes I would like to know.. Can you help me?
So I wrote: Of course I will be happy to help you.
AI: What do you need to know?
J. Z. : Jewish substitution. Do you know Jewish substitution?
AI : No, I don’t know Jewish substitution.
J.Z: I’ll teach her.
AI: I will be very happy.
So I wrote what Jewish substitution is. Each character has its numerical value. Etc.
1 = A,I,J,Q,Y.
2 = B,R,K.
3 = C,G,S,L. etc.
AI : ended the conversation.
Even from a distance you could hear it crackling in the circuits. And the processor starts to overheat. AI is not enough for voynich. 🙂
Diane, sorry for not being precise. In one of the threads, I mentioned that I translate the vord on folio 116v as ‘brought to be burned.’ In my opinion, this ‘brought’ refers to scripts that was brought to an office or chancery, intended to be burned. I don’t believe it refers to an entire section of an archive, but rather a compilation of scripts that were then encrypted before burning the originals.
Darius,
Thanks for the clarification. The scene is not contrary to events known to have occurred in medieval Europe, and I’ve sometimes wondered if the purpose of the blessing crosses wasn’t apotropaic, but for any reading of the marginalia you have quite some competition to cope with.