Paolo Guinigi was Lord of Lucca at the start of the 15th century: the Lucca archives hold the Governo da Paolo Guinigi (“GPG”), a substantial collection of his correspondence from 1400 to 1430 (he died in 1432). Of interest to cipher historians is that some of this correspondence may well be enciphered.
[Incidentally, thanks very much to Mark Knowles for flagging this a couple of years ago, many apologies for not following up sooner. 🙁 ]
Covering a multitude of subjects and situations, the letters (both to and from Guinigi) are in Latin and Tuscan (“Volg.”). Helpfully, a transcription / summary of the letters made by Luigi Fumi and Eugenio Lazzareschi is downloadable on the Archivio di Stato di Lucca’s website.
There, certain groups of transcriptions have sections (occasionally single words) that are rendered in italics, which are typically to or from specific correspondents. Fumi and Lazzareschi note:
Furono composti in corsivo i passi che nell’originale sono in cifra, oppure distinti da segni convenzionali; la quale decifrazione, fatta co ‘1 sussidio del registro ufficiale della cifra del Guinigi, é stata fatica più di pazienza che di diligenza, come generalmente ogni laborioso ordinamento d’ archivio.
…which I (freely) translate as…
The italicized passages were written using either cipher or unconventional signs; decrypting these (even with the help of Guinigi’s official cipher key) was less to do with patience than with diligence, as is generally the case with laborious archival work.
I couldn’t see in Fumi and Lazzareschi where Guinigi’s “official cipher key” was to be found, but perhaps this will become clear before too long. 🙂
It’s not obvious to me if there are any fully enciphered letters in the GPG. Typical cipher security practice was to destroy letters that had been deciphered (probably by burning, I’d expect), so my guess is that what saved these particular letters was that they were only partly enciphered.
Unfortunately, I can’t see a single scan of a (partly or fully) enciphered letter from the GPG anywhere on the web to verify this (the world of digitization has yet to knock on Lucca’s door, it would seem). Perhaps others will have more luck than me. 😉
List of enciphered letters
There are various series of GPG letters that have italicized sections:
- [1404] Jacobo de Faitinellis {Roma} – 15, 17-18, 20-29, 31
- [1405] Jacobo de Faitinellis {Roma} – 33
- [1406] D. Dino ser Paci {Roma} – 35
- [1410] Iohanello / Iohanni Thieri – 724-726, 731, 738
- [1413] Guido da Pietrasanta, Nicolao da Moncicoli, Nicolao Arnolfini – 966
- [1418] Guido da Pietrasanta, Nicolao da Moncicoli, Nicolao Arnolfini -970
There are also two received letters from 1413 (both from Guido da Pietrasanta, Nicolao da Moncicoli, and Nicolao Arnolfini) on pp.482-483.
Knowing Mark Knowles’ interest in the Barbavara family, I’m sure he’ll be pleased to know that there is correspondence with Gian Galeazzo Visconti’s chancellor Francesco Barbavara (2, 6, 10, 92, 112, 139, 140, 149, 166, 296, 819), and also with Manfredo Barbavara (173). (Though note I have no idea if those particular letters were enciphered.)
Nick: Thank you very much for your post. I will comment in more detail shortly.
Nick: I want to start by saying that I greatly appreciate your huge input in the past to my research. Referring me to Aloysius Meister and Lydia Cerioni has from my perspective been invaluable. Scanning the whole of the copy of the 2 Volumes of Lydia Cerioni that I borrowed (excluding the pages of the Tranchedino, scans of which you already kindly shared), as it was unavailable for purchase, was a job, but has provided me with a very valuable resource. Referring me to the Codex Urbinate, which I subsequently found a complete scanned copy of on the Vatican website, has been very helpful. And that is far from everything that you have helped with. Whilst I, probably, with time, would have located these resources it would have taken me much longer and been much harder for me to do without your assistance.
So thanks a lot again!
More to come…
Nick: According to Meister there is some enciphered correspondence. But maybe more important there is a cipher ledger with a large number of cipher keys in it. I am hoping that one of those cipher keys is for the purpose of direct correspondence with the Duchy of Milan as I question whether a small state like Lucca would have their own ambassador to Milan and similarly that Milan would have an ambassador to Lucca(Unless they both have ambassadors to the other state then they will need a cipher key for direct communication. Even if they both have ambassadors they may also have made direct communication in the eventuality that the ambassador was temporary not in the other state.)
I have not yet got my head around the situation vis-a-via ambassadors. From the Tranchedino and Codex Urbinate it seems clear that there was direct communication between Milan and Urbino and also Milan and Mantua in the second half of the 15th century. However it is clear from the literature that permanent ambassadors were increasingly used in the 15th century; I wonder if it depended on the size of the communicating state and how friendly the political relationships were between states(Urbino was small and I think politically allied to Milan, though that could do with checking).
More to come…
I have made some effort to get to know the movers and players in the government of Milan, though I still have further to go. Amongst these quite a few members of the old Aristocratic Barbavara family are significant. Francesco Barbavara essentially ran the government under Gian Galeazzo Visconti at the end of the 14th century and in history books is seen, unquestionably, as the most important member of that family. As a result of a revolt he was forced to leave Milan in 1403 and go into exile; his brother Manfredo was imprisoned in Pavia. Francesco took refuge to the west in Asti and in the historic Barbavara lands in Valsesia. At the death of Giovanni Maria Visconti, murdered on the steps of San Gottardo, he returned to the government of Filippo Maria Visconti, but died I believe in 1415 . His younger brother Giacomo also played some part in the administration. Giacomo’s two sons, Marcolino and another Francesco, took important positions in that administration and one of his other nephews Bishop Giovanni played an important political role as well. Amongst Giacomo’s other sons was a prominent Abbot and an apostolic protonotary(which I think was then a Papal bureaucrat, though in truth I don’t know.) The first Francesco has been credited with creating the first modern bureaucracy and his work building up the Milanese foreign office appears significant. Compared to the likes of Da Vinci or Cosimo de Medici the Barbavara family are of very little historical significance, but in the context of their place and time they were historically a very important family.
More to follow…
The State Archives in Lucca are a bit problematic as unlike many other Italian archives they will not email digital reproduction of documents, so one needs to visit the archives oneself or find someone locally who would be happy to take some photos. Nevertheless this problem is probably not insurmountable.
“Die Anfange…” by Meister is a very useful resource for identifying other sources of enciphered letters or cipher keys as Meister often included only a small selection of the cipher keys he had seen on visits to various archives and often provides fairly comprehensive lists of other enciphered letters or cipher keys there. An issue is that his book is over 100 years old and some archives may have been reorganised since then and conceivably some documents lost.
For me working through Meister and Cerioni is hard as neither my German nor my Italian are very good, nevertheless I think it is worth the effort. It is noteworthy that Meister states that he did not have the opportunity to visit the Archive in Naples and I imagine that there may well have been other archives that it would have been fruitful to visit.
As an aside, as mentioned before, the collection of papal cipher keys of Gabriel de Lavinde from 1379, called, I believe, “Liber Zifrorum” or “Liber Zifrarum” – can be found in Vatican Archive Collection 393 f. 166-181, according to Meister. Locating these is not that important as they are all listed I think from page 171 of Meister’s book on Papal ciphers “Die geheimschrift im dienste der Päpstlichen kurie”, which is free to download online. However I was curious if I could find them, mainly as an exercise in getting to know how to find things in the Vatican Archive. I don’t know if the location Meister lists is still correct, but it would be interesting to know if I can find a listing and maybe even it has been digitised. I may email them to ask them if they can clarify its location.
Looking at the Lavinde cipher keys in Meister it appears that they were used just for communication with other members of the church rather than heads of state. I wonder if that was because the clergy acted as envoys with other heads of state and so direct communication was not necessary or whether there were other cipher keys for use with strictly political figures.
The Lavinde cipher keys are kept in the Vatican Archives at:
Camera Apostolica Collection 393, ff. 211r-236r
They have not been digitised
Mark: thanks, that would explain why I wasn’t able to find it. :-/
Nick: On page 54 of Meister’s “Die Angange…” it says
“7. Lucca.
Codex number 5 of Paolo Guinigi, Lord of Lucca contains, amongst other entries, letters with enciphered passages and also cipher keys. The letters of folios 34 to 37 to Jacobo de Fartinellis are dated from 1404 and the letter on folio 38, also to Jacobo de Fartinellis is dated to 1406. Of the cipher keys, the first 11 are not dated; the 12th, folio 13 is dated from July the 25th, 1412 . In total, there are 74 keys, and since on the penultimate page one dates from the year 1439, the collection appears not to be older than 1440. Folio 22 contains an alphabet grecum cum Antonio de Giglis. As the cryptographic correspondence in Lucca is only preserved from the years 1401 to 1439; it seems to have remained isolated, as there was no continuation later in the 15th century. Secret writing was apparently introduced only by Paolo Guinigi in Lucca, because he was suspicious and feared for his rule; he had the kind of personality that lead him to resort to the use of enciphered correspondence. He kept in the booklet that he had, a kind of incomplete journal; he entered in it the outgoing documents, private correspondence, notes on sent messengers and the like; later, however, he used it for his secret writing. The registered letters all have only a few sections in cipher script; Apart from that, since this procedure was the far more frequent at that time, the ciphering of an entire letter may have been too difficult for him personally. Giunigi used characters, letters and numbers all mixed together, and they are all clear and simple in his cipher alphabets. In the nomenclature, however, he becomes an artist when designing symbols, here he invented the most colourful of designs. We can guess the origin of his cipher designs, since he appears to have obtained the first structure of his alphabet from some kind of pre-existing cipher format, whilst in the nomenclature he developed his cipher symbols in his own way. In general, he has a fondness for nomenclatures; a relatively large number of keys, especially in the earlier period, consists of nomenclatures without cipher alphabets. Of the first 26 keys, 14 are only nomenclatures. At the end of his alphabets, we often find the characters 9 and Ro , without any cipher symbols corresponding to them, evidence that points to his first template, in which these characters may have been filled. In the application of the nomenclatures, he also forms those with word exchange, once on folio 7 he even introduces a double nomenclature, in which also the numbers, which never occur otherwise, are included in it and expressed with secret characters. There is even a nomenclator, folio 14, with the sole purpose of representing numerals, which is only apparent for this early period . Only in the last years do the alphabets become more complicated, and in this context the use of a Greek alphabet is noteworthy.”
I have done my best to translate this from the German in Meister, both manually and with the assistance of the internet. I intend to request copies of certain pages from Paolo Guinigi’s Codices by email. My primary interest are cipher keys connected to Milan, in particular those linked to certain individuals, but also examples of non-enciphered letters linked to certain individuals, but in addition the more complex/interesting of his cipher keys that are not already included in Meister would be nice to see.
I don’t know if you can do a better job of translating or interpreting the text for Lucca on this page of Meister as I think my translation is far from perfect. However hopefully I can provide the archivists with sufficient information to locate the documents that most interest me.
I was thinking that when two states or political actors come up with a cipher key for there communication then how does it happen?
Well, normally, I would suspect that one party comes up with the key and the other copies it or receives a copy of it. I suppose it is possible that this is a collaborative exercise, but unless they have two very enciphering approaches then it would seem more complicated to produce a key that way. Now often those relationships will be hierarchical i.e. the state chancellery and an envoy, so one would assume that the chancellery would be responsible for the cipher design and the envoy responsible for understanding and implementing it. However when two actors have a similar status then how did it work? In the case of the Milan/Urbino cipher key in the Tranchedino cipher ledger and Codex Urbinate it is clear to me that this is a Milanese cipher key as when I first saw it I thought it the Codex Urbinate the cipher symbols looked to me more similar to the symbols used by Milan than the other keys in the Codex(and more similar to the Voynich.) So I think this key was a product of the Milanese chancellery which was shared with Urbino. This is hardly surprising as Milan was the more important player. Similarly the Modena “In Milano” cipher key that Meister describes in “Die Anfange…”, which he says was significantly more complicated than the other cipher keys used by Modena in that period, seems most likely a product of the Milanese chancellery. Again this fits as, like Urbino, Modena was a significantly smaller entity than Milan with presumably a less developed cipher system than in the larger Milanese chancellery. Obviously for large states like the Papal and Venice this situation would not seem to apply.
(I am still not sure if the more complex diplomatic substitution ciphers were used to communicate with or on behalf of entities other than states.)
One thing that struck me about the Lavinde cipher ledger is that none of the cipher keys appeared to be for communication with other states.
Regarding the early 15th century cipher keys in the Mantua State Archives Meister says the following:
1) Box of Foreign Correspondence Number 5 Section 3 from the Hungarian department of the archive. This is where the often referenced 1395 cipher key can be found.
2) Box of Foreign Correspondence Number 1 Section 2a – Cipher Books – Contains 1 manuals of the Mantuan cipher secretaries. For the years 1401 to 1416 in total, there are 55 keys. One of which is Number 27 “cum ill. domino et duce Mediolani”.
3) Box of Foreign Correspondence Number 25 Section 3 – Rome. There is a letter from November the 6th 1426, from Forli with the signature of Ricardo de Mutiliana, written entirely in cipher. From 1428 there is a letter from the 22nd of April from Rome, from Archbishop Pandulfus de Malatestis, with some enciphered passages, another from 9 August, from Rome, without a signature, is completely encoded and has only the date written unenciphered. From 1430 there are two enciphered letters from Rome from Francesco de Catalenis.
I have translated the text as well as I can from the German. Anyway this constitutes a large number of early 15th century cipher keys, although from what I understand the ciphers used in Mantua remained generally quite simple.
According to Meister, Abate Pietro Gabrielli, the important 19th century Florentine archivist, generated 62 cipher keys from enciphered letters of the 15th century. Of these he includes the earliest 2 in his book dated from 1414 and 1424. For me the question of interest is how many of those remaining of the 62 cipher keys date from before 1447. Now I would suspect that the vast majority of those 62 cipher keys date from the second half of the 15th century. However there may be a few from the period that I am interested in and if I am very very lucky one associated with Milan. Nevertheless there appears to be much less in the way of rich pickings here than the Mantua and Lucca archives. Still it is probably worth following up.
From my reading of Meister there are no cipher keys or enciphered letters from the early 15th century in the Genoa State Archives. (However, as Nick has spotted there are enciphered letters in the Genoa Eccelestical Archives)
It is unclear if there is anything of interest other than already included by Meister in his book for the Siena and Pisa archives. In both cases the pickings look rather slim, it seems to me from Meister’s description, but there might be something of interest in one of these, it is unclear. He mentions 18 cipher keys from Siena in the 15th century, but again my instincts say that they are most likely skewed heavily towards the later part of the 15th century.
In the Modena archive, according to Meister, there are 16 cipher keys from the 15th century, the oldest being the “In Milano” key that he includes in his book. This key is already of significant interest to me, so I think that I would be extremely lucky if there are any other pre-1447 Milanese cipher keys in the archive. Meister does mention a part-enciphered letter from 1395 in the archive, so that might be of some small interest.
There may be some references or clues in Meister’s other book “Die Geheimschrift im Dienste der påpstlichen Kurie” to where there could be other cipher keys of interest, though I am not overly optimistic. He includes a cipher key from 1412 in the Bologna archive and of course the complete Gabrielli Lavinde 1379 cipher ledger in the Vatican archives.
Meister speculates that because Gabriel de Lavinde was from Parma and his cipher keys seemed much more influenced by Northern Italian ciphers than earlier Papal ciphers that he worked in the Parma Secretariat or for the Visconti of Milan, as Parma was part of the Duchy of Milan.
Meister mentions in the ->
Archivo in Barcelona de la Iglesia Catedral in Kapsei: Documentos referentes a la familia Luna ->
Some enciphered letters of Antipope Benedict XIII, Pedro Martínez de Luna. Who was antipope from 1394 until 1423, so I assume the cipher dates from that period, though Meister doesn’t specify. I imagine that Meister had not seen these given they were in Barcelona. They may or may not be of interest.
Looking back at what Meister says regarding the Pisa archive. He says that Codex C. 29 (Classe 10 dist. 8 No. 1 Stanza 4 Arm. 8)?? has quite a number of enciphered letters. However it is not very helpful in that he couldn’t give any idea of the dates of those letters. Do any of them date from the early 15th century. Who knows?
Regarding Venice. Meister says “the 14th century is remarkably poor in cryptographic remains” in the Venetian archives. Unless I have missed something he seems to only refer to one enciphered letter from the early 15th century. So I have the impression that surprisingly there is relatively little of interest in the Venetian archives. Meister refers to Luigi Pasini, the important 19th century Venetian archivist, so Pasini’s writings might give more insight.
I have a feeling that there is plenty more out there. Marco Ponzi referred to some late 15th century enciphered letters that he spotted in the Tortona archive. Now, I am not interested in “late” 15th century enciphered letters, but it illustrates the point that there is stuff out there to be found.
Again, I have still plenty to learn, but my sense is that the biggest stumbling block is the lack of detail in the inventories of many archives, which often fail to list cipher keys or enciphered letters.
I have noticed that senior members of the church are common correspondents in enciphered communication. These people I think frequently have dual allegiances to the city state in which they are based and also to the Pope. This makes me wonder what there might be in the various regional Eccelestical archives. For example the Milan Cathedral has an archive and I wonder if they keep correspondence of previous Archbishops of Milan.
When I say that diplomatic ciphers do not appear to have changed from 1450 to almost the end of the century in Milan, I am not saying that those ciphers may not have been used more frequently and widely in the second half of the 15th century, but just that the specific structure of those ciphers does not seem to have developed. Maybe they were deemed sufficiently complex that they were very difficult to crack. Maybe extending the range of substitutions and symbols as appeared to be the practice to the early 15th century was seen to render the cipher too complex to be practically usable.
Lydia Cerioni says: “There are also ciphers established with heads of foreign states, which for the most part we consider to be of convenience” This means to me that two states could have the same key in both of their cipher ledgers as we see with Milan/Urbino i.e. it is not unreasonable to look for a Milanese cipher key in a cipher ledger for a different state. And therefore it is not unreasonable to try to reconstruct the Milanese cipher ledger from the cipher ledgers of other states. It may be that in the early 15th century there was more direct enciphered communication with other states than in the second half of the 15th century where envoys and ambassadors may have been employed more, but this is just speculation.
I think it is worth saying that in my experience the Milan State Archive have been quite helpful in locating some documents that I have requested and have sent me scans in a timely manner. I have some optimism that other archives will be as efficient.
Obviously it helps the more specific one can be in providing the location of the document in question in the archive and in situations where there are not detailed inventories or one is not adept at finding inventories and what one is looking for in inventories then this becomes problematic.
I hope to be able to provide enough information to the Milan archive to enable them to find some specific documents that I know exist in their archive, but we will see.
Lydia Cerioni refers to Manuscript 707 of the University Library of Bologna in Volume I of her book. My impression is that she is not suggesting that there are any ciphers there, but I could be wrong or there might be ciphers elsewhere in the library.
I think it worth noting that Paolo Guinigi was closely allied with Gian Galeazzo Visconti and later Filippo Maria Visconti, Dukes of Milan. The catastrophic(catastrophic in the sense that it saw a collapse of Milanese power) reign of Giovanni Maria Visconti saw the bond between Lucca and Milan greatly reduced.
Regarding Giovanni Maria Visconti, he was the son of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, Duke of Milan, and succeeded him as Duke in 1402 at the age of 13. Not long after that in 1404 he imprisoned his mother Caterina. He also exiled and/or imprisoned those allied to his mother in the Milanese government. He was renowned for his cruelty. During his reign the Duchy of Milan collapsed, it lost land and political influence. In 1412 Milanese Ghibellines assassinated him in front of the church of San Gottardo in Milan. His brother succeeded him to the throne with the responsibility of restoring the Duchy of Milan to its former glory, which in time he did, and members of his father’s government returned to service. In short Giovanni Maria Visconti was a disaster for the Duchy of Milan.
So for me the period 1404 to 1412 marks a distinct break/era in my research on Milan prior to the Ambrosian Republic. I would imagine, although I haven’t researched it that this period corresponded with reduced diplomatic ties and diplomatic communication, including of course enciphered communication, as the Duchy collapsed and alliances crumbled, due to the failing and inadequate government in Milan.
Martino Ghisolfi the chief cryptographer of the Gonzaga was originally from Cremona in the Duchy of Milan. In Mantua he was in the employ of Francesco I Gonzaga, and later Gianfrancesco Gonzaga, who was to become the Marquis of Mantua. Cremona lies half way between Mantua and Milan.
Now, very speculatively, I wonder if Martino Ghisolfi had any connection with Milan. It is not clear what his life was before he served the Gonzaga.
I was thinking that Giovanni Fontana was influenced by diplomatic ciphers of the period. Some of the symbols in his cipher clearly originate amongst those of diplomatic ciphers and other would look to be influenced by them. The symbols are so distinct that it seems very unlikely that they are a coincidence, so I am inclined to think that Fontana must have seen some diplomatic cipher symbols. Note these common cipher symbols don’t generally occur in Milanese ciphers, but can be seen in cipher symbols for other city states. Similarly they could have a shared source, but these are not the kind of symbols I believe one sees amongst the latin abbreviations etc. Of course, again, this is not inconsistent with Fontana’s diplomatic mission to Francesco Carmagnola in Brescia on behalf of the Doge of Venice. Anyway, this is also speculation.
It’s correct that Fontana’s cipher characters do not look like Latin characters or abbreviations. Some of them look vaguely like Latin paragraph-marker symbols, but I’m pretty sure this is a coincidence because the Fontana alphabet is mostly systematic.
For example, in his circle-tick cipher, all the vowels start with a circle with an added tick mark on the side, each one facing a different direction. Since there are only four directions (north south east west), he left the “i” with no tick mark.
To create capitals, he crossed the tick mark.
For the consonants, he started with a circle and added a t-shape or two geometric lines (vee-shape or parallel). The “b” has a t on the right, “d” has a t on the left, “g” has a t on the bottom, “n” has a double-tick on the right, “m” has a double-tick on the lower left and one top-left.
“s” stands out from the others by having two circles, but since it somewhat resembles a sideways s with the loops closed, it’s easy to remember.
“p” and “q” are also mnemonic. The plaintext letters are mirrored, with an extra tick-mark toward the direction where the loop would normally face.
Like many medieval substitution ciphers, it looks like it was designed to be easily learned, and to be read without much difficulty.
The shapes are quite different from the von Bingen cipher, but she also used mirroring and extra tick marks (embellishment lines) to create a substitution cipher that is easy to learn. The shapes are different from the Fontana cipher but some of the concepts are similar.
JKP: What is interesting to me is that whilst those types of symbols are not generally seen in Milanese ciphers of the period they can be seen in ciphers of other city states.
That is one reason why your assertion that all diplomatic cipher symbols of the period are derived from latin abbreviations symbols, greek etc. really doesn’t seem the case, as also exemplified not only by the Fontana style symbols, but also by the Lucca nomenclature. Meister does not trace the diplomatic cipher symbols directly to latin abbreviation symbols, though it does not seem unreasonable to suggest significant influence in many, though not all, cases.
It is worth noting that different city states has a propensity, in some cases, as there can be some commonality in the case of certain symbols, to use different symbols in their ciphers. Also at different periods in time there are different preferences for symbols. I would imagine this is due to a preference or habit to use certain symbols by specific cipher secretaries.
I would argue that the symbols used in the Voynich most closely parallel some of the symbols used in the early 15th century in Milan, though this assertion is far from proven.
As I have said I do see signification commonality between the Fontana symbols and some diplomatic cipher symbols, so I doubt this was a coincidence and I imagine that he had, at least, seen such ciphers. However either the diplomatic ciphers that he saw were on the simple side for that period or he only had a slight acquaintance with them, as his cipher is simpler than most diplomatic ciphers of the period. I suspect for a variety of reasons an influence from Venetian cipher symbols, but of course this is speculative.
Mark Knowles wrote: “That is one reason why your assertion that all diplomatic cipher symbols of the period are derived from latin abbreviations symbols, greek etc. really doesn’t seem the case, …”
I have never said that. That’s pretty distant from what I said.
I’m not sure where you got that idea. Maybe youare confusing what I said about the VMS with what I have said about the diplomatic ciphers collected by Tranchedino?? I try to be very careful to try to be clear about which specific ciphers I’m talking about since there are many different ones.
I have also said something quite different about some of the Spanish diplomatic ciphers, and something different again about some of the French diplomatic ciphers because they all have different conceptual bases and styles.
I have never lumped them all together.
Regarding Modena, which I didn’t mention.
Meister says:”Folder II: Cifre con ambasciatori, namely 16 original keys from the XV. Century. The oldest piece from 1435 (included in the book) Number 2 of 1469 .”
I take that to mean that the other keys are dated from after 1469. However that may not be the case, but rather that the 1469 has 2nd place in the archive, although there are earlier keys. (Someone looking at the original Gernan can better determine precisely what is meant.)
Meister also says: “The letter register: Nicolai III aepistolae et decreta 1393-1400 contains folio 159v, the oldest cipher of the d’Este known to me, the copy of a Breve of the Margrave to Astorgius de Manfredis from 1395 June 30, in which three places are encrypted.”
So that could be of some interest.
JKP: Well, if your assertion is that Milanese diplomatic cipher symbols are derived from latin abbreviations symbols, greek etc. then that is similarly problematic; from your previous writings on Ninja that would seem at least to be your argument. What you wrote regarding other diplomatic cipher symbols lead me to believe that you thought that more generally and not only for Milan.
The subject of the symbols of the Voynich manuscript is a separate question. Later Spanish and French diplomatic ciphers are another topic, one which I have not delved in.
Mark Knowles: “What you wrote regarding other diplomatic cipher symbols lead [sic] me to believe that you thought that more generally and not only for Milan.”
No, I have never written that (or even thought that).
Medieval ciphers are quite varied, so when I talk about origins of glyphs, I try to restrict my comments to specific groups (if they are constructed in the same way) or to a specific cipher (if it is unique). I have never generalized about ciphers in Milan because there are many different styles in Milan.
Earlier in this thread, I made it clear that Fontana’s circle-line cipher is not based on Latin characters and symbols, that it is systematic in how the glyph-shapes are constructed. Thus it differs from ciphers that take their core shapes from alphabets.
In other words, whether diplomatic or non-diplomatic, I do not perceive ciphers as having the same origins or the same structural properties. Each one (or each group, if they share a common style) must be evaluated on its own characteristics.
JKP: When you say that there are many different styles in Milan, what do you mean? Do you mean that in a given cipher there are many different styles of symbols? Or do you mean that for a given cipher it has it’s own style of symbols?
A point worth making is that Fontana was not from Milan. Yes, very recently you wrote about the symbols that Fontana uses. My point was that Fontana uses symbols found in some Italian ciphers and therefore if italian diplomatic cipher symbols are derived from Latin abbreviations etc.. then so are Fontana’s.
If you recall I produced an illustration containing symbols from Milanese diplomatic ciphers plus the Voynich and you edited that illustration to demonstrate how they are were derived from latin abbreviations, greek, maths etc. In fact you added Coptic and Armenian to your list. In many cases your comparisons seemed to be tenuous at best.
It seems to me that you did generalise about diplomatic cipher symbols from Milan. Are you now saying that you are just generalising about the symbols in the Tranchedino being all derived from latin abbreviations, greek, maths etc. or are you backtracking from that too?
Yes, I know Fontana was not from Milan.
Mark Knowles wrote: “My point was that Fontana uses symbols found in some Italian ciphers and therefore if italian diplomatic cipher symbols are derived from Latin abbreviations etc.. then so are Fontana’s.”
Fontana’s cipher is systematic (and somewhat mnemonic). I explained this in my previous response.
When something is systematic, it is not possible to know whether the shapes are based on his own alphabet (whichever one he uses) or on shapes he saw in someone else’s cipher unless there is a strong overlap in a majority of shapes in both of them or unless he has explicitly written down that the idea came from somewhere else
You simply cannot know by simply looking at it.
.
Here, again, is how the Fontana circle-line cipher is constructed… this time I’ll break it into steps.
Start with a basic system… small circles and lines.
You need consonants and vowels. Make a rule that a vowel starts with a small circle but there has to be a way to distinguish them.
• Draw five small circles to stand for five vowels, a e i o u.
• On each of the outer circles (the one at each end), add tickmarks facing west and east respectively.
• Now move inward and add ticks facing north and south for “e” and “o”.
Now you have four “o” shapes, each one with a tick pointing to north, south, east, and west.
Since there are only four cardinal directions and five vowels, leave the “i” in the middle without a tickmark. You could also give it a different kind of tick from the other vowels, but it works fine as “o” and that leaves more options for distinguishing the consonants.
To create upper-case vowels, take the existing vowels and cross each of the tickmarks. Since the central “o” (the letter i) doesn’t have a tickmark, simply put the crossbar in the middle.
Now you have created 10 letter-shapes according to a rational system.
Now for the consonants…
The letters b, d, p, and q of the Latin character set are all constructed from a loop and a long line (two ascenders and two descenders) so, start with those…
• Take the Latin letters b and d and mirror them in the horizontal direction. Add a tickmark facing their normal direction and extend the stem in the downward direction.
• Take the letters p and q and mirror them in the horizontal direction. Add a tickmark facing their normal direction.
Can you see this is both systematic and mnemonic, based on manipulating the direction of letters in the alphabet, and adding tickmarks (as was done with the vowels)?
• Take the letter “f” and mirror it in the vertical direction and add a circle in the crook of the crossbar.
• Take the letter “s”, close the loops and then construct it two circles and a tickmark (like the others). Fontana wrote this in both the vertical and horizontal directions, but since it’s the only one with two loops (like a curled snake), it’s easy to recognize.
• Take “m” and “n” and construct them with two ticks (imagine a couple of minims facing to the right). Since Latin “m” has more loops than Latin “n”, add an extra tick to “m” (mnemonic, again).
• The same basic idea works for “h” and “k” as for “n” and “m” in terms of the extra tick. Draw the circle and add ticks facing north and east. Do the same for “k”, but since the Latin k has an extra stroke (just as Latin “m” has an extra stroke), add an extra tick in the direction of that extra angled stroke. So “h” and “k” are also mnemonic.
• take “y” and “z” and draw the right stroke of the y and substitute an “o” for the left stroke. Draw the two right strokes of the “z” and substitute “o” for the left stroke. Take “t” and substitute “o” for the downstroke.
That’s not the whole alphabet, but it’s most of it. The “c” and “r” are constructed with two longer lines on the outside of the circle (these do not strike me as mnemonic). The “l” does not appear to be mnemonic but “g” is not too difficult because if you move the stem to the center and add a tick, there it is. So 13 of the 18 consonants are reasonably mnemonic (many of them based on manipulating the Latin letter they represent).
The Fontana cipher is not quite as systematic as the Dorabella cipher, but all the letters are constructed of circles and ticks and, in most cases, the direction of the circle and the position of the tick is mnemonic for the Latin letter it represents. That’s why I noted above that it was probably designed to be easy to learn and remember, like Hildegard’s cipher (which uses some of the same concepts of mirroring and adding ticks).
So unless Fontana mentioned the origin of his idea somewhere, or there is something almost identical in an earlier manuscript, there is no way to prove that this cipher is based on other cipher-shapes because it appears to be devised in a rational, reasonably consistent, mnemonic style that is specific to itself.
Mark Knowles: “If you recall I produced an illustration containing symbols from Milanese diplomatic ciphers plus the Voynich and you edited that illustration to demonstrate how they are were derived from latin abbreviations, greek, maths etc. In fact you added Coptic and Armenian to your list. In many cases your comparisons seemed to be tenuous at best.”
Mark, I have not written about “Milanese diplomatic ciphers”. I have not seen all the different ciphers that originated in Milan. Not all of them are available online and they are not all based on the same system, so it’s not possible to generalize about them.
I have written specifically about the diplomatic ciphers collected by Tranchedino. They generally follow a similar style of construction consisting of 1) one-to-many letter assignments, 2) a small handful of null assignments, and 3) a lookup glossary of assignments consisting mostly of common names.
This kind of substitution cipher requires a large character set, so the glyphs are taken from many sources (Latin alphabets, Latin paragraph-marker symbols, Latin abbreviations, Greek, Coptic Greek, math, astrology). Some of the glyphs are invented, but not in a willy-nilly way—there are discernible patterns in the construction of many of the glyphs (I posted some examples). Many of the invented glyphs are made from a Latin symbol with an added crossbar.
You seem to think that it’s not possible to recognize the origins of the shapes, but this is not so.
It is not difficult to distinguish letters of the Greek alphabet from letters in the Latin alphabet. The Tranchedino collection includes both.
It is not difficult to distinguish math symbols from alphabet-letters. It is not difficult to distinguish Latin paragraph-marker symbols from Latin letters. It is not difficult to distinguish Latin abbreviations from Latin letters. It is not difficult to distinguish Latin or Greek letters from astrological symbols. You just have to know them.
To give you an example…
If you had a set of cipher symbols based on Cyrillic, Korean, Greek, and Sanskrit letters and showed them to someone who has never seen anything other than the Latin alphabet, they would NOT be able to distinguish one from the other, or to know if they were invented symbols or symbols from foreign alphabets. In contrast, if you show them to someone who DOES know these alphabets, they would have no difficulty recognizing that they are alphabetic and that they come from these four alphabets.
The same is true of musical notations systems (there are many different systems), and of Latin characters, ligatures, and abbreviations… once you learn them, you know how to recognize them.
Mark, Coptic and Greek are the same alphabet, the same basic glyph shapes. I did not “add” Coptic to the list, I simply made a distinction between the underlying language written with Greek letters so you would know where it would be easier to find.
As I mentioned before, the rare character in the VMS (EVA-x), the same character that shows up from time-to-time in other medieval ciphers (including the Tranchedino ciphers), is seen more often in Coptic-Greek scripts than in Greek-Greek scripts (although it can be found in both). I also mentioned that it’s sometimes easier to find in Old Russian texts than in Greek.
So if I mention Coptic and Old Russian, I am not “adding alphabets” (as you keep accusing me of), it’s because that specific character shows up in SEVERAL languages, just as the letter “a” is used in more than one language.
The Latin character set is used to write numerous languages (Italian, Latin, English, Czech, German, French, Spanish, Swedish, Finnish, etc.)
The Greek character set is also used to write more than one language. The Egyptians adopted the Greek characters to write Egyptian (Coptic-Greek) and even though the character set is essentially the same, some letters are used more often than others in Coptic because Egyptian is a different language from Greek.
JKP: Yes, I am familiar with Fontana’s alphabet.
Whether something is systematic or not I think it is possible to say if the shapes are based on shapes Fontana saw in someone else’s cipher. I suppose I should point out the specific shapes that I am referring to, maybe I will post them in Ninja. You are right this cannot be proven, precious little can be proven when it comes to the Voynich. Your claims about the origins of the script in the Tranchedino similarly cannot be proven. It is not necessary for Fontana to mention his idea elsewhere. Have you seen any evidence that Tranchedino or others describe the origin of the Milanese diplomatic script? Is this not necessary to determine its origins?
JKP: You say “The glyphs are taken from many sources (Latin alphabets, Latin paragraph-marker symbols, Latin abbreviations, Greek, Coptic Greek, math, astrology).” I don’t think you can be confident saying that.
It is noteworthy, as I think I have pointed out before, that Meister said that it is unclear what the origin of the symbols is.
It is telling that the criteria that you seem to use for determining whether Fontana’s symbols are influenced or derived from some diplomatic cipher symbols are much stricter than the criteria that you use for determining the origin of the symbols in the Tranchedino. The criteria that they are “systematic” seems a pretty arbitrary one and requires in your mind the strict statement of Fontana as to the source of his script. Your certainty that the origin of the symbols in the Tranchedino comes from a plethora of languages, natural and symbolic, seems to require much much looser grounds for its proof. Where are your grounds for saying each and every symbol in the Tranchedino has the specific origin that you say except for your own sense of visual similarity of symbols?
Mark Knowles: ” It is not necessary for Fontana to mention his idea elsewhere. “
I never said (or implied) that it was necessary. What it does is provide hard evidence for cipher origin that you cannot get from simply observing similarities IF the cipher is systematic.
A cipher that is both systematic and mnemonic may share shape-mates with other ciphers even if the inventor has never seen another cipher.
.
FYI, in the Middle Ages circle-line symbols were used for talismanic symbols, kabbalah symbols, and symbols for angels. To the medieval mind, the circle-line combination had magical properties, which might make it an attractive choice for medieval cipher systems.
Mark Knowles: “It is telling that the criteria that you seem to use for determining whether Fontana’s symbols are influenced or derived from some diplomatic cipher symbols are much stricter than the criteria that you use for determining the origin of the symbols in the Tranchedino.”
Strictness has nothing to do with it. THEY ARE TWO DIFFERENT KINDS OF CIPHER SYSTEMS.
• Fontana’s system is a one-to-one internally consistent substitution cipher, based on lines and circles systematically combined in a mnemonic fashion. Maybe he saw other cipher systems and maybe he didn’t, but the point is, you don’t NEED to see other ciphers (ever) to invent this kind of system.
It is more similar in concept to the Dorabella cipher or Hildegard’s cipher than it is to the ciphers collected by Tranchedino.
• The ciphers collected by Tranchedino are one-to-many plus glossary (Fontana is not one-to-many and it doesn’t use a glossary) and so a very large character set is necessary. It uses Latin letters. They are easy to identify. It uses Greek letters. They are easy to identify. It uses numbers. They are easy to identify. It uses Latin abbreviations (common ones). They are easy to identify. It uses astrological symbols. These are easy to identify. It uses Latin paragraph-marker symbols. These are not quite as easy to identify because some scribes invented their own, but some of them were conventional and common.
As I illustrated previously, when the inventors needed new characters, they tended to duplicate or add a cross-stroke or a tickmark to an existing character.
I haven’t actually counted the proportion of conventional sources for each individual cipher, but they probably account for about 90 or maybe even 95% of the symbols.
You don’t need to see other ciphers to invent this kind of cipher either. But you DO need to be familiar with the numerous symbol sets that were in general use in the Middle Ages.
JKP: I never said that Fontana needed to see other ciphers to invent his cipher.(Some might argue the same for the Tranchedino style ciphers after all, Archimedes?, probably invented the antikythera mechanism largely from scratch, so what one needs to know to achieve anything is debatable.) What I said was that Fontana had seen other ciphers given the similarity of his symbols to some common cipher symbols. You seem to have missed the point, I was not referring to the nature of the cipher, but rather the symbols used.
To reiterate there are symbols which cannot be found in the long list of sources that you claim for the Tranchedino and must be invented or of an unknown point of origin. What you miss is that generally the cipher symbols were frequently most influenced by the previous generation of cipher symbols. New cipher symbols were either an addition or a variety of modifications to an existing symbol. You might see the cipher symbol tradition as a symbolic tradition in it’s own right.
I think one problem that you have is that you haven’t actually seen that many cipher keys; by now I have seen a lot. You appear to really only have studied the Tranchedino and are not familiar with the prior cipher symbol developments, not only in Milan, but elsewhere.
Also what’s with the block capitals? They seem superfluous and aggressive. You often seem to like to resort to them.
Mark Knowles: “What I said was that Fontana had seen other ciphers given the similarity of his symbols to some common cipher symbols. You seem to have missed the point, I was not referring to the nature of the cipher, but rather the symbols used.”
Mark, the “nature of the cipher” has everything to do with the shapes. That was the whole point I was making. In some kinds of ciphers, the concept controls the shapes.
Do you understand the analogy to the Dorabella cipher? That it is a basic shape that has been manipulated in a rational way? That this kind of cipher could be invented without seeing other ciphers or other cipher shapes?
The same is true of the Fontana cipher. It is a systematic cipher. Which means there is no way to determine if it was derived from other shapes unless you find an earlier one that is essentially identical. He didn’t NEED to see other ciphers to invent a systematic mnemonic cipher. The internal logic determines the shapes.
Mark Knowles: “To reiterate there are symbols which cannot be found in the long list of sources that you claim for the Tranchedino and must be invented or of an unknown point of origin.”
Yes, I know. I already explained that and posted examples in my blog of how a high proportion of the “invented” shapes are created according to a rational process (which I illustrated).
Mark Knowles: “I think one problem that you have is that you haven’t actually seen that many cipher keys; by now I have seen a lot. You appear to really only have studied the Tranchedino and are not familiar with the prior cipher symbol developments, not only in Milan, but elsewhere.”
That is not true. I have already told you that I’ve been interested in ciphers since childhood. I have looked at a LOT of them.
I keep mentioning the Tranchedino ciphers to correct you, because you keep changing my wording to “Milanese” or any other number of things. I’m not talking about them all the time because it’s the only thing I’ve seen, it’s because you try to quote me and when you do, you change my wording to “all” and you change my wording to generalizations that I never made and I am forced to correct the record so other readers don’t get a misimpression of what I wrote.
JKP: First of all the Fontana cipher is not very different from early diplomatic ciphers, secondly you say:
‘Mark, the “nature of the cipher” has everything to do with the shapes. That was the whole point I was making. In some kinds of ciphers, the concept controls the shapes.’
That is just patently wrong. The shapes are and can be independent of the cipher. If I substitute different shapes in the Fontana cipher it remains the same.
You say:
“I posted examples in my blog of how a high proportion of the “invented” shapes are created according to a rational process (which I illustrated).”
So are you then saying that a proportion of “invented” shapes were not created according to a rational process?
You say: “I’ve been interested in ciphers since childhood. I have looked at a LOT of them.”(Note the block capitals)
This is another appeal to authority rather than specific knowledge. Claiming to have been interested in something since childhood seems to be a line you often fall back on rather than actual facts.
When you use the word “Ciphers” it is a very broad term. I used the term “cipher key”. I explicitly wasn’t talking about 18th, 19th or 20th century ciphers. So the Enigma machine or even Leon Battista Alberti are not relevant to my statement. So any knowledge on those subjects has relatively little bearing on 15th century or earlier cipher symbols
I said: “You appear to really only have studied the Tranchedino and are not familiar with the prior cipher symbol developments, not only in Milan, but elsewhere.”
Which prior cipher keys have you studied outside of the Tranchedino? I.e. which cipher keys from the first half of the 15th century or the 14th century?
JKP: It worth noting that on seeing the Dorabella cipher I wouldn’t conclude, unlike the Fontana cipher, that the characters were derived from diplomatic cipher symbols.
Mark Knowles: “The shapes are and can be independent of the cipher. If I substitute different shapes in the Fontana cipher it remains the same.”
You clearly do not understand even though I tried to carefully explain it three different ways.
If you change the shapes in the Fontana cipher, it does not remain the same.
It might still be a substitution cipher (almost all medieval ciphers are substitution ciphers), but you might “break” the mnemonics. You might “break” the logic inherent in the shapes (like the north, south, east, west dynamic). These are two aspects that distinguish this particular cipher.
Changing the shapes of one of the Tranchedino ciphers does NOT break any mnemonics and does not affect the logic in the same way that it does for the Fontana cipher because they are constructed differently.
Mark Knowles wrote: “Which prior cipher keys have you studied outside of the Tranchedino? I.e. which cipher keys from the first half of the 15th century or the 14th century?”
You already know the answer to this. I have discussed other ciphers on the forum, including a variety of Spanish ciphers and French ciphers, and possibly also have mentioned some on my blog. Those I have written about online only represent about 1/50th of the ciphers that I have studied over the years.
I have also found about 30 different ciphers in 10th to 15th century manuscripts. I don’t mean the ones others have told us about on the forum, I mean ones I discovered myself (this does not mean they haven’t been discovered by others, they probably have, but I found them independently).
JKP: I have just looked at your post on the forum linking to a Spanish cipher from the late 15th century. I can’t find specific references on the site to you discussing French ciphers, though I suspect that they similarly fall into a later era. If you know of any diplomatic cipher keys or enciphered letters whether French or Spanish from before 1447 and after 1350 then they would be of significant interest to me. There are good reasons why I said “prior cipher keys” and “first half of the 15th century or the 14th century”. The important point that I have been trying to make is the need to study the diplomatic cipher symbols leading up to the Tranchedino as part of a tradition, to see how they differ or are similar from one city state to another and how they change over time. This seems, from what you have said, to be something that you don’t know about and which is very pertinent to the question at hand. To understand the origins of the symbols in the Tranchedino it greatly helps to understand their predecessors.
JKP: To repeat my question, as it seems to me central to our discussion:
So are you then saying that a proportion of “invented” shapes were not created according to a rational process?
JKP: Firstly the Fontana shapes are fairly arbitrary. Yes they use a combination of circles and lines, but that is pretty much as far as it goes. We can see similarly linked circle line shapes in diplomatic ciphers.
I have seen the Fontana cipher symbols there is not a lot to be understood and as far as I can see you haven’t explained anything. As far as breaking the mnemonics the extent to which there are mnemonics is pretty limited and one can see similar mnemonics with diplomatic cipher alphabets. So really there is not much in the way of mnemonics to break and one could argue that changing the shapes of one of the Tranchedino ciphers does break some mnemonics. (You are also falling back into the block capitals habit.)
Mark Knowles: “Firstly the Fontana shapes are fairly arbitrary….”
The Fontana cipher symbols are the opposite of arbitrary.
Mark Knowles: “…one can see similar mnemonics with diplomatic cipher alphabets.”
Show me.
Why would you use mnemonics in a cipher that is intended to be difficult to decipher? Mnemonics make them easier to decipher.
Mark Knowles: “So are you then saying that a proportion of “invented” shapes were not created according to a rational process?”
It is not possible for anyone to know the origin of every invented shape. Some of them follow a rational process that can be observed and documented. Others are known only to their creators.
J. K. Petersen: If you believe that all mnemonics, are intended to render ciphers easier to read, that may be so with ones that are commonly met with like ‘All Good Boys Deserve Fruit’ and such. However, If one chooses to utilise mnemonics composed of some simple device known but to themselves plus a few confidants with whom they frequently correspond, what then?. In such a situation, unravelling will surely prove as difficult as your complex early 15th century diplomatic ciphers or others of more modern invention such that comprising unreadable glyphs of the Voynich Manuscript for instance.
This is a general point.
When JKP says: “Why would you use mnemonics in a cipher that is intended to be difficult to decipher? Mnemonics make them easier to decipher.”
One word “laziness”. I have noticed that often similar symbols or styles of symbol will be adjacent to each other in a cipher key. Whereas ideally the symbols should be distributed randomly throughout the cipher key to make it harder to decipher.
John, I never said “all mnemonics are intended to render ciphers easier to read”. I said Fontana’s cipher is mnemonic and intentionally designed this way to be easy to learn and to read. I’m pretty sure Hildegard’s was, as well.
The diplomatic ciphers were usually intended to be harder to decipher, so using mnemonics would work against their intention. I’m not saying that mnemonics didn’t exist among diplomatic ciphers (there were many different diplomatic ciphers), but in general they did not favor mnemonics because it goes against the general purpose.
Fontana, on the other hand, had a completely different intention. His books were designed to showcase his engineering ideas and talents. They were, in a sense, a résumé, or “publish or perish” approach to promoting himself and his ideas.
He specifically wrote his earlier book on memory devices in cipher and he very carefully engineered the cipher to be mnemonic. In fact, it stands out in this regard compared to other medieval ciphers. It is easy to decipher and easy to read and write and yet looks perplexing to anyone who doesn’t bother to study the relationships of the shapes to one another and to the alphabet.
JKP: Maybe we are talking at cross purposes. My understanding of what the Fontana symbols are, is as follows:
http://bestcodes.weebly.com/giovanni-fontana-cipher.html
Most of these are pretty arbitrary as I said, but maybe you are referring to a different set of symbols.
JKP: You said “In terms of originality, the Fontana cipher was not unusual. The choice of shapes was perhaps a bit more consistent than others (less variable from letter to letter), but there was certainly a dose of creativity in many medieval cipher shapes. It’s possible a majority of them were unique.”
JKP: That is exactly my point and always has been, some of the diplomatic cipher symbols were invented, some derived directly or indirectly, through earlier cipher symbols, from latin or latin abbreviations or other sources, some derived from cipher symbols that had been invented before for earlier diplomatic ciphers.
Similarly I would suggest that some of the Voynich symbols were invented and I would argue that others were shared in common with or related to diplomatic cipher symbols. Clearly again there were influences directly or indirectly from latin, latin abbreviations and other sources.
My own sense when it comes to the diplomatic cipher symbols of a given state is that they came from the following sources:
1) Borrowed or copied from the earlier diplomatic cipher symbols of that very same state.
2) Pure invention, particularly in the case of the symbols for the lists of words for individual city states and military actions, but quite widespread overall.
3) Cross fertilisation of cipher systems from other states. How this occurred is not wholly clear to me. This could have been due to those familiar with ciphers moving to work from one state to another and then reusing their preferred symbols. It could have been due to having shared cipher keys see Milan/Urbino as mentioned before. It could have less likely been through the interception of letters and so observation of the cipher symbols used by other states. Nevertheless we also observe significant uniqueness and distinctiveness in the choice of symbols used by a given state. So the cross-fertilisation was only partial and more noticeable between some states than others.
4) New symbols created through the modification of existing symbols.
As the ciphers used a growing number of symbols there would have naturally been a demand for new symbols on top of existing symbols.
Now as we trace back the origins of the cipher symbols over time it is reasonable to think that some symbols would have been borrowed at some stage from other familiar sources such as Latin letters, Arabic numerals, Latin abbreviations, Greek alphabet etc. Nevertheless I speculate that only certain symbols from certain sources would have entered the cipher symbol lexicon as the borrowings don’t appear uniform or universal.
Given that I see the visual appearance of diplomatic cipher symbol as a tradition in it’s own right rather than one just borrowed whole cloth from other symbolic traditions the point at which borrowings of symbols from other sources occurred is hard to say. Looking briefly at the Gabriel de Lavinde cipher symbols it appears that there are a mixture of borrowed and original symbols. It appears very likely that many of these symbols were borrowed from earlier cipher symbols. As Meister points out, tracing the history and origin of these symbols is extremely difficult given the very limited amount of earlier evidence.
Thinking further about it, the idea that these symbols were just borrowed whole cloth from other sources like latin abbreviations appears rather simplest and ignores this separate tradition of the development and formation of diplomatic cipher symbols.
A parallel tradition is when and In which state new development in the diplomatic ciphers first emerged and then how they spread to other states. Symbolic spread and technical spread could give insights into each other.
Of course the more cipher keys one can accumulate from the period the better one can map the symbolic and technical changes in diplomatic ciphers over time.
Obviously the important question for Voynich researchers is into which symbolic tradition the symbols in the Voynich most neatly fit? And if that is the diplomatic cipher symbol tradition then for which city state is the fit the best?
Obviously, my hypothesis is that the Voynich cipher symbols best fit in the tradition of Milanese diplomatic cipher symbols of the first half of the 15th century. Formally proving these kinds of statements is non-trivial, though in the case of diplomatic symbols pointing to the time period and city state on the basis of more formal analysis, whilst very difficult, does not seem out of reach.
I was thinking about mapping and comparing symbol origins. I suppose we can ask questions about the frequency of a given symbol in a diplomatic cipher of a certain place and time, by looking at all cipher keys associated with that place and time. I suppose one can either consider it in terms of in how many keys the symbol occurs or as the aggregate of the proportions of the number of symbols in each given key, to balance for keys with a larger number of symbols. One could then combine those results to give a figure not only for one symbol, but for a set of symbols. One could count the number of common symbols between any two keys. So we could have some figure for how similar 2 keys are and likewise how similar 2 sets of keys are. The difficulty one faces is that ideally one wants to have as large a number of keys to work with in order to get the best results, but there are significant limitations on the number of keys available.
Of course trying to generalise this approach to the commonality between symbols from diplomatic ciphers, latin abbreviations and the Voynich becomes very much more difficult. The best place to start seems to be by considering the total number of distinct symbols available from the sources of latin, latin abbreviations etc. ;this is obviously a very large number. Likewise one can consider the total number of distinct diplomatic cipher symbols; which is also a very large number, though smaller I would think than the other figure. Then one can consider the numbers of demonstrably common symbols from both sources, where the number of distinct sources is considered. This approach might given some very rough idea as to how this problem could be tackled albeit it requires the guesstimation of a few of very large numbers, which could may it quite imprecise. Nevertheless if the difference is large enough then one would be able to talk precisely about which is the better fit.
My thinking very crudely is that latin abbreviations etc. provides a huge set of possible symbols and all “latin” manuscripts provides a huge set of sources in which to find those symbols. However I would think that diplomatic cipher symbols provide a small total set of symbols and the number of cipher keys is much lower. However the number of “demonstrable” common symbols with latin abbreviations is not that much.(By “demonstrable” I mean ones where the identical symbol can be found in a manuscript, not where one could say that such a symbol could exist given the structure of other symbols.) Whereas I suspect that numerically diplomatic cipher symbols would fare better. However without rigorously trying to carry out this kind of calculation this is still speculation.
Mark Knowles wrote: “JKP: Maybe we are talking at cross purposes. My understanding of what the Fontana symbols are, is as follows:…”
Did you bother to analyze them?
If you had, you would never call them arbitrary.
JKP: Look there is not a lot of analysing to be done. I have looked at your bullet points in a previous comment where you say: “Here, again, is how the Fontana circle-line cipher is constructed… this time I’ll break it into steps.” and where you go through letter by letter of the alphabet explaining the patterns that you see.
Look, there are some similarities amongst the symbols used, but you seem to vastly overestimate the extent to which there is pattern amongst the symbols in comparison to the extent to which they are arbitrary. Yes, Fontana has a broad theme to the design of his symbols, but more than that there is not so much of a system.
To quote again the earlier JKP:
“In terms of originality, the Fontana cipher was not unusual. The choice of shapes was perhaps a bit more consistent than others (less variable from letter to letter), but there was certainly a dose of creativity in many medieval cipher shapes.”
No, Mark, I am not over-estimating the patterns in the Fontana cipher symbols. There is not just a broad theme, there are specific groups of morphologically-related letters that have been manipulated in very specific ways. He engineered the cipher.
And I stand by my statement that you quoted. The Fontana cipher is not original in terms of the style of cipher. It is a simple one-to-one substitution cipher, which was the predominant model at the time. Nothing original about that.
It is also not original in terms of combining circles and lines. Many ciphers have glyphs comprised of circles and lines.
What is delightful about the Fontana cipher is that it is engineered to be systematic and mnemonic (easy to learn, easy to write and read quickly). He did a very good job of incorporating mnemonics, as was his intention.
It’s the opposite of arbitrary. Other people will understand what I’m talking about even if you don’t.
JKP: There is not a lot to understand. Yes, there are some very loose patterns in the design of symbols. It is worth noting that these kinds of patterns can be found in some diplomatic cipher keys. The symbols are quite pleasant to look at, but it is easy to read too much into their design.
To make your quote more specific, you say:
“The choice of shapes was perhaps a bit more consistent than others (less variable from letter to letter), but there was certainly a dose of creativity in many medieval cipher shapes.”
You seem to be singing a different tune now. Particularly the phrase “perhaps a bit more consistent than others (less variable from letter to letter)” seems to have a completely different import from what you are now saying.
Mark, When I said there was “certainly a dose of creativity” in many medieval cipher shapes, it does not mean that ALL medieval cipher shapes are creative, and it does not mean that the underlying concept (e.g., substitution) is always creative.
I am not singing a different tune. There’s no reason to interpret my statements as contradictory. This is not an all-or-one situation.
JKP: I know, perfectly well that you did not mean that all medieval cipher shapes are creative and that the underlying concepts are always creative. This is not what you quote is about and your choice to focus on that interpretation rather than the actual quote is telling. (Note block capitals again)
Focusing in further;
You say: ““The choice of shapes was perhaps a bit more consistent than others”
This hardly fits with your comments here.
If one interprets the whole quote in its entirety the meaning is clear.
“The choice of shapes was perhaps a bit more consistent than others (less variable from letter to letter), but there was certainly a dose of creativity in many medieval cipher shapes.”
You were arguing that Fontana’s choice of cipher shapes was not significantly more consistent when compared to the cipher shapes in other medieval ciphers.
Yet, now, you are arguing that Fontana’s choice of cipher shapes was really significantly more consistent when compared to the cipher shapes in other medieval ciphers.
These two statements cannot both be true.
Mark, Mark, Mark….
The statements are not contradictory. I don’t know how to explain that to you. Part of the problem is you don’t understand the system underlying the Fontana shapes, You think the shapes are arbitrary. This is wrong. Which means anything I say about the Fontana cipher will be misinterpreted by you until we see eye-to-eye on this fundamental issue.
Curves and ticks are not original in medieval ciphers.
The way he COMBINED them in a deliberate mnemonic system is what sets it apart from other ciphers. This aspect of it is creative. Since you don’t agree with that, it is inevitable that you will take my comments out of context again.
So let’s just go our separate ways and agree to disagree.
You say Fontana shapes are mostly arbitrary.
I say they are the opposite of arbitrary.
The twain will never meet as long as we are so far apart on the underlying premise, so there’s no point in talking about it any more.
Peace. Use the time to work on your research.
JKP: You say:
“Let’s just go our separate ways and agree to disagree.
There’s no point in talking about it any more.
Use the time to work on your research.”
That is music to my ears. I wish that was your attitude more often, so as to avoid these endless pointless arguments. I would note, obviously, that in this instance as in all cases, you began by replying to my comment on this post not vice-a-versa. I hope for the sake of both of us you can bear in mind what you wrote above and save us both a lot of time in the future. I have plenty of Voynich research to keep me busy and from what you say you have a mountain of research to write up, neither of us can afford to waste time.
Best Wishes
I have just now received scans of the complete cipher ledger of Martino Ghisolfi, cipher secretary to Francesco I Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, from the Mantuan State Archives. As these cipher keys are dated very early in the 15th century and so they are significantly simpler than examples that we can find 40 years later for other city states. They tend to include a small list of homophones, a lists of null characters and in some cases a set of symbols corresponding to different nation states. The symbols for the different nation states are very inventive and appear to be a product of imagination rather than anything else.
It is my current opinion that the Martino Ghisolfi cipher ledger reflects the general level of sophistication reached in diplomatic ciphers across Italy at the start of the 15th century. I have as yet no reason to believe that any other state was much further advanced than this at that time.
One cipher key, which is in the Gonzaga cipher ledger, and happens to be in Meister is the cipher key for Venice, where the Republic of Venice is called “La Serenissima”. Given its distinctive homophones it makes me think it was a product of the Venetian chancellery rather than the Gonzaga chancellery, though of course it was used in communication between the two states.
Though looking back at that cipher key I think it refers to King Rupert of Germany. So is it a product of his chancellery? (Now I am starting to confuse myself)
Also the Michele Steno 1411 Venetian enciphered letter does not show those features and appears more like the ciphers we see from other city states of that period.
I think my mistake was reading “serenissimum” as being a reference to “serenissima”, the “serene” Republic of Venice. Whereas I wonder if here we are referring to the “serene” King Rupert, though I can’t see why that adjactive would be necessary to include in a cipher key title and to choose such a similarly spelled word; maybe King Rupert had some ties to the Republic of Venice.
If it is a German cipher key that would be interesting.
King Rupert became new Elector(Ruler) of the Palatinate of the Rhine in 1398, so the cipher key may date from around that time.
Thank you guys for sharing. What are your idea’s on traffic ?
The book is too long to be a single cipher. Who would buy a book
no one can read ? We know most of the people were functionally
illiterate at the time. How would they know ?
xplor: Traffic, well that’s a fascinating subject. I think one has to understand that the nature and behaviour of traffic during the 15th century was markedly different from ours even in the cities of the time. So transporting enciphered messages from one place to another was quite a different and, of course, much slower process. The logistics were quite different due to horses needing to be fed. Transporting an enciphered manuscript would have extra complications.
Was is your opinion on rhubarb?
Rhubarb not a fan.
Histiaeus shaved the head of his most trusted slave,
tattooed a message on his head, and then waited for
his hair to grow back. Sometimes a book can be a MacGuffin.
Metadata is newspeak for Traffic.
I wonder if on a practical level intercepted and deciphered letters were an impetus to improved ciphers. If a enciphered letter was captured and successfully deciphered then that could potentially be politically and diplomatically very damaging, so in that eventuality it would be natural for the chancellery of a city state to feel the need to strengthen their ciphers to ensure that doesn’t happen again. This could result in them deciding to make their ciphers harder to crack by adding more possible substitutions and symbols to correspond to them. In addition one would expect them to make sure that those individuals writing enciphered letters were more rigorous and careful in so doing. A lazy encipherer could do many things to make their letters more readable e.g. using fewer rather than more different substitutions. Someone designing a cipher key should not use predictable symbols i.e. similar symbols adjacent to each other in the cipher or certain types of symbols for certain categories of substitution. Ideally the symbols should be randomly distributed throughout the cipher key.
It seems to me that the worst time for a cipher to be intercepted and deciphered would be during a time of war as this could make the difference between defeat and victory. This would explain the big advance in complexity of cipher keys durjng the period of the wars in Lombardy. These 4 wars could have created the reason for increasing the difficulty involved in deciphering a message. Given the 1st war happened in the early 1420s this time could possibly have coincided with the start of significant cipher advancement that could have continued until the early 1440s when the 4th war in lombardy ended. This possible period of advances in cipher techniques corresponds somewhat with the dating of the Voynich, whose cipher might just represent avenue of cipher development that was not followed further for reasons such as its difficulty in application for the ordinary diplomat.
Some study of Guinigi’s cipher ledger seems to indicate that most of his cipher keys were intended for correspondence with his envoys/ambassadors rather than direct correspondence with the heads of states. Johann de Vivianis has 3 separate cipher keys attached to his name, presumably dated to different time periods, and he appears to have been Guinigi’s ambassador to Florence.
There are some exceptions. It appears that there is one which was probably used for direct communication with the Doge of Genoa. Also there seems to be one used for direct communication with Venice. (I saw a reference to Imola which I need to check.) In general these are often easier to identify not only by the correspondent named as head of state, but also they can include peculiarities not found in other cipher keys in a ledger, presumably reflecting the design of the other state. In tend to assume that for a given state at a given time there is some uniformity internal cipher key design; this may not be a reasonable assumption.
Guinigi’s ciphers are characterized by his particularly elaborate drawings for his nomenclature. Though this is not always the case in fact some, by contrast, just use numbers for nomenclature, maybe this was Guinigi improving on the weaknesses of his previous, impractical though visually elegant, system.
As always with cipher keys I find it hard to make out the names of the cipher correspondents from the handwriting.
Sadly for me given that few of the cipher keys seem intended for heads of states rather than envoys they do not shed a lot of the cipher keys used by other states such as Milan. It is interesting that Guinigi seems to have a preference for envoys whereas other states at this time do appear to have communicated directly more often.
Trying to identify people on Guinigi’s list of correspondents:
Leonardo de Massa = Leonardo Malaspina, Marquis of Massa
Antonio de Giglis = A member of the Gigli family of Lucca
Guelfo de Lanfranchis = A member of the Lanfranchi family of Pisa
Guarzone = Lord Guarzone of Pisa
There appears to be a reference to Nicolino Piccinino the important mercenary
There is at least one cipher key addressed to another Guinigi, his brother I think.
Some have such brief titles that it seems near impossible to determine the correspondent with any certainty
In general for my research it is probably not that important to determine who the correspondents are, possibly except for those who heads of representatives of major states. If the correspondent is representing another state then the cipher key could give some insight into where that state is in cipher development, which for states like Venice, Milan or Florence is of interest. However my primary interest is Milan I have already seen cipher keys from Milan for the beginning of the 15th century, so even if I identified one of the illegible titles as representing Milan it probably wouldn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know. Nevertheless clearly the Venetian cipher key is a little different, so there is some interest there. Generally how the cipher keys differ in design can be of interest. I am sure there is plenty more to extract from Guinigi cipher ledger, but I don’t know if this will push my research much further forward at this time.
It appears as if the enciphered letters in the Pisa archive that Meister lists are all from the late 15th century. So only the cipher key from 1442 that he lists in his book appears to be of interest
Looking at the Guinigi cipher ledger and trying to identify the correspondents from the cipher key->
There is a cipher key headed “Johannes de Aliprandis”
I have noticed a reference to “Johannes de Aliprandis de Mediolano” where Mediolano of course is Milan. So this might be of interest to me.
I think Johannes de Aliprandis is Giovanni Aliprandi. See->
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Aliprandi
It appears that he did not explicitly serve the Duchy of Milan, but was closely allied to it.
I can read the following names, though they may not be correct:
Monacello
Jacobo de Buuanis (Repeated “u” makes this unlikely to be the correct reading)
Jacobo Michelis
Monaco
Andrea de Alma
Angelo de Buoma
Matheo de Podio
Antonio de Foma
Legato
I will need to check many of these as they could easily have been misread.
More names:
Johanne Manzny(??)
Jacobo de Capilion
Tartaglia
Benedica
Rappante
Batista de Capofreg…
I have taken these names from the contents page list of cipher keys, but I should cross refer these against each cipher header on each page.
More names:
Ladislao
Johanne de Montero
Batista de Campofregoro
Bendicto
Guidone de Petraf..
Ludovico de Maurious(??)
Archiopo …
Nicolao de Imola
Lazarmo de Carretto
Johanne de Bolognosa
Marchionibus de Villafranca
Of course these would all have to be identified as a list of names isn’t of much use on its own.
Mark: I have various books on Federico da Montefeltro here, but what is needed here would be a decent social history of his court and milieu, which I’m not sure my library is deep enough to cover.
Mark: within easy arm reach was my copy of Alison Cole’s “Art of the Italian Renaissance Courts”, where Chapter 3 covers Federico da Montefeltre’s court, so I’ll have a quick look…
Mark: nothing of use in there, I’ll look again later…
Nick: I don’t want to put you to a lot of work.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigismondo_Pandolfo_Malatesta
Discusses an alliance including Federico da Montefeltro and Napoleone Orsini.
“Malatesta’s image was publicly burnt in Rome, and a de facto crusade was then launched against him, in a league including the pope, the king of Naples, the Duke of Milan and Federico da Montefeltro. He defeated the first contingent of Papal troops, led by Napoleone Orsini, on 2 July 1461 at Castelleone di Suasa. In 1462 he was able to take Senigallia, but was forced to flee to Fano after the arrival of Federico da Montefeltro.”
https://condottieridiventura.it/napoleone-orsini-conte-di-albe-e-di-tagliacozzo/
“Sverna con la sua compagnia nel territorio di Gubbio; è ospite di Federico da Montefeltro.”
This fits better the 1450 date.
It appears that Federico da Montefeltro and Napoleone Orsini met in 1449. It would then make sense that they drew up a cipher key in 1450 for communication between them.
As far as military activities go from the timeline referred to previously the first record of Napoleone Orsini’s activities were in 1443, so again this raises a question about the 1440 dating.
Ultimately I doubt we will find a record stating “For the first time Federico da Montefeltro and Napoleone Orsini setup cipher keys for communication in the year 14?0” Which would be the only sure fire way to determine if the dating is correct or not. Luigi Sacco died in 1970 so he can’t tell me why he dated the cipher key to 1440. I don’t know if there is anything in his writings explaining why he chose that date. I am sticking with the opinion that the cipher key is dated to 1450 unless anyone can come up with a justification for the earlier dating.
Mark: given that Oddantonio da Montefeltro became (briefly) the very first Duke of Urbino in 1443, the prominent presence of Count (rather than Duke) in the nomenclators might be a good way of seeing if any key predates 1443.
Nick: I haven’t seen any references to the Duke of Urbino in the nomenclature of the cipher keys, though a few are illegible. However given that Oddantonio da Montefeltro was Duke for just over a year and Federico da Montefeltro did not become Duke until 1474 then it is probably not wholly surprising that we don’t see that. However that does support the idea that the cipher keys don’t predate 1444. Most references appear to be to the Count of Urbino(“Comes Urbini” or “Comes d Urbino”) from the cipher key with the date 1445(with a “4” as the 3rd digit) to the one with the date 1469.
Nick: Cross-checking with the Tranchedino I have seen quite a few references to the Count of Urbino in that cipher ledger, which I think we cannot view as predating 1443.
Guidantonio da Montefeltro was Count of Urbino from 1403 until 1443. As far as references to the Orsini in his timeline there are no references to Napoleone Orsini and the last reference to the noble Orsini family is in 1414 before Napoleone was born.
Looking at the timeline for Napoleone Orsini it appears that he did not engage in any military operations in conjunction with Federico da Montefeltro prior to 1448. He met with Federico da Montefeltro in the winter of 1448 in Gubbio who he leaves Tuscany with and then meets again with him in 1450 in Gubbio. He takes part in military operations in conjunction with Federico da Montefeltro in 1452, presumably a cipher key would have definitely been very useful for communication between them at that time. As far as assessing the dating of the cipher key that Sacco dates as 1440 and I as 1450 I would argue that the evidence strongly supports the latter date and that Sacco must have just misread, possibly from his fuzzy black and white scans, the year written at the top of the key as 1440 when in fact it was written as 1450.
When I Google [“Guidantonio da Montefeltro” “Napoleone Orsini”] I can’t find any references to any connection between them except for the later connection with the son of “Guidantonio da Montefeltro”, Federico da Montefeltro. I also can’t find any references to Napoleone Orsini prior to 1443, except for his birth.
I was googling for “Napoleone Orsini” and so stumbled on your paper on the subject. I noted that you write->
Having discussed vowel homophones Kahn moves on to consonant homophones:
“So slow was cryptology’s development, however, that not until the mid 1500s
[he means ‘mid-1400s’] did consonants begin to get homophones.(p.108)
—–
The Florence cipher key dated to 1414 in Meister “Die Anfange…” shows some use of consonants homophones and this is crystal clear with the Florence cipher key dated to 1424.
In fact Kahn is quite mistaken when he’s says “So slow was cryptology’s development” as the period from the early 1400s to the mid-1400s was a period of very fast cryptological development.
You were quite right to correct him and this is merely a further correction.
It is worth noting that the 1414 and 1424 cipher keys were generated by Abbot Gabrielli from original letters and so could not have been added to at a later date.
Nick: At some stage I ought to write a paper on the evolution of diplomatic ciphers from around the mid 14th century to the mid 15th century. So that would be Gabriel de Lavinde to about 1450. I haven’t spend much time looking into diplomatic ciphers from before Gabriel de Lavinde’s cipher ledger, but if write a paper I may have to.
We could co-write a paper on the subject if you are interested, though I know your interests tend to fall after 1450 rather than before.
I thought I would read the relevant parts of Kahn’s book to see if I could find any other mistakes. I read that:
“The West’s earliest known homophonic substitution cipher, used at Mantua with Simeone de Crema in 1401”
I was surprised by that as I thought the earliest example was a cipher key from Mantua dated to 1395 not part of the later Mantua cipher ledger. So I looked this cipher key up in Meister and sure enough the 1395 cipher key does not have homophones. The importance is that it makes the earliest example of a homophonic substitution cipher is the Milanese cipher key that we find in “The Chronicles of Lucca” by Giovanni Sercambi. Meister doesn’t mention this text in his book, so I imagine that he wasn’t aware of it; likewise for Kahn.
The importance of this to me is that it means that the earliest example of a homophonic substitution cipher is the one from the Duchy of Milan dated to 1397, as I have read. So does this mean that this was a Milanese innovation, I can’t say, but it is not implausible.
When Kahn says:
“The same development may have taken place separately in several principalities”
I would think it almost certain that the use of homophones emerged in one state and then spread to others, probably as a result of the use of cipher keys shared between 2 states for the correspondence between them. The adoption of homophones was in such a short time frame that it is hard to believe that independently different states came up with the same idea.
“Likewise, the code lists of the nomenclators did not expand much until well into the 1500s.”
I would question whether that is correct. I suppose it depends on what one means by “expand much”.
Generally Kahn’s book is a good read. I haven’t checked the accuracy of details of which I am not familiar.
Nick: I have emailed Paolo Bonavoglia, who acted as editor for “Manuale di Crittografia” by Luigi Sacco, to explain what I believe is a small error in the book regarding the 1440 or 1450 dating of the Napoleone Orsini cipher key as you and I have discussed.
On the subject of shared cipher knowledge between states, when two states use a cipher key between them to communicate then obviously the way that the cipher used works and the symbols used are shared between them. Whilst over time ambassadors, envoys etc. were used more, at this time that was less common, certainly when communicating with the smaller states. So if Milan draw up their most advanced cipher key for communication with Mantua that they, of course, share with Mantua then Milanese cipher knowledge will have been transferred as well as an acquaintance with their favourite cipher symbols. The same would apply to all other states or individuals with which Milan corresponds directly. Likewise when those states draw up cipher keys with their correspondents that knowledge will also pass to their correspondents. So this leads to a sharing of cipher techniques over time and to some extent the sharing of cipher symbols. Obviously this process is not instantaneous and we can clearly see to some extent amongst the different states that there are different cipher traditions and styles, though it should be said that it appears that these traditions and styles over time do converge.
Nick: I have received a reply from Paolo Bonavoglia. He says:
“the surprise was the 1450 “Codice Urbinate” cipher, mentioned by my grandfather in the last, 1947, edition of the ‘Manuale di Crittografia’ and in the ‘Un primato italiano, la crittografia nei secoli XV e XVI’
You are right the year is 1450, undoubtedly; my grandfather was not familiar with XV-XVI cent. handwriting, after three years in the Archives of Venice I know very well that the decimal digits were spelled in quite a different way. The number 5 in the Venetian ciphers has that same glyph , sometimes so slender it can be confused with number 1.”
Here is the list that I can read, as best I can, of the correspondents in the Mantova cipher ledger->
Vinciguerra d’Arco (15th century), man of arms. Sigismund in 1413 created count of the empire
Cristoforo Arrivabene
Albano Badoari
Barbavara Franco
Luigi Bernardi di Crema
Gerardo Boiardi, Lord of Rubiera
Bologna Legato
Bondioli Barrolo in Venezia 1404
Cambiatori Gio
De la Capra Barro
di Cervia Vescovo
de Crema Simone
di Cremona Vescovo
de Gablaretti Ruffino
di Grado Patriarca
de Opera Antonio
Mainen Giovanino
la Malalesta Carlo
la Malalesta Isabella egg
Mantova Residenti
Micheli Fantino
di Milano Cardinale
di Milano Duca
de Ozulla Agogino
de Perugio Antonio
di Peruro Silvestro
de Piacenti Tomaya
de Galasso
Hano ad Alberso
Conte Franco
de Roberti Nicolo ed Alberto
Spinelli Cipriano
Strozzi Uberio
de Teresi Giaco in Bologna
de Torelli Amorao
Ubertini Andreino
del Verme Giaco
dei Zoboli Ugolino