VMs: Cicco Simonetta / Sartirana / library...?

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi everyone,

Here is the heavily summarised outline argument for my main theory about 
the VMS, together with a suggestion as to how it might be physically tested 
- all comments welcome!

(1) The VMS' cipherbet shares a character-pair with some Italian ciphers 
circa 1440-1455
--> it was probably constructed by the same code-maker
--> it's written in a kind of cipher.
(2) The ciphers it shares those characters with were for high-status 
Milanese insiders
--> Tristano Sforza [the Duke's brother]
--> Orfeo da Rycano [head of the Milanese secret police]
(3) The VMS' cipher is more complex than the other ciphers
--> it was constructed after the other ciphers (ie, after 1455)
(4) The VMS has resisted all statistical efforts to decode it to date
--> it was constructed by a master code-maker and/or a cryptologist

--> (A) The person who designed the code was Cicco Simonetta, the 
super-rich (and well-educated) head of the Milan security forces (who 
personally appointed Orfeo da Rycano from Florence), who was arguably the 
greatest Western cryptologist of the Quattrocento.

(5) The diagrams in the VMS are traced
--> its diagrams are copies, not originals
(6) The contents of the VMS appear to be varied
--> it is probably a collection of separate documents by separate authors
(7) The handwriting is very consistent across all folios
--> it was probably copied by 1-2 persons
(8) The VMS appears not to have been copied from any other known document.
--> the manuscripts it was copied from were probably rare (for whatever reason)
--> the manuscripts it was copied from were probably expensive

--> (B) The VMS is a copy of a set of rare (probably unique), expensive 
documents.

--> (C) The VMS is an encoded copy of a set of rare documents, probably 
owned by Cicco Simonetta, using a code designed by Cicco Simonetta.

(9) Cicco Simonetta, with a little help from Filarete (and a lot of help 
from Aristotile da Bologna), rebuilt his castle in Sartirana in 1462-1463.

If you accept my argument up to this point, I believe it leads to a quite 
extraordinary inference:

--> (D) The original manuscripts of the VMS were too rare for a bibliophile 
and man of high culture like Simonetta to want to destroy - but too 
politically dangerous (for whatever reason) for him to keep. The only 
feasible solution - which I believe he conceived in about 1462, and 
commissioned and executed in 1463 - was to encode them (using the most 
fiendish code at his disposal), and then to brick them up in a hidden 
library within his castle, in a void left during the Sartirana 
reconstruction of 1463.

I'm also sure that this theory can be tested!

Simonetta's castle at Sartirana (near Pavia, not too far from Milano) 
remains intact and has in fact been refurbished fairly recently - it's 
currently the home of the highly regarded Sartirana Fondazione Arte 
(Telephone: (0384) 800804), which houses a textile museum and holds the 
occasional contemporary art show. The director of the Fondazione is Dottor 
Giorgio Forni - but as I can only (barely) read Italian, I'd be highly 
unlikely to be able to discuss this with him sensibly over the phone.

All help, ideas, and suggestions for how to proceed with trying to test 
this would be much appreciated! For example, what equipment would be most 
effective for finding voids in brick walls? Where can you hire super-thin 
cameras (with lights) for passing into such voids to have a look?

Please don't dismiss this idea out of hand - I've only summarised my 
argument here, as I'd be typing all week if I tried to include it all (this 
email is quite long enough as it stands).

Thanks, .....Nick Pelling.....

PS: before anyone says, I do realise that this loosely parallels the hidden 
library in Umberto Eco's "The Name Of The Rose". If anything, I think that 
this is possibly 10x more extraordinary! :-)


______________________________________________________________________
To unsubscribe, send mail to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxx with a body saying:
unsubscribe vms-list