Cipher Mysteries

Perhaps because of its geography (spanning a mountain range) or its powerful neighbours (France, Milan), Savoy is one of those nebulous, hard-to-grasp historical regions with a perimeter seemingly made of rubber.

Here’s a map of 15th century Savoy courtesy of the very useful sabaudia.org: as landmarks, you can see Milan, Turin, Genoa and Lyon – just off to the lower left are Marseille and Avignon (home to antipope Clement VII and antipope Benedict XIII between 1378 and 1403, at which time the latter escaped to Anjou following a five-year siege by the French army). The green shapes mark mountain passes:-

The same site also has a nice timeline for Savoy events (in French), from which I’ve summarized a few points of interest between 1350 and 1450 below. The initial historical context is that Amadeus VII is ruling the House of Savoy, with the separate Savoy-Achaia line ruling over Piedmont (but please don’t ask me to summarize the history of Achaia and how it’s linked here, that might well bore you to death):-

• 1385: Amadeus VII acquires the Barcelonnette region.
• 1388: Amadeus VII loses Nice to Jean Grimaldi.
• 1401: Amadeus VIII acquires the County of Geneva after the last Count Humbert dies childless.
• 1403: Louis of Savoy-Achaia moves the House of Savoy’s capital to Turin, and creates the University of Turin as part of the first State of Savoy.
• 1406: Amadeus VIII receives the homage of the Seigneur de la Brigue and negotiates with the Count of Tende to establish a direct route between Nice and Turin.
• 1411: Amadeus VIII buys Rumilly, Roche, and Ballaison, the House of Geneva’s last remaining possessions.
• 1411: The Savoyards briefly occupy the Val d’Ossola to ensure control of the Simplon pass (though the Swiss Confederates subsequently drove them out in 1417).
• 1416: after a magnificent reception at Chambery, the Emperor Sigismund, visiting Amadeus VIII for the third time in four years, grants him the ducal title – the House of Savoy become the Duchy of Savoy.
• 1418: following the last Savoy-Achaia’s death, Amadeus VIII regains control of Piedmont.
• 1427: the Visconti yield Vercelli to Amadeus VIII.
• 1434: Louis of Savoy marries Anne of Lusignan in Chambery, a union which binds the Savoy royal family to the Lusignan kings (from Cyprus and Jerusalem) & hints at an Eastern policy for the Duke.

From this, you can see the shadow of the Holy Roman Empire hanging over the legitimacy of the House of Savoy’s 1416 transition to become the Duchy of Savoy: so it is should be no surprise that if you look at the rear of Turin’s Palazzo Madama (which was started by the Savoy-Achaia line in the 14th/15th century), you can still see make out its swallowtail merlons embedded just below the top of its towers.

Now all this historical framework is in place, you should be just about able to make some sense of this hideously overcomplex historical map of Savoy (from William Shepherd’s Historical Atlas of 1923-1926), courtesy of the University of Texas at Austin.

For my own Voynich Manuscript research, what has become clear to me from this is that rather than Savoy in the larger sense, it is probably Piedmont (as gained by the Duchy of Savoy in 1418) I should be specifically interested in. But what Piedmontese historical archives should I be looking at? Questions, questions, questions…