01 The letter
| Shelfmark | BnF Clairambault 1161 |
|---|---|
| Sender | Unidentified |
| Recipient | Unidentified |
| Date | Unestablished;1554/1555 remains a hypothesis |
| Language | French |
| Report status | 6/6 pages transcribed; 2/6 pages deciphered; 4 more in part |
| Ciphertext | 3,149 elements, 3,046 identified; 5 further wordlike groups not classified |
02 The key
51 accepted forms: 38 letter signs, 11 nomenclature entries, 2 nulls, 39 provisional unidentified labels
03 The decipherment
f163r — complete eight-line cipher paragraph
Ce Seigneur a par deulx fois escript et mandé à ceste royne qu’elle laissast passer en silence et dissimulation beaucoup de choses quant au faict de la religion en ce royaume afin de regaigner sa noblesse et peuple, et que son filz et elle y puissent regner et commander en plus grand repos.
Translation. This lord has twice written and sent word to this queen that she should let many matters concerning religion in this kingdom pass in silence and dissimulation, in order to win back her nobility and people, so that her son and she may reign and command there in greater peace.
04 Plaintext and other sources
Where a decipherment or clear copy already existed, as George Lasry gives it:
- Plaintext in the margin or below
- Matching historical plaintext in the margin of f163r, in the same volume; the other five cipher faces have no established matching plaintext.
05 Our check
This result is George Lasry’s. This project did not re-solve the cipher: it checked one sample against the Gallica image and recorded what it found.
- Batch A. Image checked: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b90010063/f186.item
- Folio matches the report: yes; cipher present: yes
- What we checked: f162r (canvas 186) and f163v-164r (canvas 188, "Aultres advis") are all-cipher pages with signs matching his table (+, #, w-forms, 77=de, 76=le, 84, 52, /// null); no run decoded symbol by symbol; the f163r margin plaintext he cites was not on the canvases I fetched
- Verdict: partly confirmed (method key recovered based on adjacent plaintext, extent partial). The check is a sample, not a re-solution.
- Notes: Cipher is bound next to an unrelated 1707 certificate copy (f161v), so date and context depend on content only; 1554/55 (Mary Tudor, Hampton Court) is his hypothesis. Only 2/6 pages fully deciphered; 39 provisional labels.
06 Sources
- George Lasry, with ChatGPT Astra 6 and Anthropic Opus 5.5, BnF cipher research, 10 October 2026 (sent to Daniel Bourdeau on 13 October 2026 for publication here), p. 73; his other items are listed on his contributor card.
- The working folder:
targets/clair1161/(his entry as extracted from the report, our spot-check,profile.json).