Exea to Climent, 1408

01 The letter

Francesc Climent, called Çapera, was Benedict XIII’s chamberlain and treasurer and later bishop of Barcelona; he left his papers to the cathedral chapter. Among them Sebastián Puig y Puig found fourteen letters partly or wholly in cipher, deciphered them, and printed them in the appendix of Pedro de Luna, último papa de Aviñón (1920). This is one of them: Alfonso de Exea, archbishop of Seville to Climent, 23 Aug 1408 (appendix LXIV, pp. 500–503; Çapera no. 133). Puig prints the whole letter after its opening formula in italics as his decipherment. The reading audit of 22 October 2026 found no text of the letter in the repository; on 23 October Puig’s pages were fetched as images from Google Books and transcribed (texts/exea1408_reading.md, with an English translation). It opens: “know that the Cardinal of Spain [Pedro de Frías] has played a Trebellian trick on us”: he feigned illness when the Pope left Portovenere, then went to Genoa, where the Patriarch [Simon de Cramaud] urged him in the King of France’s name to go to Paris, with the promise of the church of Rouen; the Pope has ordered his revenues seized for the Camera (translation). The defection of Pedro de Frías, the “Cardinal of Spain”, to France. The letter is entirely in cipher and is the longest text of the fourteen.

The originals are not digitised, and the archivist Josep Mas noted that Puig studied many of the Schism papers at home in 1920–30 and did not return them all. Puig’s print may be the only witness.

02 The cipher and its key

Puig never printed a key, and the only image of any of these ciphers is his facsimile of one page of Benedict XIII’s own letter of 22 June 1400. From that page the key of Benedict’s letters was rebuilt here: a plain substitution, one sign per letter. Puig writes of “la clave o claves”, the key or keys, he recovered, and nothing shows whether this letter, from another writer, used the same one. So it has its own entry. Benedict XIII’s letters are on Benedict XIII to Climent, 1399–1403 (a different or unverified cipher, with its own page); the other letters of his circle each have their own page for the same reason: Santa Cruz to Climent, 1399, Jafet to Climent, 1400, Comuel to Climent, December 1415, Comuel to Climent, June 1416.

03 What remains

• The ciphertext. No image of the letter exists, so its cipher, its key and Puig’s reading cannot be checked. Blocker: needs the original in the Arxiu Capitular de Barcelona.

Full texts

The transcription and the decryption of every document on this page, so that the reading can be used and checked. Short files are shown here; all are in the repository.

Exea to Climent, 23 Aug 1408

Alfonso de Exea, archbishop of Seville, to Francesc Climent, Perpignan, 23 Aug 1408, in Benedict XIII's circle during the Schism: the defection of Pedro de Frías, the 'Cardinal of Spain', the order to arrest his revenues in Castile, four candidates for the see of Osma, and the Infante Fernando's expulsion of the prelates and of Leonor López from the court. Entirely in cipher, the longest of these texts (2,339 words as printed); Puig y Puig printed it in 1920 (appendix LXIV, pp. 500-503) with the deciphered passages in italics.

Decryption: exea1408_reading.md

Reading: exea1408_reading.md

Translation: exea1408_en.md

04 Sources

• S. Puig y Puig, Pedro de Luna, último papa de Aviñón (1387–1430), Barcelona 1920, appendix LXIV, pp. 500–503; p. 466 n. 2 on the italics. Full view on Google Books (CuOlkxWnk-EC).
• J. Baucells i Reig, El fons Cisma d’Occident de l’Arxiu Capitular de la Catedral de Barcelona, Barcelona 1978, pp. 11–13.

Notes and profile: targets/exea1408/; the list of all fourteen cipher items is in targets/benedict1399/NOTES.md.