01 The three records
| Record | Folio | Date | Who | System | Read |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| R9403 | 226–228 | Łask, 17 Sept 1531 | Hieronymus Łaski to a councillor of the dukes (probably Leonhard von Eck; an inference) | Łaski’s System B, e/r swapped; word sign DAG = King John | 414/416 words (99.5%) |
| R9415 | 260–261 | 18 April 1533 | King John’s side to “illustrissimi principes … fratres”; address to Aurelio Augurelio | homophonic “L”, Latin | 386/405 (95.3%) |
| R9414 | 257–259 | Wardein, 14 March 1537 | unnamed Bavarian servant to Duke Ludwig of Bavaria | homophonic “G”, German | 947/1037 (91.3%) |
The percentages count every word of the ciphered runs; clear passages are not counted, and doubtful words count as open for R9414 and R9415.
02 Łaski, 17 September 1531 (R9403)
Łaski’s graphic cipher (System B) was rebuilt from the glossed letters R9322 and R9417 in the same volume. In this letter the signs for e and r are the other way round (starred x = e, plain x = r) and some shapes differ. The sign DAG, three times, stands for King John. The docket says “anno 32”; the text is dated 1531.
… cum hac hieme Turca oratoribus regis Ferdinandi hoc dederit responsum: Item ad dominum uestrum dicite illi nunquam ipsum amiciciam nostram, numquam pacem uel inducias consequuturum nisi cedat regno Hungarie amico nostro Ioanni regi serenissimo; quod nisi fecerit, ueniam ad querendum eum …
Ruffus brought the dukes’ letters on the 15th, and Łaski thanks them. The Sultan told Ferdinand’s envoys this winter that there would be no friendship, peace or truce unless Hungary was given up to King John. Ships, guns and grain are being carried to the Danube and soldiers levied. The diet of Speyer will be short; Łaski is ill but will ride post to it, and the dukes and their friends should stop any decision against the king until he arrives. On the marriage he cannot yet write: within ten days he will settle it with the King of Poland, “for among the Poles, as among the French, the dowering of kings’ daughters is fixed by law.” Postscript: the councillor should put the king’s letters before the imperial estates.
03 King John’s side to the dukes, 18 April 1533 (R9415)
The signs look like the System A′ set used by the dukes’ agents in the 1534–35 reports, but the A′ key does not fit, and neither does R9369, Augurelio’s own key of 1531. A gloss over part of line 3 (“incrementum”) gave the first values; a solver (simulated annealing) with a Latin language model and a search over the candidate values gave the rest. Six signs after the clear passages are nulls marking the join.
… hostis noster una parte tractatum cum […] nobiscum inceperit, ex alia parte Turcarum Caesari pro pace clam supplicaverit, credimus D. vestras illud iam compertum habere.
Georgius, the dukes’ servant, came back with their three reasons for urging concord at the diet of Pressburg. Ferdinand, “our enemy”, opened a treaty with King John while secretly suing the Sultan for peace; the Sultan’s own letters revealed it, so John recalled his orators and, at the Sultan’s request, sent his governor to him. Ferdinand boasts of peace but does not know its terms, and the dukes should not believe the rumour. The Turkish envoy in Vienna has made Ferdinand’s orator in Turkey “his” orator. The address on the fourth page, in clear, is to Aurelio Augurelio.
04 From Wardein to Duke Ludwig, 14 March 1537 (R9414)
The opening, the date (“Datum Wardein … den vierzehenden tag Marcii anno siben und dreissigisten”) and the address (“Herzogen Ludwigen in Bayrn”) are in clear. The gloss over lines 6–8 gave the first values of a new homophonic alphabet; a solver (simulated annealing) and a search over candidate values with a language model of sixteenth-century German, three passes over every line against the image, and a search for dictionary words one letter away brought it to 91.3%.
… dan der turkisch kaiser irn herrn befolhen hab das si in aller eil, ieder mit […] pferden gerust sein …
The writer describes his journey back into Hungary and the state of Hungarian affairs; envoys of the pashas of Belgrade and Bosnia; the Turkish emperor ordering them to be ready and arming a hundred thousand men to win Hungary and then turn on Austria; Ferdinand’s party taking towns and villages. Duke Wilhelm never writes to him, so he asks Ludwig to intercede, citing his service to their father; he writes of his debts and leave, of mining and ore specimens, and of Hans Schwab of Kraków as carrier. Postscript: “der herr Camermaister hat mein ziffer”.
05 What stays open
- R9414: about ten words are word signs with no key (Ψ at P2 lines 2, 8, 9, 27; a swash X at P2.15, P2.25, P4.2, P4.21; K at P4.33, probably “the king”). About fifteen are blotted or struck. About sixty-five are legible but unresolved: several homophones still have more than one value.
- R9415: nineteen words open or doubtful, scattered (listed in
r9415/count.txt). - R9403: two words on f.228 (“[?]orator”, “[?]meus”) and a small insertion on P1 l.4; ten more words are deciphered but doubtful (ergo, Ruffus, sequentes, contra, postas, constituar, nam, ubi, dotandis, meus). The transcription is aligned to the decipherment, so its sign variants are not recorded.
- The recipient of R9403 is inferred, not named.
06 Sources
- Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Kurbayern Äußeres Archiv 4591, via DECODE records R9403, R9414, R9415 (login; publication needs the archive’s permission).
- Łaski’s key: rebuilt from R9322 and R9417 in this project (the Bavarian key volume).
- Print: a web search (22 September 2026) found no edition; Acta Tomiciana vol. 8 (1530–32) was not searched page by page.
Transcriptions, keys, solvers and decipherments are in the repository folder kaa4591b/.