Nevers to Pisany, 1593 — two of seven read

Summary. In the autumn of 1593 Nevers travelled to Rome to ask Clement VIII to absolve the newly converted Henri IV; the Pope refused to receive him as ambassador. The BnF catalogue lists seven of his letters from the road as “avec chiffre”, three to Revol and one to Pisany in fr. 3985, three to Revol and one to Pisany in fr. 3986, and the new catalogue scored them as one office’s key with one passage already read. They are two keys. The letters to Pisany are in the numerical cipher that Tomokiyo catalogued from fr. 3995 as no. 46 (“Chelles, October 1592”): a two-digit alphabet with homophones, barred figures for common words, plain figures for a second word list, double-dotted figures for names, and the digit 1 dropped in as a null. Read from the full-resolution table and checked against the office’s own decipherment of a Gondi letter in the same key, it resolves every figure of both Pisany letters. The 8 September letter reads whole: l’on dissuadoit [le Roy] de rechercher [que le Pape] luy donnast l’absolution … [le duc de Nevers] alléguoit qu’il n’estoyt besoin qu’il allast sans cela, parce qu’il ne feroit rien … l’on n’a volonté de contanter le Pape, que l’on n’y aille poynt. The 14 October letter, written the day after Possevino told him at Poschiavo that he would not be received, reads in long stretches: [le duc de Nevers] ne sera receu come [ambassadeur] pour pluseurs resons … n’avoir autre charge … [le cardinal Gondi, le duc de Mantoue] … m’avancer de plus pour faire ce que m’a esté escrit … tenir secret. The letters to Revol were written in the Court’s symbol cipher: the 27 August copy is in clear throughout, the 9 October copy carries two and a half lines of symbols, and three were not reached on the image. Status: two of seven read, one of them with residual garbles; the Revol passages need the symbol key, for which the deciphered siblings in the same volumes are the route.

01 The seven letters

Item	Date and place	To	Where on the image	Cipher
fr. 3985 no. 66	Nevers, 27 Aug 1593	Revol	ff. 113–114v (canvases 226–230)	copy in clear; the recurring sign is the copyist’s que
fr. 3985 no. 88 (dupl. no. 94)	Nevers, 2 Sept 1593	Revol	after f. 156; not reached	no. 60 (Tomokiyo)
fr. 3985 no. 116	Nevers, 8 Sept 1593	Pisany	f. 209 (canvas 419)	no. 46, read
fr. 3986 no. 68	Vese, 7 Oct 1593	Revol	ff. 144–150 region; not identified	no. 60 (Tomokiyo)
fr. 3986 no. 75	Coire, 9 Oct 1593	Revol	ff. 156–157v (canvases 306–309)	clear with c. 90 symbols of no. 60 on f. 157v
fr. 3986 no. 81	“Ville” [Edolo], 14 Oct 1593	Pisany	f. 168 (canvas 332)	no. 46, read in stretches
fr. 3986 no. 101	Desenzano, 23 Oct 1593	Revol	after f. 190; not reached	no. 60 (Tomokiyo)

Both volumes are microfilm digitisations on Gallica with every canvas labelled NP; the folio is close to half the canvas number, and the 1400 px canvases do not resolve two-digit figures, so the pages were fetched at full IIIF resolution (about 4,900 px wide). Tomokiyo’s Henri IV article states the division of keys: Gondi and Nevers used the symbol cipher no. 60 with the King and Revol from July 1593, and the numerical no. 46 with Vivonne (Pisany). The catalogue entry had not taken that in.

02 The key

The alphabet rows of cipher no. 46 in BnF fr. 3995 f. 87, a landscape table of two-digit figures under the letters a to z — BnF fr. 3995 f. 87, the head of the table: a 34 74 · b 90 · c 92 95 · d 54 55 · e 79 69 · f 71 · g 40 · h 27 · i 63 73 83 · l 65 77 · m 49 50 · n 57 58 · o 26 36 46 · p 52 21 · qu 19 · r 22 32 42 · s 17 18 · t 12 13 · u 15 25 35 · x 14 · y 76 · z 86; nulls 66 96 80 (1)99 100. Below it, three word lists.

Tomokiyo’s published image of the key is 225 pixels wide; the Gallica image of the sheet is 7,677. The table has a barred series from 99 down to 2 for common words (80̄ de, 56̄ je, 51̄ luy, 53̄ la, 11̄ que, 9̄ quil, 38̄ ne, 73̄ est, 5̄ recherche), a plain series on the figures the alphabet leaves free (24 sa, 28 sans, 29 se, 87 si, 45 tout, 62 vous, and the provinces), and a double-dotted series of names (99 Pape, 98 Roy, 88 Duc de Nevers, 70 Cardinal Gondi, 89 Duc de Mantoue, 54 Revol, 34 De Pizany, 1 Ambassadeur). In the letters the digit 1, and once 0, is dropped inside a group as a null, the device the sister key no. 45 prescribes in words. The conventions were checked against a letter the office deciphered interlinearly in the same key, Girolamo Gondi to Pisany of 22 September 1593 (fr. 3986 ff. 64–65v): personne, rencontre, congregation, absoudre, sainct, siege, ladicte, Romme all come out figure for figure.

03 8 September 1593, fr. 3985 f. 209

Lines 4 to 7 of the copy of 8 September 1593, figures inside French clear text — The first two passages. Above: “Car j’estois sur ce mesme faict” followed by figures; below: “Car” and the passage about the Duke.

Three passages, 122 figure groups, all in the key.

“Car j’estois sur ce mesme faict” l’on dissuadoit [99̈] de rechercher [99̈] luy don[n]es[t] l’absolutio[n]. The copy has the Pope’s sign twice; one of them is the King’s (98̈) in sense. Tomokiyo read this passage with the figure 14 for 74 and the name as Beaulieu; the figures are 74 and, in the next passage, 54 Revol.
“Car” [le duc de Nevers] alléguoit qu’il n’estoyt besoin qu’il a[l]la[s]t sans cela, parce qu’il ne feroit rien, then in clear “Je suys attendant des nouvelles de” [Revol] “à qui j’ay escript”. Nevers is named by his sign in his own letter; the 61 in allast is a slip for 65.
“Je suys d’opinion que” l’on n’a volonté de contanter le Pape, que l’on n’y aille poynt, and in clear “Et suys bien ayse que soyez de mesme volonté”. Three figures in this passage are the copyist’s (11 for the u of volonté, 14 inside de, 84 for 34).

Lines 19 to 22 of the same copy, the third passage in figures — The third passage: “Je suys d’opinion que … Et suys bien ayse que soyez de mesme volonté.”

04 14 October 1593, fr. 3986 f. 168

Seven lines of two-digit figures in the copy of 14 October 1593 — The seven-line block after “ce qu’il en dit et”.

Seven full lines of figures, a short run and one more line: 269 groups, 268 in the key. The copyist’s hand makes 1 and 7, 0 and 8, 3 and 5 close, and the transcription still has garbled stretches. What reads continuously: [le duc de Nevers] ne sera receu come [ambassadeur] pour pluseurs resons. Je luy ay demandé … se [le Pape] voloit que … e[ll]e m’a dit n’avoir autre charge, ne me declarans que … je me … conten[t] … qu’il de cela et luy … [p]l[a]inte de lettre m’est … faict aller … pluseurs resons … pour en par… [le cardinal Gondi] [le duc de Mantoue] avec de m’avancer de plus pour faire ce que m’a esté escrit, qui est conforme au nostre. Ce qu’il faict tenir secret, et le … dans sa … [le cardinal Gondi] a … s’est nostre [q]uestion, est bruit … secrete, tout yra … Tomokiyo’s fragment stopped at “Je luy ay demandé”. The doubtful groups are listed in the transcription file; a lexicon scorer over the alternative null placements did not settle them, and the next pass is a re-reading of those spots with the Gondi decipherment as the guide to this copyist.

05 The letters to Revol and key no. 60

The five letters to Revol are in the Court’s symbol cipher, Tomokiyo’s no. 60, endorsed “Chiffre baillé à Monsieur de Nevers, Montereau, aoust 1593”. Its enciphering sheet (fr. 3995 f. 109) gives four or five symbols for each letter, a syllabary ba … vu, word signs, Roman numerals for provinces, towns and persons (iiij^xx for 80), and a row of nulls; Nevers’s secretary added a deciphering table sorted by the shape of the symbols (ff. 110v–111). Both tables were read from the full-resolution images on 17 September 2026 and are transcribed in key60.txt; the deciphering table is complete and legible, and it settles the values Tomokiyo found doubtful (the y-shaped sign is s, the 4-shaped sign is x, the crossed η is the doubling sign).

First page of the deciphering table of cipher no. 60, four columns of symbols with their values, sorted by shape — The deciphering table, fr. 3995 f. 110v: Roman numerals, Arabic figures, letter-shapes.

The cursive forms the copyist uses in the letters differ from the Court hand of the table, so the values were checked on Henri IV’s letter to Nevers of 7 October 1593 (fr. 3986 f. 151), a page in the same cipher with the office’s interlinear decipherment: plusieurs, contre, de la, promesse, respondre, Bellièvre, Villeroy, Zamet pin down thirty of the commonest signs. The Instruction of 31 August turned out to be the richer crib: part 2 of the Mémoires de Nevers is on Gallica after all (ark bpt6k64451005, reached through the catalogue notice rather than search), and its pp. 492–499 print the Instruction in clear; better, the cipher pages of the manuscript Instruction itself (fr. 3985, canvases 264–268) carry the office’s interlinear decipherment in the same copyist’s hand as the Revol letters, matching the print word for word. That gives three full pages of symbol–plaintext pairs in the target hand, on top of the King’s letter of 7 October.

Interlined decipherment: lines of French plaintext written above lines of cipher symbols — The crib: Henri IV to Nevers, Chartres, 7 October 1593, with the decipherment between the lines.

Cipher symbols with interlinear French decipherment in the Instruction of 31 August 1593 — The second crib: the Instruction of 31 August 1593 (fr. 3985), interlined by the office; the same text is printed in the *Mémoires de Nevers*, ii, 492–498.

Where the cipher sits in the copies, from the full-resolution pages: 21 August, fr. 3985 f. 88–88v, six lines; 27 August, f. 115, one line (the earlier pages of that letter are in clear); 2 September, f. 176, about ten lines with the sign lxxix for Rome; 7 October, fr. 3986 f. 146v, nine lines; 9 October, f. 157v, four lines; 23 October, f. 198, five lines. The f. 146v and f. 157v passages are transcribed symbol by symbol (ct_3986_f146v.txt, ct_3986_f157v.txt) and run through the decoder; a second pass at higher magnification then showed that both pages, like the interlined Instruction, mix short cipher stretches into faded clear cursive, so those transcriptions over-read cipher and carry a revision note. Tomokiyo’s three anchors on f. 146v fall out of the table at once, l’absolution (λ 14 ꝑ 4 20 xx ‡ π ⊥ = la·b·so·l·u·t·i·o·n), à la vérité and intérêt, with qu’il, bien, et, que, nous, si around them; but between the anchors the output is still letter salad, because the copyist runs the small symbols together (ue, ur, ıı, v) and the same stroke stands for two or three table entries. The next pass is a glyph-level alignment of the copyist’s forms against the crib page in the same hand, then the other four letters.

Nine lines of symbol cipher in the copy of 7 October 1593 — fr. 3986 f. 146v, the block of cipher in the letter from Vese, 7 October 1593.

Four lines of symbol cipher at the head of f. 157v — fr. 3986 f. 157v, the head of the letter from Coire, 9 October 1593.

06 Sources

BnF, Département des Manuscrits, Français 3985 (Gallica ark:/12148/btv1b90606498) and Français 3986 (ark:/12148/btv1b9060631k), Mémoires de la Ligue; Français 3995 f. 86–87 and ff. 109–111 (ark:/12148/btv1b525085665), the two keys.
S. Tomokiyo, Catalogue of Ciphers (Mainly Related to Duke of Nevers) in BnF fr. 3995, no. 46 and no. 60; French Ciphers during the Reign of Henry IV, on the Gondi–Nevers correspondence of 1593–94.
Working files in nevers1593/: the two key tables (key46.txt, key60.txt), the decoders, the four transcriptions, the segmentation scorer, and the notes.

Nevers to Pisany, 1593: the numerical key reads two letters, and the other five were never in it