The Letter That Took 528 Years to Read
A 1498 diplomatic letter — written in cipher by a Spanish ambassador to relay sensitive intelligence about Henry VII’s court and the Scottish king James IV — has finally been fully decoded, more than five centuries after it was sent.
The letter was written by Pedro de Ayala and sent to the Spanish court. It was rediscovered in Spanish archives in 1860, and historians have been working to interpret it ever since. Now a team of three historians has cracked it completely, producing what they describe as the most accurate translation yet and publishing their findings in Renaissance Studies.
What makes the cipher interesting is its deliberate messiness. Ayala sometimes used multiple symbols for the same letter, making the text considerably harder to decode. It’s a 15th century adversarial design — built to frustrate exactly the kind of systematic analysis that eventually broke it anyway.
The contents are a vivid snapshot of late medieval politics. The letter covers the court of Henry VII, ongoing marriage negotiations with Spain including plans involving Katherine of Aragon, a report on Scotland and its ruler James IV, and even information on the voyages of John Cabot to North America. Ayala was apparently quite taken with James IV, describing him in glowing terms — well-proportioned, handsome, generous, courageous, and fluent in seven languages.
Five hundred and twenty-eight years to crack one letter. Worth the wait.