I should beg a thousand pardons for my delay in writing to you;  but I will do something better: I will make amends. Even if I did not write to you, never did I cease preparing a response, particularly founded and sure, upon things which I know with certainty, regarding  your request to explain certain papers and  various writings about the origins of your most honored name and also, in part, of mine.

      These  [papers], as you and I well know, were for centuries kept with other religious books, in San Giovanni  of Cortesano, in the lands of the Community of Chiare  [Chiari in the province of Brescia]. There is no longer any trace of either papers or books in that place, as everything was burned or lost in those horrible times which followed the battles of the year 1701. Of so many precious stories did the frequency of war in our country deprive us, as did the many public and private disasters, the damage of time, and the ignorance of too many. Those who witnessed this, nine years ago now, spoke of the barbarian foreigners starting fires with these books, and keeping them going with the pews of the church.  Destiny  decreed  that, because of my thirst for ancient knowledge and love of History,  I found myself among those books the Autumn before these events took place, in time, therefore, to search through those texts and those dusty papers, and many were the notes I took about what I found there of great interest to me.

       The books I saw were all stored in bookcases, and were church missals, some more than a hundred years old, a Latin grammar, and one different from the others.   This one was like the others on the outside, but once opened I could see that  there were pages out of the ordinary, some Latin writings, handwritten notes and pages of prayers to God and to the Saints.  I at once  avidly read all the Latin ones, and others of interest.  I read and reread, and many pages did I write, translating and taking notes, until at last I was satisfied.  I have kept all of these writings, and they are now of great help to me in retelling you what I found there, with accuracy and truth.

       The Salvoni of Chiare [Chiari] always had memories of their origins, and through legends and stories, passed these on to the younger generations. This much I know because I am in part one of this family.  The legends of the Dragon and the Child, and that of the Archangel Gabriel, are as you well know, two examples of these. There were also memories in the family of papers and of written accounts. Many were aware of the place, the church and the book, even if for hundreds of  years not one of them went to search through those papers, or otherwise witness their content.

       There were, therefore, prayers in our own language, and in the language of the Holy Church  [Latin], addressed to God  and to the Blessed, and especially to the Archangel Gabriel, and to St. Bernard of  the monks of  Chiaravalle [Clairvaux], invoked as protectors  of the family. My main interest was at once for the three Latin letters placed at the beginning of the book, and for many pages of notes written in our own language. The first  of these was written by hand, on thick, rough paper, addressed to the Abbot of the Monastery of Santa Maria of Chiaravalle, in the Marca Anconitana [Marche region].  I never discovered this man’s name  with any certainty, as the paper was folded in four, and at that spot was faded: Rufus, Ulfus or Curtius or some similar brief name.  A large seal was placed in the bottom left quarter of the page.  In it a Grifon in relief with a few distinguishable letters; two Ns, one S and maybe an H.  In colloquial Latin, this writing told of a little boy, about three years of age, with birthmarks on the right  buttock and behind the right ear, with light eyes each of a different colour, the right one blue, the other one grey.  This child was brought hither by the Monk Benedictus Petri, Theologian and  Chaplain at the court of Sweden. The boy was known by the writer of the letter and also by the Swedish Senate as  Ericus Erici of the great House of Birger, grandson to the king.  In the letter the writer, who knew the Abbot, pleads for the Abbot’s help,  as he was related to the little boy through his [the boy’s]  Bavarian mother. He implores for the  protection of the Holy Church, that it guarantee the safety of the child until order is restored  to the kingdom, where he could then return.  Gratitude and remuneration were promised, upon  the accession of his rights by the child. Of the very long (….?) only Gryps, Suetius, Senator, did I understand with certainty.

       The place where this letter was written was Ringstae Castrum [Ringstae Castle], and the time was in July of the year of our Lord  1359. The above are in clear writing, but not the day, which could be in the twenties.

        The second letter, very brief, on dark paper, and also written by hand and in Latin, was the reply to one which the Abbot himself wrote to a woman by the name of Brigid, a renowned nun living in Rome.  In this letter the nun declares that God would hurl her into the depths of Hell if ever she help the evil blood of Magnus to return to the Swedish throne by way of this little boy.

         The third letter is the wordiest of the three and of great interest to Your Lordship particularly, being it the Will of the Monk Benedictus.  It is dated December A.D. 1360.  In the room with the dying Monk are the Abbot, some monks and a scribe.  In the presence of God, under oath, the dying man briefly tells his story.  He says he is Benedetto, son of Pietro, in the fiftieth year of his life, a monk in the order of Bernard of Chiaravalle, a noted Theologian, and one of the Chaplains of the court of Blanca, Queen of Sweden.  He tells of having discovered, in confession, from a Lady in Waiting, about a plot by the Queen herself, to murder by poisoning, the entire family of Erik, her son, King of Scania and of Sweden. He describes how he kidnapped and hid, with the help of a wet-nurse, the firstborn child of Erik, an infant boy of two, having the same name  as his father; how he replaced the boy with the body of another  recently dead infant of similar features; how he came to know the fate of the entire family; how he was greatly  and very secretly protected by Grips, a powerful  man in the Kingdom, in his castles.  He continues to recount how, upon the discovery by the evil woman of the deceitful substitution, he had to flee Sweden by night, as she had kept everything quiet inside the Kingdom, but had sent paid assassins to find them.  How the two of them had traveled for months with pilgrims towards Rome, dwelling in ten Monasteries, and at least three times escaping the dagger sent by the evil Queen.  They had arrived in the Marca Anconitana in the autumn of the year 1360, and he had lived his life according to the dictates of his conscience and the principles of Christian piety.  He swore to have told the whole truth. He blessed the little one, entrusting him to the care of the monks and Holy Mother Church, and asked God Almighty to have mercy on his soul.

        The other papers, in our own language, were notes and brief stories, although many in number, by the first son of Ericus Erici [i.e. the first son of the saved boy], about the life of his father and about his own. According to these writings, Ericus was raised by the monks.  Because of the various events in the History of Italy and of Sweden, and due to his disinclination towards affairs of states, or arms, or military action, he grew up without any desire to reclaim what by blood would have been his birthright.  Thus he had a long and peaceful life. From the monks he learned the art of cultivating the land, and skills in commerce. He was clever in administrating his own life: he soon had stewardship of the wealth of a rich merchant from a family who had been powerful in Iesi, and after the death of the merchant, he married his only daughter and heir. They had two sons and three daughters, and he came to be known as “Rico de’ monaci” [Rico of the monks] or “Rico Salvus”.  Soon the “de’monaci” went into disuse, but Salvus remained, which means “He who survived” or “He who was saved”, because Rico alone escaped the tragedy which befell his whole family. Of his sons, the younger followed in his father’s footsteps increasing his fortune.  One of his own sons is a renowned  soldier aspiring to ancient glory.  Rico’s older son felt a strong desire for arms and adventure, and while still young, left his family home to try his fortune in the brigade of Pandolfo Malatesta, a great ‘Condottiero” from a nearby city  [Fano].  In some of these papers is the account of the many adventures which led Pandolfo  to become the Lord of Brescia, but of these I took few notes. This Salvus served as colonel for the cavalry, and he organized the defense of the western boundaries of the Signoria of Brescia. There is hire a description of how he became so seriously ill that he almost died, and how, by divine grace, he was brought back  to health,  leaving forever the army life. With the help of Pandolfo and with money inherited from his father, he bought lands between the River Oglio and Chiare.  He married a local girl and spent the greater part of his life managing his property and, making good use of the knowledge that his father had learned from the monks of San Bernardo, he cultivated his lands. He only returned once to Iesi, and it was on this trip that the old guardian of Santa Maria , who remembered his father well, gave him the letters in Latin and the prayers of the family, and also told him about the fate of many other lost documents, as the Monastery had been decaying for years, and had no protection from thieves  or the  damages of weather.  To these papers he added his own notes, tying the sheets together in a missal, and keeping them thus in the house for as long as he lived.  The following generations lost interest, and it is unknown when, but certain it is, that this book ended among the belongings of San Giovanni in Cortesano, in the country, as you well know, and shared the sad fate of these.

        I hold the deepest hope that this letter of mine has been able to satisfy, at least in part, your desire to know, and that it has shed some light on the events and adventures surrounding the origins of your most distinguished name.  I did not have the means of discovering anything about the History of Sweden, which, although powerful at this present moment, only recently has this country, emerged from barbarism, and its beginnings are lost in the mists of time. I do not, therefore, know with certainty what truth there is in those letters, nor the true causes that made your ancestor and mine renounce his claim to be King.  Whether it was, in fact, disinclination, as stated by his son, or maybe more the lack of means, or the absence of allies and real friends either in this country or in the other.

        My highest esteem for Your Lordship is steadfast. I remain your most devoted and obliged servant.

        To these papers my great great-grandfather added a few lines:

        Copied from the Library of my friend Berardi in Milan, with news of certain interest to the whole family.  The most Rev. Prevosto Marchi, who is here with those of S.S. di (…?)  Carlo, has seen the original writings and believes that all the signs are present for the documents to be authentic. He who wrote was a certain Antonio Zulli, of whom I know nothing. The Prevosto believes that he was a priest in Chiari in the past century.  The letter was written in Chiari in c. 1710 to an unknown Prior in Milan. My friend Berardi found it while examining an endowment, from someone in Brianza, to the Ambrosiana Library. The letter was not considered valuable by the latter, and therefore became part of the private Berardi Library. I offered money to my friend for those papers, but was only allowed to copy them.   

         April 1845     Salvoni Giuseppe.