'Ragioni Antique Spettanti all'Arte Del Mare, Et Fabriche De Vasselli'. Remarks of old time relating to the art of the sea and the building of ships in Italian.
This book was their professional ‘bible’ and into it, over many years, they out information important to their maritime livelihood. This includes sailing directions and tidal information to help navigate as far east and south as the Black Sea and North Africa, and as far north as Flanders and England. There are also detailed design and rigging specifications for Venetian fighting and trading galley, some built by named shipwrights in the Arsenal. Many pages describe methods for drawing up religious and secular calendars and how to make astrological and astronomical calculations. There are also notes on medicine, and the manufacture of the gunpowder and prayers to protect against storm and sickness.
One page contains family notes. These mention the presence of the writer’s brother Domenego at the Battle of Zonchio – a naval action against the Turks in 1499 – and both his death and that of other members of the family. The latter include the murder of another brother, Alessandro de Millo, in 1505. This event is recorded elsewhere in Venetian state papers and provides the clue which identifies the manuscript with this otherwise almost forgotten family.

Administrative / biographical background
The entries in the ‘Ancient Rules’ were written by eight separate people over more than 60 years. Some were professional scribes employed to copy useful material from other sources; others were the book’s owners, also copying or making their own notes. The present title of the volume is not original but was added about 1600. The original 15th century owners of these pages appear to have been a modest Venetians family called Millo or de Millo. They were seamen or shipbuilders who, about 1499-1509, lived near the great Arsenal or state dockyard of that city, which was the leading European sea-power of the period.