I think evidence is key. But my own hypothesis as to why Fontana and Voyauthor wrote their manuscripts in cipher is that:
1) They could.
2) It was so they could feel clever i.e. vanity.
3) It was a way of showing off their skills to friends and acquaintances.
4) It was of interest to them.
5) They wanted to keep the contents of their manuscript secret.
However one needs primary evidence to clarify Fontana's motivation. Here evidence is much better than hypothesis.
(29-12-2020, 10:59 PM)MichelleL11 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (29-12-2020, 08:37 PM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Opinions on Fontana's reasons for enciphering his works could be interesting.
I always thought that John Friedman's discussion of medieval scientific ciphers.
Yes, that's very interesting. If Friedman is right Fontana did view his cipher as cutting edge even though it was far from it for the time. That says to me that it wasn't his lack of skill, but rather his ignorance of the latest ciphers being used that lead him to believe his ciphers were advanced.
This makes me wonder if we can actually say the difference in sophistication of the Voynich versus Fontana has more to do with level of knowledge than motivation.
(29-12-2020, 10:59 PM)MichelleL11 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I am not convinced the VM and Fontana's work share similar motivations.
I am not really suggesting the works share similar motivations as they cover quite different topics. My notion is that the motivations for enciphering them might be similar.
One idea that has been put in my head from this discussion is that if Trithemius and Fontana wrote about ciphers in their enciphered books could the author of the Voynich cipher have written about that very same cipher in the manuscript on one of the pages without illustrations? Certainly the temptation to extoll the virtue of one's own cipher could have been high.
If Fontana did indeed think his cipher was cutting edge it leads one to believe that the dissemination of cipher knowledge from specialists to others was very limited.
(30-12-2020, 12:59 AM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (29-12-2020, 09:15 PM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It's a simple substitution cipher. A mnemonic one. It takes 10 minutes to break it.
I don't think it was created for secrecy. It was used in manuscripts that showcase his engineering ideas. I think the cipher is a way to demonstrate his abilities when combined with the engineering diagrams.
Is it your contention that simple substitution ciphers were never used for secrecy? Looking at 14th century diplomatic ciphers it appears that they used simple substitution ciphers for secrecy then.
If you had actually read my blog, all of it, you would have seen me mention that Fontana WROTE A BOOK on mnemonic strategies and ways to arrange letters (Secretum de thesauro experimentorum ymaginationis hominum). So it is not just the fact that it is a simple substitution cipher, or that it is a mnemonic one (which makes it even easier to break and quite easy to read), but he WROTE about mnemonic systems, using his cipher. He had a specific interest in memory aids that he expressed using his cipher. It was designed to be easy to learn and remember (and thus easier to write an entire book using the cipher, which he did).
I was not implying that substitution ciphers were never used for secrecy. I was pointing out that there are several indicators (not just one), that Fontana had other motivations besides secrecy, such as demonstrating some of his mnemonic theories. His cipher is distinctly different from others in the way that the entire alphabet (except maybe one character) is mnemonic in an overtly systematic way. I have not seen this in any other medieval cipher.
(30-12-2020, 02:29 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (29-12-2020, 09:15 PM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It's a simple substitution cipher. A mnemonic one. It takes 10 minutes to break it.
If you had actually read my blog, all of it, you would have seen me mention that Fontana WROTE A BOOK on mnemonic strategies and ways to arrange letters (Secretum de thesauro experimentorum ymaginationis hominum).
So do you disagree with John Friedman in the article Michelle cites?
(30-12-2020, 02:29 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (30-12-2020, 12:59 AM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (29-12-2020, 09:15 PM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It's a simple substitution cipher. A mnemonic one. It takes 10 minutes to break it.
I was not implying that substitution ciphers were never used for secrecy.
So why did you mention that it takes 10 minutes to break? It seems that you are implying that a cipher which states 10 minutes to break could not have been used for secrecy. I think you are looking at this through a modern lens.
(30-12-2020, 02:29 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If you had actually read my blog, all of it, you would have seen me mention that Fontana WROTE A BOOK on mnemonic strategies and ways to arrange letters.
I have already discussed with you your mnemonic theory of Fontana's cipher symbols and expressed my opinion that you overstate the "mnemonic" nature of the cipher symbols.
Mark Knowles Wrote:So do you disagree with John Friedman in the article Michelle cites?
Most of the article is about John de Foxton and Bacon. Friedman only devotes a couple of paragraphs to Fontana.
I agree with his basic description of Fontana's cipher system for vowels and some of the consonants (like other writers, Friedman doesn't fully describe all the mnemonics Fontana employed for the complete alphabet, but he gives the gist of it).
I also agree that the diagrams in Secretum are mostly mechanisms for shift-substitution ciphers (which is not the same as the mnemonic system used to actually write the book).
I would further agree that Fontana probably had more interest in developing his cipher system than in actual concealment.
Fontana wrote his book in cipher for the same reason everyone else did in his time.
The bulk was in plain text. The "secrets" were in ciphertext.
The idea was not to create a secret unbreakable vault. Rather, it was to keep his secrets within his circle of professionals and friends, the people he would have sent copies of his manuscript to. By writing the professional secrets bits in cipher, it stopped the uninitiated from casually skimming the book and learning trade secrets. But at the same time, he wasn't stopping the initiated from accessing his information, as the cipher wasn't that difficult.
After writing the above, I am reminded of a more modern equivalent.
A naturalist (I forget the name) studying penguins at the beginning of the 20th century was horrified to find evidence of homosexual promiscuity amongst them.
In his scientific reports back to the UK, he wrote the offending passages outlining these practices in classical Greek. The editor of the scientific journal published them in this way, so as to allow the educated man to understand an interesting fact of nature without offending or scaring the casual reader by this glimpse into the nature of the penguin.