Why did Giovanni Fontana write his book in cipher?

[Mark Knowles]

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.