new book

["Rafal T. Prinke" <rafalp@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I have accidentally found information about this new book
on the publisgers' Web page. It seems quite interesting
and the cipher it describes may be behind the VMS - especially
as it was used in Renaissance coded scripts and on
astrolabes. I enclose the publishers' description.

Best regards,

Rafal
--------------------

King, David A. 
The Ciphers of the Monks. A forgotten Number-Notation of the Middle Ages
ISBN 3-515-07640-9

EURO 102,00 
DM 199,50 
ÖS 1.456,00 
SFR 171,57 

This is the first comprehensive study of an ingenious number-notation
from the Middle Ages that was devised by monks and mainly used in
monasteries. A simple notation for representing any number up to 99 by a
single cipher, somehow related to an ancient Greek shorthand, first
appeared in early-13th-century England, brought from Athens by an
English monk. A second, more useful version, due to Cistercian monks, is
first attested in the late 13th century in what is today the border
country between Belgium and France: with this any number up to 9999 can
be represented by a single cipher. The ciphers were used in scriptoria ?
for the foliation of manuscripts, for writing year-numbers, preparing
indexes and concordances, numbering sermons and the like, and outside
the scriptoria ? for marking the scales on an astronomical instrument,
writing year-numbers in astronomical tables, and for incising volumes on
wine-barrels. Related notations were used in medieval and Renaissance
shorthands and coded scripts. This richly-illustrated book surveys the
medieval manuscripts and Renaissance books in which the ciphers occur,
and takes a close look at an intriguing astrolabe from 14th-century
Picardy marked with ciphers. Mit Registern.

1. Auflage, 2000. 506 S. 
Gebunden
F. Steiner Verlag
lieferbar