VMs: Re: Mediaeval book written entirely in cipher

["Philip Neal" <philipneal_vms@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

[737]  Eugenio Battisti, Giuseppa Saccaro Battisti,  Le Macchine
> Cifrate di Giovanni Fontana, Arcadia, Milano, 1984, pp. 167. [b488] batt 
> 84-1
>    Indice:
>      Ritratto di Fontana Giovanni
>      La prospettiva e l'immaginazione
>      Il teatro delle macchine
>      La memoria come artificio
>      Scrittura in chiaro e scrittura in chiave; l'alfabeto segreto 
> (Giuseppa Saccaro Battisti)
>      Nota Bibliografica
>      Dal De omnibus rebus naturalibus
>      Bellicorum instrumentorum liber
>           Nota Introduttiva
>           Riproduzione, Decrittazione e traduzione complete; commento.
>           Quaranta riproduzioni a colori al vero
>      Secretum de thesauro experimentorum ymaginationis hominum
>           Nota introduttiva (Giuseppa Saccaro Battisti)
>           Decrittazione completa; riproduzione delle immagini
>      Indici
>      Fonti e personaggi antichi ebrei, cristiani e orientali
>      Autori e personaggi classici
>      Autori medievali ebrei e arabi
>      Autori latini medievali e contemporanei
>      Personaggi conosciuti direttamente dal Fontana
>      Indice dei termini tecnici o inconsueti nel Bellicorum instrumentorum 
> liber
>      Indice dei nomi citati nei saggi e nei commenti
>      Bibliografia
>
> I especially like the sound of "Decrittazione completa; riproduzione delle 
> immagini". :-)

I have tracked this book down in the Science Museum Library at
Imperial College, London, and photocopied portions for the purposes
of private study. I can't read Latin and Italian at all fast, but
the main points are these.

a) Giovanni Fontana wrote two entire books in cipher and at least two
others not in cipher.

b) The cipher is a simple substitution, and it is certainly not
Voynichese.

c) The Paris manuscript is partly about mechanical memory devices:
there are illustrations of them and some of them look like Lullian
rings or Vigenere cipher wheels. There are also pictures of spirals
and one diagram of a circle of stars which looks more like the VMS
star circles than anything I have seen. Haven't translated the
accompanying text yet. There are no naked women or plants.

d) The 1984 edition has images of every page. It is a beautiful
production and, alas, well within copyright. I imagine it will be ok
to quote portions of the original text and to describe the pictures
in words.

e) I have also found and copied the H. Omont description of the Paris
ms. I think Omont died in the 1920s and is out of copyright so I will
post this to my site. There are two illustrations but unfortunately
they are of pages with text only and no figures.

I will post more about this when I have read through what I copied.
A first glance suggests to me that this kind of renaissance humanist
production is the background to the VMS and not the late mediaeval
stuff I studied at university.

More soon - promise.

Philip Neal





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