RE: VMs: decryption document

["GC" <glenclaston@xxxxxxxxx>]

Nick wrote:

> There are plenty of crypto books and articles out there
> to get the right
> terminology (monoalphabetic, polyalphabetic, etc) from.
> What's perhaps more
> important to point out is that if you can infer some
> kind of date-range for
> the VMS, then you can - almost certainly - rule out
> many encrypting
> mechanisms that were developed later than that time.

Huh?  The one thing I know about cipher is that its history is as
dark as its roots.  The Knight's Tour cipher was first written
about in 1140, but this does not mean this was an original
invention even then.  If one considers themselves an historian to
any degree, their search for the origins of things should not be
encumbered by the myopia of earlier researchers.  Our age has a
vast amount of information at our fingertips, so much that we
would be the envy of any past historian.
>
> The "4" glyph (especially in combination with the "4o"
> pair) seems
> extraordinarily specific to cipherbets devised (or
> recorded) in Northern
> Italian states around the period from 1440 (in Urbino)
> through to 1455 (in
> Milano): and as the "castle" (though there are in fact
> several) on the
> 9-rosette page appears to be Milan sometime shortly
> after 1453, I think we
> can probably narrow it down to the time period 1454 to
> (say) 1470 without
> getting too scary.

All you can tell without a deeper understanding is that 1440-1455
is the earliest occurrence you can find for these symbols.
Barring anyone finding these symbols in use at an earlier date,
you are setting a "low-end" date for the VMS.  There is nothing
here that says someone 100 years later could not have copied some
of these symbols, or that some of these symbols had an early
origin that allowed them to be included in a document dated around
1450.  More analysis of symbols might be in order before we fall
into dating on the low end of the scale.

The symbol at the top of the second ring on 57v has only one
correlation that I have found, and that is not Italian, but
English, and about 130 years later than the 4o symbol dating.
This is the "Fear God" symbol, used in early English shorthand
systems.  An unusual percentage of the symbols on this page show
up in early English shorthand, but to date have not been
demonstrated to appear in Italian manuscripts or Italian
shorthand.  I don't know how this affects your theory, but to me
it goes to the high-end dating of the VMS.

> For me, this rules out (for example) polyalphabetic
> ciphers on likely
> provenance grounds alone.

What's your time-frame for the development of polyalphabetics?
Alberti covered the wheel in 1450, Trithemius covered the table in
1500, and by 1535 Agrippa had covered almost 50 separate uses of
the polyalphabet.  Does this mean these individuals created
polyalphabetics?  By no means, since the hidden nature of the
subject meant that they write only the basics of the systems,
always admonishing that the initiate learn from a master, that the
basics are only bare-bones examples.  Even Selenus' tome was
written in this manner, the juice of his book hidden in the
letters at the beginning and among a few pages that these pointed
to.  (NO, it has not been documented in Cryptologia even today).

If you are truly interested in the extent of the development of
polyalphabetics by 1500, you should understand above all that
these systems were developed out of cabalistic mathematics and
very well established by 1500.  Read Trithemius, Reuchlin (thank
Jim Reeds for the reference), and Agrippa.  Compare these works to
the writings of Vigenere, a man who followed the tradition
somewhat by hiding certain facts and claiming others as his own.
There's more cipher history hidden in Vigenere than I care to
mention.

What I'm trying to caution you on is that to infer a lack of
sophistication based on Kahn's history of cryptography is
fallacious in the extreme.  Alberti pointed a finger in 1450
[first published in 1468], and others pointed the finger again and
again toward a great secret.  A secret based wholly on another
secret, the secret of cabalistic mathematics.  Lack of evidence
does not mean that the systems do not go back further than
currently recorded - it only means that no one looks for them
because, like you, no one believes they existed prior to
Trithemius, and thus you infer there was no sophistication in
these systems before a certain date.  Your assumption is totally
incorrect.

Here in Texas it would seem at present that the basic rule is
"kill them and let God sort them out", but in fact, it is "don't
#$%# with tradition".  When you look back on the centuries, this
rationale has always been deemed valid, especially in the
educational circles of 15th-17th centuries.  Even in the new age
of printing, we find that the books that were circulated in print
were the very same books that had circulated for centuries in
manuscript.  Commentaries on these older texts were prolific, but
no one seemed to break from the tradition and offer anything new.
In fact, Francis Bacon's "Advancement of Learning" (1605) was the
first direct challenge and alternative to this type of educational
stagnation, in an age where "common tradesmen" were making greater
contributions to scientific advancement than the universities.

It's important to understand that throughout the 15th and 16th
centuries there were a host of discoveries and revelations that
set the educated religious world on its ears, without a lot of
public fanfare.  With Catholic censorship fully in place, this
also happened without a lot of written resistance to the catholic
order.  The fate of prominent dissenters is well documented.  The
educational climate and atmosphere is difficult to understand in
modern democracies, and since we cannot contemplate these things
well, we infer that lack of evidential writing means lack of
sophistication.  As an example, SacroBosco inferred the roundness
of the earth in the 12th century, while the church said it was
flat, which is why no one openly championed his astrological
texts.  Nevertheless, his texts survived, which implies that
someone along the line deemed them valuable enough to allow them
to continue.

Dating of esoteric works from this period is a difficult task, and
no more difficult than in the case of the Voynich.  Traditional
forms of clothing, etc., only give a low-end date.  The existence
of a clock gives a low-end date.  All these forms could only mean
that he author was influenced by books in his library that were
traditional, in a time when "new" or "current" had little value.
These things help to set the low-end date, but more effort is
needed to set the high-end date.  Once that is set, the VMS and
its genre will be well-established.

GC

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