06/09/2025

Correspondence of Imperial Ambassador Alonzo Sanchez (1522)

I reconstructed a cipher used between Alonso Sanchez and Emperor Charles V and uploaded it in a new article "Correspondence in Cipher of Imperial Ambassador Alonso Sanchez (1522)". It is similar to known ciphers for other ambassadors at the time, in the tradition of the Spanish ciphers from the time of Ferdinand and Isabella.
This will allow reading many undeciphered letters, including the two in the DECODE database that I reported in May in "Unsolved Historical Ciphers". (For some of the letters marked "Non-decrypted" in DECODE, plaintext is avaiable. So it is advised to check before working.) For example, the beginning of one of the two I reported in May, R9509 (which is recorded more fully in R9596) can be read as:
- - - - - A [xix] de es-t-e escrevi a vuestra magestad a-z-i-en-do-l-e s-a-b-e-r lo que lo-s de esta r-e-publica me r-e-s-p-o-n-di-e-r-o-n a c-a-b-o z-e [s/t...?].

No comments:

Post a Comment