Conference article

Hieronimo di Franceschi and Pietro Partenio: Two Unknown Venetian Cryptologists

Paolo Bonavoglia
Mathematics and Computer Science, Mathesis Venezia c/o Convitto "Marco Foscarini" Venezia, Italy

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Published in: Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Historical Cryptology, HistoCrypt 2019, June 23-26, 2019, Mons, Belgium

Linköping Electronic Conference Proceedings 158:1, p. 3-11

NEALT Proceedings Series 37:1, p. 3-11

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Published: 2019-06-12

ISBN: 978-91-7685-087-9

ISSN: 1650-3686 (print), 1650-3740 (online)

Abstract

In 1596 the powerful Council of Ten, the secret service of the Republic of Venice, sent a message to the new Baylo in Constantinople, warning him to use, for ordinary messages which needed to be encrypted, Pietro Partenio’s cipher, but for questions of extraordinary importance to use the Zifra delle caselle1 cipher invented by Hieronimo di Franceschi. But who were Partenio and Franceschi? This paper is the report of the first results of a research in the State Archive of Venice about these two unknown cryptologists, still in progress.

Keywords

Cipher Code Cryptography Latin square Modular arithmetic Nomenclator Super-encryption Transposition Venice

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