Cipher Mysteries

As I mentioned here recently, I've been trying to grasp the structure of the humanist community of astronomers / mathematicians orbiting around Nicholas of Cusa and Cardinal Bessarion in Rome... but so far haven't found any definitively useful books on the subject. Thony Christie has a nice article here, and there's a book on 15th century Viennese ...

Though Professor David A. King is best known, academically speaking, for his detailed study of astrolabes, I first ran across him via his epic (2001) tome "The Ciphers of the Monks" (summarised here): there, what happened was that one particular 14th century astrolabe from Picardy had some markings in an unusual number system first devised by Cistercian monks, and - ...

Fans of historical novelist Christopher Harris have a new Voynich Manuscript-themed book of his heading their way in early 2009: to be published by Dedalus Books, "Mappamundi" is a non-Byzantine sequel to the final book in Harris' Byzantine trilogy, "False Ambassador" (if that's not too confusing). I asked him how he came to find the Voynich Manuscript:- "As ...

Over the years I've spent looking at the Voynich Manuscript, I've become progressively more accustomed to its ways, to the point that it is no longer an enciphered grimoire to me, but simply a book we cannot as yet read. When learning to juggle, the primary force which keeps the ball in the hand is not gravity but fear: all ...