Polygraphiae libri sex

Polygraphia VI — damage-preserving rendering, full_chunk_0106

Damage-preserving review rendering with tenor detection and footnoting. Damage class: mid_damage_recoverable; OCR quality: 4/5.

Audit note — V1.0 smoothed several damaged loci into fluent certainty, especially praemalitudine, sine repta, and the broken philosophical clause on finite number.

Polygraphia VI, Back-Matter: Straight Table of Transposition

Transposition Instructions

You will have transmitted [it]. First, indeed, let the first alphabet^1 be assigned first, the second second, the third third, and so let it be done successively with the rest. But if, [conjectured: because of the multitude]^2 of business or of the household, the alphabets which we have marked out should not suffice for everything, or if some of them seem too exposed and manifest, we shall be able to introduce various new transpositions,^3 of which the number may be very great, and the method of the secret^4 may remain always perpetually hidden.

Let us set down an example of this matter: let b be a, f be b, l be c, p be d, t be e, z be f, c be g, m be h, and so successively through the whole usual alphabet,^5 so that between any letter taken up three idle^6 and transposed letters [conjectured: lie between].^7 Afterward four, then [conjectured: five], more or fewer, yet in such a way that the whole alphabet, as though revolved into a circle, comes together, and no letter at all is omitted, but each single one is placed in the same series for another in its own order. In whatever manner you write it, you must know that it is to be firmly committed either to written letters or to memory, lest, having slipped through forgetfulness, you yourself can no longer read what you had written.

For the transposition of letters can be varied in as many ways as, according to the estimation of the human intellect, which, enclosed by temporal operation in a mortal body, does not grasp [unclear] and finite [things], an innumerable number for mortal man will arise. Therefore whoever wishes to have more methods of writing by metathesis^8, and methods removed from our instruction, if he is even a little ingenious and diligent, will easily obtain the effect in his operation. For talent can do very great things if it is aided by study and art. But he who despises the smallest things will never reach the greater. I know that there will be very many who will mock these studies of ours as vain and childish; to them we give this as an answer: that we shall be entirely content, provided only that they please those at whose request they were composed by us.

The straight table follows.

Page 514: Straight Table of Transposition

Straight table of transposition.^9

a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
n o p q r s t u v w x y z
o p q r s t u v w x y z
p q r s t u v w x y z
q r s t u v w x y z
r s t u v w x y z
s t u v w x y z
t u v w x y z
u v w x y z
v w x y z
w x y z
x y z
y z
z

In this canonical table of letters,^10 without [conjectured: repetition],^11 from the one usual [conjectured: alphabet] of our Latin letters, through mutation or transposition of the letters themselves, you have as many alphabets as there are monograms^12 in it throughout, namely twenty-four times twenty-four, which make 576 in number; and, multiplied by just as many, they make a little less than fourteen thousand.

Page 515

Inverted table of transposition.

^1. alphabetum: here a cipher alphabet, not merely the ordinary ABC. ^2. OCR praemalitudine is best read as prae multitudine, “because of the multitude”; a typical spacing/letter confusion rather than authorial obscurity. ^3. transpositiones: systematic substitutions or rearrangements of letters in Trithemius’s cipher procedure. ^4. arcani modus: literally “the mode/method of the hidden thing/secret,” i.e. the operating rule of the cipher. ^5. alphabetum usuale: the ordinary Latin alphabet used as the base sequence. ^6. ociosae: “idle,” i.e. null or unused intervening letters in the transposition scheme. ^7. OCR interlaceant is probably interiaceant, “lie between”; if printed as interlaceant, it may reflect a late/technical spelling, but the sense is the same. ^8. methatesis: metathesis, here letter-transposition; spelling reflects early-modern/Greek-derived technical vocabulary. ^9. tabula transpositionis recta: a “straight” transposition table, laid out as successive shifted rows. ^10. canonica: regular or rule-governed, not “canonical” in a theological sense. ^11. OCR sine repta is likely sine repetita or sine repetitione; the transmitted form is damaged, so the reconstruction is tentative. ^12. monogrammata: single-letter entries/signs in the table; the arithmetic treats table entries as countable letter-units.