Daniel Beury

Cipher Secretary to the Pontiff

Ciphering has been around for a very long time.  It started with the Egyptians and the use of hieroglyphic symbol substitution.  Even the popes have a very strong need for the use of cryptology.  In 1555 Pope Paul IV created the office of Cipher Secretary to the pontiff.  Triphon Bencio de Assisi was the first to have this title bestowed to him.  In 1557 King Phillip II of Spain had declared war upon Pope Paul IV.  The Pope had deep-seated anti-Spanish sentiments.  Under the leadership of Assisi, a group of cryptanalysts deciphered one of King Phillip's cryptograms.  Peace came about on September 12, 1557 after a bad defeat from the Duke of Alva.  

In the late 1580's the Argenti family took over the position of Cipher Secretary to the pontiff.  Matteo Argenti, nephew of Giovanne Battista, wrote a 135-page book or brochure on cryptology.  This book's or brochure's purpose was to describe and summarize Renaissance cryptology.  The Argentis also were the first to institute certain cryptographic processes like the use of a mnemonic key to mixing a cipher alphabet with double letters omitted.

In 1605 Matteo Argenti created a variable-length “Huffman-like“ code for encryption.  The Huffman Code is an algorithm, which produces a variable-length binary code from a given set of source symbol frequencies.

This is just a little look into the works of the cryptologists of the Pope and the Catholic Church.