Philip II's Trivial Substitution Cipher

Among the Spanish ciphers in the reign of Philip II (for which see another article), Cp.30 is strange in that some of the substitution letters are the same as the plaintext letters. That is, "a" is enciphered as "a"; "b" as "b", etc. When I first saw it in Devos (1950), I thought it was a transcription error.


I found actual letters written in this cipher by Bernardino de Mendoza to Philip II and Martin de Ideaques, which were intercepted and deciphered (for the most part) on a separate sheet in BnF fr.3641 (see another article). They showed that the trivial substitution was actually used but the weakness was minimized because most syllables were enciphered with combinations of figures and vowel indicators.

The following shows a letter from Bernardino de Mendoza in Paris to Martin de Idiaques, dated 6 May 1590, in which yellow highlight shows where substitution is trivial.


Despite the trivial substitution, Cp.30 has its merit in providing indicators of consonants as well as vowels, which allows variations in enciphering (e.g., "tan" may be parsed as "t-an" or "ta-n" in enciphering).

Since the letter seems to discuss cipher, a transcription is given below, in which [ ] indicates words undeciphered in the manuscript but deciphered according to Cp.30 in Devos (1950) and "?" indicates where the deciphering does not match Cp.30. (Bearne must refer to Henry IV.)

BnF fr.3641 f.60
Este despacho embio a Agen para que desde ally le encarminen a
Tholossa por dar quantos van por lavia de leon aora en manos
del de Bearne que publica avez descifrado algunos despachos que
he embiado en las cifras que mude de que no he uisto hasta aora cossa
que me le pueda hazer ereer
Nichil no obstante lo [qual] entre 115+ que a ya
[otro] mesor medio para escrivir no he querido dexar de dezir como? a [V.M.] que
para remediar el [inconveniente] de a vellos tomado los herejes? que se qui si eren
escrivir con [mas dificultad] y ran Nichil [cifra] dos enbago y de la [misma]
[manera] se des [cifra] ran [como] en las [cifras] esta a puntado y servira para V.S.? de senna
[qual] es son los herejes? que van [cifra] dos enbago ver en la margen [qualquiera] de estas tres? marcas * * *
y para los que no lo fueren [cifra] de estas tres? * * * [assi mismo] me servire de la cifra que
[alli] embie de mauleon meses a Dios guarde a
V.M. De Paris 2 de mayo 1590


©2017 S.Tomokiyo
First posted on 1 October 2017. Last modified on 1 October 2017.
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