L’art de deschiffrer. A Seventeenth-Century Treatise on the Art of Deciphering Used by the Spanish Secretariat of State and War in the Southern Netherlands

Cezary Taracha

doi:10.18290/rh26742.5

Published : 2026-04-01

Vol. 74 No. 2 (2026)

L’art de deschiffrer. A Seventeenth-Century Treatise on the Art of Deciphering Used by the Spanish Secretariat of State and War in the Southern Netherlands

Cezary Taracha

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8613-9078

DOI: https://doi.org/10.18290/rh26742.5

Abstract

Between 1668 and 1714, a handbook on cryptography was written in Brussels. It was used by the Spanish authorities (the Secretariat of State and War) in the Southern Netherlands. In 1967, the Belgian historian Jérôme P. Devos published the manuscript. In this article, we present the contents of this publication, highlighting the most important principles of encryption and decryption used in European cryptography.

Keywords:

Spanish cryptography, encryption manuals, Southern Netherlands, 17th century

Details

References

Statistics

Authors

Download files

pdf

Altmetric indicators

Cited by / Share

Licence

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

References

Alcocer, Mariano. “Criptografía española.” Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia 105 (1934): 337–460.

Beal, George. Codes, Ciphers and Secret Writing. London: Hamlyn, 1973.

Churchhouse, Robert F. Codes and Ciphers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Devos, Jérôme P., ed. Description de l’Espagne par Jehan Lhermite et Henri Cook, humanistes belges. Extrait du Passe-temps, manuscrit II, 1028 de la Bibliothèque Royale de Bruxelles. Paris: SEVPEN, 1969.

Devos, Jérôme P. Les chiffres de Phelippe II, 1555-1598, et du Despacho Universal durant le XVII siècle. Brussels: Académie Royale des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, 1950.

Devos, Jérôme P., and Herbert Seligman, eds. L’art de deschiffrer. Traité de déchiffrement du XVIIe siècle de la Secrétairerie d´Etat et de Guerre Espagnole. Louvain: Université de Louvain, 1967.

Dulong, Claude. “Les signes cryptiques dans la correspondence d’Anne d’Autriche avec Mazarin. Contribution a l’emblématique du XVIIe siècle.” Bibliotheque 140 (1982): 61–83.

Fouché Gaines, Helen. Cryptanalysis: A Study of Ciphers and Their Solution. Dover: Dover Publications, 1956.

Gardner, Martin. Codes, Ciphers and Secret Writing. Dover: Dover Publications, 1984.

Kahn, David. The Codebreakers: The Story of Secret Writing. New York: Macmillan, 1967

Kahn, David. “On the Origin of Polyalphabetic Substitution.” Isis 71 (1980): 122–27.

Laffin, John. Codes and Ciphers: Secret Writings through the Ages. London: Abelard-Schuman, 1964.

Mendelsohn, Charles J. “Bibliographical Note on the ‘De cifris’ of Leone Battista Alberti.” Isis 32 (1947): 48–51.

Mendelsohn, Charles J. “Blaise de Vignère and the ‘Chiffre Carré’.” Procedings of the American Philosophical Society 82 (1940): 103–29.

Navarro Bonilla, Diego. Derrotado, pero no sorprendido: reflexiones sobre la información secreta en tiempo de guerra. Madrid: Plaza y Valdés, 2007.

Pesic, Peter. “Secrets, Symbols, and Systems. Parallels between Cryptanalysis and Algebra, 1580–1700.” Isis 88, no. 4 (1997): 674–92.

Séligman, Henri. “Un traité de déchiffrement du XVIIe siècle.” Revue des Bibliothèques et Archives de Belgique 6 (1908): 1–19.

Singh, Simon. The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography. New York: Doubleday, 1999.

Smith, Laurence D. Cryptography: The Science of Secret Writing. Dover: Dover Publications, 1955.

Taracha, Cezary. “Cómo descubrir el secreto de una cifra diplomática.” Investigaciones Históricas 18 (1998): 109–22.

Taracha, Cezary. “Sekrety hiszpańskiej ambasady w Rosji. Matryca szyfrowa księcia de Liria z 1727 roku.” Studia Rossica Gedanensia, no. 2 (2015): 360–70.

Taracha, Cezary. “Szyfr Felipe Rodrigueza z 1726 roku.” In Ojczyzna i wolność. Prace ofiarowane Profesorowi Janowi Ziółkowi w siedemdziesiątą rocznicę urodzin, edited by Anna Barańska, Witold Matwiejczyk, and Ewa M. Ziółek, 725–44. Lublin: Towarzystwo Naukowe KUL, 2000.

Taracha, Cezary. “Unas reflexiones sobre el servicio de información español en la época de los Reyes Católicos y los Austrias.” Roczniki Humanistyczne 67, no. 2 (2019): 79–110.

Thompson, James W., and Saul K. Padover. Secret Diplomacy. Espionage and Cryptography 1500–1815. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Company, 1965. Originally published 1937.

Way, Peter. Codes and Ciphers. New York: Crescent Books, 1977.

Wrixon, Fred. Langages secrets. Codes, chiffres et autres cryptosystèmes des hiéroglyphes à Internet. Köln: Könemann, 2000.