Ernest Rinzi, born as Ernesto Rinzi in Milan in 1836, was a
jeweler, goldsmith and miniaturist. He exhibited miniature portraits at the
Royal Academy between 1886 and 1889, and was a member of the Society of
Miniature Painters.
Rinzi wrote this manuscript in a code of his own
invention, in a minuscule hand that requires magnification to see clearly.
While each journal page is ruled with twenty-one lines, Rinzi managed to fit
over a hundred lines of text.
Currently on display in our A Miscellany of Marvels: New Acquisitions at the RBML exhibit,
Rinzi’s code eludes us. Most of the text is in code, although some names and
events appear in English or Italian, such as the assassination of King Umberto
I in 1900, the death of Queen Victoria and the coronation of Edward VII in 1901,
and the death of Rinzi’s wife Jessie in 1902.
The first page of the manuscript appears to contain a
list of the characters or symbols which Rinzi used in his alphabet, including
Greek and Hebrew letters, astrological symbols and Chinese characters. This
page may hold the key to Rinzi’s writings, which remain undeciphered to date.
Can you crack the code?
This is our final post on Rinzi. Read our other posts,
and keep following us on Tumblr and Twitter for more on RBML treasures, and
come look at Rinzi’s journal itself in A
Miscellany of Marvels, up at the RBML until September 14, 2017.
Ernest Rinzi, Journal
of Ernest Rinzi, 1898-1903. Bound manuscript journal. From the Rare Book
& Manuscript Library at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Post-1650 Manuscript Collection. Post-1650
MS 0668.
When we challenged readers to crack Ernest Rinzi’s code, we
didn’t think someone actually would! But we have received word that Rinzi’s
cipher has been broken, and we couldn’t be more excited.
After we posted about Rinzi’s journal to our Tumblr in
August, word got around the cryptography community about this special,
unsolved cipher. Klaus Schmeh, the publisher of “Klausis Krypto Kolumne,” described Rinzi’s cipher as the “third most
interesting [undeciphered encrypted book] behind the Voynich Manuscript and the
Rohonc Codex” in his September 21 blog
post.
On October 10, Klaus got in touch with the RBML to tell us
that Rinzi’s code had been broken
by Tony Gaffney. Tony Gaffney is a London-based codebreaker who frequents
“Klausis Krypto Kolumne”. He has broken a number of 16th-century
cryptographic challenges created by Giovanni
Battista Bellaso and has created his own cryptographic challenges,
including a chess
cipher.
Using the larger portion of text on the page below, Tony
used frequency analysis and guessed words to decipher the lines. Take a look at
his work here:
We’re in touch with Tony and have sent him the entirety of
Rinzi’s journal. Here at the RBML, Project Cataloger Mariagabriella Stuardi –
our Italian specialist – is using Tony’s work to decipher the journal. One of
her recent discoveries include what may possibly be Rinzi’s ampersand symbol!
See some of her work below, in blue ink, below Tony’s initial work:
We’re hoping to have a translation of Rinzi’s text some day!
Many thanks to Tony, Klaus, and everyone else who took a crack at the code!
We’ll keep you posted as we continue our efforts to decipher Rinzi’s text.
