Big Chuck

Charlemagne, King of the Franks, from 768 A.D. to his death in 814 A.D., was also crowned Emperor by Pope Leo III in 801 A.D. Charlemagne in addition to his empire building that has had lasting effects on the modern disposition of Europe, was also a man of great ambition in regards to the expansion and support of the arts and education. He, himself, was known to struggle with the art of writing, but somewhere along the line at least two sets of simple symbolic substitution ciphers, developed for use in secret communications, have been attributed to him, or his court.

The first set of glyphs has been represented in a modern book on codes and ciphers. It is supposedly based on documents held by the Bodleian Library in Oxford. The second set of glyphs appears in Trithemius's work Polygraphie published in 1561. Trithemius was an Abbot who died in 1516 and had the dubious honor of having some of his books placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum until the year 1900. The edition being printed well after his death might not be accurate to his original text, but it is also tempting to speculate that he indulged in a bit of creative engineering in his texts. Price $1.99

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