“Brothers Antun and Mihovil Vrančić occasionally used coded messages in their correspondence. Thanks to the research of D. Sorić and the author of the present work, Mihovil’s codes were recently deciphered, while a short coded missive by Antun still eluded comprehension. Namely, in a letter from France in 1546 Antun used different codes than those later used by Mihovil. This paper shows how Antun’s code was finally deciphered. The frequency of the characters was not much helpful because the message was very short. Being focused on the first word also proved not to be the right way, since the first two characters, as subsequently found, were “empty”, intended to trick the undesirable readers. Niether reliance on analogous syntactical habits was fruitful. Only attempts to guess the key words led to a solution: as part of the news about good reception at the French king’s, Antun secretly communicates to Mihovil that he could soon report “great things” to his authorities in Transylvania. One Antun’s letter from the time after the French mission shows that his diplomatic duty was related to Austrian king Ferdinand. Judging by the historical context, it was probably another proposal for an Austrian-Transylvanian compact which had met with a good reception from François I.”

Summary of the paper: Lončar, M. Using script against undesirable readers (II): a coded message of Antun Vrančić // Colloquia Maruliana … 23, 23 (2014), pp. 119-131