“Among Antun Vrančić’s manuscripts in the Széchényi National Library in Budapest there are five coding manuals, each on a separate sheet of paper. These are the four official documents assigned to Vrančić in 1550s by the Viennese court accompanied by Antun’s personal use tool. All five are made on the same form: they consist of a coded alphabet and additional coded words; Antun’s private manual being the only one without additions. The most interesting are four lists with coded words, the number of which is growing steadily from fifty in the oldest system to more than two hundred in the last one. They contain the most important names and terms of the Austrian foreign policy of the time. The oldest and the smallest one was given to Vrančić and Zay on the occasion of their journey to Turkey in 1553, the second was given three years later in Constantinople, the third was entrusted to Antun shortly after his return from Turkey in 1557 with the aim of informing the future Czech king Maksimilian about the circumstances in Transylvania, the fourth was created in the same time somewhere in 1558, and was probably intended for Vrančić’s mission in the West (which, however, did not occur). In this paper we have tried to identify all the entries from the lists. They reflect the protagonists and problems faced by the Austrian branch of the Habsburgs, from the Ottoman threats through the Transylvanian issue, Protestantism and the papacy to the Spanish-French war in Italy, from Livonia in the north to Sicily in the south and from England to Persia. The appendix contains the first edition of all five Vrančić’s coding manuals.”

Summary of the paper: Lončar, M.; Sorić, D. Using script against undesirable readers III: Vrančić’s encoding tools // Colloquia Maruliana … 25, 25 (2016), pp. 17-55.