A post-historical note on war time codes and subterfuge techniques, is presented here since activities such as the Medieval Inquisition was the same as any intrusive war. During World War II, the Navajo Indian language was used instead of a manufactured code for official battle-line transmissions.³ It proved to be an effective ploy in the Pacific front. The Indian word symbols were completely foreign to the Japanese code breakers.

Even common soldiers during this war, both in the Pacific arena and the European, designed their own ciphers. They used such things as pin holes, names of their pet dogs to let their family know that they were safe in a non-war zone.⁴ More recently a modern scholar, Michael Drosnin, decided he had deciphered the great code within the Torah. It has been known for centuries, that the Bible has been done in cipher.⁵ But no one dared to assume its solution. It was thought to be inpertinent.⁶

Yet, Mr. Drosnin decided on a complex system whereas all spaces were to be deleted from the text of the Torah. In this way letters that created words would become clear and informative.⁷ His method is no better than the word search games found in modern magazines. In word searches, the area of the words to be found is very well defined. In spite of normal reading techniques for the Torah, Mr. Drosnin laid out his text as the whole length of the scroll and supposedly discovered modern prophetic readings. Yet since the Torah is unrolled only three or four columns at a time, the particular word search method that Mr. Drosnin used was not very useful for a code or cipher of any kind. I believe he decided the modern Word Search games used in our schools today were bsed on a code style from the Middle Ages. He was wrong. The code of the Bible is very well defined and found in the manuscript of Abraham Zacuto where he referred to the Calendar.⁸

When I first discovered ciphers in the Greek texts brought into medieval Europe in the XXV century, I found them only because the translators would comment that the author was mistaken. The author did not know what he was writing about. At one point, I discovered an actual English word translated into first century Greek in order to create a ninth century Spanish phrase that had the correct (Spanish) meaning in Greek.⁹ But one word does not make a cipher any more than great blocks of letters can create a prophecy. The only thing that that phrase could tell me was that version of the text was rewritten by a copyist who liked to play jokes.

In an attempt to get away from codes and ciphers, I began to explore Biblical history. At the mention of calendars, the search led me to Abraham Zacuto's Almanac of 1472 translated into Latin by his student José Vizinho (of Salamanca). This particular manuscript happened to contain a list of cities with their longitudes and latitudes. With all the pages and pages of numbers in this copy, only one was printed upside down and reversed.¹⁰ It was the number three. As everyone else, I thought it was just a typo due to the newness of the printing press. But I was curious. I decided to lay out the coordinates to see how the locations looked on a graph.

What I saw was a medieval message to Paris and to Greece. Paris sat squarely in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and Greece was being crushed by the heel of Italy. The message I concluded was: "those being hunted in Paris should flee westward, and Greece should be prepared for an attack from Rome." Abraham Zacuto's own words confirmed the surreptitious information I found may have actually been sent to other contacts. He stated that he was very pleased that his Almanac had even been sent to Muslim lands.¹¹ His method was an older one. It probably was originally used during the time of the Templars.

It made perfect sense, even a century after the fall of the Templars in Paris. There was still oppression under the auspices of the Inquisition which haunted those people from the Middle East. In Spain, Abraham Zacut did not remain long as a court astronomer, even though his books were well respected. In 1492, he was forced to flee to Portugal. His position there as court astronomer did not last very long either. The Inquisition hounded every Jew within Europe until they fled to Africa and the Muslim lands or to parts unknown.

Earlier in the tenth century, Paul the Deacon, purported to have re-written the Historia Romana, one of his several books.¹² I believe this book was originally coded for a reverse reader. The original text is interpersed with sections written by Paul (and italicized by the publisher) which supposedly flesh out the history of the Roman Empire. In his enthusiasm, apparently Paul, made several gross errors in this data collecting.¹³ He also added several words that are not normal for the ninth century AD, such as Carmen Nicostrata (Song of Victory: Mixed Spanish and Greek), tautana (Tautalogy? not used until used in 1579) and saturnia (not used until 1591).

Familiar European words that one can recognize immediately but as one can see, the dating of such words is much later in time. This only means that a later writer inserted the "newer" vocabulary into the text in order to clarify it for the XVI century readers. Or else the book was rewritten as a historic record for a different purpose. We do not know.

An index of 15 pages in Historia Romana, lists all the proper names used within the manuscript. Since Abraham Zacut's later cipher was indicated by the number three, I decided to look for the number three in this book also. I was not disappointed. At several points where suspect words were located, a three or thirty-three appeared nearby. There were two references to Aude (Adelaide) in the index of this manuscript.

The visible "messages" found as proper names appear to be read from the back of the manuscript and are not within any kind of grammatical sentence structure. At times, a three or thirty-three is associated with the word or phrase and other times, there is no warning. Also, the common Latin words near each word can be included with the Proper name or they can be completely ignored. (Examples of this layout can be found in Appendices I [Book I], II [Book VI] and III [Book IX].)

First all the words had to be "translated" by using not only Latin, but any language that might have been available to the author. The languges I discovered within the three sample excerpts, besides Latin, included one or two words of basic Chinese, a Dutch word, and some Spanish. After translating the names, the words were sorted into Books, one book at a time, then into sections. The individual lists were then reviewed and the suspect translations (those that seemed to refer to historical medieval information) were blocked out. Who actually wrote these texts and edited them later, is actually an unknown factor. Paul the Deacon has been given the credit, but the few words of a later century may indicate doctoring of the texts even later than suspected.

² Strauss, p. 26, Axiom #2: A censor must show certain literary dificiencies of an author's style and that the style is not accidental chance. That ambiguous statements are deliberate. Or that sentence structure is badly done on purpose. Censor must prove writer is intelligent and in general a good writer and errors are deliberate.

³ Belleranti, S. W. (1984, November). The Code That Couldn't Be Cracked. The Retired Officer, p. 33-35.
Paul, D. A. (1973) The Navajo Code Talkers Philadelphia: Dorrance and Company.

⁴Abigail Van Buren, Austin American-Statesman, October 14, 1986, p. B9, Wartime secret codes kept families informed.