Agostino Amadi

Agostino Amadi (Venice, 1588), also written as Agostin, or Augostino Amadi, was a Venetian writer who created a manuscript on ciphers. It is assumed that he was a teacher of ciphers, but it is not known if he ever worked at the Council of Ten in that capacity.
== The manuscript ==
The Amadi manuscript contained 700 pages and was bought by the Council of Ten from his widow on the 16th March, 1588. 
It was titled: "Agostino Amadi. Trattato delle cifre. 1588. Trattato delle cifre. Venezia". Ciphers of Agostino Amadi, 1588 in the Archivio di Stato di Venezia. The archive kept the contents secure and secret for hundreds of years. Agostino Amadi. Trattato delle cifre. 1588. Trattato delle cifre. Venezia. Manoscritto presso l'Archivio di Stato di Venezia. Inquisitori Stato Codice Amadi Registri busta 1269c Translation into Italian and English. Multiple Volumes: The Venetian Ciphers of Agostino Amadi
The manuscript was then sold to the Emperor of Austria and moved to Vienna in 1799 and stored under Cod. 313. It was only in 1869 returned to the Venetian Archives in Italy. K.K. Hofbibliothek. AdressatIn. Rückforderung von Italienischen Handschriften Und Inkunabeln. Year 1868. link. Vielen Dank Herr Friedrich Simader, Sammlung von Handschriften und alten Drucken, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek. “Nuova serie di Codici mandati a Vienna dalla Direzione della Biblioteca di Brera il 22Febbraio 1842, Source: Archivio Storico Italiano, Vol. 5 (1843), pp. 471-476”. Google books. Storia arcana ed altri scritti inediti di Marco Foscarini.
Agostino must have owned a huge collection of mathematical and musical books, about 1500 of them, as well as many instruments. From the paper: Gian Vincenzo Pinelli's collection of catalogues of private libraries in sixteenth-century Europe, by Angela Nuovo, Published 2007. Refer to fol. 258r in in Ambrosiana R 110 sup.
== The contents ==
The first volume teaches the different ways of coding "in simple, double and multiple alphabets", with extensive use of "rotae", rotating alphabets made of parchment and a coloured thread. 
The second volume is dedicated to the art of trazer: decoding the cipher without having the decryption key.Piero Lucchi.
The great cipher collector Luigi Pasini (1835-1885), the archivist in the State Archives of Venice, wrote: 
"The volumes by our loyal citizen Agostin Amadi, who recently died, provide instructions for writing simple and double ciphers and for using several alphabets. They teach the art of deciphering unknown ciphers without code sheet, both in our language and in foreign ones, with beautiful, clear and realistic rules, so that anyone who puts in some exercise and diligence can make true progress in a short time. They also teach different ways of writing secret messages, strengthening a cipher so that it cannot be understood; they teach ways of writing invisible, undetectable ciphers, of reviving dead letters, and other important secrets. All this is contained in said volumes, as stated in the communication from the cautious and loyal Milledonne, secretary of this council, and Vianello, secretary of the Senate. These volumes are so important and so unique that it is not good for the service of our state to leave them in the hands of private citizens, risking that they fall in other hands, possibly foreign hands. Therefore, the children of our well-deserving citizen who remained in extreme poverty will be rewarded with the usual generosity of Our Lordship", etc.". Passage from the English version of Pasini: Written Ciphers Used By The Republic Of Venice, Luigi Pasini, 1872, translated 2021. Original: 1873. Il R. Archivio generale di Venezia. By Archivio di Stato di Venezia. Vol II. Published by. Stab. tip. di P.Naratovich, 1873. Approx 490 pages.
Category:Venetian writers