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French cryptographer From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Blaise de Vigenère (5 April 1523 – 19 February 1596)[1] (French pronunciation: [viʒnɛːʁ]) was a French diplomat, cryptographer, translator and alchemist.
Vigenère was born into a respectable family in the village of Saint-Pourçain in Bourbonnais. When he was 12, his father, Jehan (modern spelling Jean) de Vigenère, arranged for him to have a classical education in Paris. Registered at the university at 14, he quit after three years without a known degree.[2]
From 1539 to around 1545, he worked under Gilbert Bayard, a first secretary to King Francis I, who had fiefs in Bourbonnais.[2]
In 1545, he accompanied the French envoy Louis Adhémar de Monteil, Count of Grignan, to the Diet of Worms as a junior secretary.[3][4] After the diet's rupture, he traveled in Europe.[5]
In 1547, he quit the court and entered the service of the House of Nevers. He would remain associated with it until at least a year before his death in 1596. At first he was secretary to François I, Duke of Nevers, a position he held until the deaths of the duke and his son in 1562. A letter of July 1593 reveals he was also secretary to Louis de Gonzague (who became Duke of Nevers by his marriage to François I's daughter Henriette of Cleves in 1565) and tutored Louis' son (born 1580).[6]
In 1549, he took his first trip to Italy, in particular to Rome. It is not known who his protector was on the trip,[7] which lasted for three to four years,[8] but one of his biographers, Maurice Sarazin, has suggested it may have been Cardinal Tournon, a celebrated diplomat and friend of the arts.[9] He would return to Rome again in 1566 for another three years. During his stays, he examined all the ancient buildings and expanded his knowledge of antiquity.[8] In his 1586 book, Traicté des chiffres ou secretes manières d'escrire, he wrote:
in Rome, I did all that was possible — talking to learned men versed in Roman antiquity, visiting and revisiting the marble reliefs, bronzes, medals and ancient cameos from which one might draw knowledge and instruction — but I couldn't restore anything. [10]
After the death of François II, Duke of Nevers, in 1562, Vigenère resumed his studies. He received lessons from Adrianus Turnebus and Jean Dorat and learned Greek and Hebrew.[5]
In 1566, the queen mother, Catherine de Médicis, sent Vignère to Rome,[11] where he was secretary under Juste de Tournon, the ambassador of her son King Charles IX.[8] In December of that year she sent a letter to Tournon, requesting that Vigenère respond to an overture made by the secretary of the elderly king of Poland, Sigismond Auguste Jagellon, who had no children. Apparently the secretary had proposed the Polish king name her son Henri (the Duke of Anjou and future King Henry III of France), as his successor. She specified Vigenère should interview the Polish diplomat verbally, verifying the proposal's authenticity, then facilitate the idea, all without revealing he had been authorized to do so by her.[12] Nine years later, Vigenère wrote in detail about this incident in his book La description du Royaume de Poloigne, without naming himself or revealing that he could have held secrets.[13]
During this later stay in Italy, Vigenère also visited other Italian cities, notably Venice and Florence.[11]
In 1570, at age 47, Vigenère retired from traveling and settled in Paris to devote himself to writing.[8] He donated his 1,000 livres a year income to the poor in Paris. He married Marie Varé on 24 July 1570.[14]
He died of throat cancer in 1596 and is buried in the Saint-Étienne-du-Mont church.[15]
On Vigenère's trips to Italy he read books about cryptography and came in contact with cryptologists. Giovan Battista Bellaso described a method of encryption in his 1553 book La cifra del. Sig. Giovan Battista Belaso, published in Venice in 1553,[16] which in the 19th century was misattributed to Vigenère and became widely known as the "Vigenère cipher".[17] In 1567 and 1568, Vigenère created a different, stronger autokey cipher, which he published in 1586 in his book Traicté des chiffres ou secrètes manières d'escrire (Treatise on Ciphers or Secret Ways of Writing).[18][19] It differs from Bellaso's in several ways:
After his retirement, Vigenère composed and translated over 20 books, including: