Dot Porter, Curator, Digital Research Services at the University of Pennsylvania Library, offers a video orientation to Penn Library’s LJS 225, Litterarum simulationis liber, by Michael Zopello. This manuscript was written in Rome between 1455 and 1458, in Latin and Italian. It was a presentation copy for Pope Callistus III of a work on cryptography that describes two systems: in the first, Italian words beginning with one letter are all represented by Italian words beginning with another letter; in the second, signs or symbols represent letters or entire Italian words (titles, city names, and numbers).
See the full online facsimile of this work in Penn in Hand.
The Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies 