Roger Frontenac was a

French navy The French Navy (french: Marine nationale, lit=National Navy), informally , is the maritime arm of the French Armed Forces and one of the five military service branches of France. It is among the largest and most powerful naval forces in t ...

officer and a scholar of

Nostradamus Michel de Nostredame (December 1503 – July 1566), usually Latinised as Nostradamus, was a French astrologer, apothecary, physician, and reputed seer, who is best known for his book ''Les Prophéties'' (published in 1555), a collection o ...

' prophecies. He proposed an interpretation system for the text of ''Les Propheties'', based upon a form of

cryptography Cryptography, or cryptology (from grc, , translit=kryptós "hidden, secret"; and ''graphein'', "to write", or ''-logia'', "study", respectively), is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of adver ...

known as the Vigenère table.

Biography

Roger Frontenac, as a navy officer, was in charge of military ciphers. After World War II, he began to study the work of Nostradamus, treating it as any other message from an enemy. He searched for any hint about decoding methods. The name of Nostradamus' son Cesar led Frontenac to suspect the use of a Caesar cipher.

His maiden work: ''La clef secrète de Nostradamus''

He published his treatise about Nostradamus' letters and works, '' La clef secrète de Nostradamus'' (''The Secret Key of Nostradamus''). In the book, Frontenac professed his belief in Nostradamus as a true

prophet In religion, a prophet or prophetess is an individual who is regarded as being in contact with a divine being and is said to speak on behalf of that being, serving as an intermediary with humanity by delivering messages or teachings from the s ...

, who made correct foretellings, and that the centuries (in French ''Les Propheties'') contained true predictions about future events until the year 3797. But, he contended that those predictions were hidden and mixed, and not made understandable before events occurred. His conclusions were based on a combination of several cryptographic methods, including a systematic alteration in the metrical order of

quatrain A quatrain is a type of stanza, or a complete poem, consisting of four lines. Existing in a variety of forms, the quatrain appears in poems from the poetic traditions of various ancient civilizations including Persia, Ancient India, Ancient Greec ...

s' texts. This process was inspired by Nostradamus' use of the expression ''rabouter obscurément'' ("to mix in order to make them obscure") in a letter. The systematic reordering of quatrains, according to Frontenac, could be achieved using a couple of combined

keys Key or The Key may refer to: Common meanings * Key (cryptography), a piece of information that controls the operation of a cryptography algorithm * Key (lock), device used to control access to places or facilities restricted by a lock * Key (map ...

, and he stated that he managed to find the first key (a typical Vigenère text, easy to hold in memory), that was the Latin phrase:

References

Bibliography

*Frontenac, Roger, '' La clef secrète de Nostradamus'', Les Editions Denoel, Paris 1950

External links

*
La chiave di Frontenac
*
Website by Cesare Ottavio Ramotti
{{DEFAULTSORT:Frontenac, Roger French non-fiction writers French cryptographers Nostradamus Year of birth missing Year of death missing French male writers Male non-fiction writers

Biography

His maiden work: ''La clef secrète de Nostradamus''

See also

References

Bibliography

External links