Concept

Blaise de Vigenère

Summary
Blaise de Vigenère (5 April 1523 – 19 February 1596) (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. From 1539 to around 1545, he worked under Gilbert Bayard, a first secretary to King Francis I, who had fiefs in Bourbonnais. In 1545, he accompanied the French envoy Louis Adhémar de Monteil, Count of Grignan, to the Diet of Worms as a junior secretary. After the diet's rupture, he traveled in Europe. 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). In 1549, he took his first trip to Italy, in particular to Rome. It is not known who his protector was on the trip, which lasted for three to four years, but one of his biographers, Maurice Sarazin, has suggested it may have been Cardinal Tournon, a celebrated diplomat and friend of the arts. 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. 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.
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