Hi Pen;

It was very common back then to use a cypher if they thought their ideas might seem offensive. Especially among artists and scholars, who were the two hardest hit groups where writing is concerned. Sadly, the most popular type of cypher made no sense what so ever, and the only thing detectable might be a pattern if you even got that much. A key was an absolute requirement to crack this type of code, so the chances of breaking this thing are very slim indeed. Perhaps it would be possible to crack the pattern using a computer, but I don't really know. It would probably wind up being one very elaborate guess.

Tim