It is known that the letter was written on August 11, 1676 by a girl whose name "in the world" was Isabella Tommasi. After she was tonsured, she took the name Maria Crocifissa della Concesione, literally "crucified Mary". Mary was only 15 years old when she took her vows. The girl lived in a Benedictine monastery in the commune of Palma di Montechiaro in Sicily.
According to one legend, Mary woke up one morning to find her hands and face stained with ink. Nearby, she found a mysterious letter written in an incomprehensible language - more precisely, a cipher. Maria went to the sisters, convinced that the letter was written by her own hands, "the enemy of the human race."
What it says, she didn't know. The cipher consisted of letters of the Greek and Latin alphabets, as well as Cyrillic and even runic elements.
Popular
14 mysterious lines were kept in the monastery of Palma di Montechiaro, and a copy was taken to the archives of the Cathedral of Agrigento.
For three centuries, scientists have tried in vain to decipher the mysterious letters left by the possessed nun. Until last week, scientists at the Ludum Science Center in Catania (Ludum Science Center) did not guess to use all the resources - including the "darknet" - "Network on top of another Internet Network". It is about the "dark Internet" that there are rumors that they sell drugs there and you can freely download pornography. But there are more useful resources out there. In particular, scientists stumbled upon decoding software.
“We heard about software that is allegedly used by intelligence for decoding,” said Daniele Abete, head of the center. “We loaded the software with ancient Greek, Arabic and runic alphabets, and Latin. And it's really something diabolical." The letter turned out to be very incoherent and not always consistent.
“God thinks he can free mortals,” Sister Mary wrote. And added: "It does not work." The nun called God, Jesus and the holy spirit "useless, extra weight."
She also writes: “Perhaps the Styx exists,” referring to the river from ancient Greek mythology that flowed in the realm of the dead to Hades.
As can be seen from the above, Maria was a very educated girl and also a talented linguist. Researchers suggest that she suffered from schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.
Another thing is curious: legends say that there were two more letters written in a similar manner. Unfortunately, they have not reached our days. Or?..
The shocking news excited the Network - three centuries later, a letter dictated by the devil to the nun Maria Crocifisse della Concesion was deciphered!
It is known that the nee Isabella Tomasi from the age of 15 was in the Benedictine convent of Palma di Montechiaro in Agrigento. But one of her mornings in 1676 did not start according to God's plan - the girl woke up in her cell, sitting on the floor, and even with her face and hands smeared with ink! On the table, she found a piece of paper with text, the meaning of which no one understood ...
Nun Maria did not hide anything, but immediately confessed to the sister nuns that this letter was dictated to her by the devil himself, who had taken possession of her!
By the way, then no one doubted the words of the “possessed”, but on the contrary, the letter was put on public display in the monastery. But here's the bad luck - the meaning of the words written by the girl under the dictation of the devil, no one could understand or read. Who would have doubted that after 361 years the mysterious manuscript would just be left alone and not try to find out the truth? But it is worth noting that none of the versions and attempts brought visible results until ...
Until the Italian computer geniuses from the Ludum research center in Catania got down to business. It turns out that they took advantage of the anonymous DarkNet space, closed from the authorities and search engines, which remains invisible to ordinary browsers, and only there they picked up a suitable decryption algorithm!
You will not believe it, but in order to start working with the "language of the devil", specialists had to load into the program many rare alphabets, including Yezidi, ancient Greek, and even ancient Germanic runic.
The algorithm worked by trying to match letters from alphabets with signs and letters from a mysterious letter. And he "succumbed" to 15 lines of a terrible message!
By the way, the text itself, indeed, is very similar to the devilry - it is written nervously, chaotically, and even in different languages. And the red line through the entire “message” is reflections on the relationship between people, God and the devil.
Here are some phrases and passages verbatim: “God was invented by man”, “This system does not work for anyone”, “God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are an extra load, useless”, and - “God believes that he can free all mortals ".
"The Devil's Letter"
After the long-awaited opening, the director of the Ludum Center, Daniele Abate, comments on what happened with undisguised skepticism:
“Probably, Maria was a talented linguist. She wrote the text in a language that she invented herself, mixing the alphabets known to her. Each character is well thought out and structured. But the devil, of course, was… In her head!”
Scientists have already managed to establish that the nun Maria was indeed an excellent linguist - she knew Latin, ancient Greek and runic alphabets. But the diagnoses were added to this knowledge - it turns out that the girl suffered from schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
Today, the famous “letter of the devil” is kept in the cathedral of the city of Agrigento (Sicily), and a copy of it is in the native monastery of the nun Maria.
The mysterious letter, written over 300 years ago, was deciphered by specialists from the Ludum Science Museum (Sicily), who used a special web code.
The author of the letter was Sister Maria Crocifissa della Concezione, a 31-year-old nun who lived in the monastery of Palma di Montechiaro in Sicily in the middle of the 17th century. On August 11, 1676, a woman was found on the floor in her cell. Her face was covered in ink, and in her hand the nun held a note written in an incomprehensible language. According to the surviving historical records of eyewitnesses, Mary claimed that she was possessed by the devil, who forced her to write this letter, forcing her to turn away from God.
The message of the nun consists of only 14 lines, but until recently no one could decipher it.
In a new study, scientists decided to approach the process of deciphering the letter globally, analyzing not only the strange cipher, but also the life story of Mary.
When you're working on a historical transcript, you can't ignore the writer's psychological profile. We needed to learn as much as possible about this nun, said Ludum Museum director Daniel Abate.
Mysterious Mary and her cipher
Having raised the archives, they found out that Maria Crocifissa della Concecione was the ancestor of the Italian writer Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa. According to the records of the monastery, Mary became a novice at the age of 15.
The incomprehensible symbols in the message unequivocally indicated that Sister Mary had created her own language, unlike anything else. To establish this, the researchers first tested the software they used to transcribe standard abbreviated characters in different languages.
The program found that the nun's letter contained a mixture of words from ancient alphabets such as Greek, Latin, Runic and Arabic.
The scientists analyzed how the characters are repeated in the letter, and in order to find the vowels, they slightly improved the decryption algorithm.
We did not have much hope for the result. We thought we could just understand a few words. But the nun was fluent in languages, Daniel Abate shared.
The devil's message
Scientists deciphered the symbols and managed to make several sentences:
"God thinks he can free mortals", "The system doesn't work for anyone", "Perhaps now, Styx is sure."
(The Styx in Greek and Roman mythology is the river that separates the underworld from the world of the living.)
The letter also says that Maria suffered from schizophrenia, this is also confirmed by the records of the monastery, which record that the nun screamed every night that she was fighting the devil.
Finally, after 340 years, scientists from Sicily succeeded. What they read shocked everyone.
It is known that the letter was written on August 11, 1676 by a girl whose name "in the world" was Isabella Tommasi. After she was tonsured, she took the name Maria Crocifissa della Concesione - literally "crucified Mary". Mary was only 15 years old when she took her vows. The girl lived in a Benedictine monastery in the commune of Palma di Montechiaro in Sicily.
According to one legend, Mary woke up one morning to find her hands and face stained with ink. Nearby, she found a mysterious letter written in an incomprehensible language - more precisely, a cipher. Maria went to the sisters, convinced that the letter was written by her own hands, "the enemy of the human race."
She didn't know what was written there. The cipher consisted of letters of the Greek and Latin alphabets, as well as Cyrillic and even runic elements.
14 mysterious lines were kept in the monastery of Palma di Montechiaro, and a copy was taken to the archives of the Cathedral of Agrigento.
For three centuries, scientists have tried in vain to decipher the mysterious letters left by the possessed nun. Until last week, scientists from the Ludum Science Center in Catania (Ludum Science Center) did not guess to use all the resources - including the "darknet" - "Network on top of another Internet". It is about the "dark Internet" that there are rumors that they sell drugs there and you can freely download pornography. But there are more useful resources out there. In particular, scientists stumbled upon decoding software.
“We have heard about software that is allegedly being used by intelligence to decode,” said Daniele Abete, head of the center. - We loaded the software with ancient Greek, Arabic and runic alphabets and Latin. And it's really something diabolical." The letter turned out to be very incoherent and not always consistent.
“God thinks he can free mortals,” Sister Mary wrote. And added: "It does not work." The nun called God, Jesus and the holy spirit "useless, extra weight."
She also writes: “Perhaps the Styx exists,” referring to the river from ancient Greek mythology that flowed in the realm of the dead to Hades.
As can be seen from the above, Maria was a very educated girl and also a talented linguist. Researchers suggest that she suffered from schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.
Another thing is curious: legends say that there were two more letters written in a similar manner. Unfortunately, they have not reached our days. Or?..
