Page 1: Before there was Tarot
Page 2: First Century of Tarot – Pt.1
Page 3: First Century of Tarot – Pt.2
Page 4: 2nd & 3rd Centuries of Tarot
Page 5: Modern (Occult) Tarot
One must get used to the fact—and this will be said time and again—that even now we know precious little of such everyday things as playing cards.
Detlef Hoffmann
383-405 Rome, Italy
Pope Damascus commissioned what was to become the standard Bible throughout the Middle Ages, Saint Jerome’s Vulgate. This Latin Bible was called the versio vulgata (common translation) and remains to this day the official scriptural text of the Roman Catholic Church. The Bible is an essential source for the study of Tarot. Much of the symbolism which people have attributed to Joachim of Flora, Dante, Petrarch, and so on, derives directly or indirectly from the Bible. (For example, finding a Triumph of Eternity motif in Tarot does not mean that it was based on Petrarch’s I Trionfi, but that both were based on the Bible. Comparing the three works in detail, it can be seen that Petrarch followed the biblical motif only in the broadest sense, his later illustrators followed it more closely, while Tarot followed Rev 21:23 directly and did not rely on Petrarch at all.) The Douai-Rheims version was the Church’s official English translation of the Vulgate, and the Rheims New Testament is available online at
http://www.hti.umich.edu/r/rheims/.
(http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08341a.htm.)
c.400 Spain
Arelius Prudentius Clemens wrote Psychomachia, an allegorical battle between personified virtues and vices. “The ‘Psychomachia’ is the model of a style destined to be lovingly cultivated in the Middle Ages, i. e., allegorical poetry, of which before Prudentius only the merest traces are found.” In addition to being influential in the development of allegory in general, the specific theme of Psychomachia, the virtues, was endlessly varied and elaborated, and is specifically included in Tarot. Various sites have online Latin versions, and an English version is available online at http://www.richmond.edu/~wstevens/grvaltexts/psychomachia.html. (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12517c.htm.)
c.415
Saint Augustine, (354 - 430), bishop of Hippo, wrote The City of God, which included a detailed analysis of Pagan theology. He analyzed Varro’s tripartite theology (mythical, civil, and natural), showing that the first two were equivalent in their uselessness, while natural theology, in its best form (Platonic), is closely parallel to Christian theology. There are a number of elements of Tarot (and the Mantegna cosmograph) that may reflect aspects of this work. The City of God is available online at http://www.ccel.org/fathers/NPNF1-02/. (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02084a.htm)
494 Rome, Italy
“In a prohibition of all sorts of methods of divination proclaimed by Pope Gelasius in 494 mention is made of the Sortes apostolorum. The oldest version of this book which has been discovered, however, dates from the 10th century. After three days of fasting, the singing of the officium s. trinitatis and the reciting of a prayer, the enquirer casts three dice of six sides each at one throw. Fifty-six answers are given… It is characteristic of this version that many answers open with a poetic description or comparison; in the answer to the case 5.4.3., for instance, the impatient enquirer is compared to a blind little dog and in 6.5.2. to a hunter who wants to catch the deer while they are still running.… The Sortes apostolorum were translated into Provencal in the 13th century, but the method of deciding which answer is the relevant one is different. The use of dice has here been replaced by coloured threads fastened to each of the answers. The enquirer selects one of these threads at random, then the book is opened and the answer to which the thread is attached is read. A French translation which stands much closer to the Latin text, in method as well as in the wording of the answers, is preserved in a Vienna manuscript of the late 13th or early 14th century.” (Braekman, 7.)
c.524 Pavia, Italy
Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, while confined to house arrest awaiting execution, wrote De Consolatione Philosophiae. “The Consolation dominated the intellectual life of the Middle Ages and it was translated at different times by Alfred the Great, Chaucer, and Elizabeth I.” Boethius’ Consolation was the source for the Christian adoption of Fortuna and her Wheel, and passages of the Consolation also explain the therianthropic figures on the TdM version of the Wheel of Fortune. The Consolation established the medieval conception of tragedy based on Fortune, sometimes called the De Casibus tradition after Boccaccio’s work of the 1360s. Various sites have online Latin versions of the Consolation, and an English version is available online at
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/latin/boethius/boephil.html.
(Oxford World Classics edition;
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02610b.htm.)
6th or 7th c. Egypt(?)
A prose text on fortune-telling with dice is “usually ascribed to the Egyptian Astrampsychos. It is thought to have been written in the 6th or 7th century, but it may well have made use of earlier works. It contains 92 short questions and no less than 1,030 answers, which are divided into 103 decades. The questions are restricted to personal matters… They betray to some extent a Christian influence, which is further apparent from the request to address a prayer to the Almighty Creator and to Michael, Gabriel and Raphael.…Judging from the large number of variants which are found in numerous manuscripts, this book seems to have enjoyed an enormous popularity. Closely related to it is a Latin work of divination, the so-called Sortes Sangallenses, of which only a fragment in a 6th century hand has come down to us.” One scholar believes the text dates back to the 2nd century. (Braekman, 6.)
655 Mecca, Saudi Arabia(?)
“Chess (shatranj) was a legal issue after Mohammad died in 642 A.D. In 655 his son-in-law [and eventual successor], Caliph Ali Ben Abu-Talib disapproved the game for his sect of Muslims because of the graven images.” Chess in its various forms was repeatedly condemned or prohibited through the centuries. Most often, this referred to versions played with dice. (Religion and Chess, Bill Wall.)
c.830? Auxerre, France
[IMAGE] “Indeed, we find a rough outline of the trifunctional figure in a commentary on the Book of Revelation due to Haymo, a monk at Saint-Germain of Auxerre in the first half of the ninth century…. Haymo was the first person, so far as we know, to have inscribed side by side on a piece of parchment the three nouns that express social trifunctionality: sacerdotes, milites, agricolae.” The “three estates”, as they were known in later France, or three orders, were a dominant social concept for many centuries before and for centuries after the invention of Tarot. The lowest ranking six cards of the trump sequence clearly represent this idea, with two representatives from each of the three estates. (Georges Duby, The Three Orders, 109.)
c.965 Cambrai, France
Bishop Wibold recommended the use of a dice game as a spiritual exercise. The game associated 56 clerical virtues with the 56 outcomes of three dice. At the end of the game, the players must exemplify the virtues for the rest of the day. Thierry Depaulis: “Wibold was bishop of Cambrai (northern France) in the 10th century. He devised a complicated dice game called Ludus regularis seu clericalis which was described in a Chronicle written in the following years. (This Chronicle was later edited and published in 1615.) There is a long entry on the game in Jean-Marie Lhôte’s Dictionnaire des jeux de société (1996).” Ross Caldwell has translated the entry describing Wibold’s game. The translation is online at Ludus Regularis Seu Clericalis, and includes a comment associating Wibold’s game with a 1474 Book of the Pastime of the Fortune of the Dice by Laurent L’Esprit. Laurent L’Esprit would appear to be Lorenzo Spirito, and the reference to a version of his 1482 Book of Luck.
Wibold’s game was the (remote) historical basis for the 1404 El Tablero de Jesus hoax.
Gertrude Moakley mentioned Wibold’s game in connection with the number of cards in a Tarot deck. “Why are there fifty-six suit cards, and why are there twenty-one trumps? The answer is found when we remember that cards, as a game of chance, replaced dice almost completely. In the dice games which use three dice, there are fifty-six possible throws, and with two dice twenty-one.” Naturally a great many lot books were also designed around these numbers. (M 41-42.)
Cf. Allegorical Games.
1061 Ostia, Italy
Chess became increasingly popular in Europe. “In 1061 Cardinal Damiani of Ostin forbad the clergy from playing chess.” (Cardinal Bishop Damiani of Ostia is more commonly known as Saint Peter Damian.) Chess in its various forms was repeatedly condemned or prohibited through the centuries. Most often, this referred to versions played with dice. (Religion and Chess, Bill Wall; St. Peter Damian.)
c.1150 Bingen, Germany
Saint Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) was a Benedictine abbess and visionary. She documented her allegorical and apocalyptic visions and illuminated her texts. Scivias, an abbreviation of Scito vias Domini, (“know the ways of the Lord”) was her most famous work. It described (in three books) a series of visions she had in 1141. She was very widely known, and details from the fourth vision of Book II about a Turris Ecclesia, or Tower of the Church, may have influenced the design and meaning of TdM’s Tower card, also known as the House of God.
The salient passage about the Turris Ecclesia is online at
http://www.uni-mainz.de/~horst/hildegard/documents/flanagan.html
(http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07351a.htm.)
c.1180 Cremona, Italy
“In some cases the casting of dice is found amalgamated with another method of divination, the so-called geomancy.…This pseudo-science is probably of Arabic origin and became well known in Western Europe after Gerard of Cremona (d.1187) had translated into Latin a number of treatises on geomancy, especially the Liber Alfadhol. In the latter 144 questions are found, grouped under the twelve signs of the zodiac… For each question there are twelve possible answers, which are each ascribed to an Arab…. The relevant number is found either by making dots [geomancy] or by the casting of two, three or four dice and adding up the successive casts. If the sum is not higher than 12, this is the number of the relevant answer; if it is higher, the number 12 should first be subtracted as many time as possible.… As it is well known that superstition does not like simple and straightforward methods, it is hardly surprising to see that such merging of different methods of divination into one complicated whole is often found in medieval treatises on fortune-telling.” (Braekman, 9.)
1195 Cairo, Egypt
“By 1195, the Jews were seriously involved in playing chess, but Rabbi Maimonides included chess among the forbidden games for jews.” Chess in its various forms was repeatedly condemned or prohibited through the centuries. Most often, this referred to versions played with dice, and Maimonides objection was apparently to the ludo aleae aspect. (Religion and Chess, Bill Wall; Maimonides.)
c. 1200 Paris, France
Book I of De Bestiis, ascribed to Hugo de Folieto (Hugh of Fouilloy), is an aviary, moralizing birds as a bestiary moralizes animals. It was sometimes preceded by a letter purportedly from Hugo to a Raynerus with the title Incipit libellus cuiusdam ad rainerum conversum cognomine corde benignum de quadam avium significatione mistica et morali. Hugo states that the purpose of such works is “to instruct the illiterate with pictures, and thus seek to convey the spiritual allegory graphically to minds incapable of comprehending philosophic concepts.” (Benham 21.) Didactic art in the Middle Ages was a commonplace, a pervasive reality generally associated with the subject matter people truly needed to know about, religion. Pope Gregory the Great stated in the sixth century that pictures were the books of the common man, (pictura est laicorum literatura), and painting was sometimes classified under Rhetoric among the Liberal Arts. This understanding of the function of art as didactic illustration was repeated throughout the Middle Ages, with the twelfth-century theologian Peter Comestor being among the famously quoted examples: “The paintings of the churches are in place of books to the uneducated”, quasi libri laicorum. (Catholic Encyclopedia.) In another example, “the statutes of the painter’s guild in Siena stated outright that their task was ‘the exposition of sacred writ to the ignorant who know not how to read’.” (Ross King, Michelangelo & the Pope’s Ceiling.)
c.1230 Paris, France
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Iohannes de Sacrobosco (John Holywood) an English monk and a contemporary of St. Thomas Aquinas, published a textbook on astronomy, De Sphaera. This was a widely known and influential text on the subject for several centuries, and included discussions of the three “poetic” forms of celestial rising, Cosmic, Chronic, and Heliacal. These are represented in the “Mantegna” cosmograph by corresponding allegorical figures. They were used to fill out the fourth decade, being placed beneath the seven Cardinal Virtues. An online version of De Sphaera is available at http://www.esotericarchives.com/solomon/sphere.htm.
(Shephard 52-57.)
(http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08409b.htm.)
c.1252 ?
The Franciscan John of Wales (aka, Johannes Gallensis, who taught at Oxford and Paris circa 1260-80), authored(?) a moral allegory on chess. The work appeared in a collection of sermons attributed to Pope Innocent III, circa 1300, and is referred to as the Innocent Morality. “Reduced to bare bones, here’s what the Innocent Morality had to say. To begin with, the King moves ‘in all directions’, because the King’s will is law. The Queen ‘moves aslant’ because women are greedy and underhanded. The Bishop moves obliquely, which is symbolic of the widespread misuse of the clerical office. The Knight moves both straight and oblique (one up and one angled—today we think of this as two up and one sideways) which illustrates the two faces of the knightly condition. On the one hand, the Knight ‘has the legal power of collecting rents, etc.’ but also he is guilty of ‘extortions and wrong-doings.’ The Rook moves straight—straightforward justice by the King’s officers. And the poor pawn, plodding forward one step at a time? He moves straight until he is promoted. Then he becomes as greedy and underhanded as the Queen, showing ‘how hard it is for a poor man to deal rightly when he is raised above his proper station.’ Besides these promising observations, there was one additional touch, which is good for a whole sermon all by itself: between games, all the pieces are kept together in a bag on equal terms: It is only when they are in play that there a social difference between them. When the game is over (in the next world), all will be treated equally again.” (JAF, http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Pantheon/7756/murray.html.) Cf. Allegorical Games.
1265-1272 Rome/Paris
Saint Thomas Aquinas, chief philosopher/theologian of the late-medieval Church, wrote Summa Theologica. Among other Tarot-related subjects discussed in detail in this encyclopedic work, St. Thomas presents and defends the seven Cardinal Virtues in an order of precedence which may have been reflected in the original design of Tarot, and was maintained in the TdM designs. His discussions of the individual virtues, Political and Regnative Prudence in particular, are extremely valuable. Aquinas’ Summa Theologica is available online at http://www.newadvent.org/summa/. (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14663b.htm.)
c.1275 Italy?
Dominican Jacobus de Cessolis wrote a version of the Innocent Morality. This version, titled De Moribus Hominum ed de Officiis Nobilium Super Ludo Scaccorum, was widely influential in both Latin and various translations. (JAF, http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Pantheon/7756/murray.html.) Cf. Allegorical Games.
c.1300 Mamluk, Egypt
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The Mamluk style of playing cards was probably created sometime in the thirteenth century, and is almost certainly the direct ancestor of early (see 1379) European cards. The suit-signs are very similar to the Latin suit-signs. These cards were refered to in early accounts as Saracen cards, e.g., jeu de quartes sarrasines. (P 40,
http://www.wopc.co.uk/mamluk/,
http://l-pollett.tripod.com/cards64.htm.)
1300 Lombardy, Italy
Gertrude Moakley wrote about the Popess card in the Visconti-Sforza deck: “Her religious habit shows that she is of the Umilata order, probably Sister Manfreda, a relative of the Visconti family who was actually elected Pope by the small Lombard sect of the Guglielmites. Their leader, Guglielma of Bohemia, had died in Milan in 1281. The most enthusiastic of her followers believed that she was the incarnation of the Holy Spirit, sent to inaugurate the new age of the Spirit prophesied by Joachim of Flora. They believed that Guglielma would return to earth on the Feast of Pentecost in the year 1300, and that the male dominated Papacy would then pass away, yielding to a line of female popes. In preparation for this event, they elected Sister Manfreda the first of the Popesses, and several wealthy families of Lombardy provided at great cost the sacred vessels they expected her to use when she said Mass in Rome at the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore. Naturally, the Inquisition exterminated this new sect, and the ‘Popess’ was burned at the stake in the autumn of 1300. Later, the Inquisition proceeded against Matteo Visconti, the first Duke [imperial vicar?] of Milan, for his very slight connections with the sect.” (M 72-73.)
c.1300 England?
Gesta Romanorum, a collection of moralized anecdotes, including some derivative chess allegories. “It was compiled in Latin, probably by a priest, late in the thirteenth or early in the fourteenth century. The ascription of authorship to Berchorius or Helinandus can no longer be maintained. The original object of the work seems to have been to provide preachers with a store of anecdotes with suitable moral applications… There are two versions of this long-lasting and widely distributed work (or, more accurately, collection of works). In the English version, which [chess scholar H.J.R.] Murray thinks is the oldest, it is a section entitled ‘Antonius the Emperor.’ The King is the soul, the opposing King is the Devil, and the Knight is the Christian. The Bishop (known as the ‘aufin’ or counselor) is a wise man, who can abuse his wisdom by deceit. The Rook stands for brokers and false merchants ‘that run about after winning and money, and care not how they are gotten.’ The Queen symbolizes women, who ‘go from chastitie to synne, and are taken by the devil for gloves or other such gifts.’ The pawn is, as usual, the common man, who has the potential to become a king in heaven; but once he turns aside is taken and sent to hell. In the continental version, the theme appears twice. One, called ‘The Game of Chess,’ was written before 1342, the other some time later. In that fourteenth-century section, the King is Christ and the Queen is the Soul. Knights are militant Christians—the eight squares commanded by the Knight’s move correspond to the eight Beatitudes—and Rooks are judges. One interesting passage concerns Bishops, wise men who can move three squares forward—intellect, reason, and fortitude—or backward—gluttony, robbery, and pride. Murray describes this version as ‘a hopeless muddle’ by the translator, who was apparently working from three or more sources and knew very little about chess.” (JAF, http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Pantheon/7756/murray.html,
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06539b.htm.)
Cf. Allegorical Games.
1308-1321 Ravenna, Italy
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Dante Alighieri’s Commedia was a masterpiece in a variety of ways, and has been presented as an influence on the design of Tarot by more than one author. William Marston Seabury wrote a privately printed pamphlet, The Tarot Cards and Dante’s Divine Comedy in 1951. Seabury suggested that the symbolism of the two works derived from the same source. Joseph Campbell, the renowned mythographer, had an experience reminiscent of Court de Gebelin’s epiphany, except instead of perceiving immediately their Egyptian content, in 1967 Campbell quickly perceived analogies to Dante’s Convito, La Vita Nuova, and Commedia. “A single philosophical strain, it seemed to me, could be recognized as supporting, on one hand, the mighty ediface of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy and, on the other, the enigmatic imagery of a contemporary pack of cards.” (K I:372; GT 387; Campbell & Roberts, Tarot Revelations, page 5.)
http://orb.rhodes.edu/encyclop/culture/lit/Italian/da_e_2.htm.
1310 Barcelona, Spain
“The editor ‘R.M.’ of La carte à jouer en languedoc des origines à 1800 (Toulouse, 1971), p. 7, quotes J. Amades and J. Colomines, Els Soldats i altres Papers de Rengles (Barcelona, 1933-1936, vol. II p. 7)” in regard to an extraordinarily sketchy and suspect playing-card reference in “Barcelona, where from 1310 the game of cards (naips) are forbidden by the ‘Consell de Cent’.” (Caldwell Bougearel.)
14th c. England
[IMAGE] Two manuscripts dated to 14th century England, one on vellum and one on paper, contain a versified lot book using dice. “This 14th century vellum MS contains only 74 lines of the poem: from the case 6.6.6. to the middle of the quatrain dealing with the combination 6.3.1. This fragment is the only Middle English text in a volume of Latin texts. The numerals of each cast are written in Arabic figures in the margin beside each stanza…” There are also two surviving 15th century fragments of this lot book. Braekman notes that some stanza were certainly inspired, directly or indirectly, by the Sortes Apostolorum. A page from the paper MS is shown in the image linked above. (Braekman, 17.)
1332 Vorau, Austria
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“The Etymachia is an anonymous fourteenth-century prose treatise on the seven deadly sins and seven virtues, which is remarkable primarily for its systematic comparison of each vice and virtue to a series of natural phenomena (animals, birds, or occasionally plants). Each of its fourteen chapters is similarly structured: the vice or virtue in question is first described as a personified figure riding into battle, and then natural characteristics of its mount, as well as of additional emblems on its helmet, shield, and tunic are subjected in turn to an allegorical exposition. In most cases this exposition is followed by a series of appropriate quotations, usually taken from biblical or patristic sources. In a relatively small but nevertheless important minority of manuscripts, the text of each chapter is accompanied by an illustration.… As its title suggests, the Etymachia stands broadly in the tradtion of literary battle between vices and virtues associated with the Psychomachia of Prudentius….” One author noted similarities between the animal lore of the Etymachia and the symbolism used in Carnival processions. The design is reminiscent of a medieval sermon: “Each half of the treatise could be said to begin with a thema (quotations from I Samuel and Esther respectively), which is then subjected to divisio (in each case there are seven messengers, representing respectively the seven vices and seven virtues) and dilatatio (the interpretation of each proprietas and the appending of quotations).” Hundreds of copies survive, the oldest of which is a Latin version labeled "Titulus 75" of the Lumen Anime, a sourcebook for preachers. (Nigel Harris, The Latin and German Etymachia, 1994.)
[Although the Etymachia ties in vaguely with some other topics on the list, such as the animals in illustrations of Petrarch’s Trionfi and of course the Psychomachia, it was mainly included simply because there is so little mention of its existence on the Internet.]
1337 Marseilles, France
“The lexicographer Du Cange (1678 and subsequent editions [of Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis entry re Pagina]) is the source for the 1337 entry of the Abbey de St. Victor of Marseille. He gives some of the interdictions made to the monks. Quod nulla persona audeat nec praesumat ludere ad taxillos nec ad paginas nec ad eyssychum, ‘Let no one dare or undertake to play dice, pages, or chess.’” This was reported by Henry René d’Allemagne in 1906. “D’Allemagne is sure, since playing cards were also called ‘feuillets, pages… papier à jouer’.” However, the subsequent four-decade silence about cards, combined with the obscure referent of the quote and the possible anachronistic interpolation by the seventeenth-century lexicographer all make the identification of “playing at pages” with playing cards highly inferential, bordering on far-fetched. Most contemporary playing-card historians discount the report, and the earliest generally recognized reference to playing cards is from 1371. (Caldwell Bougearel.)
1338-1374 Milan, Italy
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According to D.D. Carnicelli, Francesco Petrarch’s I Trionfi was written over a span of some thirty-six years beginning in 1338 and continuing until his death. The triumphs of Love and Chastity appear to have been originally intended as a complete work. After Laura’s death in 1348, he re-conceived the work to include triumphs commemorating her Death and proclaiming her Fame. In the final years of his life, from 1370 until his death, he wrote the triumphs of Time and Eternity. This complete cycle of Love, Death, and the ultimate triumph over Death, (rather than the transient triumph of Fame), was conceived only at the end of his life. It is this classic Triumph of Death structure which made his Triumphs the powerful and influential work of art they became. The iconographic tradition that developed was based more on this general structure than on any of the details of his poetry, and in fact the poems were largely ignored by the artists. This secondary tradition was extremely well-known and influential, and although it did not draw very directly from Petrarch, it was nonetheless extremely standardized.
The other secondary tradition was the moral allegory which was overlaid on Petrarch’s Triumphs. The first printed version of the Trionfi was in 1470, and there were over two dozen editions printed in the fifteenth century. As early as 1471 there was biographical information and some commentary added, and in 1475 there appeared an edition with the commentaries of Bernard Ilicini. This became the canonical allegorical interpretation of the Trionfi. Carnicelli notes that Bernardo treats the Triumphs as an allegory of the soul, its struggle and triumph. Bernardo took the same kind of approach as other allegorizers of the day, such as Pierre Bersuire (author of the popular Ovide moralise), and Giovanni Boccaccio. Bernardo says that Petrarch’s basic theme is “know thyself”, and he uses the triumphal pageant to create a unified allegory about the conflict between reason and passion through the different periods of a man’s life. (D.D. Carnicelli, Lord Morley’s Tryumphes of Fraunces Petrarcke.)
Gertrude Moakley argued that Petrarch’s Trionfi provided the basis for the design of the 1450 Visconti-Sforza Tarot deck. (M)
1351 Italy
Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron includes a variety of references to specific games, but says nothing of cards. (H 12; K I:34; P 35.)
1360 France
Les Amoureux Eschecs was a long, anonymous, romantic allegory of chess, set in the Garden of Pleasure. (It formed the basis of Lydgate’s 1412 allegory, Reson and sensuallyte.) A late fifteenth century allegory Romance of the Chessboard, borrowed from the influential The Romance of the Rose. Moral and romantic allegories of chess form a backdrop for the subsequent allegorical interpretation of cards. (http://www.chess-dictionary-chesmayne.net/Les-Echecs-Amoureax.htm.) Cf. Allegorical Games.
1364 St. Gallen, Germany
Ordinance “forbade dice games, and allowed board games, but left card games unmentioned” A similar ordinance in 1379 included cards. (GT 11; P 35, 37.)
1364 Paris, France
Confort d’Amy, a poem by Guillaume de Machau, “denounces gaming in general and dice in particular, but says nothing of cards.” (P 35; K I:34.)
1365 Amsterdam, Netherlands
Dummett noted that “Mr. Lex Rijnen has reported an earlier [reference to card playing], from the neighborhood of Amsterdam in about 1365, but this as yet remains unconfirmed.” Rijnen’s finding was in the Journal of the Playing-Card Society, 1975, v.IV, n.2. (GT 12.)
1360s Italy
Boccaccio’s De Casibus Virorum Illustratum (The Cases of Famous Men) was written. This seminal work established the “Fall of Princes” form of moralized biographical sketch, which essentially defined medieval tragedy and was also at the heart of the Tarot trump sequence. “It has been suggested that Boccaccio’s work might well be described as a History of Fortune, for it is a collection gathered throughout the centuries, which describe the most memorable and crushing blows that befell the illustrious personages of mythology and history, written, as the author himself declared, with the object of teaching princes the virtues of wisdom and moderation by holding up to them the examples of misfortune provoked largely by their own egotism, pride, and inordinate ambition.” (Seabury, 12.)
1366 Italy
“In his tract De remediis utriusque fortunae [Francesco] Petrarch describes all the games usual at that time without mentioning cards.” (H 12; GT 11; K I:34; P 35.) But there is more of interest here than just another indication of when playing cards were introduce to Europe. This is another of the endless examples of the popular medieval treatises on Virtue and Reason versus Fortune and Passion. Medieval writers like Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Chaucer, and many others are valued today primarily for the least characteristic aspects of their works, those elements which foreshadow later sensibilities. To a large extent these authors were more honored in their own time for those things which are rarely translated, much less actually read today; things like De Remediis. It survives in over 250 manuscripts, and consists of 254 dialogs between Reason and the passions, Hope, Fear, Joy, and Despair. De Remediis has 122 dialogs about good fortune in Book I, and 132 dialogs about bad fortune in Book II. Petrarch writes, “…there is our ever present war with Fortune, in which only virtue can make us victorious—that very virtue we willingly and wittingly neglect. We are barehanded weaklings engaged in an unequal fight with an implacable foe, who throws us up and down as if we had no weight, whirls us around, and plays with us, so that defeat would be easier to bear than such continued mockery.” This harkens back directly to Prudentius and the earliest medieval allegory, as well as Boethius and Jean de Meun, among the most popular and influential.
1367 Berne, Switzerland
Early prohibition of playing cards, kartenspil, mentioned in a 1398 document. Kaplan reproduces part of the document, in which the term is clearly legible. The finding has been disputed, since “we only have a copy of the 1367 ordinance from a compilation made in 1398, and Dr. Rosenfeld gives detailed grounds for thinking the mention of card playing to be an insertion at a later date. On this he seems to have the better argument….” According to Alain Bourgearel (p.c.) Detlef Hoffmann concluded in 1998 that there were better reasons to accept the 1367 date. (GT 11-12; K I:24.)
1369 England
Geoffrey Chaucer wrote about games, including those played by the Knight in the Canterbury Tales, and in The Book of the Duchess, but says nothing about cards. (K I:34; P 35.)
1369 Paris, France
Ordinance forbade various games, but did not mention cards. A similar ordinance in 1377 included cards. (P 35, 37; GT 11; K I:24.)
1371 Catalonia, Spain
The earliest reference to cards in Europe, “it first appears as naip in a Catalan document of 1371.” This reference comes from a 1989 article in the Journal of the International Playing Card Society, by Luis Monreal, which post-dates most of the other sources used for this list. (P 36.) This reference appeared in the Diccionari de rims commissioned by Peter IV, King of Aragon. (Ortalli, 175.) Earlier references exist, some of which may in fact be legitimate, but all of which appear disputed as spurious by at least some contemporary playing-card historians.
1377 Florence, Italy
Ordinance concerning cards, naibbe, naibbi. This source refers to cards as “a certain game called naibbe, newly introduced in these parts”. (GT 11, 44; K I:24.) Playing “cards were to be treated just as strictly as gambling.” (Ortalli, 175.)
1377 Basel, Switzerland
Dominican Johannes von Rheinfelden authored the essay Tractatus de moribus et disciplina humanae conversationis, although this dating is suspect. Surviving copies date from 1429. See Tractatus de moribus.
1377 Paris, France
Ordinance prohibiting “card-play in contexts clearly directed at the working classes”. A similar ordinance from 1369 did not mention cards. (P 35, 37; GD 10.)
1377 Siena, Italy
Ordinance concerning cards, naibi. (GT 10, 44, Ortalli 175.)
1378 Regensburg (Ratisbon), Germany
Ordinance “declares various games, including ‘spilen mid der quarten’, [playing with cards] punishable by fine if played for stakes higher than those expressly permitted.” (P 36; GT 10; B 29, Ortalli 175-6.)
1379 Viterbo, Italy
Cola di Covelluzzo’s Viterbo Chronicle reports, “In the year 1379 there was brought to Viterbo the game of cards, which in the Saracen language is called nayb.” In fifteenth-century Italy, in France, and in Spain from 1371 to this day, cards were referred to as naibi, nahipi, naips, naipes, naibbe, naibbi. (GT 11, 43-44; K I:32; P 36; Ortalli 176; HG 224.)
1379 Brabant, Belgium
Account-book of the duke of Brabant, Wenceslaus of Luxembourg and his wife Johanna, “describes a fete held at Brussels in 1379 at which cards were played.” There is also an entry noting the purchase of a deck of cards, quartspel mette copen. (K I:24; GT 10, 65; P 37; B 64; Ortalli 176.)
1379 St. Gallen, Germany
Ordinance prohibiting “card-play in contexts clearly directed at the working classes”. A similar ordinance from 1364 did not mention cards. (P 35, 37; GD 10-11; Ortalli 176.)
1379 Constance, Germany
Unspecified reference to cards. (GT 10.)
1380 Barcelona, Spain
Inventory of a Barcelona merchant, Nicolas Sarmona, includes a reference to “a game of cards comprising forty-four pieces”. (K II:1.; Simon Wintle)
1380 Nuremberg, Germany.
Unspecified reference to cards. (GT 10; B 29?; Ortalli 176.)
1380 Perpignan, France
Rodrigo Borges was described as “pintor y naipero”, painter of cards, and is the earliest named card-maker. (GT 10; Simon Wintle, http://www.wopc.co.uk/history/earlyrefs.html.)
1381 Marseilles, France
“A certain Jacques Jean (son of a Marseilles merchant) bound for Alexandria, Egypt, pledged to his friends Honorat d’Abe and Micolas Miol, before a notary, not to gamble or play games of chance on his journey: primarily taxilli (the greatly condemned dice), but also scaqui (i.e. chess which actually enjoyed a good reputation) and nahipi. The pledge to forsake gambling was a well-known obligation in Mediaeval juridical practice, especially as far as dice were concerned. But here the novelty was the inclusion of cards among the unacceptable games.” (Ortalli 176; K I:24; B 45) This item comes from “the records of Laurent Aycardi, a notary of Marseilles.” (HG 224.)
1382 Barcelona, Spain
Prohibition of gambling, including naypes. “The decree was read by the town crier in the streets of Barcelona: Uno gos jugar a nengun joch de daus, ni de taules, ni de naips.” (K II:1; Ortalli 176.)
1382 Lille, France
Prohibition of dice and cards (quartes). “No one from then on must dare either by day or night play as dez, as taules, as quartes, ne a nul autre geu quelconques”. (K I:24; GT 10; B 45; Ortalli 176.)
1384 Valencia, Spain
“In 1384 the Valencia Consejo general forbade un novel joch appellat dels naips”, a new game called naips. (Ortalli 176; GT 10-11.)
1384 Nuremberg, Germany
A manuscript notes the “widespread adoption of the new game throughout Europe”. Dummett reports this, noting that he was unable to confirm it. (GT 11; B 29.)
1387 Castile, Spain
“An edict by King John I includes cards among prohibited games.” (Ortalli, 176.)
1389 Zurich, Switzerland
Prohibition against cards. (Ortalli 176.)
1390 Holland
Prohibition against cards. (Ortalli 176.)
1391 Augsburg, Germany
Prohibition against cards. (Ortalli 176.)
1391 Santa Maria a Monte, Italy
A 1391 ordinance forbade various games, but still did not mention cards. However, they were forbidden in a 1396 ordinance. The 1396 prohibition was lifted in 1419, but reinstated in 1445, indicating the ambivalence with which cards were viewed. (Ortalli 177.)
1392 Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Prohibition against cards. (Ortalli 176.)
1392 Willisau, Switzerland
“The Karnöffelzunft Willisau is a Fastnachtsverein in Suisse, Willisau being a location near to Lucern. Interestingly, the Karnöffelzunft knows an otherwise rather unknown playing card legend, called the Heilig-Blut-Legende: At the 9th of July 1392 in Willisau three guys played with cards. Ulj Schröter, one of the three, lost all his money at that occasion. With a curse he threw his dagger against the heaven and after that 5 drops of blood fell on the table. The blasphemer is caught by the devil, the other try to clean the table without effort, finally they also die. A still existing chapel (Heilig-Blut-Kapelle) and a yearly procession reminds the bloody case. The precise date and the related name suggest, that there was a real murderous action at the 9th of July 1392 in Willisau and probably also the involvement of playing cards in the matter refers to a true, not legendary fact at the event.” (Trionfi.com Tarot News of early playing-card history.)
1392 France
Account book for King Charles VI, “Given to Jacquemin Gringonneur, painter, for three packs of cards, gilt and colored, and variously ornamented, for the amusement of the king, fifty-six sols of Paris.” These are not the so-called Gringonneur cards, aka Charles VI cards, which are a late fifteenth-century Ferrarese Tarot deck. These three decks might be better compared to the 1440 Marziano da Tortona deck. (K I:24; GT 65-66; P 37.)
1393 Milan, Italy
Timothy Betts suggests that “evidence for the true meaning of hanging upside down comes from a 1393 decree for Milan and Lombardy: ‘Let him be drug on a [wooden] plank at a horse’s tail to the place of execution, and there be suspended by one foot to the gallows, and be left there until he is dead. As long as he lives let him be given food and drink.’ This is one of the Visconti’s torture-punishments, of which the forty-day execution (quarantena) for high treason was the most cruel and infamous. (B 278.)
Chronicle di Giovani Morelli “contains a warning against the use of dice by children. Morelli describes naibi as a kind of game, and from the context it appears it was one which only children played, possibly for instructive purposes.” (K I:24.) Hargrave quotes the passage: “Play not at games of chance or at dice. Play the games which are for children, les osselets, les fers, les naibis.” (HG 224.) Ortalli refers to Morelli’s “Ricordi —memoirs written between 1393 and 1421”. (Ortalli 181.) Compare this with the 1424 Ferrara reference to acquiring decks for children, and the 1516 entry.
1395 Milan, Italy
The Holy Roman Emperor Wenceslaus appointed Giangaleazzo Visconti the first Duke of Milan, (for the price of 100,000 florins). “The formal coronation of Giangaleazzo as duke of Milan took place on a Sunday morning, September 5, 1395, at the square in front of the ancient basilica of San Ambrogio…. Thus, the title, imperial vicar of Milan, was replaced by the title of duke….” This was later to be reflected in heraldry included on Visconti Tarot decks. (K:II 72.)
1395 Bologna, Italy
“A certain Federico of German origin, suspected of pushing counterfeit coins in Bologna in 1395, also sold cartas figuratas et pictas ad imagines et figuras sanctorum.” (Ortalli 197.)
1396 Catalonia, Spain
“Another reference to playing cards in Catalonia occurs in the libre de les Dones, which Francesc Eiximenis dedicated to the Countess of Prades in 1396.” (Ortalli 175.)
1396 Santa Maria a Monte, Italy
Prohibition against naibi, “albeit with a fine of only 20 soldi compared to the 3 lire for other games.” Cf. 1391, 1419, or 1445. (Ortalli 177.)
1396 Paris France
“At the French court a hawker or maker of cases, Guion Groslet appears in the account books of 1396 for having sold an estuy for the cards of Queen Isabelle of Bavaria (Charles VI’s wife).” (Ortalli 178.)
1397 Paris, France
Prohibition against card playing. (K I:24.) This may be the same prohibition referred to by Ortalli, “when the prevot of Paris forbade the gens de metier from playing cards on working days.” (Ortalli 178.) A prohibition directed at the working class indicates that cards were readily obtainable and relatively cheap, and therefore must have been made with stencil, printing, or other relatively cheap means.
1397 Ulm, Germany
Prohibition against card playing. (K I:24.)
1398 Paris, France
“…the prévôt of Paris forbade the gens de métier from playing cards on working days.” (Ortalli 178.)
1398 San Pietro, Italy
“…in 1398 at San Pietro in Mercato, a few miles outside Florence, the punishment for playing naibi was 20 soldi compared to 30 for other forbidden games, while at Campi in 1410 it was as little as half.” (Ortalli 177.)
c.1400 Mamluk, Egypt
“The future Sultan al-Malik al-Mu’ayyud is recorded to have won a large sum of money in a game of cards in about the year 1400”. (GT 42.)
c.1400 Mamluk, Egypt
A nearly complete deck (47 cards) from this provenance was found in the Topkapi Sarayi Museum in Istanbul, Turkey. As reconstructed, it was a 52-card deck “virtually identical with the Italian variety of the Latin-suited pack”. (P 40; K I:53, 56; H 19.)
c.1400 Leyden, Holland
“There is similar evidence [of playing card purchase] for the Dutch court at the time of Albert of Bavaria (died 1404), despite the repressive measures introduced for the country of Holland and the city of Leyden in 1390-1397.” (Ortalli 178.)
1401 Barcelona, Spain
“The painted Mamluk-type cards were certainly imitated by the Italians, but there is also a reference, in 1401, to a pack of large, painted, gilded cards in the property of a Barcelona merchant.” (Wintle 7)
1402 Ulm, Germany.
Cardmaker (kartenmacher) mentioned as profession in registry. (Betts, 109.)
1403 Aragon, Spain
The King of Aragon, Martin el Humano, requested some playing cards, un joch de naips. (Ortalli 178.)
1404 Langres, France
“…at the Langres Synod cards were on the list of prohibited games. And preachers did not hesitate to adopt very severe positions on this subject.” (Ortalli 176, K I:26.)
1404 Granada, Spain
A dice game, known as El Tablero de Jesus (or El Tablero, or simply Tablero), “is known to have been played by the Cistercian monks in the Abbey of Los Santos de Campo in Granada as early as 1404, and may well have been invented by one of the brothers there.” That, and many other interesting details are “known” about Tablero, (including surviving game boards and even a papal ban!), and this information had been widely disseminated in the SCA community, (Society for Creative Anachronism—participant medievalists), where Tablero was played as a legitimate period game. In early 2000 however, Thierry Depaulis did some homework… and it turned out that all the “facts” establishing Tablero were fiction. Not a single primary source historical reference to El Tablero could be tracked down, some of the details (such as the fictional Pope Sylvester V) were clearly bogus, and nothing at all appeared to refer to the game before the 1970s. An actual dice game, dating from circa 965, provided a kind of historical precedent for the fictional Tablero, although the games are completely different. This wonderful hoax illustrates how many traditional “facts” (viz. occult bullshit) about Tarot and its history became established—someone just made this stuff up, and others repeated it. (El Tablero de Jesus) Cf. Allegorical Games.
1405 Bologna, Italy
In 1405 Baldassar Cossa, papal legate in Bologna from 1405 to 1411, put a tax of 14 soldi on carte da zugare a naibi. (Caldwell, from Orioli 1908 “Sulle carte da giuoco a Bologna nel secolo XV”, Il Libro e la Stampa, n.s. II, pp. 109-119.)
1408 Orleans, France
Inventory of the Duke and Duchess of Orleans, listing “ung jeu de quartes sarrasines and unes quartes de Lombardie (‘one pack of Saracen cards; one cards of Lombardy’)”. (GT 42.)
1408 Paris, France
Court records describe con artists using cards in a simple scam “with a psychological resemblance to Three-card Monte.” (Giobbi; P 73.)
1410 Campi, Italy
“…in 1398 at San Pietro in Mercato, a few miles outside Florence, the punishment for playing naibi was 20 soldi compared to 30 for other forbidden games, while at Campi in 1410 it was as little as half.” (Ortalli 177.)
1414 Barcelona, Spain
Multiple inventories referring to Moorish cards: “j joch de nayps moreschs” and “j joch de nahyps moreschs”, both meaning “1 pack of Moorish playing cards”. (GT 42.)
c.1414-1495? Barcelona, Spain
“…the ‘Moorish’ sheet of cards in the Instituto Municipal de Historia was manufactured in Spain, possibly by a Catalan card-maker, to cater for Moorish tastes in playing-cards, but who inadvertently contaminated the cards with stylistic features of his own, such as leaves and spiral scroll borders, which are often seen in European mediaeval manuscript decorations. We appear at last to have an example of a design that was in use alongside the ‘ordinary’ Spanish pattern of the time, in all probability a popular, cheaper version of what the Mamluk cards is a luxury, hand-painted version of.” (Simon Wintle, “A ‘Moorish’ Sheet of Playing Cards”, The Playing Card, IPCS, v.XV, n.4, May 1987.)
c.1415 Bologna, Italy
A portrait of Prince Fibbia, dating from the later seventeenth century, bears an inscription identifying him as “inventor of the game of Tarocchino in Bologna”. This apparently legendary attribution appears to be a Fibbia family tradition, intended to explain their arms on some Bolognese cards by attributing the game to Prince Francesco Antelminelli Castracani Fibbia (1360 - 1419). (K I:32 -33, II:2, GT 66-67.)
1418 Augsburg, Germany
Cardmaker (kartenmacher) mentioned as profession in registry. (Betts, 109.)
1419 Santa Maria a Monte, Italy
A 1391 ordinance forbade various games, but still did not mention cards. However, they were forbidden in a 1396 ordinance. The 1396 prohibition was lifted in 1419, but reinstated in 1445, indicating the ambivalence with which cards were viewed. (Ortalli 177.)
1422 Florence, Italy
The first mention of playing cards in Florence names Iacobo di Bartolomeo Sagramoro, a painter frequently employed by the Este, who was owed 6 lire for repairing four decks (painting the backs red) and making thirteen replacement cards from scratch, five of them with figures and eight with pips. “Since old packs were being repaired in 1422, we can reasonably suppose that the games concerned had already taken root for sometime. Nonetheless, the date is relatively late compared to the above-mentioned cases at the courts of Holland, France or Brabant.” After this date, however, Florentine references abound. Sagramoro is also mentioned as the card painter in the earliest reference to Tarot, in 1442. (Ortalli 179-180.)
1423 Florence/Ferrara, Italy
The Ferrarese “Marchesa Parisina Malatesti, Niccolo III’s second wife, ordered that the [Florentine] painter Giovanni dalla Gabella be paid the handsome sum of forty gold ducats for a valuable pack of cards, decorated with gold and brazil [‘the red color extracted from brazilwood’] and fine ultramarine blue [from ‘the very expensive lapis lazuli’ stone]…. This was clearly a work of the highest standard, given the price and the value of the materials….” (Ortalli 180.)
1423 Florence/Ferrara, Italy
Another restoration job by Sagramoro: “he had to repair the back, fix the corners, glue down where necessary and make two new cards. All for the relatively paltry sum of three lire marchesane, but confirming a very abundant use of cards continually in need of repairing.”(Ortalli 180.)
1423 Florence/Ferrara, Italy
“…again the Marchesa Parisina wrote to Florence to obtain ‘a pack of VIII imperadori cards made with fine gold’…. The cost of this pack on the Florence market was seven florins and then there was the expense of bringing them to Ferrara, but there was nothing exceptional about all this…. What is really important is that this is the earliest mention of the game of imperatori, suggesting that not only the cards, but also a new way of playing had been imported from Florence.” (Ortalli 180; Caldwell.)
1423 Bologna, Italy
A famous (but unrecorded) sermon was preached by the Franciscan St. Bernardino of Siena. A bonfire of vanities, including playing cards, was prompted by the sermon. The well-known cardmaker’s tale, probably apocryphal, is also attached to this Bolognese sermon. Destitute because of Bernardine’s success, the cardmaker lamented to Bernardino: “My Father, I make cards, and I have no other trade. In preventing the exercise of my art, you remove the means of earning my livelihood and supporting my family.” Bernardine instructed him to paint a radiant sun with the “monogram of Christ”, IHS. The cardmaker grew rich selling the image. Ross Caldwell (citing Thierry Depaulis) notes that “The earliest versions talk of tabulas lusorias, which means ‘gaming boards’, i.e. backgammon or the like. It seems a biographer changed it to carte da giuocare in the 16th century.”
St. Bernardino preached against games throughout his career, and his sermon Contra alearum ludos (written circa 1430?) is included (Sermo XLII) in his collection of Latin sermons, Quadragesimale de christiana religione. His disciple, John Capistran, preached a similar sermon in 1452. Also see the 1497 Savonarola entry. (Ross Caldwell, p.c.; Betts 109; St. Bernardine of Siena.)
1424 Ferrara, Italy
The Marchesa Parisina ordered two packs of inexpensive cards “sent to be used by our girls”. (Ortalli 181.) Compare with the 1393 Morelli entry and the 1516 Ferrara entry, also referring to cards for children.
1426 Nördlingen, Germany
Karnöffel, “a celebrated game in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Germany”, was the first known game using trumps. In the earliest known reference to Karnöffel, it was “listed in a municipal ordinance of Nördlingen in 1426 as among the games that could lawfully be played at the annual city fête.” W.L. Schreiber also noted that it was “a trick-taking game played by soldiers and peasants rather than the upper crust.” (GT 184; P 165; Betts 321; WPC 42.) See Karnöffel; see also Allegorical Games.
1427 Bologna, Italy
John of Cologne (Giovanni di Colonia), son of John “who makes pictured playing cards” (qui facit cartesellas depictas ad ludendum) is noted as having injured another cardmaker, Giovanni da Bologna, in a fight. The fight was resolved in the house of another cardmaker in Bologna, Nicolo da Fabriano. (Caldwell, from Orioli 1908 “Sulle carte da giuoco a Bologna nel secolo XV”, Il Libro e la Stampa, n.s. II, pp. 109-119.)
1427 Tournai, Belgium
“Tournai was a centre of the arts, where numerous artists and craftsmen resided. Many of these also made playing cards for the then flourishing trade. In 1427 there were two master card-makers in Tournai, Michael Noel and Philippe du Bos. They formed a guild and each registered his chosen mark: one was a rose, the other a wild boar. Each master card-maker had as his helpers those who prepared the colours, les broyeurs; those who applied the colours, les bruneteurs; and those who prepared the paper, les carteurs. Their duties were clearly defined by the rules of the guild, which also stipulated which colours were to be used. The register contains the names of many women who worked at the making of cards.” (Simon Wintle, http://www.wopc.co.uk/history/earlyrefs.html)
1429 Basle, Switzerland?
The earliest surviving copy of Brother John’s Tractatus de moribus et disciplina humanae conversationis, ostensibly a copy of an original dated 1377. There are additional copies dating from 1472. See Tractatus de moribus.
1430 Florence, Italy
Antonio di Giovanni di ser Franceso was listed as a naibaio by trade. “In the portata d’estimo of 1430, he declared many woodcuts for cards and pictures of saints—tante forme di legname da naibi e da santi.” (Ortalli 197.)
c.1430 Stuttgart, Germany
Decks with animal and bird suit-symbols are popular in Germany. Also from the mid fifteenth century are some copper-engraved decks with animal, birds, and flowers as suit-symbols. This is the tradition of the 1544 Virgil Solis deck, and the 1557 Caitlin Geofroy Tarot’s suit cards, and related to the hunting-themed decks. (GT 14; K I:12, 59.)
c.1430s Ferrara, Italy
Marchese “Niccolo III had a small parchment volume: libro de piccolo volume de carte de piegora che insegn’a zugare a scachi, tavole, merlero et a la volpe. This was surely a games rules booklet.” (Ortalli 182.)
1434 Florence/Ferrara, Italy
Marchese Niccolo III of Ferrara “paid 7 gold florins to have two packs of cards sent from Florence.” These might well have been more carte da imperatori, like those purchased from Florence in 1423. (Ortalli 181.)
c.1435 Alsace, France.
[IMAGE] Meister Ingold wrote Das Guldin Spiel, (The Golden Game). About chess: “Johannes Ingold, a Dominican from what is now Germany (died 1465), in his work was especially concerned with the Seven Deadly Sins, illustrating each with a game. Besides chess, he refers to cards, music, shooting, dancing, and several games of chance. In his outline, the King is Reason, the Queen Will, the Bishop Memory, the Knight a warrior, and the Rook a judge. The pawns are the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Then he takes a second pass at the subject, equating the King with Christ, the Queen with Mary, the Bishop with patriarchs and prophets, the Knights with martyrs, the Rook the apostles, and pawns men on earth.” (JAF.) About cards: “From [The Golden Game] we learn that the 52 cards of the pack represent the 52 weeks of the year in which we fall into sin, the sins in question being symbolized by the four suits (roses, crowns, pennies, rings) and thirteen ranks depicted on the cards. We also learn that the ranks represent various medieval characters who ‘win’ one another in a given order of precedence, suggesting the mechanics of a trick-taking game—possibly Karnöffel.” (P 51; GT 15; B 29; Ortalli 199.)
1435 Rome, Italy.
“…in the Constitutions on the Chapters of the cathedrals of Pope Eugene IV in 1435, we learn that even canons played cards in the choirs of churches.” (Ortalli 198.)
1436 Ferrara, Italy
In a list of jobs done by a woodworker, reference is made to a torchiolo da carte. “This small card press is the first evidence of the Este court’s dealings with manufactured printed playing cards as opposed to entirely hand-drawn and painted cards. And given the very low price of the packs sent to Parisina at Portomaggiore for her daughters in 1424, they could not have been hand-made….” (Ortalli 181.)
By putting those two facts together, Ortalli suggests that not only were printed cards available in the 1420s, but that they were being created within the Ferrarese court in the 1430s. “…in 1436 the press for making cards was purchased directly by the Este.”
1437 Ferrara, Italy
“At least three packs of rather ordinary carthexele (2 lire each)” were commissioned from the painter Iacobo Sagramoro. For one of the decks it was noted that it had been ordered on behalf of the Marchese. “The relatively modest price (2 lire) compared to the price of hand-made cards suggests that the painter coloured and added the finishing touches to cards printed on the [1436 entry] press.” (Ortalli 181, 182.)
1437 Ferrara, Italy
“Two new packs with green and red marbled backs” were commissioned from the painter Jacopo di Bartolomeo Busoli, along with some repair work on other cards, “all for 6 lire”. (Ortalli 181.)
1439 Barcelona, Spain
Inventory referring to Moorish cards: “x jochs de naips moreschs” and “iij altres jochs de naips plans petits”, meaning “10 packs of Moorish playing cards” and “3 other packs of small playing cards”. (GT 42.)
15th c. England
“One of the best-known Middle English poems of fortune-telling is Ragman roll, which Thomas Wright printed in 1844 from MS Fairfax 16, in which one of the two MS versions preserved at the Bodleian Library is found. The poem seems to have been used for the social entertainment of ladies. It consists of 26 stanzas of eight lines each and was written in the 15th century. Ragman roll is closely related and no doubt heavily indebted to a 13th century French satirical poem in quatrains called Rageman le bon which Wright printed from the Bodleian MS Digby 86, together with the English version. According to Johan Vising Rageman is the Devil; in his opinion the French poem should be regarded as a kind of “bestourne”, a fantastical or nonsense poem about “the good Devil”. This is an attractive interpretation of the name, but the etymology of Rageman remains a vexed problem, and Vising’s hypothesis has not gone unchallenged. The means of selecting the stanza was provided by coloured threads or ribbons fastened to them. These threads hung out of the closed book and the enquirer was invited to pick one at random; then the book was opened at the page the chosen thread indicated, and the stanza to which it was fastened was read out. This means of deciding which answer is the relevant one recalls the 13th century Provencal version of the famous Sortes apostolorum which has already been mentioned.” (Braekman, 13-14.)
Page 1: Before there was Tarot
Page 2: First Century of Tarot– Pt.1
Page 3: First Century of Tarot– Pt.2
Page 4: 2nd & 3rd Centuries of Tarot
Page 5: Modern (Occult) Tarot