Re: Imperatori sources and discussion

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Thanks for your answer, Phaeded!

I respond point by point:
Phaeded wrote: 21 May 2022, 18:29 Why is Florence necessary as a diffusion point into the Upper Rhine?
I did not want to say that Florence is a diffusion point into the Upper Rhine. I wanted to point at the fact, that if Florence as a capital of the world --or one capital of the world-- is no longer a place for selling cards due to the ban from March 1377 onwards, the already produced cards have to be sold elsewhere. And if I were a merchant in these days, I would try to sell them as far away as the negative effects of card playing are not already known - I would try to sell them north of the Alps, using the well known trading routes open in summer 1377: the Arlberg pass and the Brenner pass. The first leads to the lake of Constance and the Upper Rhine, the second leads over Innsbruck to München, Augsburg and Regensburg and Nürnberg.

At least for me striking is that the earliest mentions of cards in Germany follow exactly this pattern: Constance and Upper Rhine region (Freiburg with JvR saying that the cards arrived in 1377, then the bans in Constance and St. Gallen in 1379 (and later the Zürich ban in 1389)), and the Regensburg ban in 1378, followed by the Nürnberg ban in 1380 (and later the Augsburg ban in 1391). It is clearly the routes over the Arlberg and the Brenner pass, if the cards came from the Italian south.
Phaeded wrote: 21 May 2022, 18:29 The game is already varied and well known there by 1377, re. JvR.
Sorry Phaeded, but even if I place myself against the common opinion: I don't buy this story anymore (and this is not one of my far too fast comments, I meditate on JvR now for quite a long time). The longer I reflect on JvR, the longer it seems to me that he invents all of these different variants. We should not forget that his main verb is "adaptari", he adapts. He does so because he allegorizes, this is what he clearly says.

And if you read Kopp's literature on it, then Kopp writes more or less nearly every second paragraph that JvR could have invented the content if we would not know it better - but who knows it better? I don't. And third: the early Swiss cards reported in Kopps work don't have a queen, they all stick to early structure with king, ober and unter, the Mamluk form. It is simply not at all plausible -at least for me-- that all of these variants should be lost and the Swiss somehow should have stuck only with the earliest Mamluk variant by pure chance. In this light, if you read JvR very closely then you can even follow his way of adaptation: he first introduces the queens as in chess, and then goes for his preferred variant including the maiden. And if you read him closely, the he really puts a lot of effort in justifying the queens (and the maiden), it is not at all that he goes over his introduction of the queens as if it would be clear that queens should be there. By that, he changes the game from a war game to a court game - which fits to the moral goal he has (this is the title of his work).

I do want to raise the conjecture, that JvR wrote his book --the literary form it is not at all a treatise, it is a book-- in two steps: first as a tractatus in the first part containing the first five sections, and then, after getting in contact with de Cessolis, he wrote the 6th section of part 1 and then part 2 and part 3. The latter are clearly based upon the knowledge of de Cessolis, he copies his structure and style (this is common knowledge and I also wrote about this in this very forum). And de Cessolis clearly classifies his work as a book ("liber" in latin) - so if JvR would have known de Cessolis from the beginning, he would also have classified his work as a book. Furthermore this two step -procedure helps to clarify all the content-wise contradictions within the text (as e.g. the children playing with cards in the streets in 1377, which is impossible if the cards just arrived in Freiburg).

We should not forget that both were Dominicans, highly trained scholastic monks, and their trained philosophy is mainly the very form-oriented Aristoteles. Perhaps they might report wrongly the number of angels on a needle tip, but certainly they don't spoil the form of a literary product. Scripture is holy for them, and treatises were first short tracts coming from sermon and having the length of a sermon.

I know that I have to show this in detail, but there is still something I do not grasp, which makes me reflecting on and on…

Perhaps: even if you don’t find it plausible what I am trying to say, could we just go on based on the hypothesis, that it could be as I say? Then there might be new insights which otherwise don’t show up…

It is very interesting what you write in
Phaeded wrote: 21 May 2022, 18:29
The preconditions of manuscript production and nascent woodblock printing, albeit of a religious nature:
[...]

But what we have here in the cities of the Upper Rhine is an interest in novel print productions just as cards arrive. One of their texts even lends itself to the idea of pips: The Book of the Nine Rocks uses the metaphor of jumping from rock to rock to illustrate the soul’s journey to God.

I'm still of the opinion that the Dominicans seemed less obsessed with controlling cards than the Franciscans (e.g., St. Bernardino of Siena). In addition to the Friends of Gods, consider the very card-like illustrations of The Speculum Humanae Salvationis or Mirror of Human Salvation (Witz does a painting based on them - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Knigh ... avid_Water - and of course, cards), of which scholars believe the author was a cleric, and there is evidence he was a Dominican:
There are, however, good reasons to place the origin of the text in a previous hit Dominican monastery. In Chapter III, the Immaculate Conception is described in accordance with the doctrines of the Dominican Order; Chapter XXXVII tells of the vision of St. Dominic; Chapter XXX includes the theory of the sanctification before birth expressed by St. Thomas Aquinas, a previous hit Dominican next hit, and special honor is also paid to him in Chapter XLII").(Wilson, Adrian, and Joyce Lancaster Wilson, A Medieval Mirror. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984: 10, 27)
.

It is of course no wonder in this milieu that JvR - a Dominican in Freiburg - writes a religious allegorical interpretation of cards. I just don't see why we need Florence here.
Thanks for pointing to Witz and his card-making again and to JvR writing allegorically on cards. And we do not need Florence, as I tried to explain above.

I am interested also in your version of
Phaeded wrote: 21 May 2022, 18:29
I'll take it up in a separate post, but the Knights Hospitallers - a means for the acquisition of playing cards from Mamluk Alexandria - had a chapter house (commandery) near Freiburg and indeed a concentration of such chapters in the Upper Rhine (and Florence had plenty of commercial connections with the Hospitallers' base in Rhodes, but that merely points to the ultimate diffusion point).

Phaeded

Meanwhile, I will try to find another explanation which does not need the sack of Alexandria 1365, this seem to me a too long time to 1377. I try to find a shorter variant (hopefully not only producing fantasy...)

Re: Imperatori sources and discussion

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vh0610 wrote: 22 May 2022, 21:02
Phaeded wrote: 21 May 2022, 18:29 The game is already varied and well known there by 1377, re. JvR.
Sorry Phaeded, but even if I place myself against the common opinion: I don't buy this story anymore (and this is not one of my far too fast comments, I meditate on JvR now for quite a long time). The longer I reflect on JvR, the longer it seems to me that he invents all of these different variants. We should not forget that his main verb is "adaptari", he adapts. He does so because he allegorizes, this is what he clearly says.

And if you read Kopp's literature on it, then Kopp writes more or less nearly every second paragraph that JvR could have invented the content if we would not know it better - but who knows it better? I don't. And third: the early Swiss cards reported in Kopps work don't have a queen, they all stick to early structure with king, ober and unter, the Mamluk form. It is simply not at all plausible -at least for me-- that all of these variants should be lost and the Swiss somehow should have stuck only with the earliest Mamluk variant by pure chance.
And yet the oldest hand-painted luxury deck, the Stuttgart, has two suits of all women, which comes close to the vaguely defined variant in JvR: "...one in which two of the suits have Kings and the other two Queens...."

He doesn't say the entirety of 2 suits is one gender and the other two suits is the other gender, but nothing he says rules that out; and that is what the Stuttgart court cards show, while otherwise keeping to the mamluk pattern of three court cards per suit.

I do agree that the persistence of the "common" Mamluk deck format does not get discussed enough, nor the distinguishing feature of the "knaves"/marshalli holding "signs" up or down, but JvR was spot in describing that in accordance with several surviving early decks.

Phaeded

PS Still writing/editing the Hospitaller angle

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Thanks Phaeded for the answer!
Phaeded wrote: 22 May 2022, 23:49
And yet the oldest hand-painted luxury deck, the Stuttgart, has two suits of all women, which comes close to the vaguely defined variant in JvR: "...one in which two of the suits have Kings and the other two Queens...."


He doesn't say the entirety of 2 suits is one gender and the other two suits is the other gender, but nothing he says rules that out; and that is what the Stuttgart court cards show, while otherwise keeping to the mamluk pattern of three court cards per suit.

Sorry, Phaeded, but for me this statement does not justify the validity of JvR's description in 1377 in the sense that the described decks were really there. For me, it is rather the other way round:

The Stuttgart is from ca. 1430

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuttgarter_Kartenspiel

Das Kartenspiel ist 1427 bis 1431 entstanden [...]. Über seinen Entstehungsort können nur Vermutungen angestellt werden.

1958 gelang Gerhard Piccard durch den Nachweis von Wasserzeichen einer Ravensburger Papiermühle auf den Spielkarten eine nicht nur zeitliche, sondern auch regionale Zuordnung in den schwäbischen Raum bis Nürnberg, Augsburg und Zürich. Von Spielkartenforschern wird das prächtig gemalte Spiel mit Künstlern in Verbindung gebracht, die Bücher illustrierten oder Altarbilder herstellten, so z. B. mit dem Umfeld der Malschule Konrad Witz in Basel. [...]


[The card game was created between 1427 and 1431 [...]. Only assumptions can be made about its place of origin.

In 1958, Gerhard Piccard succeeded in not only chronologically but also regionally assigning the game to the Swabian region up to Nuremberg, Augsburg and Zurich by proving the watermark of a Ravensburger paper mill on the playing cards. The richly painted game is associated by playing card researchers with artists who illustrated books or made altarpieces, e.g. with the environment of the painting school Konrad Witz in Basel. [...]
]
Note that Konrad Witz shows up again and also Basel shows up again, even if there is no final proof for Witz. [And Gerhard Piccard is the watermark researcher with whom Rosenfeld published on dating of cards].

What we certainly know, is that JvR wrote in 1377 and that the Basel version of his tractatus is from 1429, exactly the time the Stuttgart was painted, perhaps by Konrad Witz in Basel. But if the Stuttgart is not from Konrad Witz, then at least it is the Swabian Region, note that Ravensburg is not too far away from Constance and Basel. We know from history, that JvR's book was quite well known in his time, otherwise we would not have had 5 surviving copies --- and Master Ingold wrote his Golden Game with direct reference to JvR in 1432 in Alsace region, not too far from Basel also.

Hence, my conclusion is: the Stuttgart painter did read JvR or knew of him -[or had other influences e.g. from Italy, the Constance Council is already over and all developments meanwhile in Northern Italy could have come back over the Alps].

In other words: between JvR and Stuttgart are ca. 50 years full of evolution in cards - the structure of the Stuttgart does not at all tell us something about the validity of JvR’s description.

Hence I read
Phaeded wrote: 22 May 2022, 23:49
He doesn't say the entirety of 2 suits is one gender and the other two suits is the other gender, but nothing he says rules that out; and that is what the Stuttgart court cards show, while otherwise keeping to the mamluk pattern of three court cards per suit.

[..] but JvR was spot in describing that in accordance with several surviving early decks.
the other way round: the painter of the early decks (which are in accordance with JvR) all knew JvR's tractatus, since they are all much later, more than 50 years. The decks don't tell us anything about the decks at the time of JvR.
And with respect to JvR, we should remember Decker (1989):

Manuscripts, especially copies of copies, are always troublesome because scribes can impose errors and can incorporate information from a date much later than the basic text […].
The testimony is open to doubt. If playing-cards had only just arrived in the neighborhood of Basel in 1377, we would expect one form, not the range of mutations cited.
Some commentators, justifying a manuscript of 1377, assume that playing cards had already been in Europe for a generation […]. This assumption can hardly be disproved, but supporting evidence is lacking. The great flurry of notices comes after 1375. […] But a new game can travel quickly whereas new forms of a game evolve slowly (an observation that I owe to Michael Dummet). Furthermore brother Johannes is not likely to have collected all his evidence at once. Years would pass […] If so, Johannes cannot have completed his survey in the very year that cards first came to him.
Other commentators on Johannes trust only particular passages, dismissing the rest as scribal tampering. This explanation is unsatisfying. It defies the unity of thought and style, seemingly from a single author. […]
Decker's and Dummet's arguments are convincing for me and to be considered in any history of the cards.


Addendum: I do read JvR "...one in which two of the suits have Kings and the other two Queens...." constructively as an adaptation from chess and de Cessolis: take the 8 chess officers on each side in a first step and divide them in half respectively and throw the elders/judges/bishops of de Cessolis as non-military away: then you have the face cards for all four card colours following the mamluk structure.

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Is it more likely a moralizing treatise by a monk transformed playing cards or that he simply recorded what he saw? Not sure how that could have been a best seller...its not like JvR is otherwise famous with numerous manuscripts floating around. His treatise just happened to survive and pertinent to our subject - that doesn't make him famous in his day.

At all events, clearly the queen was inserted early (by whom and why?), although I agree with you that the persistence of the Mamluk format in Imperial regions is somewhat astounding.

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Phaeded wrote: 25 May 2022, 05:01 Is it more likely a moralizing treatise by a monk transformed playing cards or that he simply recorded what he saw? Not sure how that could have been a best seller...its not like JvR is otherwise famous with numerous manuscripts floating around. His treatise just happened to survive and pertinent to our subject - that doesn't make him famous in his day.

At all events, clearly the queen was inserted early (by whom and why?), although I agree with you that the persistence of the Mamluk format in Imperial regions is somewhat astounding.
The German translation of the English text presented by Roger Tilley clearly presents the text in a manner, that Johannes offers "observations", not "own inventions".
The Bond translation we had given.
Image



The Kopp translations of 1973 we had given also.
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1094&p=24280#p24280

It would be better to have the JvR-discussions at this thread ...
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1094
Huck
http://trionfi.com

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Phaeded, I answered your
Phaeded wrote: 25 May 2022, 05:01 Is it more likely a moralizing treatise by a monk transformed playing cards or that he simply recorded what he saw? Not sure how that could have been [...]
in
vh0610 wrote: 25 May 2022, 11:54 [I follow Huck's advise to continue the discussion in this thread]

You raise a very interesting question, Phaeded:

[...]

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Sorry I've been incommunicado for so long! I'm working on a lengthy essay on some manuscript images of Petrarch's Triumphs, which I hope to post in the Researcher's Study in the next few weeks. In the meantime, I'll try to catch up with some of the discussions that have been happening.
vh0610 wrote: 13 May 2022, 12:47 However, I do not agree that “the visual dynamics lie at the heart of playing card history”, because this statement does not leave enough room for the evolutions which do come from a change in semantic content or meaning. In other words, in my opinion, both is true: evolution by visual dynamics as well as by evolution of meaning. We have to differentiate, case by case.
Your point here is quite valid. While I do think that the "visual dynamics" are the most important factor in the evolution of playing card design (and can therefore be said to "lie at the heart of it"), they are of course not the only factor, and semantics played a role too. When cardmakers made small changes to the designs of the cards they were copying, they often appear to have made them so that the design would "make more sense" or because they thought the card was improved by the change in some semantic way, not just aesthetically. So semantics were certainly relevant. But it is vital to always remember that the overriding concern of cardmakers, in virtually all cases, was to design a card which was very similar to an already existing card. So, in nearly all cases, such semantically motivated modifications were minor (but could of course easily accumulate into very major alterations over several generations of cards).
However, I have the following question: is your observation perhaps not a part of a larger structure? Isn’t it foreground (lower part of the card) –middleground (middle part of the card) –background (top part of the card) composition rule which also applies to other cards? Put differently –and perhaps asked strangely: are the two horses on the chariot card also “assistants”? Or: are the human beings on the judgement card “assistants” to the angel? In this light: are the bags of money “assistants” to the hanged man? The structure would be in this case: two objects in the lower part of the card and a large one in the middle of the card. If this holds true, then we would have a triangular structure which point to the top part of the card which is mainly sky/heaven/god.
I see what you mean, but I don't agree. The pattern we see from the Rothschild Emperor and the other, later cards is quite clear: two (or sometimes four) small human figures, accompanying a much larger central figure who depicts the subject of the card. The moneybags don't fit the pattern because they are not accompanying human figures; the horses likewise; and the humans on the early Judgment cards are the same size as the angels, so they don't fit the pattern either. These variations stray too far from the Rothschild Emperor design and also from each other to form any kind of consistent visual pattern, and consequently they would have been completely ineffective as a unifying feature marking the trumps out from the other cards.

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Nathaniel wrote: 06 Jun 2022, 05:48 I see what you mean, but I don't agree. The pattern we see from the Rothschild Emperor and the other, later cards is quite clear: two (or sometimes four) small human figures, accompanying a much larger central figure who depicts the subject of the card. The moneybags don't fit the pattern because they are not accompanying human figures; the horses likewise; and the humans on the early Judgment cards are the same size as the angels, so they don't fit the pattern either. These variations stray too far from the Rothschild Emperor design and also from each other to form any kind of consistent visual pattern, and consequently they would have been completely ineffective as a unifying feature marking the trumps out from the other cards.
Nathaniel, I see what you mean. I discard my conjecture.

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Nathaniel: If you look at medieval Wheel of Fortune images, you will see that much of the time Fortuna is larger than the four figures on the wheel. So she seems to satisfy Nathaniel's criteria, if drawn in a particular way. Better than the Devil, in fact, since there are four small figures, as compared, in the early cards, to only one, the one in his mouth, although indeed the Cary Sheet has four.

But that is not what I came here to talk about. These cards are tarocchi, not imperatori, and if two artists in Ferrara are assigned to them, probably they are different-looking decks.

I have held for a while that the four ancient empires might have had something to do with the VIII Imperatori game. They are mentioned as suits by JvR and in a version of Karnoffel/Kaiserspiel that Huck mentioned. So when Phaeded mentions them, viewtopic.php?p=24685#p24685, I am pleased. He wrote:
The fly in the ointment for this theory is the word "Imperatori" could refer not to four contemporary Empires (as we encounter in the Hofämterspiel as four kingdoms, and which I regard as a late variant of Imperatori) but successive empires and their rulers, as JvR insinuates these empires might be associated with the suits: Babylonia - human head (Huck reasonably suggests suit of coin), Persia - missing image (the manuscript's inserted image is missing - perhaps the polo stick which would have been associated with the Mamluks, kindred Muslim rulers as Persia was to become, and of course Babylonia was under Persian suzerainty at this point), Greece-Macedonia is Bells, and Rome is Eagle (= Shields? And note the Muslim double shield might have eventually become the suit of hearts as their outlines are similar). The initial impulse here would be to ape the format of a world chronicle from a successive empires perspective, but anachronistically warring against one another within the card game. The suits have features of German decks, so I would suggest German decks in general are variants of a proto-game of Imperatori - especially apropos since they are imperial, not papal, fiefs.
I also like his comparing the ancient empires to modern ones. After that he loses me: seven electors vying for the position of emperor. I can see how there are either seven imperatori or one, but eight is a stretch. More importantly, how would such a game be played? I cannot imagine. I think it is important to think about that.

In another thread, at viewtopic.php?p=24930#p24930 I wrote something of relevance here. I have a certain idea about how Marziano's game was played, and I think that Marziano's and Imperatori have features in common, and with Karnoffel, in that they have cards with special powers and imply an allegory. Here is what I wrote:
"Imperatori" already suggests an allegorical game. Imperators were triumphal figures, and another thing about them was that they ruled over more than one state, in the normal course of events, while typically coming from one of them. Ruling over more than one state is comparable to the role of trumps in the game, which have power outside their "suit" (whatever that may be). If kingdoms represent the states in a world or region, then the imperator can range over as many of them as he wants and can. That he comes from one of them is in the game signified by a special relationship to one of the states. The Roman emperor was from Rome. Alexander, who ruled the eastern Mediterranean and established a kind of empire, or at least federation, was from Macedonia. The Persian Emperor was from Persia. The Babylonian Emperor was from Babylon. Johannes talks about a game where the suits represented these four ancient "kingdoms." They were empires, too. There was a version of Karnoffel, around 1453, that used the same four; Huck mentioned it once.

We don't know who the imperators in Imperatori were, but chances are that in the 1423 deck there were eight of them, and 8 is a multiple of 4, for four kingdoms. If so, 2 would attach to each kingdom, probably the Emperor and his second in command. Later the "VIII" is dropped, so we don't know how many there were, but I would imagine a multiple of four, ranked hierarchically within their kingdom.

I like to imagine the imperial cards as being distinguished on the cards by their dress and other regalia, maybe just the hats. Artists then tended to use costumes of their own time. So Holy Roman Empire crowns for one, Greek Orthodox for another, Turbans for a third, and some other Muslim headgear, Turkish or Mamluk, etc., for the fourth (the two bad suits). Different emperors might have had different powers. The Babylonian Empire didn't fight the Romans or the Greeks, for example, while the Persian Empire fought both the Babylonians and the Greeks. Or two of them fought the other two, like the Western and Eastern Christians vs. the Turks and Mamluks. Or they all fought one another. These particulars are just examples; the details are not important, except that it may be that there was only one card that looked like the Emperor card in Trionfi. Or none. They may even have been different species of animals, predators that attacked one another (but don't ask me how that would work).

What is most important are the rules, which are both intrinsic to (in the sense of furthering) and extrinsic to (in the sense of detachable from) the allegory playing out in the game. Rule number one might be that only imperial cards can attack other kingdoms. This is the trump function.

A suit card from a particular kingdom leads. This defines in what kingdom the battle is to be fought. The citizens, nobles, and imperials are divided into four factions, each loyal to a different chief, who is one of the four players of the game (but four is not a necessity). Think of Putin, Trump, and Le Pen as cards in the same player's hand, or those of two partners, the stratified-authoritarian faction, in this case (maybe different then, for example Bessarion with the Medici [for unity under the Pope]; Plethon with Filelfo, Filelfo with Filippo, and I expect different degrees of fundamentalism among Muslims, even in one state). Since the citizens are ranked hierarchically, the highest ranking one wins and takes himself and the others in that particular combat (like gladiators) out of the game. The nobles are part of the factions, too, but if they are captured by a different faction the one capturing them has scored some nice points, depending on the rank. Capturing a King is particularly valuable, because he commands the court figure next below him, and so on, even in captivity. Imperials are valuable for the same reason, in their own kingdom.

When do the imperials take part? Well, if all the citizens and nobles in a particular faction have seen action, then that faction can and in fact has to use its imperials, including imperials from other kingdoms if it has no others. However an imperial from the same kingdom as the card led will know the terrain better and fight to defend it more fiercely than those of other kingdoms. It will beat any imperial from another kingdom, but can't beat an imperial from its own kingdom of higher rank.

When an imperial is led, however, it is a matter of the pecking order among kingdoms, how worthy they are, by standards of nobility or religion. Romans are the most Christian or noble, let us say, Greeks next, Persians/Mamluks next (Mamluks weren't Muslim in their homeland and so aren't very fervent), and Babylonians/Turks last.

This is basically the same game as Marziano's, as I imagine it.

There are other possibilities, maybe even actual variations. It might be that a higher imperial from a different kingdom from the card led can beat a lower imperial from the same kingdom. And in case of two imperials of the same rank from different kingdoms from the card led, the one played last might have priority, or the one from the noblest kingdom wins. The principle of "the one played last has priority" might also extend to the situation where an imperial is led, in which case the imperials would have among them only the rank if emperor and vice-emperor, four of each. The "equal papi" rule is a simplification of that.

I would note that this last game, where the imperials have no rank outside their own kingdom, could also be played with ordinary cards, 56 or 52 or 48. It is just a matter of promoting the cards by two ranks, Kings becoming Emperors and so on.

Imperatori could also have been more like Karnoffel. That is, an imperial of upper rank can beat anything below him, but the second in command could beat anything but a King (partial trump). And some further differentiation among imperials, depending on their kingdom. The main way it is not like Karnoffel is in promoting low cards to high. However, it could have lower nobility beat higher nobility in certain circumstances, for example if two partners each played a lower nobility of the same religion, and the other two could only muster one higher noble. I want to emphasize the this comparison to Karnoffel has nothing to do with who in particular is represented on the cards: devils, popes, etc., all of which could equally well be imperatori. It seems an obvious point, even if Ortalli missed it. One way of defining a game is by its rules.

Well, I am going to have to find some people to play these games with, now that summer is coming and I can be outside with friends. When it comes to Covid, I am still very conservative.
So back to finding a game that can be played with some enjoyment.

So Imperatori cards turn into Trionfi cards, with the bad imperatori becoming bad triumphs and the good imperatori becoming good ones. Because Bologna and Piedmont have one rule for papi and another for the other ones, it seems to me that it might have happened in two stages (or more). And also - because new card games were illegal until legalized, at least in Florence, and having "bad" cards ruling over Kings was not the best moral lesson - perhaps first simply a version of Imperatori with "good" subjects, such as four virtues (already associated with the four suit-signs) and four imperatori-types, now with papal and imperial crowns. But the argument is not strong. None of this is strong, and the same can be said for the other proposals, at this point.