Re: Imperatori sources and discussion

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vh0610 wrote: 10 May 2022, 11:34
Phaeded wrote: 04 May 2022, 01:07

As for your Imperatori theory - too many leaps of faith. Of course no issue with the HRE Emperor, but these three are beyond fanciful:

* In a world dominated by the Empire and Papacy, no one is ever going to call the Pope an "emperor." Not with the burning debate of who has civil power as laid out in Dante's Monarchia still lingering.
I propose - and that is full Dante -- to see, that the pope, following the Augustinean idea of civitas terrena and civitas dei, is evidently not the Emperor for the earthly world, but a kind of Emperor for the the civitas coeli as the representant of Jesus on earth. This is symbolized by the Donation of Constantine -also Dante treats this-, after which the pope had the right to wear the clothes of the emperor...
VH,
Thanks for taking the time for the thoughtful response and digging up the Dante reference about the Devil (Lo ’mperador del doloroso regno), however I remained unconvinced for the simple reason that if Dante is the key then these uses of "emperor" for the papacy and the devil remain inconceivable within a schema attributable to Dante. The odd Dantean phrase (e.g., the devil one) taken out of the context of his profoundly imperial worldview simply isn't enough - as his worldview was a single Roman emperor (and witness his letters begging the living Holy Roman Emperor to invade Florence) - that doesn't allow for a multitude of emperors.

You've misinterpreted Dante; yes, he acknowledges the Donation of Constantine, but negatively, almost as a second fall, which is clear in this translation (even the word "rich" is pejorative here):
(Inf. 19.115-17): “Ah Constantine, what wickedness was born—/and not from your conversion—but from the dower/that you bestowed upon the first rich father!” [Ahi, Costantin, di quanto mal fu matre, /non la tua conversion, ma quella dote/ che da te prese il primo ricco patre!]
(nice article here BTW - Dante and the Donation of Constantine: Santi Quattro Coronatihttps://sites.duke.edu/danteslibrary/da ... nati-rome/ )

He's not even beyond putting the living pope in the Inferno; the last thing imaginable for Dante is a imperial pope (and he would never liken the HRE to the Devil). All of his hopes of returning from exile were placed on the singular position of the Holy Roman Emperor, not some heavenly emperor. There simply is no room for emperors in Dante.

Phaeded

Re: Imperatori sources and discussion

52
@vh0610 (Anton?)
vh0610 wrote: 13 May 2022, 10:05
My proposition was, inspired by Ross’ idea on Mamluk’s naib-Unter usurping the king’s throne in their card game, that the Italians and the Spaniard being at the Council bring this idea with them –and we know from the Richenthal chronicles that playing cards was THE game at the Council!—and combine it with the situation of possible peasant’s uprising as in the Evil Carnival in Basel (which is very close to Constance). So the Unter becomes in the card game an implicit emperor trumping over kings.

Further, and in this light, I do fully agree with “the Mamluks would have nothing to do with those pope/emperor/devil trump themes”, all I tried to say is that the pope/emperor/devil are then additional implicit emperors which also reflect the situation at the Council of Constance: the pope is beaten by the devil when crossing the Arlberg pass (historical fact, also in the Richenthal chronicles), and evidently the pope beats the emperor since he crowns him, and every king, because he can excommunicate him.

My proposition is then that we have four implicit emperors in the card game, all beating kings, hence the name “Kaiserspiel”. The four emperors are: revolting peasants, symbolized by the Unter (and in view of the chaos associated with it: the Evil Carnival), the devil, the pope and the HRE. And Kaiserspiel is taken back home to Ferrara after the Council –remember Ross’ contribution with the interdiction of the new way of playing in 1420— in its Italienized/Latinized version: imperatori.
Can you give us the passage from Ulrich von Richenthal that describes the popularity of cards at the council? I can't find an edition of the chronicle online. I've checked Schreiber, but he doesn't mention it, at least searching under the name "richenthal."

Playing cards became a public problem in Milan by 1418, occasioning the first law of 20 January of that year against illegal gaming tables and luring young men with "the sweets called hazel catkins and roasted honey, lechaboni and the like, for the gluttony of which adolescents are frequently moved to play dice and cards." The card games aren't described in any way, but in the 1420 law there is some light shed on them. Here is my unfinished study of the texts, a bit raw but maybe you'll be interested. Two (maybe three) parts -

Playing cards in Milan, 1418 and 1420.

Compared to other cities in Italy, the earliest evidence for playing cards in Milan comes relatively late. Whereas Florence and Viterbo supply the earliest notices of the game of cards (naibi) in 1377 and 1379 respectively, and Bologna taxed their production already in 1405, the earliest documentation of a game played with cartexellas in Milan is dated 20 January 1418, about 50 years after the arrival of cards into Europe, and 41 years after their earliest attestation in Italy. Obviously this should hardly lead us to believe that cards did not exist in the Milanese until shortly before then, and there is indirect evidence of their existence in Lombardy. In the inventory of Valentina Visconti, Duchess of Orléans, made in Blois shortly after her death on 4 December, 1408, two packs of cards are noted: a pack of “Saracen cards” (ung jeu de quartes sarrasines), and a pack of “Lombardy cards” (unes quartes de Lombardie). (Frances Marjorie Graves, Deux inventaires de la Maison d'Orléans, 1926, p. 49, and p. 123, nos. 748, 749). “Lombardy cards” tells us at least that cards were made in Lombardy. Valentina had left Lombardy, from Pavia, in 1389; her husband, Louis d'Orléans, brother of King Charles VI of France, was a gambler, and made several trips to Italy in the 1380s and 1390s (Eugène Jarry, La vie politique de Louis de France, duc d'Orléans, 1372-1407, 1889, passim; vide “Table alphabétique” (p. 473) s.v. “Italie”). The existence of such cards is not surprising, but little else can be said about them, and they could have come into the possession of the duke and duchess at any time before 1408. A further allusion to playing cards in Pavia early in the 15th century comes from Pier Candido Decembrio's biography of Filippo Maria Visconti. In chapter LXI he says that “from his youth” (ab adolescentia) his favourite game was playing cards. Born in 1392, Filippo Maria's entire youth was spent at Pavia, until 1412, so we may conclude that he played cards there.

(apparent earlier evidence for playing cards in Italy is of doubtful value, since it comes from printed statutes of a century or more later, and no contemporary manuscript evidence can be found. Playing cards were frequently written later into pre-existing statutes regulating dice and gambling. Franco Pratesi weighed the evidence in Carte da gioco in Europa prima del 1377? - Italia published electronically at http://www.naibi.net/A/510-PRE1377ITA-Z.pdf (5.5.2016)

The dearth of documentation may be a result of the strictly centralized legislative programme of the Visconti regime, where the gaming houses, called biscatia (modern Italian bisca, biscazza), were regulated according to a 1396 statute (Alessandra Rizzi Statuta de ludo, 2012, p. 182 no. 650; Ceruti 1869 30, and 1876 col. 997, no. XXXV). Playing cards, cartexellas, were simply added to the dice already named in the statute. The central repository of these laws in the castle of Porta Giovia were lost in deliberate destructions following upheavals in the dynasty in 1385, the early 1400s, and especially the wholesale destruction of 1447, when the last Visconti duke died. Such records as we do possess, then, are lucky survivals from the Office of Provisions in Milan as well as in the towns and cities outside Milan which sometimes preserved the legislation emanating from the central chancellery.

Like those for dice games, the main purpose of these laws was to prevent the abuses of gambling games, especially when they lured young men into playing them in a dangerous environment where not only could they lose money or be robbed, but the dangers of drunkenness and protitution were always present.

The laws presume that the games named are well-known, which is unfortunate for historians, who are often faced with nothing but the names of games, sometimes stricly local, of which we have no more information. It is only occasionally that some principle or mechanism is described, which allows us understand what kind of game it was and therefore to relate it to the general family of card games that we already understand. Fortunately, this is the case with the edict of 1420.

The law of 1396 stiputlates that the biscatia of Milan were regulated at the discretion of the Vicar of the Podestà, a power which migrated to the Vicar of Provvisione, the duke's representative with the city, sometime before 1418. The situation in 1418 shows us what we might imagine, that ad hoc playing tables were set up in the streets of the city and in the plazas in front of churches on festival days and at other times. Apparently some of the sons of the prominent families of Milan had gotten into trouble, mainly debts, but also all of the vices associated with drunkenness and prostitution, which are only alluded to because of their shame. These families got their complaint before the Vicar of Provisions, the duke's representative with the city, with full authority to act on his behalf, both to execute the law as well as to promulgate it.

The Vicar of Provisions in these years was Giacomo Teseo Bussone da Carmagnola, doctor of laws (Caterina Santoro, Gli offici del comune di Milano e del dominio visconteo-sforzesco (1216-1515), 1968, p. 126), thus someone fully competent to promulgate a statute relevant to the situation.

Re: Imperatori sources and discussion

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Filippo Maria decree on card games
"1420: Filippo Maria forbids anyone to play cards, if not according to the correct and ancient system [Nel 1420 vietò qualsiasi giuoco delle carte, quando non fosse secondo il retto e antico sistema](F. Malaguzzi Valeri, La corte di Ludovico il Moro (Milano, Hoepli, 1913-1917) vol. I, p. 268)."
Giordano Berti

Francesco Malaguzzi-Valeri 1913 p. 268
Fossati 326 ll. 104-111
Caterina Santoro ed. I Registri dell'Ufficio di Provvisione (Milan, 1929) p. 560, n. 40
Caterina Santoro Giochi e passatempi dei secoli passati (Milano, 1957) p. 66, n. 4
Alberto Milano Carte da gioco milanesi dal XV° al XX° sec. Storia, fabbricanti, curiosità (Milano, 1980), p. 10
Giordano Berti Storia dei tarocchi. Verità e leggende sulle carte più misteriose del mondo (Mondadori, 2007), p. 8.

Document no. 4 (Santoro 1957, 66)

Obviare volentes sceleratis machinationibus et falatiis quibus multi, presertim adolescentes quotidie seducuntur a perfidis deceptoribus in praticam ludendi cum cartexelis ad numerum petendum, ut puta, de prima, tertia, quarta vel per equipolentum modum et aliquando, qui recipiendo carteselas attingunt ad numerum signorum, quod nuncupatur ludus de triginta vel ad aliquem consimilem ludum, unde compertum est multos et potissimum adolescentes maleversari pariterque summe falaciter reddi et sepissime proinde denum ad peiora deduci, utilitate pensata reypublice,
providerunt et ordinaverunt et provident et ordinant quod decetero nullus cuiusvis status et conditionis existat audeat vel presumat in civitate vel ducatu Mediolani aliquo modo ludere nec ludi facere ad aliquem ex predictis vel consimilibus ludis nec ad aliquem ludum carteselarum nisì dumtaxat secundum antiquum et rectum modum, videlicet iactando foras figuras et alia signa pro tali signo et tali figura, nominando enses vel bachulos et tale signum contra tale signum et hec omnia sub pena florenorum decem cuilibet contrafacienti auferenda, in quam similiter penam incurrat et incurrisse intelligatur quilibet mutuans cartesellas cum quibus luderetur ad aliquem ludum supra prohibitum et similiter in eamdem penam incurrat quilibet qui supereret tali prohibito ludo, si eodem die non acusaverit contrafacientem et quilibet possit acusare et habeat medietatem pene et alias medietas sit comunis Mediolani et quod stetur sacramento cuiuslibet acusantis cum uno teste fidedigno.

Wishing to avoid the wicked manipulations and trickery by which numerous persons, especially youths, are every day corrupted through perfidious deceptions in playing card games for a specified number, for example the first, third, fourth, or some equivalent manner and at once, those who, on receiving the cards, reach a certain number of signs, which is a game called Thirty, or at any similar game, due to which many, especially youths, go wrong, and are also paid back in a particularly deceptive way and, as a result, very often led to worse. Concerned for the interests of the Republic, they (the 12 of Provisions, magistrates) have made provision, and ordered, and provide and order that henceforth no one of whatever status or condition should venture nor presume, in the city or the duchy of Milan, in any way to play or to cause to be played at any of the aforesaid or similar games, nor at any game of cards, except to the extent that it follows the ancient and proper way, that is to say in throwing forth the figures and other signs for such a sign and such a figure, in calling swords or batons and such a sign against such a sign, and all of this under penalty of 10 florins that will be applicable to whoever contravenes, into which the same penalty is meant to be incurred and incurred each lender of cards with which to play any game above forbidden. Anyone can accuse and have almost half, and the other half is for the commune of Milan and that the oath of any accuser is to be performed with one trustworthy witness.

Richenthal

55
Ross Caldwell wrote: 14 May 2022, 10:52 Can you give us the passage from Ulrich von Richenthal that describes the popularity of cards at the council? I can't find an edition of the chronicle online. I've checked Schreiber, but he doesn't mention it, at least searching under the name "richenthal."
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1843&p=22719&hilit ... hal#p22719

Actually we have only the prohibition of playing cards during the rather short election of the pope Martin ...

The note "we know from the Richenthal chronicles that playing cards was THE game at the Council! " is a plausible conclusion, but the documentary evidence is thin.
As far I know it and I would love, if I could say more.
Huck
http://trionfi.com

Re: Imperatori sources and discussion

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Document number 3
20 January 1418

In the name of the Lord, 1418, Thursday, 20 January, morning. Honorable and distinguished doctor of law, lord Jacopo Tesio da Carmagnola, Vicar of the Office of Provisions of the comune of Milan, and also the prudent lords, the Twelve officers of the said Office present and seated for the tribunal in the chamber of their Office of Provisions located above the Palace of Justice or Credentie situated in the Broletto Nuovo of the comune of Milan: in consideration of the dishonest and vicious habits into which adolescents and noble boys and citizens of the bountiful city of Milan are lured on account of the bisclacias which are held in the streets, at churches, and at the festivals of the said city, by the sellers of the sweets called hazel catkins and roasted honey, lechaboni and the like, for the gluttony of which adolescents are frequently moved to play dice and cards, which is called commonly repellare,

Bisclacia=biscatia; from bisca, verb biscazzare;
Vocabolario degli accademici della Crusca, first edition, 1612, p. 124.
E bisca, e biscazza al luogo, dove si tien giuoco pubblico. Lat. Aleatorium.

John Florio, Queen Anna's New World of Words, or Dictionarie of the Italian and English tongues, London, 1611, p. 62:
Bisca, a brothell or bawdy house. Also a riotous place where nought but whoring, rioting, gaming, drinking and all licentiousnesse is used.
Biscacciáre, to use of frequent a Bisca, to lavish or riot unthriftily in whoring and dicing houses.
Biscázza, any riotous spending, unthriftinesse.

[flonorum = flororum? flores avellanorum (Gregory of Tours), fleurs d'aveline (Alfred Jacobs), hasel-blüthen (Felix Dahn) noisettes, oat chaff (Brehaut), hazel catkins (Lewis Thorpe); avellanorum, abellanorum; variant avillanorum (ed. Bruno Krusch MGH, Scriptores Rerum Merovingicarum Tom. I P. I Fasc. I, p. 365]

Rapellare; see Sella 209; ALMA 5 (1930), p. 209 http://documents.irevues.inist.fr/handle/2042/751
Forse specie di giuoco col diritto di richiamare una parte dello scommesso o del perduto.
Perhaps a kind of game with the right to reclaim a part of the wager or the loss.
Rizzi 397-400 (nos. 2032-2056; all dice games; not defined)

Gregory of Tours History of the Franks VII, 45, flores avellanorum

De fame anni praesentis. Magna hoc anno famis paene Gallias totas obpressit. Nam plurimi uvarum semina, flores avellanorum, nonnulli radices herbae filicis arefactas redactasque in pulvere, admiscentes parumper farinae, panem conficiebant. Multi enim herba segitum decidentes, similiter faciebant. Fuerunt etiam multi, quibus non erat aliquid farinae, qui diversas colligentes herbas et comedentes, tumefacti deficiebant. Plurimi enim tunc ex inaedia tabescentes, mortui sunt. Graviter tunc negutiatores populum spoliaverunt, ita ut vix vel modium annonae aut semodium vini uno triante venundarent. Subdebant pauperes servitio, ut quantulumcumque de alimenta porregerent

Earnest Brehaut translation, History of the Franks, 1916, p. 186
45.
In this year a severe famine oppressed almost all of the Gauls. Many dried and ground into powder grape seeds and oat chaff and fern roots and mixed a little flour with it and made bread; many cut straw and did the same. Many who had no flour ate different herbs which they gathered, and in consequence swelled up and died. Many too wasted away and died of starvation. At that time the traders plundered the people greatly selling scarcely a peck of grain or half measure of wine for the third of a gold piece. They subjected the poor to slavery in return for a little food.

Il 20 gennaio 1418 il Vicario ed i dodici viri prudentes di Provvisione, considerando il danno che poteva derivare ai costumi ed alle abitudini degli adolescenti e dei bambini, fanno divieto ai venditori di dolciumi (venditores offellarum et flonorum avellanorum et mellis cocti nuncupati lechaboni et consimilium) di tenere luoghi di giuoco pubblico nelle piazze della città, ed in occasione di feste, perchè non accada che i giovani spinti dalla gola, siano indotti a giocare a carte e dadi nella speranza di vincere un premio ( quod apellatur comuni vulgare repellare ) ; appare chiaramente in questo complesso di atti l'intento di attirare la clientela mediante uno stretto legame tra giuoco e richiamo pubblicitario .
Rivista di diritto industriale, vol. 6, 1957, p. 99

On January 20, 1418 the Vicar and the twelve viri prudentes of Providence, considering the damage that could be caused to the customs and habits of adolescents and children, prohibit the sellers of sweets to hold places of public play in the squares of the city, and on the occasion of festivals, so that it does not happen that young people, drawn by the treats, are induced to play cards and dice in the hope of winning a prize (quod apellatur common vulgare repellare); clearly appears in this complex of acts the intent to attract customers through a close link between gaming and advertising.

Re: Richenthal

57
Huck wrote: 14 May 2022, 11:22
Ross Caldwell wrote: 14 May 2022, 10:52 Can you give us the passage from Ulrich von Richenthal that describes the popularity of cards at the council? I can't find an edition of the chronicle online. I've checked Schreiber, but he doesn't mention it, at least searching under the name "richenthal."
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1843&p=22719&hilit ... hal#p22719

Actually we have only the prohibition of playing cards during the rather short election of the pope Martin ...

The note "we know from the Richenthal chronicles that playing cards was THE game at the Council! " is a plausible conclusion, but the documentary evidence is thin.
As far I know it and I would love, if I could say more.
Thank you very much! I didn't remember the connection with the name "Richenthal." Now it is in my mind.

"No one was allowed to play in secret or in public, whether with cards or other things, while the Pope remained unelected." Well, the prohibition was promulgated on Sunday 7 November (read in churches), and Pope Martin V was elected on Thursday 11 November, so it was not long at all.

Yes, card play was popular enough that Sigismund banned it during the mini-Lent of the election process.

Re: Imperatori sources and discussion

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Ross Caldwell wrote: 14 May 2022, 10:52 Compared to other cities in Italy, the earliest evidence for playing cards in Milan comes relatively late. Whereas Florence and Viterbo supply the earliest notices of the game of cards (naibi) in 1377 and 1379 respectively, and Bologna taxed their production already in 1405, the earliest documentation of a game played with cartexellas in Milan is dated 20 January 1418, about 50 years after the arrival of cards into Europe, and 41 years after their earliest attestation in Italy. Obviously this should hardly lead us to believe that cards did not exist in the Milanese until shortly before then, and there is indirect evidence of their existence in Lombardy. In the inventory of Valentina Visconti, Duchess of Orléans, made in Blois shortly after her death on 4 December, 1408, two packs of cards are noted: a pack of “Saracen cards” (ung jeu de quartes sarrasines), and a pack of “Lombardy cards” (unes quartes de Lombardie). (Frances Marjorie Graves, Deux inventaires de la Maison d'Orléans, 1926, p. 49, and p. 123, nos. 748, 749). “Lombardy cards” tells us at least that cards were made in Lombardy. Valentina had left Lombardy, from Pavia, in 1389; her husband, Louis d'Orléans, brother of King Charles VI of France, was a gambler, and made several trips to Italy in the 1380s and 1390s (Eugène Jarry, La vie politique de Louis de France, duc d'Orléans, 1372-1407, 1889, passim; vide “Table alphabétique” (p. 473) s.v. “Italie”). The existence of such cards is not surprising, but little else can be said about them, and they could have come into the possession of the duke and duchess at any time before 1408.
Would luxury decks be less likely to appear in public documents (other than the commissioning document) than mass-produced decks that get reflected in regulations?

"Saracen", which arguably could be considered luxury if gold and lapis lazuli blue such as in later examples, might have inspired luxury variants, which eventually trickled down to the public as "Lombard", but obviously as woodblock prints.

Back to this thread where I posed the hypothetical links: viewtopic.php?p=22227#p22227
* 1365: Pierre I Lusignan/Cyprus's raiding "crusade" of 1365 on Alexandria results in the very portable Mamluk decks being amidst the booty (the best explanation for the ensuing explosion of cards in Europe, as Knights Hospitallers, among others, participated in that crusade and could have quickly spread the new game across Europe)
* 1377: Bernabò Visconti's daughter Valentina (ca. 1357 – 1393) becomes Queen consort of Cyprus and titular Queen consort of Jerusalem by marriage to Peter II of Cyprus in 1377. The returning Visconti household members who escorted there, including brothers from Bernabo's huge family, might have been gifted with Mamluk decks from the famous raid of Pierre II's father, during the marriage festivities.
* 1387: dowry contract for Valentina Visconti/Orleans (1371 –1408, the other being an aunt) and marriage to Louis I, Duke of Orléans 1389. What better gift than to re-gift a Mamluk deck tied to the elder Valentina? Her husband is murdered before she dies and thus in her possession. Even Dummett surmises Valentina could have brought the Saracen cards with her from Milan then (Michael Dummett and Kamal Abu-Deeb, “Some Remarks on Mamluk Playing Cards”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 36 (1973), pp. 106-128, 114).

In a matter of some 20 years there are direct Visconti relations to the probable source of "Saracens" (Cyprus), thus by-passing a popular diffusion of playing cards in Lombard and then the Visconti commissioning luxury decks. This does not rule out the popular diffusion model sweeping the rest of Europe, of course (and that is even probable, perhaps via Genoa), but rather points to the Visconti court having access to Mamluks at a fairly early date - 1377 at the earliest - independent of a popular diffusion. Would help explain why Marziano is developing a luxury deck at a very early time (c. 1412), that being luxury decks - even if "Saracen" - had been in the ducal holdings for some time.

To clarify the playing card diffusion's historical point - paralleling something that has been demonstrated repeatedly for a c. 1440 for trionfi (all decks and references after that date, and then a profusion of them), a relevant if older post by "vh0610":

viewtopic.php?p=24320#p24320
Re: Collection John of Rheinfelden 34

vh0610
…from a bird’s eye perspective a statistical “flurry“ from c. 1375 onwards. The statistical “flurry” from the list points towards an event-model of time on the large time scale (you yourself write about “specific events”, sampled data, for the small time scale). This is certainly relevant, since it is also clear that there must have been some years before 1377, in which the cards were event-like introduced to Europe. But how many? What is plausible?

In this context, I propose again to rediscuss Dummet‘s remark reported in this very forum
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1094&p=22249&hilit ... +15#p16817

Petrarch’s De remediis utriusque fortunae (1366) discusses a number of games but says nothing about playing cards; a Paris ordinance of 1369 forbids numerous games, but does not mention card games, although one of 1377 was to forbid cards to be played on work days; similarly, a St Gallen ordinance of 1364 forbade dice games, and allowed board games, but left cards unmentioned, although an ordinance of 1379 prohibited them as well.

At least I cannot ignore Dummet’s argument, we have to deal with this observation. My proposition is hence to logically intersect Dummet’s argument with Decker’s argument about the “flurry”: there was an event sometimes after 1369 which introduced the cards to Europe, which then consecutively led to Decker’s “flurry of notices” after 1375.

I would revise that slightly to say that the event was in 1365 - the capture of Alexandria, the fabulously rich port for the Mamluk Sultanate capital in Cairo, with the returning knights spreading the game across Europe. Petrarch doesn't note them in 1366 because the raid itself happened fairly late in the previous year, 11 October 1365, so they would have just arrived in 1366 with hardly enough time for them to be interpreted and adapted to become a European craze in the space of a single year, but the seeds were planted that year. A dozen years later, however, allows the adaptation and variations to have developed that JvR notes.

Phaeded

Re: Imperatori sources and discussion

59
Phaeded wrote: 16 May 2022, 15:47
Would luxury decks be less likely to appear in public documents (other than the commissioning document) than mass-produced decks that get reflected in regulations?
Yes, of course. I forgot another piece of indirect evidence for playing cards in Lombardy well before 1418: Decembrio's mention that Filippo Maria's favorite game "ab adolescentia" - Ianziti translates as "from childhood" - was playing cards.

Since Ercole and Sigismondo d'Este, 9 and 11 years old if I remember correctly, and Valerio Marcello, who died at the age of eight, played Trionfi, it is plausible that Filippo Maria in Pavia was playing cards by 1400 as well.

On the other hand, luxury decks are far more likely to survive the accidents of history, thereby potentially misleading commentators about the nature of playing cards in the earliest period.
"Saracen", which arguably could be considered luxury if gold and lapis lazuli blue such as in later examples, might have inspired luxury variants, which eventually trickled down to the public as "Lombard", but obviously as woodblock prints.
I would revise that slightly to say that the event was in 1365 - the capture of Alexandria, the fabulously rich port for the Mamluk Sultanate capital in Cairo, with the returning knights spreading the game across Europe. Petrarch doesn't note them in 1366 because the raid itself happened fairly late in the previous year, 11 October 1365, so they would have just arrived in 1366 with hardly enough time for them to be interpreted and adapted to become a European craze in the space of a single year, but the seeds were planted that year. A dozen years later, however, allows the adaptation and variations to have developed that JvR notes.
This is Thierry's position too, more oblique. He notes that the sack of Alexandria essentially stopped North African/Levantine and European trade until around 1370, by which time playing cards must be taken to be known in Europe, so that shortly before 1365 is the most probable time for playing cards to have been transmitted.

Re: Imperatori sources and discussion

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Ross Caldwell wrote: 16 May 2022, 17:32 This is Thierry's position too, more oblique. He notes that the sack of Alexandria essentially stopped North African/Levantine and European trade until around 1370, by which time playing cards must be taken to be known in Europe, so that shortly before 1365 is the most probable time for playing cards to have been transmitted.
Venice was especially pissed off at Lusignan's raid for interfering with their own trade with Alexandria (and some scholars have argued the entire point of the raid was to force trade back through Cyprus, the traditional middle man, vs. other countries going direct to Alexandria). Venice took steps to reestablish trade with Alexandria immediately (the Venetians did not know the target of the crusade was Alexandria), well before 1370 (which is the date of a peace treaty between the Mamluks and Cyprus); see Kenneth Meyer Setton, The Papacy and the Levant, 1204-1571: The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, 1976: 274-276. Google scan here: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Th ... =en&gbpv=1

But what is sticking in my craw here is "shortly before 1365 is the most probable time for playing cards to have been transmitted"; why ignore the obvious - Alexandria in 1365 - and posit same vague "shortly before"? Based on what? The number of international knights involved and amount of booty, presumably with card decks mixed in, explains the sudden appearance of cards in multiple places in Europe shortly thereafter.

Phaeded