Thanks also for providing Decker’s article in the post above. Most interesting for me in this article is:
All of these points Decker raises --and together with my prior reflections in this thread-- lead me to the hypothesis, that Johannes himself wrote a first –perhaps even unpublished-- version in 1377 containing the first 5 chapters of what is now Part 1Manuscripts, especially copies of copies, are always troublesome because scribes can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. […]
We need not need require that Johannes wrote in 1377 [the full version as e.g. of 1429; vh0610]. This date is his own historical note […]
This period I would take to be subsequent to 1400, late enough to provide for the impressive diversity of cards, but before the first scribe intervened in the account, necessarily prior to our manuscript of 1429.
(“in 1377. This date is his own historical note”)
probably based on sermons he held in church. Then,
(“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”),
based on his first (perhaps: unpublished) version of 1377 and induced by some event, he himself
(“unity of thought and style, seemingly from a single author”)
wrote the full version considering heavily de Cessolis, sometimes after 1400 and before 1429
(“take to be subsequent to 1400”, “prior to our manuscript of 1429”).
Collected as a hypothesis:
This version is then the archetype Jönsson (1998) speaks of. Note that for this hypothesis part 1 does not contain chapter 6 dealing with the numerology of the number 60 – if you compare with the titles of the first five chapters, the sixth chapter stands out contentwise and seems to be written in the second version in order to prepare part 2 and part 3.Johannes himself wrote a first –perhaps even unpublished-- version in 1377 containing the first 5 chapters of what is now Part 1, probably based on sermons he held in church. Then, based on his first (perhaps: unpublished) version of 1377 and induced by some event, he himself wrote the full version considering heavily de Cessolis, sometimes after 1400 and before 1429.
Furthermore, I propose to rediscuss or consider Decker’s
since it is a very relevant remark from a statistical point of view – is it thinkable that we have very rare evidence before 1375 and then a flurry - note that he writes “flurry”. The question is: why a “flurry” after 1375 and not before? In other words: the new game induces due to its gameplay a flurry – why does the same gameplay does not induce a “flurry” in a massive sense before 1375, if the cards were already there? What is the difference?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.
In this context, I also propose to rediscuss Dummet‘s remark reported in this very forum
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1094&p=22249&hilit ... +15#p16817
In this light, we can draw information fromPetrarch’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.
Huck wrote: 29 Aug 2021, 10:23
Codices manuscripti theologici bibliothecae palatinae Vindobonensis Latini aliarumque occidentis linguarum, Bände 1-2 Denis Joan. Thomas nob. de Trattnern, 1794
https://books.google.de/books?id=erGmjT ... f=false
See on the right bottom corner the citation of Master Ingold
Note, the “As I did read” from Ingold – he has to have read it in a handwritten manuscript. If we combine this with the information of Decker thatAls ich gelesen han, so ist es kumen in teutsch land des ersten in dem iar da man zalt von crist geburt, tausend, drühundert iar.
[As I did read, it [the game of playing cards; vh0610] first came to Germany in the year which is counted from Christ’s birth as thousand, [plus] threehundred.]
manuscripts, especially copies of copies, are always troublesome because scribes can impose errors, then this information on 1300 is certainly not waterproof.
Consider the information on number shapes of this time from a numismatic source http://www.helmutcaspar.de/aktuelles16/ ... hlen.html
[This information was quick access for me in the internet – the content on the form of the numbers is confirmed by simple inspection on the JvR-manuscripts. If necessary, I will look for a source in palaeography.]Während im Mittelalter ausschließlich römische Zahlenbuchstaben zur Datierung verwendet wurden, kamen im Verlaufe des 15. Jahrhunderts von den Arabern übernommenen Ziffern in Mode. So gibt es Münzen, auf denen die 7 wie ein Haken nach unten zeigt, die 4 als halbe 8 geschrieben wird und die 5 wie eine nach unten schauende 2 erscheint.
[While only Roman numerals [on coins; vh0610] were used for dating in the Middle Ages, numerals adopted by the Arabs came into fashion in the course of the 15th century. There are coins on which the 7 is pointing down like a hook, the 4 is written as a half 8 and the 5 appears like a 2 looking down.]
Note furthermore that the zero “0” arrived in Europe only in the 13th century (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0) and all writers, including the monks, had to learn this number representation in the next centuries:
Note furthermore that “the 4 is written as a half 8” and “the 7 is pointing down like a hook”, both of them an easy source of error for a copist and a reader to transform the number into a 0, especially the “half 8”.The most popular [manual on calculation] was written by Johannes de Sacrobosco, about 1235 and was one of the earliest scientific books to be printed in 1488.
In the JvR tractatus we find this to be relevant:
Note that in https://digital.onb.ac.at/RepViewer/vie ... TL_2751364 how easy one can read the “1344” as “1300”on page 197 – the same can happen on first glance with the introductory “1377”. Hence we have the hypothesis:“1377”, top of page 182, left column in https://digital.onb.ac.at/RepViewer/vie ... L_2751364
which is in the introduction – see Bond’s passage on the introduction: “he asserts that the game of cards was introduced into the country where he is writing in the then year 1377”
“1344” together with “1377”, bottom of page 197, left column in https://digital.onb.ac.at/RepViewer/vie ... TL_2751364
referring to Bond’s passage: The evidence that the work was composed in the year 1377 [...] is repeated in the fifth chapter […]: […], transiuerunt interim 1344, quia si ab annis domini 1377 sicut modo est demantur 33 anni quibus uixit remanebunt ad hue 1344.
Master Ingold read the tractatus of JvR (“As I did read”), very possibly in Straßburg or in Basel, and was inspired for the respective part of his own work by JvR. Thereby he himself made the error with 1300, or already a copist had made the error. This would explain the proximity of JvR and Ingold, as already indicated in the cited work by Denis of 1794.
It seems that Ingold read JvR somewhere before 1432 and only copied the idea of describing an ordered world out of it – something has to have happened in between. Note furthermore that the Bohemian Hofämterspiel stemming from around the same time also depicts an ordered world as in JvR – perhaps it is also based on JvR over the Habsburg connection to the Freiburg Region. (And at least JvR was as important in 1429 that someone copied him in Basel that year.)
After having inspected the shape of numbers
.the 7 is pointing down like a hook, the 4 is written as a half 8 and the 5 appears like a 2 looking down
and having made the experience that one can easily misread them in manuscripts I have a general proposition: we should be very careful with all dating numbers given in manuscripts before the great “flurry” of 1375 (and before the "flurry" all texts were manuscripts)– the datings could either by misreadings of numbers (The statement “the 5 appears like a 2 looking down.” yields that the “5” in old manuscripts can be read as a “2” or even a “3”), or errors from copists, as Decker told us. Hence I propose to be as careful as we can in this respect.