Ross Caldwell wrote: 29 Apr 2022, 15:47
What does the hapax "VIII" in "VIII Imperadori" mean? In line with the above, I might interpret it as a variant of Karnöffel with eight "trumps" instead of seven. They weren't all emperors, just as the seven "kings" in
Siebenkönigsspiel are not all kings: three of them are the counting trumps. Although
Siebenkönigsspiel is a late name for Tarock - attested beginning in 1800 with new rules for Tapp Tarock, it shows that names can be misleading if taken as literally descriptive.
An alternative theory, weaker because it doesn't account for the "VIII," might be that Imperatori were like the Liechtenstein deck, with five suits, one of which was imperial. I could imagine that this imperial suit functioned as a trump suit.
We are stuck in quandary in that there couldn't be a reference to 8 Emperors and the problem that the Mamluk cards, the prototype for all European innovations, had 12 court cards. Essentially this could be interpreted by Europeans as a king, with an over and under knave, per each 13 card suit. In the Mamluk is it
malik (king),
nā'ib malik (viceroy or deputy king), and
thānī nā'ib (second or under-deputy). The thānī nā'ib is a non-existent title - one reason for the creativity and variations in Europe of this format as even a Arab speaker couldn't explain what the Under Knave was. And since John of "Rheinfelden" (hereafter JvR) is key here, the relevant section from his tractate:
In the game which men call the game of cards they paint the cards in different manners, and they play with them in one way and another. For the
common form and as it
first came to us is thus, viz. four kings are depicted on four cards, each of whom sits on a royal throne. And each one holds a certain sign in his hand, of which signs some are reputed good, but others signify evil.
Under which kings are two ' marschalli,' the first of whom holds the sign upwards in his hand, in the same manner as the king; but the other holds the same sign downwards in his hand. [as the "common" and "first" this format of a king and knaves/marshali per suit must have been the original card deck format and arguably the 'ur-Imperatori'] After this are other ten cards, outwardly of the same size and shape, on the first of which the aforesaid king's sign is placed once; on the second twice; and so on with the others up to the tenth card inclusive. And so each king becomes the thirteenth, and there will be altogether fifty-two cards. Then there are others who in the same manner play, or make the game, of queens, and with as many cards as has been already said of the kings. There are also others who so dispose the cards or the game that there are two kings, with their ' marschalli' and other cards, and two queens with theirs in the same manner. Again, some take five, others six kings, each with his 'marschalli' and his other cards, according as it pleases them, and thus the game is varied in form by many. Also, there are some who make the game with four kings and eight ' marschalli' and the other common cards, and add besides four queens with four attendants, so that each of those four kings, with all the family of the whole kingdom, speaking of the chief persons, is there, and the number of the cards will then be sixty. And this manner of making the cards and in this number the most pleases me, and for three reasons: first, because of its greater authority; second, because of its royal fitness; third, because of its more becoming courteousness. First, I say, because of its greater authority, for we have its express figure in Holy Scripture, Daniel iii.; and again in that statue which King Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, saw in his dream, and which Daniel interpreted to him, the which statue had a golden head, a silver breast, a brazen belly, and legs of iron. [Bonds translation found in Hurst:
http://pre-gebelin.blogspot.com/2012/03 ... ribus.html ]
What clearly and uniquely happens in Europe is women are added, but eventually for many decks, suits become the King, queen, knight and page (JvR's preferreed court of King-Queen-Ober-Knave-Unter-Knave and Lady-in-waiting only becomes somewhat recognizable in the CY court variant). However, in terms of the all important issue for any royal house is
succession, with the emphasis on the king and queen and their respective houses they hail from. If the emphasis shifts to those two at the top - king and queen - you get to the magic number 8.
In what sense could 4 sets of kings and queens be termed as 'Imperatori'? I think your use of the term "Papi" (simply the plural of Pope) to indicate a similar-looking group of trumps in trionfi, is applicable to suggest that a group of vested people vying for the title of Emperor could be called "Imperatori" - more of in the sense of "imperial" (or yet another hapax, the
imperialati.
Now for the big picture question:
Trionfi/Papal and Imperatori/Imperial?
Trionfi was made not just in a Guelf city but one with the pope resident in it - in some small measure is Trionfi thus a response to Imperatori? There is zero suggestion that the number 8 holds any significance in Trionfi and the emperor has no especially elevated place nor role (and given Florence's tormentor at the time was an Imperial duchy, this makes sense). It is significant that you note Pratesi can find no records of Imperatori production in Florence, supporting the papal/trionfi argument instead, and perhaps Ser Ristori got the deck for Ferrara from Naples. At all events, the name Imperatori to any contemporary would point to something that is of the
Holy Roman Emperor (hereafter HRE), and thus perhaps it is not surprising that Ferrara is also an Imperial fief. Even the Milanese Marziano's deck is a multiple of 8, and says of the highest card Jupiter, "happily defeated the blaspheming Giants by war!" Although the trumps are tied to virtuous themes, with opposed Daphne and Cupid pulling up the rear in the woman-injected "courtly love" theme of the European West, the challenge to rulership represented by the Giants might go back to the original way in which Mamluk cards were received - three leaders per suit and their respective houses against each other for the top spot, the Emperor.
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.
But still we have the problem of the transition of a ruler with two lieutenants/knaves, the last two of which that JvR seems to visually put at odds, to an expanded court with woman in it - JvR preferring a version with a queen and lady in waiting for 5 total court cards. I'll share in a subsequent post that there is a significant reason that the original Over and Under Knave shared a adversarial dynamic that allowed the governor-cum-king to be paired with the European insertion of the queen. So the knaves, in short, are not properly part of the "game of throne(s)" - but the queen whose issue will propagate the royal line, naturally is. Thus four king and queens - even the match-making between them before marriage - constitute the Imperatori.
As Imperatori takes hold primarily in German fiefs in the Holy Roman Empire the real game of the election of of the Holy Roman Emperor can now allow an interpretation of the cards as reflecting the situation of 7 Imperial Electors + Emperor, who is in fact selected out of the major fiefs represented by the 7 Electors. The seven Prince-electors were designated by the Golden Bull of 1356, the Electoral College (Kurfürstenrat), led by the Prince-Archbishop of Mainz in his capacity as Archchancellor of Germany, organized as such:
IMPERIAL ELECTORS
Three ecclesiastical Prince-Bishops:
the Prince-Archbishop of Mainz as Archchancellor of
Germany
the Prince-Archbishop of Cologne as Archchancellor of
Italy
the Prince-Archbishop of Trier as Archchancellor of
Burgundy
Four secular Princes:
the King of
Bohemiaas Archcupbearer
the Elector of the Palatinate as Archsteward (Erztruchsess)
the Elector of Saxony as Archmarshal
the Margrave of Brandenburg as Archchamberlain
One will note the Hofämterspiel's suits fairly closely match those four kingdoms associated with the Electors named above, as one can regard Burgundy as replaced by the encompassing entity of France and replacing Italy with Hungary, as the Neapolitan Anjou had already made marriage claims on Hungary (even adopting their patron saints), so swapping Italy for Hungary was not an odd development (Italy simply remaining the place where the HRE received the Lombard Iron Crown in Monza/Milan and the Papal crowning in Rome).
Also note that the likely patron of the Hofämterspiel, Ladislas Posthumous, son of Emperor Sigismund (originally of Luxembourg, king of Hungary in 1387, king of Germany in in 1410, king of Bohemia in 1419 and finally Emperor in 1433 ) and Marie of Hungary, was desperately trying to succeed his father. Ladislas is recognized as Duke of Austria, King of Bohemia and Hungary, becomes engaged to Madeleine of France (daughter of Charles VII) but lacks Germany....instead his brother is king of Germany, Frederick III, who gets elected emperor in 1452 (Ladislas dies in 1457). One will also note the Kingdom of Germany suit in the Hofämterspiel features the curly blonde locks (FIII has straight hair) of Ladislas, in the King, Marshall and Steward cards of the German suit:
https://cards.old.no/1455-hofamterspiel/ . Ladislas seems to be placing himself in the national suit he did not possess: Germany. If this is all correct then that deck must date from before 1452. Again, a game of thrones is being played here. And Ladislas lost the game due to the seven imperial electors.
A lot of talk about a game seven electors but what of the number eight? There are always 7 Electors
and an Emperor to give you the number 8; if an elector became Emperor, the Elector position was backfilled. This emphasis on 8 can be shown in contemporary art where the Emperor is often shown with the Electors to form a series of 8 subjects; almost too perfectly arranged here as if 8 cards:
Still looking for the date of the first one; this one is 1493, from Schedel's
Liber Chronicarum, AKA Nuremberg Chronicle (top row):
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Social_or ... eiches.jpg
In fact the Imperial Golden Bull of 1356 call for these 8 to be seated together and even gives an ordinal ranking in times of an interregnum:
4. Concerning the prince electors in common.
We decree, moreover, that, as often as an imperial court shall henceforth chance to be held, in every assembly,-in council, namely, at table or in
any place whatsoever where the emperor or king of the Romans shall happen to sit with the prince electors, on the right side of the emperor or king of the Romans there shall sit immediately after the archbishop of Mainz or the archbishop of Cologne-whichever, namely, shall happen at that time, according to the place or province, following the tenor of his privilege, to sit at the right hand of the emperor-first, the king of Bohemia, as he is a crowned and anointed prince, and secondly, the count palatine of the Rhine. But on the left side, immediately after whichever of the aforesaid archbishops shall happen to sit on the left, the duke of Saxony shall have the first, and, after him, the margrave of Brandenburg the second place.
But so often and whenever the holy empire shall hereafter happen to be vacant, the archbishop of Mainz shall Men have the right, which he is known from of old to have had, of convoking the other princes, his aforesaid companions in the said election. And when all of them, or those who can and will be present, are assembled together at the term of the election, it shall pertain to the said archbishop of Mainz and to no other to call for the votes of these his co-electors, one by one in the following order. First, indeed, he shall interrogate the archbishop of Treves, to whom we declare that the first vote belongs, and to whom, as we find, it hitherto has belonged. Secondly, the archbishop of Cologne, to whom belongs the dignity and also the duty of first imposing the royal diadem on the king of the Romans. Thirdly, the king of Bohemia, who, rightly and duly, on account of the prestige of his royal dignity, has the first place among the lay electors. Fourthly, the count palatine of the Rhine. Fifthly, the duke of Saxony. Sixthly, the margrave of Brandenburg.
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/medieval/golden.asp
As for the suits, there are four Elector positions whose associated kingdoms - Germany, Italy-cum-Hungary, Burgundy/France, and Bohemia - clearly had the best path to being Emperor for the title holder; again:
the Prince-Archbishop of Mainz as Archchancellor of
Germany
the Prince-Archbishop of Cologne as Archchancellor of
Italy
the Prince-Archbishop of Trier as Archchancellor of
Burgundy
the King of
Bohemia as Archcupbearer
But under my reconstruction the Emperor would have to be one of the top four as a king, indeed, the highest "king", so the king of Bohemia Elecrtor along with his fellow three civil electors would make up the four 'Ober-Knaves', or
Marshali in JvR's parlance. Again, the four Unter-Knave - not represented by either the Emperor of 7 imperial Electors (and derived from a made-up Mamluk word they couldn't even explain) - would be someone at odds with the Ober-Knave (to be expanded upon in a different post). In this "Marshali" game described by JvR, which again he calls the most "common" and "first" I believe we have the earliest European format, closely matching the original structure of the Mamluk decks. With the insertion of a royal woman, a queen, the
Marshali, particularly in JvR's ideal format of 60 cards, the
Marshali would get pushed down the totem pole, as it were, and the Queen placed among the top 8 spots. The queen would of course hail from one of the HRE dominions and thus properly hailing from a house that was a major player in the Imperatori game of thrones.
Unlike Marcello quickly producing a deck based on Marziano's instructions in his manuscript - presumably the West received the Mamluks with a bare minimum of knowledge about them; just a ruler with two underlings. Variations are only natural under those circumstances. A theoretical reconstruction of how there was a multi-branched evolution of decks (most being dead ends) proceeded from the Mamluks:
* Prime event: 1365 Alexandria, capital city of the Mamluks, looted by the King of Cyprus and allies and shortly thereafter notes of cards proliferate; link to the original discussion here:
http://forum.tarothistory.com/download/file.php?id=2340 That had to be the origin of the explosion of card playing in the West that begins being documented within a decade. Knights Hospitaller, who had taken over many of the defunct Knights Templar properties at this point, played a key rule in that "crusade" and their numerous "commanderies" would explain the cards quick diffusion, from Catalan to Germany (more on the Hospitallers and their Grand Master's potential role with Imperatori in another post).
* Ur-Imperatori "Marshali": 4 kings/emperors perhaps identified with world empires (Babylon/Persia/Greece/Rome), with Ober and Unter Knaves
-> the notion of world empires is dropped but the suit signs associated with them become the basis of German suits. The persistence of the original Mamluk arrangement can be found even in the 1540 Playing Cards of Peter Flötner where the court cards are a king, a well-dressed Over Knave opposed to a disreputable Unter Knave, with the Queen relegated to the pips, holding a standard for the number 10.
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/704742 In the Hofämterspiel we have an echo of these four empires but now four kingdoms vying for the Emperor post. Other decks retain the King and Over/Under knaves as in this 1530 Swiss deck:
https://www.wopc.co.uk/images/countries ... cards1.jpg or the Toledo deck of 1584
https://www.wopc.co.uk/images/countries ... 1584-1.jpg . The original format clearly had a long life.
* Ur-Imperatori "Queens": Besides an apparently all queen deck, King and Queens of each suit form the 8 Imperatori as were reatiend up through common playing cards; the other court cards (knaves and lady in waiting) would have no role in succession.
-> pared down to just the King, Queen, Knight/Ober-Knave, and Page/Unter-Knave, we have genesis of Italian decks court cards in Trionfi. Besides the court cards, there is no influence of Imperatori on Trionfi (the king and queen of each suit - the "Imperatori" - are literally trumped by a new suit, Trionfi, in which Emperor and Empress are simply themes among others and not the titular subject of the game).
* Ur-Imperatori "Hof" - the entirety of a fief's household fleshed out as the court and pip cards as in the Hofämterspiel (but that deck may be a combination of two trends - imperial/national themed suits and then the pips represented by household functions, from Hofmeister to cook).
* Ur-Imperatori "5(+) suits" - more than four suits would simply be a means of adding more players/gamblers. Unless there is some specific detail that suggests a new suit, any more speculation here seems unwarranted. For instance the Liechtenstein deck simply adds another suit - polo stick, swords, cups, coins, shields - nothing about an entirely novel suit other than another object for a suit ("shields").
So the primary theme here is Imperatori is warring houses within the Imperial realm vying for the top spot of Emperor. The Emperor with seven Imperial Electors puts an emphasis on the number 8 for "the game of Emperor", but with the insertion of royal women into European decks the elevation of the queen alongside the king means those 8 highest figures of each suit - 4 queens and 4 kings - are in fact the 8 Imperatori.
Finally, the theory that a game would be centered around the question as to who would succeed to Emperor from among the various Imperial fiefs would really only be viable if the position was in that time period a revolving door of sorts or even in an interregnum state; in fact, that last status is precisely the case for almost the entire period of the earliest reference of playing cards (1377), as well as the oldest mentioning of Imperatori (1423): Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor, dies 29 November 1378 - INTERREGNUM - then Sigismund of Luxembourg, crowned HRE in Rome on 31 May 1433.
No emperor from 1378 through 1433. Thus the interest in a game of Imperatori.
Phaeded