Nathaniel wrote, Mike, the "tricky problem" was not that there was no hierarchy when the cards arrived in Bologna, it is that some people would have disagreed with that hierarchy and argued that it should be a different hierarchy, and other people would have argued in favor of the original hierarchy...

Thanks, Ross. very clear and explicit. I will mull over your reasons, to see whether I think they overpower the reasons on the other side. And thanks also to Nathaniel, although I still have a hard time understanding. He wrote: So it really is very hard to believe that someone would invent a game at...

Thanks for the clarifications, Ross and Nathaniel. Two questions, one for each of you: Ross wrote (my highlighting, to pick out what I want to question): For the iconography, obviously I can't say what the original Florentine or Bolognese papi looked like. The artist, or engraver, could have decided...

Ross wrote, On the iconography, I view it as a red herring. The depictions of the papi can tell us nothing about the rule observed when playing them. Even numbers cannot tell us. If we had no rulebooks from Savoy and Piedmont at all, we would assume from their cards that the World card was the highe...

deleted; somehow my "edit" got placed as a new post, for which see next post.

I am going to respond to Nathaniel. Thanks for taking up my challenge to explain the "equal papi" rule, Nathaniel. I'm not going to give a full reply now. but just a few things. First, if there are any difficulties with my explanation of the "equal papi" rule, please tell me. Karnoffel is only a gra...

Phaeded wrote: mikeh wrote: I find the inconceivability of anyone in Italy acknowledging two popes at the Church Union - which declared the Pope the one head of the Universal Church - beyond decisive. No one at the Union hailed the emergence of two popes - rather there was a hierarchy of patriarchs ...

My only quarrel with Nethaniel and Phaeded is about whether the evidence is decisive one way or the other. Ross argues that it is the artists who made the cards look the way they do, not the players, influenced by how they looked elsewhere. For all we know, the way they look was established by Flore...

Phaeded: I have no quarrel with your connecting Giangaleazzo with Mainz and the Stuttgart cards, far from it. I support it, as will become clear later in this post. But then you say: Have you yet to find any pre-16th century reference associating these four as a group in the manner that you have, or...

Thanks for checking my dates, Huck. I will correct the typos, and yes, it was 1400 and not 1390 that Wenceslaus was deposed.