I think the best explanation is that "1415" is a typo. 1415 isn't a date that figures in playing card history at all, so to put Minchiate there, and to recognize it is derived from Tarot, makes no sense. In other words, they know the history (which is spelled out in a sentence), but the date is completely unrelated to anything (not important enough to give a source which would be revolutionary if it existed).Marcei wrote:Hi Everyone,
I just happened to be perusing a book in my collection, Playing Cards in the Victoria & Albert Museum by Jean Hamilton. On page 22, in the description of some Italian cards, the following sentence caught my eye: “Minichiate, a game derived from tarot, was first heard of in 1415; it has a pack of 96 or 97 cards.” The book is published by HMSO Books, ©Crown copyright 1988, First published 1988, ISBN 0 11 290461 0
Because this is the catalogue of such a well respected museum, I would think that there must be some evidence to substantiate this statement: 1. documentation that Minchiate was heard of in 1415, and 2. that minchiate was, indeed, derived from the tarot.
Forgive me if this is an error in print that has been discussed before on this forum.
Without a quote or a reference for the date, and given all the sources I can cite that say otherwise, I'd say it is a typo (normally 1543 is cited, and 1988 is too early for Franco Pratesi's discovery of the 1466 mention).
Despite the credibility of the museum and the undoubted competence of the curators, editorial or typesetting errors are common, especially in dating.
If you want to look into it, outside of trusting other historians, you could look for who wrote that catalogue or that particular text and try to find them and write them asking for an explanation.
Generally such odd references will be found to be errors.