Juan Luis Vives ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Luis_Vives
... of a Spanish family, whose members were killed for Crypto-Judaism left Spain early and lived mainly in England and Belgium.

He wrote 1538 "Ludus Chartarum seu Foliorum", a short treatise, which influenced Juan Maldonaldo, compare ...
viewtopic.php?f=11&p=10427#p10427
... Both had letter contact with each other.

The text is given here in Latin (no translation)
http://books.google.com/books?id=NvhBAA ... &q&f=false

It's also about the game Triumphus Hispanicus.

He showed a strong social engagement in his home town Bruges and seems to have been a remarkable man.

I read, that he wrote also about other games. I still attempt to identify the texts.

There is a translation of Vives' account of Spanish Trump online. The game was played with normal Latin-suited cards. Here's the link:

http://www.archive.org/stream/tudorscho ... 5/mode/1up

Al Craig wrote:There is a translation of Vives' account of Spanish Trump online. The game was played with normal Latin-suited cards. Here's the link:

http://www.archive.org/stream/tudorscho ... 5/mode/1up

Thanks, Al .. this was helpful.
The text (with other dialogs) is dedicated to Philip II, son of emperor Charles V., later King of Spain ... in 1538 proud 11 years old.
The text has educative background and there's not very much intention to tell us, what are the rules of the game (similar to the Maldonado text).

A second text about general game laws follows in the Vives edition.

content (totally the text has 25 chapters or "dialogs")
"...
XXI Ludus Chartarum ser Foliarum
XXII Leges Ludi
..."

Interestingly Vives uses just the game numbers 21 and 22 (appears for Tarot and dice !) to describe games ... is this a sort of intentional poet game, somehow philosophically reflecting, that Vives knew Tarot?

The Leges Ludi scene (chapter 22) takes place in Valencia, where Vives himself was born. Indeed the wandering pupils cross the street where Vives himself was born:



Vives left Valencia in his youth to live his life at foreign places. In 1538 - when he wrote this educative text - he was near to death (in 1540; well, we don't know, if he knew this).

He uses the walk of the 3 boys in Valencia to describe the places of his youth, the boys are meanwhile talking about tennis, which seems to be regarded as the "king of all games". Scintilla, one of the boys, is from Lutetia and he describes playing in the school of Paris (well, it was Vives himself, who studied in Paris from 1509-1512, 17-20 years old):



He speaks of a teacher Anneus, who had a table with rules. The laws (Leges Ludi) are:


(... as analyzed in the introduction; the original Vives text are much longer)

So we see in chapter 22 (the Fool ?) Vives return and he becomes a boy again ((I would interpret it this way') ... This is the complete content:





Chapter 23-25 seem to build an extra class, and its content seems to be about education. Chapter 23 has as theme the body (interestingly it involves Dürer and two other important men, so the text clearly has left the pupil level ... Dürer is interested to sell his pictures and not to amuse the both other guys ... ...), likely the last both present soul and spirit (?).

So actually we have a scheme with 22 elements with 3 additional meta-elements. Vives was a Crypto-Jew, (and he suffered for it), a scheme with 22 elements would be natural (cause of the Hebrew alphabet with its 22 letters). This fact naturally reduces the probability, that Vives "really thought of Tarot" with his text-scheme.

Chapter 21, which includes the game of the trumps and is preceding chapter 22, in which Vives becomes a boy again, finishes in the following manner (with a personal song of Vives, which seems to present a deep reflected philosophy with theme "homo ludens"):



Taking some time and reading here and there in the Vives text, one gets the impression, that the playing card chapter is carefully embedded in the global text ... it obviously doesn't get his original meaning, of one selects it "out of context". But i's a longer text nd 'I don't know, if I find some time for it.
Perhaps also the Maldonado text has more, as one gets only from the playing card text alone.

**************

Andre Vitali notes Vives in his article ...
http://www.letarot.it/page.aspx?id=180&lng=ENG