Tarot History Forum

Please feel free too remove this post to where ever....

I received a new book for my Birthday on the Renaissance in 1962 (Printed 1961) In it was the first Tarot card I ever saw.
The Horizon Book of The Renaissance by J.H.Plumb.
The illustration said Ill cavallo di picche attributed to Bonifacio Bembo.Accademia Carrara. Bergamo.
The accompaning text said.....

The great classical educator Vittorino da Feltre, portrayed above in a medal by Pisanello, would not have approved of the passion for gambling and Tarrocchi playing that overtook Italy in the fifteenth century. In Venice it became so widespread, and ruined so many noble families, that the Council of Ten (1455) passed legislation prohibiting the sale of dice and cards.......

I cannot find a prohibition of the sale of Tarrocchi cards in Venice- but can find an edict by the council of ten to limit Cassinos in 1455.
This essay in the book was called the Images of Man and written by Denis Mack Smith.

~Lorredan

Can you provide this 1455 law, or a link to it?

The earliest law prohibiting playing cards in Venice appears to be 1539, according to Ludovico Zdekauer's research of 128 years ago. See the trionfi.com page "Venice: Playing Card Notes" -

http://trionfi.com/0/l/50/

"1537 Comment of Schreiber (p. 80, refering to Lud. Zdekauer, Il Guoco in Venenezia Archivo Veneto, vol XXVII (1884), p. 132 ff.): No known prohibition 15th century, however, strong prohibition in 1539, when beside the game with the ball and crossbow shooting any other game is forbidden."

But in Giovanni Dolcetti, Le bische e il giuoco d'azzardo a Venezia 1172-1807 (Venice, 1903) we read of a law in 1506 that bans the public play of playing cards and board games, but allowed them under strict conditions in private (pp. 159-160; 217). Earlier laws of 1485 and 1487 also placed strict conditions on playing cards as well (see page 217).



http://ia600301.us.archive.org/1/items/ ... lcgoog.pdf

Hi!

http://www.alterhistory.altervista.org/ ... G/1451.php

1455 Dec 17 The council of ten approve a rule against reducedand casini, where to play gaming.

~Lorredan

Lorredan wrote:Hi!

http://www.alterhistory.altervista.org/ ... G/1451.php

1455 Dec 17 The council of ten approve a rule against reducedand casini, where to play gaming.

~Lorredan

This reads like a (typically bad) machine-translation of the original Italian page -
http://www.alterhistory.altervista.org/ ... e&ante1000

"17 dicembre: il Consiglio dei Dieci approva una norma contro i ridotti e i casini, in cui si gioca d'azzardo"

The first thing to note is that "ridotto" - translated by the machine as "reduced" - is a technical term for a private gambling room.

"The term "ridotto" (plural: "ridotti") comes from the Italian word "riddure," meaning to "close off" or "make private." It originally referred to several illegal, privately owned gambling clubs that offered games of chance to members of Venice's nobility in the city's Rialto District. "
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ridotto

For more information, see Jonathan Walker, "Gambling and Venetian Noblemen, c. 1500-1700", Past & Present no. 162 (Feb. 1999) pp. 28-69:

In the anti-gambling legislation issued by the Council of Ten and other magistracies, increasingly detailed prescription of gambling arrives hand-in-hand with apparent changes in the organization of the ridotto. A contemporary Italian-English dictionary defines a ridotto as 'a home, a lodging, a withdrawing place. Also a company, a knot, a crue or assemblie of good fellowes. Also a gaming or tabling house, or other place where good companie doth meete.' (14) In 1506, legislation stated that, although it was not the legislators' intention to deprive gentlemen and citizens of 'honest recreation' (in itself a significant caveat), 'no-one could hold games of dice, tables or Cards in any residence, nor any sort of Games excepting those of balls and crossbows... nor could anyone [play] ... in the residence of any woman of immoral life or bad reputation... And similarly no-one can play in vaults or in any secret and occult place.' The parte (proclamation) continued that 'Gentlemen' and others were permitted to play in their houses or on an excursion in a boat with family and friends. A boat made an ideal ridotto because its privacy did not have to be emphasized by closed doors. (15)

(14) See G. Florio, A Worlde of Wordes (London, 1598, STC 11098); Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca, 2nd edn (Florence, 1623): 'place where one meets, refuge, shelter... And we call radotto [i.e. ridotto] the place where people meet together for entertainment'. The Crusca was the first native Italian dictionary, produced by the Florentine Academy as part of their efforts to promote Tuscan as the most prestigious of Italian dialects.
(15) Dolcetti, Le bische e il gioco d'azzardo a Venezia, 217-18, citing ASV, X Mi., 17 June 1506. I have made a few minor alterations and additions to the text printed in Dolcetti after consulting the original. On boats, see also ibid., 39-40. Gambling establishment s run by nobles in private houses first became a matter for concern in the mid-fifteenth century: see Pavan, 'Quando la città si diverte', 38-40.

(pp. 32-33)
(this last reference to (Elisabeth Crouzet-) Pavan is in Gherardo Ortalli, ed., Ludica 1 (1993), pp. 35-48, an essay I haven't seen)

Walker's paper also shows that to use the word "casino" in the 15th century is an anachronism -

The appearance of a new word around the turn of the seventeenth century may have indicated a change in the form of gambling. There was a passing reference to casini in the Ten's parte of 1598, but the first detailed reference that I have been able to find comes from 1609.

(p. 34)

So the Venetian chronology page is being loose with their terms. It is also, probably, being loose with dates. Dolcetti knows of a law of 17 October 1455 penalizing scaleteri (bakers) for allowing youths to gamble in their homes (p. 216). The penalties were severe, including 6 months prison, 100 lire, and even perpetual stripping of citizenship from offenders:

1455, 17 ott. Proibito agli scaleteri di ricettare nelle loro case quella parte della gioventù scapestrata per giuocare. Pena 6 mesi di carcere, 100 Lire di multa ed all privazione perpetua della cittadinanza.

The previous law in Dolcetti is 18 September, prohibiting the scaleteri from allowing games. This is under the rubric of prostitution, so it seems that the scaleteri were involved in more than baking.

The next law is from 1457, a generic law against dice.

Thanks Ross- it would seem that Denis Mack Smith was loose with his words as well.
Maybe better to delete my post?
Then again your information makes interesting reading as a corect rebuttal.

~Lorredan

Lorredan wrote:Thanks Ross- it would seem that Denis Mack Smith was loose with his words as well.
Maybe better to delete my post?
Then again your information makes interesting reading as a corect rebuttal.

~Lorredan

It's certainly not necessary to delete it! We all learned something because of it, I imagine. First, both Schreiber (1937) and one of his sources, Zdekauer (1884), were not aware of the 1506 reference (Schreiber's book was actually unfinished at his death, so he may have found it if he had had more time, for instance in Dolcetti). So this is another entry to put under the Venice entries about playing cards at trionfi.com .

Denis Mack Smith's words themselves are not completely misleading; he doesn't say that the law of 1455 prohibited "tarocchi", for instance. I take it that "the passion for gambling" in general is what he means. However, I can't find an outright prohibition of the sale of dice and cards, just the prohibitions of playing the games, either a broad one, like in 1506, or a narrow one, like in 1455. So he appears to be wrong in this passage.

The great classical educator Vittorino da Feltre, portrayed above in a medal by Pisanello, would not have approved of the passion for gambling and Tarrocchi playing that overtook Italy in the fifteenth century. In Venice it became so widespread, and ruined so many noble families, that the Council of Ten (1455) passed legislation prohibiting the sale of dice and cards.......

With regards to Vittorino, he certainly would not have allowed his students to indulge in gambling or frivolous games, but he would probably have approved of Triumphs, at least for children, for teaching calculation skills.
http://archive.org/stream/vittorinodafe ... 2/mode/2up

"Arithmetic, which he valued for its training in accuracy and businesslike habits of mind, was in the rudimentary stage taught by games, 'following the practice of the ancient Egyptians, whose method in the subject Vittorino highly commended.'"(this last part in single quotes is reported by Sassuolo, a student of Vittorino). I imagine that a card game like Triumphs, which is a skillful and mentally challenging game, would be appropriate for learning arithmetic. I don't think that the Este court would have allowed two boys of 8 and 9 years old to play the game, since they were under the equally strict educational philosophy of Guarino da Feltre, unless it were held to inculcate some positive habits of mind.

An older contemporary of Vittorino, Pier Paolo Vergerio, in 1404 explicitly approves of sedentary "games of skill", while naturally forbidding dice.

"The game of 'tabulae' which Palamedes is said to have invented during the Trojan war to keep his soldiers occupied during wearisome inaction, is free from all such objections [that trivial activities must lead to vanity and immorality]. Dice-playing is to be utterly condemned. It is either a base form of money-getting, or an effeminate excitement; though a game of skill, in which chance plays but a small part, is allowable. Claudius, the Emperor, wrote a book on dice-playing, which the vicious have found a useful argument for their indulgence".

(De Ingenuis Moribus, §6; translated by William Harrison Woodward in Vittorino da Feltre and Other Humanist Educators (1897) page 117; same as the book cited above at
http://archive.org/details/vittorinodafeltr00woodiala )

"...a game of skill, in which chance plays but a small part", can describe some board games as well as some card games, and legislation of games would often recognize the distinction between games of pure chance like dice, mixed chance and skill like cards, and pure skill like chess.

About da Feltre:

Vittorino da Feltre had already used the cards as a didactic instrument, when he taught his pupils a figured alphabet “literarum formas variis coloribus pictas ad lusum chartarum”, but the game became a common subject for the reflections of pedagogists and jurists in the XVI century.

http://www.letarot.it/page.aspx?id=180&lng=ENG

Il gioco in Occidente. Storia, teorie, pratiche
Franco Cambi, Gianfranco Staccioli
Armando Editore, 2007 - 240 pages
http://books.google.de/books?id=D0g7mwx ... um&f=false

See also:
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=345&start=126

Actually we have from Mantova (there was Vittorino da Feltre) some VERY EARLY playing card notes. I wrote about them recently, but it made the impression, that nobody really looked.
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=762

These very early notes possibly refer to the condition, that Mantova early had stronger German connections than other Italian cities (likely partly due to local nearness to a major trading way).

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote: With regards to Vittorino, he certainly would not have allowed his students to indulge in gambling or frivolous games, but he would probably have approved of Triumphs, at least for children, for teaching calculation skills.
http://archive.org/stream/vittorinodafe ... 2/mode/2up

"Arithmetic, which he valued for its training in accuracy and businesslike habits of mind, was in the rudimentary stage taught by games, 'following the practice of the ancient Egyptians, whose method in the subject Vittorino highly commended.'"(this last part in single quotes is reported by Sassuolo, a student of Vittorino).

I found the quote of Sassuolo da Prato -

Saxoli Pratensis De Victorini Feltrensis vita ac disciplina (ad Leonard Dathum (Leonardo Dati)), 1443.

morem illum eruditissimorum Aegyptiorum magnopere probans, qui liberos suos in numeris per ludum excerbant.

(Edition of Eugenio Garin, Il pensiero pedagogico della umanesimo (1958), p. 530)

esteeming very highly that custom of the most learned Egyptians, who trained their children in numbers by playing a game.

(Note that an older edition of the text by Edmond Martène and Ursin Durand, Veterum Scriptorum et Monumentorum... Amplissima Collectio, vol. 3 (Paris, 1724), column 854 (entire letter in columns 843-856) corrects one error of Garin's text - "excerbant", which does not exist, is actually "exercebant" - which I have left uncorrected for Google's sake. The other difference is merely a typo - "Aegytiorum" for Aegyptiorum)

Garin -
http://books.google.fr/books?id=EaucAAA ... edir_esc=y

Martène-Durand -
http://books.google.fr/books?id=s6Wu0F1 ... 22&f=false

I would like to know Vittorino's source for the claim that Egyptians trained their children in numbers by a game.