This
article is long but quite rewarding, probably Franco's most comprehensive and
thorough account of the subject that I know of. Comments in brackets
are mine, for clarification, in consultation with Franco. Numbers by
themselves in the left margins are page numbers in Franco's pdf, "I
primi giochi di carte nella repubblica fiorentina," published originally
in
The Playing-Card 40, No. 3 (2012) 179-197, posted at
https://naibi.net/A/72-PRIFI-Z.pdf. Footnotes have been moved from the end of the essay to the bottom of the corresponding page.
The first card games in the Florentine Republic
Franco Pratesi – 08.25.2011
English Abstract
The First Card Games in the Florentine Republic
The initial diffusion of card games in the Florentine territory – up to
the middle of the 16th century - occurred in the same epoch in which the
government of the town extended its control over a lot of towns and
villages of Tuscany. Several neighboring villages in the countryside
formed leagues, also organized as new communes. Both old and new
communes in the region were more or less dependent on the main town, but
in most cases they were self-governing, at least for local matters. One
of the tasks of each commune was the compilation of a statute and its
periodical revision. Almost one thousand of manuscripts with these
statutes and revisions are still kept in the Archivio di Stato [State
Archive] in Florence. A study has been done in a selection of them on
the prohibitions of gambling, with particular reference to card games -
which unfortunately are much less frequent than dice games, forbidden
since earlier times.
In addition to dice games, board games were sometimes taken into
account. With a few exceptions we find that chess and morris were
allowed. Board games of the backgammon family were instead generally
prohibited with only one traditional game allowed, in which all thirty
men are present on the board.
Card games were usually prohibited, but a special care has been
dedicated to uncover any information on card games allowed. The
information on them is poor, because they are only quoted in the
statutes as a few exceptions among prohibited games; nevertheless, it
allows us to outline a series of games subsequently played with a
remarkable popularity, such as: diritta, trionfo, and germini. The fact
that there were traditional card games, commonly played in the early
times by the Florentine population, and even in the countryside, is
emphasized.
In particular, the game of diritta, with the connected game of torta,
appears to be the first card game to be considered as traditional and
therefore allowed – for instance, a whole chapter of Volterra's statute
of 1459 (here reported in the appendix) has been dedicated to card
games. Another finding has been the insertion in the statute of Gambassi
of the Florentine law of 1450, which allowed the four card games:
diritta, torta, trenta, and trionfo. The time is close to that of the
earliest known documents on trionfo, coming from the courts of Ferrara
and Milan, but in this case the place is a very small town in the
countryside – on the other hand, we know that in the same year these
four games were allowed in Florence.
A similar occurrence has been found for germini: the indication of
this name for a card game has been discovered in Montecatini Val di
Cecina, in 1529, when it was allowed in the statute, a few years earlier
than already known from other places. Here again the location is in the
countryside. On the other hand, we are acquainted from many other
sources with another name of a locally traditional game, minchiate, a
name strangely documented either earlier or later with respect to that
of germini.
Possible relationships among these traditional games, and the game of
tarot, are discussed. The discussion begins on a local basis, but
continues in the last section including information from other places.
Alternative ways for a plausible reconstruction of the early progress of
card games are discussed, with the aim to highlight specific points
that more than others require further research, to begin with exactly
identifying the different kinds of triumph packs that have been
initially used, in addition to those - as the “standard” ones of 78 and
97 cards - which we know from other places or later times.
Premise
2
My intention with this article is to pick up the thread of a
communication that, exceptionally, I had the opportunity to present to
the members of the IPCS in Trieste, at the annual convention of 1989,
and which was then published in part in The Playing-Card.
[note 1]
On that occasion, I was able to meet in person, among others, the three
authors who had stimulated my research the most on the history of card
games, making me take it into serious consideration alongside that of
board games, which I had already been interested in. Sylvia Mann, who
with her book
[note 2] had convinced
me of the importance of ordinary playing cards, as opposed to the
special ones so loved by collectors. Thierry Depaulis, who as editor of
L'As de Trèfle
was publishing several of my articles, thanks to his preparation and
specific knowledge made me understand the importance of studying the
historical context of card games. Michael Dummett, the most important
for my studies, who with his fundamental book
[note 3]
had provided me with the necessary criteria to judge the validity of
what I discovered in my research: from then on I could consider valid
any tile I was able to add to that vast mosaic, even when it did not
immediately find a congruent location.
Florentine Republic, statutes and prohibition of games
The period of interest here covers roughly the two centuries from
1350 to 1550. In many respects, Florence was in those two centuries at
the cultural, artistic, and even economic forefront in the whole world.
First of all, our thoughts today turn to the great works of art that
have come down to us from that time. However, they were not centuries of
peace; in fact, battles followed one another almost continuously, and,
as if that were not enough, the Florentines often waged war among
themselves. It is easy to find information on that history in thousands
of articles and books. However, I think it is useful to emphasize one
point, relating to the political structure: Florence then went from a
commune-city organization to one that extended to a large part of
Tuscany, a region that was about to become an autonomous state.
In this transition to a government on a regional scale there was no
homogeneous type of subjugation and dependence of the communes gradually
conquered; to delve deeper into the question one can resort to a
detailed work.
[note 4] It can be
noted that the Florentines exerted an impulse towards autonomy: several
of these communes had previously been part of territories subject to old
feudal families or to episcopal curias, and only now were they
beginning to be able to govern themselves on the basis of their own
statutes. This situation went further, to the point of encouraging, on
the part of Florence, the formation of countryside [
contado]
leagues, communes that were not centered on a single town or a large
village but on several hamlets or small towns, which had allied
themselves precisely with a view to the new constitution of an
autonomous commune.
The Florentine government required that each commune, old and new,
draw up its own statute and send a copy to Florence where it was
approved and kept in a special archive, the Archivio delle Riformagioni.
A
riformazione was understood to mean a
reform, an addition to the statute, which had to be periodically
reviewed and, if necessary, corrected. In these operations, the
Florentine government had a minor role, while the statutaries, in charge
of compiling the statutes and their reforms, were local men, chosen by
the population of that commune.
All this enormous documentation of the Archivio delle Riformagioni,
with such a widespread provenance, was preserved for centuries inside
the Uffizi (the same prestigious building today universally known for
the Gallery) and was transferred a few decades ago to the new
headquarters of the Archivio di Stato of Florence, where 962 pieces are
now available for study in the Statutes of the autonomous and subject
communities section, which I will indicate here as SCAS.
There is no exact correspondence between the number of manuscripts
and the number of localities: on the one hand, the statutes of some
communes are preserved in several volumes; on the other, several
communes were in reality leagues that involved several nearby villages
in the Tuscan countryside. However, the order of magnitude certainly
remains that of a thousand localities involved, a documentation that
could be more appropriate for a large empire than for a regional
territory of
_____________
For brevity, I have used the following acronyms here [in the notes]:
- AdT for:
L'As de Trèfle, Bulletin de l'Association des Collectionneurs de Cartes et Tarots. No.;
- CP for: Personal Communication;
- SCAS (followed by the numbers of the pieces and cards) for: Archivio di stato di Firenze. S
tatuti delle
comunità autonome e soggette [State Archives of Florence. Statutes of the autonomous and subject communes];
- TPC for:
The Playing-Card, Journal of the International Playing-Card Society, Vol.
1. TPC XVII No. 4 (1990) 128-135.
2. S. Mann,
Collecting Playing Cards, Baker, London 1973.
3. M. Dummett,
The Game of Tarot, Duckworth, London 1980.
4. G. Guidi, "Il governo della città-repubblica di Firenze del primo Quattrocento." In
Il contado e il distretto. Olschki, Florence 1981.
3
limited extension. It should therefore always be kept in mind that these
communities are mostly very small, up to a few dozen people.
The archive collection in question is not completely preserved: in
some cases, there are reforms but the original statute is missing, in
others the opposite happens. As the decades passed, the most frequently
used language was Italian but in the early days Latin prevailed. The
number of pages in each codex varied within wide margins, from a dozen
to a thousand. The sheets of paper were variously alternated with those
of parchment and the conditions of conservation and readability of the
ink also varied within extreme limits. The handwriting of the individual
notaries involved in the compilations was also very variable and full
of abbreviations, so much so that it is [now] rarely easy to read; it
would often require the assistance of a specialist, and indeed of
several specialists, depending on the period and provenance.
Many communes have statutes preserved only from dates later than
those of interest to us (to be precise, there are about three hundred
pieces [i.e., manuscripts] that do not contain any document prior to
1550); on the other hand, there are also some statutes dating back to
before the arrival of playing cards. The interest of a given location
for our purposes is unpredictable, but a fortunate exception like that
of the commune of Sesto Fiorentino, which I reported in Trieste, with
only a few reform pages preserved but rich in data on card games, I have
never come across again.
Within the commune statutes we are only interested in a marginal
part, that concerning the prohibition of games, which could have been
absent at the beginning and, still more easily, not be present in the
documents preserved.
Fortunately, we have a general indication for the search for that
paio [usually “pair” but also applied early on to a deck of cards] of
carte [cards] of interest to us within the hundred or thousand carte
[folio sheets of a manuscript]. In the original draft of a commune
statute, the legal provisions relating to giochi [games, but also
meaning “gambling”] often have a fixed location, in the third book,
usually entitled
Of Malefices [Dei
Malefizi]. Of the previous books, the first is typically dedicated to
the manner of electing the various offices, their duties and salaries,
and the second to regulating social life, in the manner of a civil code.
This third book would instead correspond to a draft of a penal code;
here the first concern of the legislators is to establish the penalties
to be inflicted for the various crimes, treated in a succession of
chapters.
One of these chapters is often dedicated to
giochi [games/gambling],
and in particular, in accordance with the rest of the book, to what
penalties should be applied to those who do not respect the law. We are
often disappointed by what we can read, with only the indication of the
penalty reserved for those who play prohibited games, without any
specification of which games they are. Rarely, as in Settimo in 1408, it
is added that those prohibited by the statutes of the commune of
Florence are considered prohibited.
[note 5] In several communes we find one or more holidays indicated on which all games are tolerated.
We cannot expect a subtle distinction of punishments based on
individual games, which instead would be what we need most. Even subtle
distinctions are made, but they concern times and places (day or night,
outdoors or indoors, in a tavern or far away, near a church or far
away). Sometimes the age of the player or his origin is taken into
consideration. People present as observers can be equated or not to
players. Other subtle distinctions can exist on the redistribution of a
part of the fine collected by the commune to officials, witnesses and
informers.
It is much more difficult to find provisions on games in the reforms
added to the statutes at a later time. In this case, it rarely happens
that the order of the chapters is respected when listing the changes. It
must also be considered that games did not receive priority attention
from the statute writers, who in the countryside had above all problems
of proper maintenance of fields, pastures and woods, in addition to the
regulation of civil coexistence and local trade. Often we encounter a
reduction in public offices and personnel, in order to reduce the
expenses of the commune. If we find provisions on games in the second
half of the sixteenth century, and also in the following one, this
usually happens to prohibit their practice in the squares in front of
churches and especially during religious functions: an example among
many others can be the prohibition of this type for the square of
Fiesole in 1569.
[note 6]
________________
5. SCAS 848, f. 5r.
6. SCAS 311, f. 130r.
4
We are interested in card games, but to understand the related
context it is useful to consider the provisions on games in general,
dividing them on the basis of the material used to play.
Dice, board, chess and mill games
Dice were the first and usually the only game instrument that
interested the laws of the communes. Collecting them from different
times and places we could list at least a dozen names of games that were
played with dice in addition to the most cited game of
zara.
Understandably, we know nothing about all or almost all of them beyond
these names. The situation is complex, at least at first glance, and
leaves us with a great desire to one day reconstruct and understand the
detailed rules of all these games. However, if we look closely, the
interest in individual games can be scaled down by the fact that those
names were nothing more than individual examples of prohibited games: in
fact, we never find the name of a game of dice only that it was
allowed. As a rule, after having prohibited the game of
zara, a sentence like this is added: "and every other game that can be played in which money or other things can be won or lost."
In this regard, we know of entire lists of prohibited games from
later times. It is not a simple solution: faced with any new game, the
question would have arisen whether or not to add it to the list. On the
other hand, it would not have been difficult for players to gradually
invent new games, not present in the lists, and therefore which strictly
speaking could not be considered prohibited. The control based on the
opposite procedure works much better: only a few permitted games are
listed, automatically meaning that any other game is prohibited. This
more convenient solution was not necessary for dice games, since none
were allowed.
In addition to dice, we must turn to another game instrument, with
which cards later had greater analogy: these are board games and
especially those that were referred to as table games. We immediately
encounter an ambiguity in the very name of
tables,
which was used more to indicate the pieces of the game than the boards
on which they were moved. Let us limit our attention for the moment to
the main family that was the same as today's backgammon. Also in this
case, the members of the family have been and are numerous: these are
games played since time immemorial, well before the appearance of
playing cards, and for various peoples, especially Middle Eastern ones,
they remained the main game also in succeeding centuries.
What did the commune laws say about this family of games? As usual,
since money could be won or lost, and since luck played a part in the
game, this family of games was also prohibited. Very important for us,
however, is the fact that this rule, like many rules, had an exception.
All games in the family were prohibited except one: one could play the
game in which all thirty pieces were present and visible above the
playing level; this particular game, later better known as
tavola reale
[royal table], today internationally as backgammon, was often allowed.
In reality, there were additional conditions, such as the fact that the
game had to be played in public, in an open place or a lodge, during the
day, far from taverns and far from churches - in the end, it was the
exact measure of these distances that was discussed in the legal
provisions.
What is the reason given, when it is spoken of, to justify this
unusual authorization to play the game? This game is allowed because it
is a traditional game, handed down from father to son; evidently the
legislators, if not [also] others of the time, feared the dangers
connected with new fashions, with customs coming from outside capable of
profoundly modifying the traditional “culture” of the commune. In at
least one case, in Borgo San Lorenzo in 1398, the justification that is
otherwise implicit is made explicit in the commune with
chess: «except for the game of
tables and
chess because it is a very ancient thing».
[note 7] What
is implied instead is the ingenious nature of the game in question,
which requires knowledge of strategies capable of at least partially
balancing the random result of the roll of the dice.
In conclusion, the single game of
tavola reale
(not yet called that) ends up being accompanied in the laws no longer
by the other members of its own family - who instead end up
_____________
7. SCAS 92, f. 91r.
5
usually assimilated to only games of dice - but to the game of
chess. Often, they simply speak of chess and tables, implying that by tables they mean only the game type
tavola reale; this was done even before the arrival of playing cards, as for example in Vellano in 1367.
[note 8] Several times the game of tables also appears alone, without the accompaniment of chess, as in the statute of Impruneta of 1415.
[note 9]
Chess has some positive features: it is a game that does not depend
on chance and is old, handed down from generation to generation. As a
logical consequence, the game of chess has always had a role of its own
in commune statutes: in many it is not taken into consideration (because
only prohibited games are considered), but where it appears it is
generally permitted. In practice, this reverses the situation of other
games, which were prohibited except for exceptions; for chess, the
prohibitions are exceptional. Typically, the game of chess can be
prohibited if played in particular conditions, or with dice, as for
example in a statute of Volterra
[note 10] (the manuscript in question is a copy from the 16th century, but the original should be one or two centuries earlier).
Rarely do other games appear that are allowed alongside chess. The most frequent is the game of tables [
tavole],
but in this case it is immediately possible to refer the term to the
already encountered game type backgammon. with dice and thirty pieces in
play. There are also cases in which the statutory officials are more
lenient than usual, as in Cerreto in 1412.
[note 11]
The chapter on prohibited games, after the usual penalties against zara
and similar games of dice only, ends in a very permissive manner: "and
notwithstanding the aforementioned things they decided that everyone is
allowed to play with dice at every game of tables and chess in the
castle and village of Cerreto." It is a pity that it does not mention
naibi, because this could have been the right time to see it permitted.
We know that at a certain point, alongside chess, and indeed becoming
even more popular in the following centuries, the game of
dama
[checkers] appeared. However, it probably did not yet exist, at least
in the first century, at the time that interests us here; it certainly
did not exist with the name by which we know it later.
In other cases, very rare, a different game is explicitly indicated,
in which, as in common chess, dice do not come into play. An example is
mulino [mill], which was played with nine pieces each. Of this game, a more advanced variant of the children's game of
filetto
with three piece, are also reported positions in medieval chess
manuscripts. Another game, or perhaps the same game under another name,
is the game of
smerelle, permitted for example together with chess in Cortona in 1411.
[note 12] The same could have been the
ludus marellarum [game of smerelle] permitted in San Pietro in Mercato in 1398.
[note 13] In the same privileged position next to chess, another name for a game appears in the statute of Donoratico in 1407.
[note 14]: in the Latin text it is a genitive plural that follows
ludus and is connected to the following,
schachorum, but the reading “
alcarum” is not certain. The word should probably be read as “
alearum,” and these
aleae
[gambling games, originally just dice] could correspond in this
specific case to particular board games or even to playing cards.
Naibi, diritta, and vinciperdi
At this point we are able to better understand how playing cards were
received in those same commune environments. As far as we know, the
cards arrived suddenly, around 1375.
[note 15]
When playing cards appeared alongside dice in the hands of players, the
usual reaction of the statutes-men was to simply add the name of the
new game instrument next to the old one: no longer were dice games
prohibited, but dice and naibi games. On the one hand, many games that
were based on dice points could be transferred to the new medium by
using card points; indeed, the possibilities became more numerous - it
would have been an ingenious stratagem to transform oneself from dice
player into card player … if it had been legal to use them. On the other
hand, no card game could boast a long local tradition: not even one
[such game] could have been traditionally played by fathers and
grandfathers. In short, several reasons lead to the logical conclusion
that, having verified that playing cards could be used for gambling
games as was done with dice, these too had to be prohibited.
____________
8. SCAS 920, f. 22v.
9. SCAS 370, f. 31r.
10. SCAS 943, f. 183r.
11. SCAS 222, f. 26v.
12. SCAS 280, f. 89r.
13. SCAS 790, f. 92r.
14. SCAS 299, f. 13r.
15. TPC XVII No. 3 (1989) 107-112.
6
It would seem that even initially there were conflicting opinions,
due to the fact that cards have different characteristics from dice and
can possibly also present didactic aspects, in addition to being used
for "innocent" games. The fact is that in some statutes that I already
reported in Trieste (San Pietro in Mercato, Campi, Santa Maria a Monte)
the sentence was indeed extended to dice and
naibi, but the penalty for the game of naibi compared to that for dice was half, or in any case of a reduced amount.
Also in the case of cards, however, different games could be played.
As with dice, some names of card games appeared as examples of other
possible ones. The first, or one of the first, was
condannata
[condemned]; many others followed gradually. If the situation had been
only of this type, playing cards would have remained only a second means
of gambling that from a certain point on accompanied the more ancient
one of dice. In short, we would still have had a set of names of games
with the usual challenge of understanding what they were and to
reconstruct their rules as much as possible. As before with dice, the
importance and complexity of the situation could have been scaled down,
since, whatever the specific name, all these games would have been
intended only as examples of a set of games that are all prohibited.
For cards, unlike dice, this did not happen: some card games were
then allowed and over time cards actually changed their “category”:
first they were assimilated, more or less completely, to dice, then they
became assimilated to tables. In other words, just as among the table
games one had established itself that was traditionally allowed, also
among card games, some established themselves that became traditionally
played by the population and as such authorized, like chess and tables.
Let us then forget the naibi understood as an alternative to dice and
see them as a family comparable to tables. Then we are no longer
interested in the individual names of prohibited card games, such as
condonnata or
terza e quarta [third
and fourth], which will continue to appear and become more numerous.
Instead, it is the individual names of permitted games that interest us
much more.
Among the card games that could be allowed, there was a very strict
selection, linked to the condition that it was a game traditionally
widespread among the population: in short, it went well beyond all
possible foreign passing fads or the short-lived adoptions of new games.
When
diritta and
vinciperdi
are met in the statutes, these names are made to correspond to two
games, and often to the only two games allowed. The case that I like the
most, although it is more recent than others, is the one present in the
Volterra statute of 1459.
[note 16] (see
Appendix). Here the usual single chapter that in the third book of the
statute is dedicated to games is reasonably divided into three
successive chapters, numbered from LIX to LXI. The first chapter reports
the typical prohibitions of dice games, with related cases and
penalties; the second is exclusively dedicated to card games, and
thanks to this fact, which is praiseworthy for us, and to the other not
secondary fact that the spelling is extraordinarily clear, I transcribe
it in its entirety as an appendix (in this way you can also read some
accessory provisions that with some variations are found in many other
statutes); the third chapter prohibits games in the vicinity of sacred
places and precisely defines the territorial limits of the six main
churches with annexed monasteries, cloisters and gardens.
The same “second” game that we find here indicated as
vinciperdi [wonlost], in other statutes or documents is indicated as
torta [crooked, twisted], similarly opposed to
diritta [straight, straightforward]. Evidently
torta and
vinciperdi are two names used for the same game. It is not enough. In my opinion, even for
diritta and
torta
it is not actually two different card games, but the same game in which
the method of counting and winning is changed, and therefore also its
strategy. There have been many, and still are, games that can be won by
choosing to score more or fewer points. Unfortunately, I am not as sure
about the type of game this is because there are different ways in which
a game can be won or lost: even if it is a trick-taking game, you can
count either the number of cards or the number of points scored by
assigning particular values to certain cards; it is not even entirely
certain that the game was actually a trick-taking game, even if some
evidence in favor can be found.
______________
16. SCAS 939, ff. 136-138.
7
Incidentally, the very ease of playing to win or lose, in a certain
sense inverting the ranking of the cards, makes me think of the
traditional order of the numeral cards of ancient trick-taking games and
tarocchi, with the larger cards taking the smaller ones in the two
“long” suits of swords and batons and vice versa in the two “round”
suits of cups and coins; almost as if the concept of win-lose had
somehow come to influence the values of the cards themselves.
One thing is certain: this game of
diritta or
torta
had by now become the game of fathers and grandfathers, the popular
card game that was played for fun and not to win or lose large sums of
money. I had also encountered a game with the same name in Milan, as far
back as 1420, and I had reported it to the experts, hoping to read
useful comments and more convincing reconstructions.
[note 17]
In conclusion, it is true that other names of card games have been documented before this one - and immediately the names of
condonnata and
terza e quarta
come to mind - but these are forbidden games, examples rather similar
to the even more ancient names of the various dice games, also
forbidden. The first card game to gain the seal of official tradition
among the Florentine population is precisely that of
diritta or
torta.
I would like to take another small step in the reflection on these
names of games. What games could be played when playing cards were
available? It is not possible to answer with certainty, also because we
know that many dice games had been in vogue for centuries, and quite a
few of these were based on mechanisms that were easily transferable to
the new playing cards. Furthermore, it must not have been difficult with
cards to continually invent new games, as well as to retrace the
previous ones.
In my opinion, however, it is an important fact that a few years
after the arrival of cards there was ONE game that did not even require a
specific name, because it was THE game that was commonly played with
naibi. There was only the choice of playing diritta or torta, to score
more points or fewer, but that was the game, and it was played in cities
and towns. If cards were not used for games like dice, that was the
game they were used for, openly or clandestinely depending on the times
and places.
One can even hypothesize that cards arrived together with the common way
of using them. I don’t mean to say that the very first naibi decks
already had a sheet of instructions for playing, but if someone had
brought the cards to Florence from places where they were already being
used in a game, they would have seen how they were normally used. We
don’t know the name of this “primitive” game; it is known to us thanks
to the fact that, at least from a certain point on, you could play both
to win and to lose. What could it have been called before? In my opinion
it was called the
game of naibi, but I
understand that this name could be misleading, especially because of the
possibility of using the same cards in other ways.
Trionfo and derivatives
Later on, other names of games appear, but no one knows how different
these could have been from the “primitive” game already encountered. In
particular, a serious problem is encountered a few years later with the
appearance among the new permitted games of
trionfo. There must be something in common with the previous game, given that sometimes in the statutes of other regions the
rectus triumphus or rectus
ludus triomphorum is permitted, which can only be that game played “in the manner of diritta” [
alla diritta].
Diritta as a popular game disappears rather quickly, and in its place, one might say, comes
trionfo, played, as almost always implied, in the manner of
diritta.
I had already encountered
trionfo in Florence in 1450, together with other permitted games.
[note 18] Now I find that same Florentine law with the four permitted games -
diricta, torta, trionfo, trenta - transcribed within the statute of Gambassi.
[note 19]
Even the appearance of a new name for a card game,
trenta,
the “fourth” permitted game, creates a problem for us, with the risk of
losing the thread, already tangled, of the discussion: we find this
name associated with a card game in various Italian cities (and even
before, as in Milan in
________________
17. AdT 51 (1993) 4-5.
18. TPC XIX No. 1 (1990) p. 16.
19. SCAS 348, f. 161r.
7
1420
[note 20] and Lucca in 1436,
[note 21], sometimes allowed, sometimes forbidden. Furthermore, with the passing of time, variants appear such as
trenta per forza [thirty by force],
trenta degli ebrei [thirty
of the Jews], and others. It is immediate to suppose that the number
thirty indicates a limit to be reached by adding the points of the cards
played or in hand, because a game of this kind already existed with
dice; or it could have been a new game that, like
flusso and
cricca, recorded a few years later, moved in the direction of
primiera.
Was there perhaps also a change of opinion beginning to be made about
some of the card games that had initially been prohibited because they
were similar to dice games? That it was a variant of the other three,
remaining in the family of trick-taking games, would seem less
plausible; however, even in favor of this alternative reconstruction a
clue can be found: in 1465 in Orbetello,
el trenta diritto was allowed
[note 22]. Evidently, the possibilities for alternative reconstructions are not limited to triumphs, which are of greater interest to us.
Whatever the situation in detail, the deck with which the inhabitants
of Florence and Gambassi played must have been of ordinary quality.
However, if in 1450
trionfo had already
become a popular game, it could not have been a very recent invention,
with decks of cards necessarily very expensive, used - and usable - only
for a few months in the exclusive environment of the princely courts of
Ferrara and Milan!
In the Florentine law of 1450 inserted in the statute of Gambassi
there is another very significant detail, which clarifies even better
the context and its abysmal distance from the noble courts. The notary
draws up the statute in Latin, as often happened. He could then easily
have used the Latin names for the games too, which after all would not
have been too different from the Italian ones, perhaps:
rectus, versus, triumphus, triginta - yet he doesn't do it; for these plebeian games, he inserts only their vulgar [vernacular] term, and writes it expressly:
«salvo quod praedictae penae et
condemnationes non habeant locum ludorum ad tabulas cum taxillis seu ad
ludum cartarum vel nayborum alter tamen ex infrascriptis quatuor modis
ut vulgo dicitur alla diricta et alla torta et al trionfo et al trenta
[at torta and at trionfo and at trenta]. In ceteris vero modis
intelligatur ludum esse prohibitum ut supra.»
Perhaps this is why rivers of indoctrinated ink still flow around
Ferrara and Milan. At the moment, I am not following closely the
developments coming from the other disciplines involved, but at the
suggestion of Thierry Depaulis, I can point out from the history of art a
countercurrent contribution by Cristina Fiorini,
[note 23]
to be associated I think with the youthful courage of a doctoral author
and understandably soon criticized in more traditional terms by Ross
Caldwell.
[note 24] Of that courage
in anticipating the times of the Florentine production of triumphs to
1420, I was particularly struck by the refusal to compromise between
using the last years of Giovanni di Marco's life (died 1437) for the
dating, with the corresponding significant approximation to the middle
of the century, an approximation that would have made the toad easier to
swallow for the experts.
A different way of approaching the dates in question could be to
think of one of the many craftsmen and shop assistants who could
continue the style of a master for years, especially for small orders.
The great works of art of the Florence of that period are remembered,
but the production of artifacts, in quantities that are difficult to
even imagine, by the minor craftsmen tends to be underestimated. In
quantitative terms, there is a deep abyss between the oft-cited press
introduced in Ferrara within the Este court specifically for the
production of playing cards and the manufacturing possibilities of the
many Florentine workshops.
Coming back to us, if you are bothered (not so much for me) by the
idea of an expanded deck that became so quickly available and popular,
consider the hypothesis of a
trionfo played with the ordinary deck. Accepting this alternative reconstruction, one can find support in the Spanish
trionfo,
which was played with the common deck: some scholars of that nation -
of the following century, however - maintained that the game was born
together with the cards themselves
[note 25]
and perhaps before. Over time, triumphal games have also been
differentiated into several types, often of a regional nature. Already
from the years between the 15th and 16th centuries, Italian documents
have come down to us in which various games of
trionfo [note 26] are clearly indicated, and even without special cards.
Then we know that in some way from
trionfo we pass to
tarocchi, or rather for the Florentine region, we pass to either
germini or
minchiate. As regards the "standard" tarocco we can notice at
__________________
20. AdT 51 (1993) 4-5.
21. TPC XXIV No. 5 (1996) 134-141.
22. T. Depaulis, CP August 2011.
23. TPC XXXV No. 1 (2006) 52-63.
24. TPC XXXVI No. 1 (2007) 51-62.
25. TPC XV No. 4 (1988) 117-25.
26. T. Depaulis, CP July-August 2011.
9
Florence its rarity, even of the word. On the other hand, we are in a
city where the commune in 1419 began to build in the convent of Santa
Maria Novella the “Florentine Lateran,” that is, apartments of the
popes, who stayed there often, and sometimes for a long time. It would
seem implausible, for example, to tolerate here the inclusion in those
years of a female pope among the playing cards.
So either
germini or
minchiate
- I say one or the other because it is not easy to establish the
chronological priority between the two terms and it seems that I myself
have contributed to the confusion in this regard: without some of my
findings it would be out of the question to affirm that we find
germini first and
minchiate after.
At the beginning of my research, I strongly suspected that the letter
from Luigi Pulci to Lorenzo the Magnificent, where the name of the
minchiate
appeared a century earlier than usual, had been transcribed badly and I
despaired at not being able to find and check the autograph text of the
letter, disappearing among private collectors.
[ note 27]
I later found other indications confirming the popular diffusion of a
game with that name (in particular, one that was not easy to find:
Bartolomeo di Giovanni da Vaglia played it in Cortona for several months
in the summer of 1470) [note 28], which made the presence of that word
in that letter plausible to me, even without rereading it in person in
the original.
I must say that I have never found the name of tarocco in the SCAS and for now also not that of
minchiate,
a name that even appeared among the games permitted in Florence in
1477; however, I recently found that of germini in a 1529 reform of the
statute of Montecatini Val di Cecina, dedicated specifically to games.
[note 29]
It seems to me that the place and time are of great interest, together
with the fact of how that game is mentioned. The ninth section is
entitled: Punishments for those who play cards or dice, and begins as
follows.
“The aforementioned statutes also
ordered that no person of said Castle or in this habitation or its court
may play or gamble at any forbidden game such as cards or dice where
money is involved except at games of tables in which all the tables are
used and at large triumphs or at germini, and whoever does this, if it
is during the day, shall pay the penalty for each time . . .”
Incidentally, in a previous statute of 1472
[note 30] in that locality, all dice and card games were prohibited except the “usual” game of
tables [
tavole].
“Punishment for anyone who plays dice
or cards. The statute is ordered that no person should play or gamble at
any prohibited game, whether dice or cards, where money is lost or won
or paid, except at a game of tables in which all the tables . . . sap . .
. [only three letters readable] are used.”
The only card game indicated in 1529 as excluded from the prohibitions
is, in my opinion, one of the natural successors of that game of
diritta and
torta, which a century earlier had already become traditional and allowed in several places. Everyone knows that
germini later became, like
minchiate,
the Florentine card game par excellence, but that they were then in a
town like Montecatini Val di Cecina, lost among thick woods and poorly
cultivated slopes, was not a given. It may then be useful to remember
the performance staged with its
tarocchi
by Notturno Napoletano in Sansepolcro in 1521, which has now become
easier to interpret directly with minchiate, knowing that it had already
been present for some time.
[note 31]
Now that we have learned that germini was considered the
large triumphs [
trionfi grandi], what and of how many cards was the
little triumphs [
trionfi piccoli]
that was played with as an alternative? Of course, it is much easier to
imagine that the deck of litle triumphs corresponded to tarocchi with
fewer cards than minchiate, rather than to the common deck without
special cards: in short, the comparison with the previous deck of
trionfi is more convincing if this already had added cards. The
hypothesis of two different decks of 97 cards of small and large size
respectively is also not very convincing (as happened decades ago with
the now obsolete difference between the 40 Florentine cards larger than
the corresponding Tuscan ones).
To recap, the sequence we encounter for the most traditional card game in Florence and its surroundings is, over time:
diritta, trionfo, minchiate, germini, minchiate. The easiest and most well-known interpretation concerns the last two terms: everyone agrees that it is the same game,
______________
27. TPC XVI No. 3 (1988) 78-83.
28. AdT 52 (1993) 9-10.
29. SCAS 471, f. 42v.
30. SCAS 470, f. 17r.
31. TPC XVII No. 1 (1988) 23-33.
10
which simply changes its name from
germini to
minchiate,
still to be associated with the peculiar Florentine deck of 97 cards.
It is more difficult to determine whether and to whom to associate the
“normal” deck of 78 tarocchi cards (in my opinion, no one, but I could
be wrong). In some ways, we unwittingly go back to the dilemma of the
two possible alternative reconstructions of
trionfo. If
trionfo is associated with the ordinary deck, the first vogue for the name
minchiate could be associated precisely with the 78-card deck or, I would say better, with a similar one. Indeed, the term
minchiate
could have even indicated various decks with special cards added,
different in number or type; among these decks with special cards, that
of germini would later become popular, so much so that it took back for
itself the name of minchiate previously used for the whole family. It is
also possible to consider the poetic suggestion of Alfonso dei Pazzi to
the cardmaker Padovano
[note 32],
which would indicate the introduction of the special cards of minchiate
as substitutes and not additional to those of the ordinary deck.
If instead we assume that
trionfo was
already played with additional cards (not necessarily twenty-two), the
name minchiate of the years around 1470 would correspond to a first use
of that name for the new deck of 97 cards, a use that would then be
resumed after an interval of half a century in which the term
germini was used as an alternative. (My impression is that the term
minchiate
never completely fell into disuse, but here too I could be wrong.) Some
doubts remain, however, because it makes little sense to use two
different names alternatively for the same game and even less to use
those names together in some legal provisions of 1545 and 1577 in the
Sienese territory, in which one reads both
minchiate and
germini as if they were referring to two different games.
[note 33]
As you can see, there are still some knots to be untied, and moreover
they are linked: to do so you need either a mind like that of Michael
Dummett, capable of easily building a system that is not only complete
but also coherent, or you need to find other documents that allow, more
easily yet, to eliminate some of the hypothesized reconstructions that
may still find supporters.
Trumps [Briscole] and Trionfi
My research mainly concerns the Florentine, or rather Tuscan,
environment, but the discussion can be extended to an even broader and
more complex context by taking into account what we know from other
locations. The way in which the “triumphal” cards were added to the
ordinary deck and their number were in fact different for different
times and places. It can be certain that for trionfo and derivatives
there were not only the 52-card (48 for Spain), 78-card, and 97-card
decks mainly examined so far...
To begin with, the first deck of triumphs with added cards that I have knowledge of so far was 16.
[note 34]
In that case, we are far from Florence, but I would not be too
surprised if it was recognized that it was precisely from here that
Marziano da Tortona had drawn some details of his specific culture.
Primitive tarot decks with 70 cards have been documented in Ferrara and
interpreted as consisting of five suits of 14 cards. At the court of
Ferrara, in particular, I know that research on the origin of the
triumphs has been carried out, thoroughly and of a high academic level,
also thanks to the work of Adriano Franceschini.
[note 35]
In my humble opinion, however, we must be careful in using those
documents and in placing them in the context of fifteenth-century
civilization, which did indeed have some noble courts as important
centers of culture and artisanal manufacturing, but no longer in such an
exclusive manner as actually occurred, for example, in the neopalatial
stage of the great Minoan civilization.
Let us not forget that shortly before the first known mentions of
triumphs, imperatori cards were imported to Ferrara from Florence (and
not vice versa!) as I have had occasion to recall
[note 36] and later to comment on.
[note 37] I do not see why in Florence one could not play the new game of
trionfo using a local deck of imperatori cards, or one similar.
________________
32. AdT 38 (1989) 9-10.
33. T. Depaulis, CP August 2011.
34. TPC XVIII No. 1 and No. 2 (1989) p. 28-38.
35. A. Franceschini,
Artisti a Ferrara in età umanistica e rinascimentale. 1: Dal 1341 al 1471. Corbo, Rome-Ferrara 1993.
36. AdT 54 (1995) 16-17.
37. Cartophilia Helvetica, 11 No. 4 (1996) 11-13.
11
Decks of other types have been reported or hypothesized but it is
obvious, even if not for everyone, that those known today in full are
only a completely negligible fraction of those that actually existed.
Returning to Milan, the “strange” deck of Marziano preceded by decades
the more famous ones of the mid-fifteenth century, also connected to the
Visconti, for some of which the number of “triumphal” cards in the
original composition remains the subject of profound discussions, indeed
precisely those most frequently debated among the numerous experts of
the various disciplines involved, starting with the history of art.
Discussions on these topics should, however, first clarify the transition from the “primitive” game of
naibi discussed above, to that of
trionfo.
That was the most important change and would remain so, in my opinion,
even if the idea of triumphs [trionfi] had been born “simply” within the
same deck as the naibi.
In particular, there were two innovations compared to the naibi, not
easy to understand if and how they were separated: on the one hand, that
of introducing additional triumphal cards and on the other, that of
assigning trump [
briscola] functions to
single cards or to an entire suit, fixed or to be determined from one
hand to another in the naibi deck. The question of which of these two
innovations was introduced first (if it was not just one and the
distinction occurred later, for example by eliminating the added cards
and reusing the old deck for the new game) is a bit like the classic
question of whether the chicken or the egg came first.
Seen from the perspective of later events, it can be concluded that
the two innovations led to significant but different results: in the
field of subsequent traditional card games, up to bridge, it was the
concept of trumps within the ordinary deck that was probably more
successful, while the additional cards in turn opened up new avenues
that led them, among other things, to later be referred to as “arcana,” a
name that was already in itself highly indicative of a further
semi-serious and completely different use. (I spontaneously wrote
“semi-serious” so as not to say unserious, but I should perhaps correct
it instead to “very serious,” judging by the rivers of ink, even mixed
with erudition, that continually flow on that subject, and certainly not
on [their function as] trumps [
briscole].)
It is easy to hypothesize, even thinking back to Marziano's deck, that
the two concepts of trumps and extra cards may have had a connected
origin. The new “fifth suit” may have been the result of a different
placement of those same cards originally added in each of the four suits
above the standard cards: the first known deck with additional cards
had the sixteen deities that could be considered both as a fifth suit of
sixteen added cards, or as four groups of four cards added within the
four pre-existing suits.
[note 38]
For such a mechanism to work without problems, the total number of cards
in the new deck with five suits must be equal to that of the old one
with four suits, each with a given number of cards added. The
possibilities are few because that number must be a multiple of 4 and 5:
for plausible total numbers of cards, you get a deck of 40 (4x10 or
5x8), or 60 (4x15 or 5x12), or at most one of 80 (4x20 or 5x16).
A primitive deck of trumps constructed in this way, so to speak in a
theoretical way, would then have been modified differently in different
times and places, to the point of reforming some regional tarot
standards such as the Milanese, Bolognese, Sicilian and the richer one
of minchiate, popular here. After the masterly analyses of Michael
Dummett, the various possibilities of these developments and the related
intermediate steps are still the object of detailed studies by experts
at all levels.
In particular, the documentation and discussion that can be found on
the Internet is becoming increasingly richer in this regard: there is
now so much knowledge stored there that the risk of losing one's own
knowledge becomes concrete. Confessing my limited frequentation of those
enormous repositories (I mean in this field; they have long been
essential to me and in current use in other sectors of interest), there
are some names that I feel like mentioning: Andrea Vitali
[note 39] and Girolamo Zorli
[note 40],
who finally dedicates some attention also to the popular manufacturing
of Bologna (and the second also to the technique of the
12
game); also Lothar Teikemeier
[note 41] for
his persistent and boundless research in all environments, especially,
unfortunately, in those of the literati and the courts.
It is difficult to find today on the issues discussed above an
authoritative opinion of the few very competent (and, why not, also of
the many not very competent) who are interested in them, such as to be
more convincing than another. In such cases, not even the criterion of
considering the opinion with the majority of supporters as more valid is
reliable. In short, you are still authorized to independently give
yourself the answers that convince you most. While you decide for
yourself, I will continue to search for some other information in the
archives, with the hope of narrowing down the field of validly
sustainable hypotheses.
__________________
38. TPC XXVIII No. 3 (1999) 144-151.
39. http://letarot.it
40. http://www.tretre.it/menu/accademia-del ... -di-carte/
41. http://trionfi.com
