May 6, 2024: 1756 Vienna, and Nuremberg - the game of minchiate

This post presents the final, at least for now, essay on 18th century books discussing how to play minchiate. It is the seventh overall since 2018 on this topic, the others having been translated in this blog in June 2024. The booklet on this occasion is in German, printed in Vienna and Nuremburg. Franco managed both to read the old Gothic script and to translate it into modern Italian.

The result is all rather readable, except, at least for me, "rules" IX, X, and XI, which deal with penalties involving the "refusal," or rifiuto. He has already defined this term, in rule VI as the failure to follow suit. However, this is not quite accurate: Franco tells me that it is the same as a "revoke" in bridge. According to "the beginners bridge glossary" (http://kwbridge.com/glos.htm), it is "to fail to follow suit when you actually hold one or more cards in the suit led. This is a violation of bridge rules." It is a violation of minchiate rules, too. Probably our author took it for granted that if one does not have a card in the suit led to follow suit with, it is not a refusal: "rifiutare," refusal, implies that one can do otherwise but chooses not to. However, it is not simply the failure to follow suit, as if one does not have a card in the suit led, one plays a tarocco if one has any, and otherwise any card. He makes that clear in the next sentence of rule VI.

Franco's original here is "1756 Vienna, e Norimberga – Il gioco delle minchiate," at https://www.naibi.net/A/KUNST.pdf, posted by Franco on May 5, 2025. As usual, comments in brackets are mine, in consultation with Franco, the numbers by themselves in the left margin are page numbers of Franco's pdf.

1756 Vienna, and Nuremberg – The game of minchiate

Franco Pratesi

1. Introduction

Continuing to search for old texts with the rules of the game of minchiate, I found a little or unknown treatment in one very old manual on games. It is a thick volume of over five hundred pages printed in Vienna in 1756, [note 1] in Vienna and Nuremberg in the same year, and reprinted several times thereafter (at least in the years 1769 and 1789). There aren't many game manuals older than this one.

Its printing in Vienna does not happen by chance; indeed there is a justification for it in the very long title itself, which is sufficient to illustrate the entire content: The art of bringing the world with you into various types of games, as are common in higher-ranking societies, especially in the imperial and royal residence city of Vienna. Of course, Vienna was then much more than the Austrian capital and welcomed personalities and fashions from all over Central and Eastern Europe and beyond.

There are almost a hundred games for which the rules are provided, and many of these are card games. Games from all over Europe are represented in the list, and a good number are typically Italian or French, as well as, of course, German. An entire chapter is dedicated to minchiate, [note 2] which will then be found unchanged not only in subsequent editions with the same title, but also in different collections, [note 4] even in Berlin in the year 1800.

It is not easy to identify the author of the book; some inventories indicate Georg Bauer (1721-1769), who, however, appears as the bookseller-publisher. However, I noticed that at the end of the long preface, we read Die Verfassere, that is, the authors, thus indicating a multi-handed editorial team. For several games, the compilation copies, entirely or almost completely, a description already present in other texts from various publishers.

I continue by translating the entire chapter on minchiate in this book. I will insert some notes in the translation, including some comments, and then I will move on to the conclusion and an appendix about a particular episode in which minchiate and the emperor of Vienna were involved.

2. Full translation of the text

This game has been found in Italy, like many others like it. In Bologna and Naples, it was introduced as a parlor game. [note 5]
It looks like a fight in which two enemies fight each other and one tries to overcome the other. It is played with very special cards, which, however, are not easily found in Germany [“German-speaking countries,” or “Germany in contrast to Austria”?]. It is usually [note 6] played with 97 cards, in which there are 24 that count and bring points; however, all the remaining ones are called empty cards, because they cannot count for anything.

This game can be played in different ways, that is, each for himself, or two and two together. It can also be played with two, three, or four people. Each time one plays with a partner, or

____________
1.Die Kunst die Welt [erlaubt - in some ed.] mitzunehmen in den verschiedenen Arten der Spiele, so in Gesellschaften höhern Standes, besonders in der Kayserlich-Königlichen Residenz-Stadt Wien üblich sind.
2. All pp. 217-228 in the two editions of 1756. [In Google Books, you may find this in Band 2 of 2.]
3. https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/en/v ... ,151&q=min All pp. 119-128.
4. https://www.google.de/books/edition/Joh ... frontcover
5. We would have expected Florence and Rome instead. Either the authors are not correctly informed, or they distinguish the environments by reporting those of Bologna and Naples as more exclusive or elitist, which is not true, at least for Rome.
6. The “usually” is strange. It is probably due to a form of caution due to insecurity; but there remains some suspicion that, on the contrary, some minchiate game variants – or decks – were known to the compilers and then forgotten. I don't think it can refer to the not very common minchiate decks, perhaps of 69 cards, used in Lucca (Dummett, McLeod, A History of Games Played with the Tarot Pack, 2004, p. 354).


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just for oneself, however large the number of players may be. The most usual way to play this game is with four players, between two pairs of players. [note 7]

If there are fewer than four players, 25 cards are dealt to each, but if there are four, each player receives only 21 cards, but the last one must in any case be shown to all the players; if this last card is a counting card, whoever receives it scores for himself as many points as the face-up card is worth; However, if the face-up card is worthless, no one can score points.

If everyone plays for oneself and is dealt bad cards, one may not play if he chooses, but throw his cards away [gettare le carte a monte = take the cards out of play], with this condition, however, that in the end he must pay some points, as fixed beforehand, to the one who makes the last trick. The person who threw away his cards, even if he doesn't play, can still claim the penalty of the points that any player loses. The penalty usually to be paid is the following: whoever is in the lead, if he does not want to play, pays 20 points, the second 30, the third and fourth 40 points. [note 8]

The dealer, after giving the cards to everyone, must look to see if there are any counting cards [cards with point-values] left in the cards that remain, and if there are, he can exchange them with as many of his own, and in this case, it is customary to say playing with the fola, which means nothing else than all counting cards are present in the game.

All the cards are divided into either tarocchi or cartiglia. The cartiglia are then divided into four different types, that is, into swords, batons, cups, and coins; none of these kinds of cards count except the King, which is worth 5, and is a counting card. [note 9]

In all the suits, the higher cards take the lower, except in cups and coins, in which case the lower surpass the higher, if they are not face cards; because the face cards always surpass the numeral cards, and only the numeral ones have the freedom to prevail over those of a higher number.

There are 40 tarocchi, and 41 with the Fool, [note 10] and the lower are always taken by the higher. Each of these tarocchi is numbered up to 35, but the other 5 beyond these are not numbered and are called Arie; however, they are distinguished from the others through their figure, given that the lowest one represents the Star, the second the Moon, the third the Sun, the fourth the World, and the fifth the Trumpets; and these are the highest cards in the game.

Three cards of those that count, i.e. from 1 to 5 inclusive, the Ten, the Thirteen and the Twenty, and from the 28 to the 40 excluding the 29, if they are in sequence, form a verzigola; [note 11 if they are in sequence, even 4 or 5 cards make a verzigola; [note 12] the following cards also make a verzigola: Fool, Trumpets, 1, 13, and 28; [note 13] 10, 20, and 30; or also 20, 30, and Trumpets, as well as three Kings; in this it is, however, to be noted that the fool can be used for all the verzigole, [note 14] although it is the lowest of all the cards, it cannot, however, take any of those, and alone cannot make any verzigola if it is not united with the Trumpets. [note 15]

Each verzigola counts 5 points, [note 16] except the 4 Papi, which only count 3, and the other [note 17] 5 Arie, which count 10 points each.

__________________
7. This form of the game was documented as early as the sixteenth century, but only at the time of the book was it becoming practically the only way of playing minchiate, in parallel with similar ways of playing that became popular with tressette and then whist.
8. The ascending sequence is different in other descriptions, e.g. 20, 40, 50 and 60 in Minucci's Note.
9. In subsequent variants, the ability to choose the cards from the fola is auctioned off among the players.
10. Usually the fool is considered a separate card and not the 41st tarocco.
11. Usually Italian authors are uncertain between versicola and verzicola when writing this word that is not encountered outside of the game of minchiate; here the uncertainty is resolved differently and I do not change the spelling.
12. In the following, the author limits himself to giving examples of verzigole with three cards.
13. Here the 1 in the middle of the five numbers seems to belong, separately, to both the first three and the second three; the verzigole in fact include two of three cards: 1, Fool, Trumpets and 1, 13, 28.
14. Said like this, it would leave open the hypothesis of the Fool being able to replace any missing card in the series; instead, it can only be added to the verzigola, increasing its length and contributing its value to the overall score.
15. Here one could glimpse a non-existent verzigola of two cards (perhaps reading the series of five elements listed above together for the verzigole as 2+3); if this is not the case, as we know from all the other sources, it could equally have been written that the Fool cannot form a verzigola if it is not united with the 1.
16. Implying for each card that forms it.
17. Perhaps he means the 5 Arie among the “other” tarocchi. There are no other Arie.


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It is customary to count the verzigole three times, once before the game begins, that is when it is only declared before the game, because after the first cards have been played it can no longer be shown or counted. But at the end of the game you still count twice if you took it home.

Whoever cuts [literally, raises] the cards, after they have been shuffled, can take the raised card [card at the cut, in the upper part] in front of him, if it is a counting card, and all the others that follow it, in which case the dealer will have to compensate for what is missing in his portion, with those cards that were moved by the one who robbed them and placed them in front of him.

Of those extra cards left, i.e. when all the players already have their cards, the dealer must remove all the counting cards, not excluding those that are above 20, otherwise these would not be used to make verzigole, which must also be understood for the Twenty-Nine. [note 18]

Whoever replaces the cards must always dispose of [note 19] [discard to the "mountain" or fola, the residue of cards not in anyone's hand] any other cards that are not counting cards, because these cards must necessarily remain in the game.

Rules

I
If a player, either through carelessness in receiving his cards, or through forgetfulness in substituting them, has played with more or fewer cards than he should, he must necessarily pay the penalty and then cannot score anything, except the last hand, if he makes it, and the cards he takes; which penalty is also inflicted on his partner, and this mistake cannot be remedied if the first card has been played. However, if the first card has been played, and someone has noticed that he has one more, in this case, he could remedy the damage, if he said that this card which he played, would be a card that he wanted to replace, in which case he gets 19 [points - added in brackets by FP], [note 20] the transfer is granted, and the penalty must be requested from the dealer; but this does not apply if he had played a counting card. [note 21]

II
Whoever makes a mistake in the distribution must pay a penalty of 20 points for the first card and 10 for all the others, up to the sum of one resto; if the mistake happens to everyone, whoever made the mistake must pay everyone, and it may happen that one has to pay one resto for every mistake in dealing the cards.

III
Whoever has the cards due, but given to him by mistake, can exchange the cards at his pleasure, but he must play only if he does not make mistakes in the exchange; and if he has less, before playing he must ask the dealer how many he lacks and the dealer must without delay give from the rest of the deck how many he lacks; that only has to happen before he's done the fola. You can also oblige the dealer to pay a penalty every time he forgets to deal the right cards face up. [note 22]

IV
The Fool can be played any time at the player's pleasure, but not on the occasion in which one of the players has played a cartiglia for the first time, and on which the player who follows him has played a tarocco, having no cards in the suit, because then whoever has the King, if he has not yet played, must play it, even if he has other cards of the suit or even the Fool; however, this can only happen during the first trick [of that suit] and not at other times.

V
The player must follow the suit that is played each time, and if one had played coins, [and] the other puts a tarocco on it, while he had the suit to follow, then he must pay one resto
_____________
18. He mentions the possibility of 29 entering the verzigola and counting.
19. To replace the ones "robbed."
20. The number is not clear - perhaps it is a printing error instead of 20, implying points, but it is preserved in subsequent editions.
21. Because counting cards cannot be discarded, and therefore the excuse would not be valid. (However, it should be kept in mind that only the dealer and the person who cuts the deck before the deal have the right to take and replace cards.)
22. That is, to reveal the last card of the distribution.


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to each of his opponents; however, only the person who did not follow the suit must pay this penalty and not his partner, as happens for those [note 23] other errors.

VI
If one does not follow the suit played it is called a refusal, i.e. refusing the suit. But the player who no longer has cards of the suit played must play a tarocco as long as he has some; and if he no longer has any, then he can play a card of his choice.

VII
Sometimes players can lay their cards on the table (to free themselves from the danger of refusal) and give players the option to take a card of their choice, in which case they can no longer play their cards in this game, because they are considered as lost; however he cannot do so if he still has a King [note 24] in his hand.

VIII
If one does not recognize having captured [note 25] a counting card from his opponent, in addition to the penalty of two resti [note 26] at the end of the game, he must return the captured cards to the one from whom he had taken them, which he must also do with those other cards in addition to his [presumably those of the other players taken in the trick].

IX
For the refusal to be called this, the person to whom it happens must have had to play several times [i.e. tricks after the refusal], and for this reason, it is not enough that the trick has already been made and covered [i.e. the cards put face down in the pile of captured cards], except in the case that this had happened to the person who committed the refusal [unclear: that he acknowledged his mistake quickly?].

X
The player also can avoid the penalty of refusal if he noticed the refusal before playing again, but with the condition that he pick up his tarocco again [which he had played inappropriately] from the cards on the table where the refusal occurred. However, if he leaves the tarocco on the table as well as the cards of the refusal [i.e. the other players’ cards in the trick], one must not believe that he has placed the cards of the refusal on the table to improve [his situation], but to play again [perhaps meaning, postponing playing the correct card until more cards have been played], and then he will have to pay the penalty.

XI
Each resto consists of 60 points. If, after the first time, he also did not recognize, or denied it, the second time, he must immediately after the discovery pay 2 resti or double penalties.

XII
The Fool can be given to anybody, or not, because this card can be played whenever you want, and because it represents all the figures, except that it cannot take. It may happen that the person holding the Fool in his hand does not make any tricks and finds himself at the end of the game without cards that he could play instead of the Fool, in which case he must play the Fool, even though it is a counting card, therefore the death is not counted. [note 27] But if he were forced to play other counting cards instead of the Fool, because he has no others, the death of such counting cards is immediately marked.

XIII
Anyone who starts playing, or lets others play, before declaring can no longer declare; but the verzigole must at the declaration be placed [on the table] and shown openly.

XIV
The cards that count are the following:
Arie count 10.
The high tarocchi cards 5.
The Kings 5.
Papi 2, 3, 4, and 5 count as 3.
_________________
23. It is not clear whether those others are few or many or all; However, it seems to refer to the previous case in which the partner instead had to pay.
24. In other rules it is specified that, in addition to the Kings, there must be no tarocco.
25. Does not score the corresponding points.
26. Rule that does not appear to be present in other manuals and which would provide an incredibly high penalty.
27. This preferential treatment for the loss of the Fool is not reported in other texts.


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However, many other cases can happen in this game, which are impossible to include in a single rule, because this would require an entire book. 

Die Kunst die Welt mitzunehmen . . . Vienna 1756, p. 218.

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3. Comment and conclusion

A first comment should be made on the form of the text. If one thought of using Google Translate or other programs to easily switch from German to Italian, one would be disappointed. In fact, before inserting the file into the translator, some laborious preliminary operations would probably be necessary: retouching the pages for greater contrast and definition, switching from Gothic to Roman characters, and also switching from a relatively ancient German to the current language. There are also some words, fortunately few, whose meaning has been completely lost. It is to be expected that several passages of my translation will be improvable by competent readers.

Note the division into two parts of the discussion, a first with explanations on the game modes, a second, here with numbered articles, reserved for the laws to be respected in the case of errors or questionable situations, indicating the relative penalties for those who do not observe them. This second part in other cases is the only one present; that is, in those cases, knowledge of the game is taken for granted and only the rules to be respected are provided, in order to avoid the otherwise inevitable discussions and arguments between players.

This description of minchiate, presented in German in 1756, is one of the first we have of the game; even the game of tarocchi, the founder of the family, had only had a first description printed in German a couple of years earlier.

In Italy itself, there are few previously published works: The Regole Generali of Luigi Bernardi [note 28] published in Rome in 1728 and 1742 and republished in Macerata in the same 1756; the book by Francesco Saverio Brunetti, Rome 1747, on minchiate, ombre, and chess, of which many copies are preserved (also thanks to the unusual literary content) [note 29]; finally, The Capitolo of Pio Enea degli Obizzi, published only four years earlier in Livorno; [note 30] no Florentine edition (apart from the previous description by Minucci which was, however, only a long note in a 1688 book on a different topic [note 31]).

It is not clear then what the source of this description could have been, which does not coincide exactly with any of the previous ones known to us; perhaps a lost Italian manuscript was circulating, or some German traveler had collected and passed on the rules of a game he had seen in life and liked. However, regardless of the literature on the game, the fact that in 1756 itself, 144 decks of minchiate were exported from Florence to Vienna, may be indicative. [note 32]

There also remains some uncertainty regarding the date, i.e. whether the modality of the game corresponds to that in vogue in those years, especially in Florence and Rome. The imperial capital of Vienna had direct connections with both cities, but one can imagine a delay of a few years before the rules of a game that had only been Tuscan until recently were printed in Vienna, even if it was already widespread at the time in other cities, and in Rome in particular.

The very fact that the book talks about Bologna and Naples would suggest instead that the primary sources for this information were still different. However, an important connection between minchiate and Vienna can be found in none other than Francis I, who was the emperor resident in Vienna but who, among other titles, also had that of Grand Duke of Tuscany. Even if the emperor followed the government of Tuscany only from afar, the Florence-Vienna route was frequently passed by various court officials.

Equally remarkable is the fact that, subsequently, a book which in its detail surpassed all these descriptions also appeared in German in Dresden in 1798, before being translated into Italian in 1830, again in Germany. [note 33] Even the Florentine Accademia dei Germini today mainly uses this German edition to illustrate the rules of a game that it undertakes to propose again to renew an ancient local tradition. [note 34] In short, one would say that the typical fussiness of
__________
28. The Playing-Card, Vol. 48, No. 3 (2020) 96-102. https://www.naibi.net/A/84.pdf
29. The Playing-Card, Vol. 49, No. 2 (2020) 64-69. https://www.naibi.net/A/84.pdf
30. The Playing-Card, Vol. 47, No 3 (2019) 176-179. https://www.naibi.net/A/80-CARDS.pdf
31. https://www.naibi.net/A/UGHI.pdf
32. Ludica, 24 (2018) 20-38. https://www.naibi.net/A/82-Pratesi-2a%2 ... tt2018.pdf.
33. The Playing-Card, Vol. 47, No 3 (2019) 176-179. https://www.naibi.net/A/81.pdf
34. http://germini.altervista.org/


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German-language writers was needed to better complete the complex framework of the rules of this extraordinary game, starting from the deck of cards used.

The description translated here is quite complete, albeit in its brevity, taking into account that it contains both the description of the game and the rules of behavior in case of errors, with the related penalties; it does not add much to what is already known from other editions, but this information is useful because in almost all other publications only the variant played in fours between two pairs is discussed (which spread from Rome throughout Europe), while information on the everyone-for-oneself variant under consideration here is rare.

4. Appendix. Emperor and minchiate in Rome

To show that it was possible for the same emperor on the throne in Vienna to come into contact with minchiate, I add an episode that no longer concerns Francis I, but his son Joseph II, emperor in Vienna since 1765. The fact is described in a letter from the Milanese abbot Giorgio d'Adda, sent to his brother from Rome; the date is 3 June 1769, the day before the coronation of Clement XIV, which was probably the occasion of the emperor's arrival in Rome.

The letter in question is reproduced in a book by Felice Calvi, [note 35] and from the same text, I copy the passages of interest in this context, preceded by two other passages copied from the introduction, to frame the environment and the personage.

Abbot Giorgio d'Adda-Salvaterra was another of those Milanese patricians who sought wealth, honors and fame in the Roman prelature. However, d'Adda did not complete the entire desirable journey: he did not reach the nunciature; nor could he boast the purple. He was apparently a man of lively spirits, mannered, and a lover more of happy living than of intense study; he preferred the dapper society of Roman princesses to the reading of dusty folios. Coming from the branch of an illustrious family whose members Emperor Leopold I had decorated with the feudal titles of the Holy Roman Empire, he began his career as a prelate with the task given by Benedict XIV (28 October 1753) to bring, as apostolic legate, the cardinal insignia to one of our acquaintances, the Nuncio in Paris, Monsignor Carlo Durini. He is therefore Referendary of both Signatures; then showered with favors and pensions by successive popes, he dies as Prefect of the Signatura in Rome. Monsignor d'Adda spent the best years of his life in the noble city of Rome, when it was even more than today the desired meeting place of the most distinguished families in Europe for their opulence and great social position. (p. XXIV)

The chronicle of the Vatican and the arrival of princes and princesses of royal blood in Rome is a favorite theme of our Abbot. He suffers all the prestige that surrounds those personages. Emperor Joseph II, with a kindness that moves him, deigns to be occupied with him and the game of minchiate, and the Archduchess Beatrice d'Este, wife of Ferdinand of Austria-Lorraine, governor of Lombardy, gives him the recent news from Milan. Being continuously worried about his own fate does not, however, affect his constant good humor, his exuberant benevolence for the world in which he lives, the unalterable optimism with which he judges that cloud of foreigners, that flourishing nobility, which descends from the North and stops in the capital of the Catholic world. (pp. XXVI-XXVII)

Rome, 3 June 1769.
Dearest Brother,
I believe that by now the Emperor will be there, and you will have the pleasure of recognizing one of the wisest and most lovable Princes around. I had proof of this here, having deigned one evening in Casa Sforza to stand behind my chair while I played
_______________
35. F. Calvi, Corrispondenze segrete di grandi personaggi. Milan 1878.

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minchiate, he constrained me to remain seated and continue my game, asking me various things concerning the same game. He has edified [?] everyone here with his supreme piety, he has gratified many with his generosity, and he has generally stolen the hearts of everyone, both Nobles and plebeians. In Casa Corsini I also had the honor of having dinner at the table where he sat, and not far from him. In Milan, I hope that perhaps his arrival will not be indifferent, and that the State will feel relief from it. (p. 322)

Florence, 06.05.2024