A

r
4

The Game of Tarot

from Ferrara to Salt Lake City

Michael Durnmett
with the assistance of Sylvia Mann

Duckworth
 First published 1980 by N
Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd.
The Old Piano Factory
43 Gloucester Crescent, London NW1

© 1980 by Michael Dummett

All rights reserved. No part of this

publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any
form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without
the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN 07156 1014 7 1

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Dummett, Michael
The game of Tarot.
1. Tarot (Game) \,

I. Title II. Mann, Sylvia, b. 7924

795.4 GV1295.T/
ISBN0-7156-1014-7

Photoset by
Specialised Offset Services Ltd., Liverpool
and printed in Great Britain by
Unwire Brothers Limited, Old Woking, Surrey
 Contents
Annotated List of Illustrations ix
Preface xix

Part I: History and Mystery

1. The Tarot Pack in Playing-Card History 3
2. The Beginnings in Europe 10
3. Europe and Asia 33
4. When and Where the Tarot Pack was Invented 65
5. Cartornancy 93
6. The Occult 102
(i) The first phase in France 102
(ii) The second phase in France 113
(iii) The Gypsies 136
(iv) In other countries 147
7. The Game of Tarot 164

Part II: Games with 78 Cards

8. General Features of the Game 195
9. The Early Stages of the Game in France 202
10. Swiss Tarot, Tarock or Troccas 217
11. Classic Eighteenth-century Tarot Outside Italy 225
12. Grosstarock 239
13. Tarocco in Piedmont and Lombardy 258
14. Tarok-l'Hombre 280
15. Tarot in France in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries 287

Part III: Italian Games and Italian Cards

16. Tarocchino OI` Tarocchi Bolognesi 315
17. Minchiate 338
18. Trappola 355
19. Sicilian Tarocchi 371
20. The Order of the Tarot Trumps 387
21. The Early Italian Game 418
viii Contents
q

Part IV: Games with 54 or fewer Cards

22. Tapp-Tarock 437
23. The Variants of Tapp-Tarock 460
24. (Lego 489
25. Kiinigsrufen 502
26. XIXer-Rufen, XXer-Rufen and Czech Taroky 526
27. Paskiewitsch and Hungarian Tarokk 541
28. Bavarian Tarock and its Relatives 556

Analytical List of Games 574

Index 586 "1
 Annotated List of Illustrations
(between pages 320 and 321 )

1. Suit-systems
Top left: German
King of Acorns, Ober of Leaves, Unter of Bells, Deuce (Ace) of Hearts;
from German-suited pack (one of the patterns used in Saxony) by V.E.B.
Altenburger Spielkartenfabrik, Altenburg, 1969, in S. Mann Collection
Top right: Swiss
King of Shields, Ober of Roses, Unter of Bells, Banner (10) of Acorns;
from Swiss-suited pack by D. Hurter of Schaffhausen, c. 1860, in S.
Mann Collection
Below: French
King of Hearts, Queen of Spades, jack of Diamonds, Ace of Clubs;
from French-suited pack in official pattern of 1813 (Paris pattern) in S.
Mann Collection

2. Latin suits
Top left: Italian
King of Batons, Cavalier of Coins, .Jack of Cups, 5 of Swords; from
Italian-suited pack (Trentino pattern) by A.S.S. of Leinfelden, 1979, in
S. Mann Collection
Top right: 'Portuguese'
King of Batons, Cavalier of Coins, Maid of Cups, 4 of Swords; from
Portuguese-suited pack by the Real Fabrica de Lisboa, c. 1860, in S.
Mann Collection
Below left: Spanish
King of Coins, Cavalier of Cups, .]ack of Batons, 6 of Swords; from
Spanish-suited pack (Andalusian pattern) made in Cadiz, c. 1870, in S.
Mann Collection
Below right: Italian, early variant form
8 of Batons, 2 of Batons, 9 of Batons, 4 of Swords, 3 of Swords, 2 of
Swords, part of an uncut sheet, late fifteenth century, probably from
Venice, in the Magyar Nemzeti Museum, Budapest, taken from the
same wood block as a sheet in the Cary Collection (old catalogue no. I-
1008), Beinecke Library, Yale University; illustration reproduced from
plate on p. 394 of 'A Stencil Sheet of Playing Cards of the late fifteenth
century with two related Uncut Sheets of Cards' by Melbert B. Cary,
or., The Print Col[ectors'Q_uarterly, vol. 26, 1939, pp. 392-423. See pp. 17-18,
404-5
x Annotated List of lllustrations

3. Marnluk playing cards now in Istanbul

King of Polo-Sticks, King of Coins, Viceroy of Swords (formerly the 9),
Second Viceroy of Cups, Second Viceroy of Coins (replacement card
from different pack), 10 of Coins, from fifteenth-century pack in
Topkapi Sarayi Museum, Istanbul. The illustrations are taken from
photographs obtained for the author by Mr Ralph Pinder Wilson.
Unlike those in L.A. Mayer, Mamluk Playing Cards, ed. R. Ettinghausen
and O. Kurz, Leiden, 1971, they show very clearly the parts of the
designs on the cards of the primary pack over which the lower
inscriptions have been painted, at the cost of making those inscriptions
almost illegible; they also include a 4 and 10 of Coins, the latter
illustrated here, not mentioned by Mayer or by Ettinghausen and Kurz.
See pp. 39-44

4. Suits from an eight-suited Indian Ganjifa pack

Clockwise from the top: King of Silver (sated), 2 of Merchandise (qimash),
King of Gold (surkh), 5 of Swords (shamsher), 7 of Slaves (ghulam), 4 of
Lyres (Chang), 6 of Crowns (tab), in centre: 6 of Documents (bharal). From
a modern Moghul Ganjifa pack (Deccan type) from Andhra Pradesh,
in S. Mann Collection. See pp. 51-5

5. Trump cards and Queens from the Metropolitan Museum pack

(no. 21 )
Top row: Fortitude, Bagatto, 'P Queen of Cups, -, -, second row: Queen of
Coins, Queen of Batons, Queen of Swords, XI Hermit, XII Hanged
Man; third row: XVIII Sun, XVIIII Angel, XX Justice, World, XVII
Moon, bottom row: -, -, VIII Love, VI Temperance, (unidentifiable,
possibly XVI Star). One of three uncut sheets for the same late
fifteenth-century Tarot pack, probably from Venice or Ferrara, in the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (catalogue no. 26.101.5,
purchased by Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1926) See pp. 75 and 404-6.
Not previously reproduced so far as known

6. Trump cards from the Rosenwald pack (no. 22)

Top row: Moon, Sun, World, Angel; middle row: X Chariot, XII Hermit,
Hanged Man, Wheel of Fortune; bottom row: II Popess, III Empress, IIII
Emperor, V Pope. Part of an uncut sheet, showing three Queens and
twenty-one trumps, for a late fifteenth-century Tarot pack, probably
from Florence, in the Rosenwald Collection, National Gallery of Art,
Washington, D.C. (catalogue no. B 19823). See pp. 75, 395 and 403

7. Suit cards from the Rosenwald pack (no. 22)

Top row: jack of Batons,.]ack of Swords, Maid of Cups, Maid of Coins;
middle row: Cavalier of Coins, Cavalier of Swords, Cavalier of Cups,
Cavalier of Batons; bottom row: 6 of Cups, 7 of Cups, 8 of Cups, 9 of
Cups. Part of an uncut sheet, probably for the same pack as illustrated
on plate 6, also in the Rosenwald Collection (catalogue no. B 19821).
See pp. 75, 395 and 403. Not previously illustrated as far as known
 Annotated List qfllluslraiions xi

8. Tap two rows: hand-painted tarocchi from the Victoria & Albert
Museum (no. 12)

Ace of Cups, Star,_]ack of Coins, Death. Fifteenth century, see p. 72

Below: Tozzi tarocchi (no. 8)
Wheel of Fortune, King of Swords. From a set of fifteenth-century
hand-painted cards formerly in the possession of Mr Piero Tozzi,
present whereabouts now mostly unknown. See p. 70. Illustration
taken from article by M.L. D'Otrange in The Connoisseur, vol.
CXXXIII, 1954, pp. 54-60

9. Top row, and middle row, two cards at left: d'Este tarocchi (no. 6)
Bagatto, jack of Batons, Sun, World, Cavalier of Swords, Temperance;
from fifteenth-century hand-painted pack made for the d'Este family in
the Cary Collection, Beinecke Library, Yale University. See p. 69
Middle row, two cards at right: two Milanese Fanti (Jacks) (no. 17)
jacks of Swords and Coins, Niedersiichsisches Landesmuseum,
Hanover (Landesgalerie). These two hand-painted Fifteenth-century
cards, formerly in the Kestner Museum, Hanover, are not necessarily
from a Tarot pack. See p. 73
Bottom row: Brambilla tarocchi (no. 2)
Wheel of Fortune, Queen of Batons, from a fifteenth-century pack,
painted by Bonifacio Bembo, in the Brera Gallery, Milan. See pp. 68, 79

10. Cards from the Visconti di Modrone tarocchi (no. 1)

Top row: King of Swords, Queen of Batons, Knight of Cups, middle row :
Dame of Swords, Page (Jack) of Cups, Maid of Coins; bottom row: Love,
Hope, Charity. From the pack painted by Bonifacio Bembo for Filippo
Maria Visconti, Duke of Milan, in the Cary Collection, Beinecke
Library,, Yale University; it originally had six court cards in each
suit and included the three theological virtues of Faith, Hope and
Charity among the trumps. If all the usual trump subjects were
present, it would have had 24 trumps, as suggested on p. 78. It seems
unlikely, however, that the fourth cardinal virtue, Prudence, should not
have been included. Miss Moakley, in her book on the Visconti-Sforza
pack (no. 3), pointed out that in that pack the Popess depicts a
historical character, Sister Manfreda, a relative of the Visconti family
who was elected Pope by the Guglielmite sect, and burned at the stake
in 1300. Conceivably this represented the first appearance of the Popess
in the Tarot pack, Prudence being eliminated to make room for her. If
so, and if the Visconti di Modrone pack did have 24 trump cards, the
Popess may have been the only one of the usual subjects missing from
that pack. See pp. 68, 77-9

11. The portrait of Prince Fibbia in Bologna

Seventeenth-century portrait of Francesco Antelminelli Castracani
Fibbia (1360-1419) in the palazzo Fibbia, 14 via Galliera, Bologna.
Photograph reproduced by kind permission of the occupiers, the
Associazione Artigiani. This portrait has not previously been
illustrated. See pp. 66-7
xii Annotated Lis! 0flllustrations

12. The Tarocchi Players: wall painting c. 1440 at the Casa Borromeo,
Milan.
See pp. 67-8

13. Top row: wider Guildhall pair (no. 14)

Ace of Swords, Ace of Cups; hand-painted fifteenth-century cards in the
Collection of the Worshipful Company of Makers of Playing Cards at
the Guildhall Library, London: compare the Ace of Cups on plate 16.
See pp. 72-5
Middle row: narrower Guildhall pair (no. 15)
Jack of Batons, the World; hand-painted fifteenth-century cards, from
a different pack, in the same Collection. See pp. 73-5, 84-5
Bottom row: Goldschmidt cards (no. 19) and Falconer card (forgery)
(no. 20)
Unidentified subject (? Sun) (card (b) ), Ace of Swords, Falconer (card
(a) ); (at right) single Falconer card. Though the isolated Falconer card
at the right is known to be a forgery, it is presumably copied from some
lost original. Deutsches Spielkarten Museum, Leinfelden. See pp. 73-5,
84-5

14. A late fifteenth-century sheet of Tarot cards, probably from Milan

(no. 24)
Top row: Ps Wheel of Fortune, Chariot, Love, 9, second row: Fortitude,
Popess (?), Emperor, Empress, Pope (?), third row: Sun, Moon, Star,
Bagatto, Fool (P), bottom row: Tower, Devil, Temperance, 7 of Batons, 8
or 9 of Batons. The illustration shows the whole surviving part of this
uncut sheet, which is in the Cary Collection, Beinecke Library, Yale
University (old catalogue no. I-1010). See pp. 76, 135 and 406-8. Not
previously reproduced. Miss Mann thinks the card here identified as
the Popess is more likely to represent the Pope

15. Above, from left to right: Tower, Star, Moon, Devil and Chariot from
an early Bolognese Tarot pack (no. 23)
Although shown separately, these five cards come from an uncut sheet
of the late fifteenth century in the Rothschild Collection, Louvre
(catalogue no. 3804 LR) which shows six cards, the sixth being Death.
See pp. 78, 315-16 and 402-3
Below, from left to right: the Devil, by A. Hebreo (no. 27), Love,
sixteenth century (no. 28), the World, from Milan, seventeenth
century (no. 32); 2 of Coins, by Paolino di Castelletto, 1499
The Devil by Agnolo Hebreo is an isolated card from a sixteenth-
century Tarot pack, probably from Bologna,_in the British Museum;
the back has a dotted border, which was originally folded over in the
familiar way to make a border for the face, and, within the border, a
design showing a man with hands bound behind him, with the legend
CHA PERSESE GRATA EL CVLLO and, at the bottom, the name
M. AGNOLO HEBREO. Love, numbered VIII, is another isolated
card, from a sixteenth-century Tarot pack probably made in Ferrara or
Venice, in the Museo Nazionale dell Arti e Tradizioni Popolari,
Rome; the back, again with a dotted border, folded over, shows a
 Annotated List Q/'Illustrations xiii

standing winged Cupid with bow and quiver, and has no name or
legend. The World, numbered XXI, is one of a set of six seventeenth-
century Tarot cards made in Milan in the Raccolta delle Stamps Achille
Bertarelli at the Castello Sforzesco, Milan, as far as is known, it has not
previously been reproduced. The 2 of Coins dated 1499 is in the same
Collection, and is not necessarily from a Tarot pack; it, too, is of
Milanese origin. For these cards, see pp. 316, 393, 403 and 408-12

16. The Tarot pack devised by Matteo Maria Boiardo

King of Whips, Queen of Eyes, Cavalier of Vases, Jack of Arrows, 8 of
Eyes, 2 of Whips; from a wood-engraved pack of the late fifteenth
century, probably from Urbino, sold at auction at Christie's,London,
on 24 November 1971 to Signor Carlo Alberto Chiesa of Milan, and
now in a private collection in Switzerland. The verses are by Boiardo.
See pp. 76-7 and 420-2

17. Cards from an Italian Tarot pack of the sixteenth century now at
Rouen (no 25)
Top row: Victoriae Premium (= Chariot) 7, Rerum Edax (Time =
Hermit) 11; Perditorum Raptor (Pluto = Devil) 14; Inclitum Syd us
(Star)16; bottom row: Fool; .Jack of Swords; 2 of Batons; Ace of Batons.
The pack, which is probably, from Venice, is in the Leber Collection,
Bibliothéque Municipale, Rouen (catalogue no. 1351-XIV). See pp.
86, 392, 396, 400

18. Trump cards and Matto from a seventeenth-century Tarocco

bolognese
Top row: Death, Temperance, the Devil, the Tower (Saetta), middle row :
the Star, the Moon, the Sun, the Angel, bottom row: the World, the Fool,
from a pack in the Réserve des Estarnpes, Bibliothéque Nationals,
Paris. Compare plates 15 and 20. Not previously illustrated so far as
known

19. Suit cards from a seventeenth-century Tarocco bolognese

Top row: Kings of Cups, Coin, Batons and Swords; middle row: Maid of
Cups, Maid of Coins, Queen of Batons, Queen of Swords; bottom row:
Cavaliers of Cups, Coins, Batons and Swords. From the same pack as
plate 18. Not previously illustrated as far as known

20. Top two rows: eighteenth-century Minchiate cards

Top row: trumps XI (the Hunchback or Time, corresponding to the
Hermit), XXI (Water), XXVIII (Sagittarius) and the Trumpets (je
Trombe); second row: King of Cups, King of Swords, Maid of Coins,
_]ack of Swords. From a Minchiate pack by 'al Mondo', Bologna, in S.
Mann Collection
Bottom two rows: Taroeco Bolognese (third row: nineteenth-century
pack, bottom row, right: seventeenth-century pack, bottom row, left:
modern pack)
Third row: Moor, trump 12 (Traitor, corresponding to the Hanged
Man), trump 15 (Thunderbolt, corresponding to the Tower), the Sun;
xiv Annotated List 0flltustrations

from a pack by Alessandro Grandi, Bologna, c. 1865, in S. Mann

Collection. Bottom row, left: Fool, trump 10 (Wheel), from a pack by
S.A. Beg hi, Milan, 1945, in S. Mann Collection. Bottom row, right: Maid
of Cups, .]ack of Swords, from a late seventeenth-century pack by 'al
Soldato' of Bologna in S. Mann Collection. Compare plates 15, 18 and
19

21. Cards from a seventeenth-century Tarot pack with the trade-name

'Orfeo' (no. 31 )
Top row: Cavaliers of Swords, Batons, Cups and Coins; middle row:
Jacks of Swords, Batons, Cups and Coins; bottom row: Fool, King of
Batons, Ace of Swords, Ace of Coins. From a pack made in Florence,
most of the cards with Minchiate designs, in the Cary Collection,
s
Beinecke Library, Yale University (new catalogue no. ITA-63, old E.

catalogue no. I-11), not previously reproduced. See pp. 378, 394 and 402

22. 'Portuguese'-suited pack by Ciliberto, 1597

Top row: King of Swords, Cavalier of Cups, Cavalier of Coins, middle
row: Maid of Batons, Maid of Coins, King of Cups; bottom row: Ace of
Coins, Ace of Batons, Ace of Swords. From a regular 'Portuguese'-
suited pack made by Pietro Ciliberto, probably in Sicily, in S. Mann
Collection. See pp. 20 and 379

23. The alla Colonna sheets, 'Portuguese' suit-system. Above: Tarot

pack (no. 30); below: regular pack
Sheet al top left: Maid of Swords, Maid of Batons, Cavalier of Coins,
Cavalier of Batons, 2 of Swords, 3 of Swords; sheet at top right: trumps 10
(Chariot), 11 (Wheel), 5 (Sultan), 6 (Love), 20 (World ?), 21 (Angel ?) ;
sheet at bottom left: King of Coins, King of Cups, King of Swords, King of
Batons, Maid of Coins, Maid of Cups, Maid of Swords, Maid of
Batons, 5 of Swords, 4 of Swords, 3 of Swords, 2 of Swords, sheet at
bottom right: Ace of Coins, Ace of Cups, Ace of Batons, Ace of Swords,
Cavalier of Coins, Cavalier of Cups, Cavalier of Swords, Cavalier of
Batons, 9 of Swords (P), -, 7 of Swords (?), 6 of Swords. The regular
pack is dated 1613 on the 2 of Swords; both packs by 'alla Coloma',
Rome, Lady Charlotte Schreiber Collection, British Museum. The
Maid of Swords in both packs holds a shield with the Colonna arms.
See pp. 20, 320, 379, 393-4 and 399

24. Sicilian 'Portuguese'-suited regular pack, 1639

Top row: Ace of Coins, 6 of Batons, King of Batons; middle row: Cavalier
of Swords, 7 of Cups; bottom row: 4 of Cups, 7 of Coins, 7 of Swords.
These are all the surviving cards of a pack, not previously illustrated, in
the Museo Etnografico Giuseppe Pitré, Casina Cinese, Parco della
Favorita, Palermo (catalogue no. G.E. 3180), photograph by G.
Armao, reproduced by kind permission of Professor Gaetano Falzone,
Director of the Museum. See pp. 20 and 379

25. Tarocchi sicilian (top three rows: older form, six by Tuzzolino and six
by F. Cimino; bottom row, modern, by Concetta Campione)
Top row: Poverty (Povettd), IIII Constancy (Costanza), XI Hanged
 Arznotaled List Qflllustratiorzs XV

Man, XIIII the Ship (it Vascetlo); second row, two cards at left: XXjupiter
(Jove), Cavalier of Coins. These six cards are by Tuzzolino, presumably
of Palermo, C. 1790, S. Mann Collection (M. Dummett co-owner).
Second row, two cards of right: Maid (Donna) of Swords, Queen of Swords,
third row: 10 of Cups, Maid of Batons, 5 of Swords, 5 of Batons. Six
cards from pack by Felice Cimino of Palermo, 1802, in the Museo Pitré,
Palermo (catalogue no. 3508), photographed by G. Armao and
reproduced by kind permission of Professor G. Falzone. Note the
absence of indices on the Queen and 10, and the dog's heads on the
Batons and Swords (compare the 7 of Swords in plate 24). Bottom row:
Poverty (Mixeria), 11 Hanged Man; from pack by Concetta Campione
of Catania, c. 1955, in S. Mann Collection. See pp. 371-6

26. Cards from the Tarot pack by Catelin Geoffroy, 1557

Top row: I Bateleur, II Popess; middle row: IIII Emperor, VII Chariot,
IX Hermit, XII Hanged Man, XIII Death, bottom row: XIIII
Temperance, XVI Lightning, XX Judgment. The pack was made in
Lyons, and is in the Museum fir Kunsthandwerk, Frankfurt am Main
(catalogue no. K1). See pp. 203-4

27. Above and left: seventeenth-century Parisian Tarots

Top row: Fool (je Fous), I je Bateleur, IX Hermit (l'Ermite), XVI the
Lightning (la Fouldre); middle row: XX the Judgment (je Iugement),
XXI the World (je Monde). From a pack in the Réserve des Estampes,
Bibliotheque Nationals, Paris (catalogue no. Kh 34). The cards
measure 69 x 127 mm; see pp. 207-8
Below: Tarot cards by_]. Viévil of Paris, mid-seventeenth century
Middle row: 2 of Coins, Ace of Coins; bottom row: 2 of Cups, XIII
Temperance, XV Devil, XVI Lightning. The last three cards have not
been previously reproduced. Compare plates 30 and 31. See pp. 205-7.
The cards measure 63 x 125 mm, and are in the same volume, Kh 34, as
the anonymous Parisian pack above

28. Tarot de Marseille 1760

Bateleur (I), Popess (II), Empress (III), Emperor (IIII), Pope (V),
Chariot (VII), Hermit (VIIII), Strength (XI), Hanged Man (XII),
Devil (XV), Moon (XVIII), judgment (XX), King of Cups, Queen of
Batons, Cavalier of Swords, .]ack of Coins, from a pack by Nicolas
Conver of Marseilles in S. Mann Collection

29. Top row eighteenth-century Lombard pattern IT-1 - 1

Fool, Popess (II), Tower (Maison Dieu) (XVI), Moon (XVIII); from a
pack by Angelo Marisi (trade-name 'alla Colomba') of Bologna in S.
Mann Collection. See pp. 196-7 and412-13
Middle row: single-figure Milanese pattern IT-1 ~3
Bagatto (I), Tower (XVI); from a nineteenth-century pack made in
Switzerland in S. Mann Collection. See p. 412
Bottom row: double-headed Milanese pattern IT-1 -31
Devil (XV), Moon (XVIII); from a pack by Fratelli Armanino of Genoa
in S. Mann Collection
xvi Annotated List of lllustrations

30. Top row: Tarot de Besanqon, IT-1 -4

_]uno (II), _Iupiter (V), the Devil (XV), the Moon (XVIII); from a pack
by Renault of Besanqon, c. 1800, in S. Mann Collection. See
pp. 217-18
Second and third rows: Belgian Tarot
Spanish Captain (II), Bacchus (V), Chariot (VII), Devil (XV),
Lightning (XVI), the World (XXI), Queen of Cups, jack of Batons;
from a pack by Jean Caller of Brussels, c. 1755, in S. Mann Collection.
Compare plates 27 and31 , see pp. 208-10
Eozftorn row: modern Swiss Italian-suited Tarot, IT-1 -41
.Iupiter (V), Hermit (VIIII), Devil (XV), King of Cups; from a
contemporary pack by J. MUller of Schaffhausen in S. Mann
Collection. See pp. 220, 412 4

31. 'Belgian pattern' Tarot pack made in Rouen, seventeenth century

2 of Cups, Bateleur (I), Spanish Captain (II), Emperor (III), Ace of
'Coins, 2 of Coins, Empress (IIII), Bacchus (V), Chariot (VII),justice
(VIII), Hermit (IX), Wheel of Fortune (X), Hanged Man (XII),
Temperance (XIIII), Devil (XV), Lightning (XVI); from a pack by *
4

Adam C. de Hautot of Rouen in David Temperley Collection.

Compare plates 27 and305 see pp. 208-10

32. Top two rows: Tarocco Piemontese (top row: intermediate form IT-
1-21 , second row: modern IT-1 ~211)
Top row: Fool, Hanged Man (XII), Tower (XVI), Judgment (XX) ;
from a pack by Fantini of Novara, c. 1865, in S. Mann Collection. Second
row: Empress (3), the Lovers (6), the Chariot (7), the Hermit (9); from
a pack by Modiano of Trieste, 1943, in S. Mann Collection. See pp.
196, 412
Bottom two rows: Trappola pack, Prague 1816
King Of Swords, _lack of Coins, Jack of Batons, Cavalier of Cups, Ace of
Coins, Ace of Cups, Deuce of Batons, Deuce of Swords, from a pack by
Jakob Wokaun of Prague, 1816, in S. Mann Collection. See pp. 356-7

33. Top three rows: standard modern Austrian Tarock cards (top row :
type A; second row: type B; third row: type C)
Top row: Tarocks II and III,_]ack of Diamonds, Cavalier of Spades; from
a pack by Pierwaza Gal. Fabr. Kart. do Cry, Lwow, c. 1900, in S.
Mann Collection. Second row: Tarocks II and III, Cavalier of Clubs, Skits ,
from a pack by Ferd. Piatnik & Siihne of Vienna, c. 1950, in S. Mann
Collection. Third row: Tarocks II and III, Queen of Diamonds, King of
Spades; from a pack by Ceské Graficka 'Unie' of Prague, c.
1935, in S. Mann Collection. The designs common to the court cards of
the three types were established by about 1860. Type A (FT-2~1 in the
Playing-Card Society classification) emerged in the 1860s, and was
made in Vienna, Budapest and Lwow (and perhaps elswhere); it did
not survive the First World War. Many of its designs were taken from
an early nineteenth-century pack depicting named regional costumes.
Type B (FT-2~2), in the same style, but with different designs on the
trumps, was probably established c. 1865. It was made in Graz, Vienna
and Budapest, and is still produced in the last two of these cities, being
 Annotated Lift Ql'Illustrations xvii

in common use in Austria and Hungary. Type C (FT-2~3) originated c.

1890 and was, and still is, made in Vienna and Prague; it is still in
common use in Austria and Czechoslovakia. Tarocks II and III serve as
the chief means of distinguishing betweeh the three types; the falcon in
place of the eagle on Tarock II is a Czech peculiarity. Note the
Austrian manner of placing the numerals on the body of the main
design. All these patterns are known chiefly in the 54-card form, but B
and C also occur in a 42-card form, and C, occasionally, with 78 cards
Bottom row: the ',bourgeois' pattern of French-suited Tarots
Tarocks 2 and 15, jack of Clubs, Cavalier of Diamonds; from a pack by
A.S.S. of Altenburg, c. 1935, in S. Mann Collection. This pattern (FT-3
in the Playing-Card Society classification) was introduced in the mid-
nineteenth century, originally for 78-card packs, by one of the
companies ancestral to A.S.S., perhaps one in Stralsund or, more
probably, Wrist of Frankfurt. It spread to France and Switzerland, in
both of which countries it is now the only French-suited Tarot pattern
in use. In Germany it came to be used for 54-card packs, and is now
one of two used for Cego cards. Note the panel for the numerals on the
trump cards, in accordance with the German practice for French-
suited Tarots. See pp. 220, 288, 439

34. Animal Tarots (top two rows: Bavarian, bottom two rows: Belgian)
Top two rows: King of Spades, Cavalier of Diamonds, Tarocks X and
XVIII, Queen of Clubs, jack of Clubs, Tarocks XIV and XVI; from a
i Bavarian Animal Tarot pack by Andreas Benedictus G6bl of Munich,
c. 1790, in S. Mann Collection. This pattern, designated FT-1 in the
Playing-Card Society classification, was the earliest of the Animal
Tarots, originating about 1765-70 and continuing in use until about
1860. It is known only in 78-card form. See p. 219. Bottom two rows: Jack
of Clubs, King of Clubs, trumps XII and XX, Queen of Spades,
Cavalier of Diamonds, trumps VIII and XVIII; from a Belgian Animal
Tarot ,pack by P.A. Keusters of Brussels, c. 1780, in S. Mann
Collection. The Belgian Animal Tarot pattern, FT-1-1 in the Playing-
Card Society classification, emerged soon after the Bavarian one, and
lasted until about 1880. It is known only in 78-card form. See p. 219

35. Animal Tarots (top row: upper Austrian, second row: South Tyrol,
third row: Baltic; bottom row: modern Cego)
Top row: King of Spades, Queen of Clubs, Tarocks V and XVI; from an
upper Austrian Animal Tarot pack by .]akob Wokaun of Prague, c.
1816, in S. Mann Collection. This pattern, FT-1 -2 in the Playing-Card
Society classification, is known only in a double-headed version, it may
have originated as late as 1810, and continued to be made in Bohemia
until at least 1858. Originally with 78 cards, laterexamples have only
54. Note the Austrian style of placing the numerals on the trumps. Second
row: King of Hearts, Queen of Clubs, Tarocks XIX and XX, from a
Tyrolean Animal Tarot pack made by Karl Albrecht of Bolzano
in the early nineteenth century. Deutsches Spielkarten Museum,
Leinfelden. This pattern existed for about thirty or forty years during
the middle of the nineteenth century, and was made in Innsbruck and
Bolzano; it is that referred to on p. 466 as perhaps having sometimes
been made in a 66-card form. Third row: Queen of Diamonds, jack of
Hearts, trumps 1 (Pagat) and 12; from a Baltic Animal Tarot pack
probably made in Liibeck, c. 1790, in S. Mann Collection. This was
xviii Annotated List oflltustrattons

made in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in an area

centring upon Liibeck, and is known only in the 78-card form. Bottom
row: King of Diamonds, jack of Hearts, Trucks 3 and 12; from a Cego
pack by A.S.S. of Leinfelden, 1974, in S. Mann Collection. This, one of
the two patterns used for Cego packs (the other is the 'bourgeois'
pattern, plate 33), is the only surviving type of Animal Tarot pattern
\
36; Cartomantic Tarot packs
Top row: a later reprint of Grand Etteilla I
21 (corresponding to the Chariot and signifying Dissension (discord)
whether upright or reversed), 24 (corresponding to the Cavalier of
Batons, and signifying Depart (departure) upright and Disunion
(disunion) reversed), 2, representing the second element (fire) and the U

Host day of creation (corresponding to the Sun and signifying s

Eclaircissemerzt (elucidation) upright and Feu (fire) reversed), and 4,

representing the third element (air) and the second day of creation
(corresponding to the Star, and signifying Dépouillement (spoliation)
upright and Air reversed), from a pack by B.P. Grimaud of Paris, 1979,
lent by Stanley Gibbons & Co. See pp. 108-11
Middle row: a modern edition of Wirth's designs
The Chariot (VII), the Fool, the Wheel of Fortune (X), the Devil
(XV); from a modern pack by Tchou Productions of Paris, lent by
Stanley Gibbons & Co. The pack is distributed in the United States by
U.S. Games Systems, Inc., of New York, the Major Arcana reproduce
the second version, of 1927, of Oswald Wirth's designs; see pp. 126, 133
Bottom row: pack designed by Pamela Coleman-Smith for A.E.
Waite.
The High Priestess (II), the Knight of Pentacles, the Page of Cups,
Death (XIII), from a pack published by Rider and Co. of London,
1910, in S. Mann Collection, often known as the Rider-Waite Tarot.
See pp. 154-5 9

Thanks are due to the institutions and individuals who are the owners
of the cards illustrated in plates 3, 5-10, 13-19, 21, 23-7, 31, 35 and 36,
r
and of the paintings illustrated in plates 11 and 12, for their kind
permission to, reproduce photographs of items in their possession.

4
 Preface
This book is about a card game played with a
celebrated type of pack; to speak more exactly,
about a family of card games played with a
number of related types of pack. We have a deep
ambivalence about games. In all places and at all
periods a large proportion of men's time is spent
in playing games of one sort and another, or in
watching others play them; they absorb a large
proportion of men's energy and attention, and,
nowadays, consume a great deal of money. And
yet, because we have at the back of our minds a
contrast between play and work, because we
think of a game as something that by definition is
not serious, we are loth to allow that games are
worthy of serious investigation. A good
illustration of this can be found by looking at any
of those books that attempt to survey every aspect
of a particular country, Korea, say, or Mexico.
There will be chapters on its physical geography,
its history, its principal industries, its religion, its
language and literature. There will be cultural
chapters, describing town and village
architecture, interior decoration, music, dance,
dress, cookery and marriage and burial customs,
all carefully and accurately delineated; and
tucked away in the middle of all this will be two
sketchy and ill-informed paragraphs about
games. But a game may be as integral to a
culture, as true an object of aesthetic
appreciation, as admirable a product of human
creativity as a folk art or a style of music, and, as
such, it is quite as worthy of study. With games
there is a wider gulf between composition and
execution than with any other art form. Those
who excel in the skilful play of a game achieve a
merited celebrity, because, whatever intellectuals
'
x
\
1
\
/
may think, people generally recognise in such
skill a form of human achievement. But those
who invent games are seldom known by name,
and, whether or not they are identifiable, few
think to give them the credit that they deserve.
Yet the invention or the improvement of a game
is also an achievement of high value, calling for
an unusual talent. There could never have been
an Alekhine or a C-apablanca had there not First
been the unknown genius who invented chess, or
those who, over the many centuries of its history,
perfected its rules. Of course, it is very rare that
anyone invents a totally new game: the
important steps in the history of games consist
for the most part of the introduction into some
existing game of a radically new idea. But new
ideas, particularly good new ideas, are very hard
to come by, as anyone can testify who has ever
tried to invent a game or.improve an existing one.
Among all the various types of game, card
games are those which we are least disposed to
consider worthy of serious study. This is
probably in large part due to their indissoluble
connection with gambling, which has at many
times and in all places made them the subject of
official disapprobation and often of actual
prohibition. The connection is indissoluble, not
only because, given the universal predilection for
gambling, a pack of playing cards makes a highly
convenient randomising device for use in pure
gambling games, but also because of the nature
of those card games which are not in essence
gambling games. Most board games are two-
person games, and of their nature permit of only
two or three possible outcomes - a win for one or
other player or possibly a draw; if there is great
 XX
disparity between the players, this is most easily
remedied by a handicap. But almost all card
games are of a kind in which much of the interest
would be destroyed if the question were only one
of which player or side had won and which had
lost. Their scoring systems necessitate
consideration of by how much each player wins
or loses; and this makes it all but inevitable that
winnings and losses should be registered by
monetary payments, however little of a gambling
spirit may prevail among the players.
Whether or not this association with gambling
be the reason, it is certain that the history of card
games has not presented itself to scholars as a
subject fit for their attention. Chess is
acknowledged by all as a serious intellectual
pursuit, and the glory of chess to some degree
spills over on to other board games. Their history
has therefore been the object of some learned
studies by a small body of devoted scholars,
including the great Dr Thomas Hyde, Bodley's
Librarian and Professor of Arabic at the
University of Oxford, with his De Historia
Shah itudii of 1689 and De Historia Na rdiludii of
1694, the Dutch nineteenth-century historian of
chess, Antonius van der Linde, and H..].R.
Murray, with his monumental and definitive
History of Chess of 1913 and his History of Board
Games other than Chess of 1952. But card games are
felt to be frivolous, and few scholars have thought
them worthy of notice. The instruments of such
games, playing cards themselves, have indeed
been seriously studied, principally as an adjunct
to the history of engraving and printing; but
those scholars who have interested themselves in
such objects have been largely concerned with
their design and not their use. It should,
however, be obvious that valuable clues
concerning the history of playing cards are to be
extracted from the history of the games played
with them, just as, conversely, the history of
playing cards often throws light upon the history
of card games. In any case, if the invention and
evolution of games is, in general, worth studying
as an art form which has contributed to the sum
of human happiness and in which human
ingenuity and creativeness are brought into play,
then card games, which include some of the most
subtle ever devised, merit just as serious attention
as board games.
I first became interested in the game of Tarot
in the summer of 1967. It had been a potential
interest of mine since childhood, when, looking at
Preface
a compendium on the occult, I had read the
chapter on fortune-telling with playing cards.
This, besides explaining how to tell fortunes with
regular playing cards, had also a section on the
Tarot pack, from which I first learned of the
existence of that pack, and which, in its
introductory paragraphs, stated that Tarot cards
were still used in central Europe for a
complicated game of skill. This piece of
information stuck in my mind, like many others,
I was fascinated by the Tarot pack, and, though I
had no belief in the capacity by its means to
foretell the future, I was consumed with curiosity
as to what sort of game could be played with it.
From time to time over the years, it occurred to
me to enquire about this from some expert on
card games, and I once began a letter to Hubert
Phillips on the subject, which, however, I never
sent. And then, in the summer of 1967, when I
was on holiday with my family in Normandy, I
came across a Tarot pack 'avec régles du jeu' in a
shop in Honfleur, and eagerly bought it. My First
surprise was that it was not what I then thought
of as a 'proper' Tarot pack: it had the right court
cards but the same suit-signs as in the familiar
type of regular pack, and the trump cards did not
have the right subjects depicted on them. I also
had some trouble understanding the printed
rules, because I was not at that time acquainted
with the standard French terminology for card
games; but we were much helped in mastering \
the game by my son Andrew's discovery of a
booklet about it in a second-hand book shop. We
then learned the game, and found it to be a very
good one, but, when we returned to England, I
still wanted to obtain a 'proper' Tarot pack with
which I felt it would be much more picturesque
to play. At that time, I found this much more
difficult than I had anticipated, or than it would
be now, but in the course of searching I came I
across something that puzzled me anew. This
was an Austrian Tarot pack, manufactured by
Piatnik and marketed by Benno Products, with a 8
leaflet in English describing the game played g
1
with it. This resembled my French pack in using 8
the familiar suit-signs and not having the
§
i
I
traditional subjects on the trump cards; but it
differed in having only 54 cards instead of 78, and
the game described was markedly different,
although plainly related. It dawned on me that
the game was played in different ways in different
countries, and I set myself the task of discovering
the manner of play in each country in which the
 Pre/ace
game was known.
A preliminary search among encyclopaedias
and card-game books was discouraging, and so I
returned to my original idea of writing to experts.
This, too, was discouraging, largely because
most of the experts whose names I knew turned
out to have died in the last few years; those who
were still alive knew nothing of the game of Tarot
-. one ventured the opinion that, since the pack
was well known to have been invented for the
purpose of fortune-telling, any game played with
it must have been devised by some enterprising
manufacturer. I did, however, receive two helpful
responses. One was from Mrs Geoffrey Mott-
Smith, the widow of one of the experts to whom I
had written, who told me that, although she
knew nothing about it herself, her husband had
known a good deal about the game of Tarock,
and invited me, whenever I should next visit New
York, to call on her and look at his notes on the
subject; when I later did so, she received me with
great kindness, and it indeed proved that her late
husband had known much about the history of
card games, including Tarock.
The other helpful reply was from Miss Sylvia
Mann, the foremost collector of playing cards in
this country. By that time I had read her
masterly and lucidly written book, Collecting
Playing Cards, and had for the First time learned of
the various suit-systems and o f t h e true
relationship of Tarot cards to regular ones. When
I wrote to her, she knew little of the game of
Tarot, but offered the assistance in my
investigations of her great knowledge, unrivalled
in its breadth, of the history of playing cards.
Thus began a collaboration without which I
should never have been able to write this book.
Over the years she has been unstinting with help
and advice. As I have come to know more of the
subject, I have been able to make a few
contributions to the history of playing cards
myself, and I have particularly concentrated on
matters to which evidence from literary sources is
relevant, but I should not so soon have been able
to do so, and should have made many blunders,
had I not had a constant flow of accurate and
detailed information supplied to me by Miss
Mann. Indeed, although I owe her a quite
particular personal debt, there is also a general
debt owed to her by all students of playing cards :
it is not too much to say that she first introduced
order into the subject. Other playing-card
collectors, being wealthier, have built up even
xxi
finer collections than hers, and there have been,
and are, scholars possessed of a more detailed.
knowledge of particular phases. But her great
contribution has been to lay a firm foundation.
The systematic study of the history of playing
cards goes back to the work of the great
eighteenth-century scholar Immanuel Breitkopf,
but, amazing as it may seem, no articulated
framework was provided for the subject until the
publication in 1966 of Sylvia Mann's
unpretentious volume referred to above. She was
the first to draw a clear distinction, absent from
the catalogues of any of the great collections of
playing cards, between standard and non-
standard cards: that is, between those of a kind
normally used for playing, on the one hand, and,
on the other, all other cards. The distinction may
at first sight look to be an obvious, one: but,
obvious or not, it had not been drawn until Miss
Mann drew it, and, once drawn it introduced a
great clarity into the subject.
I n fact, however, the distinction is not so
obvious as at first appears, because standard
cards may be differentiated from non-standard
ones in either of two ways. The obvious
distinction - though even this is not clearly
drawn in the earlier books - is between cards
whose design is largely or partly determined by
some purpose extraneous to the use of cards to
play card games, for instance that of advertising,
political propaganda or educational instruction,
and those whose design subserves no such
further, albeit secondary, end. Not all those
belonging to the latter category constitute
standard cards, however. Among them, we must
again distinguish between those which card
players would regard as normal playing cards
and those which they would see as special or as
fancy, as caries de farztaisie. And this, being a
psychological distinction, is not always apparent
from the cards themselves: to draw it, it is
necessary to have historical knowledge. One
must know what, at that time at which the cards
were made, and in that place where, or, rather,
for which, they were made, were regarded as the
acceptable limits of variation in the design of
normal playing cards: within those limits, we
have standard cards, outside them non-standard
ones - although occasionally what is a new non-
standard design when first produced may
become a standard one if it gains sufficient
popularity.
Playing cards are very ephemeral pbjects, and
xxii Preface
so only a tiny proportion survive from former
centuries; and, as a result, our knowledge is very
patchy. Perhaps, of some design of which tens of
thousands of samples were produced, only a
handful of cards from a single pack may have
come down to us. It is therefore not surprising
that earlier writers had simply failed to draw the
crucial distinction introduced by Sylvia Mann
between standard and non-standard cards, not,
indeed, that, having been introduced, it is
always easy in practice to draw. But it is a crucial
distinction. Isolated experiments in playing-card
design occur again and again, and are often of
great beauty and therefore of interest to those for
whom the study of playing cards is an adjunct of
art history; but they have no significance for the
history of playing cards as such. That
acknowledged, how can we apply the distinction
to early periods from which we have so few
examples that we cannot readily tell what was
customary and what exceptional' Hard as this is
to do, it has been made a great deal easier by the
realisation that, at all places and times, standard
playing cards conform to one or another
standard pattern, another concept introduced, in
its generality, by Miss Mann. In present-day
Britain or the United States, anyone can
differentiate between standard and non-standard
cards: standard cards are restricted, within very
narrow limits, to a conventional design which
forms the Anglo-American pattern, and any
others are either foreign (or, in the United States,
'ethnic') or non-standard. And in contemporary
Italy, Germany and other European countries,
there are other, quite different, but equally
stereotyped national or regional patterns, Bilder
in German, portraits in French. Such standard
patterns are known and recognised by both
manufacturers and card players, identified by
name on the box and asked for by name by the
purchaser. Others, however, have no accepted
name, and there is no such general consciousness
of them: only the systematic study of playing
cards can isolate them, discriminate them from
one another and trace their history; and it was
not until very recently that this work was begun,
a work that could be begun only when the
concept of a standard pattern had been
generalised from those that were well known and
consciously recognised. What earlier researchers
had failed to grasp, or, at least, clearly to
enunciate, is that the stereotyping of playing-
card design into standard patterns that then
evolve only so gradually that the changes pass
unnoticed by card players is a universal law,
whether those patterns are consciously
distinguished from others used elsewhere or are
merely unconsciously accepted as the norm.
Only by the introduction of the general concept
of standard patterns could there be a basis for a
systematic taxonomy of standard playing cards,
a work now being undertaken by the Playing-
Card Society of which Miss Mann was the first
President. When we go back to the earliest times
in the history of playing cards, there is little hope
of identifying for certain the cards that exhibit
standard patterns, and distinguishing them from
occasional variants or sports, but at least we are
now clear about the content of our speculations
when we conjecture that some early pack was or
was not standard.
This book is not much concerned with details
of standard patterns or their histories,
nevertheless, such knowledge is often useful in \
i
tracing the history of a game with which some
one such pattern had become associated, and
such knowledge as I have I owe largely to Miss
Sylvia Mann. Indeed, this book - the present
Preface excepted - is to be regarded as a work of
collaboration. I have done the actual writing,
which Miss Mann has checked, making
numerous helpful suggestions and corrections. In
the very few cases in which there has been a
divergence of opinion, it is my opinion that has
been set down, I have wished to take the
responsibility for the assertions made, and
mistakes that readers discover are therefore not
to be imputed to Miss Mann. The work on
documentary sources and on the rules of games
has been mine, but the sections on the history of
playing cards are the outcome of a co-operative
endeavour, extending over a decade. I have been
able to make some discoveries in this area, such
as those set out in Chapters 9 and 19, and have g
5
propounded some theories, to be found in
Chapters 2, 3 and 20. But at every step I have
8
I
been able to rely upon the stream of information
with which she has provided me; and I have been
stimulated by the equally constant flow of
suggestions and ideas she has put forward,
informed by an extremely sound judgment based
on an almost unequalled knowledge of the 1
subject. A great deal of what iS said in this book I
about the history of playing cards is therefore due
to her, and hence also a great part of the credit.
The book is a work of collaboration in that the
 Preface
acknowledgment I am here making for Miss
Mann's profound and indispensable
contributions is not echoed, in the text, by
particular acknowledgments. If it were, those
parts of the book that relate to the history of
playing cards would be crammed with clauses of
the form 'as Miss Mann has pointed out', 'as was
discovered by Miss Mann' and 'I owe this
information to Miss Mann', to an extent that
would be tedious to the reader. To spare the
reader this tedium, I have incorporated many
observations originally made by her or that I
could not have. made save on the basis of
information supplied by her, thinking it better to
instruct the reader at the outset that to her is due
much of the credit for what is said about the
history of the cards, on which depend many
deductions about the history of the games played
with them.
I owe a great debt also to Mr _John McLeod, an
enthusiast for games of all kinds. Quite
independently of me, though starting a few years
later, he became interested in European card
games of all kinds, including Tarot games, and
founded a circle of players in Cambridge. His
knowledge of the literature on card games is
considerable, though we have specialised in
different ways and I have devoted much more
attention to literary sources, he is a better card
player than I am, and has a good deal more
experience of actual play. I have benefited greatly
from discussions with him about the
intepretation of the rules of various games and
about their history. I am also indebted to him for
detailed information concerning Tarock games
he played on a visit to Austria and Tarot games
he took part in with French players, and, more
recently, indeed while this book was in press, for
the information forthcoming from a visit he
undertook at my suggestion to Sedrun, in
Switzerland, to check the information I had on
the contemporary Swiss game, and from an
immediately subsequent visit, on his own
initiative, to Turin. In particular, I owe him
many thanks for having read through all the
chapters concerned with games, and making
many valuable suggestions on points of
exposition and of fact; this has been especially
helpful in connection with the Austrian games,
which he knows rather better than I do.
I do not think that I should ever have become
so gripped by this investigation as I was had it
not been for political events. When I first became
xxiii
interested in it, I was deeply involved in work to
combat that racism which has, over the past
fifteen years, disfigured our national life and
dishonored our country. 1967 was, from that
standpoint, a disturbing and discouraging year,
for it was the year at the end of which the
Campaign Against Racial Discrimination, the
only body which has ever appeared capable of
creating a united national movement to oppose
racial prejudice and discrimination, was violently
torn apart. It was, too, the year in which I had
the honor to be among those who, partly
foreseeing the end of C.A.R.D., laboured to bring
to birth the joint Council for the Welfare of
Immigrants, which, in the last twelve years,
has done so much to help individuals enmeshed
in the net of our cruel and racially motivated
immigration laws. 1968 was the most terrible
year that I hope I ever have to live through. In the
United States it was the year in which Nixon was
elected President for the first time: I spent three
months there, arriving about three weeks before
the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King, and
leaving one week after the assassination of
Robert Kennedy, who I believe might really have
saved that country. In Britain it was the year in
which the Labour Party, then in power, finally
declared itself willing to go to any lengths to
promote racism in this country for the sake of
supposed electoral advantage by rushing through
Parliament in one week the most shameful Act
ever passed, that Commonwealth Immigrants
Act which took the hitherto unprecedented step
of denying entry to our own citizens - to those
who from no possible viewpoint could be
regarded as other than our own citizens, to those
who had been consciously and deliberately
offered our citizenship, to people to whom we
had, in the words of the then Home Secretary,
Mr Callaghan, in recommending the Bill,
contracted 'solemn obligations' - of turning those
of our citizens who had the misfortune to have a
skin-colour the voters were presumed not to like
into people who had no place on the face of the
globe where they were legally entitled to go. I
took part in a march organised by ].C.W.I. to
protest against the Bill, and saw the hatred on
the faces of the Government supporters who lined
Whitehall shouting 'Wogs, go home', as if the
whole point of the Bill were not to deny a home to
those who came to be called, even by the
sympathetic, 'British passport-holders', as
though they had got hold of their passports by
 xxiv
some underhand means. Within a month Enoch
Powell had made the most notorious of his many
speeches designed to inflame racist feeling, a
speech whose content could not be rebutted by
either of the major parties without frustrating
their whole strategy of appearing to sympathise
with racist feeling, although the leader of the
Conservative Party did reprimand him for his
manner of expression, and a speech whose effect
on the attitude of white people around them must
have been felt within twenty-four hours by every
black person in the country. By the end of the
year, at Christmas time, it was possible for Mr
Merlyn Rees, as a junior Minister at the Home
Office, to appear on television and assure the
British public that he would 'get rid Of' a family
of children, British citizens from East Africa
separated from their parents by the new law, a
promise that evoked no sentimental allusions to
room at the inn. Britain had indeed been
converted into a racist country.
To those of us who had for some time been
engaged in attempting to combat racism the
emotional strain and distress of those two years
were severe. I found it almost impossible to do
any more work on philosophy or logic than my
teaching duties made essential: apart from the
difficulty of finding the extended periods of time
necessary for such work, both subjects present
themselves as wholly serious, and, in a time of
such crisis, it seemed impossible to devote any
energy available for serious work to anything so
remote from the concerns of most people when
there were so much more urgent calls upon it.
But when one is engaged in what produces
constant emotional anxiety, there is a need for
some kind of refuge, and my new hobby became
for me such a refuge. It presented sufficiently
difficult and sufficiently intriguing problems to
exercise the mind, but provoked no anxiety and
seemed too far removed from serious concerns to
\
compete with either my academic or my political
work, it became a necessary recreation for me,
almost a drug that could alone confer for an hour
or two a peace of mind that was otherwise
absent. I have, indeed, continued to pursue it
long after I ceased to need any such refuge, and
have transformed it from a recreation into a piece
of research which, although only a hobby, was
still undertaken as conscientiously as possible;
but I doubt if I should ever have become so
absorbed with it as to carry it so far had it not in
the first place been for a time an emotional
Preface
necessity for me.
Britain and the Iberian peninsula are almost
the only two regions of Europe in which the game
of Tarot has never been played. Even of these
regions one should say 'virtually never'. On
p. 238 of his Travels through Spain and Portugal
(London, 1775), Richard Twiss mentions an \
evening spent at the house in Granada of the
marchioness of Casablanca, 'where we were
entertained with a concert, and afterwards with
cards: part of the company played at whist, part
at piquet, and the rest at various Spanish games
with a peculiar kind of cards, much resembling
those used in Switzerland, and known by the
name of carte; de toraut'; and a Tarot de Marseille
pack in the Douce Collection in the Bodleian
Library, made in Marseilles in 1760 by Francois
Bourlion, bears a note by Douce saying 'brought
from Spain by Mr Twiss'. Likewise .James
Cleland, in his 'Hpw-I7a15cza, or the Institution of
a Young Nobleman (Oxford, 1607), says: 'His \
Maiesties permission of honest house-games, as i
l
4
v
Cardes, French Cardes called Taraux, Tables
and such like plates, is sufficient to protect you i
i
from the blame of those learned men, who thinke
them Hazards' (book V, chap. 24; quoted by
E.S. Taylor, The History of Playing Cards, London,
1865, p. 278). But such occasional references do
not controvert the proposition that neither in
Spain nor in England has the game ever been
generally known. s
The Tarot p.ack is now very widely known in I
this country, indeed in nearly every country, as l
an instrument of prediction and a document of
the occult. It would have been good if those with
a taste for magic could have kept their hands off
what does not belong to them: they have an
5
»
abundant literature of their own. When they first
appropriated to themselves the Tarot pack, it
was only an absurdity, now that they have 8
persuaded the world at' large that it was theirs
from the beginning, it has become exceedingly
irritating. 'Serious' occultists affect to disdain the
use of the cards to foretell the future, while still
claiming predictive power as one of their magical
properties, but, wherever occultist theories of the
Tarot take hold, the practice of fortune-telling
with them flourishes. It is a'mistake to view it as a
harmless piece of nonsense. Consider, for
instance, the sample Tarot reading, for a young
woman wondering whether to accept a proposal S
of marriage, supplied by S.R. Kaplan in Chapter
XVI-of his The Encyclopedia of Tarot (New York,
 Preface
1978): she is to be advised that her suitor is
insincere and would hot give her the love she
desires, and that she ought therefore to break
with him. People who take this superstition
seriously may ruin their lives by following the
advice they receive from the cards. Those who
originally promoted belief in it shared that belief
themselves, and were thus doing harm only
unwittingly; it is difficult to suppose that all who
promote it nowadays have even that excuse.
It will be obvious to anyone who glances at it
that this book is primarily concerned with games
played with Tarot cards. I have, however, written
the opening chapters as for a reader who comes
to the subject with an open mind, so as to allow
him to discover from the evidence as I have set it
out for what purpose the Tarot pack was
invented and how it came to be associated with
the occult. In particular, I have devoted a long
chapter to the antics of the occultists up to about
1920. Any study of their writings and their
activities must bring out how impossible it is for a
modern occultist to avoid intellectual dishonesty,
something that was not true of his predecessors
in the Renaissance; examples will be found
repeatedly in Chapter 6. Occultist theories of the
Tarot, in particular, are simply inconsistent with
the ascertainable facts about the history of the
cards; those who wish to encourage such theories
are therefore compelled to distort or gloss over
the facts The book by Mr Kaplan cited above is
an example of this. Its object, as stated on p. xiii,
is to bridge the gap between the occultist and the
art historian. The result has inevitably been
equivocation. In non-sensitive areas, that is,
where presentation of the historical facts will not
disturb the preconceptions of the occultist,
particularly in the chapters on the fifteenth-
century hand-painted cards, there is indeed
serious historical discussion, and I have cited
Kaplan's views on these topics, sometimes in
agreement, sometimes in disagreement. But the
book as a whole is organised in such a way as to
conceal from all but the most alert of those
readers previously unaware of it the fact that,
before 1781, Tarot cards were never used for any
purpose other than to play card games, at least
until such readers arrive at the very last chapter,
which occupies a single page. This is effected by
a historically inaccurate differentiation between
the French word tarot and its German equivalent
Tarork: Latin-suited packs are referred to as
'tarot decks', without any distinction between
3
XXV
cartomantic ones and those intended for play,
while French-suited ones are designated 'tarock
packs', irrespective of country of origin, and the
game is almost always referred to as 'tarock' and
never as 'tarot'. Moreover, in the entire book no
clue is given as to the date of invention of the
French-suited form of the pack, which in fact
originated in the eighteenth century. Chapter
XIV, which deals with 'tarock packs', i.e.
French-suited ones, begins thus: 'The game of
tarock probably dates from the sixteenth
century, possibly even the fifteenth century, and
it continues in popularity today in certain
sections of southwestern Germany, Austria and
Switzerland. Early trumps were often highly
artistic and depicted animals or full-length
figures and scenes including operas, dancers,
costumes Many of these early cards were hand
stencilled.' The effect on the previously
uninformed reader must be to make him suppose
that the French-suited pack dates back to at least
the sixteenth century, and that it alone was used
for the game of tarock, the Italian-suited cards,
including the fifteenth-century ones discussed at
length in previous chapters, having been
intended for some other purpose, from the
context, he could not guess that the 'early
trumps' referred to dated from after 1750. In his
first two chapters, the second of which is entitled
'Origins of Tarocchi Cards', Kaplan includes a
great deal of occultist material, he does not vouch
for the theories he expounds, but he does not
repudiate them either, and comes close to
recommending them, as when he says, on p. 15,
that one cannot dismiss the congruence between
the 'Major Arcana' and the letters of the Hebrew
alphabet, and declares it interesting to speculate
on their possible development from early
alphabets, of which he provides a table to show
their correspondence with the Tarot cards, it is
not until the last page that he confesses that 'it
seems doubtful that the trionji derives (sir) from
the Hebrew alphabet', a revelation for which
nothing has prepared the reader. The gap
between the occultist and the serious historian is
unbridgeable, because occultist theories rest
upon a whole spurious pseudo-history of the
Tarot pack. To give its true history is,
necessarily, to puncture those theories, any
attempt to avoid puncturing them obliges one, at
best, to fudge the facts.
This book represents the first attempt to
describe in a single compass all the various forms
xxvi
of the game of Tarot, as played in different
countries and regions, my aim has been to trace
the history of each of these forms as completely as
possible. I am writing at a time when, almost
everywhere, this ancient and fascinating game is
in decline: in Austria, in the city of Bologna and
in the valleys of Switzerland it holds its own, and
in France it is actually gaining in popularity, but
almost everywhere else it is gradually ceasing to
be played. I have become thoroughly accustomed
to hear, from people of my own generation from
different European countries of whom I have
enquired about Tarock, 'I remember that my
father used to play Tarock, but we all played
Bridge'. Indeed, the same is true of many card
games. just as, throughout the world, clothes for
men are now (with allowance for climate) almost
everywhere the same, namely the rather
nondescript garments that originated in the
West, just as, if you switch the radio to a popular
music programme in Accra or (probably)
Montevideo or Kuala Lumpur, you will hear
much the same noise that you hear in London or
Amsterdam, so card playing is rapidly being
reduced to flat uniformity. The world has been
largely persuaded that, if you want to play cards
seriously, there is only one game worth playing -
Bridge. I do not want to criticise Contract
Bridge. It is undoubtedly a very great game. But
if one values other card games as manifestations
of local cultures, Bridge is a menace: it drives out
other games as the grey squirrel drove out the red
squirrel, it deals the death blow to games that
had survived for centuries. Even if one does not
care a rap for cultural diversity, but single-
mindedly considers the games simply as games,
independently of their background, this is a pity.
No one game can possibly exploit all the
potentialities for play contained within the
playing-card pack, just as no one board game
could contain the virtues of all board games. It
may be said that, if Bridge has triumphed, this
must be due to its superiority as a game, and that
it is therefore useless to resist. This would be to
ignore the many extraneous factors, for instance
the relative prestige of different cultures, that
contribute to the formation of fashion. In any
case, Bridge has not yet proved its superiority: its
reign has as yet been far shorter than that of its
great predecessor, Orb re, and who would regret
that Orb re did not succeed in obliterating all
other card games?- Moreover, I do not wish to
exaggerate. In Italy, Spain, Switzerland,
Germany and elsewhere, there is still much
Preface
resistance to the advance of Bridge, in France it
remains the case that many more 32-card packs
are sold than 52-card ones. But, compared even
with how things stood in 1900, the game of Tarot
is almost everywhere in retreat, and I have felt an
anxiety to record its history before it becomes
little more than a historical curiosity.
For forms of the game now obsolete, one can
rely only on printed descriptions. Without the
many books on card games that have been
published, from the seventeenth century i
onwards, it would be impossible to trace the I
history of any card game, yet such books are very i
treacherous. When someone composes a treatise 4
on a single game, you can usually trust what he
says, although even then you need to take care,
for it may be an unacknowledged reprint of a .
far earlier book. But the compiler of a
comprehensive book of card games is in quite a
different position. He may include in his book 8
4
perhaps two hundred different games; and it is
unthinkable that he should have learned them all
from people who have inherited a continuous
tradition of play. Only a very scrupulous writer
will include only games that he has himself
played; and even such a writer may, knowingly a
1
or unknowingly, be including games that he has
played only with people who have learned them 3
out of other books. In consequence, most g
compilers of card-game books plagiarise 2
relentlessly and without acknowledgment. A 3
description of a game may be transferred word
for word, or often with some garbling due
to undetected printer's errors, to one after s
another book by different authors, each claiming 3
to be a wholly original work. Worse occurs when
the author of a card-game book tries to
summarise an earlier description of a game he
has never in fact seen played: he will often
misunderstand the earlier account and produce
something unintelligible, or, worse still,
intelligible but quite inaccurate. The result is
that the fact that a game is described in a card- g
game book printed in a certain place at a certain
date is very far from being good evidence that it
was played in that fashion, or at all, in that place
at that date. The only way to arrive at reasonable
probability is to collect as many accounts from
different books as one can, and then compare
them carefully to determine which are derivative
from which, and, if possible, what was the g
original source of any given account.
For existing games, actual observation of or
participation in play with those who know the
4
i
I
l
 Preface
game is worth far more than written descriptions.
My own opportunities for travel are limited, and,
when one is in'search of a game played only by a
restricted circle of people, it is useless just to arrive
somewhere and expect to find players on
immediate enquiry: one has to seek out contacts
long before the projected journey is made.
Nevertheless, with the invaluable assistance offer
john McLeod, it has been possible for me to
ensure that most of the descriptions in this book of
games that are currently played have been based
on or checked against actual observations of or
participation in play. The principal exception to
this is the game of Taroky as now played in
Czechoslovakia, in addition, I am uncertain
whether the game is still played in Trieste, and,
though] know it is played in Piacenza, have noI
direct information about the mode of play there. I
r
greatly hope that the publication of this book will
prompt devotees of any form of the game to write
to me to correct those errors that I dare not hope
have not crept in, and to remedy omissions, of
some of which I am aware. It will be fairest to the
reader if I here make plain just how much direct
observation has been possible. I have on a few
occasions played Tarot with French players,
though I cannot claim a very thorough direct
r knowledge of the French game, my friend Mrjohn
McLeod has supplemented it by observations of his
experience of games with French players. Through
the kindness of Professor Gert MUller, I was
introduced to some Cego players in the village of
Oberwolfach in the Black Forest, and spent
delightful hours playing with them, to whom my
thanks are due. I have never played with, or even
met, any Swiss players. However, in November
1978, when we were both attending a Convention
of the Playing-Card Society 'held in Zurich, I
suggested to Mr John McLeod, who was about to
visit Stans to investigate the game of Kaiserspiel
played there, that he make an expedition to the
Romansh-speaking area of Graubiinden, to
discover something about Tarock as there
played, since unfortunately I had not the time to
remain in Switzerland after the Convention, he
visited Sedrun, and returned with information
that corroborated, but also amplified, what I
already knew from an account of the game sent to
me ten years before by AG MUller & Cie. I have
myself met only two Austrian Tarock players,
but have again been given a good deal of
information by john McLeod, who has played
different forms of the game with several different
groups of people both in Vienna and in Linz. I
I
xxvii
have had the great good fortune to spend many
extremely pleasant evenings playing Hungarian
Tarokk with my friends Mr and Mrs Gabor
Benscik and the late Dr B.A. Nyari, of New York,
expert players who had continued to play the
game ever since they arrived in New York from
Hungary. I have never met a Czech player of
Taroky; but I have played Tarok in Slovenia with
Ing. Drago Matko and friends of his in Ljubljana,
who with great kindness gave me information
about modes of play elsewhere in Slovenia. I have
not had the opportunity to visit Trieste. I have
also not visited Piacenza, Como or Turin or its
neighborhood. However, here again Mr john.
McLeod .has come to my help: after making
the visit to Sedrun mentioned above, he went
on, in the company of a friend from England
living in Milan whom he had met at the Con-
vention, to visit Turin and Pinerolo, and
witnessed Tarocchi played in both places,
as well as obtaining information about the
manner of play at Como. I have, on the other
hand, visited Bologna, with the help of a grant
from the British Academy, for which my thanks
are due. Through the kindness of many people
there, in particular Cornmendator Giuseppe
Ronchi and Signor Giampaolo Ferraresi, I
received detailed explanations of the game from
experienced players and witnessed many actual
games, in some of which I took part. As for the
Sicilian game, that has never been described in
print: even the special pack of tarocchi cards used
there was not, until recently, known to playing-
card collectors and scholars. I first became aware
of the pack when Miss Sylvia Mann game me one
of those currently manufactured by the firm of
Modiano in Trieste. It was obvious that there
must be a special game played with these cards,
and, after fruitless enquiries by other means, I
decided that I could find out about the game only
by visiting Sicily. Even iI had been unsuccessful,
I should have been delighted at the chance which
took me to that entrancing island. But, owing to
the great kindness shown to me by everyone I
met there, I succeeded, during two visits, in
meeting players in what I believe to be the only
three remaining towns where the Sicilian game
is still played. Above all, I must single out for
thanks my friend Dr Marcello Cimino, to whom
this book is dedicated. A journalist on the
left-wing newspaper L Q r a who - has
distinguished himself by his courage in exposing
the Mafia, Dr Cimino has a deep love for his
native land of Sicily and for its traditions. He also

xxviii
has, in an exceptional degree, that warmth
towards and readiness to help strangers which I
have always found characteristic of Italy and
especially of Sicily. Although he is not himself a
card player, and, at the outset, knew nothing of
tarocchi, he went to an unbelievable amount of
trouble to discover where the players of the game
were to be found and to put me in touch with
them. Without his help, I should have achieved
nothing, with it, I was entirely successful, and
gained a very good friend into the bargain. Many
others showed me great kindness and gave me
the most valuable help: I must mention
especially the members of the Circolo 15 maggio
at Calatahmi, who First explained the game to
me, Signor Gaetano Di Bernardi, formerly of
Calatafimi, now of Palermo, who answered many
questions about it: Signor Nino Pino, of
Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto, who was immensely
kind and hospitable to my wife and me on our
visit there, and also answered questions about
the game; Signor Sebastiano Agliolo and his
wife, of Patti, who conducted us on the difficult
drive to Tortorici and supplied a delicious meal
on our return at a very late hour, Avv. On.
Gaetano Franchina, of Tortorici, who
entertained us in his house and supplied me with
invaluable information about the game as played
now and in the past, Professor Gaetano Falzone,
Director of the Pitré Museum, who supplied me
with photographs and photocopies of cards in the
Museum, and was of great assistance in other
ways; Professor Romualdo Giuffrida,
Superintendent of the Archivio di Stato, who also
supplied me with microfilms and photographs;
Professor Manfre, Director of the Biblioteca
Communale, who helped me greatly on my visit
there; Dr Giuseppe Quatriglio, who published a
short piece by me in the Giornale do Sicilia, seeking
contact with Sicilian players before my first visit
(I had a response from Signor Giuseppe Pisano of
Patti, but unfortunately he emigrated to
Germany before I arrived in Sicily) ; Professor
Aurelio Rigoli; and Professor Rosario La Duca.
To all of them, and to others, my warmest thanks
are due. With their help, I had explanations of the
game as played in Sicily now and in the past, and
was able both to witness and to take part in it.
Libraries have, of course, been indispensable
to me, and I have been fortunate in being able to
use the Bodleian Library in Oxford, which has, in
the vessel collection, one of the finest of all
collections of card-game books, as well as the
u
4
Preface
4
\
British Library, which it is unnecessary for me to
praise. In the United States, I was able to make
use of the Princeton University Library and, on
one visit, with the help of my friend the late Boris g
Mandrovsky, one of the most intelligent and
enthusiastic collectors of playing cards, of the
I
Library of Congress. I found particularly useful \
the New York Public Library, which is not only
one of the great libraries of the world, but is quite
outstanding for the efficiency and courtesy of its
service. A former librarian at the New York
Public Library, Miss Gertrude Moakley, wrote a
fascinating study of the most complete of the
various fifteenth-century Italian hand-painted
Tarot packs, that painted by Bonifacio Bembo 1
for Francesco Sforza, Duke of Milan, perhaps the
only good book about the Tarot pack ever
written; and I had the great pleasure of meeting
her in New York and the benefit of her deep
learning concerning early Italian cards.
Especially in the early stages of my work, I was
greatly helped by the Cincinnati Art Museum,
which has not only a major collection of playing
cards but also an equally fine collection of books
on card games. Miss Nancy Basket, now retired,
formerly the Curator of the collection, was
unfailingly obliging in sending me photocopies of
sections from the books in the collection, and,
later, when I made the first of two visits to
Cincinnati. This book owes much to her and to
the Museum. Later, I received similar help from \
the Deutsche Spielkarten-Museum at Bielefeld,
which also had a notable collection of card-game
books, and was greatly helped by its then
Director, Dr Detlef Hoffmann, and its Secretary, 3
Fraulein Erika Kroppenstedt. This museum has
now been merged with the collection of V.A.S.S., x
the great Germa°n playing-card company, to form \
the Deutsche Spielkarten-Museum at Leinfelden,
of which Dr Hoffmann is again the Director; and
I have received much help from the present
Secretary of the Museum, Frau Margot Dietrich.
To Dr Hoffmann, who is also Curator of the
Historische Museum in Frankfurt, I also owe the
benefit of many stimulating discussions,
particularly concerning fortune-telling with
playing cards, on which he has done some very
valuable research. I have also greatly profited A
from two visits to the Beinecke Rare Book and
I
Manuscript Library at Yale University, which I
houses the world's finest collection of playing
cards, consisting in large part of that built up by
Melbert B. Cary, _]r. and containing two
4
I
 Preface
fifteenth-century hand-painted Tarot packs, one
of them, the Visconti di Modrone pack, probably
the earliest that survives to us. Mr William B.
Keller, the cataloguer of the collection, was
exceedingly kind and helpful to me; his
catalogue, when published, will surely represent
a great contribution to our knowledge.
I have also received much help from Dr Harold
Wayland and Mrs Virginia Wayland, of
Pasadena, California, both of them experts in the
history of playing cards, who own a wonderful
collection of photographs, taken by themselves,
of ancient cards from museums all over the
world. Mrs Wayland had, many years ago,
undertaken a study of fifteenth-century Italian
hand-painted cards, which, unfortunately, she
never published, her analyses of the various sets,
and her measurements of them, which she
generously made available to me, were
! invaluable to me and underlie my own discussion
of these early cards in this book. I have also
profited greatly from exchanges of views with
Mr Ronald Decker, an art historian who has
specialised in the study of early Tarot cards,
whose historical acumen is as great as his
inventiveness in proposing iconographic
i
interpretations. My warm thanks are also due to
Signor Vito Arienti, of Lissome, near Milan, a
distinguished playing-card collector who owns
two examples of an important and otherwise
unknown Sicilian tarocc/zi pack, and to Signor
Gianpaolo Dossena, another Milanese playing-
card enthusiast; both have showed me great
kindness on visits to Italy, and both have sent me
invaluable photocopies of books I had hitherto
been unsuccessfully hunting for. I also owe very
many thanks to Signor Marco Santambrogio, a
lecturer in philosophy at the University of
Bologna, who went to great trouble to pursue two
I enquiries which the brevity of my visits to Italy
prevented me from completing personally. To Dr
Hell rut Rosenfeld, a leading authority on the
history of playing cards generally and an
advocate, long before it became generally
accepted, of the thesis that playing cards were
introduced into Europe from the Islamic world, I
owe many interesting opinions and items of
information, both from his published writings
and from private correspondence. To Dr David
Hawkes I owe thanks for taking much trouble to
help me with Chinese material, and to Dr Kamal
Abu-Deeb gratitude for his part in our fruitful
collaboration in the study of Islamic playing
i
F
xxx
cards. I am grateful also to Mr Laszlo .Jambor,
Professor Nicholas Kurti, Dr Robert Evans, Mr
Michael Konrad, Miss Anne Pennington and Dr
Lorenzo Minio-Paluello for their kind help in
translating for me from Hungarian, Czech and
Slovene and from Italian when it got too difficult.
Particular thanks are due to Dr Ernst Ragg, who, i
just before the book went to press, put me
in touch with Ing. Matko of Ljubljana; I
should otherwise have had to confess that
Yugoslavia was the one country where Tarok is
still played for which I had failed to
discover anything about the manner of play. I
I
Mr Sid Sackson, a professional inventor of
games, was at an earlier stage very kind,
in particular obtaining from his father a I
translation of a Hungarian account of Tarokk.
Many of the people mentioned here are members
of the Playing-Card Society, and my work has I
been greatly helped by the many stimulating
discussions and the continuous exchange of
information for which the meetings of the Society
provide opportunities, I owe thanks, in I
particular, to Mr David Temperley and Mr
Trevor Denning for valuable information about
playing cards, and to many other members of the
Society too numerous to name here individually. I
owe a special debt of gratitude to Miss Emma
Fisher, for helping me to sort and file a great mass
of notes and papers, without this, I could never 1
have written this book.
Despite all this valuable help, the course of my
investigations has not been uniformly smooth.
An even greater menace than 'the plagiarism of
compilers of card-game books is the
irresponsibility Of popular writers. By 'popular
writers' I do not mean all those who write
popular books and articles, but those who make
that their profession. Popular writing - the
exposition of specialist subjects to non-experts -
is an indispensable part of the intellectual life of a
society. All members of a society have a right to
the knowledge that is in the possession of that
society, and has usually been acquired by the
expenditure of public money: if a subject is of
value in itself, rather than a mere servant of
technology, it demands to be made as accessible
as possible to all who may take an interest in it.
What is of value is not just that the knowledge
should exist, but that people should have it: it is of
as much value that a layman should grasp the
general outlines of a subject as it is that a
specialist should know it in detail. We have, in
XXX Preface
many fields, far too few popular books: and, in
the less technical fields, it tends to be the wrong
people who write them. In technical subjects, it
remains obvious that only an expert can write a
popular work, though it needs special gifts to do
so; but, in non-technical fields, such as history of
all kinds, this principle is increasingly ignored,
though it is equally true. There is a new
profession, that of the writer of popular books.
He does not have a subject, he is not an expert on
anything: just as the teachers' unions insist that
a schoolteacher can teach any subject, so the
professional popular writer is called upon by
publishers to write on any subject, which he then
'gets up', or 'researches', by hastily reading a few
general books about it, assisted by one of the so-
called research agencies that have come into
existence to serve the needs of authors like
himself. Books produced in such a manner
defraud the public: to all appearances, they are
serious works, summarising for the general
reader the conclusions of specialist research, in
fact, their authors neither know nor care whether
what their books contain is true.
The subject of playing cards and the games
played with them has become an especial victim
of this practice, because it occurs to publishers
and authors as one on which it is easy to produce
an attractively illustrated volume, and they
assume that no one will care enough about the
subject to be able, or wish, to complain of
inaccuracies. Genuine experts for the most part
confine themselves to specialist articles in learned
journals. Some do still write general books, but
these have to compete with the productions of the
professional popular writers, which it is hard for
the general reader to distinguish from them.
Moreover, as already remarked, the experts are
expert on the history of playing cards; since the
death of Geoffrey Mott-Smith, there has scarcely
been, among those who have published, an
expert on the history of card games. So these twin
subjects are bedevilled by a mass of books and
articles containing statements lifted from out-of-
date works, ill-founded guesses expressed as
confident assertions, and outright inventions, all
given without citing any source or authority that
would enable them to be readily checked. As a
result, legends, often introduced in good faith,
have been incredibly persistent, endlessly copied
into books, articles and museum catalogues by
writers who could not take the trouble to verify
them, and new ones are constantly engendered.
\
A particularly fertile source of such legends
concerning the Tarot pack was a book of 1831 by
Count Leopoldo Cicognara, from which derive
the tediously repeated stories of the invention of
Tarot by Prince Fibbia and the painting of Tarot
cards for Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, and the -v
wearisome ascription of almost all Fifteenth-
century hand-painted Tarot cards to Antonio
Cicognara or to Marziano da Tortona. Books
written by authors who lack the knowledge
needed for the task naturally mislead innocent
readers. It was fortunate for me that by the time
a well-intentioned expert on card games, \
1
appealing to Mr Alan Wykes's 'authoritative'
book Gambling (London, 1964), told me that the
game of Tarot had not been played since the
fourteenth century, I already knew enough to
disbelieve him. This statement occurs on p. 153
of Mr Wykes's book; after that date, he says, the
Tarot pack was used only for telling fortunes. On s
I
p. 151 we learn that it was the earliest European
*A
r
playing-card pack, but used for play almost
solely in Hungary, Italy, Spain and France, the
earliest example being from Lombardy in the
fourteenth century. On p. 152 it is stated that,
when the Minchiate pack was invented, as a
variation on the Tarot pack, the Fool was
dropped from it, though retained as the .Joker in II
packs from which the trumps and the Knights I
had been omitted to form the 52-card pack, we
are also told that both the 97-card (i.e.
Minchiate) and 78-card Tarot packs continued I
to be used for fortune-telling throughout Europe,
and are still so used to-day, and that the French
suit-signs were introduced in the fourteenth f
g
century. Every one of these statements embodies
a gross error, recognisable as such by the merest I
beginner in the subject. Mr Wykes, to be sure,
must have been in a hurry - he published five
more books, on various subjects, in the next two q
\
years; but the general reader has a right to be I
treated with more respect. 4
If the subject is to advance, the habits of
reiterating long-exploded theories and of making
irresponsible and unfounded statements must be
checked. For this reason, although I have passed
over in silence most of the errors to be found in I
published works on the subject, I have picked out Q
a few, especially liable to mislead, to be found in 4
8
5
recent books. I myself have been made to waste
many hours trying to verify what proved to be
quite baseless assertions, when, on two
occasions, I then appealed to their authors to
\
 Preface
make public corrections, they refused. If the
subject is, as I think, worth studying, it is
important to save others from accepting these
erroneous statements, and from being put, like
me, to pointless trouble, and it is even more
3 important to establish a code of integrity such as
prevails in other disciplines. There are, of course,
many writers on playing cards who already
conform to such a code; but there remain many
who do not. Even when sources are given, they
often prove to say nothing like what they are
quoted as saying, so that, save for a few writers
who are consistently reliable, it becomes
necessary to verify every reference. Of course,
anyone is liable to make mistakes, and I
apologise in advance for those I have surely
made, hard as I have tried to avoid them. Some of
the errors that occur in the literature, however,
seem hardly explicable by inadvertence. Only by
checking all statements and exposing the false
ones is there any chance of establishing
standards which all who write about playing
cards will feel obliged to try to live up to.
I hope that this book will stimulate some not
previously familiar with Tarot games to sample
them. The book is so arranged that, if you are not
interested in the history of the cards, or even of
1
the games, you can read the descriptions of the
games without having to read anything else. To
avoid repetitions, within each chapter the
descriptions of particular games often rely on
earlier descriptions in the same chapter of closely
related games; but I have tried to make sure that,
whenever this happens, there is a clear reference
back. There are certain features which are
I common to all or most Tarot games. These are
|
stated explicitly in Chapter 8, the second half of
which therefore needs to be read before
consulting any of the descriptions of particular
games, especially since certain terms are there
introduced and defined which are used without
further explanation in the accounts of specific
games. The General Rules of Chapter 8 assume
i that the reader knows the basic principles of
s
trick-taking play, those readers who do not
should first consult the account of it set out in
i Chapter 7. There are also certain features
common to all, or to many, of the games
rw- described in Part IV, but not found in those
described in Parts I and III. These are set out
systematically at the beginning of Chapter 23,
and certain terms are again introduced which are
repeatedly used in that and later chapters, to
v
xxx
avoid explaining the same thing each time; so,
again, before reading any of the descriptions of
games in Chapters 23 to 28, it will be necessary
to read the General Rules at the beginning of
Chapter 23.
In playing these games, I should strongly urge
players, as far as they can, to make use of
the authentic variety of pack. It would be
possible, by suitable omissions of cards, to play
every game other than Minchiate that is
described in this book with a French Tarot pack;
but not only would that destroy some of the
charm of the games for which that pack is not
designed: it would also be a kind of violation.
After all, it would be possible to play Bridge with
a set of cards bearing nothing but one of the
letters A to D (or C, D, H, S) to indicate the suit,
and a numeral from 1 to 13 (or 2 to 10 and J, Q,
K, A), but no one would choose to do so. Many
of the games here described have become
entrenched in local cultures: Bolognese tarocchi,
for instance, survives not only as being one of the
most subtle and enjoyable card games ever
invented, but as part of Bolognese life, as one
among many things that are distinctive of
Bologna. It would be ridiculous to think, for that
reason, that no one elsewhere should play the
game. But, in playing it, one is borrowing
something from another culture, to which respect
is due, and such respect involves playing it, as far
as possible, in the same manner as do those to
whom it belongs, and, in particular, with the
type of cards they use: otherwise, one is not
borrowing but stealing. Here is a game that was
invented centuries ago, in a particular city, and
we should know nothing of it had it not been
preserved for centuries, in that city. It is played
with a quite special type of pack, equally old,
that is peculiar to that game, and has likewise
been preserved, with very little change, for
centuries by those who play it. To play the game
with any other kind of cards would show a lack of
respect for and gratitude to those to whose
inventiveness and to whose own care for tradition
we owe its present existence and our knowledge
of it. When one first uses an unfamiliar pack of
cards, one may find it difficult to identify them
rapidly; but this difficulty is quite superficial,
and is very soon overcome with a little practice.
At one time it was hard to obtain foreign playing
cards. But now almost any cards that are
currently manufactured in any part of the world
can be readily obtained, for instance from Mr

xxxii
Maurice Collett, of Kendal Playing Card Sales, 3
Oakbank House, Skelsrnergh, Kendal, Cumbria.
If anyone should wish to try the games described
in Chapter 9, a Tarot de Marseille pack, with
Italian suits and 78 cards, would be suitable. For
those of Chapter 10, one could use a Swiss 78-
card pack with Italian suit-signs. The French
Tarot nouveau (with 78 cards and French suits)
is needed for the games of Chapter 15, and
either it or its Swiss cousin for those of
Chapters 11, 12 and 14. The Tarocco Piemontese
pack is required for the games of Chapter
13, the Tarocco Bolognese one for those of
Chapter 16, and the Tarocco Siciliano for
those of Chapter 19. For the games of Chapter
17 the Minchiate pack is needed, but this is not
currently available, and there is no way of
constructing any substitute for it (save by using
two 78-card packs and altering the faces of many
of the trumps). The Trappola pack, needed
for the games described in Chapter 18, is also
unobtainable at present, but in this case one
can improvise by using a regular 52-card pack of
any of the Italian-suited patterns and omitting
the 3s, 4s, 5s and 6s, or by using a Tarocco
Piemontese pack and omitting also the Queens
and the trumps. For the game described in
Chapter 24 one needs a Cego pack (with French
suits and 54 cards), and, for the games of
Chapters 22, 23, 25, 26 and 27, an Austrian
Tarock pack (again with 54 cards and French
suits). Finally, for the German games of Chapter
28, a 36-card Bavarian pattern Cerman-suited
4
\
Preface
A
3
pack and a 36-card German French-suited one a
are required, but for the American Frog and Solo 8
games, derived from Tapp, one will naturally use x
English cards. Tarot games would not be worth
playing if they were not, independently of their
history, excellent games, many of which not only
rival Bridge in strategic interest but far surpass it
in the variety of situations that can occur. But
part of the charm of playing them must lie in an
awareness of their antiquity and in their
unfamiliar flavour, a flavour in part destroyed if
one is content to use the wrong type of cards when
the right one is available.
Not being myself a particularly good card .J |
player, I have not presumed to add to the length
of this already lengthy book by putting in a great
deal of advice on strategy, most Tarot games do
not lend themselves to the formulation of cut- I
and-dried rules for successful play, and players to z
whom the game is new will have to discover
a
strategic principles by experience. I cannot hope
to have avoided all mistakes, and, comprehensive
as I have tried to make this book, there must be
several variants I have omitted. I hope, most
sincerely, that any reader who knows one or
another form of the game and who spots an error
I
or deplores the absence of some variant of which
he is fond will not rest content with complaining
about it to his friends, but will take the trouble to
write to me and point out my mistake or 4
omission, so that I can correct it, with due
acknowledgments, for a later edition.
"4
4
*;
i
I
s
4
\
g

PART ONE

HISTORY AND MYSTERY

1
 CHAPTER 1
The Tarot Pack in Playing-Card History
l
In his notes to The Waite Land, T.S. Eliot wrote,
r
'I am not familiar with the exact constitution of
the Tarot pack', he evidently did not expect his
readers to be, either. Now, just over half a
century later, probably most people in Britain
and the United States either have actually seen a
Tarot pack or have at least seen pictures of the
cards: specimens of the pack, and books about it,
are on sale everywhere, articles about it appear
in the newspapers, and it has figured in a.James
Bond Film. Few, indeed, could give much of an
account of the significance of the Tarot pack or
its relation to ordinary playing cards. Almost
everyone would be likely to say, 'It's used for
fortune-telling, isn't it?', which is true as far as it
goes, but, as we shall see, conveys an impression
at variance with the true history of the cards.
But, for the moment, let us postpone an enquiry
into the use to which these cards are put, and
confine ourselves to their appearance - the
composition and design of the pack.
In any of the popular accounts that have
become so common, the Tarot pack is likely to be
described as follows. It has four suits, consisting
not of those with which we are familiar, but of
Swords, Batons, Cups and Coins. In each suit
there are ten numeral cards, from Ace to 10, and
four court cards, instead of only three: King,
Queen, Knight and Jack. Besides the 56 suit
\ cards, there are twenty-two additional cards,
making a . pack of 78 cards i n a l l : one
unnumbered card, the Fool, and twenty-one
picture cards, numbered (usually with Roman
numerals) from I to XXI. In~the'early»chapters of
this book, the twenty<one numbered picture
cards will be :referred to as thumms, for a reason
that will be explained later. The subjects most
usually depicted on the triumphs are as follows: I
- the Bagatto (la/Iountebank); II ._ the Popess; III
- the Empress, IV - the Emperor, V _. the Pope,
VI - Love (or the Lovers); VII - the Chariot;
VIII -Justice; IX - the Hermit; X - the Wheel of
Fortune; XI - Fortitude; XII - the Hanged
Man, XIII .- Death, XIV - Temperance; XV -
the Devil; XVI - the Tower; XVII - the Star;
XVIII - the Moon; XIX - the Sun; XX -
judgment; and XXI - the World. If the
description follows the occultist tradition, then
Batons will probably be called Wands, Coins will
be called Pentacles, the Bagatto will be called the
Magician, the Popess the High Priestess, the
Pope the High Priest or the Hierophant, the
triumphs as a whole, together with the Fool, the
Major Arcana and the suit cards the Minor
Arcana; but, although these names are
appropriate to some modern packs, they are
historically inaccurate. Nomenclature apart, the
description just given is a perfectly correct
account of the composition of the most
characteristic form of the Tarot pack,as we shall
see, it has had, and still has, other forms.
When we come to ask how and for what
purpose this picturesque form of pack came into
being, we need to isolate those features of the
Tarot pack which are peculiar to it and
differentiate it from the regular playing-card
pack. To anyone familiar only with the Anglo-
American pack, the answer to this question
seems obvious: the Tarot pack differs in having
different suit-signs, in having a Knight in each
suit, in addition to the ordinary three court
cards, and in *containing the twenty-one
4 Part I: History and Mystery
triumphs. To such a person, the presence of the
Fool, on the other hand, would be unlikely to
appear a distinguishing characteristic: it seems
obviously to be the equivalent of the joker. It
needs, however, only a little knowledge of the
playing cards still in normal use in Italy and Spain
to see that most of theseanswers are wrong.
Someone who has never played cards on the
Continent of Europe may well suppose - if he
asks himself the question at all - that the
ordinary playing-card pack is, and perhaps
always has been, everywhere the same. And it is
indeed true that cards of the Anglo-American
pattern - often now known, outside Britain and
the United States, as the International pattern -
are used in every country of the world at the
present day. It will be obvious that the designs of
the court cards in the Anglo-American pack are
stereotyped, and vary from pack to pack or from
maker to maker only within very narrow limits:
they form what is known as a standard Pattern. But
anyone who has played cards almost anywhere in
Europe outside Britain and Ireland is likely to be
aware that this is far from being the only
standard pattern of playing-card design. The
Anglo-American pattern, originally borrowed by
English cardmakers from one used at Rouen, and
inherited by those of the United States, is only
one among many, though the most widespread:
there is a multitude of other, quite different,
standard patterns, some now obsolete, but many
still very much in use; some national, some
regional, and others used in various areas and
competing with other standard patterns; some
well recognised and bearing accepted names,
others identified only by historians of playing
cards.
When a card game migrates from one country
or region to another, it very often, though by no
means always, takes with it the form of pack used
for playing it in its native land. In this way, a
standard pattern originally peculiar to one
locality comes to be diffused over a wide area,
and, often, to be associated with a particular
game. It is, indeed, the spread, during the
present century, of the games of Rummy, Poker
and Contract Bridge to almost every country of
the world that has caused the Anglo-American
pattern to invade countries that still retain their
own national or regional patterns for other
games. For this reason, much can be learned
about the history of card games by studying the
history of the various standard patterns.
There are, however, other, more radical,
differences between playing-card packs,
including ones still in general use, than those
variations in design that constitute the
distinctions between the standard patterns, in
particular, differences in the suit-signs employed.
The cards used in, say, Belgium differ from those
used in Britain only in respect of the standard
pattern to which they conform: but some of those
still widely used in Germany, Italy, Spain, Latin
American countries and several others differ in
this more fundamental respect, that they do not
even bear the same suit-signs. The suit-signs with \,
which we are familiar, and which are known in
every country of the world - Spades, Clubs,
Hearts and Diamonds - originated in France,
and are therefore conveniently described as
constituting the French suit-system. There are,
however, three other, quite different, suit-systems
still in regular use, the German, Swiss and Latin
systems, all of which, as we shall see, are older
than the French one. The German suit-system
consists of Leaves, Acorns, Hearts and Bells (the
Bells being small spherical ones). This system
originated in Germany, and is now used, in a
wide variety of distinct standard patterns, not
only in Germany itself, but in Austria, Hungary,
Czechoslovakia, the Italian Tyrol, Slovenia and
occasionally Poland. The names of the suits in
German, in the singular, as they are usually l
used, are, in the same order as above: Laub, or,
more usually, Grain (green); Eichel, Here, or, more
usually, Rot (red), and Schelle. The Swiss suit-
system is rather similar, consisting of Roses,
Acorns, Shields and Bells. Not only did it
originate in Switzerland, but it has never spread
beyond that country, there has only ever been
one standard pattern for it, and it is used
primarily in the German-speaking cantons. The
Swiss-German names of the suits, in the above
order, are: Rosen, Eicheln, Schilten and So/zellen.
The suits of the Latin system are those which
we have already seen as being used in the Tarot
pack - Swords, Batons, Cups and Coins: they are
very far from being peculiar to the Tarot pack,
being used equally for regular packs of playing
cards not containing the triumphs which are the
sp_ecial feature of the Tarot pack, and having long
been so used. The names of the suits in Italian, in
the above order, are: Spade, Bastoni, Copse and
Denary; in Spanish they are: Espadas, Bastos, Codas
and Oro; (gold). Although I have spoken of 'the
Latin suit-system', it should really be regarded as
 The Tarot Pack in Playing-Card History
a family of suit-systems, having three variants
sufficiently distinct each to rank as a separate
suit-system in its own right. For convenience, I
shall refer to these as the Italian, the Sjnarzis/1 and
the Portuguese systems. This time, however, there
is not meant to be any suggestion that the names
indicate the country where each system
originated, and, where necessary, I shall enclose
the names in inverted commas as a reminder that
no such suggestion is intended: at least in the
case of the Spanish and Portuguese systems, the
suggestion would, as we shall see, be definitely
wrong. Nor would it be correct to think of these
suit-systems as being, at any stage in history,
confined to the country whose name we have
assigned to it: the terms 'Italian', 'Spanish' and
'Portuguese', in this connection, are mere
convenient labels, indicating no more than that
the suit-system in question is, or was at one time,
particularly associated with the country
concerned.
The three suit-systems belonging to the Latin
family share the same suit-signs, but are
differentiated from one another primarily by the
highly divergent shapes of the Swords and
1
Batons, and the very different ways in which
these two suit-signs are placed on the numeral
cards. The Spanish Swords are straight, and the
Spanish Batons are knotty cudgels, sometimes
with protuberances representing shoots: both
are placed on the cards (save for the 3 of Batons)
in the manner familiar to us, namely each one
separate from the others. The Italian Swords are
crescent-shaped, and the Italian Batons are
polished Staffs: each Sword and each Baton
extends from top to bottom of the card, and they
are arranged on the cards so as to intersect,
forming, in the case of the straight Batons, a
trellis pattern (on the odd-numberedcards of the
Swords suit, one sword is usually straight, and
often two are straight on the 10 of Swords). The
Portuguese system is intermediate between the
other two: the Swords are straight, as in the
Spanish system, but intersect, as in the Italian
one, the Batons also intersect, and are usually
much more regular in form than the Spanish
ones, though not as smooth and straight as the
Italian.
It is the Italian form of the Latin suit-system
that is used in the characteristic type of Tarot
pack with a description of which this chapter
opened; the use of Spanish suit-signs in Tarot
packs is virtually unknown. The use of the Italian
5
variant in regular playing-card packs is now
largely confined to the North-East of Italy,
notably Trieste, Venice, Treviso and Trent, but
also in certain parts of Lombardy, namely
Brescia and Bergamo, and, for the game of
Primiera, in Bologna, in these areas it is found in
several different, though fairly closely related,
standard patterns. It is not now in use, except for
Tarot packs, anywhere outside Italy. Well into
this century, however, a special form of Italian-
suited pack survived in Central Europe, used
only for the game known originally as Trappola.
This game originated in Venice, but died out in
its native land: in travelling North, it took with it
a form of pack which, over the centuries,
remained remarkably faithful in design to its
Italian prototype. The last Trappola pack to be
manufactured was made in Prague in 1944.
The Spanish-suited pack remains in
predominant use throughout Spain and in the
Spanish-speaking countries of Latin America; it
is also used, and manufactured, in Morocco. In
France, it is used in the Catalan region of
Roussillon, adjacent to Spain, and, with a very
distinctive standard pattern, for the game of
Aluette, popular in Brittany and in Bordeaux.
Furthermore, it is in wider use in Italy than the
Italian-suited pack itself: one standard pattern is
used in Sicily, another, called after Naples,
throughout the southern half of the peninsula,
and two others in central Italy, from Rome as far
north as Piacenza.
The Portuguese suit-system is now all but
extinct: it survives only in a very special form of
the Tarot pack peculiar to Sicily. It was, for long,
the national suit-system of Portugal, but was also
known in Florence, Rome, Sicily and Malta. In
Europe, it has been the least successful of all the
six different suit-systems here described
(counting the three members of the Latin family
as distinct systems): but it compensated for this
by a prodigious success in Asia, where it travelled
with the Portuguese colonialists and traders, as
well as, of course, being used in Brazil. In India,
in Indonesia and, above all, in .Japan, the
Portuguese playing-card pack was copied and
adapted in style to indigenous artistic forms;
indeed, in Japan, the entire practice of playing
cards derives originally from the Portuguese
example. There are still manufactured in_Japan a
number of types of playing-card pack which are
demonstrably descendants of the Portuguese-
suited pack, although they have diverged very far
6 Part I: History and Mystery
from their prototype and are known only to a
minority ofjapanese.
The use of suits unfamiliar to British and
American card-players is, thus, in no way a
peculiarity of the Tarot pack: it is simply that
that pack, in the form described above, employs
the Italian suit-system rather than the French
one long ago adopted by the English cardmakers.
That it should do so is not in the least surprising,
since it was in Italy that the Tarot pack was
invented, and at a time when no other suit-
system was known there.
The supposition that the presence of the
Knight is distinctive to the Tarot pack turns out
to be equally mistaken. Because of the
awkwardness of having two court cards whose
names in English begin with a K (or three if one
says 'Knave' rather than ']ack'), we shall
henceforward call the Knight the 'Cavalier': no
association with the supporters of Charles I in
the Civil War is intended .- he is simply a Knight
as in chess. This choice of name is justified by the
fact that in French the name of this card is
Cavalier, and in Italian and Spanish simply
Cavalla and Caballo respectively (both meaning
'horse'), although in German it is Reiter or
Kavall. Now, allied to the distinctions between
the suit-systems are various other differences in
the forms of the cards or in the composition of the
pack, and, in particular, differences in the make-
up of the court. In all suit-systems, the highest
court card of each suit is the King (Roi in French,
K¢8nig in .German, Re in Italian and Rey in
Spanish); indeed, this is also true of various other
forms of playing-card pack found outside
Europe. But even here there is a distinction. In
the French and Spanish suit-systems, the King is
always shown standing. In the Italian, German
and Swiss suit-systems, on the contrary, he is
virtually always -shown seated, the-exception is
the German-suited Hungarian pattern, used at
the present day in Austria and Czechoslovakia as
well as in Hungary, in which the King is
mounted, as he was also, exceptionally, on some
early German-suited cards. The Portuguese-
suited pack originally agreed with the Italian-
suited one in having seated Kings; only in some
late examples did the Kings, under Spanish
influence, come to be depicted standing. With
modern double-headed cards it is, admittedly,
often impossible to tell whether the King is
randing or seated, but most standard double-
headed patterns can be traced back to single-
figure ones that are either otherwise identical or
at least closely similar, so that, in almost all
cases, we can say what was the original posture
of the King.
A court consisting of King, Queen, and Jack
(in French, Roi, Dame and Valet) is found only in
the French-suited pack. In the German and
Swiss suit-systems, all three court figures are
male: the lower two, originally called Obermann
and Unlermann, have long been known simply. as
Uber and Under (Under in Switzerland). They are
almost always shown standing, although, in the
Wiirttemberg pattern, the Obers are mounted,
and they are, of course, further distinguished
from the King by the fact that he is crowned; very
often there is a further aid to identification in that
the King bears two suit-signs (four altogether in
a double-headed pack). They are distinguished
from one another, by a kind of visual pun, by the
position of the suit-sign. In the older, single-
figure, packs, the suit-sign of the Ober was at the
top of the card, and that of the Unter at the
bottom: now that double-headed cards are usual,
the suit-sign of the Unter is at the bottom of the
half-card, that is, just above the middle of the
whole card. It should be borne in mind that the
use of indices to show the rank of the cards did
not become the usual practice until the late
nineteenth century, even to this day some
standard patterns still omit them. When there
are no indices, it is essential that there should be
some readily perceived conventional feature to
make the rank of a court Figure instantly
recognisable. I n German-suited packs, the
primary mark of distinction between the Ober
and the Unter is the position of the suit-sign.
In the Italian and Spanish suit-systems, the
three court Figures of the regular pack are again
all male, but are differentiated in another way:
the second court is a mounted Cavalier or
Knight, the third one a jack (in Italian Fante, in
Spanish Sola), shown standing. In the Portuguese
suit-system, the second court card was again a
Cavalier, but the third one was female, shown
standing, and will here be called a Maid. The
name of this card i n b o t h Spanish and
Portuguese is again 'Sofa, which is in fact a
feminine word; in Italian, it is called variously
Donna, Farztirza or Fantiglia.
The Cavalier has, thus, every right to be
present in the Italian-suited Tarot pack; his
presence is nothing special to the Tarot pack,
since he is found in every Italian-suited pack. It is
 The Tarot Pack in Playing-Card History
not he who is the intruder, but the Queen. The
inclusion of four court cards, instead of only
three, in each suit, is genuinely a special feature
of the Tarot pack. In the fifteenth century, there
were, it is true, a number of regular German-
suited packs made with four court cards to each
suit, usually with the Queen added to the three
male figures, and it is possible that this
sometimes happened in Italy also, though no
such packs have survived: but that experiment
was abandoned, and, from the sixteenth century
onwards, regular playing-card packs have
always had three court cards per suit, while
Tarot packs have had four. In the very earliest
Tarot pack to have survived, there were as many
as six court cards in each of the four suits; but,
with that one exception, so far as we know, every
Tarot pack, of whatever form, has not only had
just four court cards, but precisely the four that
we have listed - King, Queen, Cavalier and Jack
- save that the jack is sometimes replaced by a
Maid.
What distinguishes the Tarot pack from every
other kind of playing-card pack is the presence of
the twenty-one triumphs: a sequence of picture
cards not identified by a suit-sign, like the
ordinary suits, and not divided, like them, into
numeral cards and court cards. Since, even in
present-day Europe, there is such a variety of
types of pack, we need a Word to pick out that
broad category of those which, unlike the Tarot
pack, are entirely composed of cards belonging to
suits properly so called. I have hitherto been
using the word 'regLllar' for just this purpose, for
which we may now explicitly appropriate it.
Apart from the Tarot pack, those so far
mentioned all have in common that they are
divided into four suits. Almost from the earliest
times when playing cards were known in Europe,
however, down to our 'OWH times, repeated
experiments have been made with the
introduction of a fifth or even a sixth suit,
although none of these experiments has ever won
much favour with the card-playing public, it
would be a mistake to make the division into just
four suits a defining characteristic of regular
packs. The presence of less than ten numeral
cards in each suit is exceedingly common, the
presence of more than ten is very exceptional, but
not quite unknown. It would therefore be
misleading to make the application of the term
'regular' depend on the exact number either of
numeral cards or of court cards. What will be
7
meant by a regular pack is any that is
exhaustively divided into suits, each suit being
distinguished by a suit-sign and divided into
numeral cards, the rank of which is indicated by
how often the suit-sign is repeated, and court
cards showing human figures.
In the wide sense of the term 'playing card',
there exist playing-card packs with a completely
different structure, for instance a Lexicon pack.
It would be a mistake to think of such things as
existing only in modern times: from the fifteenth
century onwards, people have been devising
special packs of cards to play games of their own
invention. Almost all of these have, indeed, been
ephemeral. The one exception is the Cuccu' pack,
invented in Italy in the seventeenth century for a
simple and amusing game, and still being
produced, packs derived from it were once
popular in Germany and are still popular in
Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Intermediate
between these and regular packs are what may
be called 'augmented' packs, ones consisting of a
regular pack to which a number of cards not
belonging to any of the ordinary suits have been
added. To this general category the Tarot pack
evidently belongs. A modern example is the
Taotl pack, specially devised by its
manufacturers for a complicated but excellent
game; but historically all augmented packs
known in Europe have been Tarot packs of one or
another type. To ask why the Tarot pack was
invented is, therefore, essentially to ask why
anyone found it necessary to* combine the regular
pack with a sequence of a quite different kind.
Strictly speaking, our definition would require
us to categorise any pack containing one or more
jokers as an augmented rather than a regular
pack, this. would obviously be misleading, and so
we shall allow a pack to count as regular» if,
besides suit cards, it contains any number of
jokers, it being understood that, even though
there may be more than one joker, they are not
in principle differentiated from one another. (For
one game, Zwicker, played in Schleswig-
Holstein, as many as six .Jokers are used to one
pack.) As previously remarked, no one unaware
of the actual facts of the matter can resist
identifying the Fool of the Tarot pack with the
.Joker of the regular pack, and it is often
confidently asserted, on purely a priori grounds,
that the .Joker derives from the Tarot Fool. In
fact, there is not a trace of connection between
them. If there were, we should expect to Find
8 Part I: History and Mystery
some form of Fool or joker in regular Italian-
suited packs, whereas it is only in French-suited
packs, and, at that, in ones with a full
complement of 52 cards, that the joker is ever
included Long before the Joker was introduced
into the regular pack, the practice was quite
common, in a variety of games, of designating a
particular suit card as wild: but the actual idea of
introducing a special card for this purpose did
not occur to anyone until the second half of the
nineteenth century, in the United States, where
the joker first used in Euchre as the permanent
highest trump was taken over for use in both
Poker and Rummy as a wild card, and it was
from there that it spread to Europe, together with
those games. Since the Joker was invented at a
time and place at which the Tarot pack was
virtually unknown, we have to regard the
resemblance between the joker and the Fool of
the Tarot pack as due to no more than pure
coincidence.
To complete our brief survey of the different
European suit-systems, we must glance briefly at
the principal differences between them relating
to the numeral cards. The full French-suited
regular pack has, of course, 52 cards, as does the
Italian-suited one. The full Spanish-suited pack,
on the other hand, has only 48 cards, since it
lacks the 10s. The same is true of almost all
Portuguese-suited regular packs. Most of the
latter, including all those used in Portugal itself,
also had an outstanding peculiarity of design:
dragons are depicted on all the Aces. This last
feature was copied on all the playing cards
derived from the Portuguese ones which were
produced in India, Indonesia and Japan. While
the 10s are missing in the Spanish and
Portuguese suit-systems, German- and Swiss-
suited packs make what is to us a much more
surprising omission, namely of the Aces. This is
no longer quite obvious from a glance at a
German- or Swiss-suited pack, since there are
cards which not only look much like Aces but are
actually referred to as such, and, in Germany,
where indices are used, bear the letter A for As
(Ace). Historically, however, these cards are not
Aces, but Deuces, and bear, not one, but two
suit-signs. Formerly, German card-players were
much more conscious of the historical origin of
this card, and referred to it as the Days (Deuce):
indeed, the German-suited pack was frequently
distinguished from the French-suited pack by
calling the former Dauskarte and the latter Askarte.
Now, however, the Deuce of the German- and
Swiss-suited packs has been so thoroughly
assimilated to the Ace of other packs that it has
been all but forgotten that it had a different
ancestry. The omission of the Aces reduces the
full German- and Swiss-suited packs also to 48
cards; but full German-suited packs are no
longer produced, having long been entirely
superseded by shortened ones, while the full
Swiss-suited pack maintains only the most
tenuous existence. The Swiss-suited pack has one
peculiarity of design which ought to be noted: the
10s do not, as in other packs, display ten suit-
signs, but, instead, show a banner bearing a
single suit-sign; for this reason, they are often
referred to, not as 10s, but as Banners.
In Britain, several games are known, such as
Bezique, in which a number of numeral cards are
omitted from each suit, but they have never been
so popular as to provide a great deal of incentive
for the actual manufacture and sale of
appropriately shortened packs. In most other
European countries, however, the reverse holds
good. Most of the celebrated national card games
- Piquet in France, Skat in Germany,
Klaverjassen in the Netherlands, Tresillo in
Spain, _lass in Switzerland, Tressette in Italy -
require a shortened pack. As a result, far more
shortened packs are bought than ones with a full
complement of cards. There is a great variety of
such shortened packs: here only the principal
ones will be noted. In France, a shortened pack
has always 32 cards, as used for Bezique, it is
often known in England as a Piquet pack, and is
formed by omission of the numeral cards from 2
to 6. The shortened Swiss-suited pack consists of
36 cards, being formed by omission of the
numeral cards from 3 to 5 from the full 48-card
pack which it has now largely ousted. The full
48-card German-suited pack disappeared long
ago, the principal shortened forms are a 36-card
one, identical in composition with the Swiss-
suited pack, and a 32-card one, which lacks also
the 6s. French-suited packs are also common in
Germany in both a 32-card form, as in France,
and a 36-card form, retaining the 6s. The
Spanish-suited pack in both Spain and France is
still found in both the full 48-card form and a 4
shortened 40-card form, the latter formed by
omission of the 8s and 9s. In Italy, however, the
Spanish-suited pack exists only in the shortened
form with 40 cards. Full 52-card versions of the
Italian-suited pack are still produced in small
 The Tarot Pack in Playing-Card History
numbers: since, however, almost all modern
Italian card games demand only 40 cards, both
Italian- and French-suited packs are mostly sold
with only 40 cards,. omitting the 8s and 9s and 10s .
The 'l`rappola pack, the sole type of Italian-suited
regular pack used, at least after the sixteenth
century, by non-Italian-speaking players, and
then only for a particular game, was also a
shortened pack, of 36 cards, whose composition
was unique: it retained the 2s as well as the Aces,
and omitted the numeral cards from 3 to 6. How
these various differences in composition arose will
9
be described in the next chapter.
The form of Tarot pack described at the outset
of this chapter is not, as there remarked, its only
form. It occurs in both Portuguese-suited and,
particularly, French-suited versions, there are
also shortened forms of the Tarot pack, and, for
many centuries, there existed one expanded form
of it. All these will be described in due course. In
the meantime, if we are to understand how and
why the Tarot pack came to be invented, we
must look a little at the historical evolution of
European playing cards .
 CHAPTER 2
The Beginnings in Europe
The history of chess has been intensively
investigated, and is not, save in matters of detail,
in dispute. The game was invented in India in or
before the sixth century A.D, Was introduced into
Persia in the sixth century and into the
Byzantine Empire before the ninth, spread after
the Muslim conquest of Persia throughout the
Islamic world, and from there was brought to
Western Europe in the ninth or tenth century.
By contrast, the origin and diffusion of playing
cards remain very much subject to doubt,
although much has been discovered and is
currently being discovered.
The earliest European references to playing
cards and card games have been assiduously
collected and intensively scrutinised. When the
process of collection began, the First impression
was that they clustered thickly around the turn of
the fourteenth century, but stretched back before
that, becoming sparser and sparser, until the
beginning of the thirteenth. Under scrutiny,
however, many of these references were rejected
as misreadings or later interpolations, and the
Final picture that emerged was quite different.
With one disputed and one unconfirmed
exception, no authentic reference to playing
cards is known from any European source before
the year 1377. In that year, there are four: one
from Florence, one from Paris, one from Basle
and one from Siena. From then on, they come in
thick and fast: not from all over Europe, but from
a large part of it - from Italy and Sicily, from
Switzerland and southern Germany, from the
Low Countries, from Paris, Marseilles and
Barcelona; between 1377 and 1400, an average of
about three references every two years. From
several localities, there is more than one reference
in this period; here is a list of places from which
we know of fourteenth-century references to
playing cards, together with the dates of the
known reference: Florence (1377), Paris
earliest
(1377); Basle (1377); Siena (1377); Regensburg
(1378); Viterbo (1379); Brabant (1379); St
Gallon (1379); Berne (between 1367 and 1398,
perhaps in 1379); Constance (1379); Barcelona
(1380); Nuremberg (1380); Perpignan (1380);
Marseilles (1381); Lille (1382); Valencia
(1384); Sicily (between 1377 and 1391); Zurich
(1389); Venice (1390); the County of Holland
(1390); Augsburg (1391); Frankfurt-2 -Main
(1392); Ulm (1397); Leyden (1397).1
! For most of these references, see W.L. Schreiber, Die
5lte5ten Spielkarlen, Strasbourg, 1936, G. Piceard and H.
Rosenfeld, 'Neue Beitrage zum Alter der Spielkarten',
Archiv fair Gesclzichte de Buchwesens, vol. 3, 1961, pp. 555-66,
and H. Rosenfeld, 'Zur Vor- und Friihgeschichte und
Morphogenese von Kartenspiel und Tarock', Archiv /171
Kullurgesc/zide, vol. 52, 1970, pp. 65-94, especially pp. 75-6.
For those from Perpignan and Valencia, see José Maria
Madurell Marimén, Notes Documerztales de Naiperos
Ba rcelonexes, in Documerztos y Estudios, vol. IV, Institute
Municipal de Historia, Barcelona, 1961, pp. 54-117; see pp.
62 and 64. For that from Venice, see B. Cecchetti, 'Giocolieri
e giuochi antichi in Venezla', Arrhivo Veneto, vol. XXXVIII,
1889, fasc. 76, p. 426. That from Sicily has not been
published: it comes from an edict issued under Maria I, who
reigned as sole monarch from 1377 to 1391; the text of the
edict is contained in a manuscript volume of laws of the
town of Lentini, written about 1410-20, presently in the
possession of Mrs Virginia Bugliardo, of New York, who
very kindly provided me with a photocopy of the relevant
pages. Pavle Bidev, Die xpanisclze Herkunft der Spielkarte, ed.
Egbert Meissenburg, Winsen-Luhe, 1973, p. 10, cites a
mention of naives in Saragossa in 1378 (not a prohibition).
He gives Joseph Brunet y Bellet, Lojoch de nabs, nails 6 carts,
 The Begirmingx in Europe
Most of these early references tell us no more
than that card playing occurred in the given area
at the time in question: some record the purchase
of a pack or the playing of a game, and many are
city ordinances banning the playing of various
games, particularly dice and cards. One of the
earliest, however, the celebrated treatise Tradalus
de moribund et disciplirza lzumanae conversalionir, written
in Basle in 1377 by a Dominican friar by the
name of john (usually known, probably wrongly,
as John of Rheinfelden), gives an actual
description of the pack as known to its author,
though not of any of the games played with it.
From this we learn that the structure of the pack
was essentially what it is now. There were four
suits, each with its own suit-sign; each suit
consisted of 13 cards, divided into ten numeral
cards and three court cards. The numeral cards
were distinguished, just as now, by the number of
repetitions of the suit-sign. The court cards
consisted of a seated King and a higher and lower
'Marshal', each holding his suit-sign in his hand.
(This last detail tallies with the practice in many
of the earliest surviving packs, and in some of
the later ones). The two Marshals were
distinguished by the fact that the higher One held
his suit-sign aloft, while the lower one held it
hanging down from his hand: these were,
evidently, then, the Swiss or German Ober and
Unter. Brother John unfortunately does not
indicate what suit-signs were used. These cards
would, of course, have been single-headed'
double-headed ones did not come in until the
eighteenth century, and were adopted, for
various standard patterns, only very slowly (for
the Anglo-American one, only after 1850),
indeed, some standard patterns use single-
headed cards to this day. They would also have
lacked indices: these appeared haphazardly as
early as the fifteenth century, but were never
placed in the corners, and were seldom used
systematically, until the modern practice was
Barcelona, 1886, as his authority for all the references cited
by him and not by Rosenfeld, but I cannot find a mention of
the Saragossa reference in that book. Bidev's work demands
a modification of the statement of the opening paragraph
that the Indian origin of chess is not in dispute, since he
favours a Chinese origin, basing this claim on the evidence
presented in .Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in
China, vol 4, part I, Cambridge, 1962, pp. 314-31. This
evidence was in part discussed, and rejected as irrelevant to
the origin of chess, by H._J.R. Murray in his History of Chess,
Oxford, 1913, p. 122.
11
introduced by American card manufacturers in
the 1870s, it, too, has yet to spread to all
standard patterns. But, in essentials, save for the
use of Ober and Unter instead of Queen and
jack, and, we can be sure, save also for the suit-
signs, the pack described by john of Rheinfelden
in the earliest year from which we have any
mention of playing cards in Europe was exactly
the same as our modern English pack.2
The evidence thus strongly suggests that there
was no long period of evolution at the end of which
the playing-card pack as we know it emerged,
but, on the contrary, that, a matter of at most
a very few years before 1377, the pack was either
invented or introduced from elsewhere, in a fully
developed form, and immediately spread over a
wide area of Europe. This impression is
reinforced by the fact that two of the very early
sources - John of Rheinfelden writing in 1377
and the Chronicles of Viterbo referring to the
year 1379 - explicitly state that playing cards
had been introduced into their areas in the very
year in question, while the Valencia edict of 1384
refers to them as 'a new game', and the earliest
reference of all, the Florentine edict of 1377,
speaks of them as 'newly introduced in these
parts'.3 There are also well-known arguments
from silence. Petrarch's De rernediis utriusque
fortunae (1366) discusses a number of games but
says nothing about playing cards, a Paris
ordinance of 1369 forbids numerous games, but
does not mention card games, although one of
1377 was to forbid cards to be played on work
days; similarly, a St Gallen ordinance of 1364
forbade dice games, and allowed board games,
but left cards unmentioned, although an
ordinance of 1379 prohibited them as well.
This is not to say that no problems arise. Dr
Peter Kopp had claimed the discovery of a yet
earlier reference to card playing, from an
ordinance of the city of Berne in 1367.4 (Mr Lex
Rijnen has reported an earlier one still, from the
neighbourhood of Amsterdam in about 1365, but
2 See E.A. Bond, 'The history of playing-cards',
Athenaeum, no. 2621, 19]an. 1878, p. 87, col, 3-p. 88, col. 2.
3 Mr George Beal, in Discovering Playing-Cards and Tarots,
Aylesbury, 1972, p. 4, states that a manuscript of 1384 from
Nuremberg speaks of the 'widespread adoption of the new
game throughout Europe', but I have been unable to Hndany
confirmation of this.
4 'Die friihesten Spielkarten in der Schweiz', Zeitschr tfrir
Schweizerische Archiologie und Kunstgeschiclzte, vol. 30, 1973, pp.
130-45.
 12 Part I: History and Mystery
this as yet remains LlnconF1rmed.)5 A shift of ten
years in the chronology is in itself of minor
importance, but if a decade elapsed between the
first known reference and the second, then
perhaps playing cards had been in use in some
localities for ten or even twenty years before the
first reference occurred, and the many references
from 1377 onwards are evidence only of their
wider diffusion rather than of their invention or
introduction.
Dr Hell rut Rosenfeld has controverted Dr
Kopp's claim:(' we have only a copy of the 1367
ordinance from a compilation made in 1398, and
Dr Rosenfeld gives detailed grounds for thinking
the mention of card playing to be an insertion at
a later date. On this he seems to have the better
of the argument, but there is a point about the
Tractatus de moribund itself which is more uncertain.
After giving the description cited above of the
playing-card pack in what it calls its 'common
form, and that in which it first reached us', the
text goes on to list a number of variants: one in
which all the Kings are replaced by Queens; one
in which two of the suits have Kings and the
other two Queens, one with five suits; another
with six, and, finally, one with four suits, but
with Five court cards in each suit (King, Queen,
the two Marshals and a Maid), making 60 cards
in all. Now we have no cards surviving from
the fourteenth century, but we do have a
considerable number from the fifteenth century,
and among them are German packs showing
variations of this kind, including ones with five
suits, one in which the court figures are all male
in two of the suits and all female in the other two,
ones with female Unters and ones with four court
cards per suit, so, although we do not have
representatives of all the variants mentioned in
the Tractatus, it is very plausible that there should
have been such variants. What is not credible,
however, is that such a range of variations on the
original form should have developed within a
year or two of the introduction or invention of the
playing-card pack.
For this, two rival explanations have been
5 'Makers of playing-cards in the Netherlands', journal of
the Playing-Card Society, vol. IV, no. 2, 1975, pp. 3417.
6 In 'Zu den friihesten Spielkarten in der Schweiz: eine
Entgegnung', Zeilsc/zriji /fir Schwezzerzsche Archiiologze und
Kunstgeschichle, vol. 32, 1975, pp. 179-80, and, in a more
general context, in 'Zur Datierbarkeit friiher Spielkarten in
Europe und in peahen Orient', Gutenberg-jahrbuch, 1975, pp.
353-71.
offered. Dr Kopp believes that, by the time .John
of Rheinfelden became acquainted with them,
playing cards had already been known for long
enough (presumably about two decades or more)
for variants to have been invented. Against this it
must be said that it would be strange for Brother
John to have written, 'the form in which they first
reached us', if, in the course of that same year, he
had encountered five other forms. It would also
be puzzling that, from a period of twenty years or
so, only one or two references to playing cards
should have come down to us, given that they
cluster so thickly thereafter. Dr Rosenfeld's
explanation is that the account of the variant
forms is an addition by a later copyist. This is,
perhaps, more plausible, but has its own
difficulties. We do not have the original
manuscript of the Tradatux (which, ...; Dr Kopp
has observed, may have been destroyed in the
Franco-Prussian War); we have one MS. of 1429
and three, made by different copyists, all from
1472, all four of which agree very closely, as Dr
Kopp has shown. Dr Rosenfeld's suggestion is
therefore that the interpolation was due to the
1429 copyist, whom the later ones followed. The
hypothesis cannot, however, be that we can get
back to Brother .John's original text simply by
excising the passage dealing with the variant
forms, together with the phrase 'the common
form, and that in which it first reached us'
previously quoted. The Tradatus, as we now have
it, goes on to express, and give grounds for, a
preference for the 60-card form, and, later, to
include a whole short section on the excellence of
the number 60, as well as another on the Queen
(the treatise as a whole being an essay in
rnoralising based on the playing-card pack).
Hence, if interpolations occurred, they were
carried out on an extensive scale. The problem
has thus not yet been completely resolved. My
personal inclination is to think that Dr Rosenfeld
has more of the truth of the matter. But, even if
Dr Kopp is right, the consequences are
comparatively minor: the picture is altered,
significantly perhaps, but not very substantially.
The other documentary sources yield no clues
to what fourteenth-century playing cards
were like, and none have actually survived from
that period; so, to guess at the character of these
earliest European cards, we have to extrapolate
from the surprisingly large number that have
come down to us from the fifteenth century _ all
but a few, indeed, from the second half. A
 The Beginnings in Europe
moment's reflection will show how remarkable it
is that we have any playing cards at all from very
early times. What does anyone do with a pack of
cards that have become too dirty, too creased or
too torn to be used any longer for play'
Obviously he throws them away; and since they
are made of so perishable a material, their
chances of survival for several centuries are very
slim indeed. A few early cards have been found in
Wells and similar places where they have lain
undisturbed; but by far the greater number of
cards that have come down to us from early times
owe their survival to the frequent practice of
using them to line the bindings of books, where
they have been found when the book has been
rebound; presumably our libraries still conceal
others that remain to be discovered. We are
therefore very lucky to have as many cards from
the fifteenth century as we have, it is not
surprising that these are not evenly distributed,
either geographically or in respect of date of
origin. We have a very considerable number of
cards from the northern half of Italy, from
Switzerland and from southern Germany, we
have quite a number from France, but not before
1460; we have a very few from Aragon, but not
before the very end of the century; but we have
none at all from the Low Countries or from the
southern half of Italy, nor from countries such as
England and Castile which do not appear to have
been included in the area where playing cards
were First known in Europe and probably did not
begin to use them until the fifteenth century.
The foregoing observations about the
perishability of playing cards apply primarily to
those of the cheap popular variety. From the
fifteenth century right down to the early
nineteenth, the principal mode of manufacture of
popular playing cards was by means of wood
blocks. On such a block would be engraved the
designs for a number of cards, the blocks were
inked, and the outline designs then printed on a
sheet. The colouring would then be done by
stencil, as many stencils as there were colours to
be used; finally, when the colours had all dried,
the individual cards were cut out of the sheet, and
complete packs made up. The greater number of
popular cards that have survived from the
Fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are on uncut
sheets, usually as yet uncolored - presumably
trial pulls or ones that appeared unsatisfactory or
defective in some respect, being larger than
individual cards and not subjected to the wear
13
and tear of play, they had more chance of
survival, t hough they are often t or n or
fragmentary. There were, however, more
expensive cards made by other processes. The
most luxurious were hand-painted ones, often the
work of well-known artists, produced for the use
of the aristocracy at high prices, or, of a slightly
less de luxe type, with outline designs printed by
wood block but then hand-coloured. Another
type of luxury cards were copper-engraved ones,
again often produced by celebrated engravers
and treasured as works of art. Hand-painted and
copper-engraved cards were, naturally, not as
ephemeral as the cheap ones printed by wood
block and eoloured by stencil; they would be
carefully preserved and handed down as an
heirloom.
For this reason, the cards that have survived to
us from early times contain a disproportionate
number of those of these superior types; and this
may distort our picture of the historical
development. In the special case of the Tarot
pack, its very early history is probably correctly
regarded as the history of the hand-painted cards
used by the nobility, since it appears to have
been, at the outset, confined to aristocratic
circles. But, in general, the history of playing
cards is the history of those of the cheap popular
variety; luxury packs are Mere side branches, not
part of the main stem. In all places and at all
times, cheap popular cards always conform to
the stereotyped designs that constitute standard
patterns; although such standard patterns may
be highly localised, and change gradually over
the course of time, it is a universal law that
playing-card designs, for a particular type of
pack and in a particular region, very rapidly
crystallise into such standardised forms, from
which individual cardmakers can deviate only to
the extent that the card players are unlikely to
notice, and which, likewise, .can change only so
slowly that the players do not notice that they
have changed. The reason for this is easy to
understand. As already remarked, the regular
use of indices on playing cards is relatively
recent, and, indeed, not universal even now. For
most of playing-card history, card players have
expected to identify a given card by its overall
appearance, not by a symbol in the corner or
elsewhere. It is of obvious importance for play
that each player is able to recognise each card
immediately and without error. It does not
matter, for this purpose, that a design may be
 14 Part I: History and Mystery
highly conventionalised and therefore not easily
identifiable by someone unfamiliar with that type
of pack. What matters is that the players who are
familiar with it can tell at a glance which card is
which; and this is possible only if the cards vary
very little from one pack to another, no matter
which cardmaker produced them. Painters and
engravers engaged in the production of a luxury
item do not usually feel this constraint very
heavily; rather, they feel, not merely at liberty,
but actually called on, to invent new and original
designs. But, for this reason, however beautiful
their work, it has very little influence on playing-
card history: the main stream of that history is
concerned with the evolution and dissemination
of the standard patterns used for cheap popular
cards. It is therefore important not to pay undue
attention to the hand-painted and copper-
engraved packs which survive so much more
frequently than the popular cards printed by
wood block. It is evident from many of the early
references, and particularly from the repeated
civic ordinances against card playing, that card
games became a popular pastime from the
earliest appearance of playing cards in Europe.
The most obvious lacuna in .John of
Rheinfelden's account is his failure to specify the
suit signs. The evidence of the fifteenth-century
cards surviving to us allows us to form no more
than a hypothesis about this, although a highly
plausible one. All surviving Fifteenth-century
Italian cards employ the Latin suit-system,
usually in its Italian form, but occasionally with
variations, and this is confirmed by literary
sources. The Aragonese cards also employ the
Latin suit-system, essentially in its 'Portuguese'
form. The French cards, none of which are
earlier than 1460, show either the Latin suit-
signs in their specifically 'Spanish' form, or,
from about 1480, the French ones. In both
Switzerland and Germany we find great
variation in suit-signs. Recent discoveries of
cards from several packs made in about 1520 in
either Zurich or Basle have revealed that the
Latin suit-system was also known in
Switzerland.7 One incomplete sheet, made in
7 See Vera Sack, 'Zwei Iriihe Volkskartenspiele it
italienischen Farber', Archie flfr Geschichte des But/zwexens, vol.
XVI, 1976, pp. 1218-78, Hell rut Rosenfeld, 'Ulmer
Kartendrueker um 1500 as Produzent zum Export nach
Italien und Frankreich', ibid., vol. XVIII, 1977, pp. 526-42;
and Schweitzer Spielkarterz, catalogue of the exhibition of Swiss
playing cards at the Kunstgewerbe Museum, Zurich, 1978,
Basle in about 1531, shows suits of Purses and
Keys, and several incomplete packs made in
Basle and ranging in date from 1470 to about
1529 have suits of Feathers, Hats, Shields and
Bells.8 What was to become the Swiss suit-system
of Acorns, Roses, Shields and Bells seems to have
taken shape about 1450 or a little earlier, the
earliest example being dated between 1433 and
1451 (though of this only cards of the Shields suit
survive), it must have ousted its rivals by about
1535. The two earliest surviving German packs
are hand-painted ones, the Stuttgart pack, made
between 1427 and 1431, and the Ambraser
hunting pack dated 1440-5, both with animal
and bird suit-symbols. There are also several
different copper-engraved packs with a
bewildering variety of suit-signs, mostly animals,
birds and flowers; this tradition lasted well into
the sixteenth century, a celebrated example
being the pack made by Virgil Solis of
no. 20, with notes by Peter Kopp. Dr Sack deals with some
seventy-seven cards or card fragments discovered in
bindings of books at the Zurich University Library;
Rosenfeld discusses another set of sixteen, mostly
fragmentary, cards, found in the binding of a work by
Erasmus published in Basle in 1520, but does not refer to Dr
Sack's article, the catalogue refers to both articles, and
speaks of over a hundred cards, of which a selection was
shown at the exhibition, and which presumably include
those discussed by Dr Sack. To judge by the cards shown at
the exhibition and the illustrations in the two articles, the
cards come from several different packs, and corresponding
cards are almost, but not quite, identical in design,
indicating the use of different blocks for a highly stereotyped
pattern. Dr Sack's dating of 1572 was obviously overtaken
by events. Rosenfeld assigns the cards he discusses to Ulm,
but it is plain that all these cards go together, and Kopp is
surely right in agreeing with Dr Sack that they are Swiss.
The Swords are straight but intersecting; the Batons also
intersect, and are staffs with three bands at the top, the
Cups have lids and handles. The denominations conform to
the Swiss model: the 10s are Banners, the court cards are
King, Ober and Unter, and there are no Aces. This makes
Rosenfeld 's suggestion, also entertained by Kopp, that these
cards were intended for export to Italy, extremely unlikely;
they were surely meant for local use. The cards described by
Rosenfeld are in the Bavarian Staatsbibliothek in Munich.
8 For the pack with Purses and Keys, see H. Rosenfeld,
'Die altesten Spielkarten und ihre Farbzeichen', Archiv fz2'r
Gesehichle des Buehwesens, vol. I, 1956-8, pp. 122-8, and the
catalogue Schweitzer Spielkarten, no. 16, with notes by P.
Kopp. For the cards with Feathers and Hats, see P. Kopp,
article cited in footnote 4, the catalogue Spielkarten: ire Kunst
und Gesclziehte in Milleleuropa to the exhibition at the
Albertina in Vienna, 1974, nos. 44-7, and Schweitzer
Spielkarten, nos. 17, G, 18a, 18b, 18c, 18d and 19, both with
notes by Kopp. In these Feather and Hat packs, the 10s are
pip cards, not Banners.
 The Beginnings in Europe
Nuremberg. As already observed, German
cardmakers produced some packs with five suits,
and, according to the Tractatus de moribund, also
with six; and there is some evidence, to which
Detlef Hoffmann has drawn attention, of a
fashion in the early sixteenth century for a type
of pack with a very large number of suits, going
as high as sixteen." Several packs made in
Germany, both wood- and copper-engraved,
employ the Latin suit-signs. Some of these can be
explained as intended for export, but this.is not
true of all. It is not true, in particular, of a wood-
engraved pack from south Germany, the
Liechtenstein pack, which has, besides the Latin
suits, a fifth suit of Shields, it is also untrue of the
pack made by Hopfer of Nuremberg in 1536 or
1539.10 The great majority of German popular
I
9 A sixteen-suited pack is in the Lady Schreiber collection
in the British Museum, and is illustrated in Playing Cards
from the Collection of Lady Charlotte Schreiber, vol. II, London,
1893, plates 79-80. Hoffmann connects this with a sheet at
Nuremberg (Germanisches Nationalmuseum, catalogue no.
Sp 7031), showing at least six suits, with two fragmentary
sixteenth-century sheets from the Upper Rhine, showing
suits of Carnations, Beans and Birds, at Frankfurt (Histor-
isches Museum, catalogue number C 384-5), and with
an illustration in Geiler of Kaisersberg's 8r6samlin, showing
an itinerant vendor of playing cards, in whose basket are to
be seen cards of several non-standard suits; for, the
Frankfurt sheets, see D. Hoffmann, Inventarkatalog der
Spielkartensammlung des Historixchen Museums, Frankfurt am
Main, 1972, no. 9. Thomas Murner of Strasbourg made two
packs for didactic purposes, one, in 1509, for teaching logic
and the other, in 1515, for teaching law: the First had
sixteen, the second twelve, suits. The suit-signs in both
packs include Bells, Acorns, Hearts, Shields and Crowns,
but the other ones have usually been considered the
products of Murner's imagination. Hoffmann has
suggested that they may, on the contrary, reflect an
authentic, though deviant, type of many-suited pack of
playing cards properly so called in vogue at the time.
10 For the Liechtenstein pack, which is called after a
former owner, not after its place of origin, and is now in the
Rothschild Collection in the Louvre, see D. Hoffmann, Die
Welt der Spielkarte, Leipzig, 1972, p. 25 and plate 24; W.L.
Schreiber, op. cit., pp. 16-17 and plates II and III; the
Albertina catalogue, no. 15; and Vera Sack, article cited in
footnote 7. The date of the pack is in dispute: F. Koreny, in
the Albertina catalogue, dates it to between 1440 and 1450,
making it the earliest surviving set of German cards printed
from wood blocks; Dr Sack places it after 1500, setting 1494
as the earliest possible date. There are two sheets, showing
seated Kings and standing Obers and Unters of all five suits,
the Unters of Coins and Batons being female, and the Ace of
Shields. For the Hopfer pack, see Hoffmann, op. cit., plate
42b, and the Albertina catalogue, no. 36. Forty-seven cards
survive and are in the Kunstbibliothek in West Berlin. The
suit-signs of Swords and Batons are arranged in a very
unusual manner, as spokes of a wheel, all intersecting at the
15
wood-engraved cards, from 1460 on, display the
standard German suit-signs of Leaves, Acorns,
Hearts and Bells. But a suit of Birds was also in
use, and is associated by Hoffmann with
Alsace;*' this lasted until the end of the
sixteenth century, as did also the Roses suit,
which Hoffmann takes as characteristic of the
Upper Rhine region." There is no evidence for
the standard German suit-signs before 1460. The
Dominican Meister If gold, who in 1450 wrote a
work in the Alsatian dialect called Das Guldin
Soil, lists the four suits as Roses, Crowns, Pennies
same point, the Swords are straight. Hoffmann, p. 29,
unreasonably calls this a Trappola pack. His illustration
shows jacks of Cups and Coins, and what is probably a
Cavalier of Cups, but might just be a mounted King of that
suit; unfortunately, I do not remember the details of the
other cards. Koreny, in the Albertina catalogue, mentions
unproblematic Aces of Batons and Coins, the latter bearing
the date, but questions whether the cards showing,
respectively, Flora and Lucretia running a sword through
her breast represent Aces or 'Q.ueens' of Cups and Swords.
II See D. Hoffmann, op. cit., p. 70, note to plate 39b,
which illustrates a pack made in 1585 by Heinrich Hauk of
Frankfurt with suits of Roses, Acorns, Birds and Bells, and
the Albertina catalogue, no. 62, which relates to another
pack dated 1588 with the same suit-signs and by the same
maker. Examples of both are at Frankfurt (Historisches
Museum), and of one in the Cincinnati Art Museum: see
C.P. Hargrave, History of Playing Cards, New York, 1930,
1966, p. 113, and Hoffmann, Inventarkatalog, Frankfurt,
1972, nos. 12-21, compare also no. 57. A sheet of four
numeral cards of the Birds suit is illustrated by W.L.
Schreiber, op. eit., plate II, and a King of Birds in the
Albertina catalogue, no. 18, p. 58.
nz See Albertina catalogue, no. 62, where Hoffmann says
that a suit of Roses is found in many packs of this period. A
pack made by H.S. Beham of Nuremberg in about 1523, an
example of which is in the Kupferstichkabinett in Dresden,
has suits of Leaves, Acorns, Roses and Pomegranates, see
Hoffmann, Die Well der Spielkarte, plate 42a, and Albertina
catalogue, no. 31. Another pack, attributed by Koreny to
Beham, is in the Bodleian Library in Oxford, and has suits
of Acorns, Bells, Roses and Parrots; see F. Koreny, 'Ein
unbekannte Kartenspiel von H.S. BehaM', Studies of European
and Oriental Playing-Cards, supplement to the journal of the
Playing-Card Society, vol. IV, no. 4, May 1976, part I, pp. 3-
15. The pack is illustrated in Roger Tilley, A History of
Playing Cards, London, 1973. Fragments from a pack which
is a copy of this by another maker are in the Lady Schreiber
Collection in the British Museum; see Koreny, op. cit., and
the Albertina catalogue, no. 179. Note also the two packs by
Heinrich Hauk mentioned in footnote 11. There is also the
celebrated pack by Virgil Solis of Nuremberg, made about
1540-5, with suits of Lions, Apes, Parrots and Peacocks, in
which, however, inscriptions on the Aces identify each suit
with one of those of the conventional German suit-system,
and a partial copy, perhaps by Heinrich Hauk, with suits of
Lions, Apes, Parrots and Eagles (see Albertina catalogue,
nos. 37 and 38).
 16 Part I History and Mystery
and Rings; a set of mutilated cards, perhaps
made in Alsace in- about 1480, shows suits of
Shields, Crowns, Bells and Acorns, while a
fragmentary sheet which has been thought to be
as early as about 1450, the Maihinger pack, has
suits of Lions, Bears and Dogs."
Handpainted and copper-engraved cards are
no sure guide, and we have very few popular
cards from before 1460, so it is impossible to
decide the matter with certainty. But in Italy the
fifteenth-century hand-painted packs did not use
non-standard .suit-signs, if the national suit-
system of Germany had already come into
existence in the first half of the century, it would
surely have appeared in at least some of the
luxury packs. The one piece of literary evidence
we have, which suggests that the German suit-
system was not established by 1450, is reinforced
rather than otherwise by the fact that, in an
edition of Ingold's work printed at Augsburg in
1472, an illustration depicting a card game does
show two of the standard German suits (Leaves
and Hearts). The most reasonable conclusion is
that of W.L. Schreiber, that it was not until
about 1460 that the German suit-system was
adopted;14 during the thirty years before that, it
seems that chaos prevailed in Germany in respect
of suit-symbols. It was not until the end of the
sixteenth century that the last traces of that
chaos vanished.
What are we to make of all this? Dr Kopp has
interpreted john of Rheinfelden's silence about
suit-symbols as implying that the anarchy in
regard to suit-signs prevalent in Germany up to
about 1460 was the original condition every-
where during the very earliest period, the late
fourteenth century: that there was, at the start,
no generally accepted system of suit-signs, every
cardmaker being free to choose his own. A
different explanation of Brother ]ohm's apparent
13 See Day Golden Spiel von Mesiter If gold, ed. by Edward
SchrOder, being vol. III of Elsasxirche Litteraturdenkmiiler,
Strasbourg, 1882, p. 64. For the pack with a Crowns suit,
see P. Kopp, 'Einige Streiflichter auf die Geschichte der
Schweizer Spielkarten', Studies j European and Oriental
Playing-Cards, supplement to the journal of the Playing-Card
Society, vol. IV, no. 4, May 1976, 11/38-48, and the catalogue
Schweitzer S/Jielkarten, Zurich, 1978, no. 15. The cards, which
have Banner 10s, are at Basle (Historisches Museum).
For the Maihinger cards, see W.L. Schreiber, op. cit., Plate
I, the Albertina catalogue, no. 14, and the catalogue of the
Fournier Museum, Vitoria, to which the sheet now belongs,
German section, no. 1.
14 Op. cit., p. 125.
silence is thinkable, however. We have seen that,
in all likelihood, the Tractatus de moribund
was subjected to some rather far-reaching
revision, probably by the copyist of 1429. If the
original text had mentioned four specific suit-
symbols, but, by the time it was brought up to
date to take account of variant forms of pack,
those symbols were no longer the only or the
most usual ones, and no generally accepted
alternative system had yet emerged, it is highly
probable that the later editor would simply have
suppressed the mention of particular symbols.
Kopp's conjecture cannot be disproved; but it is
intrinsically improbable, and, as we shall see in
the next chapter, evidence from outside Europe
makes it more unlikely still. Variation of this kind
is normally something that develops only after an
interval; in reproducing the equipment for a new
game, makers would, if they behaved naturally,
at first copy the prototype, and only later begin
to introduce variants. But, now, if we once accept
that, at the outset, there was some one suit-
system universally employed, alternatives to
which appeared, in some areas, only after
playing cards had been known for a few decades,
then there is really only one candidate for being
that original suit-.system: the Latin one. In Italy,
Spain and Portugal, no other was known for
several centuries. In France, the earliest
surviving cards are all Latin-suited, and, so far q
as we know, the French suit-system did not come
into existence until about 1480. Even in
Switzerland and Germany, the Latin suit-system
was certainly known. The Liechtenstein pack, if
it is really of the mid-Fifteenth century, may even
have been fairly representative of contemporary
popular packs, the search for a new suit-system
may have been conducted in the first place
chiefly through the medium of the luxury hand-
painted and copper-engraved packs. The most
natural assumption is that there was one original
system of suit-signs, that which would have been
known to john of Rheinfelden and was used
when playing cards first appeared in Europe. If
this assumption is sound, that system can only
have been the Latin one.
On this hypothesis, therefore, it was the Latin
suit-signs that, in the last quarter of the
fourteenth century, were used wherever playing
cards had spread, in Italy, Switzerland, southern
Germany, the Low Countries, France, Aragon
and Sicily. Moreover, we can make the
hypothesis somewhat more precise. In Italy,
n
 The Beginnings in Europe
what we have designated as the 'Italian'
arrangement of the Swords and Batons is the
most usual on fifteenth-century cards, but we
find also two other principal variations: a
'Portuguese' type of arrangement of the Swords,
namely as intersecting but straight, and another
that did not last beyond the fifteenth century, in
which the Swords are curved and extend for the
whole length of the card, but are placed so as to
be concave towards the nearest edge and so not
to intersect. We should surely see these
variations, not as having been intended to
constitute distinct suit-systems, but, rather, as
mere allowable deviations from the most usual
type of design. The 'Spanish' form of
arrangement, on the other hand, in which, on the
higher numeral cards, the Swords and Batons do
not extend for the whole length of the card, was
unknown in Fifteenth-century Italy.'5 The early
Aragonese cards were described above as
exemplifying the 'Portuguese' system:
specifically, they have straight Swords, but they
and the rather irregularly shaped Batons
intersect; the court cards consist of a seated
King, a Cavalier and a Maid. Though too few of
these cards survive for any generalisation about
them to be very firm, it seems likely that Italian
and Aragonese playing cards were originally of
the same general type, within which certain
variations were considered allowable, and that,
by the end of the century, custom in Aragon had
hardened in favour of straight Swords and Maids
instead of jacks as the third court card of each
suit.1"' This would explain the otherwise puzzling
is With the possible exception of a problematic hand-
painted Tarot pack; see Chapter 4.
16 One sheet of Hfteen fifteenth-century Catalan cards is
illustrated in an unsigned article 'El Joe de nabs a
Catalunya' in the Catalan journal Biblizyilia, ed. R. Miquel
y Planas, vol. II, Barcelona, 1915-20, columns 181-207, see
plates 162a, 162b, 166a. The top row consists of the Maids
of Swords and Cups and the Cavaliers of Cups, Batons and
Swords, the middle row of the Aces of Cups, Coins and
Batons and the Maids of Coins and Batons, the bottom row
of the Ace of Swords and the 2s of all four suits. The bottom
two rows are also illustrated in Agusti Duran-Sanpere,
Grabados Populates Erpaioles, Barcelona, 1971, plate 127 (this
work has been translated into several languages, including
German): this illustration is reproduced in the Albertina
catalogue, plate 30b. The sheet is now in the Museo
Municipal de Arte de CataluNa, Barcelona. The Batons are
lopped-off branches; the Swords are straight, and both
Swords and Batons are crossed on the 2s, the Coins bear the
arms of Aragon. They were discovered in the book cover of a
Catalan manuscript volume of 1519, which puts an upper
17
fact that, although the third court figure in the
'Spanish' suit-system is always male, the normal
Spanish word for ']ack', Sofa, is feminine. I have
spoken here of the earliest known playing cards
from the Iberian peninsula as being Aragonese
rather than as being Spanish, because the earliest
surviving cards are from the neighbourhoods of
Barcelona and Valencia, and we know nothing
about early playing cards in Castile; while
Catalonia is among the areas where playing
cards were first known in fourteenth-century
Europe, we have no ground for asserting that
they were known in Castile until the mid-
fifteenth century. 17
Thus, before the 'Italian' and 'Portuguese'
suit-systems were differentiated, there appears to
have been a general type of Latin pack, admitting
three principal variants: one, which became the
'Italian' form, and was predominant in Italy in
the fifteenth century, with curved and
intersecting Swords, another, to become the
'Portuguese' form, with straight intersecting
Swords; and a third, obsolete after the fifteenth
century, with curved but non-intersecting
limit on their age. Joseph Puiggari, in an article about them,
'.]oh de Nayps Catalo', L'Avens, Barcelona, 1890, pp. 230-5,
dates them to 1460-70; Duran-Sanpere assigns them to the
early sixteenth century. A notable feature is the presence of
naked children disporting themselves about the suit-
symbols on all of the Aces and 2s, they are sawing up the
Baton on the Ace of that suit. Another sheet with twelve
cards is illustrated in the Bibli¢lia article: this shows the
Aces and Maids of all four suits and the 4 to 7 of Batons.
The designs of these cards are rather stiff. The Maids stand
upright on little platforms, and hold their suit-signs in their
right hands. The Aces of Batons and of Swords have two
lions standing on their hind legs, one on each side of the
card. The Batons on the 4 to 7 are, however, arranged as in
'Spanish'-suited packs. These cards were found in the
binding of a copy of the Llibre de let Danes printed in 1495; the
article remarks on a resemblance of the lions on the Aces to
ones on the title-page of a book, Paris e Viana, printed in
Gerona in 1495, which thus seems a probable date for the
cards. The sheet is in the Institute Municipal de Historia at
Barcelona. The Maids are quite similar to ones in later
Portuguese packs.
17 A reference is frequently made in the literature on
playing cards to a prohibition of card games in 1387 by
King .]uan I of Castile. W.L. Schreiber, op. cit., p. 72, points
out, however, that, though this prohibition appears in the
official code of Spanish laws of 1640, the edict as printed in
the laws of Castile promulgated in 1508 omits the reference
to cards, so that the edict relates only to dice and 'tables',
and that an edict of 1432 by Juan II likewise covers only dice
and 'tables' (backgammon). The first genuine reference is a
prohibition of dice and card games of 1476 by Ferdinand
and Isabella.
18 Part I: History and Mystery
Swords. At least as far as the suit-signs are con-
cerned, it must have been this type of pack which
was originally used throughout Europe wherever
playing cards were known. For, unlike the
'Italian' and 'Portuguese' varieties of the Latin
suit-system, the 'Spanish' one seems to have been
a conscious, deliberate departure from
traditional forms, an invention, not of the
Spanish, but of the French, cardmakers. There
is, indeed, a close relationship between the actual
designs of the court cards in standard French-
and Spanish-suited cards; they share, moreover,
the feature that the Kings are standing, not
seated, another departure from tradition that we
should ascribe to the French cardmakers. Some
historians of playing cards have regarded the
earliest Spanish-suited cards as having been
made in France exclusively for export to Spain.
But the French suit-system is an adaptation of the
German one, and can therefore not have come
into existence until a little time after the German
system had crystallized; we cannot suppose
it to have been invented much before the date of
the earliest surviving examples of it, namelyabout
1480, as already remarked. Playing cards had
been known in France for a hundred years before
that, and so the question is there to be answered,
what type of cards French card players used
before the invention of the French suit-system.
Without a convincing alternative answer to this
question, it is irrational to assume that the only
other type of playing cards we know French
cardmakers to have produced were for export
only. It is, in fact, apparent from various features
of the design of certain early 'Spanish'-suited
cards made in France that they were intended for
home consumption."
Evidence for the truth of this thesis can,
'8 Note, in particular, the first of two packs made by
Antoine Logiriera of Toulouse (active between 1495 and
1519) and one of 1538 by Marcial Gué of Limoges, both of
which bear inscriptions in French and the arms of Anne de
Bretagne on the Ace of Coins; a sheet made in je Puy, one
copy of which is in the Rothschild Collection at the Louvre,
which has a shield with three fleurs de lys on the Ace of
Coins; and the two packs by Jean Delpy of je Puy, from
the 1490s, which have Queens instead of Cavaliers, and
in one of which the Queen of Coins carries the arms of
Charles VIII of France and of Anne de Bretagne. For these,
see, respectively: Alain Borvo, Anatomic d'unjeu: l'A!uette on
lejeu de Van/ze, Nantes, 1977, fig. 19, H.-R. D'Allemagne, Les
Carlos djouer du XVe au XXe siécle, Paris, 1906, vol. I, p. 198,
La Carte d jouer en Languedoc des orzgznex d 1800, exhibition
catalogue, Musée Paul Dupuy, Toulouse, 1971, no. 1,
Borvo, fig. 18, D'Allemagne, vol. II, p. 445, D. Hoffmann,
indeed, be found among the products of modern
French playing-card manufacturers. The game of
Aluette, dating back to at least 1502, and
requiring a 48-card Spanish-suited pack, has
been played continuously in a restricted area of
France, namely the western coast from the \
estuary of the Gironde up to Cotentin, together
with the Loire valley as far as Orleans, right
down to the present day. Aluette is not
comparable, in respect of the pack used for it,
with Trappola. Trappola was a game of Venetian
origin which travelled to Central Europe, taking
with it the Italian-suited pack long after it had 1
otherwise died out there. There is, however, no
reason to regard Aluette as Spanish in origin: so
far as the evidence shows, it was only ever played
in those areas of France just mentioned. Why,
then, should it be played with a Spanish-suited
pack? The only answer is that the 'Spanish'-
suited pack was not, in origin, exclusively •
Spanish, but was in regular use in France, and
that this ancient game has simply retained the
cards with which it was first played. That it
should have done so is due, no doubt, to the
conservatism of those regions, and also to the
nature of the game. Aluette is a four-handed
trick-taking game with partners, each player
receiving nine cards, in which that side wins to
which belongs the individual player who has
taken the most tricks, or, in case of equality, took
them soonest. It is exceptional in that you never
need to know which one of the cards in a trick
was that led to it in order to tell which of them
won the trick; and eight particular cards are
removed from their natural place and count as
the eight highest cards in the pack. These are, in
descending order, the 3 of Coins (called vs
'Monsieur'), the 3 of Cups ('Madame'), the 2 of
Coins ('je Borg re'), the 2 of Cups ('la Vache'),
the 9 of Cups, the 9 of Coins, the 2 of Batons and
the 2 of Swords. A player has, obviously, to
memorise this sequence, if the game were to be
adapted to the French-suited pack, a decision
would have to be made which French suit was to
correspond to each of the Latin ones. This is not
an insuperable difficulty; it was done for
Orb re, in which the Aces of Swords and
Batons are permanently the highest and third
Die Welt der Spielkarle, plate 10b, Borvo, Hg. 20, W.L.
Schreiber, op. cit., p. 129 (wrongly captioned 'Italian
cards'), and La Carle djouer en Languedoc, nos. 93, 94. These
packs are discussed in detail by Borvo, pp. 47-53.
 The Beginnings in Europe
highest trumps respectively. But players of
Aluette resisted the change and retained their
Spanish-suited pack down to the present day. 19
The names of nineteen Barcelona card-
makers are known to us from before 1500, but
there is clear evidence of the importation in the
sixteenth century of cards made in France,
while some German cardmakers around the end
of the fifteenth century produced cards for
Valencia." As already remarked, the few
surviving examples that we have of cards made in
or for Catalonia in the late Fifteenth or early
sixteenth century suggest that it was not the
'Spanish', but the 'Portuguese', version of the
Latin-suited pack that was indigenous to Spain.
Thus it is not merely that, before the invention of
the Freneh suit-system, the 'Spanish'-suited pack
was used in France as well as in Spain, rather,
what it is natural to think of as the Spanish system
seems originally to have been the specifically
French variation on the Latin type, while the
original Spanish version of the Latin suit-system
appears to have been that which we think of as
'Portuguese'. The German cardmakers respected
the tradition of the country to which they were
exporting cards, and made packs which, though
German in artistic style, conformed to the then
accepted norms of intersecting Batons and
straight but intersecting Swords and of seated
Kings and Maids in place of jacks. Not so the
French cardmakers: they exported packs to
Spain which exemplified their own, .highly
deviant, version of the Latin system, namely the
so-called 'Spanish' one. Once the French suit-
system had been invented, it became
largely true thereafter that most Spanish-suited
packs made in France were intended for export,
though, as we have seen, it is not wholly true to
this day. Whether because the Spanish
cardmakers could not compete with their French
rivals, or because Spanish card players came to
prefer the 'Spanish'-suited cards, perhaps as
affording a more ready discrimination between
the suits of Swords and Batons or between the
different numeral cards in these suits, the version
of the Latin-suited pack employed by the French
19 See Appendix 1 to this chapter.
20 For French cards imported into Catalonia, see
Madurell MarimOn, op. cit., pp. 59-60, 96-7, the article in
Bib!im!ia cited in footnote 16, and Charles jacotin de
Rosieres, Recherches our Za fabrication des carte; djouer, Paris,
1909, p. 24, fn. 1. For cards imported from Germany, see
Appendix 2 to this chapter.
\
19
cardmakers seems to have come into general use,
and so into general manufacture, in Spain some
time in the course of the sixteenth century.
Having by then been largely superseded in its
country of origin by the French suit-system, it
came to be thought of in Spain as the national
form of the playing-card pack, and has so
remained ever since. As for the form of pack
originally indigenous to Catalonia, and, most
likely, to the whole Iberian peninsula, that was
henceforward relegated to Portugal, and so
earned its label of the 'Portuguese'-suited pack.
This 'Portuguese' form of the Latin-suited
pack has the most obscure history of all the
European suit-systems. As we saw, it seems to
have begun as a mere alternative form of design
for the Swords and Batons suits, an allowable
variation within a single suit-system, not
originally associated either with the replacement '
of Jacks by Maids or with the presence of
dragons on the Aces. In Italy, some of these
features, along with others peculiar to itself, were
adopted for a very special enlarged form of the
Tarot pack, the Minchiate pack, invented in
Florence in the first half of the sixteenth century.
The Minchiate pack had straight but intersecting
Swords, although its Batons were the usual
polished staffs of the Italian suit-system; the Aces
did not have dragons on them, and although the
lowest court cards were Maids in the suits of
Cups and Coins, they remained jacks in Swords
and Batons. This last feature - of Maids in the
two 'round' suits and .Jacks in the two 'long' ones
- was also adopted, in the seventeenth century,
by the Bolognese Tarot pack, which, though
employing a distinctive standard pattern, was
otherwise of a wholly Italian-suited type, and
reverted to having Jacks in all four suits in the
course of the eighteenth century. The Minchiate
pack can thus not be said in a straightforward
sense to exemplify the Portuguese suit-system;
some features of that suit-system were allotted to
it at a time when, in Italy, it was not yet regarded
as constituting a distinct system. It was probably
the Catalan cardmakers who first converted it
into a recognisably distinct system, by rendering
the Swords and Batons suits only in their
'Portuguese' forms and by always having Maids
instead of jacks in all four suits - until they went
over to the 'Spanish' system which had come to
them from France. It is natural to assume that
the addition of dragons to the Aces was a
genuinely Portuguese invention, since, from the
20 Part I: History and Mystery
reign of John I (1384-1433) onwards, dragons
served as the supporters of the Portuguese royal
coat of arms; the Portuguese-suited pack, with
dragon Aces, was the national suit-system of
Portugal from at least the sixteenth century, and
continued as such down to the nineteenth, when
Portugal went over to using the French-suited
pack exclusively. Even this assumption, however,
is probably wrong. Within Europe, the
Portuguese-suited pack was not confined to
Portugal, or even to the Iberian peninsula.
Regular Portuguese-suited packs from Sicily,
dated 1597 and 1639, complete with dragon
Aces, bear witness to this, as does a celebrated
one made in 1692 by the Spanish cardmaker
Infirerra for Malta. Another was made in Rome
in 1613, also with dragon Aces, and a Tarot
pack, employing a fully-fledged 'Portuguese'
suit-system, was made by the same maker at
about the same time, while in Sicily a
Portuguese-suited Tarot pack is still in use at the
present day. Except for the 1597 example, all
these packs have a feature not found in any made
in Portugal itself: every card bears an index,
centrally placed at the top and bottom of the
card, consisting of an Arabic numeral, or (for
court cards) a letter, to indicate its rank and a
letter to indicate its suit, usually placed in a
rectangle. It is plain that a particular form of the
Portuguese-suited pack, with indices, had a
certain vogue outside Portugal during the
seventeenth century. This cannot be accounted
for by direct Portuguese influence, since there
was no such influence either in Sicily or in
mainland Italy; Sicily was under the rule of
Viceroys front Aragon and, later, from united
Spain from 1458 to 1713, and Spain dominated
most of Italy throughout the seventeenth
century. Both in Sicily and in all the southern
part of Italy, including Rome and the Romagna,
it was the Spanish suit-system that was in normal
use for the regular pack: the existence alongside
it of the 'Portuguese'-suited pack, with dragon
Aces, suggests that neither the suit-system nor
even the dragons were of Portuguese origin.
Though the oldest Portuguese-suited packs
made in Portugal itself that survive to us are of
the seventeenth century, the pack was certainly
well established in Portugal by the sixteenth. The
Portuguese reached India in 1498 and Japan in
1542-3; their introduction into those lands of
Portuguese-suited playing cards is witnessed to
by a pack based on Portuguese designs, probably
made in India in the sixteenth century, and by
the earliest Japanese versions of the Portuguese-
suited pack, dating from the Tensh6' period
(1573-92), including a wood block of about 1580
recognisably Japanese in style, but with designs
exactly corresponding to the Portuguese pack.2l 'la
a
The oldest surviving European Portuguese-suited
pack made neither in nor for any part of the
Iberian peninsula is that of 1597, already
mentioned; but a recent discovery, made
independently by Mr Trevor Denning and by Dr
and Mrs Harold Wayland, has brought to light
what may be an earlier example. In a folio of Y'
'maps and plans' from Mexico in the Archive of
the Indies in Seville, there are two uncut coloured
sheets of playing cards, forming a complete 48- l
card pack, together with an uncoloured sheet
from the same block as one of the coloured ones, 1.
several small sheets of designs for playing-card
backs, one showing Montezuma, but none 4
matching the face designs in size, and a charter
dated 1583 granting to one Alonso Martinez de
Orteguilla a monopoly on the manufacture and in
sale of playing cards in several provinces of New x
Spain. Denning has observed that Stewart Culin
described, in the catalogue of an exhibition of
1895, a facsimile of one of the coloured sheets and
a photograph of one of the sheets of back designs,
both shown in the exhibition: the former bore on
the back a pen-and-ink inscription 'Nueva \
EspaNa, 1583. Archivo de Indias, no. 117.
Dibujo.' The pack is a 'Portuguese'-suited one
without indices; there are dragons on the Aces,
the Kings are seated and the Maids of Swords
and Batons are battling with serpent-like
creatures that are attacking them (a frequent
feature in packs using this suit-system). The 4 of -n
Coins carries the arms of Leon and Castile and
the 6 of Coins the inscription 'Con Licencia de la
M Real', and other cards bear other inscriptions.
The date 1583 given on the facsimile may have
been transferred, without sound warrant, from
the charter. On the face of it, however, we have
21 For a detailed and illuminating study of Portuguese-
suited cards, both in Europe and in Asia, see Sylvia Mann
and Virginia Wayland, The Dragon; of Portugal, Farnham,
1973. See, in particular, pp. 15-16 and plates V, VI and X
for the 1597 pack, made by Pietro Ciliberto, and pp. 28-9
and plate XI for the sixteenth-century Indian Portuguese-
derived pack, now in the Spielkarten-Museum at
Leinfelden, it should be noted that the Indian provenance of
this latter pack is disputed by Dr R. von Leyden. The book
also gives a great deal of information about Japanese cards
derived from the Portuguese pack.
 The Beginning; in Europe
here a 'Portuguese'-suited pack manufactured in
Spain and exported to Mexico. Dr and Mrs
Wayland reject this inference, and regard the
cards as made in Portugal and having no
connection with the Spanish colonies; but this
leaves it unexplained how they came to be in the
Archive of the Indies and ignores the indications
on the cards themselves that they are of Spanish
origin."
We thus have evidence that the 'Portuguese'-
suited pack continued in use in Spain until quite
late in the sixteenth century. Exactly when the
change was made from it to the 'Spanish'-suited
pack is difficult to say, because there are very few
}
cards made in Spain surviving from the
r
sixteenth century, probably the two suit-systems
existed for a considerable period side by side.
There is a Spanish-suited pack made in Spain
and dated 1587 in the Lady Schreiber Collection
in the British Museum. The Fournier Museo de
Naipes at Vitoria has cards from three sixteenth-
century Spanish packs, all 'Spanish'-suited,
including one bearing the date 1570; it also has a
sheet of 'Spanish'-suited cards which the
catalogue dates tO the late Fifteenth century, but
which may well be a good deal later, especially
since, as I was informed by M r David
I Temperley, there is an almost identical sheet
dated 1605 in Vienna." In any case, it seems
zz The sheets here discussed are in the Archivo de Indias,
Casa Lonja, Seville; the full reference is: Mapas y Planas,
2 Mexio, Legajo, Patronato 183 - Ramo 6, 73-A to 73-D. Mr
Denning informs me that the Archive of the Indies was
I
founded by King Carlos III in 1758, and incorporated many
hitherto scattered collections. Culin's reference is in S.
Culin, Chess and Playing-Cards (exhibition catalogue), Report
3 of the National Museum, 1896, pp. 665-942, separately
published, Philadelphia, 1897, item no. 96, pp. 934-5. The
r Spanish inscriptions could be explained by the fact that
Portugal was united with Spain from 1580 to 1640.
23 The three sets of sixteenth-century playing cards in the
Fournier Museum are nos. 3, 4 and 5 in the Spanish section
of the catalogue, and the allegedly fifteenth-century sheet is
no. 1. Of possible relevance to the persistence in Spain of the
'Portuguese' suit-system are some cards made in Provence
in about 1545 in the Spielkarten-Museum at Leinfelden,
illustrated in D. Hoffmann, Die Well der Spielkarle, plate 11a,
which have some 'Portuguese' characteristics: the
illustration shows a seated King of Batons, the Batons being
rather knobbly, and a 9 of Swords with straight intersecting
Swords, but a jack, rather than a Maid, of Coins. A
'Spanish'-suited pack made by Martial Gué of Limoges
about 1538 has a mermaid on the Act of Coins and a dragon
on the Ace of Swords; see H.-R. D'Allemagne, is Carter d
jouer, vol. II, Paris, 1906, p. 445. Further discussion of
'Portuguese-suited cards, as used in Sicily and mainland
Italy, will be found in Chapters 19 and 20.
21
likely that the 'Portuguese'-suited pack
continued in use in Spain until well into the
second half of the sixteenth century, and that
dragons were added to the Aces there as well as
in Portugal. The addition of the dragons may
have been a Portuguese initiative, but it may also
be due to the fact that the head of a dragon
formed, from the reign of Alfonso V the
Magnanimous of Aragon (1416-1458) onwards,
part of the Aragonese royal crest - or, of course,
it may have nothing to do with heraldry.24 This
conclusion makes it more intelligible that we
should later Find the pack in Rome and in Sicily,
where Spanish influence was strong but contacts
with Portugal were negligible. Nevertheless, the
regular Portuguese-suited pack failed to establish
itself anywhere in Europe save in Portugal itself,
and even there has now died out. Though it was
thus somewhat of a failure in Europe, ft was, as
we saw in Chapter 1, a great success in Asia, being
the first form of European pack to be known there
and being imitated in India, .Java, Celebes and,
above all, Japan.
Our hypothesis is that the Latin suit-signs
were those used on the earliest playing cards
known in Europe, and that they were, originally,
those used in all countries to which playing cards
spread in their first wave of dissemination in the
-.
fourteenth century. Their 'Italian' and
'Portuguese' forms were, as remarked, at that
time merely admissible variants of a single type,
only later differentiated as characteristic for
distinct suit-systems. What was essential was not
the precise shape of the Swords and Batons, but
the fact that they extended the whole length of
the card. This is why the 'Spanish' variant of the
Latin-suited pack must be looked on as a later
innovation, introduced by the French
cardmakers at some indeterminate date during
the fifteenth century. There is, however, one
respect in which it seems unlikely that the Latin
pack, as we know it, preserves the features of the
earliest playing cards known in fourteenth-
century Europe, namely the manner of
differentiating the two lower court cards. We
have seen that, for .John of Rheinfelden, these
were distinguished in what was to remain the
Swiss and German manner, by the position of the
suit-signs; and, if his account was written within
24 See S. Mann and V.Wayland, op. cit., p. 1, for dragons
as supporters of the Portuguese royal coat of arms, and p. 2
for the dragon's head in the Aragonese royal crest. The
dates 1435-1437 given for Alfonso V's reign are an error..

22 Part I: History and Mystery
two or three years of the first appearance of
playing cards in Europe, it is unlikely that more
than one method of differentiating them had yet
developed. (It is less unlikely if the account was
written a dozen years or more after playing cards
first appeared.) Dr Rosenfeld has plausibly
suggested that originally the two 'Marshals' -
referred to as such only by john of Rheinfelden
- were both mounted, and only later both shown,
at first on the popular packs, as standing; and in
certain of the fifteenth-century copper-engraved
packs the Obers and Unters are indeed mounted.
Whether or not this speculation is sound, it
seems that, at least unless we accept the slightly
earlier date for the introduction of playing cards
in Europe advocated by Dr Kopp, we must view
the distinction between the two lower court cards
according to whether or not the figure is
mounted, rather than by the position of the suit-
sign, as having been an innovation, probably due
to the Italian cardmakers, an innovation made so
early, perhaps before the turn of the fourteenth
century, that we have no record of it.
The hypothesis that, in the first instance,
playing cards everywhere in Europe where they
were known at all bore the Latin suit-signs yields
a vivid picture of the differing policies adopted by
cardrnakers in the different areas. The Italian
cardmakers, apart from their one early
(conjectural) innovation of replacing the pair
Ober/Unter by the pair Cavalier/_Jack, displayed
a resolute conservatism, never deviating from the
original suit-system that dated from the first
introduction of playing cards. The German ones,
by contrast, went in for hectic experimentation
with suit-symbols, probably from quite early in
the fifteenth century, and only in the second half
of the century settled down to the regular though
not yet exclusive use of what was henceforward
the German national suit-system. On our
hypothesis, this must be interpreted, not, as by
Kopp, as the continuation of a primeval chaos,
but as a search for a selection of symbols
generally acceptable because suited to the
culture. An analogy would be the replacement in
Mongolia in the early years of this century of the
French suit-signs by Pinnacles, Flowers,
Swastikas and Clouds." A similar search
25 See Rintchen, 'Mongol Kiijur: je .Ieu de Cartes
Mongol', Studio Orientalia, vol. XVIII, no. 4, 1955, pp. 3-7,
and R. von Leyden, 'Tibetan and Mongol Playing-Cards',
journal of the Playing-Card Society, vol. V, no. 1, August 1976,
pp. 29-31 .
i
appears to have been conducted by the Swiss
cardmakers of the fifteenth century, with at least
one alternative system taking root for a time.
Some historians have, indeed, attempted to view
the individual German and Swiss suit-signs as
derived from specific Latin ones, but there is
absolutely no evidence to support this. In
'in
contrast both to the Italian and to the German
and Swiss ones, the French cardmakers neither
adhered to tradition nor experimented at
random: they made changes for practical,
commercial reasons. The first change made by
them, around 1460 or possibly earlier, was the \
alteration of the existing Latin suit-signs to their
'Spanish' form, and, at the same time, the
replacement of seated Kings by standing ones.
The cards resulting from this innovation were
easier for the card player to identify at a glance,
and less costly for the cardmaker to produce.
These advantages attached, to a far greater \
degree, to their second innovation, the French
suit-system.
The French suit-system, appearing about .
1
1480, should certainly be seen as an adaptation of i
the German one, with Spades (Piques)
corresponding to Leaves, Clubs (Taffies) to
Acorns and, of course, French Hearts (Coeurs) to
German ones The shapes of the French suit-
signs, in all three cases, are regularised versions
of those of the German signs. The only failure of 's
correspondence is between Diamonds (Carreaux)
and Bells; and, even there, one early French pack
has Crescents in place of Diamonds, tallying
more closely with the round shape of the Bells."
This change was a brilliant commercial stroke by
the French cardmakers. The Italian, Spanish,
Portuguese, Swiss and German suit-signs are all *
representations, however stylised, of actual
objects, usually multi-coloured and varying in
size according to how many have to be got on to
the card, and, on the court cards, often an Ii:
integral feature of the design of the figure. The
French suit-signs are monochromatic silhouettes,
constant in size and simple in shape, and never
held in the hand of any of the court figures, as
frequently happens on the court cards of other
suit-systems and must have originally been the
universal practice. This innovation had an
immense commercial advantage. The French
26 A sheet made by Francois Clerc of Lyons between 1485
and 1496; see D. Hoffmann, Die Welt der Spielkarle, plate
43a. The sheet is in the Bibliothéque Nationale in Paris.
s
 The Beginnings in Europe
cardmakers had for the most part already
removed from the numeral cards of the 'Spanish'-
suited pack most of the extraneous Horal
decoration or vignettes that embellish those of
Italian or German packs (and of the
'Portuguese'-suited ones made in Catalonia),
although these reappear on some later Spanish-
suited cards. Now they removed them altogether
from the numeral cards of the new French-suited
packs. The result is an aesthetic impoverishment,
but a commercial coup of the first magnitude.
For now it was no longer necessary to print
outline designs by wood block for any of the
numeral cards: each numeral card could be
produced by the use of a single stencil. In
consequence, a wood block for printing the
designs for a French-suited pack need bear
designs only for the twelve court cards.
Obviously, this made the production of a pack of
cards a far cheaper process. By this invention of
genius, the French cardmakers had gained a
signal advantage over their competitors in other
lands. It is therefore unsurprising that in the Low
Countries, in England and in Scandinavia the
French suit-system came to be adopted in
exclusion to all others, nor that it eventually
invaded Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Portugal
and Spa if, to compete there with what had
become the national suit-systems, ousting them
in some regions, though not to this day in others.
We should, rather, be surprised that its triumph
was not immediate: the'survival of the other suit-
systems is a striking instance of the tenacity of
cultural traditions in the face of strong economic
incentive to abandon them.
German experimentation extended not only to
the suit-signs, but to every other feature of the
playing-card pack: to the number of suits, the
number and identity of the court cards and the
composition of each suit. We have already seen
that, on the testimony of the Tractatus de moribund
as we have it, there were packs with five or six
suits by 1429, and that some examples of Hve-
suited Fifteenth-century packs survive, we have
seen also that there is evidence of a fashion for
packs with a large number of suits in the early
sixteenth century. The German cardmakers
appear also to have been responsible for the
introduction of the Queen into the playing-card
pack; and it will gladden supporters of women's
lib to know that she originally entered it, not as
inferior to the King, but as his equal. The
Tractatus de rnoribus describes packs in which, in
23
all four suits, or in two of the four, all the court
figures are female; the hand-painted pack at
Stuttgart is a surviving example of this latter
type. In yet other packs we find female Unters.
What was probably a subsequent development
yielded packs in which all four suits have a King,
Queen, Ober and Unter, of which the Ambraser
hunting pack is an example, indeed, there are
almost as many surviving fifteenth-century
German packs with four court cards per suit as
with three. The Tractatus does not mention these,
but it does mention, with great enthusiasm, a
type that has not survived, with fifteen cards in
each of the four suits, including King, Queen,
Ober ('Marshal'), Unter ('Marshal') and Maid.
It was not until the early sixteenth century that
the packs with four court cards finally died out,
and the German court settled down to its original
three members. We know of no regular Latin-
suited packs with more than three court cards;
but, when the French cardmakers introduced
their great innovation, the French-suited pack,
they borrowed from the German packs with four
court cards the figure of the Queen (Dame in
French) as a replacement for the Cavalier. If we
look on the French-suited pack as a modification
of the German-suited one, this was presumably
done to avoid the inconvenience to card players
of having to look at the .bottom of the card for the
suit-sign in the case of the Unter; at the same
time, a standing Queen is easier to draw than a
mounted Cavalier.
The German and Swiss cardmakers also made
a further innovation by often representing the 10
of each suit, not by a pip card with ten suit-signs,
but by a card displaying a banner bearing a
single suit-sign, such as we have seen to be
present in the Swiss-suited pack to this day. This
card, although more often than not bearing a
Roman X to indicate its rank, was naturally
often known as the Banner or Parzier. The Banner
form of the 10 never drove out the pip card form
in Germany, surviving alongside it until the
middle of the sixteenth century and then dying
out. In Switzerland, both forms were known, but
the Banner 10 was regarded as integral to that
suit-system which became the national one, and
the Swiss pack has retained it ever since that
system defeated its rivals. There is no indication,
however, that the Swiss ever admitted a Queen or
any other female figure to the playing-card court
before the introduction of French-suited cards, or
that they ever experimented with more than
24 Part I: History and Mystery
three court cards or more than four suits, nor do
they appear to have made either copper-engraved
or hand-painted cards .
When there were only four suits, the addition
of the Queen made a total of 56 cards, as in the
hand-painted Ambraser pack. Evidently this size
of pack found little favour, since the 10, in either
form, was rapidly eliminated from German
regular packs with four court cards in each suit,
although it was retained in all those with only
three court cards. Independently of this,
however, the pack came to be reduced to 48
cards: this happened not only in Germany and
Switzerland, but also, though in a different
manner, with the 'Spanish'-suited pack, and
occasionally, though not usually, with the
Italian-suited one. The reason always given for
this relates to the process of manufacture by
means of wood blocks. A pack of 48 cards could
be printed from two wood blocks, each sheet
bearing 24 cards, arranged in three rows of eight
or four rows of six. By contrast, there was no
convenient way to print a pack of 52 cards from
two wood blocks, in consequence, three would
have to be used, some cards being duplicated. It
is very probable that this was indeed the reason
for the reduction of the pack to 48 cards in
Germany, Switzerland, Spain and Portugal, and
this is corroborated by the fact that when the
French cardmakers adopted the French suit-
system, which made it irrelevant how many
numeral cards t.here were, since they had to print
only the court cards, they restored the original
number of thirteen cards per suit. Nevertheless,
this change can hardly have been effected
without the promotion of games which required
only 48 cards, for otherwise, unless the price
differential was very steep indeed, one can hardly
imagine card players meekly accepting reduced
packs if t he games they wanted to play
demanded 52 cards. Possibly the promotion by
cardmakers of games requiring only 48 cards was
an early example of the phenomenon exemplified
in this century by the commercial promotion of
Canasta.
The 'Spanish'-suited pack, introduced, on the
present hypothesis, by the French cardmakers,
was restricted to 48 cards by the omission from
each suit of the highest-numbered card, the 10,
which only in the rarest cases has appeared in
that suit-system, in any of its forms, since its first
invention; the suppression of the 10 formed the
model for the subsequent shortening of the
Spanish-suited pack to 40 cards by omitting also
the 9s and 8s. The early Catalan cards,
representing the prototype of what was to
become the 'Portuguese'-suited pack, do appear
to have had 10s, but almost all later Portuguese-
suited packs lack them, though there is an x
example to the contrary in the Leber Collection
at the Municipal Library in Rouen. But, in
Germany and Switzerland, the reduction of the 3
pack from 52 to 48 cards was effected in a
I
r
manner very surprising to modern card players, E
namely by the elimination of the Ace; and this I
happened both in packs with three court cards
z
A
and a 10 or Banner, and in ones with four court ;
cards and no 10. The reason is that the Ace did
not originally have its usual present high position
in each suit: it was simply a card that stood at
one end of the numerical sequence from 1 to 10. l
So far as we have any particular reason to I;
I
believe, in Germany and Switzerland the original
ranking of the cards in each suit was with the I
court cards at the top, headed by the King, i
E
followed by the numeral cards from 10 to Ace, in a
descending numerical order: the omission of the
a
t
Aces thus constituted the removal from each suit i
of its lowest card. Once gone, the Ace never
g
reappeared in the Swiss pack; in fact, there is no I
record of any Swiss-suited pack ever having ?
contained it, save in the description in the ;
1
!
Tractatus de moribund.In Germany, the Ace did s
reappear in two exceptional types of sixteenth- 5
century pack, to both of which Detlef Hoffmann
I
Q
has drawn attention. One was the many-suited I a
pack, of up to sixteen suits, apparently in vogue E
at the very beginning of the century, which has
already been mentioned. The other is a curious 4
8
f
type of which we have several specimens, one by 1
Hans Hauk of Frankfurt in 1558, and the others 9
by his son Heinrich Hauk in the 1580s. In none of 3
i
these does the Deuce appear, but they have Aces, 91
each of which bears the inscription Nil gwis or Nil
Lewis (i.e. night Lewiss, 'not certain').27 Both of
27 Four Aces and a 7 of Bells by Hans Hauk are in the
Spielkarten-Museum at Leinfelden, see D. Hoffmann, Die
Well der Spielkarte, plate 39a. Five sheets by Heinrich Hauk
for packs of this type are at Frankfurt (Historisches
Museum), see Hoffmann, Inverztarkalalog, Frankfurt, 1972, s
nos. 25-9, and Albertina catalogue, no. 67. One, a sheet Q
showing 32 cards, with the standard German suit-signs, like
all cards of this type, and the values King, Ober, Unter,
Banner 10, 9, 8, 7 and Ace, may possibly represent a
complete pack; the Albertina has a very similar sheet. Other
sheets have repetitions, so that more than one block would
have been needed for a complete pack; but it has been
\.
 The Beginnings in Europe
these, however, were deviant forms: for the main
stream of the popular German playing-card
pack, the Ace must be considered as having
irretrievably disappeared by the 1470s. It cannot
have been until the Aces had gone for good from
the German- and Swiss-suited packs that the
influence of foreign card games of the trick-taking
type in which the Ace was high made itself felt in
Germany and Switzerland. When this happened,
the 2 or Deuce was made to play the role of the
Ace in other packs.. After the further reduction of
the pack to 36 cards by the omission of the is, 4s
and 5s, it became easy to overlook the historical
identity of the Deuce, and we have seen that it
.has now been almost wholly assimilated to the
Ace of other packs; the process was not, however,
completed until the present century.
In Italy and Spain, the original card order was
even more unlike the usual modern practice. In
all four suits, the court cards ranked as the
highest, but we have clear evidence from literary
sources" that, in Italy up to about 1500, and in
pointed out by Hoffmann that in none of them do any of the
values from 2 to 6 occur. He has accordingly suggested that
packs of this type contained only 32 cards. If he is right, it is
very surprising, since, with this exception, shortened packs
continued, both in France and Germany, to include the 6s
until about 1700, and thus had 36 cards. The significance of
the inscription Nil gwir is in any case obscure. The only
possibility that occurs to me is that such packs could have
been intended for a game of chance of the type of Baccarat
or Thirty-One, in which the Ace could have the value 1 or
11 at the player's choice. Thirty-One is sometimes played in
that manner, and was certainly played in Germany, being
mentioned by Hans Sachs (see the edition of A. von Keller,
in the Bibliothek des Litterarischen Vereins in Sagan, vol. V.
Tiibingen, 1908, p. 226). It was moreover sometimes played
with a shortened pack; but Daniel Martin, in chap. 74 of the
Parliament Nouveau, says specifically that the Ace counts only
1 point, since, if it were allowed to count 11, it would be
possible for a player to obtain 31 points with only three
cards.
28 See Galeotti Martii Narniensis De doctrine Promiscua,
Florence, 1548, chap. 36 (at end), p. 433; I do not know the
date of the first edition of this book, but Marzio Galeotti
died in 1478. For testimony to the antiquity of this practice
in games played with the Tarot pack, see the commentary
by Pier Antonio Viti to 'I Tarocchi' by Matteo Maria
Boiardo, composed before 1500, either in Le Poesi volgari e
latine do Matteo Maria Boiardo, ed. Angelo Solerti, Bologna,
1894, pp. 313-38, or Tutte Le opere di Matteo Maria Boiardo, ed.
A. Zottoli, Milan, 1936-7, vol. 11, PP~ 702-16. For the
Spanish practice, see Linguae latina exe rtitatio _7.L. Vivid
Valentine, Basle, 1541, Dialogus xxi, 'Ludus chartarum seu
foliorum'; Vives died in 1540. Possibly connected with this
practice is _John of Rheinfelden's odd remark that some of
the suit-signs are considered good and others have an evil
significance.
25
Spain well into the sixteenth century, the
subsequent ordering of the numeral cards in two
of the suits differed from that in the other two.
Thus in Swords and Batons, the cards ranked, in
descending order: King, Cavalier,]ack, (10), 9, 8,
7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, Ace, while in Cups and Coins they
ranked, in descending order: King, Cavalier,
jack, Ace, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, (10). This curious
practice, of purely picturesque significance,
survives in three games or families of games: the
Spanish game of Orb re (called Tresillo in Spain
itself, and Orb re or L'Hombre elsewhere, and
once played all over Europe), together with its
derivatives; the Irish game of Spoil Five; and
most of the games played with one or other form
of the Tarot pack. In other games, it has long
been discarded as an irrelevant strain on the
attention. Spoil Five, well known in England
under the name Maw in the late sixteenth and
early seventeenth centuries, looks like a game
invented by someone with an imperfect memory
of Orb re. Orb re itself is complicated by the
fact that the Aces of Swords and Batons serve
as permanent trumps in addition to whichever
suit becomes the trump suit, and that one or
two of the cards of the trump suit are promoted
above the position they occupy in the plain suits;
it would therefore be almost impossible to
disentangle the practice of reversing the order of
the numeral cards in two of the suits without
disturbing the essential features of the game, and
it is presumably for this reason that the practice
has been retained in this game and its
derivatives. In all games played with the Tarot
pack, on the other hand, save that peculiar to
Bologna, the practice could be, and in some cases
has been, abolished without affecting the game in
the least: we can only suppose that it was
retained as a picturesque feature appropriate to a
game played with what appeared, outside Italy, as
a highly picturesque form of pack. Here, again,
however, we have a feature that is not, in origin,
peculiar to the Tarot pack, but was at the outset
simply the ordinary practice for all card games
requiring a ranking of the cards, that is, primarily
trick-taking games. As remarked, there is no
evidence that the practice was ever followed in
Germany or Switzerland; it may well be that, in
those countries, card players ignored it from the
start, assigning a higher rank in every suit to the
higher numeral cards .
How, and why, the Ace rose to the topmost
position in games played with Latin- and
26 Part I: History and Mystery
French-suited packs is quite obscure. In the First
half of the sixteenth century, the game of
Trappola, already mentioned, a trick-taking
game in which the cards rank in the same order
in every suit and the Ace is the highest card of
each suit, became popular in Venice." In
England a game called Triumph, an ancestor of
Whist, was played from the early sixteenth
century," the natural presumption is that from
the start the Ace was the highest card in each
suit, as it certainly was in later forms of the game,
although a remark in a sermon of Latimer 's in
1529 suggests that possibly the King was still the
highest card. In France a distinct game called
Triomphe, which has survived to the present day,
was played at least as early as 1534, on the
testimony of Rabelais;31 it may have been played
as early as 1482," although it is difficult to know
whether this, or the game played by René II,
Duke of Lorraine, in 1496, was the same game or
one for which the Tarot pack was used. We have
no description of Triomphe until the
seventeenth century, at which time the Ace
ranked below the three court cards but above the
10 and other numeral cards, ranking in
descending order, as it does also in the derivative
game of Ecarté. Possibly this gives us a clue to
the process by which the Ace came to be
promoted. If, originally, the numeral cards
ranked in different orders in the two pairs of
suits, so that, in Cups and Coins, or in Hearts
and Diamonds, the Ace ranked immediately
below the court cards, then, when the order was
rationalisedso as to be the same in all suits, the
Ace may in every suit have been allotted the
relatively high position it had held in two of
them, only later climbing, in most games, to the
highest position of all. But this is Hirnsy
speculation: at present, the rise of the Ace
remains a problem.
Italy remained as unaffected by the German
experimentation with numeral cards and court
cards as by that with the suit-.signs. There is,
indeed, some literary evidence that there were
some regular Italian-suited packs with four court
29 The earliest reference known to me is in Francesco
Marcolino's Giardino do [2en5zeri, Venice, 1540, but by then
the game was evidently well known.
30 The earliest reference is in Henry Watson's The chirche
of the evyll men 87" women of 1522.
31 See Gargantua, vol. I, chap. 22: this is not a game played
with the Tarot pack, since that is separately mentioned.
32 See F. Godefroy, Didionnaire de Vancienne langue frangaise,
Complement, s. v. triornp/ze.
cards, a Queen being added," if so, it does not
seem that the experiment was any great success,
and no such packs have survived. The only
possible known example of an Italian pack with
Banner 10s was probably an import from
Germany." Around the end of the century some
\
packs appear to have been made without 10s,
identical in composition, therefore, with the 48- 1
card Spanish-suited packs;35 but these, too, 1
appear to have been an exception. By and large, I
I
the regular Italian pack remained quite
s
unchanged throughout the century. It would, I
however, be quite misleading to think of Italian S
cardmakers as wholly conservative and
unenterprising. On the contrary, they made one
innovation of more importance, not only to the
design, but to the use, of playing cards than all
the novelties of the German, Swiss and French 8
cardmakers put together. This was the invention 3
of the Tarot pack. That invention, and its
significance, will be our concern in Chapters 4 I
to7.
By 1550, the experiments that proved I
I
ephemeral had been abandoned, and the various 1
%
European types of regular pack had crystallised
into more or less their definitive forms: in Italy,
the 52-card Italian-suited pack, in Portugal, the I
48-card Portuguese-suited pack, and, in France I
and Spain, the 48-card Spanish-suited one, in
France, England and the Low Countries, the 52- i
.I
card French-suited form, in Germany and
Switzerland, the German- and Swiss-suited g
packs with 48 cards. We have thus surveyed the I
first one and three-quarter centuries of the history
of the regular playing-card pack in Europe, from g
about 1375 until the middle of the sixteenth z
century, and the sometimes complicated process i
by which, during that period, the various 3
s
»
1
33 The passage of Marzio Galeotti's book mentioned in 1
footnote 28 contains the phrase regnum, reginarum, equilum
Peditumque Potenliam apropos of playing cards, with no 3
apparent reference to the Tarot pack. The sermon of St 1
Bernardine of Siena against gaming, preached in 1423,
mentions first regen alque Reginae and then milites Juperiores et
inferior's, in a passage that betrays no knowledge of the
Tarot pack, which may well not have been invented by that
date; see S. Bernardino Senensis O . F . M . Opera Ornnia, ed. PP.
Collegii S. Bonaventurae, .vol. II, Florence, 1950, Sermo 42 A
'contra alearum judos', p. 23.
i
34 See Appendix 3 to this chapter for a discussion of this
pack.
35 Sheets 1-1009 and 1-1010 in the Cary Collection at Yale 3
\
University form one probable example, the sheets at the
Fournier Museum, Vitoria (no. 1 in the Italian section of the 1
catalogue), form another.
\
 7'ze Beginnings in Europe
¢
a.
national suit-systems emerged. By contrast, the
history of the European regular playing-card
pack during the remaining four and a quarter
centuries down to the present day has been
extraordinarily uneventful, at least when seen
from a distance, as we are viewing it. A long and
intricate account would be needed if we were to
trace the origins and evolution of the various
standard patterns that are and have been used
for each of the different types of regular pack; but
in this book we shall not concern ourselves with
these, but shall rest content with surveying only
the broad outlines. There have indeed been
pa
changes, particularly since the middle of the
nineteenth century, that have profoundly
affected both card players and card
manufacturers: the introduction, into most
standard patterns, of double-headed cards and of
corner indices;36 the addition of the .Joker to the
b French-suited packs" the change from square
as The idea of double-headed cards originated in the later
eighteenth century, and spread slowly from one standard
pattern to another, rather than from country to country;
some standard patterns, such as the Neapolitan and
i Sicilian, have not adopted it yet. Among the earliest packs
to go double-headed was the Tarocco Bolognese, and,
although single-ended French-suited Tarot packs were
produced up to about 1840, double-headed ones appeared
as early as 1780. This is unsurprising, since the Tarot pack
contains more picture cards than the regular pack. The
earliest double-headed French-suited regular pack was
produced in Austria in the late eighteenth century, and,
among Italian-suited packs, those using the Venetian
pattern assumed a double-headed form at about the same
time. The Paris pattern, used throughout France, became
double-headed in 1827, and by 1830 double-headed cards
were more common than single-ended ones in most
European countries. Britain and the U.S.A lagged behind
5 other Western countries in this matter: double-headed
cards first appeared in England soon after 1850, and
I became established only in the 1860s; in the United States
the earliest example is from 1861, but the form took root
only in the 1870s. Corner indices, on the other hand, are an
_
American invention, from shortly before 1870, probably
prompted by the needs of Poker players. They were adopted
in most European countries in the 1890s, though Austria
and Italy'have been resistant.
37 As observed in Chapter 1, the joker was another
American invention, from about 1857. It, too, may have
been introduced for Poker in the first place, though the
earliest printed reference to its use in that game known to
me is from The Standard Hoyle (New York, 1899, p. 147), for a
variant called by the French name of 'Mistigris', but, even if
it was introduced for Poker, it was quickly adapted for the
game of Euchre. In Euchre the jack of the trump suit is
promoted to be the highest card, being known as the 'Right
Bower'; the _lack of the other suit of the same color
becomes the second highest trump, called 'Left Bower'.
`
27
corners to rounded ones; the adoption of modern
techniques of manufacture; and, as a
consequence of these techniques, the
replacement of small workshops by large
factories. This last change has eliminated the
multiplicity of craftsmen who used to work
principally for the local market; playing-card
manufacture is no longer profitable except with a
vast turnover, so that in most countries - Italy is
the principal exception -. one manufacturer has
obtained a near or actual monopoly. But changes
of these kinds are not our concern, which is solely
with the composition of different types of pack;
and, in this respect, very little has happened to
the European regular pack during the last four
hundred years. Indeed, essentially only two
things have happened: alterations in the
geographical diffusion of the various suit-
systems, and the introduction of shortened
packs. We may therefore conclude this chapter
by bringing the history down to the present in
just two paragraphs.
The great success story has, of course, been
that of the French suit-system, but the Spanish-
suited pack has also had successes. From the
beginning of the sixteenth century, the Spanish
game of Primero, called in Italian Primiera, was
popular in Italy, and Spanish card-playing
practice was always to remain influential there.
The Kingdom of Naples was conquered by
Aragon in 1442, and was under the direct rule of
united Spain from 1500 until the Treaty of
Utrecht in 1713; indeed, save for Venice and
Savoy, most of the peninsula was effectively
under Spanish control from 1530 until that date.
It was therefore natural that the Spanish-suited
form of the Latin pack should displace the
Italian-suited one over most of Italy, especially in
Sicily and the Kingdom of Naples, but also in
most of the Romagna save independent-minded
Bologna. As for the French-sUited pack, it had
When the joker is used, it is, as 'Best Bower', the highest
trump of all. ('Bower' is a corruption of German Bauer, used
in Alsace, from where Euchre or _Inker originated, as the
ordinary word for '.]ack'.) The Joker arrived in Europe from
the United States in the 1880s, along with the game of Poker
(and, in England, that of Euchre). The joker was also used
for a later invader from the U.S.A., Rummy. It is normally
added only to French-suited packs and, among them, to ones
with 52 cards, Euchre being the only game played with a
shortened pack in which it is used. The most popular German
variant of Rummy demands three Jokers, but in Britain only
one was required until the advent of Canasta in the 1950s,
which demanded two per pack.
28 Part I: History and Mystery
two periods of expansion. It was adopted in the
sixteenth century in England and the Low
Countries, and spread also to Savoy and the
French-speaking cantons of Switzerland. But it
was not until the eighteenth century that it made
its great advance by invading Germany, Austria
and Italy. At the present day, it is more in use in
Germany and in Central Europe than the
German-suited pack, though the latter continues
to be used in certain regions. In Italy, the type of
suit-system employed, Italian, Spanish or
French, as well as the particular standard
pattern, depends very much upon local tradition:
the French-suited pack predominates in
Tuscany, most of Lombardy, Piedmont and
Genoa. In Portugal, the Portuguese-suited pack
has disappeared altogether in favour of the
French-suited one. Only in Spain does the Latin-
suited pack continue throughout the country to
enjoy a far greater popularity than its French-
suited rival.
The only substantial change in the actual
make-up of the different forms of the regular pack
that has occurred since 1550 has been the
introduction of shortened packs. From the
beginning of the sixteenth century, a number of
games came into fashion played with packs
reduced in size by the omission of some of the
numeral cards. Originally, this shortening was
effected, everywhere but in Spain, by the
omission of the lower numeral cards of each suit,
other than the Ace, which had already become
high-ranking, to form a pack of 36 cards. We are
accustomed to speak of a 32-card pack as a
Piquet pack; but in fact Piquet was originally
played with a 36-card pack, formed by omitting
the numeral cards from 2 to 5 from the French-
suited pack. The game of Trappola is the only
sixteenth-century Italian game of which we
know, not of Spanish origin, played with a
shortened pack. It, too, employed a 36-card pack,
but, in this case, one from which it was the
numeral cards from 3 to 6 that were omitted, the
explanation is that, in this game, the lowest card
of each suit, the 2, plays an especially important
role. In the seventeenth century, the practice of
shortening the pack spread to Germany and
Switzerland; there, of course, it was necessary to
omit only the cards from 3 to 5 to obtain a 36-
card pack, the Deuce being high in imitation of
the Ace of the French-suited pack. It was in
about 1700 that the Piquet pack was further
shortened in France to 32 cards by the omission
of the 6s," the 36-card pack lingered on there
until at least 1775. In the eighteenth century,
games with 32 cards came to be played in
Germany, although ones requiring 36 cards
never wholly lost their popularity, the Swiss-
suited pack, on the other hand, has never been
employed for games with only 32 cards. In
contrast to all this, the Spaniards proceeded in a
quite different way. They, too, devised many
games played with shortened packs. But, in the
shorter form of their pack, they kept as many as
40 cards, and they arrived at it in the opposite
manner to that used by everyone else, namely by
omitting the higher numeral cards, the 8s and 9s,
instead of the lower ones. The Spanish game of
Orb re, played with a 40-card pack, spread all
over Europe, and, as already remarked, was the
most successful single card game before the
invention of Bridge; several other Spanish card
games gained widespread popularity, in France,
in England and, above all, in Italy. For these
games, 40-card Italian- and French-suited packs,
having the same numeral cards as the Spanish-
suited packs, were often used, this practice was
not, however, observed with the Swiss- and
German-suited packs. Although the practice of
playing with a shortened pack dates from the
sixteenth century, it does not appear to have
been until the subsequent century that
cardmakers began to cater for it, at least on any
large scale, by offering for sale already shortened
packs, but, as soon as they did, such packs came,
in many areas, to oust the full forms. The full 52-
card French-suited pack has, of course, never
been ousted, either in France or elsewhere; and
though the Italian-suited pack is mostly found
shortened in the Spanish manner, its full 52-card 1
form maintains a precarious existence. In Spain
itself the full 48-card Spanish-suited pack still
Hourishes; but it disappeared from Italy during
the eighteenth century. The 48-card German-
suited pack disappeared from Germany and
Central Europe at the same time. The 48-card
Swiss-suited pack is still used for one ancient
game played in one locality, with this one
38 The 1697 edition of the Académie Univerxelle des jeux still
describes Piquet as played with 36 cards, but that of 1702
gives the number of cards as 32. Likewise, the 1687 edition
of the Compleat Gamester retains unmodified the description of
the game as played with 36 cards, while the editions from
1709 on add a note giving the modifications in the rules
required for play with 32 cards and stating that that is the
current practice.
8
 I
The Beginnings in Europe
exception, it, too, has been ousted by the 36-card
form.
Appendix 7: Aluette
I seen Gabory's book, but it also probably relies on
The Aluette pack, in its present form, has many
peculiarities: the Cavaliers are female, and the four top
cards, called luettes, have features of design
corresponding to the individual names they bear; in
particular, the 2 of Cups, Za Van/ze, depicts a
recumbent cow below the suit-signs. The illuminating
study by Alain Borvo cited in footnote 18, and
previously published in Le Vieux Papier, vol. XXVII,
1974, pp. 169-85, 213-30, 247-59, vol. XXVIII, 1976,
pp. 457-63, 501-8, shows that these special features
were all introduced in the nineteenth century: during
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Aluette
was played with a Spanish-suited pack, manufactured
in various parts of France, that lacked these
eccentricities, although conforming to a definite
standard pattern. A cow, standing and placed
between the two suit-signs, appears on the 2 of Cups
on the je Puy sheet mentioned in footnote 18, and also
in a second pack by Logiriera, destined for Navarre
(see Borvo, fig. 19, and D'Allemagne, vol. 11, p. 388),
along with other animals and figures on other cards.
Borvo very plausibly concludes (p. 50) from the
different appearance of the cow that the nineteenth-
century cardmakers were prompted to restore the
cow, not by any continuous tradition of design, but by
the retention of the name Za Vache for the card, a name
F surviving from the sixteenth century wherr the 2 of
Cups had been thus decorated. It cannot be deduced,
however, that the Logiriera and je Puy packs were
specifically intended for Aluette, which is not known
ever to have been played in Navarre.
The earliest reference to Aluette found by Borvo is
from 1502, when, he says, Anne de Bretagne, then
Queen of France and wife of Louis XII, initiated the
I
fashion of this new game by playing it with the
Archduke Philip the Fair (son of the Emperor
Maximilian and father of Charles V), who was then at
Lyons convalescing from an illness (pp. 24, 55-6). As
authorities for this statement Borvo cites Paul
Lacroix, Louis XII et Anne de Bretagne, Paris, 1882, p.
252 (actually p. 262), Georges-Gustave Toudouze,
Anne, duchesse de Bretagne, Reine de France, Paris, 1959, p.
236 (p. 219 in the 1938 edition), and Emile Gabory,
Anne de Bretagne, duchesse et Reine, Paris, 1941, p. 194.
Lacroix says nothing about Aluette's being a new
game or about its coming into fashion, but merely
remarks that Philip played the game with the Queen
(ilona, avec la reine, a unjeu de eartes nome I 'a!luette), he
cites no authority, but he must certainly have had
one. Toudouze expressly disclaims having written a
work of scholarship, his book is, he says, one of
'impressions'. His source for the remark about Aluette
\
29
is almost certainly Lacroix, but he has embroidered a
bit: 'to distract her sick guest/ he said, 'Anne even
initiated the fashion for a quite new game of cards,
Aluette' (Pour dislraire son hate malade, Anne lance mime la
mode d'un]éu de caries tout nouveau: 1'Aluette'). I have not
Lacroix. We can be sure that the game existed in
1502, but not that it was then a new one. The game
was also mentioned by Rabelais in 1532 (book 11, chap.
5; cf. book I, chap. 22 and book V, chap. 23). Borvo has
made a systematic search to discover the geographical
extension of the game, and states (p. 22) that he has
found no proof of its existence south of the Gironde, in
the Basque country, in Spain, in Portugal or in Latin
America. In spite of this, he inclines (p. 55) to the
theory that it was of Spanish or Portuguese origin. If it
originated in France, he remarks, that would imply
that Spanish-suited cards were indigenous to the
regions in which it was played. Quite so: given no
reason to believe it anything but French, that is the
natural conclusion, He concedes that cards were
played in France before the French suit-signs were
invented, but asks whether the cards then used were
Spanish-suited. We can only answer 'Yes': this is the
only kind for which we have any evidence.
The practice of signalling possession of particular
cards to one's partner by means of conventional
gestures, observed in Aluette, is no guide to its origin,
it is found, not only in the Spanish game of Brisca and
the Basque game of Mus, but in the games of Watten
and Perlaggen, played in Bavaria and the Tyrol, and
of Triintne and Fliisslen, played in Schwyz, of
Kaiserjass, played in Nidwalden, both in Switzerland,
and of Briscola, played throughout Italy. A
better comparison, among Spanish games, would be
with'el Truco, now much played in Argentina, with
the related French game of je Truc and English game
of Putt. Putt, described in Charles Cotton's The
Compleat Camester, 1674, pp. 131-7, and in later
editions, was played with the 52-card pack in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. A trick-taking
game, usually for two players, it differed much from
Aluette in that each player was dealt only three
cards. The card order was unusual, the cards ranking,
in descending order, 3, 2, Ace, King, Queen, .]ack and
then 10 down to 4, in this, it resembled games of the
Italian Tressette family, played with the 40-card pack.
The resemblance to Aluette lies in the unusual feature
that suit is quite irrelevant in Putt; not only need a
player not follow suit, but a trick was won by the
highest-ranking card played, irrespective of suit; if
both cards were of the same rank, neither won the
trick. Let us call trick-taking games of this kind 'rank-
only' games ; Tressette is not one of these, only a card of
the suit led being able to win the trick in Tressette,
as in almost all games without trumps. Aluette is a
rank-only game, modified by the presence of the eight
high cards, which beat all others. The remaining
30 Part I: History and Mystery
cards rank, in descending order, as follows: the Aces,
the Kings, the Cavaliers, the jacks, the 9s of Swords
and Batons, the 8s, the 7s, the 6s, the 5s, the 4s and
the 3s of Swords and Batons. El Truco, as described
in juegos de Naives, Barcelona, 1963, pp. 123-43, is
played by varying numbers of players; it resembles
Putt in that each player has only three cards, and
Aluette in being a rank-only game modified by the
presence of four high cards, or certes bravos, which beat
all the others, namely, in descending order, the Ace of
Swords, the Ace of Batons, the 7 of Swords and the 7
of Cups. The game is played with 40 cards, and the
remaining cards rank, in descending order, thus: the
3s, the 2s, the Aces of Cups and Coins, the Kings, the
Cavaliers, the Jacks, the 7s of Cups and Batons, the
6s, the 5s and the 4s. The French variant, je Truc,
described in E. Lanes, Nouveau Manuel Complet des jeux
de Carves, Paris, 1912, and in Sid Sackson, A Gamut of
Games, New York, 1969, seems to stem from a version
preceding the introduction of the certes bravos, since it
is an unmodified rank-only game, for two players,
again with only three cards apiece. It is now played
with the 32-card French-suited pack, the cards
ranking, in descending order, 7, 8, Ace, King, Queen,
jack, 10 and 9. In this game, however, the 8s are
referred to as 6s. Though neither Lanes nor Sackson
could explain this eccentricity, it plainly indicates
that the game was introduced into France at a time
when the 36-card French-suited pack was in use, and
hence probably in the seventeenth century (the
change from 36- to 32-card Piquet occurred about
1700, although D'Allemagne, op. cit., vol it, pp. 374,
400, records that 36-card packs went on being sold
until at least 1775). Having no 3s or Zs, French
players must have adapted the el Truco ranking by
elevating the 7s and 6s, in that order, to the highest
position; when the 36-card pack ceased to be
available, they had to substitute 8s for the 6s. (See M.
Dummett, 'Bluff, Counter Bluff', Games and Puzzles,
no. 5, September 1972, pp. 16-17.)
It is evident that Putt, el Truco and Aluette, so
different from most trick-taking games, must be
connected. The antiquity of Aluette rules out the
possibility of an English origin for the family; but,
although je Truc itself is evidently derived from el
Truco, and not conversely, there is no evidence that el
Trueo is of an antiquity comparable with that of
Aluette, and, as a game played with the shortened 40-
card pack, it is quite likely to be less old than it. This
family of games may well have originated, as a family,
in France rather than in Spain, there is therefore still
no reason to consider Aluette anything other than
French.
8
\ i
Appendix 2: Playing cards made in Germany for
Catalonia
Several copper-engraved packs were made in
Germany, probably for export to Aragon. A set of
three such cards, the King, Cavalier and Maid of
Coins, is in the Kupferstichkabinett in West Berlin;
see Duran-Sanpere, plate 126, and the Albertina
catalogue, plate 30a. Each of the three figures holds a
coin; those of the Cavalier and Maid bear the arms of
Aragon, and the inscription round the edge includes
the word VALENCIA; that of the King, who is s
\
seated, bears the seal of .Juan II of Aragon (1456-
1479). In his booklet on the pack by the
'oberdeutscher Stecher', Fritz Koreny relates these
cards stylistically to the work of the Master of the
Berlin Passion. They are therefore probably not
Spanish, but from a German pack intended for
export, but they were certainly destined for Valencia.
There are two Putty on the King's throne, and another
standing behind the Maid. Koreny was the first to
draw attention to the close resemblance between these
three figures and the corresponding court figures in
the suit of Pomegranates in a pack by a south German
engraver (oberdeutscher Stitcher) produced in the 1490s,
see no. 30 in the Albertina catalogue. A reproduction
of this pack was issued in 1977 jointly by Edition
Leipzig and Heimeran Verlag of Munich, with a most
informative booklet by Koreny. Four nearly complete
copies exist, in the British Museum, in Weimar,
Uppsala and Bologna, as well as other fragmentary
ones. The pack is a Latin-suited one, in which
Pomegranates replace the usual Coins; each suit has
Ace, 2 to 9, Banner (with an index X), Maid, Cavalier
and King; the numeral cards from Ace to 9 also have
Roman numeral indices. The Swords are very slightly
curved sables, and the Batons are sticks of a very
wavy form, both of them intersecting, often in a very
unusual arrangement. All the numeral cards have
fantastic vignettes, including figures of children on
some of those of the Cups and Pomegranates suits,
on the Ace of Batons, children are sawing the Baton in
half, as in the Barcelona pack. On the basis of the
links with both the Barcelona and Berlin cards,
Koreny considers that this pack was made for export
to Spain, and in this he is surely correct. (He
mistakenly identifies the female court Figures as
Queens, ranking above the Cavaliers, but there is
nothing regal about them, and they are standing, not
sitting) It was remarked in Playing Cards of Various
Ages and Countries .Sleleded from the Collection of Lady
Charlotte Schreiber, vol 11, London, 1893, p. 13, that the
pack by the oberdeutscher Stecheris related to a sheet
of eight copper-engraved cards, the 2 to 9 of Cups,
made probably in the.1460s by the highly productive
E
I
i
 The Beginnings in Europe
Dutch or north German engraver known as the
Bandrollenmeister and now in the British Museum.
These again show small children playing about
between the cups, and may be part of yet another
pack intended for export to Spain; see the Albertina
catalogue, no. 29.
Appendix 3: An allegedly Spanish Pack
D. Hoffmann, Die Welt der Spielkarte, plate 10a, shows
four cards of a Latin-suited pack of which only Coins
survive; they are of the fifteenth century, and there
are seven altogether; they belong to the Rothschild
Collection at the Louvre. Those shown by Hoffmann
are the 5, the 6, a Banner 10 and the (seated) King.
The King bears the inscription 'Lo re doro', and the
10 'Lo Dees doro'. Hoffmann Firmly identifies them as
Spanish, and in this he is followed by Fritz Koreny
(Das Karlenspiel des oberdeutschen Stechers, handbook
with reproduction pack, Leipzig and Munich, 1977,
l
i
i
p. 28 and fig. 22}; neither offers any reason. Sylvia
Mann has, however, suggested that the cards are
Italian. On either supposition, they would be unique
I among Spanish and Italian cards in having a Banner
3
10, whereas We know from the pack discussed in
E Appendix 2 that German cardmakers included Banner
8
1 10s in Latin-suited packs intended for export, though
I am hardly qualified to judge, the style looks German
I to me. But, even if this is right, it does not settle the
question whether they were meant for Italy or for
Spain. It is possible that Hoffmann and Koreny opted
for Spain because of the large central Coin on the 5,
which is indeed a feature of Spanish more than of
Italian cards, though it is found in the Bolognese
Primiera pack. A better guide may be the language of
the inscriptions. Oro is both Spanish and Italian; it is
true that Denary is the more regular Italian name for
the suit, but Oro is also in common use, especially in
southern Italy and Sicily' moreover, the Italian Word
does not admit a plural, while the Spanish one is
usually used in its plural form Ores when it refers to
the playing-card suit. Again, while Italian normally
contracts to d'0r0, the ordinary Spanish form is de 070.
As far as this goes, therefore, the word doro tells in
favour of Italy. So does the word re, which is the
ordinary Italian word for 'king', the Castilian and
Catalan forms being rey and re respectively. Dece is,
however, unusual: the ordinary words for 'ten' are
died (Italian), die; (Castilian) and du (Catalan). The
question is in what area we might find the
undiphthongised form dele. Professor Douglas Gifford,
of the University of St Andrews, has suggested two
Spanish possibilities. One is a lingua franca used in the
Levant by Jewish and Greek Christian traders; for
this he refers to an article by L.P. Harvey, R.O..]ones,
and Keith Whinnom, 'Lingua Franca in a Villancico
31
by Encina', Revue de Literature Cofnparée, vol. 41, 1967,
pp. 572-9. This prints a short poem by .Iran del
Encina, written, for comic effect, in this lingua franca,
in 1520. The form of the word for 'ten' in this poem
is deg. However, the authors of the article remark (p.
573) that 'before the late nineteenth century writers
recorded samples of pidgin', which is how they classify
this lingua fmnea, 'almost invariably with comic
intent'. It seems most unlikely that the maker of a
rather Fine and elaborate pack of playing cards would
deliberately use a form of pidgin Spanish for their
inscriptions; it can hardly have been made either with
comic intent or for Levantine traders. Professor .
Gifford's other suggestion is Galician, for which, he
says, di e and the form lo of the definite article would
be very much in order, but he adds that one would not
expect the form or 'because of the inflected tonic
vowel in the West' (which I understand as meaning
that one would expect our as in Portuguese). The
upshot seems to be that the language is probably not
one used in Spain.
With this conclusion, Professor Gianfranco Folena,
head of the Institute of Romance Philology at the
University of Padua, fully concurs; it is, in his view,
'beyond doubt' that the language is Italian rather
than Spanish. The forms lo and deco point, he says, to
southern fifteenth-century koiné, as spoken, for
instance, at Rome or Naples. No early playing cards
known to have come from Naples, or from anywhere
in southern Italy, have survived. However, we noted
that playing cards were known in Sicily in the late
fourteenth century, by at least 1422, they were not
only being used, but made, there. Professor Antonino
Giuffrida, of the Archivio di Stato in Palermo, has
informed me that the Archivio possesses three
fifteenth-century notarised documents, discovered by
Professor Bresc, referring to playing cards. The
earliest is a contract, dated 31 August 1422, whereby
one Petrus de Matron, aged 16, engages with Petrus
de Florito of Palermo to print, collate, color and sell
playing cards (ad stamparzdurn rzayppis, incollandum,
colorandum et vendendum) in return for his board and
lodging and a third of the profits. Next is a statement of
debt, dated 7 February 1455, for the price of two
(wood) blocks for (printing) playing cards (due forrne do
nayibis). Finally, there is an inventory of 1484, listing
playing cards (cars di iocu) and various items of
equipment for printing them; it may be noted that the
word for 'ten' in this document is desi. Not only were
cards made in Sicily, they were also exported there.
The Tractatus de Civitate Ulmensi, written in 1484 by the
Dominican Bro. Felix Faber, states that there were so
many cardmakers in Ulm that they sent cards to Italy,.
Sicily and 'the remotest islands' (see Fratris Felicia
Fabri Tractatus de Civitate Ulmensi, de eius Origine, Ordine,
Regimine, de Civibus emus et Statu, ed. by Gustav
Veesenmeyer, no. 186 in the Bib liothek des litterarisclzen
Vereins in Stuttgart, Tiibingen, 1889, p. 146). Now it is
32 Part I: History and Mystery
unthinkable that playing cards should have been
`known in Sicily and in northern Italy, but not in
Naples, although I know of no direct evidence to this
effect. W.L. Schreiber, op. cit., p. 75, indeed quotes
from G.A. Summonte, Scoria della ritld e regna do Napoli,
part 11, Naples, 1601, book 111, pp. 267-8 (p. 267 is
headed 'Libro Secondo' by a printer's error), a story
concerning a statue of Our Lady of Mercy in the
church of S. Eligio in Naples: a man who had lost a
large amount of money playing cards struck the statue
on the face, whereupon it miraculously shed blood,
the culprit tied to his native Florence, where he was
arrested for a murder he had not committed, and then
confessed his act of sacrilege. It is, however, obscure
to me why Schreiber 'gives 1414 as the date of this
episode; no date is given by Summonte (the text is
exactly the same in the third edition, Naples, 1748, vol.
3, book iv, p. 80). Summonte says that the story may
be read on an old tablet to be found in the church, and
it is possible that this gives the date, although
Schreiber does not mention it; without further
enquiry, we thus have no definite evidence that 8
playing cards were known in Naples in the Fifteenth I
century. Nevertheless, we may assume that they were; 1
moreover, if cards were exported from Germany to 1
Sicily, they were probably also exported from there to
Naples. I am therefore inclined to believe that the I
Rothschild Collection cards were made in Germany *
for southern Italy, and perhaps, in view of their fine
quality, for someone at the Neapolitan court. The
large central Coin on the 5 is no objection, Naples was
much subject to Spanish influence, having been
conquered by Aragon in 1442 and ruled, as an
independent Kingdom, by a branch of the Aragonese
dynasty from 1458 until its conquest by Ferdinand II,
so that a Spanish feature in a pack made for Naples
would be unremarkable. In any case, the feature is not
decisively Spanish, for instance, on the sheet 1-1010 in
the Cary Collection at Yale, the central Coin on the 5
is larger than the others, though nothing like as large
as that on the Rothschild Collection card.
iI
N
 CHAPTER 3
Europe and Asia
The sudden widespread appearance of playing
cards in Europe in the last quarter, or at most
third, of the fourteenth century is explained by
some as the result of an independent invention of
them, somewhere in Europe, at that time. Even
without considering any positive contrary
evidence, we can recognise this hypothesis to be
intrinsically unlikely. On the face of it, the
structure of the regular European playing-card
pack cries out for explanation: it is not the sort of
thing that would occur to anyone out of the blue.
There is a story of an Eton College Training
Corps platoon, when ordered to number off,
shouting out, 'One, two, three, four, five, six,
seven, eight, nine, ten, Knave, Queen, King':
familiarity makes us apt to overlook the oddity of
continuing a numerical sequence with three
human Figures. As H.].R. Murray remarked,
people do not invent games out of wholly
unfamiliar materials: either they adapt the
equipment of one game for use in a new one, or
they use, or represent, some already existing set
of objects not previously part of any game.* The
structure of the regular European pack is too
complex, and too unnatural, for it to have been
invented outright in its developed form: no one
can have sat down and thought, 'If we had fifty-
two equal-sized pieces of paper, marked on one
side with the following designs, then we could
play all sorts of games with them.' One might hit
on the generic idea of playing cards - playing
cards in the sense in which Lexicon cards or
¥ Happy Families cards are playing cards - and
1 H._].R. Murray, The History of Board Games Other than Chem,
Oxford, 1952, pp. 7, 237.
use for them symbols of some familiar kind or
representations of some familiar objects, or,
having the generic idea, one might think of a new
structure for the pack. But, as we have seen, the
evidence suggests that the regular four-suited
pack appeared quite suddenly in Europe in a
fully developed form: the earliest European
playing cards formed a pack essentially the same
in composition as the four-suited 52-card pack
that we know today. Later - as early as the
fifteenth century -. packs of playing cards, in the
generic sense, were devised with a totally
different structure, but it seems certain that the
2 In 1449 a wealthy Venetian, jacopo Antonio Marcello,
sent as a present to Queen Isabelle, the first wife of King
René I, Duke of Lorraine, a set of sixteen picture cards that
had originally been painted by Michelino da Besozzo at the
order of Filippo Maria Visconti, Duke of Milan, who died in
1447. The set was divided into four groups of four cards
each, representing Virtue, Virginity, Riches and Pleasure:
each card depicted a suitable classical divinity. The pack
has disappeared, but Marcello's covering letter has
survived, giving a description of the pack and saying that it
had been painted by Michelino (Michelinum Pidorem
eleganlisrimum adhibuil, alterum n`ac rostra tempestate Polycletum,
qui Colum ludo artyiciosixsime ornatissirneque depingeret: 'he
commissioned the very fine painter Michelino, a second
Polycletus of our time, to paint the whole pack most skilfully
and beautifully'). The use of the word ludur shows,
presumably, that this set was really intended to be used to
play some kind of game. See P. Durrieu, 'Michelino da
Besozzo', Mémoirex de l'Inxtitul national de France, Académie des
Inscriptions, vol. 38, part 2, 1911, pp. 365-93, especially pp.
373 and 376; also the reports in the Bulletin de la Société
rationale des Antiquaires de France Pour 1895, p. 117, and in La
Clzronique de Arts, 1895, p. 110; Le Manuscript, vol. II, 1895, p.
18, has also a passing remark on the subjective the same
author's 'Le Strabon du Roi René', pp. 2-5, 17-21,lwhich
concerns another present by Marcello to King René himself.
34 Part I: History and Mystery ,
first appearance in Europe of playing cards in the
generic sense was in the form of the regular four-
suited pack. There is not the slightest trace of any
gradual development leading up to the invention
of a pack with so complex and surprising a
structure; and this fact, of itself, prompts the
supposition that the pack was not invented in
Europe, but introduced from elsewhere in an
already developed form.
If, like the game of chess, the playing-card
pack was an importation into Europe from
outside, it is natural to ask from where it came.
The question from which area European playing
cards immediately derived inevitably leads on to
the further question, which many writers have
striven to answer, where playing cards
originated in the first place, just as chess came
into Europe from the Islamic world, but was
originally an Indian invention, so it is quite
possible that the region from which playing cards
entered Europe was not that which gave them
birth. But, in asking this further question, we
must make just that distinction which does not
arise for the introduction of playing cards into
Europe. The generic idea of playing cards may
well have antedated the invention of the regular
form of pack, or of whatever approximation to it
was the ancestor of the European playing-card
pack: the question as to 'the origin of playing
cards' may well have different answers according
as we understand the term 'playing cards' in its
broadest sense or only in that narrower sense in
which it applies exclusively to cards of the
regular pack. . term yeh be hi in his glossary.
Playing cards can be made of other materials
than paper; but it is of paper that they are most
conveniently and typically made, and, indeed,
the very word 'card' (Charta, etc.) means
originally simply 'paper'. Likewise, playing cards
do not have to be printed, but can be drawn or
painted by hand; but printing is obviously the
most efficient means for producing them in any
quantity. It is therefore natural to conjecture that
the land in which both paper and printing were
first invented - China - was also that in which
playing cards, in the generic sense, were First
known. This conjecture is borne out by the
evidence. T.F. Carter gives A.D. 969 as the earliest
certain date for Chinese playing cards: this is on
the basis of an entry for that year in the Liao shi/z of
T'o-t'o, a history of the Liao dynasty (907-1125)
written in the fourteenth century, stating that the
Emperor Mu-tsung played cards (yeh be hi) on
the night of New Year's Eve Dr Gernot Prunner
has cited the Kuei t'ien lu, a book of anecdotes
written in the eleventh century by the historian
Ou-yang Hsiu, as placing the invention of
playing cards (yeh Lzii ko) in the middle of the
T'ang dynasty (618-906), that is to say, about the
time when the earliest books were printed, in the
ninth century.4 Ou-yang Hsiu's opinion seems to
be borne out by the title of a poem, mentioning
playing cards (yet MF), by Li Tung, who lived at a
the very end of the T'ang period, and by an entry
on 'golden yeh t.8;1l1 games', compiled by Lady i
Chou, consort of the last ruler of the Southern
T'ang dynasty (936-978), included in a catalogue
in the Tan eh 'Jen sung lu.5 We can therefore safely
regard playing cards as having originated in
China in the ninth century, a date which long
precedes the earliest possible one at which there
is any ground to think that they were known l
anywhere else in the world.
From a world perspective, the important step
was the invention of playing cards as such, but,
3T.F. Carter, The Invention ofPrinlin.g in China and its Spread
Westwards, New York, 1925, revised edition 1931,'pp. 140-1 ,
second edition, revised by Goodrich, New York, 1955, pp.
184-5; see also the 1925 and 1931 editions, p. 243, footnote
5, and the 1955 edition, p. 189, footnote 7. 'Liao' was the
name of the Kitan dynasty whose empire lay to the north of
the Sung, with its capital at Peking. For the passage from
the Liao shi/1, see Karl A. Wittfogel and Feng Chia-Shéng,
'History of Chinese Society: Liao (907-1125)', Transactions of
the American P/zilorophical Society, n.s., vol. 36, Philadelphia,
1949, p. 257. The reference to the Liao shih is given as
chapter 7, p. 5a of the Po-na edition. T'o-t'o includes the
4 Gernot Prunner, Ostasiatische Spielkarten, Bielefeld, 1969,
p. 4, a catalogue for an exhibition which contains many
illustrations and much useful information.
5 Both these are cited by Chin Hsiieh-shih in his Mu Chu
hrien ha (Swineherd Games) in the section on playing cards
(chzh .{1'ai); the book is included in the Chao-tai ts'ung-shu
collection, Pieh-chi, chiian 43.Chin Hsnlieh-shih flourished
in the second half of the eighteenth century, and his book
contains much valuable information. (The explanation of
the title of the book is that T'ao K'an (257-332) had s
s
gamblers flogged and their gaming instruments thrown into
the river, saying,' 'Such diversions are fit only for I
swineherds.' Among the extremely learned, 'swineherd 3
!.
S
games' was therefore a general term for games of chance.) 8
u
'e
The full title of Li TL1ng's poem is 'Secretary Wei of Lung-
chou played yeh tz12 after dreaming of double sixes. I offer
him this poem." It is in vol. 723 of the Complete Poems of the a
1
1
T'ang Dynasty. Chin Hsiieh-shih cites Lady Chou's entry as
included in 'Mr Cheng's catalogue' in the Tan ch'ien tung lu,
a work compiled in the early sixteenth century. I owe much
of this information to Dr David Hawkes, of All Souls
College, Oxford, and am much indebted to him for the great
trouble he tooklo help me with Chinese sources .
1 Q
 Europe and Asia
from a Chinese viewpoint, this is a superficial
view. As is apparent from the preceding
paragraph, the term used for playing cards in the
older Chinese works is yeh Lzii, as appears in the
title of the mid-sixteenth-century treatise Teh tail
P'u by P'an Chief-heng included in the Shun few
compiled by the Ming writer T'ao Tsung-i. In
modern Chinese, however, the word used is P'ai.
This term is applied both to playing cards and to
tiles, such as Ma .long tiles and dominoes, when
it is necessary to distinguish, the word P'ai is
qualified by a word for the material (paper,
ivory, etc.) of which the card or tile is made, thus
chill [1'ai (paper p'ai) means "playing cards' in our
restricted sense. This terminology reflects the
fact that no distinction of principle is made
between playing cards and tiles. As instruments
of a game, both are alike in looking the same on
one side and different on the other, so as to allow
each player to hold pieces whose value is
unknown to the other players; the game itself is
unaffected by whether these pieces are thin and
flexible or thick and rigid. It is apparent to
anyone who has played Ma Jung that it is
essentially a card game, bearing a general
resemblance to Rummy, but it will reasonably be
felt that there is a deeper difference between card
games and the games usually played in the West
with dominoes. In card games, it has no bearing
on the play which way up a card is laid on the
table; all that matters is which card is played by a
given player at a given time. Thus, although it
was a long time before double-headed cards were
introduced in the West, it was precisely because
the distinction between the top and the bottom of
the card had no significance for the play that
their introduction was a great advantage to
players. Double-ended dominoes, on the other
hand, would, for European players, be an
impossibility, in the usual type of domino game
played in the West, based on the principle of
matching ends, it matters to the game not only
where the domino is placed, but also which way
round it is placed. judged by -this criterion,
however, most Chinese domino games are to be
classed as card games: although the principle of
matching ends is not absolutely unknown in
China," in almost all Chinese domino games all
that matters is the identity of the domino played
at a given time, not where or which way round it
6 See Stewart Colin, Cames of the Orient, Rutland,
Vermont, and Tokyo, 1958 (originally published as Korean
Games,Philadelphia, 1895), p. 141.
35
is placed. The idea of double-ended dominoes,
such that one can identify a particular domino as
(say) the 4-3 without being able to associate the 4
with one end and the 3 with the other, is
therefore not at all an absurdity in China. From
the point of view of the games played with them,
Chinese dominoes, like Ma _long tiles, are to be
classified as playing cards in the generic sense.
Ma Jong itself is frequently played in China,
not with tiles, but with (paper) cards. Even more
common are domino cards, which are now in fact
always double-ended, bearing at each end the
two spot-markings (kg. 4-3) which together
identify the domino, and sometimes also an
additional design, irrelevant to play, for
decorative purposes. Dominoes are a Chinese
invention, which arrived in the West only very
late, in the eighteenth century.7 Each domino
represents a possible fall of two dice, there is no
blank in Chinese dominoes, the blank being a
European addition. It is indeed certain that the
early yeh 2317 were either dominoes or domino
cards, as is apparent from the title of Li Tung's
poem, which mentions the double six, while
Prunner cites the Kuei Vien lu to the same effect.
The question whether the earliest ones were
domino tiles or domino cards is as unimportant
from a Chinese viewpoint as the question from
what material the earliest chessmen or
chessboards were made, and without doubt the
term yeh Lash' was applied to both. But the question
becomes important when we enquire into the
possibility that the playing cards of other lands
are ultimately derived from those of China. Since
in his poem Li Tung speaks of 'square ivories
engraved with colours', he appears to have tiles
in mind, and Prunner believes.that it was with
tiles that Mu Tsung played. However, the
erudite writer Yang Shen (1488-1559) said that
the early yeh Tzu' were probably like the paper
cards of his day,8 and in this he is followed by
later writers, and since yeh means a leaf or page of
7 See p. 530 of S. Cumin, 'Chinese games with dice and
dominoes', Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the
Smithsonian Institution for theyear ending .tune 30, 1893: Report
of the U.S. National Museum, Washington, 1895, pp. 489-537,
and R.C. Bell, Board and Table Games from Many Cioilisations,
vol. I, Oxford, 1969, p. 162.
8.
Quoted by Chin Hsiieh-shih, op. cit. He actually says
that they were .probably like the ehih-p'ai Chiu-ling, i.e.
'drinking cards', that is, ones not designed for playing an
actual game, but as an aid in a drinking party, but the
important point is that he considered them to have been
paper cards .
 36 Part I: History and Mystery
a book (t.zu', 'literally 'son', being used vaguely for
'piece'), Carter's opinion that domino cards
preceded domino tiles, the earliest 'dominoes'
being made of stiff paper, and the more costly tile
form coming into use only later, is highly
plausible."
Whichever came First, it seems certain that,
even if we insist on counting only paper cards, it
was in China that playing cards, in the generic
sense, were first invented. It does not follow that
the idea was not hit on independently elsewhere at
a later date; nor does this determine the origin of
the regular pack divided into suits. There are
three principal types of Chinese playing cards
and tiles, of which domino cards and tiles are the
earliest. The latest are the chess cards. These are
packs in which each card bears a character
denoting one of the Chinese chess pieces,'° divided
into either two or four equal sets - suits, in a loose
sense - distinguished by colour. I know no definite
evidence when packs of this kind were invented,
but have no reason for supposing them to be
earlier than the nineteenth century.' 1
The category of Chinese playing cards most
closely resembling European ones is that
consisting of the 'money' cards, this category also
comprises Ma Jong cards and tiles. 'Money'
packs have genuine suits, composed of numeral
cards running from 1 to 9, each suit representing
monetary values. There are two sub-categories,
each comprising several forms: those with four
suits, and those with three. In the Mu Chu /zsien
/zua, a book on games by the eighteenth-century
writer Chin HsUeh-shih, the term shih P'ai is
reserved for the three-suited packs, while the
four-.suited ones are called ma Liao p'ai; this
terminology is no longer current. Chin cites
various earlier works, including the sixteenth-
9 T.F. Carter, op. cit. 1925 and 1931 editions, p. 140, 1955
edition, p. 184.
10 Chinese chess differs considerably from European chess,
both being descended, by a different line, from the ancestral
Indian game. Each player has a General (corresponding to
our King), two Captains (historically equivalent to the '
Queen), two Elephants or Ministers (equivalent to the
Bishops), two Horses (corresponding to our Knights), two
Chariots (corresponding to our Rooks), five Soldiers
(corresponding to our Pawns) and two Cannons, to which
nothing on the European board corresponds. Chinese chess
pieces are white discs, similar in shape to draughtsmen, on
each of which is inscribed the character denoting its rank, in
black or green for one player and red for the other.
11 Chess packs are almost always in the form of paper
cards, but there is a set of rectangular tiles at the Brooklyn
Museum of Art, New York.
century Teh L35 P'u, as referring to ma Liao P'ai,
while Prunner, who illustrates two seventeenth-
century four-suited packs in his catalogue,
mentions other such sources." A game played
with the three-suited pack is said by Chin to have
been very popular among gentlemen of the
scholar class at the end of the Ming dynasty
(1368-1644); and he himself expresses the view
that the pack must have been formed from the
four-suited one by omitting one of the suits at that
period, that is to say, at the beginning of the
seventeenth century. This appears a very
probable opinion. Chin remarks that, in his day,
the chi/1 p'ai (three-suited packs) are found
everywhere, and are about ten times as popular
as the ma Liao [1'ai. The disparity is even greater
to-day; but the four-suited pack still survives in a
version known as [in hu P'ai (look too Pai, six tigers
cards) popular among Hakka-speaking people,
and in a quite different Vietnamese version, the
former is easily obtainable in London.
The four suits vary somewhat in name, but
typically consist of Cash, Strings (of cash),
Myriads (of strings) and Tens °(of myriads). In
three-suited packs, only the first three of these
are present. The four-suited packs always
contain just one card of each kind, whereas the
three-suited ones almost always have either two
or four cards of each denomination; this was
already so when Chin was writing. Chin
describes a ma tiao pack as consisting of 40 cards.
Each suit contains cards from 1 to 9, save that 1
is missing from the Tens suit; in addition, the
Tens suit has three cards higher than the 9,
namely, in ascending order, the H u n d r e d
Myriads, the Thousand Myriads and the Myriad
Myriads, while the Cash suit has two extra ones,
the Clzih-hua (Flower) and the K'ung Hang. In the
Teh Leia' [1 'u of P'an Chief-heng, these last two cards
are given as Pan wen ch'ierz ('Half a Cash') and
12 Chin says that the Shu ch'ien yeh P'u of the sixteenth-
century writer Wang Tao-k'un is still in circulation, and
deals with drinking cards (chih-p'ai Chiu-ling), but that the
chih-p'ai of this work are in fact ma tlaop'ai. He also mentions
the Tin hang Ching of Li Sui-ch'iu and the Ma tiao rhiao Ii of
Lung Tzi'1-yu, both in the Shoo few collection. He mentions
two lost works, Ta ma be Chi and Ta ma be shih, but says that
on the evidence of the Ch'ao Ching to ma ke of the late
sixteenth- or early seventeenth-century writer Wen Hsiang-
feng, also in the Shoo few, the game of to ma was not played
with ma Liao p'az. Prunner, op. cit., p. 8, mentions the
fifteenth-century work Shu yziian Isa Chi by Li Jung and the
Chhyz lu of Wang Shih-chen (1634-1711) as both describing
the four-suited pack in detail. The seventeenth-century
packs are nos. I and II of the catalogue.
 Europe and Asia
I{'urzg me wen respectively. These descriptions and
names tally closely with the seventeenth-century
cards illustrated by Prunner. P'an also observes
that in the Cash suit the ordinary numeral cards
run from 1 as highest down to 9 as lowest, W.H.
Wilkinson, writing in 1895, confirms this for the
case when the game is played by four people." In
more recent packs, the extra cards, variously
named, have been reduced to three, making a
pack of 38 cards altogether. The three-suited
packs appear from the start to have had just three
denominations of card, again variously named, in
addition to the nine numeral cards of each of the
three suits, so that there are 60 cards in a double
pack and 120 in a quadruple one. In most games
I
played with these cards, the three extra cards are
not associated with particular suits. The Ma
Jong set itself is simply a variant of the quadruple
three-suited money pack in tile form. The suit
known in English as 'Circles' represents the Cash
suit (and is called in Chinese by a name
meaning, in effect, 'coppers', as this used to be
used in English for 'pennies'), the suit known,
quite reasonably from the appearance of its suit-
sign, as 'Bamboos' represents the Strings suit,
and is so called in Chinese; and the suit vaguely
called 'Characters' is the Myriads suit, each tile
bearing a numeral from 1 to 9 and the character
for 'myriad'. The four Winds, or simply
directions, in the Ma Jong set are, like the
Flowers and Seasons, an addition, peculiar to
Ma Jong; the three Hof our tiles, usually known
in English, but not in Chinese, as 'Dragons',
correspond to, though they do not precisely
reproduce, the three extra cards which in the
three-suited money pack do not belong to any of
the suits. An immense antiquity is sometimes
claimed for Ma Jong. In fact, it goes back only to
about 1870, although the general type of game
which it represents, and the money packs of
which the Ma .Ions set is a variant, are far older.
The Chinese money packs come close to falling
under our definition of a 'regular' pack, but fail
to Ht it exactly for two reasons. First, there is no
division into numeral cards and court cards, in
the proper sense. In the four-suited pack, the
extra cards do belong to particular suits, but they
are not shared equally between all the suits and
do not share ranks common to the suits to which
they do belong; rather, they appear to have
13 W.H. Wilkinson, 'The Chinese origin of playing cards 1
9
The American Anthropologist, vol. VIII, pp. 61 -78.
37
originated as continuations of the numeral series
in those two suits. In the three-suited packs, the
extra cards do not belong to the suits, but yet are
not interchangeable with one another; like the
jokers of a modern European pack. Secondly, not
all the suits have suit-signs. In the three-suited
packs, except the Vietnamese version, the two
lower suits, Cash and Strings, do have suit-signs :
the identity of each numeral card is determined,
in the way familiar to us, by the number of
repetitions of a representation, usually highly
conventionalised, either of a coin (the copper
'cash' with a hole in it) or of a string of cash. But,
in the suit of Myriads, there is no suit-sign in the
proper sense: rather, each card has written on it
its number and the name of the suit, e.g. '4
Myriads'. Exactly this happens on the Ma Jung
tiles. The same is true of most older surviving
examples of the four-suited pack: the numeral
cards of Cash and Strings are pip cards, with
genuine suit-signs, but those of Myriads and
Tens merely have their denominations inscribed
on them. The two modern versions, Hakka and
Vietnamese, of the four-suited pack have no suit-
signs at all: every card has its denomination
printed on it, in highly distorted Characters. Save
for the distortion of the characters, the same
holds good of the seventeenth-century cards
illustrated by Prunner.
Despite this difference, it is tempting to
conjecture that the four-suited Chinese money
pack is the ancestor of the four-suited regular
pack that appeared in Europe in the later
fourteenth century; both Wilkinson and Carter
have contended for precisely this theory." It is,
however, quite evident that it could not have
been the immediate forerunner of the European
pack, as Wilkinson supposed. It is no great
problem that the Chinese suits contain nine
numeral cards, whereas the original number in
the European pack was ten: but the absence of
court cards from the Chinese suits forces us, on
this hypothesis, to assume some considerable
development between the Chinese prototype and
the playing-card pack as first introduced into
Europe. A further difficulty concerns the suit-
signs. It is easy to imagine the Cash suit as the
original of the Latin Coins suit, and the Strings
suit could, by a misunderstanding, very well have
14 W.H. Wilkinson, op. cit., and T.F. Carter, op. cit.,
1925 and 1931 editions, pp. 139-44, with notes on pp. 241-6,
and 1955 edition, pp. 183-8, with notes on pp. 188-92.
38 Part I: History and Mystery
been the original of the Batons suit. But the
Myriads and Tens suits would not be intelligible
to Europeans of the late Middle Ages: they
would not even be recognisable as suits to people
who could read neither the suit-names nor the
numerals. Particularly is this so because, in
almost all money packs, whether three or four-
suited, the greater part of each numeral card in
the Myriads suit and (when present) in the Tens
suit is occupied by a human face or figure,
representing one of the characters in the famous
romance Shut hu chuarz ('The Story of the Water
Margin'). These figures are no longer to be found
in the Hakka and Vietnamese four-suited packs,
and they have been dropped from Ma Jong tiles
and cards; but they are always present in the
Myriads suit of three-suited packs, save for the
Vietnamese one and, of course, Ma Jong packs,
and they were formerly present in four-suited
packs as well. In one of Prunner's seventeenth-
century packs, figures from the Shut hu Chuan
appear on all the cards; in the other, which is
unusual in its composition also (each suit has a
10 and the Tens suit has a 1), there is a figure on
each card, representing, exceptionally, not a
character from the Shut hu Chuan, but some
historical character from ancient times. The
literary sources, however, consistently state that
the cards of Myriads and Tens are illustrated
with depictions of Sung Chiang and the other
characters of the Shut hu Chuan, and this
association seems so firm that it is likely to have
been a feature of the money packs from their first
invention. Now, although these figures are purely
decorative, and have no relation to the use of the
cards, it would be natural for a foreigner, seeing
the cards for the First time, to take them to be
their principal feature. This would, of course,
lead to a complete misinterpretation of the
Myriads and Tens suits, and this fact constitutes
an insuperable obstacle to the theory that
European playing cards were developed directly
out of Chinese ones.
\fVe must therefore dismiss the speculation that
Marco Polo or some other of the Europeans who
visited China returned with some examples of
Chinese money cards, which later gave rise to
European playing cards. Had this been so, there
would have been a transitional period during
which the Chinese prototype evolved into the 52-
card pack as described by john of Rheinfelden.
Of any such transitional period, not the slightest
trace remains: the theory is to be rejected on
essentially the same ground as that on which we
have set aside the hypothesis that playing cards
were independently invented in Europe.
The Chinese money pack cannot have been the
immediate progenitor of the European pack, but
that does not rule out its having been its remote
ancestor, through various intervening
intermediate forms. Whether this is a real
possibility depends upon the antiquity of the
money cards. A single Chinese playing card was
found in 1905 by von Le Coq at Turfan. He
tentatively dated it to the eleventh century. It
shows a human figure, which strongly resembles
that which depicts Wang Ying, one of the Shut hu
Chuan characters, and appears, in a number of
money packs, on one of the three extra cards,
inscribed simply 'Wang Ying'. The Turfan card
has an inscription at the top, in a tilted rectangle,
which, unfortunately, is hard to read, at least in
the illustrations, because it is overprinted by a
seal. If it does represent Wang Ying, the card
cannot possibly be as early as the eleventh
century; Carter assigned it to the t`ourteenth.15'
Both the sixteenth-century Teh £817 P'u and,
according to Prunner, the fifteenth-century Shu
yzian Ava Chi of Li'.Jung describe the lower two suits
as having suit-signs and the upper two as
showing Shut hu Chuan Figures; if we assume that
the association with these figures was a feature of
the pack from its first invention, then this
association sets a bound on its antiquity. The
Shut hu Chuan is the outcome of numerous
legendary accretions that have attached to a
historical nucleus, the exploits of a Robin Hood-
like band of robbers in the early years of the
twelfth century. The version that is now read
dates from the seventeenth century, but has been N
expanded from earlier versions, the first of which,
the HIiian-ho i-shih, dates from the early Yiian
(Mongol) dynasty; plays based on the story were
performed at the same period, and portraits of
and poems about 'Sung Chiang and his Thirty-
six' dating from the later Southern Sung period
15 T.F. Carter, op. cit., 1925 and 1931 editions, plate
opposite p. 142, and 1955 edition, plate opposite p. 184.
Carter states that there were two Chinese playing cards
found at Turfan, but I do not know any confirmation of this ,
I have also been told that there is an early Chinese playing
card in a museum in Bombay, but do not know if this is
true. The Turfan card is also illustrated in C.P. Hargrave, A
History of Playing Cards, New York, 1930, 1966, p. 7, and in
A. Bernhardi, 'Vier K6nige', Baesxler-Archiv, vol. XXIX,
1936, pp, 148-80, plate 9a. Bernhardi gives it as his opinion
(p. 164) that the card is to be dated to about 1400.
 Europe and Asia
(1127-1279) are well attested.1° Given our
hypothesis that the association with the Shut hu
clwan characters is an original feature of the
money pack, that pack can in no case be earlier
than the twelfth century, and can hardly be later
than the fourteenth: its most probable date of
origin lies in the late Southern Sung, that is, in
the thirteenth century.
That would leave just enough time for the
money cards to have spread westwards from
China, undergoing very considerable
transformation in the process, and to have
arrived in Europe about a century after their
invention. But the schedule is extremely tight,
and the thesis is therefore somewhat strained.
We shall do better, at this stage, to try to trace
the connection, if any, in the other direction, by
reverting to our original question, from which
area t he European playing-card pack was
immediately derived.
If playing cards arrived in Europe from some
external source in about 1370, they can only have
come from somewhere in the Islamic world,
Europe, at that date, had no contact with any
other part of the world save for those mediated by
Islam. For a long time, many scholars dismissed
this hypothesis on the ground that there was no
evidence that playing cards were known in
mediaeval Islam, hence the attraction of theories
such as that of the direct transmission of playing
cards from China to Europe by the agency of
Marco Polo. In 1939, however, L.A. Mayer
reported the existence in the Topkapi Sarayi
Museum at Istanbul of a Fifteenth-century hand-
painted pack of cards from MamlUk Egypt."
Mayer's own analysis of the pack was faulty, but,
when this is corrected, it proves to be an almost
complete pack originally containing 52 cards (of
which 48 survive), consisting of four suits,
Swords, Polo-Sticks, Cups and Coins, each
composed of ten numeral cards and three court
cards headed by the King.1** Five of the surviving
!*"See Richard Gregg Irwin, The Evolution of a Chinese
Novel, Cambridge, Mass., 1953, p. 14 and p. 20, fn. 40, and
P. Eugen Feifel, Ceschin/ite der chinesixchen Literatur,
Darmstadt, 1959, pp. 291 of.
17 L,A. Mayer, 'Mamluk playing cards', Bulletin de
Vlnstitutfrangais d'arclréologie orientals, vol. XXXVIII, 1939, pp.
113-18, posthumously reprinted in L.A. Mayer, Mamluk
Playing Cards, ed. R. Ettinghausen and O. Kurz, Leiden,
1971.
18 For a detailed discussion, see M. Dummett and K.
Abu-Deeb,. 'Some remarks on Mamluk playing cards',
39
cards have been borrowed from another pack (or
perhaps from two others), to replace lost cards,
Mayer thought that these five secondary cards
had been specially painted for that purpose, but,
if that were so, the artist would surely have tried,
if not to imitate the general style, at least to make
the shapes of the suit-signs conform to those of
the original pack, which, particularly' in the
Swords suit, they do not. The numeral cards are
pip cards in the sense of showing the number of
suit-signs corresponding to their values. The
Swords and Polo-Sticks are very highly stylised,
and their arrangement is similar to that of the
Italian Swords and Batons. In detail, the Polo-
Sticks intersect, forming, on the cards from 4 to
10, a kind of trellis pattern. On the 4 to 10 of this
suit, most of the shafts of the Polo-Sticks form an
obtuse angle with the heads, but the sides are
otherwise straight; but on all the odd-numbered
cards of the suit the odd Polo-Stick is S-shaped,
as are two of them on the 10, and on all cards of
the suit besides the 4 to 10 every Polo-Stick has a
curved head, except on the two cards of the suit
which come from the secondary pack, all curved
heads end in a dragon's head shape. The two
cards of the Swords suit (the 9 and 10) from the
secondary pack show crescent-shaped swords,
intersecting only once on the 9 but twice, in the
Italian fashion, on the 10 (on the 9 one sword is
straight). In the main pack, however, the Swords
are S-shaped, and are arranged side by side,
extending for most of the length of the card, but
without intersecting; in,this they resemble the
exceptional version of the Swords suit mentioned
in the last chapter as found in a few fifteenth-
century Italian packs. On some of the odd-
numbered cards of the Swords suit in the
Istanbul pack, the odd sword is S-shaped, and
on others it is straight.
What most strikingly differentiates this
Mamllik pack from European ones is that the
court cards show no human Figures. Instead, they
bear the appropriate suit-sign and, at the
bottom, an inscription giving the rank and suit.
The three ranks are: King (malik)3. Viceroy (mi 'ib
malik) ; and Second Viceroy (t/z5n? n21"ib). There
are also inscriptions in verse at the tops of all the
court cards and of the 8, 9 and 10 of Swords, the
Ace, 2 and 3 of Polo-Sticks and the 2 and 3 of
Coins (the Ace of Coins is missing); the verses on
journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, vol. XXXVI,
1973, PP~ 106-28.
40 Part I: History and Mystery
the secondary cards are in a different metro -
another indication that these cards were taken
from one or more distinct packs, rather than
being especially made as replacements. Closer
examination reveals, however, that, while the
lower inscriptions on the secondary cards were
there from the start, and while all those cards
with upper inscriptions always had such
inscriptions (though not originally those that
they have now), the lower inscriptions were not
part of any of the court cards of the primary pack
when they were first painted. This means that,
when the primary pack was originally produced,
the court cards must have been distinguished
solely by their designs. This is plain in the case of
the Kings, which all bear a prominent square
pattern below the suit-sign. It is only in the Cups
suit that the Viceroy and Second Viceroy bear
anything that could have served as such an
identifying emblem; but it is probably only in
this suit that the original two lower court cards
remain. In Coins and Polo-Sticks what was
originally the Ace, and in Swords what was
originally the 9, have been turned into Viceroys
by the addition of a lower inscription,
presumably when the original Viceroys were
lost, the reason for choosing the 9 of Swords to
make into a Viceroy must have been that it had
an upper inscription, while none of the low-
numbered cards of that suit does. The Second
Viceroy in both Coins and Polo-Sticks is from the
secondary pack, while in Swords it is missing
altogether. The secondary cards were evidently
taken from a pack or packs made at a time when
the practice of identifying the court cards by
means of special emblems had been abandoned
in favour of doing so by means of inscriptions;
when these cards had to be added in order to
reconstitute the primary pack, such inscriptions
were painted on to all the court cards, making it
possible to convert numeral cards lacking the
original emblems into court cards."
A curious and so far unexplained feature is the
name of the Cups suit - gamin, which does not
mean 'cups'. Some have suggested that this be
taken as the Turkish word for 'trousers', since,
oddly, a pair of short trousers was a frequently
used emblem in Marnliik heraldry. A more
attractive possibility is that it is the Persian word,
deriving from Mongol or Turkish, for '10,00()',
applied particularly to a military unit or a group
19 See M. Dummett and K. Abu-Deeb, op. cit.
of villages; if so, there would be a tantalising
coincidence in meaning with the name of the
Chinese Myriads suit. However, neither
explanation accounts for the fact that the suit-
sign is unmistakably a cup, and the second
suggestion conflicts with the fact that the word is
normally written tHm¢8n in Arabic (the Arabic
letters transliterated respectively t and t being
completely distinct), although there is a passage
in ibn BattUta where it appears as tf2mZzln.20 For
the present, the name of this suit remains a
mystery.
The Istanbul set makes it certain that there
existed in MamlGk Egypt playing cards closely
resembling contemporary Italian ones, and that
different types of design, and different modes of
representation of the court cards, were in use
there. Since the cards date from a period later
than the first introduction of playing cards into
Europe, this does not, of itself, tell us whether the
Mamliik cards were derived from Italian ones or
the Italian cards from the Mamliik ones, and
some scholars, such as Pinder and Hoffmann,
have espoused the former hypothesis." What it
does do is to alter the balance of probabilities by
removing an obstacle to what is intrinsically most
likely. We have seen that, given the abrupt
appearance in Europe of the playing-card pack in
its fully developed form, it is highly unlikely that
it was invented in Europe, and highly probable
that it was introduced from elsewhere, and, ifso, it
is hard to suppose that it came from anywhere
but the Islamic world, since Europe had at that
time no direct contact with either India or China.
Until Mayer's discovery, the apparent non-
existence of any mediaeval Islamic playing cards
seemed to some scholars an insuperable obstacle,
and so they either fell back on the hypothesis of
an independent European invention, or devised
ingenious but unconvincing acccounts of how
they might have reached Europe from India or
from China without passing through the
intervening belt of Muslim states that encircled
Europe. Once we know that playing cards were
known in at least one part of the Islamic world,
the objection is removed, there is no longer any
20 See Gerhard Doerfer, Tiirkische und mongolixe/ze Elements
in Neupersischen, vol. II, 1963, p. 638, where the passage is
cited from H. von Mzik, Die Reine des Amber; In Hagziga durch
Ifzdien und China, Hamburg, 1911, p. 442.
21 Eberhard Pinder, Charta Luxonia, Biberach an der Riss,
1961, p. 14; Detlef Hoffmann, Die Welt der Spielkarte: eine
Kulturgesehichte, Leipzig, 1972, p. 19.
 Europe and Axis
reason to resist the intrinsically most probable
hypothesis, that it was from one or another part
of the Islamic world that playing cards first
arrived in Europe.
The cards in the Topkapi Sarayl are not the
only evidence for Islamic playing cards that we
have. No other pack has been discovered, but
several individual cards, or, rather, fragments of
cards, have been found." If the earliest European
cards were imitations of Islamic ones, it seems
probable that the Islamic packs which first found
22 There are five other fragments of which descriptions
have been published and which have been definitely
identified as parts of Islamic playing cards (or at least of
designs for cards). The first four of these are all in the
private collection of Dr Edmund de Unger, and the fifth is in
the Benaki Museum at Athens (catalogue no. 9b).
(i) One illustrated in L.A. Mayer, op. cit., 1971, figs. 56
and 57, and in B.W. Robinson (ed.), Islamic Painting and the
Arts of the Book, London, 1976, plate 8. Ettinghausen, in L.A.
Mayer, 1971, pp. 9-10, identifies it as the right~hand half of
a 4 of Cups, but, if so, its arrangement of the cups in a single
row would differ from the arrangement in two rows on the
corresponding Istanbul card, and the shape of the card
would also diverge greatly from the Istanbul ones, which
measure approx. 252 x 95 mm., while this fragment is 119 x
40 mm.; it is therefore much more likely to be the top right-
hand quarter of an 8 of Cups. Ettinghausen considers the
card to be late Fatimid in date, i.e. twelfth century, but
allows that it may come from Ayyubid (1174-1258) or even
early MamlUk times, in any case, it is no later than the
thirteenth century. E..J. Grubs, in 'Fostat fragments' in
B.W. Robinson (ed.), op. cit., pp. 57-8, who also believes it
to be part of a 4 of Cups, thinks that it is Ayyubid or early
Mamlfik, probably about mid-thirteenth century and in any
case no earlier than 1200. The catalogue number is 1-27.
(ii) A second is illustrated in B.W. Robinson, op. cit.,
plate 8, and in R. Ettinghausen, 'Further comments on
Mamluk playing cards' in Gatherings in Hof our of Dorothy E.
Miner, ed. U.E. McCracken, L.M.C. Randall and R.H.
Randall, _]r., Baltimore, 1974, pp. 51-78, fig. 22, it measures
120 x 85 mm. It is part of another card of the Cups suit,
probably the Ace. Grube considers it to be of the same date
as (i). Its catalogue no. is 1-28 .
(iii) A fragment, measuring 100 x 91 mm., of a card of the
Swords suit, perhaps the 2, has not been illustrated; see
B.W. Robinson (ed.), op. cit., p. 65 (catalogue no. 1-51 ).
(iv) A fourth fragment, measuring 140 x 95 mm., has also
not been illustrated, and is part of a card of the Coins suit,
perhaps the 4; see B.W. Robinson, op. cit., catalogue no.
1-52.
(v) Yet another fragment of a card of the Cups suit,
probably the 5 or 6, is illustrated in M. Dummett, 'A note
on some fragments in the Benaki Museum', Art and
Archaeology Research Papers, no. 4, December 1973, pp. 93-9,
Hg. l. It measures approx. 87 x 35 mm.
A further fragment in the Benaki Museum is probably not
a playing card: if it is, it must be from a card of the Coins
suit. It measures approx. 75 x 40 mm., and has the
catalogue no..9c. See M. Dummett, op. cit.
41
their way to Europe had actual figures on the
court cards. Even without this hypothesis, it
is a reasonable conjecture that there may have
been Islamic packs of this type: we know from
the Istanbul set that two distinct non-
representational methods of presenting the court
cards were in use, and, in secular Islamic art,
there was far from being a strict adherence to the
injunction not to represent the human form. The
late Dr Ettinghausen indeed identified one
fragmentary drawing as a King of some
undetermined suit, and another as a design for a
mounted Viceroy." These identifications remain,
however, subject to serious doubt, all the
fragments so far identified with any certainty as
mediaeval Islamic playing cards are numeral
cards. One of these has been dated, on stylistic
grounds, to the twelfth century by Ettinghausen
and to the thirteenth by Grube. In respect of the
individual card, both darings may be too early,
despite the unquestioned expertise of these two
authorities. Designs used for playing cards are
notoriously conservative, stylistic features may
be preserved unchanged for centuries. For this
reason, while one may often safely say that a card
could not have been made before a certain date, it
is much more risky to assert, on purely stylistic
grounds, that it could not have been made after a
particular date, all the more so when, as here, one
is dealing with an isolated fragment, constituting
one quarter of a card, of a type of which we have
very few examples. But a doubt, on these grounds,
about the dating of the individual card leaves
unaffected the argument to the early date of the
type which it exemplifies: if Grube and
Ettinghausen are right in thinking the design to
23 See the article by R. Ettinghausen cited under (ii) of
the foregoing footnote, pp. 70-3 and figs. 29, 33. The
drawing of a mounted falconer shown in fig. 33 belongs to
the de Unger collection (catalogue no. 1-31), and is also
illustrated in B.W. Robinson (ed.), op. cit., plate 9.
Especially in view of Grube's remark in that volume that it
is not the work of an artist, its claims to be regarded as a
sketch for a playing card may be rated as negligible. Fig. 29
shows a fragment from the Museum of Islamic Art in Cairo
(catalogue no. 15610/4-1). It indeed depicts a seated King,
and it is not difficult tO see it as a playing card. Both the
King's hands are visible, and one holds what Ettinghausen
interprets as a bird, though to me it more resembles a snake.
Ettinghausen implausibly connects this with the Birds suit
occasionally used in Germany in the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries, until we have definite reason for identifying what
the King is holding as a suit-sign (perhaps some new
deformation of the Polo-Stick), we cannot safely class this
fragment as a playing card.
42 Part I: History and Mystery
have originated no later than the thirteenth
century, then Islamic playing cards already
existed at that time, and we can conclude
without more ado that European cards were
derived from Islamic ones and not conversely.
In addition to the mediaeval Egyptian playing
cards that have been found, one fifteenth-century
Italian card and two sixteenth-century ones have
been discovered amongst mediaeval fragments
from Egypt, indicating that there was a trade in
playing cards with Italy that extended even into
Ottoman times (MamlUk Egypt fell to the
Ottoman Selim the Grim in 1517).24 That this
trade was not in one direction only is attested by
several European references. In the inventory of
the goods of Louis de Valois and his wife
Valentine, née Visconti, Duke and Duchess of
Orleans, begun at the order of their son Charles
on the day of his mother's death in 1408, there
are listed ung jeu de quarles sarrasines and ones
quarter de Lombardie ('one pack of Saracen cards,
one cards of Lombardy').25 F.M. Graves
concluded that the former was a regular Italian
pack and the latter a Tarot pack," but since the
Tarot pack had almost certainly not been
invented by 1408, let alone by 1389, when Louis
and Valentine were married, and when she very
likely brought the cards with her from Milan,
there is no reason not to take this entry as
meaning exactly what it says. A number of
fifteenth-century inventories from Barcelona also
mention Islamic cards. Two distinct ones, both
dated 1414, have entries 'j Koch de nay's moresolis'
and 'j Koch de nahyps rnoresé/Lv' respectively
('one pack of Moorish playing cards'); a third, of
1439, has the entry 'x Joe/is de rzaips morescl15; iii
allies ]0e/15 de nips Plans Petits' ('10 packs of
Moorish playing cards; 3 other packs of ordinary
small playing cards').27 Yet another, of 1460, has
24 The fifteenth-century card is a 3 of Cups in the Benaki
Museum (catalogue no. 9a) from the same pack, probably
Venetian, as sheets 1-1009 and 1-1010 in the Cary
Collection at Yale University; see the article by M.
Dummett cited under (v) of footnote 22. Of the sixteenth-
century ones, one belongs to Dr Ettinghausen, and is
illustrated (figs. 23 and 24) in his article mentioned under
(ii) of footnote 22; it is part of an 8 of Batons. The other is a 6
of Swords in the collection of Mr Sa'd Khadam of Cairo,
and is referred to by Ettinghausen (p. 65).
25 F.M. Graves, Deus invenlaires de la Maison d'Orléans,
Paris, 1926, p. 49.
zo F.M. Graves, op. cit., p. 134.
27 See 'El Joe de nabs a Catalunya', unsigned, Biblizyilia,
ed. R. Miquel y Flanas, vol. II, Barcelona, 1915-20,
the entry 'lochs de naypx Plans, y altresjoc/zs mores/zs'
('packs of ordinary playing cards, and other,
Moorish, packs').28 The MamlUk cards at
Istanbul were not an isolated rarity, as some have
supposed; in the fifteenth century, Islamic
playing cards were perfectly well known, even in
Europe.
So far, three references to playing cards are
known from mediaeval Arabic literature. One is
from the Thousand and One Nigl2ts,29 despite the
frequent assertions to the contrary in modern
writings on playing cards. Another is from the
sixteenth-century writer Ibn Hajar al-Haytami
(1504-1567).30 The most important is a passage
in the Annals of Ibn Taghril-BirdT (a history of the
Mamluk rulers from 1382 to 1469) to which
attention was First drawn by Mme Laila
Serageddin.31 In this, the future Sultan al-Malik
al-Mu'ayyad is recorded to have won a large sum
of money in a game of cards in about the year
1400 (the date is not precisely given). This
confirms that playing cards were known in
MamlUk Egypt at a date not long after their first
appearance in Europe. But by far the most
columns 181-207, also .]osé Maria Madurell Marimén,
'Notas Documentales de Naiperos Barceloneses', Documenlos
y EsludzOs, vol. IV, Institute Municipal de Historia,
Barcelona, 1961, p. 59.
z8J. Brunet y Bellet, Lo Koch de Naibs, Nails 6 Cartax,
Barcelona, 1886, pp. 80, 111, 113 and 160. A possible,
though less likely rendering of this entry is 'packs of
ordinary playing cards and other Moorish games'.
29 See Enno Littmann (trans.), Die Erzzihlungen aus den
Tausendundein Néiehten, vol. III, Wiesbaden, 1953, p. 693. The
reference occurs in the story of the clever slave girl
Tawaddud, 460th-461 st nights, Littmann's translation is
from the text edited by Sir William Hay Macnaghten from
an Egyptian manuscript 'brought to India by the late Major
Turner, editor of the Shah-Nameh', and published by him
as Alzt Leila, or Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, four
vols., Calcutta, 1839-42, our passage being in vol. II, p 354.
30 This reference is given in Franz Rosenthal, Gambling in
Islam, Leiden, 1975, p. 37, fn. 146, p. 44, fn. 178, p. 45, fn.
180, and p. 63, as as-zawkijir ('an iqtirizf al-kab6'ir), vol. II,
Cairo, 1951, p. 191. The reference to the Tnouxand and One
Nig/its is also due to Rosenthal. My thanks are due to Dr
Rudi von Leyden for bringing Rosenthal's book to my
attention.
31 For an English translation, see Ibn Taghri-Birdi,
History of Egypt 1382- 7469 A.D., trans. by W. Popper,
University of California Publications in Semitic Philology, no. 17,
Berkeley and Los Angeles, part III, 1957, p. 50. An
acknowledgment to Mme Scrageddin was made by Dr
Ettinghausen in his article cited under (ii) of footnote 22, p.
74. For comments on this article, see the review by M.
Dummett and Kamal Abu-Deeb in the journal of the Playing-
Card Society, vol. III, no. 3, February 1975, pp. 43-52.
 Europe and Asia
celebrated reference to mediaeval Islamic cards
comes once more from Europe, namely from the
Chronicles of Viterbo. There are three fifteenth-
century Chronicles of that city, all surviving in
manuscript form. Two of them - those by Fra
Francesco d'Andrea do Viterbo and by NiccolO
di Niccola della Tuccia - have been published,"
the third, by Giovanni di Juzzo di Covelluzzo,
h.as not, but the relevant passage from it is cited
in F. Bussi's Irtoria della Cited do Viterbo of 1742.
(Writers on playing cards often give a confused
account of this matter, referring to 'the'
Chronicle of Viterbo, as if there were only one.)
All three chroniclers state that they are relying,
for their pre-fifteenth-century narratives, on
earlier Chronicles, and, in particular, for the
fourteenth century, on one by Cola di Covelluzzo
(a relative of ]uzzo's), Fra Francesco and della
Tuccia also cite another fourteenth-century one
by Maestro Geronimo. These earlier Chronicles
have disappeared: but since all three of the
fifteenth-century ones contain slightly garbled
versions of what is evidently the same entry for
the year 1379, it is apparent that they must all be
quoting, directly or indirectly, from the same
fourteenth-century source, almost certainly the
lost Chronicle of Cola di Covelluzzo. When
reconstructed by comparison of the entries in the
three Chronicles, the original statement can be
seen to have read, 'Anno 1379. Fu recato in Viterbo it
gioco delle carte, the in Saracirzo Parlare Si chama Nayb'
('In the year 1379 there was brought to Viterbo
the game of cards, which in the Saracen language
is called nay')..Juzzo has expanded the last
clause to 'che venrze de Seracirzia, 83° chiarnasi tea lore
Naib' ('which comes from the land of the
Saracens, and is called among them nab'): this
remark cannot be credited with fourteenth-
century authority, but at least shows how .Juzzo
(who died in 1480) interpreted his source.
(Although one late MS. of della Tuccia's
Chronicle substitutes for the remark about the
'Saracen' language the information that cards
were brought to Viterbo by a Saracen named
Hayl (do un saracino chiamalo Hall), this is almost
32 The Chronicle of Fra Francesco, edited by Francesco
Cristofori, was published in Arc/tivia storico Per je Marche e per
l'Umbrza, vol. IV, Foligno, 1888, pp. 261-338; that by della
Tuccia, edited by Ignazio Ciampi, in Cronache e Status della
Ciltd do Viterbo, Florence, 1872. See also Pietro Egidi,
'Relazioni delle Chroniche Viterbesi del secolo XV tra di
lore e con je fonti', Scrilti vary do Filologia (a volume of essays
for Ernesto Monaci), Rome, 1901, pp. 37-59.
43
certainly a copyist's blunder.) Thus the entry in
the original fourteenth-century Chronicle does
not seem to have explicitly stated that playing
cards came from the Islamic world; but it did, in
the very year of their arrival in Viterbo, and only
two years after the very earliest reference to them
from anywhere in Europe, connect them with the
Islamic world, and show an awareness of their
existence there. If playing cards had in fact been
invented in Europe only a few years before, it is
unlikely that they would yet have been taken up
by the Muslims, or that an Italian chronicler
would have been aware of the fact if they had."
The Viterbo reference is of great etymological
interest. In most European languages, the word
for 'card' is, as in English, a derivative of Latin
c/zarla, meaning 'paper', or of its diminutive
rhartula. In fifteenth-century Italian, however, we
very often find, alongside carzfule, carticelle, etc., the
quite different word rzaibi used for 'playing cards',
although after that century the word went out of
use; and from Marseilles and from Spain we Find
forms like naizipi and nails, the ordinary Spanish
word for 'playing cards' being naives to this day.
The entry in the Viterbo Chronicles supplies the
only plausible etymology for these words that has
ever been proposed. It is very unlikely that
playing cards in general were ever called in
Arabic anything like rziz"ib, the plural of which is
in any case fzuwwéb; but, since this word,
meaning 'deputy', is the first word of the title of
the second court card in the MamlUk pack, it is
perfectly possible that, if Italians or Spaniards
first became acquainted with playing cards of
Muslim origin, they would apply the word to
playing cards as such. It is much less likely that
they should have done so had playing cards been
a European invention, subsequently adopted by
the Muslims. The use of the words rzaibi and
rzaipes thus combines with the remark of the
Viterbo chronicler to give great weight to the
hypothesis that playing cards came to Europe
from Islam.
The word used for 'playing cards' in all three
of the Arabic sources cited above is kanjzfah, and,
as pointed out by Mme Serageddin, the same
word appears in the verse which forms the upper
inscription on the King of Swords in the Istanbul
pack, which runs 'karzjzfah brings joy and
33 See M. Dummett and K. Abu-Deeb, 'Some remarks on
Mam1Gk playing cards', journal of the Warburg and Courtauld
Institutes, vol. XXXVI, 1973, pp. 112-14 and 128, for a more
detailed discussion.
 44 Part I: History and Mystery
evermore delights hearts' (kanjifatun tajlibu al-
surziriz' we [am Mga! lashrafzu al-§udzirci). This word,
too, is of great interest etymologically. It is not in
origin an Arabic word, but is adapted from
Persian ganjzfe/1; according to the prevalent
opinion, garz]He/1 in turn was borrowed from some
undetermined source. From its appearance on
the Istanbul card and in the three literary
sources, it is reasonable to suppose that kanjzfah
was the regular mediaeval Arabic word for
'playing cards'; it is not generally used in modern
Arabic, but, in Iraq, the form Ji"Jif<1 is usual,
while garzjtfeh is the normal term in modern
Persian for playing cards of any kind. Thus in
fifteenth-century Egypt the word for 'playing
cards' was one derived from Persian, while in
Spain from the earliest times to the present, and
in Italy from the earliest times until the end of the
fifteenth century, the words naives and rzaibi,
apparently of Arabic origin, were used. (The
word rabbi appears in the Sienese ordinance of
1377, and, in the forms naibbe and nairobi, in the
very earliest certain European reference, the
Florentine edict of the same year.)
The resemblance between the MamlUk pack
and the Italian one is too close to be coincidental:
one must have been derived from the other. The
evidence that we have reviewed - from surviving
cards, from documentary references and from
etymology - does not, even taken together,
constitute an irrefutable demonstration that
European cards were derived from Islamic ones :
we shall not have such a demonstration until
some reference is found to Islamic cards from
before playing cards were known in Europe, or
some Islamic cards are discovered that can
beyond question be dated to before that time.
But, even on the evidence that now exists, the
proponent of the thesis that the four-suited pack
was invented in Europe has to accept a series of
wild improbabilities. According to him, playing
cards must have been invented, somewhere in
Europe, in the second half of the fourteenth
century. By the turn of the century, they were
known and used in Egypt, but, since they were
there called by a name deriving from a Persian
word, they cannot have reached Egypt directly
from Europe, but must have travelled there via
Persia. And what, now, on this theory, can be
made of the Viterbo reference' If the chronicler
was right in thinking that playing cards were
already known in the Islamic world in 1379, and
in thinking that the word rzaibi derived from
Arabic, then either they must have made the
journey from Europe to Persia and from there to
the Arab World in a remarkably short time, or
playing cards must have been known in Europe
for a considerable time before the earliest
references to them. If, on the other hand, he was
wrong, the words rzaipes and rabbi become once
more quite inexplicable; moreover, it becomes an
extraordinary coincidence that, while the Viterbo
chronicler was mistaken in deriving the word
rabbi from Arabic, the word né'ib should later
have come to be adopted as part of the Arabic
name for two of the court cards in each suit. One
cannot say that it is impossible: one can say only
that, on the evidence now available, no rational
considerations can make a thesis that demands
such improbabilities seem in the least degree
plausible.
Some considerations about the suit-signs in the
Italian and Mamliik packs, while not of great
weight in themselves, tell in the same direction,
and have been emphasised by Dr Rosenfeld,
who, to his great credit, has long argued for the
derivation of European cards from Islamic
ones." The generally curved shape of the
Swords, which, in Italian-suited packs, is what
principally differentiates them from the Batons,
makes better sense if we suppose that the suit-
sign originated in the Islamic world. Batons
seem, in turn, to be rather characterless objects
to choose for a suit-sign, whereas polo-sticks were
highly significant in the Islamic world, and were
used as emblems in MamlUk heraldry. Polo-
sticks would not have been recognised as such in
Europe, where the game of polo was unknown,
and so it is understandable that they should have
been converted into batons, but it is worth noting
that in the mid-fifteenth century 'Liechtenstein
pack', which has five suits, four of them the Latin
ones, the Batons somewhat resemble polo-sticks.
Particularly interesting is the word derzari still
used in Italian for the Coins suit. Playing-card
Coins have always been gold pieces, in the Italian
and Spanish packs as well as in the Mamlik one,
and indeed the name of the suit in Spain and in
Sicily is pro ('gold') and likewise in Portugal euro.
In the Istanbul pack, however, the Coins are
called dare?/lim, the plural of dir/zarn, although the
44 See particularly H. Rosenfeld, 'Die Beziehungen der
européischen Spielkarten zum Orient und zum Urschach',
Archiv fir Kulturgesahichte, vol. XLIII, 1960, pp. 1-36, and
'Zur Vor- und Friihgeschiehte und Morphogenese von
Kartenspiel und Tarock', ibid, vol. LII, 1970, pp. 65-94.
 Europe and Asia
dirham was a silver coin; the word is less odd
than the Italian denary, which properly signified
'pennies', that is, low-valued copper coins. As
Rosenfeld has remarked, the explanation is
presumably that the coins on the Islamic cards
originally represented dinars (dander in Arabic),
and were so called, and that the Arabic name
was replaced in Italian by the etymologically and
phonetically similar derzari or danari. Since in
Egypt the gold dihiir was replaced as currency by
the silver dirham in 1346, this reinforces the
hypothesis that playing cards were known in
Egypt at a date preceding that at which there is
any evidence for them in Italy, and that it was in
the form of Egyptian cards that people in Italy
first encountered them."
35 The literature on playing cards is full of misstatements
of fact, given without the references that would enable a
persistent reader to correct them. In this book, most of these
are passed by, but a few, occurring in recent publications,
are indicated, lest they ensnare the unwary. The thesis of
the derivation of European playing cards from Muslim ones
receives quite unwarranted support from the statement in
André Francois, Histoire de la carte djouer, Ivy, 1974, p. 36,
that there is in Palermo a fresco showing Arabs playing
cards, with a reference to an article by Signor Vito Arienti
in La Voce del Collezionlsla for February, 1973. This statement
is erroneous in every detail. In La Voce del Collezionista, anno
XVIII, no. 1,]anuary-February, 1973, there is, on pp. 41-3,
the First part of an article, 'La verity nella leggenda del
"Naibi"', by Signor Ferdinando Provenzano, dealing with
an Arabic manuscript discovered by him, which he
attributes to the traveller Ibn _Jubair, and interprets as
referring to a card game played by Arabs in Sicily. In The
Playing-Cord Information Circle, no. 26, JUIY 1973, p. 3, its
editor, Mr Emanuel S. Newman, stated that there was on p.
41 of Lo Voce del Collezionista for February, 1973, an article by
Signor Arienti (a well-known collector of playing cards)
describing a fresco in Palermo showing Arabs playing cards.
In fact, there is no such article by Signor Arienti in that or any
other number of La Voce de! Colle.zionzsto, and the article by
Signor Provenzano makes no mention of any such fresco, on
the basis of Mr Newman's statement, I myself made a
determined but unsuccessful effort to find such a fresco in
Palermo. Subsequently, Mr Newman's statement was
reprinted in Le jolly joker, no. 14, September, 1973, p. 17; a
letter of correction by me was printed in no. 15, May, 1974,
pp. 11-12, but too late to prevent the incorporation of the
error into Francois's book. Signor Arienti is entirely innocent
in the matter; he did not write the article in question, which
in any case did not contain the alleged statement, and has
consistently disclaimed any assertion about a fresco in
Palermo. His name has nevertheless been attached to such a
claim in a widely circulated book. A correction of the error
by myself was printed in the journal of the Playing-Cord Society,
vol. IV, no. 2, 1975, pp. 32-35 since it is one of a kind likely
to become one of those spurious items of evidence endlessly
reiterated from one book to another, I thought it best to
repeat the correction here.
45
The overwhelmiNg probability, then, is that, in
about 1370-75, playing cards came to Europe,
very likely through Venice, from MarnlUk Egypt,
where they had been known for some time. The
etymological evidence suggests that they had
reached Egypt from Persia, just as chess had
spread throughout the Islamic world from Persia,
whither it had arrived before the .Muslim
conquest. From this point in the trail, however,
the evidence becomes patchy.
The type of indigenous Persian playing cards
to be found in all museums and private
collections is probably irrelevant to our enquiry.
These are a special kind usually referred to in the
literature on playing cards and card games as As
Nas cards, from the name (85-r1is or ésanés) of the
game played with them. They consist of four or
five copies of each of five picture cards: Es (Ace)
or Shir va If/zors/iid (Lion and Sun); S/148/1 or
Péidesl1Z°1/1 <Kmg); Bib; (Lady); Sarbiiz (Soldier);
and Lakai (a trifle - the card usually shows one or
two dancing girls). The different ranks are
always distinguished by background colour."
The game of As Nas very closely resembles
Poker: five cards are dealt to each of the four
players, and, though there is no draw, there is a
betting procedure just like that of Poker; there is
no Hush, since there are no suits, and there is also
no straight, but otherwise the scoring
combinations are just like those of Poker,
36 Examples are known of packs specially made for playing
some game in which suits are irrelevant, usually a gambling
game or game of chance, which have been modified from
ones divided into suits either by repeating some one suit or
by mixing up the suits. An example of the former are the
_Japanese packs used for playing Kabu, a game of the
Baccarat type: in these, some one of the suits of a
Portuguese-derived pack has been selected and then
repeated four times, see S. Mann and V. Wayland, The
Dragons of Portugat, Farnham, 1973. An example of the latter
type is the pack made in Bishnupur, West Bengal, for
playing the game of Naksha, a game of a similar general
type in which the object is to obtain a total of 17 points. This
pack consists of four copies of a sequence of twelve cards,
consisting of a King or saheb, riding on an elephant, a bibi or
Lady, riding on a horse, and ten numeral cards, each
showing an appropriate number of objects, the objects being
different from card to card; see Pandit Haraprashad
Shastri, Proceedings of the Ariatie Society of Bengalfor 7896, 1897,
p. 2, and R. von Leyden, 'The Naksha Game of Bishnupur',
journal of the Playing-Card Society, vol. VI, No. 3, 1978, pp. 73-
82. It is possible that the origin of &xon?25 cards is similar,
that is, that they are a derivative of some pack divided into
suits, but that the suit-signs have been suppressed because
irrelevant to the game; but if so, it is unclear what the
prototype can have been.
46 Part I: History and Mystery
including the hand known in Poker as 'full house'
(a three and a pair).37 Poker itself originated in
the United States in the nineteenth century. R.F.
Foster, who made a detailed study of its origins,
.believed that it was a direct development from As
Nas as played with a 20-card American pack, the
Persian game having reached the United States
by way of New Orleans; the name 'Poker' he held
to be a mispronunciation of 'Poque', the name of
a French gambling game which French settlers in
New Orleans had transferred to the Persian
game when it was introduced."~Foster held As
Nas to be a 'very ancient' game, and in this he
has been followed by most later writers." .john
Scarne invokes the authority of a Mr Shapour
Fatemi for the preposterous assertion that it is at
least 2,000 years old in Iran, and adds that 'some
rather ambiguous historical references suggest
that it may be 5,000 years old'.'*0 After this, the
statement of Mr Alan Wykes that there are
references to the popularity of As Nas in
fourteenth-century Persian literature seems quite
sober." Actually, however, it appears to be as
groundless as his purported quotation from a
diary of one of Columbus' seamen, indicating
that the game was played by them on board ship,
37 There is a detailed and well-informed account of As
Nas by General A. Houtum Schindler, of Teheran, on pp.
928-9 of S. Culin, Chess and Playing-Cardx, Philadelphia, 1897
(constituting pp. 665-942 of the Report of the U.S. National
Museum for 1896). Probably the earliest description of As
Nas published in English was that by 'Aquarius' (Louis
d'Aguilar Jackson) in his Italian Came; at Cards and Oriental
Games, London, 1890, pp. 58-9.
38 R.F. Foster, Foxler'5 Complete Hoyle, 2nd and 3rd
editions, New York, 1909, 1914, p. 208.
39 R.F. Foster, Poker, New York, 1901, p. 9.
"°john Scarne, Scarne on Cards, 2nd edition, New York,
1955, p. 231.
41 'There was a Persian rummy game of the fourteenth
century called ds-mis, which has been adapted by every
nation without altering the structural basis of dealing a
hand of live cards to each of four players. (Poker and gin
rummy are the Western world's most popular variants of 8s-
n8s.) Columbus's seamen took the game from the Old
World to the New and one of them gives an account of it
in a journal he kept for his wife: "After the Hail Mary at
nightfall those not at watch played at cards, the game
having been showed them by sailors from Cathay It is a
game in which skill adapts to chance, each player having
five cards only and these to be matched in every respect to
the coat [court] cards and the as [see]." It seems very likely
that the sailors from Cathay had taught Columbus's men
8s-n8s. There are certainly several references to the
popularity of this game in fourteenth-century Persian
literature', Alan Wykes, Gambling, London, 1964, p. 164.
is spurious." In fact, I have been unable to find
any evidence that As Nas is any older in Persia
than the earliest surviving As Nas cards, that is to
say, than the eighteenth or possibly the
seventeenth century."
Foster identified the First mention of Poker in
print as one 'in Green's Reformed Gambler, which
contains a description of a game of poker played
on a river steamer in June, 1834'.44 He is here
alluding to .Jonathan H. Green, The Reformed
Gambler (Philadelphia, 1858), on pp. 140-7 of
which there is a story about a game of 20-card
Poker played on that date in the course of a
steamer trip (though not actually on the steamer,
42 When I enquired of Mr Wykes, he informed me in April
1971 that his notes and manuscript for Gambling had been
sold to an American university, but did not specify the
institution fortunate enough to obtain this material. After
further enquiry, Mr Wykes stated in .]uly 1971 that 8s-nas
was a game favoured by the fourteenth-century poet Hafiz,
and referred me to Muhammad 'abd al-Ghani A History of
Persian Language and Literature at the Mughal Court
(Allahabad, 1929-30), where he thought I should find
references to Hafiz playing the game, he said also that he
thought he had got the quotation from the journal of one of
Columbus's seamen from I-Iakluyt's account of William
Hawkins's voyage to Brazil. When I informed him that both
these references had proved completely incorrect, and that a
systematic search (by myself in English translation, and by
a graduate student in the original) had failed to uncover any
reference by I-Iafiz to is-nér, he finally disclosed, in May
1972, that much of the research for his book had been done
by 'professional researchers' to whom he had simply
telephoned enquiries and put the answers into the narrative
when they had been discovered for him. I have the authority
of Professor S.E. Morison, the leading expert on
Columbus's voyages, for saying that the quotation given by
Mr Wykes is spurious. A method of composition under
which the information supplied by a so-called research
agency is simply passed on to the reader without having
been checked by the author exposes such agencies to the
temptation of merely inventing information; readers ought
surely to be entitled to feel assured that an author has done
his best to make certain that the information to which he
attaches his name is correct.
431 have not devoted any serious study to As Nas cards ,
being convinced for a long time by the unanimous assertions
of so many writers, and particularly by the circumstantial
statements of Mr Wykes, that As Nas was very considerably
older than the earliest surviving cards, I concentrated on
trying to discover literary references to substantiate this.
Most of the As Nas cards in the museums are of the
nineteenth century, but some are of the eighteenth, there
may be some as early as the seventeenth century, but,
having neglected the question, I should not like to make a
definite assertion. It is quite certain, however, that, if there
are any seventeenth-century As Nas cards, they are rare,
and that there are none of any earlier date.
44 Footer's Complete Hoyle, 1909, 1914, p. 208.
 Europe and Asia
but in a house at Louisville); in the copy of this
book in the Bodleian Library in Oxford there is a
postcard sent on 9 December 1903 to Frederick
vessel by R.F. Foster, saying that he had known
Green personally. Green was what the title of his
book implies; converted from his evil ways, he
devoted the rest of his life to campaigning against
gambling (though, according to Foster's
postcard, he also invented the rubber-tipped
pencil). Actually, there is an earlier and much
fuller reference to Poker by Green in his Exposure
of the Arts and Miseries of Gambling (Philadelphia,
1843). In this, after remarking that 'there is no
mention of this game in Mr Hoyle's treatise on
games, and I am of the opinion that it was not
used in his day', Green says that it is usually
played, by two, three or four players, with a pack
of 20 cards, consisting of the Aces, Kings,
Queens, _]acks and 10s, though he later refers to
the game of full deck Poker, played with the full
pack of 52 cards.'*5 He also includes a long story
which refers to Poker as being played as early as
1829.46 Foster stated that Poker took a long time
to get into print, and in 1897 wrote that it 'is not
mentioned in the American Hoyles of forty years
ago',47 but in this he was mistaken: what is
claimed to be the first account of the game, as
called either 'Poker' OF 'Bluff', and played with
52 cards and any number of players less than ten,
is to be found in H0yle'5 Games (Philadelphia,
1845), with a brief account of '20-Deck Poker',
played with 20 cards.4** The form with only 20
cards iS indeed strikingly similar to As Nas, and,
from Green's observations, it seems likely to have
been earlier than the 52-card version.
As Foster remarked, 'triplets, fours and
sequences were among the earliest recognised
combinations of cards and are to be found in all
the oldest garnes'.4° A great many early card
games bear out the truth of this assertion. An
example is the Italian game of Cricca, called after
the term used in it for a set of three of a kind, a
46 4th edition, Philadelphia, 1847, pp. 59, 60, 70; on p. 83
is a story concerning a game played in New Orleans in 1835.
The title of the book was changed to Gambling Exposed for the
1857 edition, but the pagination is exactly the same as in the
1847 one.
46 4th edition, pp. 20-59, the references to Poker are on
PP~ 37-9.
47 Foster lf Complete Hoyle, 1897, p. 175. In Cooncan
(Conquién), New York, 1913, p. ix, Foster says that 'C,ooncan,
like Poker, took a long time to get into print'.
48 PP. 260-3.
49 R.F. Foster, Poker, New York, 1901, p. 7.
47
term we shall later find employed in the same
sense in the Tarocco game played in Bologna.
This game was already mentioned in the sermon
of about 1470 quoted by Robert Steele, and it
was forbidden in Bergarnolin 1491; there are
several sixteenth-century references to it_50
Cricca may or may not have been identical with
the game of Gleek, as played in England and
described by john Cotgrave in 1662; this three-
handed game began, like Piquet, with the players
making scores for 'ruff' (having the largest
number of cards in a single suit) and then for
'gleeks' and 'murnivals' (sets of three or four of a
kind), and ended, again like Piquet, with the
hands being played out in tricks.51 Gleek was an
importation from France, where it was known as
Glic; there it was referred to as early as 1397, and
there are several references to it from the
fifteenth century, including ones by Villon and
by King René." Again, a game called in Italian
Flusso, Flussi or Frussi was also played in France
under the name Flux and in Germany as Fliissen.
Its name is cognate with our term 'flush', and it is
played to this day as a drinking game* in
Muotatal in Switzerland, in the canton of
Schwyz, under the name 'Fliisslen'. It, too, is
so R. Steele, 'A notice of the Ludus Triumphorum',
Arc/laeologia, vol. LVII, 1900, pp. 189-200, contains the text
of the sermon on gaming: it cites Erica as ludus lrium cartularum
(a game of three cards), and goes on to say that ludit hoc ludo
dando aartulas a 3 a 3 (one plays this game, dealing the cards
in threes). For the Bergamo edict, see W.L. Schreiber, Die
iilteslen Spielkarten, Strasbourg, 1937, p. 79. In the sixteenth
century it was referred to by Francesco Berni in 1526 in his
Capilolo della Primiera, by Cardano in his book De ludo
alarum, by Garzoni in 1585 in his Piazza universals and by
John Florio in his dictionary of 1598. Berni also mentions it
in his version of Boiardo's Orlando Inamorato, Book 3, Canto
6, stanza 53 :
Sembran Costor due giocator' di cricca,
Ch'abbian it puerto tutto due in bastoni.
The Punta is like the point in Piquet (that player wins who
has the most cards in any one suit), this increases the
likelihood that the game is identical with Gleek or Glic.
'5' _]ohn Cotgrave, Wit's Interpreter, 2nd edition, London,
1662, pp. 365-8.
52 The 1397 reference is.from an entry in the account-book
of Louis de Valois, Duke of Orleans, see W.L. Schreiber, op.
cit., p. 160. That from Villon is from Le Grand Testament, line
1705 (the Ballade between stanzas 1_58 and 159); see Les
Oeuz/res de Frangais Villon, ed. Pierre Messiaen, Paris, 1946,
p. 136. The Grand Testament was written in 1461. The
reference by King René is from L'Abuzé en Court, written in
1473, see Oeuvres du Roi René, ed. je corette de Quatrebarbes,
vol. 4, Angers, 1846, p. 108. See also Godefroy, Dictionnaire de
I 'aneienne langue frangaise, s.v. 'glic'.
48 Part I: History and Mystery
mentioned in the sermon quoted by Steele, and it
was prohibited at Ferrara in 1470, although in
the 1490s it was very popular at the d'Este court,
and it was referred to by Lorenzo de' Medici,
who called it an 'accursed game' (giuoco
maladetto); there are again many sixteenth-
century references." A game called Sequence
was played in France and Italy during the
sixteenth century; if, as Schreiber believed, it is
to be identified with that known variously in
German as Quentzen, Quentzel, Quentzlen and
possibly also SchwentZlin, it Figures, as a game
usually permitted, at least when played for small
stakes, in various fifteenth-century ordinances,
including one of 1443 from Augsburg and of 1448
from Balgau.54 The recognition of threes and
fours of a kind, of flushes and sequences, as
scoring combinations, is plainly as old as the
53 See Steele, op. cit., For the Ferrara ordinance of 1470,
see G. Carnpori, 'Le Carte da Giuoco dipinte per gli
Estensi', Am e Memorze delly RR. Deputazioni all Storia Patria per
Ze Province modenesi e Parmensi, vol. III, 1874, p. 124. For the
game as played in the d'Este court, see F. Malaguzzi-Valeri,
La carte do Lodovico it Moro, vol. 1, Milan, 1913, p. 575, A.
Luzio, I Precettori d'Isabella d'E5te, Ancona, 1887, p. 22, and
A. Luzio and R. Renier, Markova e Urbino, 1893, p. 64. The
game is again mentioned by Berni, Cardano, Garzoni and
Florio. For the Lorenzo de' Medici poem, see Tutti i Tfionj
Carri, Maseherate 6 anti Camascialexclzi andati Per Firenze
(collected by Antonio Francesco Grazzini, called it Lasca),
Florence, 1559, p. 7, where the game is called Frussi. For
French references, see Godefroy, s.v. 'glic' and 'séqLlence',
E.S. Taylor, History of Playing Cards, cites another, by the
Sieur de Cholieres in 1586, and the game is also mentioned
in Thomas Varnet and Natalis Beda, La Petite dyablerie,
Paris, e. 1510 (a translation of St Bernardine's sermon on
gaming), and by Rabelais in 1534, among Gargantua's
games. Fliissen was given by Fischart in 1575 in his
translation of Rabelais, Heinrich Rausch, Das
Speilverzeichnis zm 25. Ifapztel von Fischarts Ceschichtsklitterung,
Strasbourg, 1908, cites Charles Schmidt, Historitches
Wiirterbuc/1 der eltissisc/zen Mundart, 1901, p. 231, as in turn
citing a text of 1524 in which the game is mentioned. As
/lessen orélvsn, the game is also referred to in two poems of
Hans Sachs, the First written in 1539, see Hans Sachs, ed.
Adalbert von Keller (later vols. by E. Goetze), vol. V,
Bib lio!/zek des Litterarisc/zen Vereins in Stuttgart, Tiibingen, 1870,
pp. 31, 225. For further references and information about the
game as now played in Muotatal, see Peter F. Kopp,
"Fliissliss" - VoM politischen Kartenspiel der Méichte zum
Trinkspiel der Muotataler', ,Zeitschrift fair Schweizerische
Arr/léologie undlfunttgetr/zichte, vol. 35, 1978, pp. 101-7.
54 The game of Sequence is mentioned, under various
cognate names, by Rabelais, Cardano, Garzoni, Fischart,
Florio and the Sieur de Choliéres; see footnotes 45 and 48.
It is also given by Randle Cotgrave in his French dictionary
of 1611. For the ordinances relating to Quentzen, see W.L.
Schreiber, op. cit.,pp. 36, 39, 45-6 and 153.
fifteenth century and perhaps as old in Europe as
playing cards themselves.
One of the distinctive features of Poker is, of
course, that it is not merely a game in which such
combinations score, but that that is all there is to
the game. But games of this general type are also
extremely old, Russo was just such a game, and
one of the most famous was the Spanish game of
Primero, immensely popular in the sixteenth
century both in England and, as Primiera, in
Italy. In Primero, each player was dealt four
cards, and there were three possible winning
combinations, the lowest being the prime or
Primiera (one card of each suit) and the highest
being the Hush (four cards of one suit); if any
player had one of the scoring combinations in his
original hand, there was an immediate show-
down, otherwise there was a draw. In Primero,
however, the stakes were all placed before the
deal. The excitement of Poker, on the other hand,
derives from the fact that there is a competitive
raising of the stakes after the' deal and the draw.
But this feature is also not original with Poker. It
is found, not only in As Nas, but also in the
English game of Brag, much played in the United
States in the nineteenth century. It also
characterises the French game of Bouillotte, as
Foster observed, 'the blind, the straddle, the
raise, the bluff, table-stakes and freeze-out are all
to be found in Bouillotte, which flourished in the
time of the French Revolution'.55 Bouillotte has
continued to be played in France down to
modern times, it was introduced at the end of the
eighteenth century as an improvement on the old
game of Brelan, in which the stake was placed
before the deal. Brelan is another game of great
antiquity; it appears in an edict of Lille of 1458,
and was also mentioned by Villon in 1461.56 The
term brennan is still used in Bouillotte and in Poker,
as played in France, to mean a set of three of a
kind. In the passage quoted above from Foster,
he goes on to remark that 'the draw from the
remainder of the pack existed in the old French
game of Ambigu'; Arnbigu, much played in
France in the eighteenth century, was a
derivative from Prirnero, in which the draw
already featured.
From all this it is apparent that there is no
reason whatever to assume that As Nas had any
55 R,F. Foster, Foster's Complete Hoyle, 1st edition, New
York, 1897, p. 175.
56 See the reference to Villon in footnote 47, and W.L.
Schreiber, op. cit., p. 64.
 Europe and Asia
direct influence on gambling games of the
general type to which Poker belongs, as these
were played in Europe. Scarne, taking As Nas to
be 2,000 years old, infers that it was the direct
ancestor of the European games of this kind; in
g
fact, however, the latter are much older than we
E have any reason to suppose As Nas to be. It is
much more probable that the influence went the
other way, that the invention of As Nas was
inspired by the example of some European game
of this type. General Schindler remarked, in
support of this supposition, that the word 85 is
not an indigenous Persian word, and is
presumably derived from some European word
for 'Aee'.57 Scarne's theory appears to be that
Poker was an immediate development out of the
French games, and that these in turn were
descended, through Italian games, from the
Persian one. He informs us that 'the first mention
of the game - or even the word .- Poker has been
traced by the author', i.e. Scarne, 'to Jonathan
H. Green, a reformed gambler, who in certain
writings dated 1834 described the rules for a
game then being played on the Mississippi
steamboats'; possibly he was assisted in this feat
f
I
by Foster's identical previous discovery,
mentioned in his Complete Hoyle, a book quoted
elsewhere by Scarne in order to jeer at Foster's
remarks about the game of Conqui8n.58 He goes
on to say that the game did not appear in the
American Hoyle until thirty or more years later;
as we have seen, this was also Foster's opinion,
but it is mistaken. When the game did appear in
I Hoyle, Scarne tells us, it was called, not 'Poker',
but 'Bluff', and the rules were those given by
Green, i.e. a maximum of four players using a 20-
card pack. I have not myself seen an American
3 57 S. Culin, Chess and Playing-Cards, Philadelphia, 1897, p.
929.
58 Scarneon Cards, New York, 1955, p. 230. I am not
l
suggesting that Scarne did not look up Green's books; he
remarks, for instance, that Green noted that the American
Hoyle then current neglected to mention the game, which
must be an allusion to Green's comment about Hoyle,
quoted above, in the Exposure of the Arts and Miseries of
Gambling (not in The Reformed Gambler cited by Foster). All
the same, he looked at them in a remarkably cursory
fashion. There are no writings of Green's dated 1834, 1834
is the date referred to by him in The Reformed Gambler, and
later cited by Foster. Scarne makes the same trilling error as
Foster in thinking the game of 1834 to have been played on a
steamboat; he misinterprets Green's remark about Hoyle,
which appears to concern Edmond Hoyle's original book;
and, like Foster, he overlooks Green's mention of the 52-
card form (possibly Foster did not know the Exposure) .
49
Hoyle in which 'Poker' is not the principal name
used, though the 1845 book cited above uses
'Bluff' as an alternative, it also treats the 20-card
version as a minor variant. Scarne asserts,
however, that it was only about forty years later,
i.e. after 1900, that Hoyle first called the game
'Poker'.5"
In arguing for the immediate derivation of
Poker from French gambling games, and its
ultimate derivation from As Nas, Scarne says, of
the game described by Green, 'that some features
are of French origin, but that its structure is
Iranian. Later he states that the earliest
published Poker rules, which, by inference from
his earlier remarks, must have appeared in the
1860s, established its French antecedents: it used
the Piquet pack, the pack was cut to the left and
dealt to the right, and the French terms brennan
and triton were used, the draw was taken from the
French game of Ambigu. He goes on, in a
passage strikingly reminiscent of Foster, to state
that 'Bouillotte, which antedated the Revolution,
developed the blind, the straddle, the raise,
table stakes, the freeze-out and (back to Iran!)
the bluff'. Scarne's remarks about what he takes
to be the earliest published rules of Poker are
very surprising: I have not attempted to make a
complete search through the vast number of 3
nineteenth-century American Hoyles, but I know
of none which gives a version of Poker (or Bluff)
played with the 32-card Piquet pack, or in which
the cards are dealt counter-clockwise or three of a
kind called brelgn or tricon. Indeed, Scarne's
claim appears to contradict his earlier statement
that the rules, as given in the earliest accounts,
were the same as Green's. The explanation seems
to be that, as in so many other observations of
Scarne's, he is here, without acknowledgment,
following Foster, and that, this time, he has
misunderstood his source. Foster, commenting
59 The Hoyle; were originally reprints of books issued in
London as later editions of Hoyle's famous work, more and~
more games being added. After a time, the American
editions came to include games played in the United States
but unknown in England; eventually, they became quite
independent of the volumes published in London. In this
way, the word Hoyle came to be a mere generic term for a
book with rules of games, and to this day American writers
on card games frequently include it in their titles. Although,
as usual, the American Hoyles, published in Philadelphia,
New York, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago and no doubt
elsewhere, copied from one another and reprinted accounts
of games unchanged through many editions, they do not
form a single series; there were several different publishers,
whose selection of games differed somewhat.
50 Par! I: History and Mystery
on a game called Whiskey Poker which he
described in his Complete Hoyle of 1897, says that
it has 'really little or nothing in common with the
true spirit of poker, and is simply the very ancient
game of Commerce, played with five cards
instead of three. The descriptions of this game in
the earliest Hoyles betray its French origin:
particularly in the use of the Piquet pack; the
French custom of cutting to the left and dealing
to the right, and the use of the words "brennan"
and "tricon". In later descriptions of the "new
form" of Commerce, about 1835, we find 52 cards
are used, and dealt from left to right, and the
names of the combinations are changed to "pairs-
royal", "sequences" and "flushes"'."0 When
Foster speaks here of 'the descriptions of this
game in the earliest Hoyles', he means by 'this
game' neither true Poker nor even Whiskey Poker,
the latter of which he may have been the first
to describe in print, 61 but Commerce, which is
distinguished from Whiskey Poker, as he says, by
the fact that each player receives only three
cards. The first 'Hoyle' to contain a description
of Commerce was probably the improved edition
of Charles Pigot's New Hoyle (London, 1805), and
the First known to me to do so, of those published
in the United States, was Hoyle's Improved Edition
of the Rules for Playing Fashionable Games
(Philadelphia, 1838).62 Foster was trying to
so Fowler 3 Com/Jlele Hoyle, 1897, pp. 174-5.
61 Foster does not claim priority for his description of
Whiskey Poker; the earliest account known to me in any
other book is that in The Standard Hoyle, New York, 1899, p.
147. Hoyle*s Games: Autograph Edition, New York, 1914, p.
189, remarks of Commerce that it is the parent of Whiskey
Poker.
(12 Foster's observations about the old and new forms of
Commerce are inaccurate. Most of the Hoyles, both British
and American, distinguish between two forms of
Commerce, and some, including the works of 1805 and 1838
cited in the text, say that one is the new form and the other
the old one, a few, such as Hoyles Card Games: an improved
edition, Glasgow, 1827, describe only the 'new' form, without
calling it such. But it is the form with the French
terminology that is said to be the 'new' one. In this, a set of
three of a kind is called 'tricon' (the term 'brennan' is not
mentioned), and the deal is counter-clockwise; in the 'old'
form, the term is 'pair-royal' and the deal is clockwise. The
word triton and the counter-clockwise deal do characterise
Commerce as played in France, the latter is not the usual
French practice, so possibly the game was of Italian origin. I
have not found a mention in any of the Hoyles of Commerce
being played with the 32-card pack. I do not mean to
question the thesis that Commerce reached England in the
First place from France; but Foster has oversimplified the
history - there must have been a second wave of French
influence on the playing of this game.
establish the French origin of Commerce, the
immediate progenitor of Whiskey Poker, a game
which, as Foster said, was not really a form of
Poker at all, but an adaptation of Commerce to
the use of Poker hands, Scarne's argument for
the French parentage of Poker embodies a
confusion.
Foster's own theory was quite different. The g
recognised combinations of cards were ancient,
the principle of the betting procedure was well
known from Brag, and its details may have been ;
5
derived from Bouillotte, the draw may have been 8
derived from Ambigu. But, for him, the crucial
new feature, distinguishing Poker from other
games of its general type, consisted in each I
player's being dealt Five cards, making possible a 4
I
hand of two pairs or that of Full House. In
Primero and Ambigu, a hand consisted of four I
cards, in Brelan, Bouillotte, Brag and 1
Commerce, of only three, as also in Fliissen. The 8
great innovation of Poker was the distribution of
five cards to each player; and it was therefore the
origin of this that needed explaining. Impressed
with the similarity of the early twenty-card Poker
to As Nas, Foster maintained that As Nas had
reached the United States directly from Persia.
His full reasons for taking this view lie buried in a
New York daily paper for which he was the card-
game correspondent, and in which he reported
his studies of the origin of Poker;"3 on the face of s
it, a direct contact at that time between Persia r
and the United States, with no European
intermediary, seems somewhat unlikely.
Whether there is any compelling reason to
assume it is unclear. Scarne, who tacitly agrees
with Foster on so many points, scornfully rejects
his derivation of the name 'Poker' from 'Poque':
'I can't endorse this kind of breezy scholarship,'
he declares, 'I never played Poque, I have never
seen it played, I don't know its structure, and I
never encountered anyone better informed on the
subject than I>.64 Alan Wykes, likewise rejecting
63 An article in the New York Sun of 22 May 1904, which I
have not seen, and which Foster refers to in the 1909 and
1914 editions of his Complete Hoyle, p. 208 .
6" Scarne on Cards, 1955, p.232. I have devoted attention to
Searne because there is particular danger that his remarks
will mislead those readers who are unable to check the now
much less accessible works of R.F. Foster. The danger
springs from Scarne's calculated contrast between his own
great knowledge of the subject and the ignorance of
supposed experts, conveying the impression that the latter
have contented themselves with ill-informed guesses, while
he has engaged in genuine research. It is plain that a large
1
 Europe and Asia
the derivation, tells us that 'such information as
there is about poque suggests that it was a game
of the whist family'."5 Scarne's challenge is
childishly simple to meet, and Wykes's statement
to refute, since Poque is still described in current
French card-game books; the earliest description
of it of which I know is from 1714.66 Played with
the 36-card pack, Poque has several extraneous
features: there are fixed stakes, advanced before
the deal, to be gained by the holder of each of the
top cards of a suit to be determined by turning a
card, and, after the show-down, a form of 'Stops'
play takes place (of the kind that occurs in a game
such as Newmarket). But the core of the game has
a fair resemblance to Poker: betting, after the
deal, on who has the best combination of cards,
the players standing, raising or folding (dropping
out). The combinations recognised are single
pairs, two pairs, threes and fours of a kind: the
crucial similarity lies in the fact that each player is
dealt a hand of Five cards. Foster's idea was that
French settlers in New Orleans recognised the
similarity of the newly introduced As Nas to their
own game of Poque, and transferred the name to
it; but an alternative possibility is that Poker was a
direct development out of Poque, arrived at by
suppressing the extraneous features and
introducing new winning combinations. In the
latter case, the resemblance to As Nas must have
been accidental; readers must judge whether the
twenty cards and the Full House together form too
great a coincidence. Poque itself, though not very
ancient, is closely related to the German game of
Poch or Pochen, whose existence Scarne does
recognise; if the conjecture of Schreiber is correct,
that the card game prohibited under the name
brocken in many German municipal ordinances of
the Fifteenth century is to be identified with
Pochen, it, too, is among the earliest European
ga1'f1€$.67
part of Scarne's researches into the history of Poker
consisted in an excessively hasty reading of Foster. Foster
himself, though no more incapable of making mistakes than
any of us, really was a scrupulous and painstaking
investigator of the history of card games, one of the very few
such in that field. It would be a pity if his conclusions were to
be obscured or his reputation tarnished by groundless attacks
or by others taking the credit for his discoveries.
"5 Alan Wykes, op. cit., p. 171.
"6 See, e.g., Frans Gerver, Le Guide Mar bout de Lou; lesjeux
de caries, Verviers, 1966, pp. 240-2, the 1714 account is from
the Académie universelle desjeux for that year.
so For a modern description of Pochen, see Roland G66ck,
Freude am Karlenspiel, G\8tersloh, 1967, pp. 64-6. For booker,
51
As remarked, without a knowledge of Foster's
detailed evidence, it is impossible to form a
judgment about the theory that As Nas was the
direct progenitor of Poker. Whether that theory
is sound or not, it is plain that As Nas and As
Nas cards tell us nothing, on the evidence now
available, about the transmission of playing
cards and of card games from the Islamic world
to Europe; until any contrary evidence comes to
light, it would be helpful if writers on the subject
would cease to reiterate the baseless assertion
that As Nas is of great antiquity. A different type
of Persian playing cards, much more important
for our purpose, is a great deal more elusive. In
his Voyages en Purse, published in 1686, the
Chevalier Chardin wrote, 'There are cards
among the common people, which they call
garzjaphé (karzdjaféh).They are made of wood, very
well painted. The pack is of ninety cards with
eight suits'.6' Chardin was evidently not very
interested in these cards, and his statement must
involve some error, since 90 is not divisible by 8.
Romain Merlin, in his book of 1869, asserts that
the Persians had a 96-card pack, known as
Glzendgifeh, divided into eight suits of twelve cards
each, and illustrates, as examples of such Persian
cards, one from a pack in his own collection.
rectangular and made of ivory, stating that other
examples are in the Douce collection and in that
of a M. Didot. He adds, rather oddly, that they
generally have a round shape among the Persians /
of India, but a shape like European cards among
the Persians of Teheran."" D'Allemagne, the
great historian of French playing cards, says in
his travel book about Persia, published in 1911,
that there are two types of Persian playing cards,
the As Nas cards and a 96-card pack with eight
suits of twelve cards each. The latter, he says,
are of Indian origin, but the Persians have sub-
stituted a rectangular shape for the circular one
used in India; the oldest Persian cards are painted
on ivory, and several specimens of' these have
survived, but later ones are made of lacquered
cardboard. In illustration, he reproduces two
see W,L. Schreiber, op. cit., pp. 36, 38-42, 44, 148; also the
edition of Hans Sachs cited in footnote 53, vol. V, pp. 31 and
47, and the work of Heinrich Rausch cited in the same
footnote,
as Vol. III, chapter 12, 'Des exercises et des jeux des
Persans', of the section 'Description générale de la Perse', p.
451.
co R. Merlin, L `Origine des rartex djouer, Paris, 1869, plate 69
and pp. 122-4.
 52 Part I: History and Mystery
plates from his book Les Carte; d jouer, showing
different packs, both said to be made of ivory, the
first is assigned to the nineteenth century and
said to be reproduced from Chatto's book, and
the second to the eighteenth or nineteenth
century, with an unstated owner." The mention
of Chatto is a mistake: the cards are actually
reproduced from S.W. Singer's fine book of 1816,
where they are captioned 'Oriental Cards on
Ivory in the Cabinet of F. Douce Esq.'71 The
Douce collection is now in the Bodleian Library
at Oxford, but no longer contains the cards
illustrated by Singer and D'Allernagne, though it
has some round ivory cards from a 96-card pack,
and, in a box labelled 'Persian Cards', some
rectangular lacquered cardboard ones very
similar to, though not identical with, those
shown in D'Allemagne's second illustration;
Francis Douce lived from 1757 to 1834. The
cards shown in D'Allemagne's second
illustration, like the rectangular ones now in the
Douce collection, have a decorative arch at the
top of each card; the same is true of a single
rectangular numeral card, of lacquered
cardboard, in the Fournier Museo de Naipes in
Vitoria, listed in the catalogue as Persian."
These arches are lacking in the ivory cards
illustrated by Merlin, and likewise in those
illustrated by both Singer and D'Allernagne; it is
very probable that D'Allemagne was mistaken in
saying that those shown in his second illustration
were of ivory.
The 96-card pack is well known as one of the
types of indigenous playing-card packs, usually
known generically as gwlfffl, used in India: it is
still being made, although all the traditional
types of playing cards and of card games have
been to a large extent ousted by those of
European origin. Traditional Indian playing
cards are all hand-painted, and are usually
circular. Merlin and D'Allemagne were wrong,
however, to imply that a rectangular shape
indicates a non-Indian origin: there are plenty of
surviving rectangular Indian Ganjifa cards. In
particular, the card in the Fournier Museum,
those now in the'Bodleian Library and those
shown in D'Allernagne's second illustration all
10 Henry-René D'Allemagne, Du Khorassan au Pays des
Bock/zliaris: rois rrzois de voyage en Perse, vol. I, Paris, 1911, pp.
163-5, and Les CarlesdjOuer, vol. I, Paris, 1906, pp. 4, 8 and9.
71 Samuel Weller Singer, Researches into the History of P!aying
Cards, London, 1816, facing p. 16 and p. 49.
72 Catalogue no. Persia-4.
closely resemble 96-card packs made in the
Deccan and illustrated in Rudolf von Leyden's
catalogue of Indian cards in the Spielkarten-
Museum at Leinfelden." Furthermore, the style
of the ivory cards shown by Merlin and by Singer
and D'Allemagne appears to be Moghul rather
than Persian. It seems very likely, therefore, that 4
all the cards from 96-card packs claimed as
Persian are in fact from India, it is noteworthy
that D'Allemagne, who was of course deeply
interested in playing cards, does not claim that
he actually saw any such cards during his 4
Persian travels. I am unsure whether the game of
As Nas is still played in contemporary Iran, but
*
it is certain that he 96-card pack is any longer to I
be found there; European playing cards have
\
been adopted, and the word ganju'e/1 or ganjzfeh
ordinarily refers to them. In face of this, one
might well doubt whether the 96-card pack was
ever known in Persia. Nevertheless, as we shall
see, such doubts would be misplaced: the
statements of Merlin and of D'Allemagne that
such a pack was in use in Persia are perfectly
correct, and can be supported by more than the
flimsy testimony of Chardin. It is strange that, so
far as I am aware, no cards from a Persian 96-
card pack have been preserved.
Since they have not, it is best to start with ones
of which there is a plentiful supply, traditional
Indian cards. With the negligible exception of the
cards from Mysore known as Chad cards, of the
special Naksha cards mentioned in footnote 36,
and of certain packs based on Portuguese
r
prototypes, all traditional Indian packs have an
even number of suits, each consisting of ten
numeral cards and two court cards. There are
three main types: one with twelve suits, whose
iconography relates to the famous epic, the
\
Réméyapa; the Daravatéra pack, with ten suits,
each representing one of the incarnations of
Vishnu; and the 96-card pack, with eight suits,
used principally by Muslims and sometimes
referred to as the Moghul pack, with a purely
secular iconography." The word ganjzfa, or some
corruption of it such as gafvlfa, is commonly used
in India to refer to playing cards of all three
types, and, equally, to the principal family of
games played with them. In all the types, each
card has a suit-sign, and the numeral cards, from
73 R. von Leyden, Indite Spielkarten, Leinfelden-
Echterdingen, 1977, see, e.g., no. 42.
74 Nowadays a twelve-suited pack is made in Orissa
consisting of the Dasavatira pack with two additional suits.
 Europe and Asia
1 to 10, are pip cards, their values being
indicated by the number of occurrences of the
suit-sign, often the suits are further distinguished
by background colour. Of the two court cards,
the higher normally represents a King, and is
called Pcids/151/1, M17 or Ré]b; in the Dasavatéra
pack, it represents an incarnation of Vishnu, and
is accordingly often called Avatéra. The lower
court card is called Wazir (Vizier) or Pradhén
(Minister).
Although these Indian packs have a larger
number of suits, a smaller number of court cards
per suit, and different suit-signs from the
European and MamlUk packs, they qualify as
regular packs under the definition of that term
given earlier. Despite the obvious differences, the
Indian packs are so closely related to the
European ones that a connection is undeniable :
the question is only what it is. The existence of a
connection between European cards and Indian
ones becomes even more evident when we look at
the family of games generally known as Ganjifa,
the more important of the two main families of
Indian card games. The other such family,
known generally as Naksha, comprises games of
chance, of the same general type as Vingt-et-Un,
in which the player's aim is to come as close as
possible to a total value of 17 points on the cards
he holds. A preliminary report on these games
was given by Dr Kaushal Gupta in 1978; they are
often played with ordinary Indian playing cards,
and Dr Gupta has discovered a reference to them
in the Hum éiyun-Némeh, relating to the year 1545,
in which, perhaps significantly, the word used for
'playing cards' is not ganjife/z but waraq. In
Europe, perhaps the oldest known game of this
general type is Thirty-One, a game I also
mentioned in the Steele sermon and by Hans
Sachs. Though such games are immensely
widespread, being known also in .Japan and
Korea, their history has been so little studied that
no deductions can be made concerning the
direction of influence between these various areas.
The Ganjifa family, however, consists of trick-
taking games played without trumps and sharing
a number of special features. Whichever type of
pack is used, one invariable feature is the same
peculiarity of card order that we noticed as
prevailing in fifteenth-century Italy and Spain. In
all the suits, the Kings rank highest and the
Ministers the second highest; but, in half the
suits, the 10 follows the Minister, and then the 9,
and so on down to the Ace, whereas, in the other
53
half, the Ace follows the Minister, and then the 2,
and so on down to the 10. It is absolutely
unthinkable that so bizarre a practice should
have arisen independently in different parts of
the world.
Playing cards can have entered Europe only
with one or more games to be played with them.
In view of the dominant position occupied,
among European card games other than pure
gambling games, by those of the trick-taking
category, it would be natural, in any case, to
suppose that trick-taking games were among
those introduced together with playing cards
themselves. Moreover, despite their enormous
variety, almost all trick-taking games, not only in
Europe, but also in China and in India, have
certain common features which suggest that they
are all offshoots from a single stem. One such
feature, all but invariable, is the rule that the
winner of a trick leads to the next trick. We are so
used to this that we hardly notice that other
possibilities are quite conceivable. The lead
might steadily rotate, from trick to trick,
irrespective of who won the tricks, just as, in most
European games, the deal rotates, from round to
round, irrespective of who won the preceding
round. Or, again, a player might continue to lead
as long as he won, and, as soon as he lost, the
lead might then pass to the next player in
rotation, regardless of who had won the last
trick: this is the rule for the deal in most Chinese
games. But we never find either of these perfectly
possible rules: the rule is always that the winner
of a trick leads to the next one. Another nearly
universal feature is that, unless a trump is
played, or when there are no trumps, only a card
of the suit led can win the trick. Not only can
we imagine different arrangements, but they are
occasionally found: for instance, in the games of
je True and Putt, played respectively in France
and, formerly, in England, only the rank counts,
irrespective of suit, and, if there is no card of rank
higher than the rest, no-one wins the trick, this is-
also in large part the rule in the game of Aluette,
played on the western coast of France, and in
that of el Truco, played in Spain and Argentina.
These very rare exceptions serve only to point up
how constant is the usual rule, not only in
European games, but in Chinese and Indian ones
as well. The persistence of these common
features makes it probable that trick-taking
games are ultimately all descended from some
common ancestor.
 Europe and Asia
feature of Indian Ganjifa games is the way the
game begins: the player who holds the King of a
particular suit leads it, together with a low card,
to a double trick, to which the other players all
play two cards; this double trick is automatically
won by the player who led to it, the low card,
called the 'throne' of the King, acquiring the
power to beat any other card. This mode of
opening the game is, again, quite unknown in
Europe, where, in trick-taking games
without bidding, the lead to the first trick
usually belongs to the player next in rotation
after the dealer. A number of writers assert that
Ganjifa games resemble Orb re; but, apart from
their both being trick-taking games, and sharing
the peculiarity about the ranking of the cards in
different suits, there is no similarity at all:
Orb re has both bidding and trumps, which
Ganjifa lacks.
In view of this, there is no reason to postulate
any European influence on the games played in
India with the eight-, ten- and twelve-suited
packs; and it is equally doubtful that those games
are even the remote ancestors of the games
known in Europe. Rather, it seems likely that the
games played in India represent a development,
along a different branch, from some more basic
trick-taking game that formed the common
ancestor of the Indian games and of European
games of this category. This does not in itself rule
out the possibility that this remote common
ancestor originated in India.
It is to be presumed that trick-taking games,
probably along with card games of other types,
entered Europe from the Islamic world together
with playing cards themselves. And since, as we
have seen, European playing cards and card play
probably had no influence on the Indian many-
suited packs and the games played with them,
the coincidence about the peculiarity of card
order is most reasonably explained by supposing
that that practice, too, was derived by European
because that was the suit of the last trick, other than the
trick in Acorns which C won, in which the lead changed
hands.) Finally, if a player held the King and Ober of some
suit, but not the Deuce, he might, when he was legally
entitled to lead that suit, lead the Ober, saying 'Zwang'
('Obligation'): the player holding the Deuce was then
obliged to play it to that trick. This did not apply if he led a
card lower than the Ober or chose not to say 'Zwang'.
Particularly in the rule requiring a player to lead out his
master cards (a rule not applying to the first trick, however),
this game has a certain resemblance to Ganjifa, but this is
presumably fortuitous .
55
card-players from that of Muslim ones. We have
no evidence whatever, at present, for the kind of
card game played in Mamliik Egypt; but one
feature of the Istanbul pack does partially
corroborate the supposition that, in it, the
numeral cards ranked in different orders in
different suits. This is the fact that, while, in
every suit, all the court cards have upper
inscriptions with verses, in Swords it is the three
highest-numbered numeral cards that do so,
while in Coins and Polo-Sticks it is the three
lowest-numbered ones that do (assuming that
the missing Ace of Coins did, or, as is more likely,
that it is the original Ace of that suit that has
been converted into the Viceroy). In the Cups
suit, admittedly, no numeral cards bear upper
inscriptions; but, since most of the inscriptions
suggest that the cards bearing them are good
ones to have, it seems quite probable that, in
Coins and Polo-Sticks, the numeral cards ran
from Ace (high) down to 10 (low), while in
Swords and, presumably, Cups, they ran from 10
(high) down to Ace (low). It has to be conceded
that this does not completely tally with the
practice in Europe with the Latin-suited pack, in
which it was in the suits of Swords and Batons
that the higher-numbered cards beat the lower-
numbered ones, and in Cups and Coins that the
opposite happened; but perhaps this alteration is
one that could fairly easily have occurred in the
course of transmitting a new kind of game.
As we saw, the use of the word kanjifall for the
MamlUk cards strongly Suggests that playing
cards came to Egypt from Persia. We have also
seen that some writers have associated the 96-
card eight-suited pack with Persia as well as with
India. Certainly, this pack, as used in India, has
Persian connections; not only is it sometimes
referred to as the Moghul pack, but the very
names of the suits, in the most usual form of the
pack, are Persian words. These are: stjfd (white),
tizzy (crown), gholizm (slave); shamxher (sword);
su'rk/1 (red), clang (lyre); bharat (document or
cheque); and qimizs/1 (goods or cloth). The names
scad and so°rk/z are sometimes replaced by other
words meaning 'coin', and the suit-signs on these
two suits are a silver and a gold disc respectively.
We find exactly this eight-suited pack mentioned
in Persian sources. Ettinghausen has drawn
attention to two articles on the subject in Persian
journals." In one, by Dr A.N. Manzavi, there is
76 R. Ettinghausen, op. cit., pp. 75-7. The articles are:

56 Part I: History and Mystery
printed a set of 96 quatrains by the poet Ahli
Shirazi, who died in 1536, one for each of the
cards in a pack of ganjifeh: the composition of the
pack is exactly that known to us from the eight-
suited Indian packs. Manzavi also quotes from
two seventeenth-century Persian writers, Mirza
§adiq and T.ughr§i Mashhadi, who wrote about
the cards and the games played with them, but
stated that the popularity of these games was
then waning in Persia, at least one of the games
cited is known from later Indian sources.
According to another article quoted by
Ettinghausen, by Dr B.T. Khans, the game was
formerly believed to have been invented by Mir
Ghiyath ad-Din MansUr Shirazi, who died
between 1533 and 1543, and was popular in the
reign of Shah 'Abbes I (1587-1628), but forbidden
by shah 'Abbes II (1642-1667).
It is here that there is a big lacuna in the
evidence now available to us. It is certain that the
96-card pack was in use in Persia in the early part
of the sixteenth century, it is also clear that it
was known in India during the reign of the
Emperor Akbar the Great (1556-1605). Indeed,
the whole Moghul court was predominantly
Persian in cultural orientation, and Persian
writers and artists were regularly accustomed to
visit the Imperial court. We have as yet no
definite evidence that playing cards were known
at all in India before the sixteenth century; but it
is likely that they were known there well before
that. As we have seen, it is also probable that, by
the first half of the fourteenth century or earlier,
playing cards had entered Egypt from Persia.
The 52-card MarnlUk pack, with its three court
cards per suit and its four suits, can, however,
hardly have been derived from the 96-card pack,
with its two cards per suit and eight suits. It
looks, rather, as though, behind both the 52-card
pack and the 96-card one lay some earlier
evolutionary stage of which no trace has so far
been discovered: say a 48-card pack with four
suits and only two court cards in each suit,
which, in the one case, was enlarged by the
addition of a third court card to each suit, and, in
the other, by doubling the number of suits. There
is no reason to assume that the word garzjifeh
'Ali Naqf Manzavi, 'Ganjafeh-ye Ah1T ShTr8zT', part 1,
Dénesh, no 4, April 1953, pp. 221-8, part 2, ibid, no. 5,
September 1953, pp. 305-8, 'Ali Naqi Manzavi, 'Ganjafeh-ye
shéhid-@ S8diq',
_ D£;N€X/Z, no. 8, October 1954, pp. 459-60;
BehrGz TaqT Kh8'nT, 'Ganjafeh`, Tag/zmi, vol. 13, 1960, pp.
296-300.
.
\
always relates to a pack with eight or more suits, i
E
from the fact that the word was borrowed to
apply to the Mamlfik cards, it is quite likely that
it was earlier used in Persia for some pack with
only four suits." There is, for example, a famous
passage in the Bébur-Némeh, which is written in s
the Chagatai dialect of Mongol, telling how in
1527 the first Moghul Emperor Babur sent a I
pack of ganjifa as a present; B'8bur was Turkish
I
4
by descent and aspired to be Persian in culture."
In view of the date, this is very likely to have been
a 96-card pack; but we cannot take this for 4
granted. 4
The hypothesis that the 52-card MamlUk
pack, as introduced into Europe, resulted by the
addition of an extra court card from an earlier
48-card pack gains in plausibility from the fact
that, while the title 'Viceroy' (rz&'ib malik) was a
standard one under the Mamliik Sultanate, the 1
;
title 'Second Viceroy' (th2'mT mi 'ib or no: 'ib thin?) 9
does not appear to have been used for any actual 8
officials; it looks very much like a completely i
unimaginative piece of nomenclature adopted at
a time when it was desired to add a third court
card to the existing two. A further consideration
of the Istanbul pack prompts a more radical
speculation. The cards now completely missing l
from the set are the Ace and 6 of Coins and the
Second Viceroy and 2 of Swords. The secondary
cards which have been used to replace cards from I
the primary pack lost at an earlier stage are the l
Second Viceroy of Coins, the 9 and 10 of Swords I
and the Second Viceroy and Ace of Polo-Sticks.
Thus only the suit of Cups retains all thirteen 4
cards of the primary pack. At first glance, the lost
primary cards, which need not, and probably
were not, all lost at the same time, seem a fairly
random selection, although it might strike one as
;
77
R. Ettinghausen, op. cit., p. 75, cites a quotation given 5
in the Nezam Dictionary of Sayyid Muhammad 'Ali from a I
I1
fifteenth-century Persian work, the javier-Nérneh of
Muhammad ibn Mansur, of a passage speaking of ganjafeh as i
being carved from turquoise. If this were correct, it would be
the earliest Persian reference to ganjifeh so far known, but I
am informed by Dr K. Gupta that the word used was not
ganjkzfeh and did not refer to playing cards (and also that the
material was actually lapis lazuli).
vs Memoirs of Zehir-ed-Din Muhammed Babul, translated by \
_J. Leyden and W. Erskine, Oxford, 1921, vol. 2, p. 317. The
passage, which related to June, 1527, says that on the night
when B8bur's party left for Agra, 'Mir Ali Korchi was sent
to Tatta to Shah Hassan', Tatta is some Fifty miles East of i
Karachi. It goes on to say that Shah Hassan was 'very fond
of ganjifa', and had asked for some packs, which Babur sent
to him.
9
 Europe and Asia
odd that as many as three Second Viceroys had
i
been lost at one time or another. However, since
it is quite apparent that, originally, the court
cards of the primary pack had no lower
inscriptions giving their rank and suit, and since
the cards now inscribed as the Viceroys of
Swords and Polo-Sticks bear nothing that could
possibly have served as an emblem to mark their
rank, we may regard it as virtually certain that
these cards originally served as the 9 and the Ace
of their respective suits. Moreover, although the
present Viceroy of Coins does bear a decorative
design that could conceivably have been an
indication of its rank, this is not at all the same as
that which appears on the Viceroy of Cups (and,
in a smaller form, on the Second Viceroy of
Cups); it also differs from the Viceroy of Cups in
having only one suit-sign instead of two. It is
therefore very probable that this card was
originally the Ace of Coins. A plausible further
guess is that, just as the 9 of Swords, as bearing
an upper inscription, was pressed into service as
the Viceroy of Swords, so the original 10 of
Swords was converted into the Second Viceroy,
requiring the 9 and 10 of that suit to be borrowed
from another pack. If we make all these
suppositions, it follows that the cards which
needed in the First place to be supplied, either by
direct borrowing or by converting an existing
card and then borrowing to replace it, were the
Viceroy and Second Viceroy of each of the suits
of Coins, Swords and Polo-Sticks. (On this
supposition, subsequent loss must account for
the absence of the primary 6 of Coins and 2 of
Swords, a secondary Ace of Coins to replace the
converted one, and the primary 10 of Swords
converted into a Second Viceroy. Mayer reported
the presence of a very damaged and
unidentifiable card, which does not appear to
have been seen since. The 4 and 10 of Coins have
turned up since Mayer examined the pack.
Now it is too much of a coincidence to suppose
that it was just the two lower court cards of three
of the suits that happened to be lost. We are
virtually driven to the conclusion that they were
not present in the original pack at all, but were
added later, in a rather clumsy way, when a
change of fashion had brought in 52-card packs
with three court cards in each suit. This would
give us, slightly oddly, a pack originally
composed of 46 cards, with three court cards in
the Cups suit, but only one in each of the other
three suits. Bizarre as this may seem, it might
57
explain the absence of upper inscriptions on any
of the numeral cards of the Cups suit: originally,
there were upper inscriptions on the top three
cards - the court cards - of this thirteen-card
suit, and on the top four cards - the King and the
three leading numeral cards - of each of the
other, eleven-card, suits. Another explanation is
indeed thinkable. This is that the pack, in its
original state, comprised only 44 cards, with only
one court card in each suit, and that the work of
supplementing it was undertaken in the first
place by the original artist, or by one skilled
enough accurately to imitate its style, who died I
before completing more than the two additional
court cards of the Cups suit. On this supposition,
the plan of the painter who made the Viceroy and
Second Viceroy of Cups, to indicate the rank of
the new court cards by emblems in the same way
as had originally been done for the Kings, was
abandoned after his death, and the less subtle
method of inscribing their rank and suit adopted. I
E
Since the Islamic cards introduced into Europe
in about 1375 must have had three court cards in
each suit, this might suggest that the primary
pack was originally made somewhat earlier, say
in the first half of the fourteenth century; but I
hesitate to challenge Mayer's expert judgment
assigning it, on stylistic grounds, to the fifteenth.
That the expansion of this particular pack to one
containing three court cards in each suit might
have been undertaken under Turkish auspices
could be suspected in the light of the fact that the
lower inscriptions, giving rank and suit, on the
(primary) Viceroy and Second Viceroy of Cups
are preceded, respectively, by the words Quo/zqulf
and Qara-ja, said by Mayer to be Turkish
personal names, and the fact that the lower
inscriptions on the (secondary) Second Viceroys
of Coins and Polo-Sticks are in ungrammatical
Arabic, omitting the article before the suit-name
(the equivalent of writing, say, 'Jack Hearts').
There is, however, no other evidence known of
the use of playing cards by the Turks in
mediaeval times. In any case, it is clear that the
Istanbul pack has not yet yielded up all its
secrets.
We have left the realm of solidly-based
deduction and entered that of speculation. This
much seems certain: that the 52-card MamlUk
pack and the 96-card Persian and Indian one
must be connected, and that neither can have
been immediately derived from the other. Cn the
face of it, there are two possibilities. One is that
58 Part I: History and Mystery
the regular pack was invented in India, perhaps
in a twelve- or ten-suited form, and that, from
this, every other form of the regular pack was
ultimately derived. On this hypothesis, the pack
was reduced to eight suits by the Muslims in
India, travelled from the Moghul court to Persia,
and was then further reduced to a 48-card, four-
suited, form in Syria or Egypt, later expanded to
a 52-card pack by the addition of an extra court
card. The alternative is that already suggested:
an archetypal 48-card pack, spreading from
Persia westwards to Egypt, w he r e it was
increased to 52 cards, while, in its Persian
homeland, the number of suits was subsequently
doubled to yield the 96-card pack, which then
later spread to India. On this latter hypothesis,
the ten- and twelve-suited Hindu packs would be
the result of a yet further expansion of the pack
that took place in India. This second hypothesis
need not involve that Persia was actually the
birthplace of the regular pack: it could have
arrived there from some other area again, say
somewhere in Central Asia, perhaps originally in
a 44-card form with the King as the only court
card.
The crucial question concerning I ndian
playing cards thus comes to be whether the eight-
suited l\1uslim pack is a demythologised form of
the larger Hindu packs, or whether the latter are
Hinduised versions of it. On the First alternative,
playing cards were indigenous to India, and were
transformed by the Muslims, encountering them
there, into a type palatable to themselves and
stripped of the Hindu iconography they would
have found offensive. To accept this alternative
would therefore be to embrace the first of the two
hypotheses outlined above. On the second
alternative, playing cards were introduced into
India by the Muslims, and later adapted by the
Hindus to forms employing a more congenial
symbolism: to accept this alternative is to
embrace the second of our two hypotheses.
Highly relevant to this question is a celebrated
passage in the A'in-i Akbar? of Abu Fazl 'Allami
which forms the earliest known Indian reference
to playing cards. In this, Akbar is first
described as having used a twelve-suited pack
with which to play card games. This pack is said,
vaguely, to have come down from 'ancient sages'.
Its twelve suits are listed in detail: they do not
79 Abu Fazl 'Allami, A'in-i Akbarz, translated by H.
Bloch ran, Calcutta, 1873, vol. I, pp. 306-8.
correspond to those of any otherwise known form
of pack. The iconography of this pack is largely
secular, but it seems to contain both Hindu and
Muslim elements, as the King of one suit is said to
be the Hindu god Indra, and that of another to be
King Solomon. The passage then goes on to
describe alterations to the pack said to have been
instigated by Akbar himself. This is always
interpreted to mean that he reduced the number
of suits from twelve to eight, although the
passage reads, rather, as though he merely
substituted different suits for the last eight of the
twelve-suited pack. There is, however, very good
reason for the usual interpretation, since the suits
whose invention is ascribed to Akbar correspond
exactly to those of the standard eight-suited form
that were listed earlier. Since, however, we know
that Ahli Shirazi, who died twenty years before
Akbar. at the age of fourteen, came to the throne.
wrote a poem about the 96-card pack with just
these suits, we can be certain that the claim that
Akbar invented them is without justification. The
evidential value of the passage for the theory that
the eight-suited pack arose from a reduction of
the number of suits in an indigenous Indian
twelve-suited pack is therefore slight. We may.
indeed, conclude that, in the second half of the
sixteenth century, a twelve-suited pack was
known in India, and was of reputed antiquity,
but this does not help greatly to solve our
problem.
There simply does not seem at present to be
enough evidence to settle the question definitely
one way or the other, there is only, as it seems to
me, a slight but significant tilt in the balance of
probabilities. The evidence for a Hindu origin of
playing cards is extremely weak. One writer on
the subject, Shastri, reports a tradition that the
Vishnupur variety of the Daxavaléra pack was
invented by the Malla kings of Vishnupur (the
Malta dynasty ended in 1201), and supports this
tradition on the ground that the Buddha
incarnation of Vishnu is not given its orthodox
place in the list of incarnations;80 but traditions
about the invention of playing cards exist
everywhere (they are plentiful in France, for
examples, and, as Fausta Nowotny has pointed
out, there is not really any ordering of the suits,
and hence of the incarnations, in the pack.8'
80 Haraprasad Shastri, 'Note on Visnupur Circular Cards ',
journal of the Aszahc Society of Bengal, vol. LXIV, 1895, part I,
pp. 284-5.
81 Fausta Nowotny, 'Die indischen Spielkarten des
 Europe and Asia
Another writer, Clerk, states bluntly that the
pack was invented in the seventh century or
earlier, without giving any evidence.52 In fact,
however, we can see quite easily that the
Dasaz/a15alra pack cannot have been the original
form of Indian playing-card pack, since, in a
pack in which the highest card of each suit
represents one of the incarnations of Vishnu, the
Minister is iconographically quite superfluous;
an incarnation of God obviously does not have a
Prime Minister, and no one would think of
including one unless he were making a somewhat
forced adaptation of a different idea. Clearly the
general form of this pack was determined by the
need to follow the model of other packs in which
each suit was headed by a King and his Minister;
this supposition is clinched by the fact that the
highest card is often called, not avatéra, but raja.
Rosenfeld has on several occasions argued that
playing cards were originally derived from
Indian four-handed chess, a thesis advanced by
others before him. The theory has the
considerable merit of providing some
explanation for the invention of the regular
pack; of why (in forms known outside Indian) it
has four suits, and of why each suit is divided into
court cards (corresponding to the King and the
major pieces and numeral cards (corresponding
to the Pawns).83 The explanation thus provided
does not, indeed, seem very convincing. Chess and
card games work on quite different principles: in
particular, in chess all the pieces of one colour
belong to one player, whereas there is no card
game in which each player is assigned all the cards
of some one suit. To this it may be replied that
pieces used in one game may be adapted for use in
a quite different game: but here the
correspondence between the chess pieces and the
cards seems exceedingly shaky. Not only do we
not know of any indigenous type of Indian
playing-card pack with only four suits; but, in
Indian four-handed chess, each player has a King,
three major pieces and four (undifferentiated)
Pawns, whereas, in every indigenous type of
playing-card pack, each suit has a King and only
one other court card, and ten, differentiated,
numeral cards. (Again, we must make an
exception for the Chad packs of Mysore, which
Museums fair Vélkerkunde in Wien', Archiv fair Vélkerkunde,
vol. II, 1947, pp. 1-26.
82 S.I. Clerk, 'The art of ganjifa cards', Modem Review, vol.
66, 1946, Calcutta, pp. 435-6.
83 See the articles cited in footnote 34.
I
.£
59
are late and of no historical importance.) Some
writers supply an answer to this objection by
simply inventing the type of pack which, on their
theory, ought to have existed: thus Bachmann, an
earlier adherent of the theory that would have
playing cards to have been derived from chess,
alleges that there was an early form of Indian
pack, with 120 cards, called the Chaturanga (it.
chess) pack, a statement that appears quite
groundless.8'* Rosenfeld himself has put the theory
to use to explain, not merely the origin of the
regular pack, but of the very idea of playing cards,
in the generic sense: he states that early Indian
chess pieces were circular, with figures painted on
the top, so that they needed only to be made flatter
to take the form of Indian playing cards.85 This
statement, too, appears to be without foundation.
Chinese chessmen indeed have this form, save
that they bear, not pictorial designs, but written
names, but neither of the great historians of
chess, Antonius van der Linde and H._J.R.
Murray, makes any allusion to such round
chessmen in India; certainly, by the time that
chess spread from India to Persia, the pieces were
like modern European ones, save that they were
more abstract in design.
The theory that Indian playing cards
developed from chess pieces should be set aside
as baseless. For the rest, we have no direct
evidence that playing cards were known at all in
India before the sixteenth century; but, then, we
have no direct evidence that they were known in
Persia before that century. The riddle of the
origin of the regular pack remains unresolved:
there is no proof or disproof of either of our two
84 Kurt Bachmann, Die Spielkarte, ire Geschichte in 15
jahrhunderten, Altenburg, 1932, p. 7. When writing this
booklet, Bachmann was an adherent of the theory of the
origin of playing cards in the ninth century in what is now
Sinkiang, a theory first propounded by Engelbert Huber in
his 'Zur Kulturgeschichte der Spielkarten', Fertschrzft .sum 72.
Skatkongress in Altenburg, Thiiringen, Altenburg, 1928, pp. 17-
32, and one that appears to be a complete fantasy.
Bachmann later embraced the theory of an Indian origin. In
articles expounding this belief, 'Zur Entwicklung der
Spielkarten und der Kartenspiele und defen Beziehungen
zur Skatstadt Altenburg (Their.)', in Beilriige our
Sprachwirrenrchaft und Volkrkunde: Festschrzft fir Ernst Oss, ed.
Karl Friedrich MUller, Lahr, 1951, pp. 308-73, and 'Neue
Forschungsergebnisse zur éiltesten Geschichte der
Spielkarten und des Kartenspieles in Asien und Europa',
Forrchungen und Fortsrhritte, 26. Jahrgang, Heft 5/6, 1950, pp.
63-8, he reiterated the assertion concerning the Chaturanga
pack.
is This statement is also to be found in Bachmann.
 60 Parzf I: Hixtoty and Mystery
hypotheses; either involves assumptions we have
no way of justifying. If the regular pack was
invented in India, perhaps in a twelve-suited
form, and so passed to Persia and then to the
Arab world, suffering in the process a reduction
in the number of suits first to eight and then to
four, we cannot place its invention any later than
the early thirteenth century if we are to allow
time for these developments. But, equally, the
alternative theory, that the eight-suited pack was
introduced from Persia to India by the Muslims,
and that the Hindu forms, with yet more suits,
were a later development, involves assuming the
previous existence in Persia of a 48-card four-
suited pack of which all trace has vanished. But if
we have to choose between the two theories, the
latter seems to me preferable. For one thing, the
theory of the Indian origin of the regular pack
involves that the generic idea of playing cards
was invented twice over, in India and in China;
although such independent inventions do occur,
it is better not to postulate them without
necessity. For another, the word Gary?/o» used
throughout India for playing cards of the
indigenous kind and for the games played with
them, appears to be borrowed from Persian and
therefore suggests that it was through Persian
influence that playing cards first came to India;
I
the same appears to hold good of many of the
terms used in the game.
The theory of the Indian invention of the
regular pack also entails the independent
invention, twice over, of trick-taking games. The
category of trick-taking games does not occupy
the dominant position among Chinese card
games that it does among European ones. Most
Chinese card games, other than pure gambling
games, belong to one or the other of two
categories that have played a comparatively
minor role in the history of the European card
games. One is the category of draw-and-discard
games, of which Ma Jong is only one of many
examples. The fundamental principle is that
each player in turn draws one card from the stock
or from the preceding player's discard, and then
discards one card, face up: the winner is the
player who first forms a hand wholly composed
of certain special combinations of cards. Mahjong
happens to be the one Chinese game of this type
that has attained popularity in the West (and in
Japan as well): but there is an immense variety of
such games in China, played with domino cards,
chess cards and money cards as well as with Ma
Jong tiles, the great Vietnamese game of V6-£6rrz,
played with a Vietnamese version of the money
pack, is also of this type. The draw-and-discard
principle will be familiar to every card player to-
day in Europe or the Americas as that underlying
all the games of the vast Rummy family (save
that, in Rummy games, it is often lawful for a
player to 'go out', bringing play in that round to
an end, before obtaining a hand wholly
composed of the relevant combinations, i.e.
sequences and threes and fours of a kind).
Indeed, all Western draw-and-discard games
belong to the Rummy family and are thus
connected to one another by descent.8'" The
surprising fact is, however, that it is only in the
present century that the draw-and-discard
principle has become known to most European
card players: when W.H. Wilkinson, in 1891.
induced the British cardmaking Firm of Charles
Goodall to issue a special pack of cards to play
the game of Khanhoo, adapted from a Chinese
draw-and-discard game played with the three-
suited money pack, he was able to write in the
accompanying booklet of rules, 'The principle of
this old game is hardly known in the West.' lt
seems likely that games of the Rummy type were
played in Spain in the nineteenth century; but if
so, they never achieved any prominence there.
and, with the possible exception of Portugal, did
not spread to other European countries.
Nowadays Rummy games are popular all over
as The kind of draw that occurs in Poker is Rio! an example
of what is here meant by 'the draw-and-discard principle:
only confusion results from calling Poker and As Nas
'rummy games', as is done by Alan \Vykes, loc. cit. In
games of the Poker type, there is usually at most one draw
and discard, more than one card may be discarded at a
time, and the corresponding number drawn, the discard
precedes the draw, and the discard is made face down. other
players not having the opportunity to claim an opponents
discard instead of drawing from the stock. As the draw-arid-
discard. principle is here being understood, the following
features are essential: at his turn, each player draws and
discards only one card, and must do so as long as play
continues, he discards after drawing, not before, he discards
face up, and an opponent has the option of taking his last
discard instead of drawing from the stock, at least if he can
make a scoring combination with it, and play continues in
this manner, in rotation, until one player 'goes out'. Poker
would be tame under a system of fixed scores for winning
combinations: its interest lies in the choice the players have
whether to raise, stay in or drop out. This is not at all true of
draw-and-discard games, in which there is almost always a
fixed schedule of payments, depending either on the hand
of the player going out, or on those of his opponent or
opponents, or both.
 Europe and Asia
Europe, many countries having developed their
own national form: but they originally arrived as
an importation from the United States in the
period after 1910 and particularly in the 1920s, a
new wave of invaders arriving from South
America in the 1950s in the form of the Canasta
games, a branch of the Rummy family.
The form from which all other Rummy games
have derived was one known in the United States
as Cooncan: this was a two-handed game played
with a 40-card pack, omitting the 8s, 9s and 10s,
and treating the Jack as consecutive to the 7, a
player could take his opponent's discard only if
he could make a sequence or set with it, play
ended only when one player, without making a
final discard, had disposed of all of his cards in
sequences or sets of three or four of a kind, and
there was a simple score for thus going out,
unaffected by the cards remaining in the
opponent's hand. Cooncan was first described in
print in 1897 by R.F. Foster in the first edition of
his Foster iv Complete Hoyle, under the name
Conquian he, too, remarked that it was a game
'quite different from any other in its principles?
According to Foster, it had been popular in the
South-Western States since about 1860.88 In
I
1900, Foster published an article about it in a
New York paper," and remarked later that the
letters from correspondents which it provoked
showed that the game was gradually becoming
known in the Eastern United States. On Foster's
account, the next development took place in
about 1908 'somewhere in the West'; the game
was adapted for four players, using the full 52-
card pack, and the new form was named 'Rum'
or 'Rummy'. Foster published another
newspaper article about this variation," which
was reprinted in several English papers; the
game was taken up in England with even more
enthusiasm than in the United States, and Foster
reports that by 1912 the Bath Club in London
was playing it with two full packs and two jokers,
and had printed a set of rules for that form."1 The
variations called Poker Rum and Poker Gin, the
87 Pp. 448-52. The next account, under the name Coon
Can, seems to have been in The Standard Hoyle, New York,
1899, pp. 502-3.
as R,F. Foster, Cfwnran (C0nquz6n). a (f are of Card; ago
railed 'Rum ', New York, 1913, p. ix.
as The New York Sun for 23 December 1900.
(10 The New York Sun for 10 September 1911.
91 All this will be found in R.F. Foster, Caorzcan (Conquzén),
New York, 1913, p. x.
l
t
l
61
latter being the game later immensely popular as
Gin Rummy, were described by Foster in the
1914 edition of his Complete Hoyle; I do not know if
he was the first to describe them, but they cannot
have been invented long before.92 Their names do
not indicate any derivation from Poker, but were
based on a faint analogy: their novelty consisted
in the fact that a player's sequences and sets were
not revealed until the final show-down.
Foster stated that Cooncan had entered the
United States from Mexico, its name being a
corruption of the Mexican name 'Conquian
Almost all American authorities, for instance
Geoffrey Mott-Smith and A.A. Ostrow, have
accepted Foster's account of the historical origin
and development of Rummy."3 We are indeed
fortunate that so careful an observer recorded
that development at the very time it was taking
place.94 The origin of Conquian itself remains
<12 Fortert Complete Hoyle, 1914, pp. 691-2. A.H. Morehead
and (I. Mott-Smith, Hoyle K Rule; 0/'Game.r, 20th edition, New
York, 1962, p. 113, date the invention of Gin Rummy to
1909, which seems rather early, if Foster's dating of the
invention of 52-card Rummy is correct, they ascribe it to
Elwood T. Baker, of New York.
93 See, et., A.H. Morehead and (1, Mott-Smith, op. cit.,
p. 103. The story, found in some sources, et. Richard L.
Frey, Awarding to Hoyle, New York, 1963, p. 78, that the
name 'Rump was originally adopted in England, is at
variance with Foster's account, and is almost certainly
w r ong.
<14 The one dissentient voice is that of John Scarne. He
denies that Rummy is derived from Cooncan, which he
writes 'Coon Can', he further maintains that the name
'Conquian' is a corruption of 'Coon Can', rather than vice-
versa, and that the game itself originated in the United
States. Despite Scarne's sneers at Albert Morehead and
A.A. Ostrow, the derivation of Rummy from Cooncan is
hardly to be called a hypothesis: it is plain to see in the record
provided by the card-game books. As already stated,
Conquian was First described by Foster in 1897, and Scarne
observes that, as Cooncan, it appeared in an American Hoyle
of 1900; the form for three or four players using a 52-card
pack, was first described, under the name 'Rum', in Foster's
newspaper article of 1911, the U.S. Playing-Card Company
shortly afterwards issuing a set of rules for it under the same
name, Scarne triumphantly cites the description of Whiskey
Poker from the American Hoyle of 1875 as revealing the true
ancestor of Rummy (Scarce on C1 rrlr, New York, 1955, p. 37).
Foster was well aware of Whiskey Poker, describing it in all
Hoyle. Though, in his booklet on
edi t i ons of his Complete
Cooncan or Rum, he does not mention it, he apparently
thought it had played a part in the development of Rummy
out of the original Cooncan, since in the 16th edition of
Of cial Rules of Card Games, Cincinnati, 1912, edited by him,
he included an account of Rum with the note 'This is a
combination of Conquian and Whiskey Poker' (p. 15),
Actually, it seems unlikely that Whiskey Poker had
62 Part I: History and Mystery
something of a mystery. Most card games played
in lYlexico are of Spanish origin, and the
presumption is that this is true of Conquian also;
but I know of no direct evidence for Conqui8n's
having been played in Spain. The Spanish-
playing-card manufacturers, Heraclio Fournier,
issue two booklets, juegos de naives erpanl0!er and
fuego de nazilJes exlrarzjeros, two Rummy games
being included in the former under the names of
Remigio or Rabino and ChinchOn. The non-
Spanish origin of Remigio is evidenced by its
being played with 52 cards, Fournier even put
out a hybrid 52-card Spanish-suited pack, with
English indices (the Caballo thus bearing the
index 'QI for playing Rummy and Poker.
a
anything to do with the matter, its resemblance to Rummy
is quite superficial, and the essential principles were already
present in Cooncan. Scarne quotes the 1914 edition of
Foxier 's Complete Hoyle, and jeers at his derivation of the name
'Cooncan" from `Conquian'; he asserts, on the contrary,
that Coon Can was created in the American South. The
reason why Coon Can, 'born in Dixie', has turned up in
Mexcio is 'because it has followed the American Negro
wherever he goes' (p, 36). Scarne offers no evidence that it
was in 'Dixie', rather than, as Foster says, in the South-
West, that Cooncan was first played in the U.S,A.,
moreover, 'the American Negro' has not, so far as I know,
gone to Mexico very much. Scarne is obviously hinting that
the name 'Coon Can' is connected with the exceedingly
offensive racial epithet 'coons. It would be incredible that
black people, in the American South or elsewhere, should
employ for a favorite game a name incorporating such a
term, that Scarne could make so tasteless a suggestion
demonstrates his utter insensitivity equally to people and to
probabilities. He fur then comments, 'As for the game's
being Spanish because played with a deck of forty cards,
rubbish' ', and goes on to remark that card games are played
in the United States with a great variety of shortened packs.
If he understood the first principles of card-game history, he
would realise that this is because the U.S.A. contains
immigrants from many European countries, who have
brought their games with them. There are games played in
France with the 32-card pack which are nevertheless of
Spanish origin, although the 32-card pack is unknown in
Spain, this is because the games have been adapted to the
French form of shortened pack. But whenever we find, in
some country, a game played with a variety of shortened
pack that is generally unfamiliar in that country, but well
known in certain other countries, it is a sure sign that the
game originated in one of those other countries. It strains
credulity past breaking point to be told that, with no
influence from any Latin country, Americans chanced to
invent a game in which the 8s to 10s were omitted and the 7
was treated as in sequence with the Jack, and would do so
even if we did not know the game to be played in Mexico,
which Scarne does not deny. The argument dismissed by
Scarne as 'rubbish' is in fact conclusive as showing Foster to
have been right in saying that Conquian came from Mexico
to the United States and not conversely. . four hundred years', but gives no authority for this.
ChinchOn, on the other hand, is played with a 40-
or 48-card pack, and thus may antedate the
Rummy invasion from the United States. 3'
i3
Conquian is closer to the Chinese draw-and- g
n
discard games than are the later forms of
Rummy; but it is hard to be sure whether the \
draw-and-discard principle was invented
independently in Mexico or in Spain, or whether
it was originally derived from Chinese games. If
the former, Conquian may be of Mexican rather
than of Spanish origin, and in either case may
not have been invented before the nineteenth
century. If the basic principle of the game was
derived from China, the Spaniards may have
learned it from the Portuguese, probably in the
sixteenth or seventeenth century. Even in the
latter case, it is plain that the idea did not make
much impact on card play in the Iberian
peninsula, and none anywhere else in Europe.
until Rummy went into a nova state in the early
years of this century. The fact that, until the
present century, European card players were
almost entirely ignorant of the draw-and-discard
principle, the basis of an enormous number of
Chinese card games, corroborates our earlier
conclusion that it was not through direct Chinese
influence that playing cards entered Europe.
The other main category of Chinese card
games is that which we may label 'Fishing
games, after the name usually used for them in
China. In these games, a number of cards lie face
up on the table, forming a pool, if a player, at his
turn, has in his hand a card matching one of
those in the pool, he uses it to capture that card,
setting both on one side; if he cannot make a
capture, he has to contribute a card from his
hand to the pool. At the end of play, each
player's score is determined from the cards he
has captured, according to the values of the
individual cards, often with premiums in
addition for having special combinations of cards
among those captured. The mechanics of
Chinese fishing games are always the same. At
the outset, a fixed number of cards are laid out
face up to form the pool, each player is dealt a
hand, and the remaining cards are left face down
to form the stock. At each player's turn, he first
plays a card from his hand, either to make a
capture, or to the pool, as already described; he
99 Albert A. Ostrow, The Complete Card Player, New York
and London, 1945, p. 540, states that Conquién is 'Spanish
in origin and is said to have a history dating back at least
n
 Europe ana' Asia
then turns up the top card of the stock; if it
matches a card in the pool, he captures that card
with it, and adds both to those he was won; if
not, he places it in the pool. The number of cards
in the stock is always the same as the total
number of cards in the players' hands taken
together. A great many fishing games exist in
China, played with different types of cards, and
also in Iapart, where they include Hachi-hachi
and most other games played with the liana fuda
(flower cards).% Certain games of this
category are played in Europe, such as Casino,
3 moderately well known in Britain, Scopa,
immensely popular throughout Italy, Callabra,
and a few others, some appear to have originated
in the Middle East. The mechanics of the
European games differ from those of the Chinese
and Japanese ones in that there is no drawing
from the stock, instead, there are repeated deals
throughout the game whenever the players'
hands become exhausted. Despite this difference,
the analogy is recognised by the Chinese; when
Casino was introduced into China in this
century, it was immediately named 'Fishing', like
so many indigenous games."7 It does not appear
th'at this category of games is very old in Europe,
certainly it has played little part in the history of
European card games.
Both draw-and-discard games and fishing
games are played in China with every variety of
playing cards: with chess cards, with money
of The hzma Buda are by far the best known of the
8
1
indigenous types of playing cards still used in Japan, They
1
a
form a 48-card pack, divided into twelve sets of four, each
3
set representing a month and symbolised by a flower or
3
plant. in the fishing game played with it, a player may
capture from the pool a card of a given month with another
card of the same month. The origin of the pack is uncertain,
a pack of the same general type, but with a greater number
of cards, is to be found in the Cary Collection in the
Beinecke Library at Yale University, It is at first sight
puzzling that many Japanese accounts of the game state
that the pack is derived from the 48-card Portuguese pack. It
is, however, undoubtedly the case that playing cards were
first introduced into ]apart by the Portuguese, that the
earliest Japanese playing cards were of the Portuguese type
and that descendants of the Portuguese pack are still
produced and used in Japan to this day. If we suppose that
fishing games (themselves of Chinese origin) were first
played in Japan with some form of the 48-card Portuguese-
derived pack, a card in the pool being able to be captured by
one of the same rank, it becomes intelligible that, later, a
pack with the structure of the izarzafuda pack should have been
devised to play the same game, replacing the four-suited
Portuguese one.
L) T
owe this information to Dr David Hawkes.
>
63
cards and with dominoes and domino cards.
Trick-taking games, on the other hand, exist in
far fewer numbers and do not constitute a
characteristic form of Chinese card play. Despite
this, one of the oldest and most celebrated of
Chinese games, that of T'ien Chiu (Heaven and
Nine) which is played with dominoes by four
J
players and goes back to at least the early
twelfth century, belongs to this category." This
seems surprising, because dominoes do not fall
naturally into suits; but, for the purpose of this
game, the Chinese domino set is divided, by pure
convention, into two unequal suits, the military
suit and the civil suit, within each of which a
conventional ranking is imposed. The game is, of
course, played without trumps, but the two
characteristic features of Indian and European
trick-taking games both prevail: the winner of
each trick leads to the next one, and a trick can
be won only by a domino of the suit led. Like
most European games, and unlike the Indian
ones, the player who leads to a trick is subject to
no constraints restricting which domino he may
lead.
lt is conceivable that the idea of trick-taking
games was independently invented in India and
in China, but it is more probable that it had a
single origin. If so, then the theory of an Indian
origin either of the regular pack or of playing
cards in the generic sense must be finally
rejected. It remains just possible that the Chinese
four-suited money pack was the ultimate
ancestor of the regular pack: that it spread
westwards from China, acquiring on the way
definite suit-signs for the upper two suits, a tenth
vs On p. 66 of his 'Chinese origin of playing cards', The
vol. VIH, 1895, pp. 61-78, W.H.
Amenzran <1 nllLn//Jolngirt,
Wilkinson gives a translation of a passage from the
seventeenth-century dictionary Cheng tail' Fung which, as he
remarks, had often been cited by earlier Western writers
who completely misinterpreted it as referring to the
invention of playing cards, In this passage, it is given as a
'common legend' that in 1120 an official appealed to the
Emperor for a ruling on the game of Ten e/ziu. The passage
goes on to give, as fact rather than as legend, a cursory
description of the game as played at the time when the
Imperial ruling was supposedly asked for. It further remarks
that, in the time of Kao Tsung (1127-1163), pattern sets
were issued by imperial edict, to regulate the composition of
the set of tiles used for the game, 'these', it says, 'are now
known throughout the Empire as Ku [2'ai', that is, as bone
P'az or dominoes. As W'ilkinson stresses, it concludes with
the warning that it should not be inferred that it was at this
period that games of this kind were invented. Then Chiu thus
dates from at least the early twelfth century, and possibly
earlier yet.
 64 Part I: Hixfory and Mystery
numeral card in each suit, and first one and then
two court cards.99 Since that leaves only about a
century for such an extensive evolution to have
occurred, this does not seem the most likely
possibility. A guess that seems to me more
plausible is that, with the spread of the Chinese
invention of paper, the use of the domino cards,
and, with them, the idea of trick-taking games,
travelled to somewhere in Central Asia, or to
northern Persia, and that it was there that the
idea first arose of devising a set of cards
displaying a natural division into four suits in
place of the artificial division into two suits
imposed on the dominoes. There is no way of
saying what the original suit-signs would have
99 A special type of playing cards was formerly used in
Korea, though they are now apparently obsolete, They are
amazingly long and thin, and form a pack of 80 cards,
divided into eight suits, or sometimes only of 60, divided
into six suits, each consisting of nine numeral cards and a
General. The suits and ranks are indicated by highly
distorted characters. In the later versions of the pack, the
suit-designations have disappeared, having no significance
in the gambling games for which the pack was principally
been. Perhaps one was a coin, and another a
symbol representing a military commander of a
or unit of 10,000. Such a pack could then
trimer
have spread further west, to Persia and on to
Egypt and eventually to Europe, meanwhile
giving place, in Persia, to the eight-suited pack
which then went, with the Moghuls or with
earlier Muslim rulers, to India. It could also. at
the same time, have returned to China, to he
adapted, by a misunderstanding or a deliberate
reinterpretation of the suit-symbols. t o t h e
money pack. But here we are once more deep
i nt o t he realm of speculation; as already
observed, the problem of the origin of the regular
pack is still a long way from being solved.
used. Culin considered this pack the archetypal form of the
regular pack, giving rise to all others, but this must surely be
dismissed as a fantasy. There is no correspondence between A
the names of the suits in this pack and in the Chinese money
pack, and its origin must be left in obscurity, but it may be
regarded as indicating that it might have been natural to add
a single 'court card' to the nine numeral cards of the money
pack suits. Note that in both Chinese and Korean chess. our
King is replaced by a General.
s
CHAPTER 4
When and Where the Tarot Pack was Invented
It was formerly believed that, in Europe, the
Tarot pack is as old as the regular pack. Indeed,
some have thought that it is older: the assertion is
still to be met with that the regular pack was
originally derived from the Tarot pack by
subtraction. It is clear from our study of the
relations between European and Oriental cards
that this latter belief must be incorrect. The
regular pack came to Europe from the Islamic
world, but the Tarot pack is a European
invention: there is no trace of the existence in
Egypt, Persia, India or China of anything in the
least resembling the Tarot pack* This naturally
leads us to expect the Tarot pack to have
appeared some time later than the introduction
of playing cards into Europe: as a variant on the
ordinary type of playing-card pack, it would
hardly have been devised until the novelty of the
latter had had time to wear off. One ground that
used to be advanced for the contrary hypothesis
/3; was the belief that the word rzaibi referred to
Tarot cards, while Carle, cartule, etc., referred to
cards of the regular pack: but this belief was
conclusively refuted in 1900 by Robert Steele,
who showed that Italian rabbi, like Spanish
naiver, was used simply to mean 'playing cards',
Tarot cards being known in fifteenth-century
1 Once again, an exception should be made for the 'Chad'
cards of Mysore. These were devised by Krishnaraj Odeyar
(1794-1868) after his deposition in 1830 by the British from
the throne of Mysore. Although several of the special forms
of pack he devised are augmented packs, in the sense of
regular packs to which additional cards, not belonging to
any suit, have been added, it is obvious that so late an
addition to the repertoire of Indian playing-card packs has
no historical significance. See Rudolf von Leyden, C'had.' the
Playing Cards 0f Mysore (India), privately produced, 1973.
Italian as Orion# .2 More recently, Mr Jan
Bauwens has claimed that a pack of playing
cards recorded in the Register of Duke
Wenceslas of Brabant as having been bought for
the Duke and Duchess was a Tarot pack, on the
ground that it contained 78 cards;3 but a
reference to the original entry reveals that neither
it nor any of the numerous later similar entries
contains any mention of the number of cards in
the packs bought or played with, nor anything
else to suggest that these were not
straightforward regular packs.'*
Much more frequently met with as an
argument for a.. early date for the invention of
the Tarot pack is that relating to a famous
fragment of a Fifteenth-century hand-painted
Tarot pack in the Bibliotheque Nationale in
Paris: this comprises seventeen cards, namely the
jack of Swords, the Fool and all the usual
triumph cards except the Bagatto, the Popess,
the Empress, the Wheel, the Devil and the Star.
The Abbé Menestrier published in 1704 an entry
from the account-book of King Charles VI of
France recording the payment in 1392 of '56 sols
parisis' to the painter jacquemin Gringonneur
for three packs of playing cards.5 In 1842, M.C.
2 Robert Steele, 'A notice of the Ludus Triumphorum and
some early Italian card games', Arc/zaeotogia, vol. 57, 1900,
pp. 185-200.
3 In a booklet accompanying a reproduction of the
MamlUk pack from Istanbul published in 1973 by S.A,R.L.
Aurelia Books, of Louvain and Brussels.
4 The entry is cited in A. Pinchart, Recherches sur her eartes a`
Bauer et teurfabrreatton en Belgique, Brussels, 1870.
5 Menestrier, 'Des Principes des sciences et des arts
disposes en forme de jeux', Bibtiot/zéque eurieuse et instructive de
II,
divers ouvrages aneiens et modernizes de tittérature et dei arts, vol.
Trévoux, 1704, p. 174.
66 Part I: History and A/Iyslery
Leber proposed that the cards in the
Bibliotheque Nationals came from one of the
packs painted by Gringonneur and this opinion
won such wide acceptance that the cards came to
be known as the 'Tarots do Charles VI'. If this
were correct, they would be by far the oldest
surviving Tarot cards, and, not only should we
have to say that the Tarot pack came into
existence within two decades of the arrival of
playing cards in Europe, but France would
appear to have a better claim to have been the
country of their origin than Italy. In fact,
however. there is no shred of evidence to connect
the Bibliotheque Nationale pack with
Gringonneur: Chatto,7 la/Ierlin* and
D'Allemagne" all ascribe the cards to Italian
workmanship. VV.L. Schreiber is very specific,
assigning them to Ferrara in the third quarter of
the Fifteenth century. *'0
Another piece of evidence cited in a great
many books and articles on playing cards was first
presented by Count Leopoldo Cicognara in his
book of 1831 111 a portrait in Bologna, bearing the
inscription 'Francesco Antelminelli Castracani
Fibhia, Prince of Pisa, Montegiori and Pietra
Santa, and lord of Fusecchio, son of Giovanni, a
native of Castruccio, Duke of Lucca, Pistoia,
Pisa, having fled to Bologna and presented
himself to Bentivogli, was made Generalissimo of
the Bolognese armies, and was the first of this
family, which was called in Bologna "dalle
Fibbie". He married Francesca, daughter of
Giovanni Bentivogli. Inventor of the game of
Tarocchino in Bologna, he had from the XIV
Reformatories the privilege of placing the Fibbia
arms on the Queen of Batons and those of his
wife on the Queen of Coins. Born in the year
1360, he died in the year 1419.' On the strength
of this inscription, Count Cieognara named
Castracani Fibbia as the inventor of the game of
tarocrlti. Commenting on this, Carlo Lozzi cited
" MC. Leber` 'l8tudes historiques sur les cares 51 jouerl,
.1{errzoz7e.r ale la Soeieté /Les Anliquaifer ale Frarzee,new series, vol.
6, 1842, pp. 256-348.
7 \'Villiam Andrew Chatto, Faclr and S/Jeeulalions on the
Urzgins and History of Playing Cards, London, 1848.
8 R. Merlin, L Urzgifze des carles ajauer: Rechereher nozwelles
.vurlex nazbzs, les raveN el .rwlesaulres eljyécer de carter, Paris, 1869.
<1 Henry-Réné D'Allemagne, Lex Carter ajouer du XIVe au
XXevzérl€, two volumes, Paris, 1906.
10 W.L. Schreiber, Die allexlefz Sbzelkarterz, Strasbourg 1937,
p. 101.
11 Leopoldo Cicognara, gllemarie Speltanti Alla Styria Della
Calmgralia, Prate, 1831.
with approval an entirely just observation by L.
Zdekauer that the inscription does not attribute
to Fibbia the invention of the game of tarordzi in
general, but only of that particular variety of it
known as Zarorc/zino and peculiar to Bologna.'2 As
we shall see, the diminutive ending relates to the
use in this variant game of a shortened pack, in 1
which the 2 to 5 are omitted from every suit. Quite
evidently, such a shortened pack must be derived
from the full 78-card pack, and not the other way
around, so that, if Francesco Fibbia really had
invented the larorclzino pack some time before his
death in 1419, the ordinary Tarot pack from
which it was derived must have been in existence
for a certain period before that; hence, if the
inscription is to be believed, the Tarot pack must
have been devised by 1400 at the very latest.
Doubt was cast upon the very existence of this
painting by Robert Steele in his article ofl900,13
and in this he was followed by Miss Gertrude
Moakley in her book."* However. in another
article written in the very next year, Steele
acknowledged its existence, speaking of 'the
famous inscription on the portrait of Castracani
Fibbia' and stating that 'the portrait is now in
the Palazzo Pallavicini in Bologna`. 35 It is not to
Steele's credit that, in this article. he did not
mention and withdraw his accusation against I
Count Cicognara. The existence of the portrait
was confirmed by G.B. Comelli in an article of 4
19096 It is somewhat surprising that doubt
about a point so relatively easily investigated
should have been allowed to persist for so
long
In fact, the portrait does exist, and tallies
completely with Count Cicognara's description
of it, including the inscription. It is, however.
far from being contemporary with its subject;
by its style, it is to be assigned to the seven-
12 Carlo Lozzi, 'Le Antic he Carte do Giuoeo La
Bzlulzr/lza, vol. 1, 1899-1900, pp. 37-46.
13 R. Steele, op. cit.
14 Gertrude K/loakley, The Taro! Cards Painted by Boniface
Bernliofor llzr Visranlz-Sf0r,3a Family, New York, 1966.
14 Robert Steele, 'Early playing cards, their design and
de(1oration', journal of the Royal Society of Arts, vol. 49, 1900-
1901, pp. 317-23; see p. 319.
!" G.B. Comelli, 'It Governo "l\1isto" in Bologna dal 1507
al 1797 e je Carte do Giuoeo del can. Nlontieri', 1-llti e
ilfemwie Della Reals Depulazlone dz Sioria Patria be je Prozirzlie
Della Romagna, series 3, vol. 27: 1909; see p. 3.
17 See M. Dummett, 'A note on Cicognara', journal of llze
Playing-Card Sorzkly, vol. II, no, 1, August 1973, pp, 14-17
(original issue), pp. 23-32 (reissue), and 'Nlore about
Cieognara', ibid., vol. V, no. 2, November 1976, pp. 26-34,
 When and Where the Tarot Pack was Invented
teeth century, and probably to the second half
of that century. As recorded by Count Cicognara,
it shows Prince Fibbia holding a pack of tarocro
Bolognese cards, some of which are falling to
the floor: among them can be seen the Queen
of Batons, bearing the Fibbia arms, and the
Queen of Coins, bearing the Bentivoglio arms.
The inscription is as quoted by Cicognara;
but it appears that the original inscription was
painted over and a new version painted on top,
the original one having lacked the sentence
ascribing to Prince Fibbia the invention of
and recording the privilege granted to
tfzrocr/zzno
him of placing his arms and those of his wife on
the two Queens. The sentence may have been
added to explain the presence of the playing
cards in the picture."
A tarorro Bolognese pack in the British Museum,
!" The portrait can be seen at the palazzo Fibbia, 14, via
(Jalliera, Bologna. I am indebted for its location to the kind
help of Signor Giancarlo Roversi, an expert on the history of
the city, The palazzo was formerly known as the palazzo
Felicini-Calzolari, in Sandro Chierichetti, Bologna, Bologna,
n.d., p. 111, it is stated to have been built in 1497. It was
referred to by Count Cicognara as the 'casa Fibbia', and
was said by Comelli in the article cited above to have passed
from the Fibbia to the Fabbri family, and from them to the
Pallavicini; the casual remark by Steele, cited in the text,
should not mislead anyone into looking for the painting at
the palazzo Pallavicirii, 45, via S. Stefano. The owner of the
palazzo Fibbia kindly allowed my friend Signor
Marco Santambrogio, a lecturer in the Philosophy
Department at the University of Bologna, not only to
examine, but also to photograph, the painting, the great
hall in which it hangs is now occupied by the Associazione
Artigiani, who were also most co-operative. I owe my
information about the painting entirely to the assiduous
work of Signor Santambrogio. In his The Encyclopedia of
Tarot (New York, 1978), p. 33, Stuart R. Kaplan cites my
article 'More about Cicognara', saying that I there describe
r
the 'rediscovery' of the portrait by Signor Santarnbrogio.
The quotation marks are Mr Kaplan's, and suggest a direct
quotation from my article, but in fact I did not use the word
'rediscovery', and claimed nothing so portentous on Signor
Santambrogio's behalf. The painting was never lost, but,
ever since Cicognara first described it, has remained
continuously just where he said it was. Robert Steele, in his
article of 1900, and, misled by him, Miss Moakley in 1966
expressed unjust doubts whether it existed, but, since
neither of them, at the time of writing, had actually looked
for it, this hardly counts as the painting's being lost. There
is in the British Museum a complete Tarocco Bolognese
pack by the maker who used the trade-name 'al Mondo'. In
this pack, Moors replace the Part, so it must be dated after
1725 (see Chapter 16), it exemplifies the standard pattern,
in a single-ended form and without numerals on the trumps,
and is probably to be dated to about 1750. This pack
displays the feature mentioned in the inscription on the
Fibbia portrait: the Queen of Coins holds a shield with the
67
probably dating between 1725 and 1750, bears
out the statement that, in some such packs, the
Queen of Batons bore the Fibbia arms and the
Queen of Coins those of the Bentivoglio family.
The portrait testifies to the existence, in the
seventeenth century, of a local tradition. But,
because of its late date, its evidential value is
slight, in view of the lack of any other evidence
for the existence of the shortened tarorro Bolognese
pack before the sixteenth century, the tradition is
unlikely to be sound. As we have seen, it was not
until the sixteenth century that the practice of
playing various card games with shortened packs
came into fashion, it is therefore probable that it
was in that century that the shortened tarocco
pack used in Bologna was first devised. The most
likely explanation is that the reason for putting the
Fibbia arms on one of the cards had been
forgotten, and that the story about Francesco
Fibbia was invented as a hypothesis to account
for it.
We have successively rejected the years 1377
(on the rzaibz argument), 1379, 1392 and 1419 as
bounds for the date of the invention of the Tarot
pack: one that cannot be shaken is the year 1442.
In that year there is a reference in the Registro dei
A/Iandati for the court of Ferrara to Pare no de carte
do trioaji, and, in the Registro Di Gaardaroba, one to
the purchase of quattro Para a'z carticelte do trionji 1g
As was remarked above, the word tri0n1i, or the
phrase carte do trzarz/9, is the ordinary fifteenth-
century Italian term for Tarot cards, while, as
in early English sources, the word 'pair' (Para or
Para) was often used to mean 'pack'. Evidently,
then, by 1442, at least in the d'Este court at
Ferrara, Tarot cards were well known and in
some demand.
That this was also so in Milan may be inferred
from a mural painting known as 'The Tarocchi
Players' in the Casa Borromeo in that city. It
forms one of a set of three, in the International
Gothic style, on the walls of a small ground-floor
room (now used as an office), showing young
Bentivoglio arms and the Queen of Batons one with the
Fibbia arms. The pack is 1-37 in F.M. O'Donoghue,
Catalogue of the Playing Card? begueallzed to the Trustees of llze
British Museum by the late Lady Charlotte Schreiber, London,
1901.
19 See G. Bertoni, 'Tarocchi versif'lcati', Poesie leggende
easlumanze del media ego, Modena, 1917, p. 218, fn. 3, and G.
Campori, 'Le carte do gioco dipinte per gli Estensi net sec.
XV', Alli e A/Iemorze dell Deputagioni do Starla Patria Per je
Prrwzneze modenexz eparmensi, vol. 7, 1874, p. 126,
68 Part I: History and A/Iystery
men and women of the nobility engaged in
various games. There is no agreement over which
artist painted these delightful pictures, but they
are generally dated to the early 1440s. Every
writer on art who mentions these paintings refers
to the one in which we are interested as 'The
Tarocchi Players', so that this identification of its
subject must rest on a very firm tradition. There
is nothing in the paintings as it is now to show
whether the five people depicted are playing a
game with Tarot cards or with a regular pack,
one can see the pattern on the backs of the cards,
but although the faces of two of the cards must
originally have been shown, no details of these
can any longer be seen. It is evident, however,
that the condition of the painting has greatly
deteriorated during the present century. A black-
and-white photograph of it appears in a book of
1926," and shows details that have now
vanished. As far as I can see from this
photograph, the card that has just been played
by the lady in the middle of the group is the 2 of
Coins, while the man on her right is playing the
Ace of Coins, this, of course, does not help us to
decide whether they are playing with Tarot cards
or not. However, it also looks from the
photograph as though the ladies at the two ends
of the group have each put a card face up in front
of them on the table, and that these are picture
cards: if so, all trace of these cards has since
disappeared from the painting. I have not been
able to identify these cards from the photograph;
but it is possible that, when the painting was in a
better state of preservation, one or other of them
could be seen to be a triumph card, the la/Iatto or
a Queen, thus justifying the particularisation of
the game depicted as one played with Tarot
cards; if that were not so, it is difficult to see why
the painting should have acquired its name.
Signor Vito Arienti has informed me that there is
another fifteenth-century painting of players of
[amorlzz in a castle in the Val d'Aosta. He may
have been referring to a painting in the castle of
Issogne, showing people playing various games,
including three playing cards, and dating from
1470. From the illustration I have seen, in Giulio
Brochard, Valle d'A05ta, ed. Renato Willien,
Novara, 1968, p. 76 (see also pp. 91-2)> it is not
evident that the cards being used are Tarot cards;
in any case, it is too late to have any bearing on the
20 Raimund van Marle_ The Dezrelo/Jment o/'the Italian Schools
r PaznZzhg. vol. 7, the Hague, 1926. p. 145, fig. 91.
date of origin of the game.
A great many playing cards have come down
to us from Fifteenth-century Italy. Of these, many
are sumptuous hand-painted cards made for the
nobility. The surviving cards of this kind come
from about twenty different packs: it is difficult
to give a precise figure, since some cards in
different collections may originally have
belonged to the same pack. There are nine such
packs of which more than ten cards survive: the
surviving cards of eight of these nine packs in-
clude, iii each case, at least one triumph card and
at least one suit card, so that these eight packs
were certainly Tarot packs. The three most
complete of these packs are attributed, in the
unanimous opinion of present-day art historians,
to the Cremonese painter Bonifacio Bernbo,
who was born about 1420 or a little earlier and
died in about 1480. Bembo is known to have
executed several important commissions for
Francesco Sforza, who became Duke of Milan in
1450 and died in 1466, and for his successor
Galeazzo Maria Sforza, who died in 1476. On the
strength of the heraldic emblems and mottoes
appearing on many of the cards of these three
packs, it is evident that they were made for
Francesco Sforza or, in the case of the first two,
for his predecessor Filippo Maria Visconti, who
died in 1447. They are as follows.
(1) The earliest is that usually known as the
Visconti di Modrone pack, from the name of its
former owner, it is now in the Beinecke Library at
Yale University. Sixty-seven cards survive, of which
eleven are triumph cards and fifty-six are suit cards.
In the Batons suit, the numeral cards show arrows
instead of the usual staves, although the court cards
show staves, in the usual form of polished staffs. On
the numeral cards, both the Batons and the Swords
intersect, but the Swords are straight. Because the
composition both of the court cards and of the
triumphs show certain unusual features, they will be
discussed in detail below.
(2) Probably the next in date is that known as the
Brambilla pack, also called after a former owner, now
in the Brera Gallery in Milan. Forty-eight cards
survive, of which only two - the Emperor and the
W'heel of Fortune - are triumphs, the remaining forty-
six being suit cards. Here the numeral cards show
ordinary Batons, while the court cards of that suit
have arrows: Batons and Swords both intersect on the
numeral cards, but the Swords are curved in the usual
Italian manner.
E
K
When and Where the Tarot Pack was Invented
(3) The most complete of all the early hand-painted
packs is that usually called the Visconti-Sforza pack,
divided between the Pierpont Morgan Library in New
York, the IAcademia Carrara in Bergamo and the
private collection of the Colleoni family in the same
city. Of this, as many as seventy-four cards survive
altogether, comprising the Fool, nineteen triumphs
and Fifty-four suit cards. All the Batons are of the
usual type, and intersect, as do the Swords, which are,
however, straight, as in the Visconti di Modrone pack.
The subjects on the triumph cards are standard ones,
of which only the Devil and the Tower are missing.
Six of them, however - Temperance, Fortitude, the
Star, the Nloon, the Sun and the World - are quite
obviously by a different artist, and are thought to have
been painted some twenty years later, by an unknown
artist of the Ferrarese schoolzl This particular pack,
or individual cards belonging to it, appears to have
served as a model for the painters of more than one
later pack.
I
The remaining six packs comprising more
than ten surviving cards are as follows.
(4) The most famous early Tarot pack of all is the
so-called Charles VI pack in the Bibliotheque
E Nationals in Paris, already mentioned. This
comprises seventeen cards, of which only one, the
Jack of Swords, is a suit card: the rest consist of the
Fool and fifteen triumph cards, making up all the
Standard subjects other than the Bagatto, the
Empress, the Popess, the Wheel of Fortune, the Devil
and the Star. The vivid, Horid style differs completely
both from that of Bembo and from that of the
unknown painter of the six later cards in the Visconti-
Sforza set, expert opinion, however, assigns the pack
to the same date and place as the latter, namely to
Ferrara in about 1470.
(5) The most complete set other than the three by
Bembo is one in the Rothschild Collection in the
Louvre, consisting of thirty-one cards. It is generally
accepted that a single card, a Cavalier of Swords, in
the Museo Civico at Bassano also belongs to this
pack, bringing the total to thirty-two. Despite a slight
divergence in the measurements cited for this card
(190 X 90 mm. as against 188 x 90 for the Rothschild
ones), this identification can scarcely be doubted: not
only the general style, but the border design, the
overrunning of the border and the arches in the top
corners all resemble the Rothschild cards, while the
trappings of the horse tally exactly with those of the
Rothschild Cavalier of Batons, and the curious
tortoise-baek shield with those on the Rothschild
E King and Queen of Batons. In this set, however, only
' See Ron Dcicker, 'Two Tarot studies related', part III,
Playing-Card Solely, vol. IV, no. 1, August 1975,
.joznnal of Z/1?
pp. 46-52,
69
one triumph card survives, the Emperor, the rest are
suit cards. (In his The Fnryclopedia of Tarot, New York,
1978, Stuart R. Kaplan suggests that another card,
shown by him at the top right of p. 121, is also a
triumph, the Pope, the Hermit or the World, it is,
however, surely the Jack of Coins, though admittedly
a bearded Jack is a rarity. Some writers have
questioned whether the twenty-three numeral cards,
whose measurements Detlef Hoffmann gives as 186 x
93 mm., belong with the other eight Rothschild cards,
which measure 185 x 90 mm. according to Hoffmann,
and it is true that their borders do not have the wavy
lines found on the court cards and the Emperor. The
measurement criterion would be conclusive, save that
discrepancies between measurements made by
different individuals are exceedingly common. The
general treatment, though not the individual style, is
highly similar to the Charles VI cards, and the two
packs are probably to be assigned to the same milieu.
The Swords on the numeral cards are curved.
(6) Another pack, considerably smaller in
dimensions than those so far mentioned, appears also
to have originated from Ferrara and to have been
made for the d'Este family who were Dukes of that
city, it is now also in Beinecke Library at Yale. It
consists of sixteen cards, comprising eight court cards,
the Fool and seven triumphs - the Bagatto, the Pope,
Temperance, the Star, the Moon, the Sun and the
World. The d'Este arms appear on the Queens of
Batons and Swords and the Cavalier and jack of
Batons (the King of that suit has not survived). The
arms of the King of Naples appear on the King and
Cavalier of Swords. The style again differs from any of
the preceding packs, but has more affinity with that of
the Charles VI cards than with those by Bembo.
(7) A pack consisting of fifteen cards is in the
Nfuseo Civico of Catania, housed in the Castello
Ursino, Eleven of them are suit cards, including the 7
and 8 of Swords with curved intersecting Swords: the
remaining four consist of the Hermit, the Chariot, the
W'orld and one whose identity is dubious. This last
shows a naked girl reclining on a stag, wearing a coral
necklace. In her left hand she holds an object which,
since it is painted in gold on a gold background, is
difficult to decipher, in her right hand, which is
suspended above the left one, she holds another
object, also painted gold against the gold background,
which, when I saw the cards, I took to be a fan. Mr
Ronald Decker has, however, suggested to me that
she is pouring from one vase into another, which
would identify her as Temperance: this is the only
interpretation of this otherwise mysterious figure that
I have come across, The Hermit and World cards
closely resemble those of the Charles VI pack; the
latter shows a female Figure standing on a globe
holding an orb in her left hand and swinging a censer
in her right, the corresponding card in the Charles VI
 70 Part I: History and Mystery"
set differs principally in that the female figure holds a
sceptre in place of a censer. It thus seems reasonable
to assign this pack also to Ferrara.
(8) A set of thirteen cards described and illustrated
in full in an article published in 1954 has since largely
disappeared from public view. They were at one time
all in the possession of Mr Piero Tozzi of New York:
one (Temperance) is now in the Museum of Fine Arts
in Montreal, and another (the Jack of Cups) was in
the F. Cleveland Morgan collection in the same city,
and is stated by Stuart R. Kaplan, op. cit., p. 100, to
have passed into the ownership of Mr Cleveland
Stewart-Patterson, presumably also of Montreal.
According to Kaplan, the remaining eleven were sold
in the early 1960s to a collector in Milan. T°he cards
were evidently made for some member of the Sforza
family, and all but one are copied, with some
deliberate divergences, from the Visconti-Sforza pack.
Their measurements were given in the article as 170 x
70 mm., but, as pointed out by Mr Ronald Decker,
this can be seen from the full-size reproductions to be
an error: it should be 170 x 87 mm. The set consists of
one card showing only the Visconti/Sforza emblem of
a crowned serpent swallowing a woman, one numeral
card, six court cards and five triumphs - the Pope,
Temperance, the Chariot, the Wheel of Fortune and
the _Judgment The Temperance card has been copied
from the corresponding one in the Visconti-Sforza
pack executed by the later, probably Ferrarese, artist,
so that the cards must date from after the time that
those six cards were painted. On the one numeral
card, the 5 of Swords, the Swords are straight, as in
the Visconti-Sforza pack. On the Wheel card, a point of
divergence from the Visconti-Sforza card is the ladder,
heraldic emblem of the Della Scala family of Verona,
on the clothing of the topmost figure, who wears ass's
ears, being at the height of his fortunes and about to
experience their collapse."
22 Miss Moakley, in her book cited in footnote 24, draws
attention to the initials 'A.C.' on the base of the throne of
the King of Swords in the Tozzi set. She thinks that these
initials are intended as those of Antonio Cicognara, a
painter to whom many authorities have credited various
surviving fifteenth-century Italian tarocchi. The attribution is
grounded on a purported quotation from Bordigallois
Chronicle of Cremona given in Count Leopoldo Cicognara's
book referred to in footnote 11, to the effect that in 1484
Antonio Cicognara painted a Tarot pack for Cardinal
Ascanio Sforza. As observed in more detail in Appendix 2,
the quotation is spurious, Count Cicognara was honest but
gullible. Art historians are afflicted by an avid desire to
attach artists' names to works of art, however flimsy the
evidence for it; and so, until more careful study of styles
yielded the attribution to Bembo, sets (1) to (3), and others
as well, were ascribed to Antonio Cicognara, although no
one appears to have attempted to make the elementary
check of verifying that Bordigallo's Chronicle said what it
was supposed to say; even after the attribution to Bembo
(9) The only one of these nine sets that is, almost
certainly, from a regular pack is one consisting of
fifteen suit cards, not including any Queen, and all
badly damaged by a fire that occurred in 1904, in the
Biblioteca Nazionale in Turin. On the testimony of
W.L. Schreiber," who does not, however, appear very
well informed about the matter, this set comprised
twenty-four cards before the fire. It is helpfully
reproduced in full in Kaplan's book. Unfortunately,
the composition of the set before the catastrophe does
not seem to have been recorded, save on a list kept at
the library, which Mr Kaplan reproduces and which
has itself been partly consumed by the Fire. The list
starts with the Coins suit (Cavallo, jack, Ace, 3),
followed by the suit of Cups (King, Cavallo, _Jack, 3, 4,
9, 10), and then the Batons suit, of which only Ace
and 6 are legible. Of the numerals, only Ace and 3 of
Coins, 4 and 9 of Cups, 6 and 10 of Batons and Ace, 3,
6, 7 and lU of Swords survive. There is also a Cavallo
of Swords, and three court cards whose suit-sign is
unidentifiable, a Cavallo and two jacks. From the list,
the Cavallo cannot belong to the Batons suit, but
must be of either Cups or Coins, the jacks likewise
cannot belong to the Batons suit. Evidently there were
no triumph cards before the Fire. The Swords are
curved and intersecting, on the odd-numbered cards.
other than the Ace, there is no straight vertical Sword,
but unequal numbers on the two sides. To judge by
the surviving Cavallo of Swords, the general style of
the courts somewhat resembles that of the Rothschild
CaIldS_24
had been generally accepted, the claim was made that
Cicognara had painted the six cards in the Visconti-Sforza
pack that are not by Bembo. Now Miss Moakley was
convinced that the quotation was spurious, and hence that
there was no reason to suppose that Antonio Cicognara ever
painted any Tarot cards at all. Hence she advanced two
alternative hypotheses: that the initials 'A.C.' had been
added some time after 1831, or that the entire set was a
modern forgery. The second hypothesis .is surely unlikely: a
forger would either have made the cards more unlike the
Visconti-Sforza ones, to reduce the suspicion of forgery, or
have made them exact copies, so as to throw doubt on which
was the o'riginal, which the copy. Whether Miss Moakley's
first hypothesis is correct, or whether the initials have some
altogether different significance, I cannot say. The
hypothesis that early playing cards might be forged is not,
as such, implausible: for an example of a forged copy of a
card from the Sola-Busca tarorc/zz, see D. Hoffmann, Die Welt
Der Spzelkarte,Leipzig, 1972, plate 23(a).
23 Die illeslen Spielkarlen, Strasbourg, 1937, footnote 10,
p. 102.
in The Visconti-Sforza pack is the subject of a book by
Miss Gertrude Moakley, The Tarot Cards Painled by Bonifaezo
Bemba for llze Visconti-Sforza Family, New York, 1966: all the
cards are illustrated and discussed in detail. It is also the
subject of Ta roerlzi: in matzo viseonteo do Bergamo e New Took,
with text by Italo Calvin and notes by S. Samek Ludovici,
 When and Where the Tarot Pack was Invented
As already remarked, of these nine packs, eight
contained both triumph cards and suit cards,
though in one ease only one triumph card has
survived and in another only one suit card. Of
any fragmentary set not containing any card
distinctive of the Tarot pack, we can never say for
sure that it was not originally part of such a pack,
but, if the pack to which the Turin cards
belonged had been a Tarot pack, the chance that
all of the fourteen surviving cards should have
been among the fifty-two that could equally well
have come from a regular pack is very low
indeed, so that we can reasonably discount this
possibility. Nevertheless, the remaining eight
packs testify to the great popularity of Z a rocclti
among the fifteenth-century Italian nobility,
though we should bear in mind that the greater
scope given to an artist by the triumph subjects
Parma, 1969, which also gives illustrations of all the cards.
There is also a reproduction pack issued by the Grafica
Gutenberg, Bergamo, in the United States this is
distributed by US. Games Systems, Inc., New York. The
Visconti-Sforza, Visconti di Modrone and Brambilla packs
are illustrated in Emiliano di Parravicino, 'Three packs of
Italian Tarocco cards', Burlington 11/Iagazine, vol. III, 1903,
pp. 237-52. All three of these packs painted by Bonifacio
Bembo are discussed from an art-historical standpoint in
Pietro Toesca, La Pittura e Za miniature Ne/Za Lombardia, Milan,
1912 (see pp. 626-7), reprinted Turin, 1966 (see p. 218); in
R. Longhi, 'La restituzione di un trittico d'arte cremonese
circa it 1460', Pinaroteca, vol. I, 1928, pp. 55-87, reprinted in
R. Longhi, Me pintail, Florence, 1968, Fernanda Wittgens,
'Note ed aggiunte a Bonifacio Bembo', Riviera d'A1Ze, vol.
XVIII, 1936, and C. Baroni and S. Samek Ludovici, La
/zitlura lombard de! QuaZtrocento, Messina and Florence, 1952
(see pp, 91-116). The Visconti di Modrone pack is discussed
by Robert Steele, 'A notice of the Ludus Triurnphorum and
some early Italian card games', Arr/Laeologia, vol. 57, 1900,
pp. 185-200, and by Ron and Charlotte Decker, 'The
Visconti-Sforza cards in the Cary Collection', The journal of
the Playing-Card Soeiely, vol. IV, no. 2, November, 1975, pp.
27-32. Eight cards from it are illustrated in Catherine Perry
Hargrave, A Hirlory of Playing Cards, Boston and New York,
1930, reprinted New York, 1966, p. 226. The Brambilla
pack was completely illustrated in a booklet called 48 tarot/zz
do Bamfaeio Bemba, published by the Istituto Finanziario per
l'Arte, Milan, 1971, some of the captions are incorrect.
These and several other of the hand-painted Tarot packs
discussed in the text are discussed, with several illustrations,
in an excellent article by Robert Klein, 'Les tarots
enluminés du XVE siecle', L'Oeil, no. 145, 1967, pp. 11-17,
51-2. For illustrations of the Rothschild cards, see R. Klein,
op. cit., Detlef Hoffmann, Die Welt der Spzelkarte, Leipzig,
1972, plates 17(a) and 20(b), and Leopoldo Cicognara,
remorse s/Jellanti alla Sloria della Calcograyia, Prato, 1831, plate
XI. Many works illustrate and discuss the 'Charles VI'
tarots: see R. Klein, op. cit., an anonymous picture-book,
Anlzrlze carte da taroec/Li, Rome, 1961, plates III-V, William
71
must have created a strong incentive to a patron,
when ordering an expensive hand-painted set, to
specify a Tarot pack. Equally striking is the
constancy of the subjects used for the triumph
cards; despite the wide variety in their treatment,
we Find always the same subjects as those known
from later packs, with the exception of three from
the Visconti di Modrone pack which will be
discussed below, and the possible exception of
the figure on the stag from the Catania pack. Of
the standard twenty-one subjects, the only one
not represented among any of the fifteenth-
century Italian hand-painted cards surviving to
us is the Devil: but, since this Figure appears on
the popular sets of Zarocchz, printed by wood-
block, that have come down to us from the end of
the century, this should probably be ascribed to
chance.
Andrew Chatto, facts and Speculations on the Origin and History
of Playing Cards, London, 1848, p. 187, R. Merlin, L'Origine
des carte; djouer, Paris, 1869, p. 89, H.-R. D'Allemagne, Les
Carter cijouer du XIV au XX° sir/e, vol. I, Paris, 1906, pp. 11,
13, 15, 181-2 and opposite pp. 12, 172, 414, and vol. II,
opposite pp. 4, 18, WV.L. Schreiber, Die aitesterz Spielkarlen,
Strasbourg, 1937> p. 101, and Eberhard Pinder, 'The
history of European playing cards', Graphic, vol. 11, 1955,
pp. 246-7. For the d'Este cards, see H.-R. D'Allemagne, op.
cit., vol. II, opposite pp. 12 and 38. Some cards from the
Catania pack, including the Figure on the stag, are
illustrated in D. Hoffmann, op.'cit., plate 18(a), see also R.
Klein, op. cit., and Arztic/ze carte da tarocc/ii, plate I, and Guido
Libertini, In Castello Urxino e je raccolte artisliehe e corrzunali di
Catarina, Catania, 1937, pp. 112-13. The catalogue numbers
of the cards are 6425-51. One of the Turin cards is shown in
D. Hoffmann, op. cit., plate 18(b), see also R. Klein, op.
cit., Arztzr/ze carte do tarocchi, plate I, and W.L. Schreiber, op.
cit., p. 102. The Tozzi cards are all illustrated and discussed
in M. L. D'Otrange, 'Thirteen Tarot cards from the
Visconti-Sforza set', The Conrzoirseur, vol. CXXXIII, 1954,
pp. 54-60, see also Gertrude Moakley, op. cit., pp. 33-4, in.
10, and Ronald Decker, 'Two Tarot studies related', part
III, journal of the Playing-Card Society, vol. IV, no. 1, August,
1975, pp. 46-52, particularly p. 50. R. Cavendish, The Tarot,
London, 1975, p. 140, illustrates in colour two Charles
VI cards. Kaplan, op. cit., gives illustrations of all
these sets, as follows: (1) the Visconti di Modrone
pack, seven triumphs, pp. 88-92, and eleven suit cards,
pp. 92-5, with a color plate of the Knight of Cups,
plate 9, (2) the Brambilla pack, both triumphs, p. 96,
and ten suit cards, pp. 97-8, (3) the Visconti-Sforza
pack, all the cards, pp. 36, 65-86, 285, with a colour plate of
the Bagatto, plate IV, (4) the Charles VI pack, all the cards,
pp. 112-16, with a colour plate of the Love card, plate 2, (5)
the Rothschild pack, the one triumph, p. 121, and eight
court cards, including that at Bassano, pp. 120-2; (6) the
d'Este pack, all the cards, pp. 117-18, (7) the Catania pack,
two triumphs, p. 109, (8) the Tozzi pack, all the cards, pp.
100-2, and (9) the Turin pack, all the cards, p. 119.
72 Part I: History and Mystery
Besides these nine packs, there are a number of
others of which fewer cards have survived, as
follows.
(101 A set of five, consisting of four numeral cards
and one triumph, the Emperor, was acquired in 1974
from a Milanese dealer by the Fournier Playing-Card
Museum at Vitoria in Spain. Like the Tozzi cards, the
designs are based very exactly on the corresponding
cards in the Visconti-Sforza pack; the one notable
departure from the Visconti-Sforza designs is the
depiction of a three-tiered tower on the Coin in the
Ace of that suit, a heraldic emblem of the Gonzaga
family, Marquises of Mantua, according to l\1r
Decker, The cards have black backs and measure 171 x
87 mm., as close as makes no difference to the
dimensions of the Tozzi cards (a discrepancy of a
rnillimetre or two in the measurements of different
cards from the same pack, or of the same card
measured by different people, is not significant). If the
backs of the Tozzi cards are also black, there is
therefore a possibility that these five cards belong to the
same pack.
I11) There are four numeral cards, one from each
suit, in the Correr Museum in Venice: the sword on
the Ace of Swords is encircled by a crown and has the
unusual feature of piercing a bleeding heart. The
cards are precisely similar in style to the numeral
cards of the Rothschild set, but, although there is no
overlap between them, they cannot actually be from
the same pack, since the dimensions do not tally (180
X 93 mrn. for the Correr cards, 188 x 90 mm. - or,
according to Hoffmann, 186 x 93 mm. - for the
Rothschild ones).
(12) Another set of four cards, bought in Milan
before 1915, is in the Victoria and Albert Museum in
London: it includes two triumph cards - Death and
the Star - and two suit cards - the Jack of Coins and
the Ace of Cups. The Jack of Coins corresponds
almost exactly in design with that in the Visconti-
Sforza pack, and is in a better state of preservation: as
far as I am able to see, judging from this card alone, it
could perfectly well be by Bembo. The other cards,
however, do not in any way resemble the Visconti-
Sforza cards (though it will be recalled that the Star in
the Visconti-Sforza pack as we now have it is not by
Bembo, so that it is conceivable that the Victoria and
Albert Star resembles one by Bernbo that is now lost).
Death is shown as a skeleton wielding a scythe and
wearing a cardinal's hat and robe, standing on a
black-and-white chequered floor and with a scroll
coming from his mouth saying 'Son fine'. The Ace of
Cups depicts the Cup as a fountain with a vertical
arrow between the two .jets which spring from it; the
stem of the Cup bears the inscription 'nec spe nec
metu', which was the heraldic motto of Isabella
d'Este, and the Cup stands on grass, there are two
putty at its foot, one bearing a shield with the Colleoni
arms.25 The cards measure 167 x 85 mm. know of no
connection between Isabella d'Este and the Colleoni
family, the cards could plausibly have been painted
for the famous rondottzere Bartolomeo Colleoni (1400-
1476), who was closely associated with Francesco
Sforza at certain stages of his career, but Isabella
d'Este, marchioness of l\tantua, seems a more likely
recipient.
(13) Three isolated cards should probably be
grouped together. One is a Popess in the Fournier
Museo de Naipes at Vitoria. This card was bought at
the same time and from the same dealer as the five
cards described under 110), but is slightly, though
visibly, smaller, measuring 170 x 85 mm., it has a red
back, while the other Five have black ones, It is a copy
of the Popess in the Visconti-Sforza pack, though not
an exact copy, the Popess's tiara, on this card,
projects further from her head. The second card is a
King of Cups in the collection of l\flr N, Biedak of Los
Angeles, very closely resembling the Tozzi King of
Cups, but seen in right profile, like the Visconti-
Sforza one, not in left profile, like that of the Tozzi set ,
according to Mrs \Vayland, it measures 170 X 86 mm,
The third card is a jack of Batons in the collection of
Signora C. l\1arzoli of Milan, measuring 170 x
85 mm., and closely resembling the corresponding
Visconti-Sforza card I do not know the colour of the
backs of these last two cards, if it is red, it seems
probable that all three come from the same pack,
possibly one by the artist responsible for the Tozzi set.
Kaplan (op. cit., p. 103) mistakenly groups the Popess
with the other five Fournier cards.
(14l The Guildhall, London, has two pairs of hand-
painted Fifteenth-century cards, which are of very
perceptibly different widths, and do not come from
the same pack. The wider of these two pairs (138 x
72 mm.) consists of the Aces of Cups and of Swords.
25 As often in heraldry, the device on these arms
represents a pun on the name of the bearer, though in this
case, one unlikely in more modern times: it consists of three
pairs of testicles (roger/ni) which, by a euphemism, later
came to be called, and shown as, inverted hearts. The shield
on the Ace of Cups is parted per fe'ss, not, as in all other
examples of these arms known to me, per pale. Kaplan, op.
cit,, p. 99, remarks on the presence of a precipice at the very
bottom of the card on the Ace of Cups, it is also visible on
the jack of Coins, though not present on the Visconti-Sforza
one. As Kaplan observes (pp. 70, 72), such a precipice is a
feature of four of the six cards not by Bembo in the Visconti-
Sforza pack, Temperance, the Star, the Moon and the Sun.
It is, moreover, to be found on three of the Tozzi cards,
Temperance, the Wheel of Fortune and the jack of Cups.
Kaplan remarks (pp. 60, 106) that such a precipice is to be
found in the painting at the Carthusian monastery near
Pavia of Christ on the way to Calvary by Ambrosio
Bergognone (active from 1481, died 1523), but draws no
conclusion from the fact. Kaplan gives the inscription on the
Death card incorrectly as San fine (p, 104), which he takes to
mean 'Without end', the first word is Sum, meaning 'I am'.
 When and Where the Tarot Pack wax Invented
The former shows a strong affinity with the Victoria
and Albert card: the cup is again a fountain with
vertical arrow between two cascades of water, but
stands on a ehequered floor. There is a blank scroll
behind the cup; an odd detail is a small anchor in the
top left-hand corner of the card and a small straight
sword in its top right-hand corner, looking for all the
world like suit-signs, which they obviously cannot be.
The Ace of Swords shows a short sword encircled by a
crowned serpent biting its tail; behind the sword is a
scroll with the words "Vim vi', and above it a sun with
rays and a face, with the letters MIA above the sun.
'Vim yi' is a motto borne by various Italian families,
but I have not been able to discover one for whom
playing cards are likely to have been painted, the
motto is oddly misread by Kaplan (op. cit,, p. 111) as
"Arm(o)ur'.
(15) The narrower Guildhall pair (141 x 66 mm.)
comprises one triumph card, the \Vorld, which is a
very close copy, laterally reversed, of that in the
Visconti-Sforza pack, and an elaborate card that may
dubiously be identif8ed as a Jack of Batons. This
second card, which Kaplan (ibid.) mistakenly groups
with the wider Pair (14), shows a crossbowman
shooting at a heron over water, the archer wears a flat
cap, there are trees behind him, and the heron is
standing by some rushes. Qver the right shoulder of
the archer, not attached to anything, is a vertical
cudgel, resembling a Baton of the so-called Spanish
type. lt is true that on some early Italian cards,
including the d'Este tafocrhi at Yale 16), the Batons
can be rather knobbly, but, with the exception to be
mentioned below, there is nothing else at all like this;
besides, in almost all other cases, the court figure
holds his suit-sign in his hand. Moreover, the whole
design seems rather German in style than Italian. The
Guildhall catalogue records both pairs as having been
found in an old chest in Seville.
(16) A pair of cards at the l\1uzeurn Narodowego in
Warsaw, bought in 1946 from the Potocki collection,
are both court cards, the Cavalier of Coins and the
Queen of Cups; the presence of the Queen shows that
they must have come from a Tarot pack. They show
no especial stylistic resemblance to any other of the
cards here.listed.
(17) A very fine pair ofjaeks, of Swords and Coins,
is at Hanover (Niedersachsisches Landesmuseum):
the style is quite unlike Bernbo's, but the Coin held by
the jack of that suit bears the Visconti-Sforza serpent .
(18) An isolated card, the jack of Coins, is in the
collection of Signor Francesco Andreoletti of Milan,
and is a copy, though laterally reversed, of the
corresponding card in the Visconti-Sforza pack, its
measurements (140 X 66 mm,) tally closely with those
of the narrower Guildhall pair.
(19) By far the most puzzling of all is the set of nine
cards known as the Goldschmidt cards, again from
73
the name of a former owner, at the Spielkarten
Museum in Leinfelden. One is a 5 of Batons, the
Batons appear in exactly the 'Spanish' form and
arrangement. Another is an Ace of Cups: as in the
wider Guildhall pair and the Victoria and Albert set,
the cup is a fountain, with two cascades of water and a
vertical arrow between them, as on the Guildhall
card, it stands on a chequered floor. The stem of the
cup is encircled by a serpent biting its tail, like that on
the Ace of Swords in the Guildhall pair, although
uncrowned and facing in the opposite direction. A
third card is surely to be identified as the ACe of
Swords, although Detlef Hoffmann has suggested that
it be equated with the Death card of the Tarot pack. It
shows a short sword, very similar to that on the
Guildhall Ace of Swords, to the blade of which is
chained a skull and the hilt of which has a pair of
crossbones superimposed. A fourth card shows a
crowned dolphins probably this is just a heraldic
device, and the card, like the Tozzi card showing the
Visconti-Sforza serpent, was not meant to be used in
play. The remaining Five cards are a complete
mystery, (a) One shows a falconer, standing on a
chequered floor, with a little dog at his feet, a bird on
his hand and a hoop suspended from his shoulders,
floating above his shoulder is a toothed wheel.
(be Another shows a sun, with rays and a face, very
like that on the Guildhall Ace of Swords, above a
chequered floor on which stand three metallic objects
bearing respectively, the letters a, m, C (perhaps
heraldically conventionalised mountains, or perhaps
something quite different. (c) A third shows a
bishop, again standing on a chequered floor, above
his shoulder is an anchor, exactly like that on the
Guildhall Ace of Cups. (d) A fourth shows a lady
wearing a crown, holding a model of a castle and
standing on the usual chequered floor, her gown held
by a lady in waiting, W.L. Schreiber takes her to be
an Empress. (e) The final card has no chequered
Floor, and shows a lady wearing a crown and kneeling
at a prie-dieu, with a maidservant in attendance,
Schreiber identifies her as a Dogaressa, with what
right I do not know.
(TO) In view of the falconer on one of the
Goldschmidt cards, it is worth mentioning also a
single, very large, card (177 x 95 mm.) showing a
falconer, also at the Spielkarten Museum at
Leinfelden. In 1955 Eberhard Pinder established that
this card was a forgery, though he did not publish this
Finding. However, the card is so unlike any other
known to survive that it is probable that the forger was
imitating some original that has since disappeared, he
would hardly have gone to the trouble of producing a
forgery bearing no resemblance to any authentic
prototype.2°
26 For color illustrations of eight of the nine Goldsehmidt
cards, see D. Hoffmann, op. cit., plate 19, for discussion
of therm, see pp. 18 and 67 of the same work, the article by E.
 74 Part I: History and Mystery
One of the striking facts is how frequently the
Visconti-Sforza cards were copied, sometimes
only for certain cards in a pack. It is not
especially surprising that the cards of a famous
pack should have served as a model for later
artists, but it is rather notable that it seems
always to have been the Visconti-Sforza pack
which played this role, and not, for example, the
Brambilla or the Visconti di Nfodrone one. There
might be suspicions of the authenticity of some of
these cards; but such suspicions could not he
founded on the mere fact that Visconti-Sforza
cards have been copied, since there is surely no
basis for suspecting the genuineness either of the
Victoria and Albert cards (12) or of the narrower
Guildhall pair (15). Un the whole, I am disposed
to believe that nos. (1 ) to (19) are all genuine.
It is obvious that the Goldschmidt cards pose a
severe problem. It is not apparent, from the cards
Pinder in (/raP/iz§, vol. 11, 1955, p. 243, the same authors
Uznrta I.u§orz0, Biberach an der Riss, 1961, p. 89, \N`.L.
Schreiber, op. cit., p. 100, and R. Klein, op. cit. For a colour
illustration of the single 'Falconer' card, see E. Pinder's
(in/ihzs article, p. 243. Pinder's later judgment that this card
was a forgery was based on a chemical analysis of the paint by
the Doerner Institut in Munich, backed by the stylistic
.judgment offer Degenhard, of Munich, and others; I owe this
information to Frau Margot Dietrich, of the Leinfelden
Museum. For the Correr cards, see R. Merlin, op. eit., p. 66
and plates 8 and 9. For the Warsaw cards, see
Stanislaw Sawicky, 'Dwie wl'oskie karty "tarocchi" w
zbiorach IVIleum Narodowcgo w W'arszawie', Ruagwik
Mugeurn ./\"aronhwegri w rnrsgawze,
[,,,1*,
vol. II. 1937,
pp. 605-24. A colour illustration of one of the wider pair of
Guildhall cards (the Ace of Swords) is in Roger Tilley,
PlnyzNg Cards, London, 1967, p. 9. For a colour illustration of
the Hanover cards, seeJ,A.S. Morrison, 'Garnblers' printed
ar t', T/ze Penrose Annual, vol. 53, London, 1959, p 54. Three of
the Victoria & Albert cards are illustrated, two in colour, in
R. Cavendish, op. cit., pp. 126 and 140. All the cards in sets
(10) to (19), but not the Falconer card (no. 20), are
illustrated in Kaplan, op. cit., as follows: (10), p. 103; (1 1 ), p,
123; (12), p. 104; (13), pp. 103, 105; (14), p. 1115 l 15), pp.
104, 111; (16), p. 1099 (17), p, 108; (18), p. 105, and (19), p.
1 10. Mr Decker cites, as a reference for the Gonzaga tower,
The Complete Paz ntzng5 of /Wantegna, ed. N. Garavaglia,
New York, 1967, p. 104. Of the cards in sets (1 ) to 120), those
I have not personally seen are the ones in Paris, namely the
Charles VI and Rothschild sets (nos. 4 and 5), those at Turin,
\Varsaw and Hanover (nos 9, 16 and 17) and those in private
collections thirteen of the Visconti-Sforza set in the Colleoni
collection in Bergamo, the IVlarzoli and Biedak cards in set
no. 13, the 'I`ozzi cards, no. 8, and the Andreoletti card. no,
18). For these I have relied on photographs and on
information, including measurements, very kindly supplied
by Dr and laIrs Harold VVayland, of Pasadena, California,
who many years ago undertook a comprehensive study of
fifteenth-century Italian hand-painted cards, but regrettably
never published the results of their endings, their help,
without which I should not have known of some of these sets,
has been invaluable to me,
themselves, that they are Tarot cards at all: not
one of them can he identified with any assurance
as one of the Tarot triumphs. Hoffmann equates
the falconer (a) with the Bagatto; but the single
'Falconer' card (no. 20) resembles any ordinary
Bagatto even less, and so makes this
identification doubtful. Hoffmann also equates
card (h) with the Sun of the Tarot pack, hut
since the very similar sun on the Guildhall Ace of
Swords clearly does not determine the identity of
the card, it may be that, on this Goldschmidt
card, the sun is again decoratxve,
. and that the
identifying symbol is the three mysterious objects
standing on the floor. The bishop might be a
replacement for the Pope; on a sheet taken from a
woodblock, mentioned below, a female bishop
evidently substitutes for the Popess. Schreiber
might be right in saying that the lady with the
model castle is an Empress; but none of these
identifications is compelling, and the lady at the
prie-dieu remains completely enigmatic.
There is, nevertheless, a reason for regarding
the Goldschmidt cards as part of some very
unusual Tarot pack. Their iconographical links
are with the wider Guildhall pair; but there is
some reason to suppose that the narrower
Guildhall pair comes from the same pack, which
must, if so, have been a Tarot pack, since one
member of that pair is the World. The
dimensions of the narrower Guildhall pair (141 X
66 mm.) coincide as nearly as may be with
those of the Goldschmidt cards (140 X 66 mm.).
Where the wider Guildhall cards have
unpatterned gold backgrounds, the narrower
ones have gold backgrounds with patterns very
similar to those on the Goldschmidt cards. The
pattern does not seem to be exactly the same on
any two of the Goldschmidt cards, nor does the
pattern on any one of them tally precisely with
that on either of the narrower Guildhall cards;
but the pattern on one is very similar to that on
Goldschmidt card (h) (the card with the sun) 3
and that on the other has a clear resemblance to
those on Goldschmidt cards (a) and (e) (the
falconer and the lady at the prie-dieu). Both the
narrow Guildhall cards have black borders, just
as do the Goldschmidt cards. The only
iconographical resemblances are the Spanish-
style Batons on the Goldschmidt 5 of that suit and
the exactly similar one on the Guildhall card
presumably to be identified as the jack of that
suit, and the caps worn by the latter figure and the
Goldschmidt falconer. These points do not
together make the assignment of the two sets to
 When and Where the Tarot Pack we; Invented
the same original pack more than a plausible
conjecture: but since, in several of the
Goldschmidt cards and in the Guildhall jack of
Batons, if that is what it is, we have the only
examples from these fifteenth-century hand-
painted cards that present difficulties of
identification, with the sole exception of the
Catania figure on the stag, it is a tempting one.
If the Goldschmidt cards do come from a Tarot
pack, then they testify to the existence in the
fifteenth century of a type Of such pack
employing the 'Spanish' form of the Latin suit-
signs and deviating greatly from the norm in the
representation of the triumph subjects, and
probably also in the selection of those subjects,
but yet having links with tarocclzi of a more usual
kind, as exemplified by the Victoria and Albert
cards and by the Visconti-Sforza pack. The
implications of this possibility will be discussed
in more detail below.
The Goldschmidt cards, and their relation to
the two Guildhall pairs and to the Victoria and
Albert cards, do indeed pose a difficult problem
which is far from being solved. But if we set the
Goldschmidt cards on one side, and, with them,
the single Falconer card, almost all is plain
sailing: the smaller sets, (10) to (18), simply
confirm the impression derived from the nine
packs of which thirteen or more cards have
survived. There are a few problems about where
certain of the cards were painted or at whose
order: but their identity and the composition of
the packs from which they came are for the most
part unproblematic. Making the suggested
assumptions that the Marzoli and Biedak cards
belong with the Fournier Popess, and the
Bassano card with the Rothschild ones, we have
nine sets of from one to eight cards, of which five
come from Tarot packs and the other four could
be from regular packs. Of the Five from Tarot
packs, all have some suit cards, and four have one
or more triumphs. Moreover, when it consists of
only four or fewer cards, the chance that a set
which could have come from a regular pack
actually came from a Tarot pack is significant. If
we take the denomination of a surviving card to
be random, there is of course a 2:1 chance that a
single card from a Tarot pack will be a suit card
other than a Queen. The chance that both of two
cards will be suit cards other than Queens is over
44 per cent, and, even with four cards, the chance
that none of them will be distinctive of the Tarot
pack is nearly 19 per cent. But even if we suppose
that every one of our sets from (1) to (18) that
75
could have formed part of a regular pack did in
fact do so, there are, if the suggested
identifications are accepted, only five such sets
altogether as against thirteen from Tarot packs.
It is plain that the great majority of the playing-
card packs painted by hand for the Italian
nobility of the fifteenth century were tarocclii.
The Goldschmidt cards aside, the four more
fragmentary sets which include triumph cards -
the five Fournier ones (10), the four Victoria and
Albert ones (12), the Fournier-Biedak-lvIarzoli
trio (13) and the narrower Guildhall pair (15) -
confirm our previous impression that the
triumph subjects, though not their
representation, were standardised from an early
date. This is reinforced by the earliest detailed
reference to the Tarot pack, a sermon against
gaming from an anonymous manuscript volume
of sermons by a Dominican friar. The volume
was formerly in the possession of Robert Steele,
and is now at the l\1useum of Art in Cincinnati.
The bulk of the sermon was published by Steele
in his article of 1900,27 in which he dates the
volume to between 1450 and 1470; in his
subsequent article of 1901,28 he gives the date,
more cautiously, as between 1450 and 1480. In
this sermon, the preacher lists the twenty-one
triumph cards, together with the Matto, as if
they formed an invariable set: the subjects are
precisely the usual ones, though not in exactly
the order most familiar to us. The same selection
of triumph subjects is confirmed by many literary
references from the sixteenth century." It is
found, likewise, on certain surviving sheets of
cards, printed from wood blocks and made for
the popular market, dating from the end of the
Fifteenth century. For our purpose, the sheets
showing regular packs are not of importance: I
shall list only those four which show tarocclti.
(21) Three coloured sheets for one such pack are in
the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and show, In
whole or part, twenty of the twenty-one standard
triumph cards.
(22) A sheet for another such pack, showing all
twenty-one triumphs and three Queens, is in the
Rosenwald Collection in the National Gallery of Art,
Washington, and another copy, much less well
preserved, in the Spielkarten Museum in Leinfelden.
The Rosenwald Collection has two other sheets,
probably though not quite certainly from the same
pack, showing suit cards.
2' See footnote 2.
28 Sec footnote 1 5. 29 See Chapter 20.
76 Par! I: History and Mystery
(23) Yet another sheet, showing six triumph cards,
is in the Rothschild Collection at the Louvre. A
further sheet of six triumph cards, without doubt from
the same pack, is at the Bihliotheque de l'Ecole
Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts in Paris.
Together they show the Wheel, the Chariot, the
Hermit, the Hanged Man, Death, the Devil, the
Tower, the Star, the Moon, the Sun. the World and
the Judgment or Angel.
(24) Finally, a sheet showing two numeral cards, a
fragment that is probably the Fool, and, in whole or
part, fifteen triumph cards, is at the Beinecke Library
at Yale, having been part of the Cary Collection.
Among these, there are certainly identifiable the
Bagatto, the Empress, the Emperor, Temperance,
Fortitude, the Wheel, the Chariot, the Devil, the
Tower, the Star, the Moon and the Sun: there are also
fragmentary cards that could be the Pope and Love
cards, and a female Bishop who presumably replaces
the Popess. Several cards resemble the corresponding
ones in the Tarot de Marseille pattern.30
A discussion of the probable places of origin of
these various popular Tarot packs will be
postponed until Chapter 20. A detailed analysis
of all the cards in the hand-painted packs (1) to
(19) and on these four sets of sheets will be found
at the end of the present chapter.
There are two late fifteenth-century exceptions
30 A fragmentary card on one of the Metropolitan
Museum sheets is probably the Moon, but might be the
Star; the other of this pair is missing. Their catalogue
numbers are 26.101.5, 26.1014 and 31.54.159, a
composite photograph of the last two is reproduced by
Kaplan, op. cit., p. 125. The catalogue number of the
Rosenwald sheet is B 19823, the two other sheets with suit
cards are B 19821-2. See Boris Mandrovsky, 'Early Italian
playing-cards in the Rosenwald Collection, the National
Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.', journal of the Playing-
Card Society, vol. I, no. 2, November 1972, pp. 1 and 8.
The catalogue number of the Rothschild sheet is 3804.
The cards shown are the Chariot, Death, the Devil, the
Tower, the Star and the Moon. See W.L. Schreiber, op. cit.,
p. 104, where, however, the sheet is incorrectly stated to
show the Sun instead of the Star. The catalogue number of
the sheet in the Cary Collection is 1-1005. The cards
definitely identifiable are the 7 and 8 of Batons, the Bagatto,
the Emperor, a female bishop presumably representing or
replacing the Popess, Temperance, Fortitude, the Chariot,
the Wheel, the Devil, the Tower, the Star, the Moon and the
Sun. There are also fragments probably to be identified as
the Fool, the Pope and Love, Half of the Rosenwald sheet
with the triumph cards is illustrated in Mandrovsky's article,
and the whole of it by Kaplan, pp. 130-1, in both cases
printed the wrong way round, the Rothschild sheet is
illustrated by Hoffmann, op. cit,, plate 14(b), and it and the
Beaux Arts sheet by Kaplan, pp. 128-9. The Cary sheet has
not, so far as l know, previously been reproduced.
to the general rule that the triumph subjects are
always the same; these both substitute individual
classical and Biblical characters for the
generalised figures of the usual Tarot triumphs.
One is the celebrated Sola-Busca tarocclzz, a
copper-engraved pack of which several examples
are extant, it was made in Venice by a Ferrarese
artist in 1491, or possibly in 1523.31 It has the
usual number of cards in each suit, and the suit-
signs are standard, but the numeral cards are
very fancifully executed, the suit-signs not being
displayed in the usual manner, but worked into a
picture containing one or more figures. The court
cards are identified with various historical
characters, whose names are shown on the cards.
There is a Matto, but the twenty-one triumph
cards, which are numbered from I to XXI, again
depict characters of classical and Biblical history,
their names being shown on the cards; there is no
correspondence with the usual subjects.32 The
other is a pack designed by the poet Matteo
Niaria Boiardo (1441-1494). It was to have four
suits, made up of the usual fourteen cards each,
but with the non-standard suit-signs of Whips,
Eyes, Arrows and Vases, in addition, it was to
have a Fool (Folic) and twenty-one non-standard
triumphs. Again, there was no correspondence
between their subjects, each of which
represented some quality, such as patience,
modesty, etc., and was symbolised by an
appropriate historical character, and the
standard ones." Both these are evidently
ii One card bears the inscription 'Col permesso del
Senato Veneto nell'anno ab urbe condita MLXX' ("With
the permission of the Senate of Venice in the year 1070 after
the foundation of the city'). A traditional date for the
foundation of the city of Venice is 421, yielding the date
1491 for the cards, but W.L. Schreiber, op. cit., p. 105,
remarks that an alternative date is 453, yielding 1523 for the
cards.
32 D. Hoffmann, op. cit., p. 68, gives Ferrara as the place
of origin of this pack. For discussion and illustrations, see
Arthur Mayger Hind, Early Italian En.gravzrzg, London, vol. I,
1938, pp. 241-7, and vol. IV, 1938, plates 370-93. Kaplan,
pp. 126-7, illustrates twenty triumphs and three court cards.
33 Each card was to bear a descriptive tercel composed by
Boiardo, there were also to be two extra cards, bearing
sonnets by him. The resulting poems, consisting of the two
sonnets and the tercel arranged to make five capiloli, one for
each suit and one for the triumphs, were printed separately
in 1523 in a volume published in Venice and containing
poems by various authors. They were reprinted, under the
title 'I Tarocchi', together with a previously unpublished
commentary by Pier Antonio Viti da Urbino (r. 1470-1500),
by Angelo Solerti in Le Poesy Volgari e Latifze do A/I. Al. Baiardo,
Bologna, 1894, pp. 313-38, with notes oh pp. xxxii-xxxv,
 When and Where the Taro! Peek was Invented
conscious departures from the norm: they in no
way call in question the existence of a norm. The
standard composition of the Tarot pack was
plainly fixed at a very early stage in its history,
despite occasional experiments such as the Sola-
Busca tarorclti and those of Boiardo. Later, as we
shall see, a number of variant forms developed,
but, in fifteenth-century Italy, the number and
identity of the cards of the Tarot pack was
completely deterrninate.
The important exception to this is the Visconti
di Modrone pack, which we have yet to describe.
It diverges from the norm in two ways, both in
respect of the suit cards and in respect of the
triumphs. Among the sixty-seven surviving cards
are all forty numeral cards save the 3 of Coins.
However, there are six different denominations of
court card, a male and a female one of each rank :
King and Queen, Knight and Dame (or male and
female Cavalier) and Page (or jack) and Maid.
J
Although there is no suit in which all six court
cards survive, they are distributed so randomly
and again in A. Zottoli (ed.), Trite je opera do A/Iatteo A/Iaria
Boiardo, Milan, 1936-7, vol. 2, pp. 702-16, with notes pp. 748-
9, The title 'I Tarocchi' is not Boiardo's; neither he nor Viti
uses the word tarrncrhi, but, instead, trioryfi (sometimes for the
twenty-one triumph cards, sometimes for the pack as a
whole). The suits represent four passions: love (Arrows),
jealousy (Eyes), fear (Whips) and hope (Vases). Each court
card depicts an appropriate Biblical or classical character.
The Fool (called by Viti mario) is called in A/Iondo (the
World), a reversal of the usual practice by which the World
is the highest triumph card, each of the actual triumph
cards represents some quality, such as patience, modesty,
etc., and is symbolised by an appropriate historical
character, there is no correspondence with the usual
triumph subjects. Viti's commentary is addressed to a lady
of the court of Urbino, he expresses the hope that his
patroness will have a pack made in accordance with the
designs he describes. She must have done so, since Carlo
Lozzi, 'Le Antiche Carte do Giuoco', La Biblizyilia, vol. I,
1900, pp. 37-46 and 181-6, mentions just such a pack,
though missing all the court cards and the Fool, and R.
Merlin, L'0rzgine des carte; éjouer, Paris, 1869, pp. 94-6 ahd
plate 28, speaks of another copy, missing hve court cards,
seven numeral cards, the Fool and all the triumph cards.
(Merlin naturally does not recognise his pack as a Tarot
pack, and Lozzi fails to connect his with Boiardo's poem.)
The pack illustrated by Merlin was very probably identical
with one sold at Christie's in 1971 to Signor Carlo Alberto
Chiesa of Milan, this was a pack printed from wood blocks,
and also missing the Fool and all the triumph cards, as well as
a few court cards and numeral cards. For more illustrations
and further details, see M. Dummett, 'Notes on a fifteenth-
century pack of cards from Italy', journal of Ile Playing-Card
Society, vol. I, no. 2, February 1973, pp. 1-6. The pack is now
in an anonymous Swiss collection.
77
as to make it impossible to suppose otherwise
than that there were originally all six in each
suit: there survive the King, Queen, Dame and
Maid of Swords, the Queen, Dame, Page and
Maid of Batons, the King, Knight, Page and
Maid of Cups and the King, Queen, Knight,
Dame and Maid of Coins. Of the eleven surviving
triumph cards, eight represent standard subjects
.- the Empress, the Emperor, Love, Fortitude, the
Chariot, Death, Judgment and the World. The
other three cards, however, represent the three
theological virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity,
subjects which do not, of course, occur in the
ordinary Tarot pack.
The Visconti di l\lodrone pack is the only
Tarot pack, of any kind, in which the suits include
court cards other than the usual King, Queen,
Cavalier and either Jack or Maid. There must
have been sixty-four suit cards in all: how many
triumphs there were originally, and whether a
Fool was included, it is impossible to say.
Ronald Decker has suggested that there may
originally have been only fourteen triumphs, and
no Fool, so as to make up the usual total of 78
cards," but the total number of cards in the pack
34 Letter to the journal of the Playing-Card Society, vol. III,
no. 1, August, 1974, pp. 23-4, 48, see also letter by M.
Dummett, ibid., vol. III, no. 2, November, 1974, pp. 27-31,
and Ronald Decker, 'Two Tarot studies related', part III,
ibid,, vol. IV, no. 1, August, 1975, pp. 46-52 (esp, p. 50). Mr
Decker presumes that the Visconti di Modrone pack had
only 78 cards, like other Tarot packs; since it must have had
64 suit cards, that leaves only 14 triumph cards and no
Fool. There can, on this reasoning, have been no Fool, since
Mr Decker accepts my view that the three missing Virtues
must originally have been present, and, if we add these to
the eleven surviving triumphs, we already obtain 14, and
there is no room for the Fool, Mr Decker then takes the very
illogical step of arguing that, since there are only 13
(surviving) triumph cards in the Visconti-Sforza pack that
were painted by Bembo, perhaps these, together with the
Fool, were all that the pack originally contained. This is
illogical because in this pack there are only the usual 56 suit
cards, so that he is suggesting an original pack of only 70
cards, whereas the original prentiss was that all Tarot packs
had 78 cards. He attempts t'o rescue his hypothesis by
conjecturing that the Visconti-Sforza pack had originally six
court cards in each suit; but this is obviously very special
pleading. On his hypothesis, there would, besides the suit
cards, have been seven cards in common between the two
packs; the Empress, the Emperor, Love, Justice, the
Chariot, Death and the Judgment. Seven of the triumphs
present in the Visconti di Modrone pack would then have
been removed, namely the WVorld and the six Virtues other
than Justice, when the Visconti-Sforza pack was painted, to
make room for the Fool, the Bagatto, the Popess, the Pope,
the Wheel of Fortune, the Hermit (which originally
 78 Par! I: History and Mystery
is unlikely to have been seen as a significant
feature. Since four of the stock set of seven
Virtues were included among the triumphs, it
seems probable that the other three were also:
Temperance arid justice, which belong to the
standard list of triumph subjects, and Prudence,
which does not. It is just possible, on the other
hand, that what was held constant was the ratio
between the number of triumphs and the
number of cards in each suit, which, in the 78-
card Tarot pack, is 3:2; if this was also so in the
Visconti di Modrone pack, it would have had
twenty-four triumph cards, in which case it could
have contained all save one of the usual subjects,
making, if the Fool was included, a pack of 89
cards altogether, indeed, if we do not suppose
that it included Prudence, it could have had all of
the usual subjects.
However this may be, the divergence of the
Visconti di Modrone pack from the norm, both
as to the number of suit cards and as to the
subjects, if not the number, of the triumph cards,
strongly suggests that it dates from an early
period when the Tarot pack had not yet assumed
its definitive form. In fact, it is probably the
earliest of all the examples of that pack that have
survived to us. It has usually been thought to
have been made for Filippo Maria Visconti,
which would date it to 1447, the year of his death,
at the latest. All three of the Bembo packs
bear emblems and mottoes of the Visconti family,
but that does not prove that they were made
for Filippo Maria, since Francesco Sforza,
his successor, had in 1441 married his
illegitimate daughter by Agnese del Maino,
Bianca Maria Visconti, and had assumed the
name Visconti-Sforza and, with it, many of the
represented Time) and the Hanged Man. Later, when the
number of triumphs was increased by eight, this was done
by restoring, from the original set of subjects, the World and
two of the Virtues, Temperance and Fortitude, but not the
other four, and adding the Devil, the Tower, the Star, the
Moon and the Sun. All this makes so little sense, and is so
grossly implausible, that the hypothesis that demands it is
not to be entertained. What is impressive about the
fifteenth-century Tarot packs that have come down to us is
not the variation in subjects, but, on the contrary, their
invariance, given the fact that no pack has survived
complete. Certainly we must allow that, after the Visconti di
Modrone pack was made, four of the seven Virtues were
removed; the advantage of the hypothesis that that pack
contained twenty-four triumph cards (not including the
Fool as a triumph) is that it gives a reason for the removal of
at least three of them when the number was reduced to
twenty-one.
Visconti devices. It is indeed, virtually certain
that the Visconti-Sforza pack was made for
Francesco Sforza. One reason given by Robert
Steele for taking the Visconti di Modrone pack
to have been made for Filippo Maria is
admittedly Himsy. He thought that the Love
card, which shows a man and woman joining
hands before a tent above which flies a winged
and blindfold Cupid, carried a reference to
Filippo Maria's second marriage. Filippo Maria
divorced his First wife, Beatrice di Tenda, in
Italian style, having her executed for adultery in
14185 in 1428, he married Maria of Savoy,
although the marriage was probably never
consummated. The tent on the Love card is hung
with shields, alternately showing the Visconti
serpent and a white cross on a red ground, which
Steele took to be the arms of Savoy. But, if the
cards were painted by Bembo, an attribution
questioned by no one, they cannot have been
made as early as 1428, and it is unlikely that
there should have been any allusion to this
unfortunate marriage at any later date, Ronald
and Charlotte Decker identify the shield with the
cross as the arms of the Principality of Pavia, a
title held by all the Visconti and Sforza dukes.
The principal reason for thinking that the cards
were painted for Filippo lVIaria is, however, that
the numeral cards of the Coins suit, other than
the Ace and 2, show actual coins, the gold Horin
of Filippo Maria, bearing the letters 'FI MA' and
made by the imprint of an actual die; the same is
true of all the eleven surviving cards of the Coins
suit in the Brambilla pack, but not of the
Visconti-Sforza pack. The Deckers surmise,
instead, that they were made by means of 'seals
of the sort used to attach wax imprints to official
documents', 36 this strikes me as rather unlikely,
in view of the fact that both sides of the coin are
shown: it does not seem probable that there were
two distinct seals, corresponding exactly to the
two sides of the coin. The figures on the court
cards of Swords in the Visconti di l\Iodrone pack
bear a gold fruit on their costumes, which the
Dockers identify as a quince, a Sforza emblem;
but this need not imply that the cards were
painted after Filippo Maria°s death, since
35 Ron and Charlotte Decker, 'The Visconti-Sforza cards
in the Cary Collection', journal of the Playing-Card Soczely, vol.
IV, no, 2, November 1975, pp. 27-32, seep, 29.
36 Ibid., p, 31. The Dockers wish to prove that the pack
was painted for Francesco Sforza, not for Filippo Maria
Visconti.
 Wizen and Where the Taro! Pack was [no/enlea'
Francesco Sforza was in his service, as well as
being married to his daughter. The probability
seems therefore to be that both the Visconti di
Modrone and the Brambilla packs were painted
for Filippo Maria Visconti, the former being the
earlier of the two and dating from the earliest
stage of existence of the Tarot pack.
The Deckers believe that all three Bembo
packs were painted after the death of Filippo
Maria. Stuart Kaplan, on the other hard, takes
the more usual view that the Visconti di
Modrone and Brarnbilla packs were both
painted for him, but regards the Brambilla pack
as the earlier (op. cit., p. 107). So far as we can
tell, the composition of the suits in the Brambilla
pack was standard (or what came to be
standard), since only two of the triumphs
survive, we cannot be certain about them. If the
composition of the Brambilla pack was in fact
standard, it seems more likely that it is the later
of the two. Hankering still after an identification
of the Visconti di Modrone pack as a wedding
present, which has only tradition, not evidence,
to speak for it (and not, of course, an ancient
tradition), Kaplan makes the novel suggestion
that it was painted for the wedding of Francesco
Sforza with Bianca Maria Visconti in 1441.
Taken together with his view that the Brambilla
pack is earlier still, this yields a date rather too
soon for such a commission to have been given to
Bembo, whose earliest dateable work is from
1442. As Ronald Decker has observed, the style
of the Visconti di la/Iodrone cards resembles
Bembo's illustrations for a History of Lancelot
dated 1446. If we assume that the Brambilla pack
was the later, we must leave time for Bembo's
receiving from Filippo Maria a second
commission to execute a set of Tarot cards, we
shall therefore probably not be far wrong if we
date the Visconti di Modrone pack to about
1445. We know from the Ferrara account-books
that the Tarot pack (carte do tri0rz/5) was already in
existence by 1442, and was sufficiently familiar to
that court to bear a generic name. On the other
hand, I have argued that the Visconti di
Modrone cards are not likely to have been
painted many years after the First invention of the
Tarot pack. That event may therefore be
reasonably placed at somewhere around 1440 -
the approximate date, incidentally, assigned to
the painting in the Casa Borromeo.
With the possible exception of the
Goldschmidt cards and of one or both of the
79
two Guildhall pairs, all the early Tarot cards we
possess are Italian; and though, as we shall see, it
cannot be ruled out that the pack was known
elsewhere during the Fifteenth century, there is
no conclusive evidence that it was. We can
therefore safely say that it was in Italy,
specifically in northern Italy, that the pack was
invented and First became popular. Furthermore,
it appears initially to have originated and have
been in use in aristocratic circles. The type of
pack of which the few sheets, printed from wood
blocks, listed above are the only remaining
representatives was no doubt, in its time, very
common. As already remarked, cheap mass-
produced playing cards are highly ephemeral,
and survive, when they do, only through some
unusual accident, whereas costly objects made
by an acclaimed artist are preserved: there are in
fact not very many more popular cards, printed
from wood blocks, surviving from fifteenth-
century Italian regular packs than there are
Tarot cards of the same type. We may therefore
safely assume that in the last quarter of the
fifteenth century the Tarot pack attained great
popularity among the lower ranks of society, this
is confirmed by the Steele sermon, the author of
which was probably not preaching to a
congregation drawn only from the nobility, and,
perhaps, by the painting at Issogne.
Nevertheless, the connection with the nobility,
and especially with the courts of Ferrara and
Milan, compels attention. We have seen that at
least two out of three, and probably more, of the
cards hand-painted for the nobility were tarocclii,
a proportion there is no reason to suppose so high
for the popular cards printed from wood blocks.
The three packs by Bonifacio Bernbo were all
made for the Milanese court, the Visconti di
Modrone and Brambilla packs probably for
Filippo Maria Visconti and the Visconti-Sforza
one for Francesco Sforza. We have noted that the
Tozzi, Fournier, Biedak and Marzoli cards come
from at least two distinct packs, though probably
by the same painter. That painter must have had
access to the Visconti-Sforza cards in order to
make such close copies of them. The card in the
Tozzi set bearing only the Visconti-Sforza
serpent implies that that pack was intended for
the Milanese court. If Ronald Decker is right in
identifying the three-tiered tower on the Fournier
Ace of Coins as a Gonzaga emblem, that
suggests that the Five cards of the Fournier set (10)
do not after all come from the same pack as the
80
Tozzi cards, and that we therefore have to do
with three distinct copies of the Visconti-Sforza
pack. A possible supposition is that all three were
commissioned from the same artist by Beatrice
d'Este, who married Lodovico it Moro, the last
great Sforza duke, in 1491 and died in childbirth
in 1497: one (the Tozzi set) for her own use, one
(the five Fournier cards) as a present to her sister
Isabella, who married Francesco Gonzaga,
Marquis of Mantua, in 1490, and one (the
Fournier-Biedak-Marzoli trio) for an unknown
recipient. (The Della Scala emblem on the figure
on the Wheel of Fortune card in the Tozzi set
remains a mystery, since that family had been in
eclipse for a century.) The Victoria and Albert
cards may also come from a pack made for
Isabella d'Este, in view of the inscription of her
motto on the Ace of Cups (though the presence
on that card of the Colleoni shield would then he
mysterious), the artist must surely also have had
access to the Visconti-Sforza cards, in view of the
exact correspondence of the two Jacks of Coins.
The painter of the narrower Guildhall pair and of
the Andreoletti Jack of Coins, whether or not
these are from the same pack, must also have
seen the Visconti-Sforza cards. In view of the
presence of the arms of the King of Naples on two
of the cards, the d'Este pack at Yale was
probably made for Ercole I, the father of Beatrice
and Isabella, who became Duke of Ferrara in
1471 and died in 1505, since he was married to
Eleanora of Aragon, the daughter of Ferdinando
I, King of Naples. We may also with reasonable
confidence assign the Charles VI, Rothschild and
Catania packs to those made for the Ferrara
court. The Ferrara account-books continue to
record orders for Tarot packs, among cards of
other kinds, for example, in 1452, in 1454 and in
1461 £37 and in 1492 Cardinal lppolito d'Este, the
brother of Beatrice and Isabella, wrote from
Hungary, where he was staying with his aunt,
Beatrice of Aragon, Queen of Hungary, to thank
his mother Eleanora for sending a variety of
things including gilded Tarot cards (triurn/2lit
doraZz).38 We have no wav . of being sure, but a
plausible guess might be that the Tarot pack
originated in the court of Ferrara, in 1440 or a
few years earlier, and was soon afterwards
adopted by the wealthier court of Milan. In any
case, it seems probable that, for the first two or
37 See the references under footnote 19.
is See (I, Bertoni, op. cit., footnote 19, p. 218.
Part I: History and Mystery
three decades of its existence, it was restricted to
the nobility, and only after that spread out
among a wider social circle.
Although the Tarot pack originated in the
fifteenth century, it did not originally bear that
name. The word "Tarot" has become more or less
naturalised as an English word, it is in fact the
French adaptation of the Italian name of these
cards - Zarocc/zz or, in the singular, Zarocro. In early
sources the French word is sometimes spelled
tara (plural Zaraux), Zarault or simply Zara. In
every other language but French and English, the
hard 6 sound of the Italian word has been kept -
Tarock in German (formerly often spelled Tarot
or Tunic), tarokkin Hungarian, taroky in Czech, etc.
Where the word Zarorclzi comes from, nobody
knows: no plausible etymology for it has ever
been suggested, and this deficiency was already
being commented on by an Italian poet, Lollio,
in 1550.39 It is not, however, the original name of
the cards: the first use of the word tarocc/zz known
to me dates from 1516, once again from an /GI*
account-book of the Ferrara court.'*0 Throughout
the fifteenth century, the word used was always
irionfi, or, in Latin, triumpizz - 'triumphs': this'
name was still in use in 1500.41 The word Zrionj,
39 'lnvettiva contra it Giuoco del Taroco': 'E quel nome
fantastics, e bizarre/Di Tarocco, senz'ethirnologia,/Fa
palese a ciascun, the i ghiribizzi/Gli harnesser guasto, e
zorpiato it cervello' ('And that whimsical, bizarre name
"'Tarocco", without any etymology, makes plain to each that
fantasies have damaged and befuddled his brain'- 'he' being
the inventor of the game).
40 in 1516 the Regislro Di Guardaroba of the court of Ferrara
repeatedly records the purchase of two, or four, Para de
taroralii, and similar entries occur in the following year, see
G. Bertoni, op. cit., 1917, pp. 218-19. The word Zanzcrhi also
occurs in Francesco Berni, Ca/222010 del Ciuoco Della Prirniera,
Venice, 1526. I know no sixteenth-century use of the word
frzbrj to refer to Tarot cards in general, or to the game played
with them, although it continued to be used to refer
specifically to the triumph cards. Nor do I know any
authentic occurrence of the word tarocchi before 1516. For an
almost certainly spurious one, see Appendix 2 to this chapter.
41 The word triumplzi occurs in an ordinance from Reggio
nell'Emilia in 1500, forbidding games of chance, including
dice and cards, but specifically excepting "tables" (i.e.
backgammon), chess and triumphs (hoc Zamefz statute non
sombre/iendenttw Zug/erztes ad tabular et Jcacl105 el Zrzumplwr rum
rartzs); see W.L. Schreiber, op. cit., p. 79, where, however,
the city is mistakenly identified as Reggio di Calabria. Such
exceptions were quite frequent, as at Brescia in 1488, Sale in
1489 and Bergamo in 1491 (see W.L. Schreiber, op. cit., pp.
78-9); in all of these cases the expression used was triumplzi
or Iudzzs Niunzp/zorwn. It thus seems clear that the replacement
of the word Mon or frzump/2z by the word Zarocchi occurred
some time between 1500 and 1516.
 When and Wlzere Z/ze Tarot Pack was Invented
strictly speaking, refers only to what we have
been calling the triumph cards, sometimes taken
as including the Fool, sometimes not. By
transference, it was used to apply also to the
game played with the Tarot pack, and sometimes
to the pack itself, including the suit cards; but the
more correct way of referring to the cards of the
Tarot pack, taken together, was as carte do trz07y9.
At some time between 1500 and 1516, the new
name, Zarocc/zz, superseded the old one, and was
thereafter invariably used as the way of referring
to these cards in Italian.
An opinion that has gained some support was
first advanced by Robert Steele, namely that the
Tarot pack was formed by uniting the regular
pack with what had previously been an
independent entity, a pack consisting solely of
the Matto and the twenty-one triumphs used on
their own, and that the early references to ttionj
should be taken as alluding, not to the composite
pack known to us as the Tarot pack, but to this
supposed 22-card pack. He based his opinion on
the text of the sermon by the anonymous
Dominican the manuscript of which was at that
time in his possession; indeed, that sermon
formed his only ground for that opinion. The
preacher inveighed, in his sermon, against three
types of game: first dice, then playing cards
(cartuZae); and finally triumphs (triumPl22). When
he comes to the last of these, he lists the twenty-
one triumph cards and the Fool, but makes no
mention of the suit cards. Now, doubtless, if we
knew nothing of the Tarot pack save what we
learn from this sermon, we should have no reason
to think that a set of trzuml9lzz consisted of
I
r
anything but these twenty-two cards. But the fact
is that there is no other evidence whatever for the
existence of a pack consisting solely of the
triumph cards and the Matto, as we have seen, it
so happens that every fragmentary Tarot pack
that has come down to us includes at least one
suit card. The remarks of the Dominican friar
provide a very Himsy basis for contradicting the
assumption so compellingly suggested by the
actual cards that have survived, namely that the
I that the trumps or trionfi were considered a separate game
triumph cards of the Tarot pack from the first
r formed only part of a composite or augmented
pack, one containing, in addition to them, the
four suits of the regular pack. The preacher was
not, after all, trying to introduce his congregation
to vices with which they were previously
unacquainted: he was trying to wean them from
what he regarded as vices to which they were
81
already addicted. He therefore did not need
carefully to inform them of the precise
composition of a trionyi pack, something they
already knew very well: he was trying, by
rhetorical devices, to convince them of his view
that all these things - dice, regular playing cards
and triumphs .- were instruments of the devil, the
list of triumph cards evidently served as a
memorandum for expatiating on this topic. What
more natural than that, having left the subject of
regular playing cards, he should, when he turned
to denounce triumphs, mention only the cards
peculiar to the Zrionji pack? We may agree that it
was primarily to these additional cards that the
name triuml9lii applied, without in the least
inferring that they ever formed by themselves an
independent pack.42
Miss Moakley is inclined to the same view as
Steele, but adds a further complication: she
thinks that there were also packs, consisting
solely of picture cards, but different in number
and subjects from the triumphs of the Tarot
pack, and likewise known as Zriofzji On her view,
the term Zrzkmji originally applied to cards of any
pack of a certain generic type, one consisting of
cards depicting mythological Figures, personified
abstractions and the like, and only later came to
have specific application to a composite pack
formed by uniting a particular such series to the
regular four-suited pack. That there were, during
the Fifteenth century, various packs answering to
this general description, Miss Moakley
undoubtedly establishes. It does not appear,
however, that they were, at any time, of
widespread use; none of them gained a hold on
general taste or remained more than an isolated
curiosity. Nor can it be shown that they were in
existence at an earlier date than the composite
Tarot pack. What is most to the point, however,
is that there is no reason to think that the word
42 Stuart Kaplan, op. cit., pp. 26, 349, offers a piece of
spurious evidence for the Steele thesis, stating that St
Anthony, Bishop of Florence, in a Treatise of Theology written
in 1457 'refers to playing cards and tarot, thus suggesting
from playing cards, which comprised court cards and
numeral or pip cards". He presumably intends to refer to the
Summa T/zeologzta of St Antoninus, Archbishop of Florence,
Pars 2 (Nuremberg, 1447), chap. 23, of this work does indeed
contain several mentions of playing cards, under the
alternative names of cartaa or rabbi, and their suit-signs (e.g.
§ viii, 'Unde in carts sive naibis sunt figure non sour
baculorum, denariorum, cupparum, sed et gladiorum'l. No
mention of triurnpiti is, however, to be found.
82 Part I: History and Mystery'
trionji was ever used for any kind of playing cards
other than Tarot cards. If Miss Moakley were
right, the references to carte do trionji in the
account-books of the Ferrara court, from 1442
onwards, might relate, not to Tarot packs, but to
others of this more general type, but such a
generalised use of the term cannot he
substantiated.
The most interesting of the special packs
which Miss Moakley claims as examples of trionji
in the alleged more general sense, and one to
which she draws particular attention, is a set of
sixteen picture cards commissioned by Filippo
l\Iaria Visconti from the painter Michelino da
Besozzo W. 1394-1442) - a painter, incidentally,
to whom the murals of games players in the Casa
Borromeo have been attributed by some. This set
was sent in 1449 by a Venetian, Jacopo Antonio
Marcello, as a present to Queen Isabella, wife of
King René I, Duke of Lorraine. It was divided
into four groups of four, representing Virtue,
Virginity, Riches and Pleasure, each card
depicted a suitable classical divinity. The pack
has not survived, but the letter to Queen Isabella,
written in Latin, describing the pack and saying
that Michelino painted it, has." The letter
applies the word Zudus (game) to the set, showing
that it was really meant to be used to play some
kind of game; but there is no use of the word
thumplii in reference to the cards.
A celebrated but problematic passage in the
life of Filippo Maria Visconti, written in Latin by
Pier Car dido Dezembrio (1399-1477), runs as
follows: 'He was accustomed from his youth to
play games of various kinds and particularly
that type of game in which images are painted,
which delighted him to such an extent that he
paid 1500 gold pieces for a whole pack (Zudum) of
them, made in the first place by la/larziano da
Tortona, his secretary, who executed with the
utmost diligence images of gods, and placed
under them with wonderful skill figures of
animals and birds."*'* There are many oddities
about this passage. In the first place, as W.L.
43 See Chapter 3, footnote 2.
44 The passage runs: Varzis autem ludendi mods ab
adolescenfia crux es! Plerurzque so [di genre, qui ex imaginibus
depzdis fit, in quo Precipice oblectatus est aden, it integrum forum
milk, et quingentis auras merit, auctore vol in Primis A/Iartiano
Terdonerzxi nu; Se6t76/a7i0, qui Deorum imagines, fubjectasque his
animalium /iguras, et avi um miro ingenio, rumrnaque industria
/Jerfecit. Dezembrio's life is reprinted in L.A. Muratorx,
Ream italicarum rcrzptores, vol. XX, Milan, 1731, and the
passage will be found in col, 1013.
Schreiber remarked/*5 playing cards were
perfectly well known when Dezembrio was
writing, and it is quite obscure why he should
choose to describe them as for readers who had
never heard of them before. In the second place,
even for someone as rich as Filippo Maria
Visconti, the price for a single pack seems
staggeringly high. In the third place, as remarked
by Campori,'*° l\Iarziano is not known to have
been a painter, and a funeral oration for him
makes no mention of his having been one."
However, if the information given by Dezembrio
is Elt all correct, the pack described was
presumably not a Tarot pack, which does not
normally contain images of gods or pictures of
animals and birds. Hence this was probably a
pack of the kind Miss Moakley is concerned
with; but there is not in Dezembrio's text any use
of the word trium/2lti. The word does, indeed,
occur in what Campori cites as a contemporary
translation into Italian of Dezembrio's life of
Yisconti, written by someone using the s
pseudonym Polismagna, the manuscript of
which is said by Campori to be preserved in the
d'Este library; but it may quite well be that the
translator, like others after him, was puzzled be
the passage, and assumed that it must refer to
some kind of Tarot pack.
Another documentary source cited by l\Iiss
Moakley is an inventory of the workshop of the
engraver Francesco Rosselli made in 1528.49 This
inventory lists plates for printing a number of
remarkable games: the giuoc/10 del trionfo do
Petrarciza; the giulio d'ap0Jtoli oleo! nostro signore, the
giuoco do see virtue; and the gi0ucl10 do Pianeti c/10 ioro
fregi (the game of the triumph of Petrarch, the
game of Apostles with our Lord; the game of
45 W.L. Schreiber, op. cit., p. 100.
46 G. Campori, 'Le Carte do Giuoco dipinte per li
Estensi net Secolo XV', Attz' e Memorie dell RR. Deputagzorzi di
Storia Patria Per Le Province modenesi eparmensi, vol. 3, Modena,
1874, p. 125, in. 4.
47 The funeral orations printe<3 in Tirabosehi, Styria della
letteratura italian, vol. 6, p. 1196.
43 See G. Campori, op. it., p. 125, fn. 3. The translation
runs: Alcuna Volta .zugava a je carte de triurnpNi. Et di Huerta gioclzo
molto sz deleetoe Per mode 6/ie compare no Para di carte do triumph
fompite mille et eznque Vento dueati. Di querto maximamente auctore et
easone Martina do Terdona sua Jecretario, it quale cum meraviglioio
inzegrza el summa indurtria compile quest gioc/zo de carte sum je
sure et imagine de ii dei el sum lejigure de ii animal et de ii celli
the gli rum sottofmsti.
49 See. A.M. Hind, Early Italian Engraving, part I, vol. I,
London, 1938, pp. 10, 11, 305-8. The spellings are given as
in Hind.
 When and Wlzere the Tarot Park we; Invented
seven virtues; and the game of planets with their
borders). These must, again, have been games
with picture cards of special kinds; but they are
not labeled, generically, trio fji. The name of the
first game relates to the poem by Petrarch called
I Triofj, and cannot, therefore, fairly be cited in
support of a general thesis.
None of the special packs so far mentioned has
survived: the only one of this kind that has come
down to us from this period is the celebrated
copper-engraved set, which exists in two
versions, known as the tarorclzz do A/Iantegrza, about
which it is invariably, and correctly, observed
that they are neither la rocnlz z' nor by Mantegna.
They are thought to date from about 1465, and
were made by an unknown artist of the Ferrarese
school. Many have doubted that this set was used
for a game at all, on the ground that existing prints
are on paper too flimsy to be used for play, but it is
quite likely that it was originally intended for a
game of some kind. The set consists of fifty
picture cards, divided into five groups of ten
each, representing respectively social ranks,
Muses, sciences, virtues and the celestial spheres :
the cards are individually numbered, and each
group is distinguished by a letter. Once again,
there is no evidence that they were ever referred
to as trioryi, although at a later date the term
tarocc/zz was attached to them by a vague
analogy."
The fact is that games of this kind represent a
persistent, and natural, inclination to invent new
games to be played with packs of playing cards
having a structure entirely different from that or
the regular playing-card pack or from an
augmented form such as the Tarot pack, an
inclination already manifest in the fifteenth
century and freely indulged in by games
50 Miss Moakley also suggests that some engravings
ascribed to Nieoletto do Modena, illustrated in A.M. Hind,
op. cit., vol. VI, 1948, plates 640-7, form part of a pack of
cards; but this cannot be so, since they differ considerably in
size. The literature on the tarocdzi dz Mantegna is vast: for
illustrations, see A.M. Hind, op. cit., vol. IV, 1938, plates
320-69, for a survey of the literature, see D. Hoffmann, op.
cit., p. 67. For arguments in favour of regarding them as
playing cards, see Fritz Saxl, 'Verzeichniss astrologischen
und mythologischen illustrierten Handscrhiften des
Lateinischen Mittelalters in Rijmischen Bibliotheken',
SzLzur;gsberzchte der Heidelberger Akademie der Wzsserz.v4/zaften, pp.
101, 222, and Heinrich Brockhaus, 'Ein Edler Geduldspiel
"Die Lietung der Welt oder die Himmelsleiter" und die
sogenannte Taroks di Mantegna vom .Jahre 1459-60', in
Miscellanea do Scoria del!'Arte in note Igirzo Benvenuto Supine,
1933, p. 397.
83
manufacturers to-day. There was a particular
vogue for such games in Italy, which lasted
through the seventeenth century, as two such
packs designed by Mitelli bear witness. In most
cases, however, the games invented to play with
packs of this kind have no strong attraction to
outweigh the disadvantage of having to buy a
special pack of cards to play them; often they
merely imitate the features of traditional games
played .with the regular pack. As a result, the
packs designed for use in such games prove
ephemeral and leave no progeny. The only
exception to this is the CuccU pack, an Italian
invention of the seventeenth century which not
only exists to this day but spread to other parts of
Europe, where it gave rise to the Hexenkarte of
Germany, no longer extant, and the Gnav pack of
Denmark and Norway and the Killekort of
Sweden, both still well known in those countries.
This was, and is, used to play a simple and
enjoyable game which, in a simplified form,
adapted to the regular pack, is known to British
children under such names as Ranter Go Round
and Catch the Ace. But, of course, this has
nothing to do with the Tarot pack, and no-one
ever thought of calling these cards trionj or tarocc/zi.
There is thus no reason to suppose that the
Tarot triumphs ever formed a separate pack by
themselves, and there is still less reason to think
that they were ever regarded as just one species of
a large genus known, as a whole, as trionji. It is
evident that the Tarot pack became immensely
popular within a short time after its invention;
but the only reasonable hypothesis is that it was
from the start a composite pack, containing the
four suits of the regular pack alongside the
additional cards to which the name trionji
properly applies, and that, in connection with
playing cards, the word triorji, as used in the
fifteenth century, applied only to the Tarot
triumphs or, by extension, to Tarot cards as a
whole.
There can be no doubt that it was in Italy that
the Tarot pack was invented, and there that,
throughout the fifteenth century, it was chiefly
popular; but the question when it first became
known in any other country does not admit of so
ready an answer. It was certainly in France that
it first became known outside its country of
origin, but it is difficult to be precise at what date
it was First known there. The earliest certain
reference to it there comes from Rabelais in 1534,
he includes it, under the spelling larau, in his long
84 Part I: History and Mystery
list of the games played by Gargantua, tarot; are
again referred to in the posthumous Fifth Book of
1564.51 The earliest surviving Tarot pack known
to have been made outside Italy is one made by
Catelin Geoffroy in Lyons in 1557.52 But we have
seen that the term tarocrlri did not come into use
in Italy until after 1500, and we should therefore
assume the same to be true of the term tarot; in
France: if there were any reference to the Tarot
pack from fifteenth-century France, we should
expect it to be by means of some such word as
Zriump/zer. And indeed we find, once more from an
account book, that in 1496 Rene II, Duke of
Lorraine, is reported as having played at
lriumPl16,53 the earliest recorded use of the word in
French as the name of a card game dates from as
early as 1482.54 Unfortunately, we cannot be
certain that these references are to games played
with the Tarot pack. In Italy, after the adoption
of the new term tarocc/zz, or perhaps 4 in other countries, originated from the
simultaneously with it, the term trzbn was
transferred to a game played with the regular
pack, this new use of the word triorf goes hack at
least to 1526.55 In France also there was a very
ancient game, played with the regular pack, and
known as Triumphe, which is also mentioned by
Rabelais. If we conceive of the Tarot pack as not
having been introduced into France until after
the adoption of the name Zarowlii, that is, at the
beginning of the sixteenth century, so that the
cards were never known there otherwise than as
Zarols, then we could interpret these late fifteenth-
century references to lriumplze or ttiompize as
alluding only to the game known from Rabelais's
time to the present day under that name. But this
supposition, although possible, is unlikely. It
implies that the use of the name 'Triumplze' for a
card game in France is unconnected with the
51 F. Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel, book I, oh. 22 and
bookV, oh. 23.
52 Seventeen cards from this pack are illustrated in Detlef
Hoffmann, op. cit., plates 15(b) and 36(a), nine of them in
colour. Nine are illustrated by Kaplan, op. cit., p. 132. The
pack is in the Museum fur Kunsthandwerk, Frankfurt am
Main, catalogue number K 1.
53 See H.-R. D'Allemagne, op. cit., vol. II, p. 212. The
references occur in the account-books of the court of
Lorraine for the year 1495-6, and run respectively :
Au Roy, je 29 avril pour jouer au triumphs 8 Vézelise
deux francs.
Encore audit seigneur roy je lr mai pour jouer audit
triumphs 8 Vézelise deux florins d'or.
54 See F. Godefroy, Dicliormaire de lucienne langue frarzgaise,
Complérnent, s.v. 'triomphe', See also Chapter 9, fn. 2.
55 In Francesco Berni, Capilolo del Giuoco Della Primiera.
contemporary use in Italy of the word trionji for
Tarot cards and the games played with them,
that it was mere coincidence that two such
similar names were used for different things. On
this theory, the transference of the term trionji to a
game played with the regular pack might have
occurred in imitation of the name of the French
game also so played, necessitating the
introduction of a new word for Tarot cards. This
is possible; but it is not probable. For reasons
that will not be set out in full until Chapter
7, it is much more likely that no coin-
cidence was involved: that the name Zrionfi was
transferred from the Tarot cards to a game
played with the regular pack precisely because
that game was in part adapted from that which
the Tarot pack was used to play, and that the
game played in France under the name
Triumphe, like other games with similar names
dissemination of the same idea. If this is so, then
the game known to this day as Triumphe cannot
have come into existence until after the term
KrzOrj had ceased to be used specifically for Tarot
cards, and the fifteenth-century uses of the word
triumphs or Zriomphe must be taken as referring to a
game played with the Tarot pack, whose
introduction into France must therefore be dated
to at least about 1480. It fits well with this
hypothesis that the later reference concerns the
court of Lorraine, to which W€ have noted a
pack of playing cards made for the Milanese
court being sent as a present some forty-odd
years earlier.
Of the various hand-painted Tarot cards of the
fifteenth century, the only ones of which we
could not be certain that they came from Italy
were the Goldschmidt cards and the two
Guildhall pairs, though they had connections
both with the Victoria and Albert cards and the
Visconti-Sforza pack. Opinions about the
provenance of the Goldschmidt cards have been
very various. W.L. Schreiber assigned them to
Venice, on the strength of his identification of the
kneeling lady as a Dogaressa. Eberhard Pinder
thought they were made in the Upper Rhine
region by an Italian artist. Now the Victoria and
Albert cards are surely Italian, if only because of
the Italian inscription on the Death card, and it
is plain that the painters of the Goldschrnidt
cards and of the wider Guildhall pair were
familiar with the convention used in the Victoria
and Albert pack for the representation of the Ace
 When and Where Zlze Tarot Pack was Itwealed
of Cups. Furthermore, if the narrower Guildhall
pair really is part of the same original pack as the
Goldschmidt cards, the artist must have known
the Visconti-Sforza pack, including the later
cards not by Bembo. There is therefore good
reason for thinking that an Italian artist, or at
least one acquainted with Italian cards, was
responsible for this pack. Nevertheless, Detlef
Hoffmann is surely right in fastening upon the
appearance of the Batons in their so-called
Spanish form as the most significant clue. Batons
on Italian cards of the Fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries may vary somewhat in shape: but they
invariably intersect, and, like the Swords (which
do not always intersects, they invariably extend
the whole length of the card. They are never
found disposed, as in Spanish-suited packs and
as on the 5 of Batons in the Goldschmidt set,
upright and in the manner of the pips on a
French-suited card, in separate rows. It seems
unthinkable that this pack can have been made
for use in fifteenth-century Italy.
From the fact that the two Guildhall pairs
were discovered in a chest in Seville one might be
tempted to believe that the Goldschmidt cards
represent an otherwise unknown phenomenon -
Spanish Tarot cards. But this would surely be a
mistake. As has already been remarked, that
variant of the Latin suit-system which was in the
course of the sixteenth century adopted as the
national suit-system of Spain was not in origin
Spanish, but French. What little we know of late
fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century Spanish
cards suggests that at that time cards made in
Spain employed the Latin suit-system in
something very much more like what was to
become its Portuguese variant, with straight but
intersecting Swords and knobbly but intersecting
Batons, though doubtless French-made
'Spanish'-suited cards were imported in
considerable numbers. It is possible, therefore,
that the Goldschmidt cards represent a type of
Tarot pack used in some noble house of fifteenth-
century France, though there is no need to locate
them more narrowly in Provence, as Hoffmann
does. They differ too much from anything else
that has come down to us, however, for this to be
more than a conjecture. Only a single Tarot pack
survives to us from sixteenth-century France,
that by Catelin Geoffroy already referred to; and
this is no guide to the way the suit-signs
appeared on early French Tarot packs, since it
uses completely non-standard suit-signs. The
85
subjects on the triumph cards are, however,
standard, and show no relationship with
the enigmatic Figures on the Goldschmidt
cards. The next earliest French Tarot pack
we have is one made in the early seventeenth
century, and on this the Swords and Batons are
neither of the usual Italian shape, nor of the
Spanish one, they do, however, for the most
part intersect with one another. In all
later French Latin-suited Tarot packs, the
Italian suit-system is used. It thus appears that, if
the Goldschmidt cards really were made for use
in France, they have left no progeny and may
have been an isolated experiment; but the data
are too sparse to ground a Firm opinion. It could,
indeed, be argued from the fact that the Tarot
pack was later associated so Firmly with the
Italian version of the Latin suit-system that it
cannot have been introduced into France until a
time when that suit-system was no longer very
familiar, or, at least, no longer seemed quite
ordinary, on the ground that otherwise the suit-
signs would have undergone the same
modification to their 'Spanish' form that was
imposed on regular Latin-suited packs in France.
Such an argument would rest upon the
assumption that we have made that originally the
'Italian' suit-system was everywhere in use. But,
even if this assumption and the foregoing
argument are correct, this does not threaten our
conjecture that the triumph/ze played by Duke René
II and the triumplze mentioned in 1482 were games
played with the Tarot pack, or even that the
Goldschmidt cards represent the type of pack
that may have been used. The 'Spanish' variation
on the Latin suit-system was in existence by
about 1460, but it may have been invented
earlier, and the Goldschmidt cards might
represent an early phase when the Tarot pack
was known only in a few aristocratic circles.
In all Tarot packs made outside Italy, the
triumph cards bear Roman or Arabic numerals
to indicate their position in the sequence; and,
in all non-ltalian Latin-suited Tarot packs after
1700, except in the Revolutionary period, and in
some seventeenth-century ones, they also
have their names inscribed in full at the bottom
of the card (save for the Death card, whose name
is usually missing). The same practice was
usually observed for the court cards as well, and
often for the Aces. Italian Tarot cards made
before the eighteenth century do not carry verbal
inscriptions (save for a few non-standard packs,
86 Part I: History and Mystery
and some occasional mottoes); and even the
practice of putting numerals on the triumph cards
seems to have come in only gradually. On the
sheet in the Rosenwald Collection in Washington,
the numbering stops at XII, the top nine cards
being left unnumbered; on the sheets at the
Metropolitan Museum, New York, the triumph
cards are numbered from I to XX, only the top
card, the World, being left unnumbered; but, on
the sheet in the Cary Collection, and on those in
the RothsChild Collection and at the Ecole des
Beaux Arts, the triumph cards bear no numerals.
There is an incomplete pack in the Bibliotheque
Municipale at Rouen from the early sixteenth
century, whose triumph cards bear numerals,
although a classicised pack, the Figures can
easily be equated with the usual subjects, unlike
in the Sola-Busca tatoccl8.56 Count Leopoldo
Cicognara knew a complete example of a very
similar, though not identical, pack, and
illustrated six cards from it in his book of 1831 ,57
in his pack, there were no numerals on the
triumph cards. The triumphs of the Sola-Busca
pack itself do bear numerals. Numerals do not
seem to have been an original feature of any
of the hand-painted packs: there are numerals
on three of the triumph cards at the Castello
so The pack is part of the Leber Collection, catalogue
number 1351-XIV. Four cards are illustrated in colour in D.
Hoffmann, op. cit., plate 23(b), and nine by Kaplan, op.
cit., p, 133, Thirty cards survive, including the Fool and
seven triumph cards. The latter are to be identified with the
usual subjects as follows: Imperator Assiriorum,
unnumbered (the numeral is presumably covered up by the
turned-over edge) .- the Emperor, Pontifex Pontificurn, 5 -
the Pope, Victoriae Premium. 7 - the Chariot, Omnium
Dominatrix, 10 - the \'Vheel of For tune, Rerum Edax
(Saturn), 11 - the Hermit (or Time), Perditorum Raptor
(Pluto), 14 -the Devil; Inclitum Syd us, 16-the Star.
57 See L. Cicognara, op. cit., pp. 163-6 and plate XIV, the
cards are also shown in D. Hoffmann, op. cit., fig. 6. The
cards illustrated by Cicognara are the Aces of the four suits,
Cupid = Love, and Apollo = the Sun. Contrary to what is
said by D. Hoffmann, op. cit., p. 68, the pack described by
Cicognara was not the same as that at Rouen, though very
similar. The Rouen set includes the Aces of Batons, Coins
and Swords, and these differ considerably in design from
those ,shown by Cicognara. Also, Cicognara describes the
Fool of his pack in detail, and it is quite different from that
at Rouen: Cicognara's Fool was a drunkard lying On his
back, supporting, with his legs in the air, a jar marked
'Muscatello', that at Rouen shows a man armed to the
teeth, and dressed in armour, but with genitals exposed and
urinating, and bears the inscription 'Velim fur dam dari
mihi'. The Cicognara pack is ascribed by A.M, Hind, op.
cil., vol. V, London, 1948, pp. 130-40, to Nicoletto da
Modena.
Ursino in Catania (not on the unidentified
one showing the figure on a stag), but these
have obviously been added much later; there
are also numerals on the triumph cards of the
'Charles VI' set, which are also later ad-
ditions, although, in their case, they may have
been added in the fifteenth century. Otherwise
the hand-painted triumph cards are all
unnumbered. It should not be thought, however,
that the lack of numerals in these packs is
evidence that the triumph cards did not
originally form an ordered sequence. The sermon
quoted by Steele lists them in a definite sequence,
even giving their numbers, a sequence that is
confirmed by some literary sources of the
sixteenth century. It is not that the cards did not
have an order, but just that those who used them
were expected to remember this order without
recourse to enumeration, just as they would
know the order of the court cards of any suit
without any further aid. It Might seem that to
keep in mind the order of twenty-one distinct
cards is too difficult a feat for people to have been
expected to perform; but this supposition can, as
it happens, be decisively refuted. The particular
form of Tarot pack still used in Bologna, which
has changed comparatively little since the
sixteenth century, save for becoming double-
headed (it was one of the earliest standard
patterns to do so), did not, until the mid-
eighteenth century, hear numerals on any of the
triumph cards at all. Yet, in the game played
with this pack (which has also changed very
little, at least since the eighteenth century, and,
probably, since long before that), the triumph
cards have a definite ranking. Eighteenth-
century descriptions of this game list the triumph
cards by name, and never refer to them by
number, and were probably written for players
using packs without numerals on the cards. In
any ease, there is a clear demonstration that the
same ranking applied before it was the practice
to put numerals on the triumph cards. Before
that time, a celebrated geographical Bolognese
Tarot pack was designed by Canon Luigi
Montieri in 1725: the main body of each triumph
card (including the Fool) carried geographical
information, and that of each suit card showed
coats of arms. (There was a great vogue in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries for such
instructional packs, particularly geographical
and heraldic ones; both regular packs and Tarot
packs were designed for this purpose.) In
 WIzen and I/Vlzere Ile Taro! Pack was Invented
Montieri's pack, the usual symbol giving the
denomination of each card was confined to a
small panel at the top. In each such panel on the
triumph cards is a single letter; when the
triumphs are arranged in descending order, with
the Fool at the end, these letters spell C LUIGI
MONTIERI INVENTOR, a clear indication
that, at that time, the triumphs ranked in the
same order as that which they have had from the
mid-eighteenth century until now." Another
famous Bolognese Tarot pack was made (in 1664,
according to C.P. Hargrave) for the Bentivogli
family by the engraver Gioseppe Maria Mitelli
(1634-1718); the engravings were also issued in
book form, with ten cards to a page, and the
triumph cards are again arranged, in descending
order, in the usual sequence." It is thus apparent
that, long before the Bolognese triumphs bore
numerals, they were arranged in a determinate
order, and that, from the early sixteenth until the
mid-eighteenth century, players were expected to
remember this order. What Bolognese players
could do up to the eighteenth century, others
could do in the Fifteenth. There is therefore no
obstacle to supposing that the triumph cards
formed, from the outset, a sequence with a definite
order.
Why, then, were these cards called 'triumphs'°
Many have tried to explain the word from the use
of the twenty-one triumph cards in play, namely
as 'triumphing' over the other cards, and we
cannot say for sure that this explanation is
incorrect. A brilliant suggestion of Miss
Moakley's is, however, more attractive. This is
that the name has nothing to do with the use of
the cards, but only with what is shown on them,
the series of triumph cards representing a sort of
triumphal procession. As documented by
5"The Montieri cards are illustrated in Playing Card; of
Various Ages and Counlrze.s Selected from the Collection of Lady
Clzarlolle Schreiber, vol. IH, London, 1895, plates 74-9, with
notes pp. 13-15. There is also a reproduction pack issued by
the Edizioni del Solleone in Lissone in 1973, edited by
Signor Vito Arienti and illustrated by Kaplan, op. it., p,
147,
Two of the Mitelli cards are illustrated in C.P.
'39
Hargrave, op. cit., opp. p. 232, see also opp. p. 99 in 1966
edition, twenty-four are shown in Kaplan, op. cit., p. 54.
The book version was issued as (fzuoeo dz Carle on nuoOafonna
do Tarter/zznz; [nlaglzO in Rome dz (fzOyeppe ,Matzo II/fzlellz, and
was reprinted in '1970 by Huber und Herpel of Offenbach
am Main as Gioseppe l\flaria l\1itelli, Bologneser Toroclcrpiel
des 17. joe/vrlzzmdertf. C.P. Hargrave, A History 0f Playzng Cards,
New York, 1930, 1966, p. 232, confidently cites the date
1664 but gives no authority for doing so.
87
Burckhardt and Miss Moakley, a favourite
entertainment in the courts of Renaissance Italy
was the staging of just such triumphal proces-
sions, with floats bearing Figures either derived
from classical mythology or representing
abstractions such as Love, Death, etc.: a trans-
formation of the utterly serious triumph of a
Roman general or Emperor into an elegant alle-
gorical entertainment. A frequent ingredient
in such Renaissance triumphs was the idea
underlying Petrarch's poem I Trionj, in
which each successive personified abstraction
triumphs over, that is, vanquishes, the last,
thus, in the poem, love triumphs over gods
and men, chastity over love, death over
chastity, fame over death, time over fame
and eternity over time. The case would be
clinched if it were possible to explain the subjects
of the triumph cards of the Tarot pack as forming
a triumphal procession of this sort; but in
spite of Miss Moakley°s determined efforts,
supplemented subsequently by those of Mr
Ronald Decker, such an explanation, while
plausible in principle, is difficult to make
convincing in detail. Nevertheless, in default of a
better explanation, we may accept it as likely,
though by no means certain, that it was this
association of ideas which prompted the use of
the name 'triumphs' for the additional cards of
the Tarot pack.
A/9/mndzéc 7:
A Problematic Set of Tarofc/li
After I had finished this book, and was engaged on
final revision, I received a copy, kindly sent me by the
author, of Stuart R. Kaplan's The Encyclopedia of Tarot
(New York, 1978), already referred to. The most
valuable feature of the book is the extensive series of
illustrations of all the sets of fifteenth-century Italian
hand-painted Cards, and of many other Tarot packs
surviving from before the eighteenth century. I have
inserted references to Kaplan's illustrations of the
packs discussed in this chapter in the footnotes. have
some disagreements with Kaplan's judgments, to
some of these I have drawn attention in the text or the
footnotes of this chapter. There is, however, one set of
hand-painted Tarot cards illustrated by Kaplan of
which I was quite unaware, discussion of which I
thought it best to relegate to this appendix.
The set in question comprises twenty-three cards,
Kaplan states (p. 106) that the last known owner of
the set, before the Second W'orld War, was a British
dealer named Rosenthal, and says (p. 99) that in 1939
88 Part I: History and Mystery
it was offered to a leading American collector, who
refused it because he doubted its authenticity. Kaplan
supplies illustrations of all the cards (p. 99),
unfortunately, these are rather minute, so that it is
difficult to see details even with a magnifying glass. Of
the twenty-three cards, eleven closely resemble the
corresponding Visconti-Sforza ones: the Emperor,
Justice, the Cavalier, jack, 5 and 4 of Swords, the
Queen and Jack of Batons, the King of Cups, and the
King and Jack of Coins. Four resemble the Visconti-
Sforza cards in general style, but differ in detail: the 5
of Batons, the 5 of Cups, and the 5 and 3 of Coins.
The former two differ in the arrangement of the suit-
signs, the latter two in the disposition of the scrolls
inscribed a bon daft, which is the form of the Visconti
motto consistently used in this set (the spelling is
always dropt on the Bembo cards, as on the Tozzi 5 of
Swords, though it is drozt on the Fournier 2 of Coins).
Two cards, the Star and the Ace of Cups, are very
similar to the Victoria and Albert ones. The Star is
almost precisely the same, but the Ace of Cups shows
some differences: the Colleoni arms are not parted,
there is an inscription I cannot read on the upper
scroll, the cliff noted by Kaplan is missing, and,
though the stem of the 'cLlp' or fountain is still
inscribed new spa new meta, the inscription occupies two
lines instead of four. Another card in the Rosenthal
set shows only the Visconti/Sforza serpent, exactly
like the Tozzi card. The remaining five cards are: (i) a
Falconer card, very closely resembling no. (20), save
for the design on the cape, (ii) a card showing a sun
with rays and a face, as on the Goldschmidt and wider
Guildhall cards, over a castle, with a wheel and a Fleur
de lys above the castle on either side, and, at the
bottom, a scroll inscribed Fortegza (a word which may
mean either 'fortress' or 'fortitude'); (iii) an Ace of
Swords, showing a dagger dripping blood, and, at the
bottom, part of a sun with an inscription I cannot
read, and two scrolls higher up on the card, marked a
bon dropt and, apparently, REPUTE, (iv) a Cavalier of
Batons, like the Visconti-Sforza one but laterally
reversed, and with a three-turreted castle in the top
left-hand corner, encircled by an inscription I cannot
read, and ah unidentifiable object in the top right-
hand corner, .and (v) an Ace of Coins, showing a
cardinal in the Coin, and, according to Kaplan, an
inscription, not visible in the illustration.
It is very hard to draw conclusions about this
extraordinary set from Kaplan's diminutive
illustrations, taken from a photograph in his
possession, they deserve publication in color and in
full size (though Mr Kaplan does not know their
measurements). The salient reason for supposing the
suspicions of the American collector who refused to
buy them to be justified is the figure of the cardinal on
the Ace of Coins, it looks very much like an attempt to
establish the set as really being, at last, from the pack
supposedly painted for Ascanio Sforza. However, the
style of this Ace of Coins seems totally unlike that of
the rest of the set, it is possible, therefore, that it is a
forged addition to an otherwise genuine set. A more
subtle reason for doubt lies in the form of the Colleoni
arms on the Ace of Cups; here the device takes the
later form of three inverted hearts, not of three pairs of
coglionz (testicles), as on the Victoria and Albert card
and other contemporary presentations of these arms,
for instance in the Colleoni chapel at Bergamo (see
footnote 25). This strongly suggests that the
Rosenthal cards could not have been painted in the
fifteenth century.
If the set should nevertheless prove to be genuine
(perhaps with the exception of the Ace of Coins), it
would establish the most interesting links between
other surviving sets of fifteenth-century Tarot cards.
First, it would supply an original for the Falconer card
(no. 201, and from a Tarot pack, though whether it
represented the Bagatto, or even the Fool, or some
distinct alternative triumph subject, would remain
obscure; this would increase the probability that the
Goldschmidt cards are also genuinely from a Tarot
pack. Secondly, it would establish the sun with a face
as a device employed on various Milanese Tarot
cards. and thus would make it less likely that the
Goldschmidt cards or the wider Guildhall pair had a
non-ltalian origin, the significance of this sun would
remain problematic. Thirdly, it would provide further
examples of the practice of placing small emblems in
the upper corners of cards, a practice that would still
be baffling.
Whether genuine or forged, the set poses some new
puzzles of its own. What is the significance of the
inscription REPUB on the Ace of Swords? On the
death of Filippo Maria Visconti in 1447, the citizens
of Milan, tired of their Dukes, as well they might be,
declared a republic; in 1450, however, Francesco
Sforza captured the city and proclaimed himself
Duke. Can this card be meant to contain an allusion
to the bloody suppression of the short-lived republic 3
The card inscribed Fortezza cannot, in view of the
inscription, represent the Sun, if the card is genuine,
this provides corroboration of the view that the sun on
the Guildhall card we took to be the Ace of Swords
and on the unidentified Goldschmidt card is not, in
either case, the feature of the card determining its
identity. The Fortezza card, if spurious, may be meant
to represent the Tower; but, if genuine, it can hardly
do so, because that card, although it went under
various names and had many representations, is never
called la Fortezza, or even Za Torre, in early Italian
sources. It is much more likely to represent Fortitude,
by a kind of visual pun, even though this subject is
normally represented by a personification; la Forlezza
is the name invariably given to this subject in the early
sources, as against the name Za Forma (Strength)
usually employed in the later Tarot de Marseille-
derived packs. It is hard to avoid being impressed by
 When and Where Ilse Tarot Pack was Invented
this card. Unlike most of those in the set, it is not a
close copy of some other existing card. If we suppose it
a forgery, then to suppose it intended to represent the
Tower is to attribute a very crude mistake to the
forger. If we regard it as representing Fortitude, on
the other hand, it becomes an ingenious and
unexpected representation of its subject, and
presupposes enough knowledge of the literary sources
on the part of any forger responsible for it for him to
be aware that the regular word used for the Fortitude
card in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was
Fortez€a. These considerations seem to me to weigh in
favour of the authenticity of the set, and, if the
Fortegza card is genuine, the lady with the model
castle in the Goldschmidt set may be another deviant
version of Fortitude.
It thus becomes a matter of some importance for
the study of fifteenth-century hand-painted Zarorchz to
determine whether any or all of the Rosenthal cards
are genuine, and, as a first step, where they are. Mr
Albi Rosenthal, of Oxford and London, who is
presumably the British dealer referred to by Kaplan,
has informed me thain the 1920s his father sold some
hand-painted Italian tarocchi to Herr von Hardt of
Switzerland, but does not know where the von Hardt
collection is now. He has also told me that at a later
date some fifteenth-century hand-painted tarocc/zi were
shown to him at his Curzon Street office in London,
but that these were definitely found to be forgeries.
Which of these two sets, if either, is that designated
'the Rosenthal cards" by Kaplan is unclear. It is to be
hoped that the cards themselves, or at least some
more detailed illustrations of them, become available
for examination, in the meantime, we owe a
considerable debt to l\1r Kaplan for bringing the set to
public attention.
Appendix 2:
The Tarot/zz of Cardinal Ascanio Sforza
In Count Leopoldo Cicognara, A/Ierrzorie spellarzli Alla
Prato, 1831, p, 16, there iS
Sloria Della Caliograjia,
quoted an alleged excerpt from the Chronicle of
Cremona by Domenico Bordigallo. The excerpt is in
Italian, and states that in the year 1484 the excellent
painter Antonio Cicognara (of the same family as the
Count) painted no magnyico matzo de Carle delly de'
Tarocc/il, do me vedulo (a magnificent pack of the cards
called taroaclzl, seen by me) for Cardinal Ascanio
Sforza. Count Cicognara says that this passage was
communicated to him by Mgr Antonio Dragoni from
the so/zede (notes) of Giacomo Torresino, an
eighteenth-century Cremonese antiquarian. On the
strength of this passage, numerous art historians have
ascribed various hand-painted Tarot cards of the
fifteenth century to Antonio Cicognara, including the
89
six cards of the Visconti-Sforza pack that are not by
Bembo; but the passage is almost certainly spurious.
Any historical document connected with Dragoni is
under the gravest suspicion, since he was either a
forger or the dupe of forgers, although he was
primarily concerned with documents relating to the
Dark Ages, of which he made, or manufactured, a
large collection. Torresino did indeed compose notes
on local history, using a page for each year, and
entering quotations relating to that year from various
sources, but this work, at any rate in the form in
which it survives in the Biblioteca Statale at Cremona,
stops before 1484. Bordigallo's Chronicle was written
in Latin, and has never been published, the
manuscript was located by Signor Marco
Santambrogio, of the University of Bologna, in the
Biblioteca Treccani in l\lilan, where, with the kind
assistance of Signora Carla Treccani degli Alfieri, he
examined it, he found that, while the entry for 1484
does contain a reference to Aseanio Sforza, namely to
record that it was in that year that he was created a
Cardinal, it mentions neither Antonio Cicognara nor
tarocciii. It is conceivable that the quotation was in
some later section of Torresino's notes that has since
been lost, but from some other source, or that it is in
Bordigallo's Chronicles but under a later year
(Ascanio Sforza died in 1505), but the probability is
that it is quite inauthentic. In any case, the use of
the modern word rrzazzo for 'pack' was, so far as I am
aware, unknown in fifteenth-century Italian, which
uses pare or 82o60 instead; so, even if the Italian given
by Count Cicognara is a translation of some genuine
Latin original, the word tarorc/zi is not likely to have
occurred in that original. See M. Durnmett, 'A Note
on Cicognar8', journal of !ize Playing-Card Society, vol. IL
no. 1, August 1973, pp. 14-17 (original issue), pp. 23-
32 (reissue), and 'More about Cicognara', ibid., vol.
V, no. 2, pp. 26-34. These two articles are cited by
Stuart R. Kaplan in his annotated bibliography (The
Encyclopedia of Tarot, New York, 1978, p. 356), but he
mentions only their discussion of the Fibbia portrait,
not of the Bordigallo Chronicle. Mr Kaplan does,
however, state categorically (pp. 33, 351) that the
Chronicle contains no reference either to tarocc/zi or to
Antonio Cicognara. Though I consider this quite
probable, I cannot vouch for it, since Signor
Santambrogio had time to examine only the section
dealing with the year 1484, and l have not yet seen the
manuscript myself. From the absence of
acknowledgment to myself or to Signor
Santambrogio, the reader might naturally suppose
that Mr Kaplan was speaking on his own authority
and had examined the Chronicle in more detail than
Santambrogio had done; but this seems unlikely in
view of his mistaken assertion (p. 33) that it was in
1484 that Bordigallo wrote his Chronicle, since
anyone who had seen it would have observed that the
entries go beyond that year. From his curious
 90 Par! I: History and Mystery

statement (p. 374) that Torresino's notes contain
Bordigallo's Chronicle, it is equally unlikely that he
has seen them. Mr Kaplan expresses the belief (pp.
100, 107) that the initials 'A.C.' on the Tozzi King of
Swords may stand, not for 'Antonio Cicognara but
for 'Ascanio Cardinale', this seems somewhat
illogical, since Count Cieognara's purported
quotation from Bordigallo is the only positive
evidence either that Antonio Cicognara painted any
tarocc/zz or that any were painted for Ascanio Sforza,
and Mr Kaplan agrees that the quotation is spurious.
His assertion of its inauthenticity occurs during a list
(pp. 31-3) of spurious sources, and is repeated in the
bibliography, in the section discussing the authorship
and dates of the hand-painted packs (pp. 106-7), he
cites the purported Bordigallo quotation in full,
without, indeed, endorsing it, but without repudiating
it either, only the most alert reader 1.. likely to
remember the earlier declaration of disbelief in it. Of
course, it is perfectly plausible that Ascanio Sforza
should have had some tarot/zi made for him. But, ever
since 1831, the names of Antonio Cicognara and of
Ascanio Sforza have been endlessly cited, in books,
articles and museum catalogues, in connection with
tarorf/ii, and it is in my view best to make no further
reference to those two individuals until some genuine
evidence of such a connection becomes available.

Swords Batons Cups Coins Approx.

5126
(1) Vis.diMod, A-10 A-10 A-10 A, 2, 4-10 190 X 90
(2) Brambilia A~10 A-6, 8-10 A-10 A-10 180
(3) Vis,-Sforza X 90
A, 2, 4-10 A 0 A-10 A-10 175 X 87
(5) Rothschild 2-8, 10 3-10 2, 59 6 188 X 90
(7) Catania 7, 8` 6, 9 A, 10 2, 7, 8 180
(8) Tozzi X 90
5 170 X 87
(9) Turin A, 3, 6, 7, 10 6, 10 4, 9 A, 3 P 198 X 94
(10) Fournier 7 A, 2, 8 171
(11) Corner X 87
A 2 4 4 180 X 93
(12) v. &A. A 167 X 85
(14) Guildhall (wide) A A 138 X 72
(19) Goldschmidt A A 140 X 66
Rosenthal A, 4, 5 A, 5 A, 3, 5 P
(22) Rosenwald A-9 A-9 A-9
(24) Cary sheet
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 CHAPTER 7
The Game Of Tarot
With a pack of cards, you can play games; you
can tell fortunes; you can do conjuring tricks; or
you can build a house of cards. For the fourth
and most trifling of these uses, it matters not at
all whether the faces of the cards bear anything
on then or not. For the third, all that is necessary
is that your audience can readily identify a card
shown to them. The second of these practices we
have seen to have been virtually unknown until
the eighteenth century. It follows that a special
type of pack, invented around 1440, can have
been invented for one purpose only: for play.
We have no actual description of any game
played with the Tarot pack from before the mid-
seventeenth century. We do, however, have
sufficient evidence from which to extrapolate
backwards, so as to determine, with high
probability, at least the main features of the
original game of trzoryi the game played with the
Tarot pack at the time of its First invention and
that for which it was devised. All later forms of
the game have certain constant features, which
may be presumed to have belonged to it from its
inception. We know how certain forms of the
game, played with variant types of Tarot pack,
were later played, and we have excellent grounds
for thinking that these games changed little in the
course of the centuries, two of these variant packs
- the la/linchiate pack and the Tarocco Bolognese
pack (sometimes called the Tarocchino pack) -
originated in the sixteenth century, and so we
have a good idea of the sixteenth-century
Italian style of play. We do have a
description of the game intended to he
played with a very special form of Tarot pack
invented at the very end of the fifteenth century
i
-
\
by the poet Matteo Maria Boiardo. We cannot
place a great deal of weight on this, because the
description ends with the remark that one can
also use this pack to play the usual sort of game;
but at least it seems probable that those features
which the game played with Boiardo's pack
shared with those later played with the standard
Tarot pack were, from the first, characteristic of
Tarot games.
In asking for what purpose the Tarot pack was
invented, we are asking why the twenty-two
additional cards - the Matto and the twenty-one
triumphs - were added to the regular pack. We
shall not gain any enlightenment if we study the
iconography of the Tarot pack. That study is, in
itself, fascinating, and has absorbed many
people, not all of them with occultist leanings, it
is, no doubt, worth pursuing for its own sake. But
it is highly improbable that, by this means, we
shall learn anything relevant to the game played
with Tarot cards, or, therefore, to the primary
purpose for which the pack was originally
devised. Whoever invented the pack wanted to
add, to the regular playing-card pack, two new
elements: one consisting of a single card, the
Matto or Fool; the other consisting of a sequence
of twenty-one picture cards. The members of the
latter sequence had to be memorable and readily
recognisable. One way of achieving this would
have been to inscribe large numerals on the
cards; the subjects would then have been
comparatively unimportant, just as it is
essentially a matter of indifference to a modern
Bridge or Poker player what the court cards look
like, so long as they have clear indices to give
their rank and suit. This was, indeed, the method
 The Game of Tarot
adopted, from the end of the fifteenth century
onwards, in many, possibly in most, Tarot packs ;
and we shall see that, in the type of Tarot pack
that, from the later eighteenth century on,
superseded the traditional form in Germany and
Central Europe, the subjects on the triumph
cards really did come to be entirely irrelevant.
But, when the Tarot pack was invented, such a
device would not have seemed natural. In the
mid-fifteenth century, indices of any kind were
unknown: card players were used to identifying
each card - court card or numeral card - from
the whole design, not from one special ingredient
of it. It was therefore necessary to choose, for the
new picture cards, a series of very definite
subjects, that could be easily distinguished, and
with each of which could be associated a name
that could be used to refer to the card. The
subjects on the Tarot triumphs .- the Sun, the
Devil, Death, the Virtues, the W'heel of Fortune,
Love, the Pope and all the rest - served just this
purpose. By and large, they were standard
subjects of mediaeval and Renaissance
iconography, to be met with in many other
contexts; they were precisely the sort of subjects
which any fifteenth-century Italian, faced with
the problem of devising a sequence of twenty-one
picture cards, would have been likely to select.
We can derive some entertainment from asking
why that particular selection was made, and
whether there is any symbolic meaning to the
order in which they were placed; and we may or
may not come up with a plausible or illum-
inating answer. (If we do not, that may not
indicate that we have failed to solve the riddle,
there may be no riddle to solve.) But our answer,
though it may throw light on what the original
designer of the pack, or the Duke or other noble
who ordered it to be made, had in mind, is
unlikely to throw any on the way in which an
average fifteenth-century player of the game
would have viewed the cards. For him, they were
simply a set of picture cards arranged in a
particular sequence and having a particular role
in the game, he would be as unlikely to take any
special interest in the selection of subjects or
possible symbolic significance in their order as a
modern Bridge player is to be able to tell you
which jacks have moustaches.
We can see how little importance was attached
to the precise- subjects represented on the
triumph cards from the variations introduced at
various times and places. The presence of the
165
Pope and Popess has perennially given offence to
some, and various replacements have been found
for them. In that variation on the Tarot de
Marseille pattern known as the Tarot de
Bes ancon, originating in the seventeenth century
and widely used in eighteenth-century Germany
and Switzerland, Jupiter and Juno were
substituted for the Pope and Popess. In the quite
different pattern used in Belgium for the Italian-
suited Tarot pack during the eighteenth century,
the Pope and Popess were replaced, respectively,
by Bacchus and the Spanish Captain (the latter a
character from the Commedia dell'Arte). In
Bologna after 1725, in deference to Papal
displeasure (Bologna being within the Papal
States), the Pope, Popess, Emperor and Empress
were all removed in favour of four Moorish kings
or satraps. It would be a mistake to read into
these substitutions any subtle symbolic equation
of the new figures with the old ones: all that was
being sought was a choice of new and easily
recognisable figures, with obvious labels, in place
of the old ones that caused offence. In a similar
way, when a Sicilian duchess objected to the
presence of the Devil in the pack, her wishes were
accommodated by replacing him with a Ship, a
card borrowed from the Minchiate pack and
there representing the element of Water. It could
be objected that all that these examples show is
that, by the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, the original symbolism had been
forgotten or was no longer regarded as
significant. But the fact is that the same attitude
was already clearly displayed in the sixteenth
century. The Minchiate pack invented in that
century in Florence is the sole form of Tarot
pack - with the possible exception of that
represented by the Visconti di Modrone pack _
having a different number of triumph cards from
the otherwise invariable twenty-one: it has as
many as forty. To find new subjects for this
greatly increased number of triumph cards, the
devisers of the pack added the four Elements, the
four missing Virtues (Prudence, Faith, Hope and
Charity) and the' twelve signs of the Zodiac. It
has seldom been suggested that the resulting
sequence of forty triumph subjects has any
special symbolic significance: it is obvious that
those who devised the Minchiate pack simply
looked around for a convenient method of adding
new and memorable subjects to the existing ones.
If this was true in the sixteenth century for the
inventors of the Minchiate pack, there is little
166 Part I: History and Mystery
reason to suppose that it was not also true a
hundred years earlier for the inventors of the
Tarot pack itself. At any rate, if there was any
special symbolism underlying the sequence of
Tarot triumphs, as originally devised, this played
no role in the games played with the cards, and
hence disappeared from the consciousness of
card players.
It might be thought that the introduction,
towards the end of the fifteenth century, of the
practice of inscribing numerals on the triumph
cards marked a change in the manner of play
with those cards: that, originally, they did not
form a sequence with a definite order, but that
the association of a numbering with them
represented the imposition of such an order for
the first time. If so, the original game played with
the Tarot pack can have had no resemblance to
those later played with it, and the suggestion is
weakened by the grave difficulty of making any
plausible proposal about what kind of a game it
can have been in which there were twenty-two
distinct picture cards, all with a special role in
the game, but none ranking higher or lower than
any other. The suggestion is, however, quite
superfluous. It is founded on the fact that we
should find it very troublesome to have tO
memorise an ordering of twenty-one different
picture cards without the aid of a numbering
appearing on the cards themselves. But, as we
saw in Chapter 4, players of the special form of
the game of tarocc/Li peculiar to the city of Bologna
and its environs continued to do just that until
the later eighteenth century, when for the first
time makers of the Tarocco Bolognese pack
adopted the practice, universal elsewhere, of
putting numerals on the triumph cards - more
exactly, on those of the middle range, from 5 to
16. The eighteenth-century card-game books
that give the rules of the game as played in
Bologna simply list the names of the triumph
cards in order: anyone wishing to play the game
had to commit this sequence to memory. As
noted in Chapter 4, there can be no doubt that
this ordering was already a feature of the game
in the seventeenth century; the intense
conservatism of Bolognese players, in respect
both of the rules of the game and of the designs of
the cards, makes it overwhelmingly probable that
it goes back to the beginning of the sixteenth. Of
that which, for two and a half centuries,
Bolognese card players were able to do, there is
no reason to declare those of the fifteenth-century
courts of Milan and Ferrara incapable.
In any case, there is positive evidence that,
from the start, the triumph cards were regarded
as forming an ordered sequence. The earliest
detailed reference to the Tarot pack is the
sermon, already mentioned, by an anonymous
Dominican friar included in the volume of
sermons formerly belonging to Robert Steele,
and dating from between 1450 and 1480. In this,
the triumph cards are not merely listed in
sequence, but actually numbered. No hypothesis
makes any kind of sense, or has any evidence in
its favour, other than that the additional cards of
the Tarot pack, the Fool excepted, formed from
the outset a series with a determinate ranking
which originally had to be memorised by the
players and subsequently came to be indicated
by numerical indices on the cards.
To understand the purpose for which the
Tarot pack was invented, we have, therefore, to
ask for what reason an ordered sequence of cards,
of different length and composition from the
ordinary suits, was added to the regular pack:
the particular subjects depicted on these cards
can, in this context, be entirely neglected.
Obviously, to find the answer, we have to look at
the role that these cards play in the game, on the
reasonable assumption that the essential features
of the game, in the various forms in which it was
later played, belonged to it from the start. This is
easily stated: the game of Tarot is a trick-taking
game, and the twenty-one triumph cards are
permanent trumps.
Probably most readers of this book are already
familiar with trick-taking games such as Whist,
Bridge or Pinochle. It May be worth while,
however, to make the mechanics of such games
quite explicit at this point, particularly because
we ordinarily take it for granted that a number of
distinct features go together.
Trick-taking games
In any trick-taking game, it is essential that, at the
beginning of actual play, the players should all start
with an equal number of cards in their hands. In each
game, there is a cyclic direction of play - clockwise or
counter-clockwise. In Tarot games, the direction is
usually counter-clockwise: this is because Tarot is an
Italian game in origin, and in Italy and Spain the
standard direction was originally counter-clockwise,
while north of the Alps and the Pyrenees it was
clockwise. The cards held by the players are played
 The Game of Tarot
out in tricks, each trick consisting of as many cards as
there are players, each player contributing one. Each
player plays his card to the trick face upwards in the
centre of the table. At the beginning of each trick, one
of the players has the lead, that is, the duty to play the
first card to the trick: the other cards are then played
successively by the other players in rotation,
according to the designated direction, clockwise or
counter-clockwise. If, at the beginning of play, each
player holds n cards, there will therefore usually be n
tricks, though in certain games, so long as the stock of
cards not dealt out before play is not exhausted, each
player replenishes his hand by drawing one card from
the stock after each trick, this is primarily a device for
making the game one of imperfect information when it
is played by only two players. The rules of the game
will provide a way of determining which is the
winning card in any trick, the player who played that
card is said to have won the trick, and he gathers up
all the cards of the trick and places them face down
beside him. The cards of a trick already played are
out of play, and cannot be used again in any later
trick, but the outcome of the given round of play
depends on what cards, and how many, have been
won in tricks by the various players. (A 'round" of
play is to be understood as that segment of the game
that lasts from one deal to the next. \Vhen two or
more players play in permanent or temporary,
partnership, one partner usually collects all the cards
won in tricks by himself or any of his partners.
The foregoing description may be taken as a
definition of a 'trick-taking game': there are some
games having some of those features but not others,
for example ones in which the player who has won the
trick takes the cards of that trick into his hand for
later use, but they are based on an essentially different
principle. In some trick-taking games, a good deal
takes place in any round before actual play begins, for
example bidding: but there are three main features to
be specified before the mechanics of the actual play is
determined, These are: (i) who has the lead to each
trick, (ii) which is the winning card in any trick, and
(iii) what constraints restrict a player's freedom to
choose the card he will play to a trick.
In trick-taking games -- not only European ones,
but those played in China and in India and Persia as
well - it is a virtually universal rule that the winner of
any trick before the last has the lead to the next trick.
This leaves only the player who leads to the first trick
to be determined by convention. The rule varies in
different games: but, in European games without
bidding, it is usually the player next in rotation to the
dealer - the one on the dealer's right if the direction of
play is counter-clockwise, and the one on his left fit is
clockwise - who leads to the first trick.
167
wiz
In trick-taking
"8 agames
Z played without trumps, the rule
almost always holds that a card of any suit other than
that of the card ledMk
to the trick is devoid of trick-taking
power: the trick is therefore won by the highest-
ranking card of the same suit as the first card played
to it. This rule, complicated in most games by the
presence of trumps, is so nearly universal that most
card players would probably regard it as one of the
defining characteristics of trick-taking games. An
alternative principle, however, is not merely
abstractly conceivable, but is actually realised in a few
deviant trick-taking games, and serves to point up
how dominant is the usual rule that (trumps
excepted) only a card of the suit led can win the trick.
The alternative is to disregard suit altogether in
determining who has won the trick, and count as the
winning card that of highest rank irrespective of
suit. Such a rule prevails in the French game of je
Truc and its now obsolete English cousin Putt. In a
modified form, it also governs the still popular games
of Aluette and el Truco, the former played on the
\'Vest coast of France with a special type of 48-card
Spanish-suited pack, the latter in Spain and South
America with the 40-card pack. Under this rule, it can
of course happen that two cards of equal rank, higher
than any other card in the trick, are played by
opponents to the same trick. Such a situation can also
arise, even under the usual rule, in any game played
with two or more packs simultaneously, and it is then
sometimes resolved by counting the card played later
as beating that played earlier, sometimes by the
opposite rule. In all the four deviant trick-taking
games mentioned above, however, such a trick is not
considered as won by any of the players. Yet another
conceivable alternative would be to regard the entire
pack as forming a single sequence, so that a trick
would be won by the highest-ranking card of the
highest suit, but, as far as I am aware, there is no
game governed by a principle of that kind. Even the
First alternative rule for determining which card wins
the trick holds good only in a very small minority of
unusual games, just those four already mentioned: in
the overwhelming majority of trick-taking games the
rule is that, unless trumps are admitted and a trump
is played to the trick, the winning card is the highest
one of the suit led.
Following suit
In European trick-taking games, there is seldom any
constraint on what card may be led to a trick. There
are a few exceptions to this, but they are infrequent
and minor: usually, the player with the lead is legally
free to lead any card of his choosing from his hand. It
is very rare, however, for there to be no constraints on
the cards played by the other players, those who play
168 Part I: History and Mystery
to a trick to which the first card has already been led.
Among European games, those in which there is no
constraint at all are mostly two-handed games in
which each player draws a card from the stock after
each trick, and then, as soon as the stock is exhausted,
constraints come into force. The most familiar
constraint is that requiring each player to 'follow suit'
if he can: that is, to play a card of the suit led if he has
one. Less usual, but far from uncommon, is the
additional requirement that any player who is able to
play a higher-ranking card of the suit led than any so
far played to the trick must do so. In games with
trumps, the constraints vary a great deal: but,
although there is much variation in detail, which
naturally has a profound effect upon the strategy of
the game, almost all European trick-taking games
leave the player with the lead free toplay any card
that he chooses, and almost all circumscribe in one
way or another the freedom of the other players .
Trump;
The presence of trumps in a trick-taking game
introduces an entirely new additional feature into the
determination of which player has won a given trick.
W/hen such games are played with the regular pack,
some means or other is used to select one of the four
suits as the trump suit for a given round. VVhen there
is bidding, the nomination of one of the suits as trumps
may form an ingredient of the bidding itself, as in
Bridge, an older practice, exemplified in Skat as now
played, is for the declarer - the player making the
highest bid - to announce the trump suit, at his
choice, after the bidding is completed \Vhen there is
no bidding, the trump suit is determined
by chance: when not all the cards are dealt out,
the First undealt card may be turned face up,
and its suit taken as the trump suit; when the
whole pack is dealt out, the last card dealt may be
turned up for the same purpose, or the pack may
be cut before the deal begins. The cards of the
trump suit behave in a quite different way from those
of the other suits (the 'plain' suits). Any card of the
trump suit, even the lowest, beats every card of a plain
suit, even the highest, and it does so irrespective of the
suit led to the trick. The rule governing which card
wins the trick thus takes the form that the trick is won
by the highest trump played to the trick, or, if the
trick contains no trump, then by the highest card of
the suit led.
In games played with the Tarot pack, there is no
need of any device for determining a suit as trumps,
for the twenty-one triumph cards always fulfil this
function, while the four ordinary suits are always
plain suits. The triumph cards are, however, trumps
in precisely the sense just given: that is to say, each
trick is won by the highest triumph card played to it,
or, if none is played, then by the highest card of the
suit led. For this purpose, the triumph cards normally
rank in descending numerical order: that is, the
highest is the XXI, followed by the XX and so on
down in sequence to the I (the Bagatto or Pagat).
Within each suit, the ranking is in accordance with
the ancient principle observed in Italy and Spain.
That is to say, in every suit, the four highest-ranking
cards are the court cards: the King is the highest,
followed by the Queen, then the Cavalier and then the
jack. In Swords and Batons, the numeral cards follow
in descending numerical order: the 10 ranks next
below the Jack, followed by the 9, and so on down to
the Ace, which is the lowest card of the suit. In Cups
and Coins, however, they rank in ascending
numerical order: in these suits, the Ace ranks next
below the Jack, followed by the 2, then the 3, and so
on, with the 10 as the lowest card. It is obligatory to
follow suit, if possible. This means that, if a card of a
plain suit is led, then every player who still has any
cards of that suit must play one to the trick, and, if a
triumph card is l°d to a trick, then likewise any player
who still has some triumphs in his hand must play
one. In Whist and Bridge, as in many other trick-
taking games, a player who has a void in the suit led
(has no cards in that suit), and who therefore cannot
follow suit, is at liberty, when it was a plain suit that
was led, either to play a trump or to 'throw away' a
card of another plain suit, thus denying himself the
chance to win the trick: 'throwing away' is, of course,
tactically important as a means of creating a void in
one's hand, so as subsequently to be able to trump a
trick to which that suit is led, or simply to get rid of
losing cards. In Tarot, however, there is not this
opportunity: when a plain suit is led, any player
unable to follow suit has the obligation to play a
trump if he has one. This obligation holds good even if
the player's partner has already won the trick, and
even if it means playing a lower trump than some
other player has already played. The reason for this is
that there are, in games played with the 78-card pack,
half as many trumps again as there are cards in any
one plain suit; in Minchiate, and in the many games
played with shortened packs, the proportion is even
higher. If a player with a large number of trumps were
allowed to hoard them to use on valuable tricks, he
would have too great an advantage. In games like
Whist and Bridge, the only way to force one's
opponents to play their trumps is by leading trumps
oneself: in Tarot, it can alternatively, and more
economically, be done by repeatedly leading a plain
suit in which they are short.
The Malta
This explains the role of the triumph
cards in the game. The role of the Fool or Matto
is entirely different. To speak more exactly, it was
 The Game of Tarot
entirely different in the earlier of those forms of the
game of which we have records. In those forms of it
now played in Austria, Hungary, Slovenia,
Czechoslovakia and the Black Forest, it has been
transformed into the highest trump card, beating even
the XXI: but, previously, it had a quite distinct role,
which it retains in the forms of the game played in
Italy, France and Switzerland. In games of this kind,
the player holding the Matto can play it to any trick
he chooses: it has no trick-taking power, but it
releases the player who plays it from the obligation to
follow suit or to trump. He may thus use it to avoid
losing a valuable card which would otherwise be
captured in that trick. There is some variation of rule
about whether it is permissible to lead the Matto as
the first card of a trick; in any case, it is usually
inadvisable. When it is allowed, the player next in
rotation is usually at liberty to play any card of his
choosing, and the card that he plays is treated as if it
has been led to the trick, so that the remaining player
or players have to follow suit to it if they can and, if
they cannot, to trump if they can.
The 0b1€6l of the game
In order fully to explain the role of the Matto, it is
necessary to say something about how the winner of a
round is determined. So far, we have merely said that
the winning player or side in a trick-taking game is
determined by the cards won by the various players in
tricks. Trick-taking games may be classified into
those, like Bridge and Umbre, in which what
determines which player or side has won a given
round is simply the total number of tricks won by
each, and those in which what matters is which
particular cards each player has won in tricks. There
is no serviceable accepted terminology to distinguish
these two types: I shall therefore call those of the
former type simple trick-taking games, and those of the
latter type com/alex ones. These are, of course, intended
merely as technical terms: no suggestion is being
made that Bridge, or Cymbre for that matter, is an
easy game to play. In complex trick-taking games,
different cards carry different point values, according
to their rank, and the winner or loser is determined by
the total number of points each player has on the
cards he has won in tricks. Originally, the points won
by a player constituted his score for the round. In
many games, however, the points won on the cards
captured in tricks serve merely to determine which
player or side has won the round, and the scoring is
done on a different principle. In order, then, to avoid
confusion, it is necessary to keep the two kinds of
points carefully distinguished: we may therefore
speak of card Points to mean those
that go to determine which player or side has
won the round, and of game Points to mean those that
are actually marked on the score sheet (or
169
immediately paid in cash or chips). In most complex
trick-taking games, such as Skat and mass, the
national card games of Germany and Switzerland,
only certain cards carry any pfwint-values at all: the
others contribute nothing to the total of card points,
but are merely of strategic significance, as
determining who wins the trick. In a few such games,
however, such as X/lanille, every card contributes to
the card-point total, though some make a much
higher contribution than others.
Trick-taking games may be classified in another
way as well, namely as borilive or negative. In positive
games, the object is to win as many tricks, or as many
card points, as possible, or to win at least a certain
number. In negative games, the object is to win as few
tricks, or as few card points, as possible, or to win no
more than a certain number. In certain games with
bidding, the object may be positive or negative
according to the bid made, and thus vary from round
to round. Nevertheless, most trick-taking games can
be classified as primarily positive or primarily
negative.' It seems impossible to say whether simple
or complex trick-taking games are the older in
Europe: it may be that both are as old as card playing
itself. By contrast, it is clear that negative games, of
which the best-known to-day is Hearts and its
variants, and the earliest really successful one was
Reversis, which originated in Spain in the sixteenth
century, are a later development: the positive games
came first, and subsequently the idea occurred of
playing a game with essentially the same mechanics,
but with the aim of the players reversed. (This is
evident enough from the very name of Reversis - in
Spanish Revesino - which was played in England
under the name of Losing Loa dam, and is probably
the game referred to by Rabelais as Cbquirnbert, quz
gazgna /Jerri. I
Card/90znt5 in Tarot
In this terminology, Tarot is a positive complex trick-
taking game. It resembles Marcille rather than such
games as Skat and Jass in that every trick won
contributes to the card-point total, even if it contains
none of the high-scoring cards. The method usually
1 There is a small modern category which escapes this
classification for a different reason. One example is the
simple trick-taking game oOh, Hell, in which each player's
object is to make wxarlly the number of tricks he declared
that he would, no less and no more, the excellent game
played with the Taotl pack, a modern invention with five
suits and various extra cards, works according to the same
principle. Likewise, in a modern member of thejass family of
complex trick-taking games played in Switzerland,
Differenzlerjass, each player predicts how many points he
will make, and obtains a negative score consisting of the
difference, by defect or excess, between his actual and
predicted total,
170 Part I: History and Mystery
adopted for computing the total of card points won by
each player is rather complicated, and will be
described later. For the present, I give here a
simplified description, which probably corresponds
rather well to the original method: it must be
understood that some particular forms of Tarot
diverge very considerably from the methods here
described. In this simplified method, each player
scores 1 card point for every trick he wins. In addition,
he scores 4 card points for each King he wins in tricks
(whether originally played by himself or another), 3
points for each Queen, 2 points for each Cavalier and
1 point for each jack. He also scores 4 points for the
highest trump (triumph XXI), 4 points for the lowest
trump (triumph I, the Bagatto) and 4 points for the
la/Iatto or Fool. The player holding the XXI cannot
lose it, since it is the highest card in the pack. The
player holding the Bagatto, on the other hand, can
very easily lose it, since it can be beaten by any other
trump: so trying to bring the Bagatto home, if you
hold it, and trying to capture it, if you do not, are
important subsidiary objects of the game. Now, as
remarked, the Matto has no trick-taking power. But,
while it cannot take a trick, it cannot normally be
captured either. \Vhen the player who holds the
Matto plays it to a trick, it is not taken away by the
winner of the trick: the player who originally held it
takes it back and puts it with the cards he has won.
Usually, he is required to give another card in
exchange for it from among the cards he has already
won, he will, naturally, select a low card (a card
without special point-value). If he has not yet won any
tricks, he waits until he does in order to give a card in
exchange for the Matto to the player who won the
trick to which he played it. But (whether the rule
about offering a card in exchange is in force or not) if
the player who played the Matto never wins any tricks
at all, he must, at the end of the round, surrender the
Matto to the player who won the trick to which he
played it. Normally speaking, therefore, a player
holding the Mulatto can count on gaining 4 card points
with it. The rule governing the Matto is usually
summarised by saying that it can neither capture nor
be captured: it would, of course, have appeared
senseless to state the rule that it is not captured before
the system of card points had been explained. Because,
by playing the Matto, a player is released from the
obligation to follow suit or to trump, the card is
sometimes known in Italian as the Sousa, and
frequently, in French, as the Excuse. This term was
corrupted in German into Skins c. Skis, and it is as der
SkzYi` that it is now regularly referred to in German,
despite the fact that, in the games played in Austria
and Baden, it has long lost the role that has been here
described, and has, in effect, been converted into
trump XXII.
Now, it may be said, this tells us how the
triumph cards and the Matto were used in play :
but it fails to explain why the Tarot pack was
invented in the first place. If, in the plain suits, it
is the court cards that are going to carry high
point-values, we can readily understand the
addition of a fourth court card: but that, as we
have seen, was by no means unique to the Tarot
pack, being a frequent feature of fifteenth-
century German packs, particularly of the
costlier sort, hand-painted or copper-engraved.
The special role of the Matto in play also made
this a comprehensible addition to the pack:
although there appears to be no actual
connection between the Matto and the later
joker, and although the function of the two cards
is different, we may naturally compare the
invention of the one with that of the other. But
that does not account for the principal
distinguishing feature of the Tarot pack, the
sequence of the twenty-one triumph cards. If, in
a game played with the regular pack, the trump
suit is determined by chance at the beginning of
each round, it would clearly make no essential
difference to the game if, instead, some suit were
designated a permanent trump suit, as indeed
happens in certain games. Thus, when there is no
bidding, there is no disadvantage in having
special cards as permanent trumps, but,
conversely, there appears to be no particular
advantage in it either, since it is so easy to confer
that role on one of the suits by convention. It is
true that, in Tarot, there are in effect Five suits -
the trumps in addition to the four plain suits: but
five-suited packs were perfectly well known in the
fifteenth century, at least in Germany, and it
would seem much easier to introduce an
additional suit than to devise a special set of
picture cards. It is also true that the sequence of
triumphs is longer than any of the suits proper.
This, if desired, would have been harder to
achieve by adding extra cards to one suit of a
regular pack; numeral cards higher than 10
would be very difficult to identify without
indices, and the addition of any large number of
court cards takes us precisely in the direction of
the Tarot triumphs. However, the effect can be
attained by convention, namely by removing
certain cards from the suits to which they
properly belong, and treating them as permanent
trumps; this is a feature of several games,
including Orb re, Schafkopf and Skat. The role
of the triumph cards as permanent trumps in the
games played with the Tarot pack simply does
 The Game of Tarot
not, at first sight, provide an adequate motive for
the invention and production of a special pack of
cards not readily adapted to the playing of games
of other kinds.
The puzzle is solved once we drop the
assumption that, at the time when the Tarot
pack was first devised, the idea of trick-taking
games with trumps was already familiar. Our
difficulties were caused by taking it for granted
that card players of the time were already
acquainted with games played with the regular
pack, in which some one suit would be
designated as trumps, permanently or for a
round at a time: we then could not see why
anyone should go to the trouble of inventing a
new form of pack in which a quite special set of
cards were to serve as trumps. But, if we assume
that the idea of trumps was not already familiar,
the aspect of the matter is quite altered. In that
case, the invention of the Tarot pack must have,
at the same time, constituted the introduction of
the idea of trumps into trick-taking games, one of
the great inventions in the history of card play;
and the question, 'Why bother with a special set
of picture cards when one of the ordinary suits
would do?', loses most of its force We must, of
course, assume that, when the Tarot pack was
invented, trick-taking games in general, and,
more specifically, positive complex trick-taking
games, were already well known. In games, as in
all other fields, human inventiveness usually
proceeds by a step at a time, we cannot expect
more than one, or at the most two, new ideas
from the same source simultaneously. The game
of Tarot cannot possibly have been the first trick-
taking game known in Europe: the first
realisation of the fundamental conception of
trick-taking play must have assumed a very
straightforward form, without the complication
of trumps or that of the Matto. Indeed, we know
for certain that trick-taking games are older in
Europe than the Tarot pack, since the German
game of KarnOffel was such a game, and is
referred to as early as 1426, and it had
complicated rules, under which the natural
ranking of the cards is violently disturbed, so that
it is as incapable of having been the earliest
known trick-taking game as is Tarot itself.
For similar reasons, it is not thinkable, either,
that Tarot was the first known complex trick-
taking game, that is, the first in which different
point-values were attached to the various cards.
On our hypothesis, the invention of the Tarot
171
pack was the invention of the idea of trumps. It is
not quite certain that the Matto was an original
member of the pack, it may have been added at a
slightly later stage, when the form of pack
represented by the Visconti di Niodrone one was
replaced by what became the standard 78-card
form. There is also one piece of evidence to
suggest that the classic manner of using the
Matto may have been a later development, and
that it was originally the lowest trump But,
whether or not the invention of the Tarot pack
represented the introduction of the Matto in its
classic role, one radically new and fundamental
idea, that of trumps, is as much as we can
suppose to have been introduced at one time; it is
implausible to suggest that the game of Tarot
simultaneously embodied the innovation of
assigning to the cards not merely different trick-
taking powers but different point-values. It is
true that we do not have such clear positive
evidence to the contrary as in the case of the
trick-taking principle itself: Karnijffel was, in our
technical terminology, a simple trick-taking
game, and no game can be cited that is known
both to have been older than Tarot and to have
been a complex game in our technical sense.
There are, however, several complex trick-taking
games played with the regular pack in which the
point-values obey the same general principle as
that displayed by the court cards in the plain
suits in Tarot: that is to say, the high-scoring
cards are precisely those with the greatest trick-
taking power, and these carry point-values which
diminish by l point as one descends through the
sequence. Among such games is the sixteenth-
century Italian game of Trappola, in which the
highest-ranking cards in each suit are, in
descending order, Ace, King, Cavalier and jack,
these being also the high-scoring cards, carrying
point-values of 6, 5, 4 and 3 card points
respectively. Other examples are provided by the
Spanish game of Malilla, sometimes asserted to
be an invention of the nineteenth century, but
demonstrably as old as 1776,3 and quite possibly
2 The evidence is from the Irwettiz/a of Lollio: see Chapter
21.
3 Gégé, Historique et régle du jeu de la Manville, Enghien-les-
Bains, 1883, maintains that the game originated only in
1865, and spread from the South of France to the rest of the
country only after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. This
last remark may well be correct, but, for the rest, Gégé is
completely confused. He fails to distinguish between French
Marcille and Spanish Malilla, apparently not realising that
 172 Part I: History and Mystery
far older, together with its French and Dutch
descendants Marcille and Manilla, and the rather
similar Spanish game of Solo (not to be confused
with several other games of the same name). In
all these last four games, the five highest-ranking
cards of each suit carry, from the highest to the
lowest, point-values of 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1: in Malilla,
these cards are, in descending order, the 9, Ace,
King, Cavalier and jack; in Marcille they are the
10, Ace, King, Queen and jack; in Manilla, the
Ace, 10, King, Queen and Jack; and in Solo, the
7, Ace, King, Cavalier and jack. Yet another
example is the negative complex game of
Revesino or Reversis, originating in Spain no
later than the early sixteenth century, in which
the highest cards of each suit are Ace, King,
Cavalier or Queen and Jack, bearing the point-
values 4, 3, 2 and 1. A not very well-known game,
played both in France and Germany under the
names Quarante des Rois and Vierzig vom
KOenig, has the King, Queen and _Jack as the
highest cards of each suit, carrying point-values
of 5, 4 and 3 respectively. Another game of this
kind is Fiinfzehnern, popular in Germany
throughout the nineteenth century, in which the
top five cards of each suit were Deuce (Ace),
King, Ober, Unter and 10, once more with point-
values of 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1. A long obsolete member
of the genus is the Alsatian game of TrUrnpfspiel
described by Daniel Martin in 1637, in which the
top cards of each suit were Ace, King, Queen and
Jack, with point-values of 4, 3, 2 and
respeetively.4
the Spanish pack lacks 10s, and describes Marcille as being
popular in Catalonia, Navarre and Andorra as well as the
South of France. Having discovered that the game played in
France under the name of Marcille in the eighteenth-century
was an entirely different one, namely a Stops game, later
called Compete, he quite mistakenly takes early Spanish
references to Malilla to be alluding to the Stops game. An
anonymous pamphlet of 1776, Le jet de Za /\/ali/le, perhaps
published in Amsterdam, informs the reader that the game
has long been popular in Spain, and hopes that it may he
introduced into France. It describes the Spanish game, as
played with the 48-card pack, and the author states that he
is abridging the earliest written account, written by a Don
Antonio, whose date he does not give. Malilla therefore
probably dates from the first half of the eighteenth century
or earlier, while Marcille may be an adaptation from the
early nineteenth century.
4 Daniel Martin, Parliament nouveau, Strasbourg, 1637, oh.
74, p. 635. This is a French/German reader, with parallel
texts on a variety of subjects, intended for those learning one
or other language. I have not seen the original, but the
French text of the. entire book is reprinted in Collection
None of these games shows any sign of being
directly derived from or influenced by Tarot: the
mark of such an influence is a special value or
role for the lowest trump. Indeed, Fiinfzehnern
and Reversis are played without any trump suit,
and the same appears to have been true of
Trappola in its original form. (Fiinfzehnern has,
indeed, a curious affinity to the Indo-Persian
Ganjifa games, which is presumably a result of
coincidence.) Probably none of these games is as
old as Tarot, but they collectively bear witness to
what is very likely to have been a principle of
assigning point-values in complex trick-taking
games that antedated the invention of the Tarot
pack, and may go back to the introduction of
card games into Europe. This very
straightforward principle is that underlying the
assignment of point-values to suit cards in Tarot :
that governing their assignment to the additional
cards of the Tarot pack is considerably more
subtle. It seems natural to suppose that the game
of Tarot was founded upon some existing game
or games played with the regular pack and
without trumps, in which the high-scoring cards
in each suit were just the court cards .
Now, under the supposition that the Tarot
pack was devised in order to embody what was
then a completely new idea in trick-taking play,
that of trumps, its invention makes perfect sense.
Trump cards play a completely different role in a
trick-taking game from cards of the plain suits :
l they can win a trick to which a different suit was
led, and they beat all other cards regardless of
their rank. If card players had long been
accustomed to trick-taking games played without
trumps, in which the principle held without
exception that a trick could be won only by a
card of the suit led, then, when the idea of trumps
first occurred to some ingenious individual, they
would as much be thought of as cards fulfilling a
completely new and special function as would the
Matto, when that was first invented. It would
thus be entirely natural to realise the new idea,
not by adopting a convention under which one
of the suits behaved quite differently from the
others, but by adding a new sequence of cards to
the pack. There would have been no apparent
reason why this new sequence should have the
same structure, or the same length, as the
existing suits; nor would it seem natural to assign
a new suit-symbol to it, as if it were equivalent to
the ordinary suits. These would be cards
intended to play an entirely new role in the game,
 The Game of Taro!
and therefore naturally represented by designs of
a new kind: like the important cards of the four
suits, they would be picture cards, but they
would no more need a suit-sign than would the
Matto, or the_Joker in a modern pack.
If this hypothesis is correct, the invention of
the Tarot pack was one of the great moments in
the history of card play. One of the reasons why a
serious history of card games has never been
written is that people tend not to take card games
seriously, in the way that they are prepared to
take chess. But another reason is the complexity
of the subject: card games proliferate far more
rapidly than do board games. When such a
history comes to be written, it will therefore have
to concentrate, not so much on the detailed
evolution, spread and fortunes of individual
games, as on their constituent ideas. New card
games are constantly being invented, and old
ones modified: but it is much more rarely that
anyone comes up with a radically new principle
of play. The evolution of a card game is primarily
the history of its adopting or adapting principles
already practiced in other games, the invention of
new card games primarily a matter of a new
combination of existing ideas.5 In the course of
this process, the new or modified games present
tactical problems that may not be able to be
exactly paralleled in older games; even an
alteration in the method of scoring may radically
affect strategy, as in the change from Auction to
Contract Bridge. Nevertheless, human inventive
genius is best displayed, in the field of games,
when someone devises a fundamentally new
principle of play; and, in the history of card
games, that has not happened often. If we restrict
ourselves to trick-taking games, then, since the
principle of trick-taking play was First invented,
only two outstanding new principles have been
alfacienne, Daniel .Margin of la vie to Slraibowg au commencement
du XVI# iiéde, ed. Charles Nerlinger, being fascicule 49 of
the ['ublicalzon.s de la Faculty Der Lettrer de Z'Univef5zté de
Strasbourg, Strasbourg, 1900, the section 'Du loiieur de
cartes' being on pp. 216-18, while the German text of the
account of Triimpfspiel is quoted in Heinrich A. Rausch,
Day SpzeZver.3ezr/zrzz5 i n 25. K a l l e ! von Fisclzarts
'CenlzzrlzZil:[ztZerung', Strasbourg, 1908, pp. xxxvii-xxxviii.
9 Alain Borvo, Arzatomie d'unjeu de caries. Z'AZue!te of Le jeu
de Vafhe, Nantes, 1977, p. 18, cites Pierre Berloquin as
advancing the same conception of a card game as a
compound of constituent principles of play, each of which
may be found in many other games, and as coining the term
funl9fnet for these constituent principles.
173
introduced: the idea of trumps, and the idea of
bidding.
We are able to say precisely where the idea' of
bidding comes from: it comes from the Spanish
game known in Spain as Tresillo, and
everywhere else as Cymbre or l'Hombre. This
game is comparatively little played to-day: but,
in its time, it was the most successful card game
ever invented, enjoying, at rather different dates,
an enormous vogue in France, in England, in
Germany and in Italy, it was carried by
Portuguese sailors to Indonesia and Japan. It
occupied the same position as Bridge does to-
day, as the fashionable card game and as, par
excellence, the intellectual card game: and it
occupied it for a far longer period than that for
which Contract Bridge has yet existed. Its history
in France can be traced through the series of
card-game books published every few years in
that country from the mid-seventeenth century
onwards. From looking at these books, it
becomes apparent that, at any given time, a card
game may be in a stable state or in a nova state.
A game in a stable state is usually accorded only
a brief description, perhaps incorporating a few
hints on strategy: and this description will, very
often, go on being reprinted, perhaps without any
verbal changes, for many decades. These are the
games played in the family circle, or by the
peasantry or the bourgeoisie. Their devotees are
likely to be conservative in their habits of play,
and not much given to verbal analysis of strategy,
although they may be highly skilled in play. A
game goes into a nova state, on the other hand,
when it is taken up by the lzaut monde: and the
manifestation of this in the card-garne books is
extremely striking. As the game becomes more
and more fashionable, the accounts given in the
books become longer and longer: there are
detailed discussions of strategy and analyses of
sample hands. This is partly because the game
has caught the attention of intellectuals and
people given to making explicit analysis, and
partly because proficiency at the game has
becomes requirement for social success in a
milieu that prizes such success highly. At the
same time, the game tends to undergo rapid
evolution, as it is modified with the intention of
making it more entertaining - more skilful or
more varied; and it may also bud off a whole
progeny of variant forms. All this is exemplified
by Orb re, which was the greatest nova ever
seen, and, at the height of its popularity in
174 Part 1: History and A/lystéry
France, was occupying about half the space in
the card-game books, at least if its variants are
reckoned in.
It is easy to understand the reason for the
enormous popularity of Orb re: it introduced
card players to an entirely new and exciting
principle, that of bidding. There can be no doubt
that it was from Orb re that this principle
entered card play: not only is it the earliest game
to have involved bidding, but, as soon as the
game became fashionable outside Spain, the
principle of bidding was adapted to many other
trick-taking games, Tarot included, which had
not formerly incorporated it; and the form which
bidding first took in these games was patently
borrowed from the type of bidding used in
Orb re, often not very well adapted to the games
for which it was being borrowed. Orb re needed
bidding because it was a three-handed game in
which, in each round, one player - the hombre or
man ..- played on his own against the other two in
temporary partnership. Until the invention of
Orb re, the most usual ways of playing trick-
taking games were with four players, forming two
fixed partnerships, as in Whist, or with three
players, each playing for himself. Now, obviously,
Ornbre would have made a very poor game if,
say, the player to the right of the dealer had
always to play on his own against the other two :
he would often have been resoundingly defeated,
and the game would have been boring. Hence
each player in turn had an opportunity to say
whether he wished to undertake the role of the
lwmbre or solo player in that round. This was, in
origin, the simplest form of bidding imaginable:
a player could either pass or elect to play on his
own, and, as soon as anyone SO elected, the
bidding stopped. However, the principle once
introduced, it was natural to make it more
interesting by allowing different bids to be made,
so that a player who had made a positive bid
could be overbid. As time went by, an ever more
elaborate code of possible bids was devised. It is
worth noting, however, that the different bids did
not relate to what the bidder committed himself
to doing during the actual play. Once actual play
began, the task of the declarer the lwmbfe was
always the same: he had to win more tricks than
did either one of his opponents, taken separately.
The bids related, instead, to the preliminaries
preceding the actual play: to whether or not the
declarer could discard worthless cards from his
hand and replenish it from the stock of undealt
cards, to how the trump suit was to be
determined, and SO on. Thus what the declarer
had to do in order to win was Fixed: the bids
affected only the conditions under which he tried
to do it. The idea of variable contracts - different
things that the declarer committed himself to
doing during actual play, if he was to count as
winning .- which figures so prominently in
Bridge, did not make its appearance until Boston
Whist came on to the scene at the end of the
eighteenth century. It was even later that the
practice of bidding was adopted in four-handed
games with fixed partnerships, like Bridge:
Boston Whist, whose simplified modern
descendant is Solo Whist, is the only branch of
the Whist family in which the principle of fixed
partnerships is abandoned. For a long time, the
principal point of bidding was taken to be as a
means of deciding, in four-handed as well as in
three- or Five-handed games, which player or
players should, in any one round, play against
the rest in temporary partnership. Indeed, so
long as the object of actual play, the way of
deciding which side had won, remained constant,
there could be no point in bidding in a game with
Fixed partnerships. Thus, surprising as it may
seem to those who associated bidding primarily
with Contract Bridge, trick-taking games with
fixed partnerships were the last to adopt the
principle of bidding introduced by Ornbre; and
they could do so only after that principle had
been modified in Boston \Vhist by admitting
variable contracts.
The idea of bidding is thus a European, and,
specifically, a Spanish invention. According to
our present hypothesis, the other leading idea,
that of trumps, was invented in Italy in about
1440, with the invention of the Tarot pack. In
any ease, trumps, like bidding, were certainly a
European invention: trumps are unknown in
Oriental card games that do not derive from
European ones. By contrast, the basic idea of
trick-taking play itself is not of European origin.
As we have seen, even when we ignore the use of
trumps, trick-taking play incorporates several
distinguishable elements that are nevertheless
always, or almost always, associated. In Chapter
3 we imagined different conventions determining
which player should lead to each trick. One
was that the lead might simply rotate from one
trick to the next, irrespective of who won the
trick; this would parallel the invariable custom in
European games concerning the deal for each
 The Game of Tarot
round. Another was that the lead might remain
with one player so long as he went on winning
tricks, but then, as soon as he lost one, pass to
the next player in rotation, regardless of who
won the trick: this would be the analogue of the
g usual Chinese principle for selecting the dealer.
There is no reason to think that games played
in accordance with either of these rules would
be strategically trivial: yet no such rule is to be
found in any trick-taking game, European or
Oriental; with negligibly rare exceptions, the
winner of a trick always leads to the next one, \Ne
noted, also; the possibility, realised only in a tiny
minority of unusual games, of alternative rules
for determining by which card a trick is won: as I
remarked before, these exceptions underline how
predominant is the principle that (trumps
excepted) only a card of the suit led can win the
trick. These facts strongly suggest that trick-
taking play has a single origin: that all, or nearly
all, trick-taking games have evolved from some
one common ancestor.
This prototype of trick-taking games, of which
Bridge, Tarot, Umbre, Skat and all the rest are
the descendants, must have been created before
playing cards ever reached Europe. One of the
leading uses for playing cards has, of course,
always been as instruments of pure gambling
games like Baccarat, Faro and Thirty-One,
where the cards become a mere randomising
device like dice or the roulette wheel. But it can
hardly have been in order to play such games
that playing cards were invented in the first
instance, since they often ignore suit altogether,
or fail to discriminate between the different ranks
of court cards, and, in any case, dice are
incomparably older than cards and already
served perfectly as a randomising device, the
pure gambling games do not exploit the true
essence of playing cards as an instrument of play.
If we set them aside, and consider only those
games that require at least some strategic skill,
we Find that European card play has always been
dominated by trick-taking games. If you look at
any card-game book -- French, English, German,
Italian, Dutch or any other - published in
whatever century, you will End that at least three-
quarters of the games described are trick-taking
ones. Almost all the card games that have
enjoyed a great vogue at one time or another -
almost all those that have entered or passed
through a nova state - have been trick-taking
games, and the same is true, with a very few
175
exceptions like Scopa in Italy and Cribbage in
England, of almost all those that have had a
widespread popular following. Apart from the
pure gambling games, perhaps 75 per cent of the
man-hours spent in playing cards have in Europe
been expended upon trick-taking games. Despite
the great success of Bridge, this is less likely to be
true of the twentieth century than of any period
in the past, because of the popularity in modern
times both of Poker and of the many forms of
Rummy and its offspring Canasta: but, taken
over the whole history of card games, it would be
a fairly safe bet.
This makes it highly probable that trick-taking
play was not independently invented in Europe,
but entered, very likely in various forms, with
playing cards themselves. Once it is accepted
that playing cards entered Europe from outside,
it is not to be supposed that they would have
entered merely as instruments of possible games
still to be thought up, any more than the
chessboard and chess pieces would have spread
without being accompanied by information
about the game played with them; playing cards
would have come into Europe together with a
game, or, more likely, many different games, that
they could be used to play. In view of the
subsequent predominance of trick-taking games,
It is surely to be presumed that such games were
among those that entered Europe along with
playing cards themselves.
We know, moreover, that by 1426 the game of
KarnOffel was already being played in Germany.
This was half a century after the first
introduction of playing cards: but, as already
remarked, it subjected the cards to an
extraordinary rearrangement of their normal
order, and, as we shall see, it also overlaid the
basic principle that only a card of the suit led can
win the trick with many and complicated
exceptions. For these reasons, it cannot have
been invented before the fundamental idea of
trick-taking play had already long been familiar :
its existence presupposes general acquaintance
with that idea.
We know very little about the card games
played in Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries. VVe do know, however, that there was a
clearly accepted notion of the order of the cards
within each suit: this is already apparent in john
of Rheinfelden's treatise, when he speaks of the
two 'marshals' as being under the Kings. A little
reflection shows that this conception of itself
176 Part I: History and Mystery
implies the existence of trick-taking games. It is
true that, in some games of other kinds, we need
the idea of a cyclic order: for example, in any
game in which a significance is attached to
having three or more cards in sequence. But it is
only, or at least primarily, in trick-taking
games that we need an idea of the direction of
the ordering, that is, of one card's being higher or
lower than another. It might be objected that,
when two sequences of equal length, held by
different players, have to be compared, this can be
done only by taking that sequence to beat the
other which is headed by the higher-ranking card.
We have seen, however, that, until about the end
of the fifteenth century in Italy, and until well
into the sixteenth century in Spain, it was the
normal practice to treat the ranking of the
numeral cards as running in one direction in
Swords and Batons (the higher numeral beating
the lower), and in the other direction in Cups
and Coins (the lower numeral beating the
higher). This practice shows that what was
required was to compare the ranks of any two
cards of the same suit, but not those of cards of
different suits: it is easy to remember that the 4
of Cups beats the 7 of Cups, and that the 6 of
Swords beat the 3 of Swords; but, as remarked,
it is not so easy to remember straight off that the 4
of Cups has a higher absolute rank than the 6 of
Swords, and that therefore the sequence 4-6 of
Cups is superior to the sequence 4-6 of Swords.
The need for a ranking within each suit, but not
as between cards of the different suits, irresistibly
suggests trick-taking play. It is true that we have
no evidence of the practice of reversing the order
in different suits in France, Germany or
Switzerland Qohn of Rheinfelden's text is rather
ambiguous, but suggests that the Ace was the
lowest card of every suit); but, since it is likely
that it was from Italy that playing cards spread
to the rest of Europe, trick-taking games, if they
had arrived together with the playing-card pack,
would have followed wherever it spread.
As we have seen, this practice of reversing the
order of the numeral cards in half the suits is
observed, without exception, in the trick-taking
games played in India under the general name of
Ganjifa. This unquestionably establishes a link
between the Indian games and those of Europe;
and trick-taking games hold an even more
predominant position among Indian than among
European card games. As we have seen, the
connection between Indian and European card
games cannot have been direct. Direct contact
between Europe and India was made for the first
time since the rise of Islam by Vasco da Gama's
arrival in 1498. By then, both trick-taking games
and the practice of reversing the order of the
numeral cards in two of the suits had
demonstrably long been known in Europe, and
hence cannot have been learned from Indian card
players. By the early sixteenth century at the
latest, and possibly two decades before the end of
the fifteenth, the use of trumps in games played
with the regular pack was being practised by
European players, whereas, in the Ganjifa
games, there is neither a trump suit nor bidding.
Furthermore, as we noted before, although the
Ganjifa games are full-Hedged trick-taking
games, with a trick being won by the highest card
of the suit led and and the winner of a trick
(almost always) leading to the next one, they
exhibit a number of radical differences from the
trick-taking games played in Europe. There are
severe and often complicated constraints upon
the leads that may be made, there is the basic
principle that the holder of the highest
outstanding card of any suit must play it when
that suit is led; there is the general rule that the
lead to the first trick belongs to the player
holding the King of a particular suit (usually
varying according to whether the game is played
in the daytime or in the night-time); and there is
the frequent practice of playing multiple tricks -
the player with the lead puts down several Cards
simultaneously, and the other players have each
to put down an equal number of cards. The
Indian games and the European ones must have
developed from some common ancestor; neither
can directly have influenced the other.
It is highly probable, as we saw, that Indian
playing cards, and the Indian Ganjifa games,
were derived from those of Persia, where the
eight-suited pack associated in India with the
Moghuls was in use at least by the sixteenth
century, and where similar and perhaps identical
games were being played at least by the
seventeenth century. There was, of course, close
cultural contact between Persia and the Moghul
court: Mirza Sadiq, who was born in 1018 A.H.
(1610A.D,) in Isfahan and died in 1061 A.H. (1653
AD. in India, devoted the 64th chapter of his
Encyclopaedia to ganjzfell, 'describing various
games including Han rang, known from later
 The Game of Tarot
or"
Indian sources." The eight-suited pack, and
probably also the Perso-Indian type of game,
date back to the early sixteenth century. Further
back we cannot at present go: but we saw that
etymological evidence makes it likely that
playing cards and card games reached Mamliik
Egypt from Persia, and that the 52-card MamlUk
pack and the 96-card Persian and Moghul pack
; probably have as their common ancestor a 48-
card pack with four suits and two court cards per
suit. The special type of game played in Persia
and India therefore presumably developed in
Persia at some date after playing cards First
reached Egypt. This early history is, on present
evidence, highly conjectural: but, if the re-
construction of history suggested here is correct
in outline, the occurrence IH both India and
Europe of the practice of reversing the order of
the numeral cards in half the suits can be
explained only by supposing it to have been
followed before the eight-suited pack was
invented, by players in la/IamlUk Egypt as well as
in Persia, and to have entered Europe along with
trick-taking games and with playing cards
themselves. We have already noted that the
disposal of the upper inscriptions on the Istanbul
cards gives partial support to this hypothesis.
The predominance of trick-taking games in
Europe and India is not paralleled in China.
There, as we saw, setting aside pure gambling
games as before, two quite different categories of
card game have predominated: draw-and-
8
discard games and what we called 'fishing'
games. Draw-and-discard games were virtually
unknown in Europe until this century, when
E Rummy games were imported from the United
States, and, subsequently, Canasta from South
America, and achieved great popularity. Fishing
games are played in Europe in a different manner
from that customary in China and Japan: there is
no turning over the top card from the stock after
playing a card from the hand, but, instead, there
are repeated deals in the course of play;
moreover, it is usually allowable to capture more
than one card from the pool by the play of a
single card, which never happens in the Chinese
6 The Encyclopaedia is called Shihid-i Sédiq, and its oh. 64
is discussed by 'Ali Naqi ManzavT in 'Ganjafeh-ye Shéhid-i
S8diq', Dzinesh, no. 8, October 1954, pp. 459-60. Han rang is
described in 'A note on Garijpa', by the Maharaja of
Sonepur, journal of the 81/zar and Orzkra Research Society, vol.
10, 1924, pp. 221-6.
177
and Japanese games. In England the best-known
fishing game is Casino; by far the most successful
of all European fishing games is the Italian game
of Scopa, with its derivatives. Fishing games have
not, however, played any great role in the history
of European card games, and, though I know
little of their history, Scopa appears to have been
already well known in Naples by the early
eighteenth century, but may possibly have arrived
from the Middle East.
Although there are few Chinese trick-taking
games, one, the domino game T'ien Chiu
('Heavens and Nines', so called from the name of
the highest domino of the civil suit, the double six
or Heaven, and of the highest dominoes of the
military suit, the Nines, i.e. the 6-3 and the 5-4),
is very celebrated and very ancient. The primary
object of the game is to win the last trick; but
how much is paid by the other players to the
winner depends on how many tricks they have
won. There are a few European trick-taking
games in which the object is to win the last trick,
for example the Swedish Fernkort and the
German Letzter Stich, and it is a persistent
feature of many games, going hack at least to
Trappola and some forms of Tarot in early
sixteenth-century Italy, that the winner of the
last trick gains a bonus. In the present state of
knowledge, we can only speculate whether T'ien
clziu is a remote ancestor of the trick-taking games
played in Persia, India and Europe, or whether
the principle of trick-taking Play was invented
twice independently.
Whatever the exact truth on these questions
may be, it seems certain that trick-taking
games are older than the use of playing cards in
Europe, and perhaps as old as the four-suited
pack itself; and, since trumps are an unknown
phenomenon in any game not demonstrably
derivable from a European forebear, we may
confidently assert that they, like bidding and
unlike the general trick-taking principle,
represent a European contribution to the art of
card games. As for the idea of complex trick-
taking games, it is impossible to be certain. No
known trick-taking game of non-European origin
is complex in our technical sense, although it is a
regular feature of fishing games that different
cards captured bear different point-values, we
might, therefore, conclude that the trick-taking
games that entered Europe along with playing
cards were all simple ones, and that the idea of
178 Part I: History and Mystery
assigning different point-values to cards
according to their rank first arose in Europe. On
the other hand, it is highly tempting to associate
the distinction between high-scoring cards and
low cards with that between court cards and
numeral cards. Familiar as we are with the latter
distinction, we forget how curious it is. But, when
we reflect, when, say, we recall the Eton platoon,
we are impelled to ask why anyone should have
thought of continuing a numerical sequence with
three social or political ranks. It would be a
satisfying solution if we could argue as follows. A
difference in the type of design which a card
displays is likely to point to a difference in its role
in the games for which it was originally devised;
and an elaborate design is likely to point to an
important role. In a simple trick-taking game,
and, indeed, in most card games, the court cards,
even when they head the suit, differ from the
numeral cards only in respect of their higher
rank: it would be in no way inappropriate to
their function if they were replaced by numerals
from 11 to 13. It is only in complex trick-taking
games that the higher cards of each suit differlin
role from the lower ones otherwise than just by
being higher. If, therefore, we hypothesise a
prototypical complex trick-taking game in which
the court cards were the highest cards in each
suit and the only cards with high point-values, as
in fact they are in Quarante des Rois, we have an
explanation for the differentiation between court
cards and numeral cards: court cards were given
special designs because they played a special role
in the game. This idea is enticing; unfortunately,
what little evidence there is tells against it. If that
were ever the rationale for the distinction
between court cards and numeral cards, it had
been completely forgotten by the time that the
eight-suit pack and the Indo-Persian Ganjifa
games played with it were invented.
Furthermore, we have seen it to be probable that
there were originally only two court cards per
suit, and possibly, in the First instance, only one :
and a complex game with only two high-scoring
cards out of twelve, and no trumps, would be
distinctly tame. We have, therefore, reluctantly
to abandon this attractive idea. Complex trick-
taking games may have entered Europe together
with playing cards, or they may have been
invented in Europe at an early date, perhaps
prompted by the distinction between court and
numeral cards; but, in either case, they probably
do not have an antiquity equal to that of simple
ma.
trick-taking games. This conclusion tends to
reinforce the hypothesis that, in the beginning,
the King was the only court card, acquiring first
one subordinate and then a second: it would be
less bizarre, at the time when the four-suited
pack was first devised, to head every suit with a
single figure card than with a sequence of them.
We may regard it as certain that trumps are a
European invention, it does not follow that it was
with the game of Tarot that they made their first
appearance. Is there any positive evidence for
this hypothesis, apart from the plausible
explanation that it provides of why the Tarot
pack was invented at all Here etymology proves
once more a clue. As has been said, the name
used in Italy throughout the fifteenth century,
right down to 1500, for Tarot cards and for the
game played with them is trionj or trium/2lli. In the
sixteenth century, however,~ from at least 1516,
this name was replaced by the word Zarocc/zz,
whose etymology is unknown and already
perplexed people in the sixteenth century.7 From
early in the same century, however, we find
names cognate with 'triumph' being used, in
several countries, for games played with the
regular pack. In France there is Triomphe, a
game still played, or at least described in the
card-game books, to this day.8 In England there
is Triumph, first referred to in 1522, and next in
a sermon by Latimer preached in 1529.9 In Spain
there was Triunfo, of which the first mention was
7 Lollio, in his InvettWa of 1550, spoke of 'quel nome
fantastic, e bizarre/Di Tarocco, senz'ethimologia' (that
fantastic and bizarre name of 'Tarocco', devoid of
etymology).
8 The earliest French reference which is certainly to this
game, and not to Tarot, is, as so often, in Rabelais's list of
the games of Gargantua, Gargantua, 1534, book I, oh. 223
Rabelais spells it triumph, and includes tara separately in
the list.
9 The earlier reference is from Henry Watson, The ehirehe
of the euyll men and women/ whereof Lueyfer is the heed/ and the
membres it all the Players dissolute and runners reproued, This was
a translation of La Petite Dyablerze dent Luczjer est Ze ref by
Thomas Varnet and Noel Beda which had previously been
published in Paris, itself an abridged and adapted
translation of the sermon De alarum [ado by St Bernardine of
Siena. At the end of The ehirehe of the euell! men and women the
date is given as 22 August 1511, though it is not quite clear
to me whether this is meant to be the date of the translation
or of the work translated. The British Library gives the date
of La Petite Dyablerie in its catalogue as '1520?', and that of
Henry Watson's translation, of which it has a microfilm of a
copy in the Cambridge University Library, as 1522. There is
another, anonymous, translation, differing only in trifling
variations in wording, entitled The churche of quell men it
 The Game of Taro!
by j.L. Vives in 1539.10 The German game of
Trumpffen, perhaps the same as the Triimpfspiel
described by Daniel Martin in l637,~appears in
the list of games given by Fischart in his
translation of Rabelais in 1575.11 As for Italy
women/ where Lucyyfere is heed, And the membres is all the Players
dzSrnlzzie/ and synnfrs relbroued. The First page of this says that it
has been 'translated out of frenche in to Englisshe/ at the
instau'ce of Charles erle of Worcester/ and chaberlayne to
our soueraygne lorde the Kyng'. Charles Somerset, who was
Chamberlain to the Household of Henry VIII, was created
Earl of Worcester in 1514> and died in 1526. Both the
French and the English versions substitute different games
for those mentioned by St Bernardine. On p. 10 of Watson's
book there occurs the passage 'there is seuen specyalles/
which is/ the moon/ the glebe/ the Husshe/ the torment/
the regret/ one and thyrty( and ye tryumphe', The names
of all these card games are known from other sources. The
French original of this passage gives the seven games as 'je
mamma/ je glic/ je Flux/ je torment/ la regnette/ Trente
et Vng/ & la ronfle'. It would therefore appear that Watson
is equating 'ronfle' with 'tryumphe', but this impression is
contradicted by an earlier sentence on the same page: 'the
players shall same/ play we at the romfle/ the other shal
save place we at the tryumphe'; at this point in the original
French, different games are mentioned ('les ioueurs diront
iou5s au glic. Lautre dire iouons aux flux'). Although this is
only a translation, it seems clear that 'tryumphe' must have
been known in England as the name of a card game. For
Latirner's sermon, in which allegorical use is made of the
words "triumph" and 'heart', see Hugh Latimer, Sermons on
the Ckznl, London, 1886, p. 27, and john Foxe, Art's and
Monuments, 1563, pp. 1297-8 and 1300 (col. 2): 'the game
that wee wyll playe at, shall bee called the triumphs. '
10 [inguae Zaiirzae exercitatzo ],L. Vwis Valentin, Basle, 1541,
Dialogus xxi, 'Ludus Chartarum SCU foliorum'. The first
edition of this book, of which there are very many, was
published in Basle in 1588. S.R. Kaplan, The Enryclo/Jedza of
Tarot, New York, 1978, states that 'Ludovico Vives,IWriting
i n 1 5 45 i n Lupus C/zartarurn, Dialogs, describes the method of
playing the game of Jan/rc/zi' (p. 28) and that this work
'contains one of the earliest published references to the
game of taroeehi' (p. 374). This is an error: Vives died in
1540, and the dialogue refers to a game with the regular
pack, as might be expected of a Spaniard. In the Spanish
dictionary of john Minsheu, one of the meanings of the
w o r d Zriumfo or triumplzo is given as 'a game at cards so
called': see A Di5tzonarze in Sparzir/L and English, by R i c h a r d
Percivale, enlarged by I. Minsheu, London, 1599, reprinted
1623, s.v. 'triumfo'. In the Dialogues in Spanish and English
appended to the dictionary, el lritinf0 figures as the name of a
card game and is translated 'Trump' (p. 25, towards the
end of the 3rd dialogue). The dialogue later refers to a
distinct game called lriunfo ra!/éd0, translated as 'still
trump', I do not know what this is. The Tesoro de la Lingua
Carlellana, 0 Espaiola of D o n Sebastian Cobarruvias,
Madrid, 1611, gives un ju6g0 de naives, we [Zaman Zriutifo (a
game of cards which they call triunfol as one of the meanings
of lriunfo.
"Johann Fischart, (1esrhzchtkZzHen¢rzg, Gargantua, ed. U.
Nyssen, DUssel dorn, 1963, gives the text of the 1590 edition.
See also the work by Rausch cited in footnote 3.
179
itself, Francesco Berni alluded to Trionfi as a
game played with regular cards, and distinct
from Tarocchi, which he refers to under that
name, in 1526, and it has other mentions in
sixteenth-century Italian sources." These
games were by no means all identical; on the
contrary, they differed greatly. Daniel Martin's
TrUmpfspiel was a complex game, whereas the
other games are all simple ones: in Triomphe
each player received only five cards, whereas the
English game of Triumph was the ancestor of
Whist, and the entire pack was distributed.
What, then, explains this allocation to a variety
of trick-taking games played with the regular
pack of a name formerly applied to the game
played with the very special pack of cards now
known as taroccliz?
The explanation is very simple. What connects
all these different games is that they were games
played with trumps: their names refer to this
outstanding and, at the beginning of the
sixteenth century, novel feature of them. The
word 'trump' is simply a corruption of 'triumph',
a corruption that appears almost as early as the
parent word 'triumph', as applied to cards, and
soon supersedes it. Similarly, Trumpf is an
ordinary German word for 'trurnp', as triurzfo is in
Spanish, although in French the word most
commonly used has long been about. In Italy, the
word trionj continued very often to be applied to
the triumph cards of the Tarot pack, as well as to
trump cards in other games, although it was no
longer used for Tarot cards as a whole, or for the
game played with them: in fact, it simply
acquired the meaning 'trumps ', and, now that we
know for what purpose the triumph cards are
used in play, we may as well simply call them
'trumps' henceforward. Even before the word
larocclzi had been introduced, when the word
Noon was reserved for Tarot cards, it had a
certain ambiguity; it could be applied to the
cards of the Tarot pack as a whole, but it denoted
more particularly the twenty-one cards we have
been calling triurnph cards, or those together
12 F. Berni, C`aPz/£010 de! Gizmo della Primzera, Venice, 1 5 26.
The game is also mentioned by Girolamo Cardano in oh.
XXV of his Liver de Ludo Algae, written in 1564, published in
Hierrmyrzi Crndarzi 1\4er/iolanenxzv Upera Omnia, tom. 1, Lyons,
1663, pp. 262-76, see also S.W. Singer, Researches into the
History of Playing Cards, London, 1816, pp. 328-31, and
Oystein Ure, Cardarzo, the Gambling Scholar, Princeton, 1953,
appendix. It was also discussed in a lost Italian work of
Cardano's, De Ludix, of 1524, see his Liber de Libris Propriir,
in Opera Urania, tom. 1, pp. 60-95, par ticularly p. 61 (col. 2).
180 Part I: History and Mystery
with the Matto; a set of Tarot cards was more
properly called carte do zfrzbnji, 'cards with
triumphs'. The word tarocchi inherited the same
ambiguity.
These facts all but compel us to make the
following supposition. Somewhere around the
end of the fifteenth century, it occurred to some
Italian card players that the idea of trumps,
which hitherto had been the distinguishing
feature of the game of Tarot, in which special
cards were used for the purpose, could be
adapted to games played with the regular pack
by simply designating one of the suits as trumps.
This idea then spread rapidly to many other
countries, travelling much faster and more
widely than the game of Tarot itself, just because
it did not require a special pack of cards not
everywhere readily obtainable. The word used
particularly for the trump cards in Tarot was
very naturally transferred to trump cards in these
new games, necessitating the introduction of a
new word for Tarot cards as such, and, since
the new idea of trumps appeared to card players
the distinctive feature of the various games, the
same word was employed as the name of the
games themselves. This hypothesis is reinforced
if we accept Miss Moakley's conjecture about the
origin of the word trionji or triumpizi as applied to
the Tarot trumps. Many have suggested that the
word was adopted because a trump card
'triumphs' over any card of a (plain) suit, but, on
Miss Moakley's view, the word had originally an
iconographical significance, deriving from a
conception of the figures on the Tarot trumps as
belonging to one of those processions of
allegorical or mythological figures on floats that
delighted Italian Renaissance courts; such
processions, whimsically modeled upon the
triumphal processions of ancient Rome, were
ordinarily referred to as 'triumphs'. I view this
conjecture as plausible, not as established; but, if
it is correct, it would follow that, when the Tarot
pack was invented, the word atrium/Jhi was not yet
in use for trump cards in other games. If the idea
of trumps had at that time been embodied in
games with the regular pack, it would have been
surprising if whatever word were then used for
'trumps' in such games had not, at least
sometimes, been applied to the trump cards of
the Tarot pack; yet there is no trace of any such
word. In any ease, it is beyond question that, at
around 1500, a word formerly reserved
exclusively for Tarot cards was borrowed for
games played with the regular pack, and rapidly
came to mean simply 'try,mps', and this would be
virtually inexplicable if trick-taking games with
trumps had been played with the regular pack
since before the Tarot pack was First invented.
Even if we accept this hypothesis, there is a
problem in determining the date at which the
idea of trumps was first transferred from Tarot to
games played with the regular pack. Were it not
for some fifteenth-century French references to
the game of If riomphe or Mumplze, we should
naturally place the innovation in the first decade
of the sixteenth century. We have already
mentioned a French reference to Ze triumbhe as a
card game dating from 1482, however, as well as
Duke René ITs game of triumphs in 1496.13 Now
France was the first country to which the game of
Tarot spread from Italy, and we know from
Rabelais's references to it in 1534 that it was
already quite well known by then. Rabelais also
refers to la triumphs, which thus obviously was for
him a game played with the regular pack; there
are other sixteenth-century French references to
Triomphe, and, since the game is described in
the seventeenth-century card-game books, we
can be confident that what Rabelais is referring
to is that game of Triomphe which has survived,
with very little change, down to the present. But,
in 1482 or even 1496, the game of Tarot was still
being referred to in Italy as trionj, and the word
tarorc/zz was, so far as we know, not yet in use. The
fifteenth-century references to triumpize could,
therefore, equally well refer to Tarot. We have to
choose between the hypotheses, both mildly
surprising, that the Tarot pack and the game of
Tarot had already reached France by 1482, and
that, by that date, the crucial step had already
been taken of adapting the idea of trumps to
games with the regular pack; this latter step must
originally have been taken in Italy rather than in
France, unless, indeed, we are prepared to
assume that both hypotheses hold good.
Our theory that the triumph cards of the Tarot
pack were devised in order to play what was then
a wholly new role in trick-taking games, that of
trumps, and that this idea was subsequently
borrowed from the game of Tarot and adapted to
13 Frédéric Godefroy, Dictionnaire de Varuienne langue
frangaise, Camplément, Paris, vol. X, 1902, s.v. 'triomphe
quotes the phrase joker au jeu du Triumph from a manuscript
of 1482, JJ 206, folio 181 r° in the Archives Nationales. For
René ITs game, see H.-R. D'Allemagne, Lex Carlos djouef, vol.
II, Paris, 1906, p. 212.
 The Game of Tarot
games played with the regular pack, can be
sustained only in the absence of any evidence for
games, of equal antiquity with Tarot, played
with the regular pack but involving trumps. We
must therefore consider carefully two possible
claimants for such a position. The First is the
Italian game of Ronfa. In his book Gambling, Mr
Alan Wykes informs us that "Triumph, ruff, orb re
and honors were all built round the idea of
trumping, and are all developments of rona, an
early sixteenth-century Italian game in which the
leading player could decide to his own
advantage Which should be the superior or
trump suit in play Ronfa, like orb re, was
usually a game for two."4 If this information
were sound, Mr Wykes, or the 'professional
researchers' who assisted him, might have
succeeded in identifying that Italian game in
which the idea of trumps was First adapted from
Tarot to play with the regular pack.
Unfortunately, the game of Ronfa is older than
the early sixteenth century, probably far older.
The first reference known to me from an Italian
source occurs in the same sermon by an
anonymous Dominican friar, dating from
between 1450 and 1480, which we have already
cited as giving the First listing of the Tarot
triumphs." There are here two mentions of
Ronfa, as if to two separate games: one is
specifically to a card game ('Ronfa, ludus
cartularum'), and the other to a game bearing
the alternative name of Buffa Aragiato, which
may equally well have been a dice game or game
of tables (i.e. backgammon game); 16 the whole
passage is one in which names of card games,
dice games and backgammon games are
indiscriminately jumbled together as being,
!* Alan Wykes, Gambling, London, 1964, p. 165. I know of
no game called 'Honors' or 'Hof ours', but a stage in the
evolution of Triumph into modern Whist was a game called
Ruff and Hof ours, described in Charles Cotton, The
O/mpleal (frzmriler, London, 1674, pp. 114-20. The sentence
should therefore probably be emended to begin Triumph,
Ruff ano' Hof ours and Orb re were all ...',
is Robert Steele, 'A notice of the Ludus Triurnphorum',
Arrlzarolrzgia, vol. LVII, 1900, pp. 185-200, see also the same
author's 'Early playing cards', journal of the Royal Society of
Arts, vol. XLIX, 1901, pp. 317-23.
lo The famous manuscript compiled in 1283 at the order
of King Alfonso X the Wise of Castile on chess, dice,
backgammon and board games mentions buffer cortesa and
but/a de boldrooe as backgammon games: see Alfonso el Sabio,
Librot de Arnlrex, Dad/15 e Tablas (Das Schaclzzabelburh lfOnzg
Alford des I/Velsen), ed, and trans. by Arnald Steiner, Geneva
and Zurich, 1941, pp. 324-5, 328-9.
181
according to the preacher, names of devils. Of the
game of Buffa Aragiato or Ronfa, the preacher
comments that 'it is a cruel game, that has led
many to poverty', so in was certainly a game
played for high stakes. Whether or not there was
also a backgammon game called Ronfa, the card
game was well established in Italy by the 1490s :
in 1491 ronjhe was prohibited by municipal edict
in Bergamo;'7 in 1492 a letter of Ippolito d'Este
acknowledged the receipt, among other things, of
a pack of cards for playing the game (carte do
rom/J/za),!8 in 1499 the Diario Ferrarese mentioned
Ramp/za as among the games played at the court
of Ferrara." There are frequent references to it in
sixteenth-century Italian sources."
If we take the date of the anonymous sermon
against gaming to be at the extreme end of the
interval, 1450-80, to which Robert Steele dated
it, that could just be consistent both with our
theory that the idea of trumps was taken over
from Tarot into other games, and with Mr
Wykes 's contention that Ronfa was a trick-taking
game with trumps. However, although
everything concerning the game of Ronfa is
obscure, it seems highly probable that we should
identify it with the game played in France under
the name of Ronfle. But, if so, it goes back to the
beginning of the Fifteenth century: the earliest
reference to Ronfle in Godefroy's dictionary is
from 1414, with another from 1464.21 If Ronfa
and Ronfle are to be equated, and if Mr Wykes is
correct in saying that Ronfa was a game
involving a trump suit, our theory about the
origin of the Tarot pack is in ruins.
1 ?
See VV.L. Schreiber, Die iilterlen Sbzelkarten, Strasbourg,
1937, p. 79.
its See Giulio Bertoni, 'Tarocchi versificati' in Poesied,
ego, Modena, 1917, p. 218.
leggwzrie, w/§L'1m1an,36 de/ media
"> See lvluratori, Rerun IMlzrarum Serif/ztofer, vol. XXIV, p.
376.
211 See the works of Berni and Cardano cited in footnote
11.
! Frédéric (fodefroy, DIrtzunnazre de l'anczenne langue
i'rarz§az:w, Paris, vol, 7, 1892, s.v. 'ronHe'. The 1414 reference
is from a manuscript, cited merely as Arch. JJ. 189, piece
266: 'Lesquelz compaignons commencement a jouer au jeu
de ronHe. The 1464 one is cited from the Lettres de jelzan de
Lanna, in Cczbinel hzstorzque, 1875, p. 241 : 'Comme Ton dist,
Ton joue aux cartes pour passer je temps, est a savor a je
roufle, a XXXI, au ghelicque, au harlequin et au frane.ju.'
There are other references without precise dates: one of
1537. given as 'Chirhpf;wp' Po/frfp /Jar ye of YI/le ~,»l€, vol.
XI, p. 290, employs the term rof#e not as the name of a game
but as a technical term in another card game, la Picardie :
'J'avais cinquante et cinq de ruffle/ Enjouant a la Picardie.'
I am afraid l have not checked these references.
182 Part I: History and Mystery
As we saw concerning the alleged fourteenth-
century Persian references to /-s-N8s, and the
supposed entry in the diary of one of Columbus's
seamen," Mr Wykes is better at making
assertions than at substantiating them. It would
be a matter of the greatest interest for the history
of card games to find out with certainty how
Ronfa (or Ronfie) was played: but a request to
Mr Wykes for references to support his confident
statement on the subject failed to elicit the most
tenuous ground for it. The fact of the matter is
that the evidence that has come down to us on
the question is confusing, and points in opposite
directions. The word rona, and the word r02y'le as
used in card play, are certainly connected with
the English word 'ruff', still in regular use by
Bridge players as a verb meaning to play a trump
card to a trick to which a plain suit has been led.
By the seventeenth century, Triumph had
evolved into two forms, described by Charles
Cotton, one called Ruff and Hof ours, or,
alternatively, Slamm, and the other called Whist.
In Whist, as then played, the 2s were omitted
from the pack, and every player received twelve
cards, the last being turned to determine the
trump suit. In Ruff and Hof ours, each player
again received twelve cards, but the last four
were dealt to the centre of the table to form a
stock, the top one being turned to determine
trumps, the player who held the Ace of trumps
was entitled to take the four cards of the stock
into his hand, discarding four at his choice. The
procedure of taking the four cards of the stock
was called 'ruffing'.23 Cotton does not use the
word 'ruff' as meaning 'to trump', but he does
describe the French game of Triomphe under
the name 'French-Ruff'.2'* john Florio, in his
Italian/English dictionary of 1598, gives 'Ronfa'
as meaning 'a game at cardes called ruffe or
trumpe', and the verb 'ronfare' as meaning 'to
snort, to snarle (the 1611 edition adds 'in sleep')
..., also to ruff or trump at cards'.25 Ron fare is not
in use in modern Italian in either sense, but the
more general meaning given by Florio confirms
the identification of Ronfa with Ron He, rorjer
being the ordinary French word for 'to snore'.
Randle Cotgrave, in his French/English
dictionary of 1611, gives 'Ronfle' as meaning
22 See Chapter 3, p. 46 and fits 41 and42, and p. 51 .
2% Charles Cotton. op. cit., pp. 114-20.
24
Ibid. pp. 121-2.
a
25 John Florin, The Worlds of Word's, London, 1598.
'Hand-Ruffe, at Cards'.2" All this naturally
supports the view that Ronfa or Ron He was a
trick-taking game whose outstanding feature was
the use of a trump suit.
The word 'ruff' was, however, also used in card
play in a quite different sense. In Piquet and
some other games there is a score for the Point,
that is, for having the greatest number of cards of
any one suit, or, in case of equality, that having
the highest total value (the Ace counting 11, the
court cards 10 each and the others their face
values). The word r0fy9e regularly appears in the
older French dictionaries as meaning the 'point'
in Piquet, though later supplanted by the word
Point; and Cotton uses 'Ruff' in this sense too."
The eighteenth-century French writer on playing
cards, Bullet, uses the term rorg'le only in this
sense, without mentioning the game of Ronfle."
A Spanish encyclopaedia of 1926 assigns the
same general meaning to the word rury'Za, though
without a specific mention of Piquet." Boiteau
d'Ambly, in his book of 1854, discussed the game
of Ronfle, and said that it was still played in the
Vosges: according to him, it was, as played there,
a very simple two-handed game, in which the
sole object was to have the highest rog/ie or point,
taken as consisting in the highest sum of values of
cards of any one suit held in hand." The
authoritative Italian dictionary, the Vorabolario
della Crusca of 1612, gives as a proverbial phrase
accurate Za ronfaf accusare is a verb commonly used
in card play to mean 'to declare' some
advantageous combination of cards held in hand,
and the entry goes on to say that Ronfa is a card
game similar to Primiera.31 Primiera was a game
very popular in Italy in the early sixteenth
century, originating, like so many card games, in
Spain, where it was called Primero, under which
name it also enjoyed great popularity in
26 Randle Cotgrave, A diclzimarie of the French and English
tongues, London, 1611.
Op. cit., p. 82.
Zglean Baptiste Bullet, Rechero/zes lzzktoriquex sur lex earths 42
jour, Lyons, 1757, p. 144.
29 Enficlopedia Universal Illustrada Europeo-Amerif ana, Bilbao,
l\4 Madrid and Barcelona, vol. LII, 1926, s.v. 'rubella': 'reunion
de rnuchab carts de un mismo palo'.
W Boiteau d'Arnbly, Les Carte; d .jouef el Za fartomancie,
Paris, 1854, p. 162.
31 Vocabolario degli Accademzkz della Crusca, Venice, 1612, s,v.
'accusare': 'E proverbialmerlte, Accusar la rona giusta, he
é confessor la verit8 per l'appunto, E Ronfaé giuoco di carte,
come Primiera e simili' (Proverbially, 'to declare the true
rona', that is, to confess the truth exactly. Ronfa is a game
of cards like Primiera and similar ones).
 The Game of Tarot
England. It was not a trick-taking game, but
belonged to the same general category as Poker,
being a gambling game whose outcome
depended on the particular" combinations of
cards each player held in his hand.
It is plain that two totally different ideas, that
of trumps and that of the point, became
associated with the words rona and 'ruff'. The
difficulty is to know which of these two
associations is the original one; which one
characterised the game of Ronfa as it is referred
to in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Here
Randle Cotgrave's translation of 'Ronfle' as
'Hand-Ruffe' may give us a clue: his entry for
'Triomphe' is 'The Card-game called Ruffe, or
Trump, also, the Ruffe, or Trump at it'. By the
time he compiled his dictionary, the confusion
between the two senses of 'ruff' had already set
in: and his phrase 'Hand-Ruffe' may well have
been intended to differentiate a game in which
the ruff was the point on cards held in hand from
one in which it consisted in the play of a trump
card. In 1534 Rabelais mentioned both Ronfle
and Triumphe in his list of games: and his
English translator, Urquhart, of 1653 likewise
rendered the former as 'handruff', while he
translated the latter 'as 'trump'.32 That, in
England at least, the name 'Ruff' originally
denoted a game in which 'ruff' meant 'point'
seems to be clinched by one of the earliest
English references to Ruff as a card game, in the
contribution of 1589 to the Martin Marprelate
controversy called Martin; Months mind and
dubiously attributed to Thomas Nashe. The
author says, in a passage whose metaphorical
intention escapes me, 'They are now in hande to
shuffle the Cardes (as ill as they will seem to love
them) and to confounde all, to arnende their
badde games, having never a good Carde in their
handes, and leaving the auncient game of
England (Trumps) where everie coate and sure
are sorted in their degree, are running to their
Ruffe where the greatest sorte of the sutecarrieth
away the game'.33 This passage is far from clear :
but it is apparent that the writer is not using
'Ruff', as was later done, as an alternative name
32 See F. Rabelais, The heroic deeds of Gargantua and
Pantagruel, trans. Sir Thomas Urquhart and P. je Motteux,
Everyman edition, vol. I, London, 1929, p. 50, or many
other editions.
33 See The Cbmplele Works of Thomas Nay/ze, ed. by
Alexander B. Grosart, vol. I, 1883-4, pp. 141-205, the
quoted passage is on p. 161 .
183
for the game of Trump OI` Triumph, but as
standing for a quite different game; and the
concluding remark Hts well with the idea that the
game referred to was one in which the winner
was he who held the longest single suit in his
hand.
It thus seems more probable than anything
else that Ronfa was not originally a trick-taking
game at all, or, at any rate, not one played with
trumps, but one in which the point - as
determined either by the mere number, or by the
sum total of the values, of cards of one suit held in
hand .- played an important role; and that the
verbs ronfare and trionfare, as applied in card
games, later became confused owing to their
similarity of sound, leading to a similar confusion
between the English terms 'ruff' and 'trump'
derived from them." This confusion can be
clearly seen in _John Florio's dictionary: the two
verbs seem to have been still further confused
with the verb trotfiare, meaning 'to puff oneself
up'. Florio gives tr0ry9o as meaning 'puffed,
swolne, also a trump at cards, a game at cards
called trurnpe', and trorzfare, also spelled Ironware,
as meaning 'to puffs, to swell ...; also to trump at
cardes', with the 1611 edition giving as a further
meaning 'to snort' (the basic meaning of ronfare).
The confusion seems to have become pretty
thorough. A game called Trionfetti was already
in existence in Italy in 1564, when, as Triumfeti,
it was mentioned by Cardano in addition to the
game of Triurnphi, both being distinct from
Tarocchi, which is referred to by Cardano under
that name" Trionfetti may be the game
34 An important, but puzzling, use of the term rona, not as
the name of a game, but as a technical term in play, occurs
in the Invettzba contra z[ Giuoro del Taroco of 1550 by Alberto
Flavio Lollio (1508-1568) of Ferrara, this poem will be
discussed in detail in Chapter 21. Speaking of the moment
before play opens when you inspect your hand, Lollio says,
's'hai quattro,/ O cinque Carte di Ronfa, to tem/ Che non
ii murcia it Re, con je figure' ('if you have four or five cards of
rona, you are afraid that you will lose the King, with the
court cards'). Carte de Ronfa does not mean 'trumps', for
which Lollio uses the term trionfi. He is speaking of a three-
handed game with the Tarot pack, in which each player has
a hand of twenty cards. The most natural interpretation is
that Lollio is speaking of a long holding in a plain suit,
which is called rrmfa, it you have the top four or five cards of
that suit, you are afraid that they may be trumped by
another player who has a void in that suit. I do not feel sure,
however, that this is the correct interpretation.
is Cardano, Libel de Ludo Algae, cap. XXV, see footnote
11. The game is also mentioned by Tomaso Garzoni, La
Piazza Universals, Venice, 1585, as trionjlti, see p. 574 of the
1586 edition. john Florio, A Worlds of Word's, London, 1598,
184 Part I: History and Mystery
mentioned by Francesco Berni in 1526 under the
name Trionfipiccoli, again as distinct both from
Trionfi and from Tarocchi.36 From one later
account, however, it appears that Trionfetti was
not a trick-taking game at all; played by four
players in fixed partnerships with a full or a 32-
card pack, it allows scores for pairs, for threes of
a kind and for the point (Punta), taken as the sum
of values of the cards held in any one suit."
It is noteworthy that we have no evidence for
the use of the French word roryie, or of Spanish
rutfla or Portuguese rufa, with the meaning
'trump': Godefroy cites two sixteenth-century
metaphorical uses, one from Rabelais, of the
phrase en r01y9e due to mean 'in a good position',
which would tally well with its literal meaning
being that of a successful point displayed to the
opponents. In view of the priority of the French
references over the Italian ones, it is likely that
the game was of French origin and was imported
into Italy, the name 'Ronfle' being there
converted into 'Ronfa', Ronfle need not be
thought to have been so unsophisticated a game
as that mentioned by Boiteau d'Ambly: It could
even have been ancestral to Piquet. Piquet is
referred to by Rabelais under its older name of
Cent (the game being played 100 up), which in
England was corrupted to 'Sant', Being a game
played with a shortened pack (originally with the
36-card pack), it is unlikely to have originated
before 1500, and certainly cannot be as old as
defines Trionfetti as 'a game at cardes as our trump', in his
Second Flutes of 1591 he had translated triwrzpiietto as 'trump'.
In the 1659 edition of Florio's dictionary. A Dictionary Italian
and English, revised by Giovanni Torriano, the entry for
Trionfelto is 'the game Trump, or Ruff, or Whisk at Cards',
'Whisk' is just an alternative form of 'Whist', but it seems
very unlikely that \'Vhist was played in Italy in the
seventeenth century.
36 F. Berni, op. cit.
3. Aquarius (i.e. Louis d'AguilarJackson), Italian Games at
Cards and Oriental Games, pp. 49-52. Aquarius equates
Trionfetti with Gile, a game separately referred to by
Garzoni, gilt being the technical term for a pair. Aquarius,
or L. d'A. Jackson, was an engineer who was an enthusiast
for foreign card games, and published.a number of small
booklets about them, which, unfortunately, are far from
always accurate or clear; he frequently follows very closely a
German or Italian text, which he does not in all cases
interpret correctly. In this case, I do not know what his
source was, and have been unable to find any Italian-
language account of Trionfetti. I have no doubt that, in
some source available to Aquarius, Trionfetti was described
as a non-trick-taking game of the kind he describes, but it
may well be that the game referred to by Cardano, Garzoni
and Florio was a trick-taking game with trumps.
Ronfle. Piquet is a simple trick-taking game
without trumps, in which the importance of the
play in tricks is overlaid by that of the
declarations that can be made from hand before
play begins: these features are entirely consonant
with its being, or having been descended from, a
game going back to a very early stage in the
history of European card play, since trick-taking
games without trumps are probably as old in
Europe as playing cards themselves, and
declarations made from hand seem also to be
very ancient. Ronfle may well have been a game
of the same general type. m
However this may be, it is evident that,
although at first sight Ronfa poses a problem for
our theory about the origin of the Tarot pack,
that problem evaporates upon examination. The
I
discovery of some really solid evidence about how
Ronfle and Ronfa were played in the fifteenth
century is, indeed, much to be desired, but, in
default of any more convincing reasons than we
have at present, we cannot with any assurance
classify them as trick-taking games, let alone
ones played with trumps.
A more serious problem is raised by the game
of KarnOffel, which was a celebrated game in
fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Germany. It goes
back to quite early in the fifteenth century,
having been listed in a municipal ordinance of
NOrdlingen in 1426 as among the games that
could lawfully be played at the annual city fate."
A thorough investigation of the history of the
game has been carried out by Dr Rudolf von
Leyden, who has collected some thirty references
to it from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Oflthese, eight are from the works of the famous
Catholic preacher Bishop Johann Geiler of
Kaisersberg. For him it provided an apt
illustration of the disruption of the social order.
In the usual card games, the cards in each suit
ranked in a natural and determinate order, with
the King at the head, and the higher-numbered
cards beating the lower-numbered ones, the
Deuce ranking last. But in KarnOffel, which
Geiler mistakenly regarded as a new game, all
was topsy-turvey. During the Reformation,
KarnOffel, containing, as it did, cards known as
the Pope, the Emperor (Kaiser) and the Devil,
became the source for a more substantial allegory
by Protestant propagandists and satirists.
38 W.L. Schreiber, Die iiltexten Spielkarten, Strasbourg,
1937, PP 42-3.
 The Game of Tarot
After the sixteenth century, KarnOffel lost its
celebrity, and passed out of the consciousness of
most card players. But it by no means died out: it
continued to be played, in varying forms, in
isolated rural areas of Germany, Switzerland and
the Netherlands, and is still played in
Switzerland to this day; of all European card
games still living, it must be that with the longest
demonstrable history. The earliest detailed
account of the manner of play comes from an
article published in a German periodical of 1783,
describing Karniffel as then played amongst the
Thuringian peasantry." Dr von Leyden has
unearthed three others: one published in
Lucerne in 1841, describing Karnéiffel or
Kaiserspiel as then played in the German-
speaking Catholic cantons of Switzerland, one
from a German periodical of 1924, describing the
Karniiffeln or Kniiffeln then played in Friesland;
and a book of rules for the game of Kaiser-Spiel
or Kaiserjass (Chaisere) as now played in the
half-canton of Nidwalden, together with a very
recent description by Herr Hansjakob
Achermann published in a local journal." The
original game was played with a full 48-card
German-suited pack. In Thuringia it was played
with a 36-card one, and in Friesland with a
French-suited pack of 48 cards. In Switzerland it
is played with the Swiss-suited pack. In the
nineteenth-century Lucerne version, all 48 cards
were used, this must have been the last game for
pa
'Beytrag zur Geschichte der Kartenspiele', Teutre/zer
Alerkur, 1783, pp. 62-8,7.
40 Dar uralte Adele so genannte Karrzbfel- oder Kazserrpiel,
Lucerne, 1841 ; .],F. Berhard, 'I)as Karnfiffeln (Kniiffeln).
Ein friesisches Kartenspiel', Die Hezniat. Monalrsc/zrzfl des
Verezn.t ,our Pfelege Der Naiar- um/ Landeskurzde in Schleswig-
//0/.s£ezn, Hamburg, I zfbeelr and Dem Fzirrlenlurn Lu"bee/1, h4arch
1924, reprinted (pp. 22-4) at the end of (I. Erhardt, 'Das
Karniffel- oder Karn6ffelspiel', De r A le e , Sth Jahrgang,
Altenburg, 1930, pp. 20-2, and .fassreglemenl fair day [fairer-
Spzel, n.d., issued by J. MUller & Cie. of Schaffhausen,
together with Hansjakob Achermann, 'Der Kaiserjass, we
or heute in Nidwalden gespielt wind'. Dr von Leyden has
found references to Kaiserspiel or KarnOffel being played in
Switzerland from the early seventeenth century (Schweitzer
Idzotzkorz, Zurich, 1895, vol. 3, p. 514), in Liibeck in the early
eighteenth century (Sporham-Krempel, Ein Hanrlz/all Hliikk,
Munich, 1958, p. 49), in Switzerland and Thuringia in 1810
Solofliurniselze.t Woe/zerzblall, no. 29, 21 July 1810, p. 222), and
in Iserlohn, Westphalia, in the nineteenth century (Kluge-
GOtze, Etyrnologiselies Wr3'rlerbt4e/1 der Deutrc/zen Sprache, Berlin,
1951, p. 366). It is not known whether the game survives in
Germany or in Friesland. For all this, see R. von Leyden,
Iuirrz6j elf 1/as [iarZerz.it»ze[ Der l,anr/5lrnelv/ite, Vienna, 1978, a
booklet issued by Piatnik & S6hne with a reproduction pack.
185
which they were required. But the modern game
uses a 40-card pack, missing the 8s and 9s; for
the few places in which this ancient game
survives, the 48-card Swiss-suited pack continues
to be manufactured. Dr von Leyden, Mr _John
McLeod and Mr David Baird have all visited
Stans to witness this venerable game being
played.
The games described in these various sources
differ considerably from one another, but share
several common features. All are simple trick-
taking games with trumps. The Swiss games are
those of which we have the most detailed
descriptions: the modern game as played in
Nidwalden differs from the nineteenth-century
one in certain ways, but the essential features are
in common. The Thuringian and Frisian versions
have the surprising feature of having two trump
suits, while the Swiss forms have only one. In the
Thuringian and Frisian games, the trump suits
are determined by turning the first two undealt
cards, if both are of the same suit, another is
turned, and so on until two suits have been
exposed. In the Swiss games, each player receives
one card face up in the first round of the deal,
and the lowest card (according to the ranking in
plain suits) so dealt (in case of equality, the
earlier) fixes the trump suit. The game is
characteristically played with four or with six
players in two fixed partnerships, usually each
player is dealt five cards, and that side wins
the round which makes three tricks (once either
side has done so, the remaining tricks are not
played out). In the Frisian game, there are four
players in two fixed partnerships, but each player
receives nine cards, ~the object of each side being
to make Five tricks, the nineteenth-century Swiss
form provides versions for three players or for
four, each playing for himself, and in these cases
the winner of a round is the First to obtain three
tricks, each player receiving as many cards as
required to ensure that someone wins (seven in
the three-handed version, nine in the four-
handed one). In no form of the game is there an
obligation to follow suit, nor a prohibition on
trumping although able to follow suit. In the
Thuringian game and in the Swiss nineteenth-
century one when played with three players or
with four, each playing for himself, it was
obligatory for each player to beat the highest
card yet played if he could (with a card of the suit
led or with a trump): in Swiss partnership games
and in the Frisian game, there are no constraints
186 Part I: History and Mystery
on play to a trick. In all forms, open discussion
between the players is lawful, or each side has a
director who instructs his partner or partners
what to play.
As in most trick-taking games with trumps, a
trick may be won only by a trump or a card of the
suit led. In all the forms other than the
Thuringian one, the ranking of the cards in the
trump suit or suits is quite eccentric, and differs
wholly from that in the plain suits. In the
Thuringian game, the same eccentric ranking
obtains in the plain suits as well as in the two
trump suits (unless, indeed, the author of the
1783 account had made a mistake in this regard).
This difference in the order of the cards in
trumps and in the plain suits is but an extreme
example of something that happens in several
other games, notably in Orb re; but, again with
the exception of the Thuringian form, KarnOffel
has an absolutely unique feature. This is that
only the highest of the trump cards are fully
fledged trumps, that can beat any card of a plain
suit. The lowest cards of the trump suit have no
power as trumps at all, while the intermediate
ones are what may be called partial trumps: they
can beat cards of a plain suit below a certain
rank, but not those above it.
In detail, the ranking of the cards differs
considerably in the various forms: but it is worth
describing, together with the names used for
certain cards, for the light that is thrown on some
of the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century references.
(11 As remarked, the niNeteenth-century Swiss
game was played with a full 48-card Swiss-suited
pack. The Banners (lOss were called Kaisers, a player
holding one or more could declare it before the start. of
actual play, thus increasing the value of the round and
making the Kaiser a trump, if not declared, it did not
become a trump and belonged to its proper suit. In
the plain suits, the cards ranked, in descending order:
King, Uber, Unter, Banner (if not declared), 9, 8, 7, 6,
5, 4, 3, Deuce (called Say = Sow). The most
remarkable features, both of this game and of the
modern Swiss version, are, as just observed, that only
certain cards of the trump suit have any power as
trumps, those that do being called Stitcher, and that
only some of the Step/zer function as fully fledged
trumps, those that do are called I{6'rzzg5tec/z€r or
Ifirzgstec/ter (King-beaters), because they beat even the
King of a plain suit. In the nineteenth-century game,
the I{i1'nzgsZer/wr were, in descending order: the Unter
of the trump suit, called the joy, the 6 of the trump
suit, the Deuce or Sum of the trump suit; and the
Kaiser of Roses (if declared), called Bless (pale). The
remaining six Step/zef had restricted powers as trumps :
if a plain suit were led, they could beat certain cards
of that suit, but were beaten by others. The 3 of
trumps and, below it, the Kaiser of Acorns (if
declared), called Grfln (green), were Obewleclzer, and
could beat the Uber of a plain suit and any lower
card, but not the King. Next came the two Urztersteclzer,
the 4 of trumps followed by the Kaiser of Shields or
Tiitsrhz these could beat an Unter of a plain suit or any
lower card, but not the Ober or King. Last came the
two Farbster/ter, which could beat any numeral card of
a plain suit (including an undeclared Banner), but
not a court card: these were, in order, the 5 of trumps
and the Kaiser of Bells or Fusel. Thus, if Shields were
trumps, and the 9 of Acorns were led, followed in turn
by the 5 of Shields, the Unter of Acorns and »the 4 of
Shields, each card in succession would beat the
preceding one, the Unter would beat the 5 of trumps
because the latter was only a Farbstecher, but would be
beaten by the 4 of trumps because it was an
Urzterstec/ter.
The 7 of the trump suit, called Sibelle or Babelz,
behaved in a peculiar way, as in all KarnOffel games.
\'Vhen led to a trick, it could be beaten only by the
highest card of all, the for or trump Unter, but when
played to a trick otherwise than as the first card, it
lacked all trick-taking power. The remaining four
cards of the trump suit, the King, Ober, 9 and 8, had
no power as trumps, but formed, in effect, a separate
plain suit, ranking in that order. Thus, if one of the
Steclter were led to a trick, it could be beaten only by a
higher Step/ter, e.g. the 3 of trumps, if led, could be
beaten only by a I{6'nzgsterlwr, and not by the King of
trumps. But if one of the four cards of the trump suit
which were not Step/ter were led, it could be beaten
only by a higher such card or a Spec/ter of the
appropriate rank, the Ober by an Oberslec/zer and the
King by a I{6'nigstec/ter. Thus, if the Ober of the trump
suit were led, it could be beaten by the trump 3, and
that in turn by the King of the trump suit.
(2) The modern Swiss game is played without the
8s and is; with this exception, the cards rank in the
plain suits as before, the Unter being called Bauer and,
as usual nowadays, the Deuce being called Ass (Ace).
There are now six Kingstecher, which are, in
descending order: the Kaiser of Bells, called in/Iugg,
the 5 of trumps, the Bauer (Unter) of trumps, called
jogs; the 6 of trumps, the Ace (Deuce) of trumps, and
the Kaiser of Roses, called Blast as before. (It will be
seen that the former Farbstec/ver have been promoted. )
The Ubersterher are the 3 of trumps followed by the
Kaiser of Shields, called Oberkaiser, the Unlerster/ter are
the 4 of trumps, followed by the Kaiser of Acorns,
called Wydli or Gager. The 7 of trumps, with no special
name, has the same peculiarity as before: played to a
trick, it has no power at all, but, led to one, it can be
beaten only by the jogs. The jogs, being no longer the
 The Game of Tarot
highest card, can then in turn be beaten by the Mugs
or the 5 of trumps, neither of which could have beaten
the trump 7 directly. This leaves only the King and
Ober of the trump suit, called, respectively, der Fun!
and /ziralii; they in effect form, as before, a diminutive
plain suit of their own, having no power as trumps or
when a Stitcher has been led.
(3) The Frisian game is or was played with 48
cards, comprising a full French-suited pack from
which the 10s have been removed. The cards in the
plain suits rank, in descending order, Ace, King,
Queen, jack (Bauer), 9, 8 and so on down to 2. Five
cards, called Allen (old ones), are permanent trumps,
and rank above all the others: they are, in descending
order, 2 of Hearts, 4 of Clubs, 8 of Spades, 8 of Hearts
and 9 of Diamonds.'** Then follow, in descending
order, the Aces, the Jacks, the 6s (called Papers, Pope),
the 2s (called Twist), the is (called Drat) and the 4s
(called Wagon, Carriage, or Viereck, Rectangle) of the
two trump suits, save for any that are Alien. Only the
trumps down to the 6s or Papen inclusive are fully-
fledged trumps able to beat any card of a plain suit;
the 2s can beat Kings or lower, but not Aces, and the
is Queens or lower, but not Kings or Aces. It seems
likely that the 4s of trumps beat Jacks or lower,
though this is not explicitly stated. The 7s of the
trump suits are even more highly privileged than in
the Swiss games: played to a trick, they have no trick-
taking power, but, led to a trick, they can be beaten
by nothing whatever, not even the Alter. The 8s and 9s
of the trump suits are also privileged: called Freikarten,
when led to a trick they can be beaten only by the
Allen or the Ace or jack (Bauer) of a trump suit.
Presumably the King, Queen, 9, 8 and 5 of the trump
suits rank in that order and have no power as trumps,
though this is not made plain: any player who holds a
trump 5, called Hun de (Dogs, may exchange it for one
of the exposed trumps before the start of play, and this
is a privilege accorded in many games to the lowest
card of the trump suit. The trump suits are called the
gewéi/zlie Farber (selected suits), and the plain suits
bulerwiihlte (unseleetedl.
(4) In the Thuringian game, there were again some
permanent trumps, ranking above all others: in
descending order, the 8 of Leaves, called der Toile (the
l\ladman) or das ale Thief (the Old Beast); the 9 of
Hearts, called do; rotlze T/zier (the Red Beast); and the
9 of Bells, called das gelb Thief (the Yellow Beast).
The pack used was the 36-card German-suited one,
which thus lacked is, is and 5s. The highest cards of
the two trump suits, ranking below the three
permanent trumps, were the Ober, called Oberkarrzzjfel
41 The article reprinted in Der A/te is in German, and,
though it quotes some specimen remarks by players in
Frisian, it for the most part gives the names of the cards in
German; I cite them in the forms given in the article.
4
187
or Landskrzec/it (Footsoldier), followed by the Unter,
called l/nterkarnzj§'e! or Betel (Beadle), and then the 6,
called the Pa/158 (Pope). The 7s of the trump suits,
called die bélve Siebert (the evil 7s), had the same
privilege as in the Frisian game, led to a trick, they
automatically won. They could not be led to the first
trick, however The 8s and 9s of the trump suits (other
than the three Beasts) were called Freykarten, their role
is not explained very clearly, but it appears that,
though without power as trumps, they could be
beaten only by the three Beasts, the Karniffels and the
Popes. The Deuce, the King and the 10 of each trump
suit are said to be the lowest cards and to be merely
for throwing away: evidently they too had no power as~
trumps. A player holding a trump 10 could exchange
it for one of the exposed trumps at the start of play.
There is no indication that any of the cards acted as
partial trumps: evidently the cards of the trump suits
were divided into fully fledged trumps and those
without any power as trumps at all. The order in the
plain suits imitated that in the trump suits, namely, in
descending order, Ober, Unter, 6, 8, 9, Deuce, King,
10, 7. An Uber or Unter of a plain suit was called
fouler Sclzlingel (lazy rascal). The plain suits were
called ungewéi/zlle Farber (unselected suits). In the
game as played in the nineteenth-century at Iserlohn,
Westphalia, the 9 of Hearts was the permanent
highest trump, but the base Siebert, when led to a trick,
could not be beaten even by it, this form therefore
appears to resemble the Thuringian and Frisian more
than the . Swiss ones, but no further details are
available. Much of the interest of the Frisian and
Swiss games lies in the system of scoring, in the latter,
there is, during the deal, a pause after the delivery of
cards in each round to two successive players, during
which either side may offer to increase the value of the
round and the other may either accept or surrender.
The details are of no importance for the history of the
game.
Despite the differences between the various
forms, there is a strong family resemblance
between them. All are simple trick-taking games,
without the obligation to follow suit, in most of
which there are only five tricks per round; in all
there are trumps, and in all the trump 7 has the
peculiarity that it is powerless when played to a
trick, but cannot be beaten, or can be beaten by
only one card, when it is led. Above all, all have
the feature that the ranking of the cards in the
trump suit or suits is eccentric, and that only the
highest cards actually function as trumps. The
Thuringian game is exceptional in having an
unusual order in the plain suits; and in all forms
but the Thuringian one there is the feature,
unique in trick-taking play, of partial trumps.
188 Pal't I: History and Mystery
Games can change greatly in the course of their
history, and, in particular, may borrow
interesting features from other games. Trappola,
for example, began as a trick-taking game
without trumps, and later imported this feature;
and dozens of games, including Tarot games,
adopted the practice of bidding which did not
originally belong to them. But, in general, a
game preserves throughout its history that
feature which was characteristic of it and gave it
its particular flavour and identity. It looks very
much as though the special features of KarnOffel
which distinguished it from other games were a
trump suit in which only some of the cards
functioned as trumps, the special role of the
trump 7 and, probably, the presence of partial
trumps, together with the rearrangement of the
ranking in the trump suit. Even if we had no
indication of how the game was played in the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, we should have
to regard it as probable that these were original
features of it, and to assume that it was from the
beginning a game played with trumps.
The earliest substantial reference to KarnOffel
discovered by Dr von Leyden is a poem by
Meissner written in or before 1450:42 from it, he
has conjecturally reconstructed the ranking of
the highest cards as being, in descending order:
the Unter, called the karnbjfelg the Deuce, called
the sinew (Sow), the 3, called the babs (Pope), the
5, called the Keyser (Kaiser), and the 4, called the
tizfel (Devil). The term 'Sow' for the Deuce was
a common one, since, in many early German and
some Swiss packs, a sow was depicted on each
Deuce. The other four names, however, are
peculiar to the game of KarnOffel, and, though
later attached to cards of other ranks, they were
evidently used from an early stage in its history.
The next references of any substance are from
Bishop Geller. There are two principal passages,
both somewhat confusing. The first comes from a
sermon originally preached in 1496. Geiler is
comparing the social order with the order of the
cards in play, and begins by remarking that in
(ordinary) card games, there is a fixed order, in
which the King beats the Ober, the Ober the
Unter and so forth. In the Latin version, he then
continues: 'But now a game has been invented
42 deEyn suberlich hijffiich spruch von de spiel
karnoffelin', Cd. by JC. von Fichard, Frankfurter Archie fair
allfrf DelUx(l14 Lileraiur and (jefrfzichte, Frankfurt am Main,
1815, part III, chap. 4, 'Altdeutsche Lieder aus der ersten
Héilfte des XV]ahrhLmderts', no. LXI, pp. 293-7.
which is called KaiSerspiel or KarnOffel in which
everything is turned upside down: thus the 3s
beat the Ober, the 2 beats the King, and so on;
and there occurs a wonderful transformation
(vicissitude) of Kaisers, as in this game the Kaiser
is made by chance now from this set (cetu), now
from another." (The meaning of this last sentence
is obscure, and I have translated it as best I
could.) After speaking of the perversion of the
social order, he comes back to his analogy, and
says further: 'But now another game has been
invented with the ranking of the cards such that
the Unter beats the King, and the 2 and the 6
likewise, the 3 beats the Ober and the lower-
numbered beats the higher-numbered; and it
may happen that from this number some are by
chance made Kaisers.'43 The German text differs
slightly. In it, the first passage runs: 'But now we
have a game called Karniffelspiel in which
everything is turned upside down: the is beat an
Ober, the 4 beats the Unter, the 2 and the 6 beat
a King; and a card is turned over, so that now
one is Kaiser, now another becomes Kaiser, as
luck will have it." The subsequent passage runs :
'But now there has been invented another game
with the ranking of the cards such that the Unter
beats the King, the 2 and the 6 beat the King, the
3 beats the Ober, and the lower-numbered beat
the higher-numbered, when they are if the game
of Kaiserspiel."*'* The other principal mention of
the game by Geiler is in a sermon preached in
1515. The German text of the crucial passage
runs: 'The game of KarnOffel has been invented,
in which the lower-numbered cards beat the
43 'Sed nunc ludus inventus qui appellate (keiserspil)
ludus Caesaris: vol (karniffelius) in quo hee omnia
pervertuntur: its ut trier vincant superiorem: duo regen etc.
fitque mira victissitudo cesarum: ut in hoc ludo jam de hoc
Qetu/ jam de alia Hat Cesar ad fortunam Num: out est
alius ludus inventus in certes potestatum ut inferior vineat
regen/ et duo et sex etc. trier superiorem et minor maiorem 1
Si fuerit ex horum numero qui forte fortuity faeti sun
cesares', Sermoned Pn=r!anfz5szmz Doctor's Jo/zannzs Getter
h?zserJbergzz de Arbored Hurrzana, Strasbourg, 1515, pp, 132b-
133b.
44 'Aber ietz so hat man ein spill heisset der karniffel spit
karniffelius/ do sent alls ding verkert/ die drib stechen an
ober/ die fler den undern/ zwei und sechs stechen ein
kiinig/ und so sehlecht man umb/ ietz so is einerlei Keiser/
darnach so wirt ein anderer lei Keiser/ we das glick gibt
Aber ietz so is ein ander spit funder in dem regiment/ auff
der karen/ das der underbtlib sticht den kiinnig/ die zwei
und sechs ein kUnnig/ die dr to den oberon/ und der minder
den merern/ wan sie von dem Keiser spit sein', Geiler von
Kaisersberg, Day Burk de A 1/9078 Humana. Von /Lem mens6lzlzrhen
liaurn, Strasbourg, 1521, pp, 138-40.
 The Game of Tarot
higher-numbered, and the Unter beats the Ober,
and a Kaiser is made by turning up a card, the 2s
beat a King, and the 6 and the 2 beat the Ober
(or: the 6 beats the 2 and the Ober), and the
CarnOffel beats all of them.' Later he says, of
'those who play Karniiffel, when they wish to do
so, they can draw a card out, and then shuffle the
cards, so that the same one is' exposed and is
Kaiser'. A little later yet in the same sermon, he
speaks of throwing all the cards, the King, the
Kaiser, the Uber, the Banner and the Devil, on to
the fire.45
These passages leave a very confused
impression. There is a card called the Devil, but
we are never told which it is. There is also a card
called the KarnOffel, which beats. all others, but,
again, Bishop Geiler does not further identify it :
it does not seem on the face of it that it can be the
Unter, since it is stated that the 4 beats the
Unter. There is no mention of a card called the
Pope; and apparently a card, or perhaps two
cards, are selected as Kaisers by a random draw.
More light is thrown on the matter by examining
the Protestant sources. A work of 1537 asks, with
allegorical intention, the following questions.
Why does the Karnfjffel beat the Kaiser and the
Pope, when he is a simple footsoldier
(Landsktzefltt) and the Qber is a cavalryman? Why
is the Pope called the 'Six', and why does he beat
I the Kaiser with all the cavalrymen and
footsoldiers, with the exception of the KarnOffel,
that is, the selected (erweleten) footsoldier? Why is
the Devil, or the evil 7 (die b5158 szében), free as the
devil (teufelsfrei), so that neither the Kaiser, the
Pope nor the KarnOffel can beat him? Why is the
selected (erwelezfe) Deuce, the lowest and weakest
of all the cards, called the Kaiser? To this last
question the answer is given that many believe
that the Pope has stolen so much from him that,
although he is still called Emperor, he has
l
l
become a beggar; the selected (efwelete) 6 has
46 'man hat erdacht karnéffclfSspil/ do stechen die
minden die merer/ unfed die under die oberon/ und macht
r
man einerley Keiser/ die schlecht man mb/ as do die wei
stechen an kiinig/ und die sechs die wei/ den oberrnan
und das Carn6ffeI sticht es alssamen die/ die karniiffels
spit spilen/ Venn sie germ einerlei hetten/ so kiinnen sie es
ziehen daruff/ unfed also mischen/ das der selbenlei uffligt/
1
r
und Keiser it \Venn den das spit ult it unfed man Lang
gekurtzweilt hat mitt der kart/ so zerreilSt man sie/ unfed
wiirfft man den Kiinnig unfed Keiser/ den Oberman das
panel und den eiffel as rniteinander in das feyer und
verbrcnt 8s', Dze br6l§amlzn duct. Keiserspefgs uffgelexen von Fraser
.70/zann Paulzrz, Strasbourg, 1517, pp. 109-10.
189
three times as much as the Deuce, and so it is no
wonder that the triple crown beats the single
crown of the Kaiser. A further question is why
the lazy Fritz (der fault Fritz) beats the 10 or
Banner." Another satirical work of 1546 takes
the form of a dialogue between the Pope and the
Devil. From this we learn that neither of the
Devil and the Pope beat the other; that the Pope
beats all the cards, including the Kaiser and the
Kings, with the exception of the Karn6ffel; that
the KarnOffel beats the Pope, the Devil and all
other cards; that the KarnOffel is an Unter; that
it is the 2, 3, 4 and 5, and only they, that. are
called Kaiser; that the 2 beats the King, the
Obers and the other Kaisers, and that the 5 is
beaten by all other Kaisers, and by the King,
Uber, Pope and KarnOffel, but beats only the 10,
9, 8, etc."
From Geiler's muddling remarks it might seem
that we were dealing with a game in Which there
was a perverse ranking of the cards in every suit ;
but, although these Protestant sources seem to
differ in the way the term 'Kaiser' is used, the
earlier one reserving it for the Deuce alone, it is
apparent from them that only one of the Unters is
chosen to be the Karniiffel, the highest card in
the game, only one 6 is chosen to be the Pope,
only one Deuce becomes a Kaiser; presumably
also there is only one evil 7 or Devil. It thus
becomes natural to suppose that these are the
Unter, 6, 2 and 7 of some one suit selected by a
chance procedure. It would nevertheless be very
difficult to reconstruct from these passages alone
the precise order of the cards. With a knowledge
of the nineteenth-century Swiss game, however,
the remark that the Deuce, 3, 4 and 5 are all
Kaisers, and that the Deuce beats the King and
the Ober, whereas the 5 beats only the numeral
cards (those from 10 down), becomes extremely
suggestive: we appear to have here the same idea
of partial trumps that is found in the Swiss game.
With the same hindsight, we can make sense of
46 'Eine Frame des franzen heiligen Orders der
Kartenspiler von Karniiffel an das Concilium zu Mantua
1537', i n j . Voigt, 'Uber Pasquille, Spottlieder und
Schmahschriften aus der ester Hiilfte des 16.
]ahrhunderts', Hixlorisc/zei 7-asclzenbuch, ed. Fr. von Raumer,
9. Jahrgang, Leipzig, 1838, p. 418, This was reprinted in
Cyriacus Spangenberg, 'Wider die biise Siebert ins Teufels
Karn6ffelspie1'; see C. Fr, Fliigel, Cetchichte Der komisr/zen
Lif teralur, vol. IH, Leipzig, 1786, p. 321. The alternative
name dz? bélve Siebfrz for Der Teufe! is Spangenberg's addition
to the original text.
47
Pasquillus, News Zeytung com Tezif/tel, 1546,
190 Part I: History and Mystery
Bishop Geiler's observation that the 6 and the 2
beat a King, the 3 beats an Ober and the 4 an
Unter. What we seem, then, to arrive at is
essentially the Swiss game, without the special
role of what, in it, are called Kaisers, namely the
Banner 10s. Within some one suit, the Unter
becomes the KarnOffel, the highest card in the
game; it is followed by the 6 or Pope, and then
the Deuce or Kaiser; next come the 3, 4 and 5 of
that suit, whether or not they are called Kaisers ;
and the Devil or evil 7 of that suit plays the
special role that it plays in all the subsequent
forms of the game, with some variation about
whether or not, when led, it can be beaten by the
KarnOffel. The KarnOffel, Pope and Deuce are
unqualified trumps; but the 3 can beat plain
cards only from the Ober down, the 4 those from
the Unter down, and the 5 only numeral cards. It
follows that, in the plain suits, the cards have
their usual ranking, with the King highest and
the Deuce lowest. Presumably the remaining
cards, King, Ober, 10, 9 and 8, of the selected
suit had no power as trumps.
Evidently Meissner's poem reflects an earlier
stage of the game; but it is unlikely that the
special names of cards already used in it, the
Kaiser, the Pope and the Devil, applied to all
those of the relevant denominations: they would
surely have been names of individual cards of
some one selected suit. We are thus driven to
conclude that a trump suit was a feature of
KarnOffel from the beginning: and since
KarnOffel was in existence by 1426, whereas we
have seen reason to put the origin of Tarot no
earlier than about 1435, this destroys the claim of
Tarot to have been the very first card game
played with trumps. Was there any connection
between the two? Dr von Leyden, impressed by
the presence of the Pope, the Emperor and the
Devil in both games, is persuaded that there
must be. The reason is unconvincing: all three
figures were very familiar to men of the fifteenth
century, and their occurrence in both a German
and an Italian game requires no hypothesis of
influence either way to explain it. But, before we
go further into this question, let us assume that
there was such a connection, and ask, further,
whether this invalidates our hypothesis about the
origin of the Tarot pack.
On the face of it, it does: we can no longer say
that the invention of the Tarot pack represented
an independent invention of the idea of trumps.
But on reflection we see that we have here two
rather dissimilar ideas. In the later forms of
KarnOffel, there is a large number of trumps,
owing to some cards being permanent trumps
and, in some versions, to there being two trump
suits. But, in the earlier form, there are just three
cards of one suit, the KarnOffel (Unter), Pope (6)
and Kaiser (Deuce), lifted out of their natural
order to become fully-Hedged trumps, three more,
the 3, 4 and 5, which serve as partial trumps, and
one, the Devil (7), which plays a special role. Let
us suppose that the inventors of the Tarot pack
were familiar with KarnOffel and got their idea
from it; what they did with it was still something
radically new, namely to add to the pack twenty-
one special cards to play the role that the three
top cards played in KarnOffel. They might have
thought, instead, of making all the cards in some
one suit behave in that way; but, on the
assumption that Karnéffel was the only game in
which trumps had hitherto appeared, it would
have been°in no way unnatural for them to have
done what we are supposing that they did. The
etymological evidence makes it clear that it was
from Tarot, the game originally known as
Triumphs, that the idea of trumps was taken into
card play generally. In the Swiss KarnOffel rules,
the word Trumpf is used for the trump suit as a
whole, those members of it which actually
function as trumps being called Steclter. But in the
accounts of the Thuringian and Frisian games,
we find instead the adjective gewéhlte or erwéiltile
(selected), as we do in the early sources, which
never use Trumpf or any cognate word, here the
original technical term, antedating the term
Trumpf, which derived ultimately from the Italian
word triorji as used of the Tarot trumps, has
been transmitted over the years right down to
the twentieth century. That the game of Tarot,
rather than that of KarnOffel, must have been the
original source of the idea of trumps as it features
in countless European trick-taking games played
with the regular pack is also evident from the
form which that idea took. If KarnOffel had been
its source, we should expect that, at least in some
cases, the special features of KarnOffel would be
found in other games, namely that not all the
cards of the trump suit function as trumps, and
that some are merely partial trumps. Yet these
features are quite unknown outside Karnfiffeli in
all other games, a card either has unlimited
power as a trump or none, and every card of the
trump suit, or in sequence with it, is a genuine
trump. The strongest hypothesis concerning the
\
 The Game of Taro!
relation of KarnOffel to Tarot does .not impugn
our thesis about the origin of the Tarot pack and
its later consequences for card play, it merely
diminishes the originality of its inventors.
But was there any actual connection between
KarnOffel and Tarot' There is some reason to
think so. The preferred Swiss name for KarnOffel,
Kaiserspiel, was already familiar to Bishop
Geiler, who, in one passage quoted above, uses
the term Ifeiserspil, or, in Latin, ludus Caesar's. A
Latin text from Wiirzburg contains a passage
relating to the period 1443-1455 concerning uranus
I quidam ludens ad carat Zudum vocatum imperatoris
(a certain man playing at cards the game
called the Emperor's game.).4* Ludus Imperatofis
would be quite a natural Latin rendering of
Kaiserspiel, and may therefore denote the game
called by Geiler Zudus Caesar's, i.e. KarnOffel. In
this case, the game may also have been known at
Ferrara. In 1450 a certain Andrea di Bonsignore
of that city was paid 2 lire for painting two packs
of Carle do Irnperat0ri;4* around 1454 Borso d'Este
played at cards Idette delfimperatore (called 'of the
Fmperor'), and an account-book for the years
1452-7 records two payments, at 12 sold a pack,
for earth do imperaturi or de imperal0re.50 Since
Ferrara was a principal early centre for the game
of Tarot, and may have been its birthplace, it is
hard not to suspect that, if KarnOffel were known
there soon after the invention of the Tarot pack, it
was known before that event, and gave the original
idea which led to it. If so, KarnOffel is the remote
ancestor of Whist, Triomphe, Orb re and all the
rest, by a line that leads, surprisingly, through the
games which the Tarot pack was invented to play.
This conclusion is far from certain. If the carte
do imperator made in Ferrara were cards intended
for playing Karniiffel, they were presumably
48 W.L. Schreiber, op. cit., p. 52, the text is a manuscript
Trarfatuy de conlractzbw by Paulus Warn, Cod. lat. man. 4695
p. 37 and Cod. lat. 12 730 p. 56b in the Staatsbibliothek in
Munich,
49 G, Campori, 'Le Carte do Giuoco dipinte per gli
Estensi net Secolo XV'> Are e /Vfemorie delly Reals Deputazioni
L dz Scoria Patna Per It Provmcie modenesi e parmesaN, vol. III,
Modena, 1874, pp. 123-32, see p. 127.
so See G. Bertoni, op. cit., p. 218, for Duke Borso's game,
and in. 3 for the entries in the account-book of the court.
VV.L. Schreiber, op. cit., p. 96, mentions parle dei Imperator as
being painted in Ferrara in 1450, but gives no reference; he
may be alluding to Campori's article.
191
German-suited cards, and there is no other
indication that German-suited cards were
known, let alone made, in Italy during the
fifteenth or even the sixteenth century. More-
over, KarnOffel appears to have been from the
start what it was in later times, a game of the
common people; it is therefore difficult to
imagine its coming to be known in the
elegant court of Ferrara. More probably, the
two games of KarnOffel and Tarot were uncon»
nected, and represented different independent
approaches to the idea of trumps as we are
familiar with it in games like Bridge. In
KarnOffel, one of the ordinary suits is used, but
only some of the cards in it are given total or
partial power as trumps; in Tarot, a whole new
series ofpieture cards is added to the pack. just as
bidding became part of many positive trick-taking
games that originally lacked that feature, so the
idea of trumps was incorporated into almost all
such games, from some of which, such as
Trappola, it is known originally to have been
absent: the most notable such games to resist the
idea of trumps are Piquet and those of the popular
Italian Tressette family. It happened to be Tarot
from which the idea was taken over into other card
games.
Whether or not KarnOffel served as an
inspiration to those who invented the Tarot pack,
the reason for its invention cannot be doubted,
namely to embody the new idea of trumps in a
special additional sequence of cards. It was
motivated, therefore, by considerations that had
to do, not with magic, or the occult, but with the
only use to which playing cards were then put,
that is, to play card games, that has been the
principal contention of this chapter.
 r

PART TWO

GAMES WITH 78 CARDS

!
I '\
I

1
I
»

in
\
E
CHAPTER EIGHT
General Features of the Game
We have now to describe the very varied and
numerous forms of game that have developed
from the original Italian game of trzbnji since its
beginnings in the fifteenth century, many of them
still played in different parts of Europe, some
I
long obsolete. It would be agreeable if we could
s
simply take them in historical sequence, tracing
their evolution over the course of the centuries.
Unfortunately, this is difficult to do, because of
the gaps in our knowledge. The earliest explicit
description of any form of Tarot game is from a
French card-game book of 1659, which describes
several French versions and one Swiss one.
Despite some lacunae which have to be filled by
guesses, we can trace the evolution of the game in
France, Germany, the Habsburg dominions and
elsewhere, from the eighteenth century onwards,
from numerous descriptions in German, French
and other languages; its history in the French-
speaking cantons of Switzerland is uniform with
that in France itself, but, in the rest of
Switzerland, it appears to have changed very
little from the seventeenth century to the present
day. Assuming the game to have been introduced
into France and Switzerland in about 1500, and
into Germany in about 1600, we are, indeed, left,
in both cases, with about a century and a half of
unrecorded history; but it seems likely that there
had been comparatively little evolution before the
earliest descriptions in French and German were
written.
In order to provide a strictly chronological
account, however, we should have to start with
Italy, where the game began. There we Find, not
one continuous tradition of play, but four distinct
ones, corresponding to four main centres where
the game had taken root before the close of the
Fifteenth century - Ferrara, Milan, Bologna and
Florence. The type of game played in Bologna
has always been peculiar to that city and its
immediate neighbourhood, and was formerly
known as Tarocchino, from being played with a
shortened pack of only 62 cards. This game is
still very much alive, and we have descriptions of
it going back to the eighteenth century, one of
which gives information about the mode of play
in the preceding century. It is reasonable to
assume that the general characteristics of the
game go back to the beginning of Tarot play in
Bologna in the fifteenth century, although the
shortening of the pack probably did not occur
until the first half of the sixteenth; but we have no
ground to draw inferences from this to the kind of
Tarot game played in any other part of Italy.
Florence was responsible for another, even more
unusual, form of Tarot, Minchiate, played with a
specially devised expanded pack of 97 cards.
Minchiate, as played at Florence, came to be
very popular at Rome as well, and also, in a
different form of which we have no record, at
Genoa. We have many descriptions of Minchiate,
one from the seventeenth century; but, again, we
are dealing with a very special form of Tarot
game. In Bologna, the shortened 62-card pack
entirely superseded the original 78-card form,
but in Florence and Rome the 78-card pack
survived, alongside the more popular Minchiate
pack, until the seventeenth century. We have no
direct information about the type of game played
in those cities with the 78-card pack, but it is
probable that the game still played in Sicily is a
descendant of it: though the Sicilian pack was
reduced to 63 cards in the course of the
eighteenth century, the game had been
196 Part II: Games with 78 cards
introduced into Sicily, almost certainly from
Rome, in 1663, and was Originally played there
with a full pack of 78 cards. This represents a
tradition of play which may well go back to quite
early times in Florence, but probably has little
connection with the style of play in more
northern parts of Italy.
To the type of game played in Ferrara, and
probably also in Venice, we have only a few
clues, and cannot reconstruct it with any
certainty. But it is Milan that poses our greatest
problem. We have eighteenth-century
descriptions both of the game of Tarocco, as
played with the 78-card pack in l\1ilan and in
Lombardy generally, and of the distinct, but
broadly similar, games played in Piedmont. The
probability is, however, that these games do not
represent continuous local traditions of play.
From at least the beginning of the eighteenth
century, French cardmakers were exporting
Tarot packs to Savoy, then an independent state
comprising Piedmont as well as Savoy proper,
which became part of France only in 1880. Pro-
bably the earliest surviving pack of this kind is one
made by Jean Dodal of Lyons, who was active
there from 1701 to 1715; this pack, of which
one example is in the Bibliotheque Nationale
in Paris, and another in the British Museum,
bears, on several cards, the inscription F.P.LE
TRENGE, i.e. 'made for export'.1 The type of
design which it exemplifies is a slight variant on
the celebrated standard pattern known as the
Tarot de Marseille, and is ancestral to the
modern Tarocco Piemontese. It differs from the
Tarot de Marseille only in a few details, among
these are the appearance of a face on the belly of
the Devil (trumps XV), a full face rather than a
profile on the Moon (trump XVIII), the presence
on the Judgment (trump XX) of the droplets
that appear on several other cards and the use of
the name LE FOL or LE FOU instead of LE
MAT for the Fool. By the second quarter of the
century this earliest form of the Tarocco
Piemontese was being made in Piedmont itself;
the earliest example known to me is one by
Giuseppe Ottone of Serravalle made in 1736 and
now in the Museo de Naipes Fournier in Vitoria.2
1 The British Museum example is F-5 in O'Dorloghues
catalogue. The 2 and Cavalier of Cups of the Bibliotheque
Nationale copy are illustrated in H.-R. D'Allemagne, Les
Carter djouer, vol. 1, Paris, 1906, p. 192.
2 No. 25 in the Italian section of the catalogue. A 'Spanish
Tarot' was issued by the hrrn of Fournier a few years ago,
A letter of Thomas Gray testifies to his having
seen Tarocco played in Turin in 1739.3
All this strongly suggests that the game of
Tarot was introduced into Piedmont in the
eighteenth century from France via Savoy, and
there is no direct evidence of the game's having
been played in Piedmont before that date. There
is, however, one curious detail' of Piedmontese
play that suggests that it was: namely that the
Angel orjudgrnent (trump XX) is always treated
as superior to the World (trump XXI an 3
eccentricity that continues to this day. In the
Tarot games played, IIOW or formerly, in Bologna,
Florence, Rome and Sicily, the Angel, or the card
corresponding to it, does indeed rank higher than
the World; it is difficult not to suppose that, in
this detail of the Piedmontese games, we have a
survival from a previous period when the game
was played with some quite different type of
pack. However this may be, the type of pack used
in Piedmont from the eighteenth century down to
the present day was certainly of French origin,
and this may well be true of the games played
there also; we cannot extrapolate with any
assurance from the Piedmontese games, as
described in the earliest printed sources, to
games played in Italy before the eighteenth
century.
From the 1740s onward, cardmakers in various
parts of Italy began producing Tarot packs with
78 cards whose design constituted another slight
variation on the Tarot de Marseille; since, so far
as we know, these cards were used only in
Lombardy, it may be called the Lombard
pattern.'* The actual designs again differ only
slightly from the Tarot de Marseille; the chief
based on this pack, but with inscriptions in English at the
top of each trump and in Spanish at the bottom of each
trump and court card, it cannot be relied on as otherwise a
faithful reproduction. An illustration ofit is'in S.R. Kaplan,
The Encyclopedia of Torol, New York, 1978, p. 277.
3 See The Letters of Thomas Gray chronologically orrongedfrom
the Walpole and Mason Collections, vol. 1, London, 1827, p. 54.
Gray, writing from Turin on 16 November 1739, speaks of
his having seen taro played there.
4 The date 1650 given in the first edition of the catalogue
of the Fournier Museum for no. 12 in the Italian section, a
pack of Lombard type made in Gorizia, is certainly about
100 years too early. For illustrations of the eighteenth-
century Lombard pattern, see C.P. Hargrave, A Hixlory of
Playing Cards, New York, 1930, 1966, pp. 226, 232. For
illustrations of nineteenth-century versions, see Roger Tilley,
Playing Cards, London, 1967, pp. 16-17, and Kaplan, op. it.,
pp. 154, 160, 164.
 General Features of the Game
divergence in this respect from the Tarocco
Piemontese is that the Devil (trump XV) has no
face on his belly but wears a pair of furry
trousers. The principal difference between the
two forms of pack is that those of the Lombard
type had the narrow format generally typical of
Italian cards, the backs being folded over to form
borders for the faces of the cards, whereas the
Piedmontese cards are quite wide and do not
have the backs folded over. On the testimony of
Joseph Baretti, the game of Tarocco was highly
popular both in Lombardy and Piedmont by
1768.5
The Lombard variation on the Tarot de
Marseille appears to have been of Italian origin,
but obviously testifies to strong French influence.
We have only a very little information about the
I design of Tarot cards used in Milan during the
I two hundred years or so before 1740, and no
direct information about the type of Tarot game
played there during that period; but it is
probable that neither the Tarot de Marseille-
derived designs nor the type of game that became
popular in Lombardy represented sO abrupt a
departure from tradition as seems to have
I occurred in Piedmont. In Lombardy, the W/orld
g was, and still is, given the rank appropriate to its
t number (XXI), as superior to the Angel or
judgment (XX); and this accords with what
appears to have been the continuous Milanese
tradition from the earliest times. Moreover, the
Tarot de Marseille designs themselves are likely
to have had a fairly close resemblance to those
long traditional in Milan. Nevertheless, the
probability is that the introduction of the
Lombard pattern signalises a historical
discontinuity, just as does that of the Tarocco
Piemontese. Both the Lombard and Piedmontese
patterns share with the Tarot de Marseille two
striking features: the particular order and
numbering of the trumps; and the inscriptions at
the bottom of the trumps and court cards of their
names in full (in addition to the numerals at the
top of the trumps and at the sides of the numeral
cards of the suits). The order which the trump
subjects have in the Tarot de Marseille goes back
to the mid-sixteenth century in France. Although
the order observed in Milan was. certainly
similar, we have no reason to suppose that the
precise order employed in the Tarot de Marseille
Uoseph Baretti, An Accounl of the Manners and Customs of
Italy, vol 2, London, 1768, pp. 219-21 .
197
was ever known in Italy before the eighteenth
century. We cannot rule it out as impossible that
this impression is due only to our ignorance; but
the evidence from the inscriptions appears
decisive. Nowhere in Italy was it the regular
practice to inscribe their names on the trump
cards. We have specific evidence that it was not
done in Milanese packs before the' eighteenth
century; before that time, such names are found
in Italian packs only of an obviously non-
standard type, such as the Sola-Husca tarocchi. In
France, however, the practice goes back to the
seventeenth century, and, so far as we know, was
always observed in the Tarot de Marseille. What
appears to clinch the case is that, in the earliest
versions both of the Tarocco Piemontese and of
the Lombard pattern, the inscriptions were In
French. Moreover, these French inscriptions
employ precisely those names used for the trump
cards in the Tarot de Marseille; particularly
noteworthy is the use for the trump XVI of the
surprising name La Maison Died, meaning 'The
House of God' or, possibly, 'The Hospital', a
name by which it is always known in the Tarot
de Marseille, but for which no equivalent term
has ever been used in Italian. It was only at a
later stage that the inscriptions in both types of
Italian Tarot de Marseille-derived pack were
rendered into Italian, La Maison Dieu then
becoming La Torre (the Tower). In the same way,
the early packs follow the usual Tarot de
Marseille custom of omitting the name of Death
(trump XIII), inscribed La Matte when the
inscriptions were later translated into Italian;
and, in the early packs, the third court card of
each suit is labelled Cavalier or Chevalier, although
in Italian this card has always been known as
Cavalla (Horse), which name was used when the
inscriptions went into Italian.
Now we can, no doubt, imagine a vogue for a
French type of design, and, with it, for the
French practice of inscribing their names on the
trump cards, affecting the designs employed by
Italian cardmakers without any other break in
continuity. But this leaves the use of inscriptions
in the French language unexplained. There was
not in Lombardy, as there was in Savoy, a
substantial French-speaking population; if it had
been a matter merely of the introduction of a new
style of design to replace an old one, we should
surely expect that, from the start, the inscriptions
would have been in Italian, using the names
customary among players of the game. The fact
198 Part II: Games with 78 cards
that the cardmakers not only took over, almost
intact, the Tarot de Marseille designs, but at the
same time adopted the French inscriptions,
strongly suggests that the introduction of the
Lombard pattern represented the reintroduction
into Lombardy of the Tarot pack itself and of the
game played with it, that game having died out
there at some earlier date, perhaps by the end of
the seventeenth century, this may well have
happened in Piedmont also, although there the
gap between the demise of the indigenous game
and the reintroduction of Tarot games from
France must have been short enough for some
players to have remembered the traditional
ranking of the Angel and the World relative to
each other. On this hypothesis, it is entirely
plausible that it should have been the Tarot de
Marseille designs that were borrowed: by the
early eighteenth century, there was probably no
form of 78-card pack surviving in mainland Italy.
The Bolognes'e pack had long ago been reduced
to 62 cards; in Florence and Rome, the 78-card
pack had probably succumbed to competition
from the 97-card Minchiate pack, in Ferrara and
Venice, all forms of Tarot game seem to have been
long defunct .
It follows that we can no more assume that the
form of Tarot game we find played in Lombardy
in the eighteenth century represented a contin-
uous indigenous tradition than we can make the
parallel assumption for Piedmont, As a matter of
fact, we shall later see that, if we did make this
assumption, our deductions would probably not
be seriously in error; but this is a point that needs
to be argued for, certainly not to be assumed.
The general upshot is this. We can, with fair
confidence, reconstruct the history of Bolognese
Tarocchi, and can even speculate from what
game played with the full 78-card pack the game
of Tarocchino might have been derived. We
know how Minchiate was played, and may
reasonably presume that its main features were
present from the start. We can make only vague
conjectures about the game played in Florence
and Rome with the 78-card pack, conjectures
based on the Sicilian game and on Minchiate. All
of these, however, are forms of Tarot game which
had no influence on the games played with the
78-card pack in other parts of Europe. We have
little direct evidence for the type of Tarot game
played in Ferrara and Venice, and none for that
played in Milan before the eighteenth century;
any conclusions we reach about the latter can be
based only upon a presumed relationship with
games played in other countries. It has therefore
seemed better to abandon any attempt at a
strictly chronological account. Instead, I shall, in
Part II, describe those Tarot games played with
the 78-card pack outside Italy, together with
those played in Piedmont and Lombardy from
the eighteenth century onwards. Part III will be
exclusively devoted to Italy, the games of which
we have actual accounts, or which are still
played, will first be described, after which it will
be possible to speculate about those games for
which we have no conclusive evidence. Part IV
will describe that great family of Tarot games in
which the card originally known as the Fool has
assumed an exalted rank.
In our survey of all the various forms that the
game of Tarot has assumed at different periods
and in different countries, we shall encounter
certain features again and again; and, to avoid
pointless repetition, it is well to adopt a constant
terminology for these at the outset.
Genera/ terminology for Tarot games
Stager of the game
All card games take place in stages, punctuated by a
dealer's distributing the cards to the other players and
to himself; and, as stated in the last chapter, we shall
use the term round to apply to the period of play
between one such deal and the next. Card players are
more accustomed to use 'hand' or 'deal', but these
can easily lead to ambiguity when an unfamiliar game
is being explained. In some games, the players simply
play as many rounds as they feel like, adding the score
for each to the cumulative total. In others, several
rounds in succession may be required before the score
can be set_tied, for instance, the winner or winning
side may be stipulated to be the one first reaching, in
several rounds, a certain Fixed cumulative total, In
Italian, such a set of several rounds is usually called a
Parthia, in French a Pattie: in this book, it will be called
a games following the usual English nomenclature. At
the beginning of each round, the deal may be said, in
a different sense, to consist of several rounds, one for
each time that the dealer comes back to the starting-
place, but this should cause no confusion.
Ranking of the cards
As already explained, Tarot games are trick-taking
games; any reader who does not clearly understand
what this means is referred to the explanation in
 Genera! Features of the Game
Chapter 7. The trick is always won by the highest
I trump played to it, or, if no trump is played, by the
highest card of the suit led. The trumps usually rank
I in sequence from the XXI (high) down to the I or
I Bagatto (low): any exceptions to this will be explicitly
stated. The top four cards of each suit are invariably
King, Queen, Cavalier and Jack (or Maid), in that
order. When the numeral cards rank, in Swords and
Batons, from 10 (high), 9 and so on down to Ace
(low), but, in Cups and Coins, from Ace (high), 2 and
I
so on down to 10 (low), it will be said simply that the
suit cards rank 'zn their original ora'er'. Sometimes,
however, this practice is abandoned, and the numeral
r
cards rank in every suit, after the court cards, in the
f
order 10 (high) down to Ace (low); in such a case, it
will be said that the suit cards rank 'in the simplified
order Play is usually counter-clockwise, but sometimes
clockwise, it will be taken for granted that the dealer
deals in the same cyclic order as that in which play
proceeds, and that the deal passes, from one round to
I the next, in the same direction. A player with the
lead is free to lead any card, and the subsequent
players to any trick must follow suit if they can,
including playing a trump if a trump is led, and, if
they cannot follow in a plain suit, must play a trump if
they have one regardless of any other considerations.
l
Apart from these constraints, a player is usually free
to play any card that he likes; the exceptions will of
course be noted. All this will be expressed by saying
that 'the usual constraints' are observed in play.
In almost all Tarot games played with the 78-card
pack, the Fool is treated in the manner already
explained. It has no trick-taking power, and may be
played at any time, irrespective of any obligation to
follow suit or to play a trump. It cannot, however, be
captured, save in exceptional cases, and is therefore
taken back from the centre of the table, and placed
with the other cards won in tricks by that player or
side; very often, it is not the custom to play it to the
centre of the table, but simply to show it to the other
players before placing it with the cards won in tricks.
More often than not, another card must be given in
exchange for the Fool, from among those won in
tricks, either immediately or at the end of the round;
but since this is not an invariable rule, it will be
expressly noted. Whenever the Fool is treated in this
general manner, this will be conveyed by saying that
'the Fool serves at Excuse in French Tarot, the card is
actually' called l'Exouse, because it excuses the one
who plays it from following suit or trumping, and this
provides us with a convenient term for indicating this
special role of the card in play. Unless otherwise
stated, the Fool may be led to a trick, and the next
player may then play any card, which is treated just
as if it were the lead, other players having to follow
suit to it if they can, or, if they cannot, to trump if they
can. Usually, if the player or side which had the Fool
makes no tricks at all, the Fool must be surrendered at
199
the end of the round to the player who won the trick to
which it was played.
Poznan-values
As we have seen, the object of the game is almost
always to make as many points as possible on the
cards won in tricks, different cards having different
point-values. The cards are divided into those having
no special point-value, which will be called 'low hards'
(a term which will always refer to their Point-values, not
to their trick-taking power), and ones having a high
point-value, which will be called 'roufzlzng catd§'. In a
great many games, the only counting cards are the
XXI and the l or Bagatto, that is, the highest and the
lowest trumps, the Fool, and the court cards of the
four suits; all the numeral cards, and the trump cards
from II to XX, are then low cards. In some games,
however, there are other counting cards. In games in
which the counting cards are the nineteen
enumerated above, the most usual point-values are as
follows :
The XXI 5 points
The trump I 5 points
The Fool 5 points
Each King 5 points
Each Queen 4 points
Each Cavalier 3 points
Each jack 2 points
In certain games, however, even when there are no
other counting cards, the point-values differ from
these standard ones. When there are only these
nineteen counting cards, and they have the values just
stated, this will be expressed by saying that 'the
mounting cards have their standard values'.
What needs considerable explanation is the
method, common to most, though not to all, Tarot
games, of reckoning the total point-value of the cards
won in tricks by a player or side. This is apt to strike
someone who first encounters it as eccentric and
puzzling, but the rationale of it is soon understood.
The cards are counted out in sets, which may be sets
of two, of three, of four or even of some larger number,
according to the particular game being played. Let us
suppose first that they are counted out in pairs. Then,
normally, the pairs will be so arranged that each
counting card is accompanied by a low card: the value
of such a pair is precisely the number of points given
as the point-value of the counting card. For instance,
when the point-values are as above, a pair consisting
of a Queen and a low card will together be worth 4
points, the point-value of a Queen being 4. Each pair
of low cards will be worth 1 point. If, however, the
cards cannot be arranged so as to pair off a low card
with every counting card, there will be some pairs
consisting of two counting cards: the value of such a
200 Part II: Games with 78 cards
pair is 1 less than the sum of the point-values of the
two counting cards. For instance, with the above
point-values, the value of a pair consisting of a King
and a Cavalier will be 7 points, one less than the sum
of the values of the King (5) and of the Cavalier (3). It
must he stressed that it will make no difference to the
total of points on a player's cards how he groups
them. Suppose a player has won in tricks just six
cards, the XXI, a Queen, a jack and three low cards.
If he groups each counting card with a low card, he
will have one pair worth 5 points (for the XXI), one
worth 4 points (for the Queen) and one worth 2 points
(for the jack): his total will be 5 + 4 + 2 = 11 points.
Suppose that instead he takes the XXI with the
Queen. That pair will then be worth 5 + 4 - 1 = 8
points. He will also have a pair consisting of the Jack
and a low card, worth 2 points, and another
comprising two low cards, worth 1 point, making a
total of8 + 2 + 1 = 11 points, the same as before.
When the cards are counted in threes instead of in
pairs, a set consisting of a counting card and two low
cards will be worth the poiNt-value of the counting
card, kg. a Cavalier and two low cards will together
count 3 points. A set consisting of three low cards will
count 1 point. A set consisting of two counting cards
and a low card will be worth one less than the sum of
the point~values of the two counting cards, et. the
Fool, a Jack and a low card will, on the above values,
be worth 5 + 2 .-- 1 = 6 points. A set consisting of three
counting cards will he worth two less than the sum of
the point-values of the three cards: eg. the trump I, a
King and a Cavalier will be worth 5 + 5 + 3 -- Z = l l
points on the above values. Again, it does not in the
least matter to the total score how the cards are
grouped. If, instead of saying that the low cards have
no value, we say that each has a point-value of 1, then
it will be a general rule that each set of three cards has
a combined value 2 less than the sum of the point-
values of the three cards, it is then obvious that it will
make no difference how the cards are distributed
among the sets oflthree.
The same goes if the cards are counted in fours. A
set of four consisting of one counting card and three
low cards will be worth the point-value of the
counting card. A set consisting of four low cards will
be worth l point. A set consisting of two counting
cards and two low cards will have a total value one
less than the sum of the point-values of the counting
cards. One consisting of three counting cards and one
low card will be worth two less than the sum of the
values of the counting cards. And a set of four
counting cards will be worth Z/tree less than the sum of
their point-values. Once again, if we were to regard
each low card as having a point-value of 1, we could
say generally that each set of four had a combined
value of 3 less than the sum of the values of the
individual cards.
This method of reckoning the points won in any
round by each player or side is so extremely
common, and so perplexing at first sight, that I have
thought it right to labor it here, so that it will be
quite clear before particular games are described.
Having thus explained it generally, I will, in
particular cases, say merely that the cards are counted
zn Pairs, in Z/n665 or in fours, and leave it to be
understood that the method just described is
intended. The only question that remains to be settled
is what to do with any odd cards left over: with a
single card when the cards are counted in pairs, with
one or two cards when they are counted in threes, or
with one, two or three cards when they are counted in
fours. In some games this cannot happen, in others it
can, and, when it can, there are different ways of
dealing with it, which will be explained for each
game. The matter is simplest when the cards are
counted in threes. In this case, the usual practice is
that two odd cards that remain over after the cards
have been counted out in threes count as if there were
three of them: if they are both low cards, they count 1
point, if they include one counting card, they count
the value of that counting card, and, if they are both
counting cards, they count one less than the sum of
their values. A single odd card that remains over then
counts nothing if it is a low card, and one point less
than its value if it is a counting card. A player will
never have so many counting cards that he cannot so
arrange his cards that the odd ones remaining over
are all low cards. Hence, when the method just
described is adopted, this may be succinctly indicated
by saying that 'two odd low card; count 7 poznl and one odd
low cord counlx nothing'
Readers who did not skip the last chapter will at
once see the rationale of this method of reckoning
points, which otherwise may at first be obscure.
Suppose we have a three-handed game, in which the
cards are counted out in threes, there will then be no
cards left over when a player counts his cards, because
there must be three cards in every trick. Now it is
plain that an apparently quite different method of
reckoning the total number of points from that
described above would yield the same result. Suppose
that, instead of counting out the cards in threes in the
above manner, a player were to reduce the point-value
of every counting card by one, and simply reckon up
the total of these reduced point-values, adding 1 for
every set of three cards: a moment's reflection will
show that he will arrive at the same total as by the
other method. Since, in a three-handed game, each
trick consists of three car'ds, adding one point for
every set of three is tantamount to adding one for
every trick taken. And, indeed, in very exceptional
cases, we find the rule for reckoning points given in
precisely this way: the point-value of each counting
card is cited as being one lower than those usually
given, and there is stated to be an additional point for
each trick won. just this is the method of reckoning
 Genera! Features of Ilse Game
points employed in the Spanish game of Malilla and
its more famous French offspring Marcille: and there
can be no doubt that it was the original rule in Tarot.
Presumably the nearly universal method that was
described above arose simply as a matter of
convenience. Players found it tedious to carry out two
operations, one of counting the number of tricks and
one of adding up the point-values of the counting
cards, and fused the two together by adopting the
foregoing procedure. At first, the combined operation
would be thought of as consisting of adding 1 to the
sum of the point-values of the counting cards in each
trick. But, in the course of time, since there would
most often be at most one counting card in a trick,
and since it might, in any case, be easiest to count by
rearranging the cards so that no more than one
counting card was included in a trick, the point-values
associated with the counting cards must have come to
be increased by one, and thus the method of
reckoning that has been described would have been
i
arrived at.
It is, however, evident that, very often, the original
rationale of the procedure was forgotten. Let us say
that, when the cards are counted out in pairs, 2 is the
'base number' in that game, and, when they are
counted out in threes or in fours, that 3 or 4 is the
E 'base number'. Then the original rationale of the
method requires the base number always to be the
same as the number of players, and thus as the
number of cards in each trick. But, as we shall see,
this is not always the case: there are three- or four-
handed games in which the base number is 2, and
four-handed games in which it is. 3. In all such cases,
the probable explanation is that, at some former time,
the most popular form of the game was one in which
there were that number of players given by the base
number: that the practice of counting the cards out in
threes is testimony to the former predominance of a
three-handed game, and that of counting them out in
pairs to the popularity of a two-handed form. The
rationale of the method of reckoning points being
forgotten, the practice of counting the cards out in
pairs or in threes (of using 2 or 3 as the base number)
was then thoughtlessly transferred to games with a
different number of players. It is obvious that, the
lower the base number, the greater becomes the
comparative importance of winning low cards in
tricks: of course it is always of importance to win
counting cards.
Any beginner at Tarot must accustom himself to
counting out his cards in this manner. At first, the
adding and subtracting seem to involve a great effort;
but, as with everything of the sort, it quickly becomes
second nature.
Card hints and gare hints
A frequent source of confusion in descriptions of card
201
games is the use in different senses of the word
'points'. Very few card games are, like chess, simply
won, lost or drawn: in virtually all the score is
reckoned in points, and, when the play is for money,
settled at so much per point, per hundred points, or
the like. In some games, such as simple trick-taking
games like Bridge, the points in which the score is
kept are the only ones involved, since the outcome of
each round depends upon the number of tricks made
by each side, But, in complex trick-taking games like
Tarot, it is often important to maintain a sharp
distinction between the points won on cards taken in
tricks in any one round and the score for that round.
In the simplest cases, indeed, there may be no such
distinction: at the end of each round, a player may
simply write down as his score the number of points
that he won on the cards that he captured in play. It is
reasonable to suppose that this was the original
system. But, very often, it is not like this. Very often,
the points won on the cards taken in tricks serve
simply to determine which player or side has won the
round; the points then allocated to each player as his
score are then computed according to some different
system.. To avoid ambiguity, I shall, as stated in
Chapter 7, use the expression 'game points' to mean
those that are written down on the score card and
used at the end of play to determine the final money
settlement between the players, or that are translated
immediately into cash terms at the end of each round.
The unqualified term '[10zrzts', on the other hand, will
be used exclusively for those by reference to which it is
determined, at the end of each round, which players
have won and which have lost, for instance the points
on the cards won in tricks. It would be possible to be
even more explicit, and use the term 'card points' for
these, as we did in Chapter 7. But this would not only
be cumbersome, but also, in some cases, inaccurate,
for, in some games, the points that go to determine
win or loss of a round will include others besides those
won on individual cards, for instance a bonus for
winning the last trick or for having had some special
combination of cards in one's hand at the start of
play. The term 'card /Joiner' will, however, sometimes
be used in this sense, when it is necessary to
emphasise the distinction from game points, and no
inaccuracy is involved. Very occasionally, there is also
an intermediate stage between the card points and the
game points: some system of reckoning that is one
level above the points won in each round, but does not
yet represent the final score on which the settlement is
based. In such a case, I will avoid confusion by not
using the word 'points' at all for this intermediate
level, but employ some other suitable term.
With these preliminaries, we are now ready to
embark on our study of the various different
games that have been and are played with the
Tarot pack.
 CHAPTER NINE
The Early Stages of the Game in France
The game of Tarot Was played in France from
the beginning of the sixteenth century. The
earliest certain reference to it, as the game of
tara, was that made by Rabelais in 1534
We noted in Chapter 4 that Duke René II of
Lorraine played trim/Jlze in 1496 and that there is
a reference to the game of Zriumplte as early as
148242 but we saw the difficulty of deciding
whether these references are to the game of Tarot
or to one played with the regular pack. Even if
the former, we can say, what is not surprising,
that the game was not yet known in France in
1465, since the statutes, drawn up in that year, of
the earliest association of master cardmakers in
the whole of France, that of Toulouse, speak of
nails give cart's but make no mention of triumplzi
Whether or not the game of Tarot was played in
France in 1482 or in Lorraine in 1496, we shall
i Gafgarztua and Pantagruel, book I, oh. 22, see also oh. 23 of
Book V, published 11 years after the death of Rabelais in
1553, and probably not by him.
2 H.-R. D'Allemagne, Les Carter djouer, Paris, 1906, vol. II,
p, 212, and F. Godefroy, Dzelionnaire de Vancienne langue
frangaire, vol. X, Complement, Paris 1902> s.v. 'triornphe', or
Du Canoe (sieur Charles du Fresnel, Glossarium A4edzae el
Injmae Lalfinitaiis, vol. VI, Paris, 1845, s.v. 'triumphus`. Du
Canoe cites the word as written triumple, surely a misreading.
Godefroy's reference is Archives Nationales, series ii,
register 206, folio 181 recto, Du Canoe's is Lit. remiss, Ann.
1482 ex Reg. 206 Chartoph. reg. oh. 828. The phrase reads
`Le§quelz se esbatirent djouer aux quarter aujeu du triumph/ze' (who
amused themselves by playing the card game of Zriump/ze).
Series ii of the Archives Nationales consists of Jeffrey de
remission, i.e. royal pardons for breaches of the law. '/Vithout a
visit to the Archives, which l have not made, there is no way of
telling to which part of France it relates, but it must have
been to somewhere within the Kingdom as it then was.
3 Stalula nayperiorum, written in Latin and Provencal,
printed in D'Allemagne, op. cit., vol. II, pp. 528-35, see pp.
530, 534.
see in Chapter 20 that Tarot is likely to have
enjoyed its first real wave of popularity in France
after 1500. In any case, the game has been
continuously played in France from its first
introduction down to the present day. There are
several references both to the game and the cards
from sixteenth-century France, some of which
were mentioned in Chapter 5, It is referred to, as
being playe_d with Italian cards, in the Paradoxes
of Charles Etienne of Paris in 1553, and by Pierre
de Larivey Champenois in 1576.4 The game is
recorded as having been played by some
noblemen in the city of Grenoble in 157945 and it
was also referred to by Claude Gauchet in a poem
published in 1583, and by Delamothe in
his book of 1592 for teaching French to English
speakers." In the last two decades of the century,
playing cards and dice began to be taxed, and
at quite a heavy rate; this prompted protests
from the cardrnakers, and sometimes from the
provincial Parlemerzls. These tax laws invariably
distinguish between (regular) cards and tarots,
imposing a higher rate on the latter; they thereby
4 Charles Etienne, Paradoxes, Paris, 1553, p. 49, and
Champenois, Les Fafétiewes nuifs, Paris, 1576. Night XIII,
Tale 7.
5 E, Le Roy Ladurie, Le Carrzaz/al de Romans, Paris, 197/, p.
91.
s Claude Gaucher, Le Plairzr des champs, Paris, 1583, p. 252
(second edition, Paris, 1604, p. 248, re-edition, ed. P,
Blanchemain, Paris, 1869, p. 288), and G. Delamothe, The
French Alphabetll, London, 1592, pp. 150-1. Gauehet describes
a company of people in wintertime passing the day indoors
playing games, of which he mentions three flux (flush, a card
game), draughts a n d T a ro t ('... rzoslre trouppe serrate,
N'abandormanl Le few, jusques et la soirée, Paste je jour au flux,
quelquefoii" au damner; Lex autres Le tarot aymerzt et marie). This
reference should be added to those of Chapter 5, p. 100.
 The Early Stages of the Game In France
testify to the production of Tarot packs in late
sixteenth-century France on a scale large enough
to impinge on the consciousness of the royal
authorities and to merit the imposition of a
distinct scale of taxation. The First such law was
made by Henri III in 1581, and applied only to
cards made for export; this was followed by the
edict of 1583, quoted in Chapter 5, which
imposed a tax on all playing cards, 1 sou for a
regular pack and 2 sous for a Tarot pack. At the
time, Rouen and Lyons were rivals as the
greatest centres for the production of playing
cards in France. In response tO a remonstrance
by the Etats de Normandie in 1585, the tax was
specially reduced for playing cards made in
Rouen to 10 deniers for a regular pack and 20
deniers for a Tarot pack; cards made for export
to Spain, Flanders and England were to be taxed
at 8 deniers a pack, those made for Portugal at 6
deniers and those made for Switzerland at 3
deniers. For our purposes, the important fact is
I
that Tarot cards were being made in Rouen by
1585. The Parlement of Normandy was still not
l satisfied with this, and in 1586 petitioned again
for the complete abolition of the tax; they appear
to have been successful. In Lvons much the
7
same took place; the Parlement refused to
register the law of 1583, and, after a protest by
the cardmakers saying that many of their
n'umber had left for Savoy, Spain, Switzerland or
Lorraine, the law was in 1586 suspended for
Lyons.8
Thus by the end of the sixteenth century, and
probably long before that, Tarot packs were
being produced in both Lyons and Rouen. They
were also produced in Paris; in their statutes of
1594, the master cardmakers of Paris repeatedly
referred to their profession as that of Cartier; et
/kziseurs de carter, tarorg, feuilletz el carionx
(cardmakers and makers of cards, tarots, leaflets
and cardboard)." Right at the end of the century,
in 1599, they began to be produced in Nancy;
Lorraine had hitherto imported playing cards
from Lyons, but in that year Duke Charles III
ordered the establishment of workshops in Nancy
to produce caries, taraulx et das (cards, tarots and
dice).*0 Yet, from the entire century, only one
7 For the tax laws in general, and in particular in Rouen,
see H.-R. D'Allemagne, op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 293-4, and vol.
II, p. 118, and M.L. Chanoine-Davranches, Hzstozre dujeu de
caries en Normandie, Rouen, 1892, p. 13.
8 D'Allemagne, op. cit., vol. I, p. 294, vol. II, p. 242.
° Ibid., vol. II, pp, 60-2. 10 Ibid., vol. II, pp. 212-13.
203
Tarot pack, made in France, survives to us out of
the thousands that must have been made: this is
the pack, already mentioned, made by Catelin
Geoffroy of Lyons in 1557.11 A Catelin Geoffroy
is recorded as having worked as a cardmaker in
Lyons between 1582 and 1603;12 and the letter of
Duke Charles III of Lorraine authorising the
establishment of cardmaking businesses in
Nancy exhorted the cardrnakers to produce cards
and tarots 'as good and Hne as those made at
Lyons under the name of Cathelin Geoffroy."3
This later Catelin Geoffroy was presumably the
son of the one whose cards have survived. The
pack, of which thirty-eight cards remain, is
certainly a beautiful one, it is from a historical
standpoint unfortunate that it appears to be
completely non-standard. Even the suit-signs are
eccentric, comprising Parrots, Peacocks and
Lions, the fourth suit was presumably of
Monkeys, since the suit cards are copies of those
of a regular pack of 1544, in which.just those four
suit~signs were used, made by Virgil Solis (1514-
1562) of Nuremberg. Twelve trumps survive. All
the cards have borders with diagonal shading
and an index in the centre at the top and,
reversed, at the bottom, The trumps bear Roman
numerals, the numeral cards of the suits bear
Arabic numerals, and the court cards bear initial
letters for both rank and suit, P standing both for
Perroquets (Parrots) and Peons (Peacocks). The
trump subjects are standard ones, and, so far as
can be told, are arranged in precisely the order
later found in the Tarot de Marseille; they
consist of the Bateleur (I), Popess (II), Empress
(III), Emperor (HH), Pope (V), Chariot (VH),
Hermit (IX), Hanged Man (XII), Death (XIII),
Temperance (XIIII), the Lightning (XVI) and
the judgment (XX). These trump cards do not
bear inscriptions giving their names. With one
exception, the designs of the trump cards have, so
far as we know, no correspondence in detail with
those of any standard pattern, and it seems likely
that the pack was intended as a non-standard,
11 The cards are in the Museum fair Kunsthandwerk,
Frankfurt am lf{ain, catalogue number K1, they measure
125 x 68 mm. Seventeen of them are illustrated in D.
Hoffmann, Die We!! der Spielkaflerz, Leipzig, 1972, plates 15b
and 36a, nine in colour. Nine are illustrated in S.R. Kaplan,
The Encyclopedia of Tarot, New York, 1978, p. 132.
12 D'Allemagne, op. it., vol. It, p. 212.
13 Ibid. The letter says that the cards and tarots 'serons et
devront gussy belles et bones que eelles qui se font a Lion
soubz je nom de Cathelin Geoffrov'.
 204 Part II: Games with 78 cards
luxury item. The one exception is the Hanged
Man; though it in no way resembles the usual
Tarot de Marseille design, the figure being
shown in profile rather than full face, it reappears
in occasional Tarot de Marseille packs made in
Switzerland, such as one of C. 1755 made by
Claude Burdel of Fribourg and one of c. 1865 by
Gassmann of Geneva.14 Trump XVI, here
designated the Lightning, corresponds to the
Tower or Maison Dieu of the Tarot de Marseille;
somewhat as in the Minchiate pack, it shows a
woman, who is playing a viol, being grabbed by a
devil; in the background are another figure, an
archway and a window with smoke pouring from
it. For the rest, the designs of the trump cards are
iconographically straightforward; on trump I,
the Bateleur is seated with his wares upon a
table, round which three figures are standing,
and the Hermit (trump IX) is a friar, wearing a
rosary and carrying 8 lantern. The Ace of Parrots
bears the inscription 'Catelin Geo ffroy 1557
and some other cards bear the initials CG.
In the seventeenth century, the taxation of
playing cards continued; again, tarot; are always
mentioned in the edicts separately from caries. In
1605, the tax was re-established everywhere,
including Rouen and Lyons, at the higher rate of
15 deniers for a regular pack and 2 sous, 6
deniers for a Tarot pack (there were 12 deniers to
one sou). There was a further edict of 1622,
confirming the tax imposed in 16053 and there
was frequent legislation governing the collection
of the taxes and regulating the manufacture of
playing cards, in 1625, 1628, 1629, 1635, 1636,
1640, 1644 and 1661, all mentioning tarots
speciHcally.!5 In Rouen the Etats protested
against the tax of 1605 on cards and tarots in
1605, 1607 and 16088 in 1605 they said that many
cardmakers whom the 1583 law had driven to
England and Flanders had returned to France
after its suspension for Rouen, and in 1608 they
complained that the new tax had caused
thousands of families to leave their native land to
seek a living among des nations rodes et estrangéres
(uncouth foreign nations). In 1609 the tax was
rescinded for Rouen, but after the edict of 1622 it
was reimposed, the consequent protest of 1623,
which specified that many cardrnakers had
14 See Kaplan, op. cit., p. 163 for an illustration of the
Gassmann pack, and p. 242 for one of a pack of 1972 by
Miiller based on the Burdel one.
15 See D'Allemagne, op. cit., vol. I, pp. 294-306.
emigrated to England, was this time
unsuccessful."' In Lyons the Parlement again
refused to register the tax decree of 1605, and a
protest addressed by the cardmakers of Lyons to
the Treasury in 1608 spoke of the making of carte;
et tarot; as one of the principal industries of the
city, supplying not only the kingdom of France
but also Italy, Spain and Flanders.*7 As a result,
the tax was abolished for Lyons in 1609. Article 9
of the statutes of the master cardmakers of
Lyons, adopted in 1614, confirms that they were
still engaged in the production of tarots as well as
other cards. The reirnposition of the tax in 1622
evoked a new protest from the maistres et of/rzers de
carte; et tarot.; of Lyons in 1623, which says that
many had left for Switzerland and Besancon in
order to escape the new tax, and, in particular,
that the Duke of Savoy had lured many
cardmakers to Turin and Charnbéry. The Lyons
cardmakers, more fortunate that their colleagues
in Rouen, succeeded in getting the tax annulled
's~
for Lyons in 1623.18 Their statutes were revised
in 16505 article 9 continued to refer to farm."
Meanwhile, the cardmaking industry of
Marseilles was under way. Marseilles was to
become another great centre of playing-card
manufacture, rivalling Lyons, in the seventeenth
century, its cardmakers produced eight distinct
kinds of cards, including Tarots, many for
export, to Spain, Portugal, Genoa and Lima." In
1608 the Lyons cardmakers petitioned for a
prohibition on the manufacture of playing cards
in Marseilles, but it was authorised by a royal
edict of 1631.21 Tarot cards were produced
elsewhere in France as well. A royal patent of
1663 licensed the production of playing cards
and tafaux in Toulon," royal permission for the
production of caries, larotz et de; (cards, tarots and
dice) in Bordeaux was sought in 1665 and
granted in 1669.23 Tarot cards also continued to
be made in Paris; the additions of 1613 to the
statutes of the master cardmakers of Paris
16 See Chanoine-Davranches, op. cit., pp. 14-15, and
D'Allemagne, vol. II, pp. 118-20.
17 D'Allemagne, vol. I, p. 296, vol. II, pp. 242, 499.
10 Ibid., vol. I, pp. 297-8, vol. II, pp. 244, 246, 492, 502.
19 Ibid., vol. II, p. 258.
20 Ibid., vol. II, p. 317.
21 Ibid., vol. II, p. 306, see also the catalogue, Cinq xiéeles de
caries djouer en France, by jean-Pierre Seguin, published as
fascicule 205 of Le Vieux Panzer, September 1963.
22 D'Allemagne, vol. II, pp. 338, 526.
23 Ibid., vol. 11, pp. 412, 414, 538-9.
 The Early Stages of the Game in France
regulated the making both of ordinary cards and
of tarots.2'*
The Jesuit Francois Garasse wrote in 1622 that
the game of Tarots was more widely played
among the French than that of chess.25 In 1659
there was published, in the edition for that year
of La Maison asadémique des jeux, the earliest
detailed description of the game of Tarot to
appear in print in any country. It is not at all
surprising that this should be so, since it was in
France and in England that the idea first
occurred to anybody to publish a book
containing instructions for playing card games.
Previously it had been taken for granted that you
learned such a game only by being taught by
your acquaintances, and, in other countries, we
have to wait until the eighteenth or even the
nineteenth century before card-game books
appear. The 1659 A/Iaison académique was only the
second in the series; but thereafter books of this
kind continued to come out in France in an
unbroken succession, with some changes of title,
down to modern times, new editions appearing
after an interval of usually no more than three or
four years. For the most part, the account of each
game was simply reprinted from one edition to
the next. It was only with highly fashionable
games such as Ornbre, which underwent a rapid
evolution, that the description was frequently
rewritten; indeed, that of Orb re and its
derivatives expanded so as to till half the book.
The account of Tam; was reprinted in all editions
of the Maison académique up to 1702. There was
then an unusually long gap in the sequence, and,
when it was resumed with the Académie un iverselle
des jeux of 1718, Tarot had been dropped. The
original seventeenth-century account suddenly
reappeared in a volume of 1814, and, very
spasmodically, in other nineteenth-century
books; but this can have been due only to a piece
of antiquarianism on the part of an editor who
had read the seventeenth-century books, but was
otherwise unacquainted with the game.
A million is probably a highly conservative
estimate for the number of Tarot packs produced
in France during the seventeenth century; of
those, no more than four have survived to us.
There are two complete packs, both made in
24 D'Allemagne, op. cit., vol II, p. 64.
25 Francois Garasse, Rae/zen/ze des Recherches (a bitter attack
on Etienne Pasquier's Recherches de Za France of 1596), Paris,
t6Z2, p. 217, see also p. 222.
205
Paris, in the Bibliotheque Nationale;26 one nearly
complete pack made in Rouen belongs to a
private collector, Mr David Temperley; and an
uncut sheet, showing twelve court cards which
may come from a Tarot pack made in Toulouse,
is in the Musée Paul Dupuy in that city." The
famous French standard pattern for Tarot cards
is that known as the Tarot de Marseille; it is so
called from the great number of Tarot packs
made in accordance with this pattern in
Marseilles during the eighteenth century, but
there is no ground to assume that it was invented
there. The two Parisian packs, and that made in
Rouen, belong, however, to a different tradition.
One of the packs made in Paris was by Jacques
Vigil, a cardmaker of whom there are records
from 1643 to 1664.28 When H.-R. D'Allemagne
wrote his great book on French playing cards in
1906, only the Aces, 2s and is from this pack
appear to have been known. By the time when an
exhibition was held in 1963, all the court cards
had been found, although the catalogue
expressed a cautious doubt whether they
belonged to the same pack." Very recently, Mme
Lambert, of the Bibliotheque Nationals, working
under the direction of Mlle Gardey, curator of
the Reserve des Estampes in the library, has
succeeded in reconstituting the entire pack of 78
cards; the result is a discovery of the first
importance."
26 Both of them are contained in the volume Kh-34.
27 See the catalogue La Carte djauer en Languedoc det orzginet
et 7800, Musée Paul Dupuy, Toulouse, 1971, section (1),
'Toulouse', no. 8; the catalogue refers to B. Dusan, 'Cartes 8
jour anciennes', Revue arelzéologique du Midi, vol. II, 1869, p.
120, which I have not seen.
za D'Allernagne, op. cit., voL I, pp. 188-90, 302, 307, 309,
illustrations of the Ace and 2 of Coins, the 2 of Cups and the
3 of Swords appear on pp. 185 and 189.
29 The catalogue is that by J.-P. Sequin mentioned in
footnote 21; the Vigil pack is no. 359. A catalogue, Le Tarot,
of an exhibition of Tarot cards held in 1971 at the Maison
de la Culture in Amiens, published in April 1971 as no. 1 of
La Biblio!/zéque volant, mistakenly speaks on p, 30 of the
Viévil pack as an example of the Tarot de Marseille.
30 The cards, both of the Vigil pack and of the other
seventeenth-century Parisian pack, and, indeed, of many
other packs in the Bibliotheque Nationale, are pasted on to
heavy folio pages, for only one card in each pack, in both the
present packs the Popess, is a window cut in the page so that
the back design may be seen. These pages are clasped, not
bound, in a volume, and so are detachable; they are
removed for exhibitions or to~be photographed. There are a
great many such pages which, for one or another reason, are
not included in any volume, but lie separately in drawers
awaiting classification, a task for whose exectUtion there
206 Part II: Games with 78 cards
The numeral cards of the suits in Viévil's
pack for the most part resemble those of the
Tarot de Marseille. In particular, the Batons
have just the same flat appearance, the ends of
them broadening out, but still flattened; the
Swords, too, resemble the Tarot de l\1arseille,
those on the 10 being arranged injust the same
way, with two straight swords; as in the Tarot de
Marseille, no crown appears on the 3 of Swords
and no bird on the 2 of Swords. Three cards, in
particular, have designs which might naturally
be thought highly characteristic of the Tarot de
Marseille. The Ace of Cups shows the same
elaborate Gothic chalice. The 2 of Cups has the
curious feature, always found in the Tarot de
Marseille, of a central stem, between the two
cups, from which issue two branches ending in
dragon's heads. The 2 of Coins has, encircling
the coins, the S-shaped scroll always found on
this card in the Tarot` de la{arseille, sometimes
inverted, sometimes not, bearing the maker's
name, in this case IACQVES VIEVIL A PARIS.
The main difference from the Tarot de Marseille,
as far as these numeral cards are concerned, is
that they do not bear any Roman numerals to
indicate their rank. The court cards and the
trumps, on the other hand, display a pattern
completely different from the Tarot de Niarseille.
With four exceptions, and with some minor
differences of detail, the designs tally exactly with
those used in Tarot packs produced in the
eighteenth century in what is now Belgium and
was then the Austrian Netherlands. This Belgian
pattern has hitherto appeared an anomaly, being
the only standard pattern known to have been
used outside Italy for the Italian-suited Tarot
pack quite unrelated, save in the order of the
trumps, to the Tarot de Marseille. The
reconstitution of the Vievil pack by Mme
Lambert, and the purchase of the Rouen one by
Mr Tetnperley, occurred while this book was in
proof. In the original version, I had conjectured
that the Belgian pattern had in fact derived from
some standard French pattern, distinct from the
Tarot de la/Iarseille, the traces of which had
disappeared; this conjecture was conclusively
confirmed by the Vigil and Rouen packs.
are, ill have un dersto-:ad correctly, no present plans. In each
pack, or at least in those I saw, each page has four cards
mounted on it, in the case of the suit cards, the four of one
given rank, in that of the trumps, consecutively numbered
ones. It was among such separated pages that Madame
Lambert disenvered the missing cards of the Vigil pack.
The trumps in the Vigil pack bear Roman
numerals, not enclosed in panels, set at the top of
the card in positions varying between the centre
and the left-hand corner. Like those of Catelin
Geoffroy, they lack inscriptions giving their
names; but most of these can be gathered from a
sentence which appears on the Ace of Coins and
is continued on the 2 of Cups, into which have
been worked the names of the majority of the
trump subjects." These subjects include the
Pope (V) and Popess (It), which were replaced
by others in the Belgian Tarot. The Popess is
very much as in the Tarot de Marseille, but the
Pope is rather different, he wears a mitre Instead
of the tiara, and holds a crazier instead of a cross,
and two cardinals, whose faces can be seen, kneel
before him. The two other cards which differ
completely from the Belgian Tarot are the
Chariot and the World. Both resemble the Tarot
de Marseille designs. As in the Tarot de
Nlarseille, the World shows a figure within an
oval wreath, with the symbols of the four
Evangelists in the corners of the card, the figure
is male, however, and, at the bottom, the lion
occupies the left-hand, the ox the right-hand,
comer. The Chariot is not drawn by horses, but
by beasts with human heads. The rest of the
trumps, though much better drawn than in most
Belgian Tarot packs, are very close to them in
design. In particular, as in all the Belgian Tarots,
the FigUre of the Hanged Man (XII\/ is, judging
bY the numeral on the card, the wrong way up,
that is to say, upright instead of hanging by the
feet; trump XIIII (Temperance) is inscribed
FAMA SOL, as in the Belgian packs; and, again
as in the Belgian Tarots, trump XVI, which is
called La Foudre (the Lightning) on the 2 of Cups,
shows a young man walking towards a tree,
under which goats are sheltering and which is
being struck by lightning. Trumps XVII to XX
are also characteristic of what became the
Belgian pattern. The Star (XVII) shows a man
in a chair with a pair of" compasses, the Moon
(XVIII) shows a woman with a distaff; the Sun
31 The inscription on the Ace of Coins reads: PERE
SAINCT FAIT MOY YUSTICE DE CE VIELART m,
BAGA AMOVREVX DE CESTE DAME QVY SOIT
CRYE A SON DE TROMPE PAR TOVT LE MONDE
DE PAR L18 PAPE LA PAPESSE LANPEREVR
LINPERATRYCE LE SOLEIL, and continues or the 2 of
Cups: L'A LVNE LES ETOILLES L'A FOVDRE }*RUNS
A FORCE QVY SOIT PENDV E TRANNAY AV
DYABLE.
h 7719 Early Stages of lhrf (f are In l"mnc¢'
r
(XIX) shows a naked boy on a horse with a
pennant, and the angel's trumpet on the XX has
r
I
a Hag attached to it. Among the minor differences
from the Belgian Tarot may be noted the
following. The Hermit does not wear a
Franciscan girdle. and holds the corner of his
robe in his left hand; in his right hand he holds
not a book, but an indeterminate cigar-shaped
object. The figure on the X\'II holds at book in
his right hand with an hourglass design on the
cover. There are droplets on the XvIII and
XVIII. and no stars on the latter. 'I`lte I~ool bears
neither inscription nor numeral. The court cards
also resemble those of the Belgian Tarot, save for
minor details. for instance that the coin which
forms the suit-symbol on the King of (Joins is in
the crook of the King's left knee. where he holds
it with his left hand.
The names of the trumps given on the Acc of
Coins and 2 of Cups are for the most part what
one would expect, save that the Hermit is called
the Old .\an (spelled l'zd/1rl) and the .lodgment
the Trumpet (Trmnpc). The figure on the trump
l. corresponding to the Italian lfagathi, usually
called the Moumehank ( Baldr ur i. is here called
the Bags, a term still in use among Tarot players
in Chambéry at the beginning of this century.
Perhaps the most striking feature of` the Viévil
pack is one that it does not share with the Belgian
Tarot pattern, nor with any other known Tarot
pack made outside Italy, namely the order in
which its trump subjects are arranged, Viévil's
order differs from that of the Tarot de Marseille
in respect of trumps \~'ll to Xl inclusive. In the
Tarot do .\1arseille the order runs Chariot (\'II).
.justice (\'Ill). llermit, (IX). Wheel of Fortune
(X) and Strength (la Furze) (Xl): in \'iévil's pack
it runs .]ustice (VII), Chariot (VIII), Strength
(IX), Wheel of Fortune (X) and llermit (XI). It
IS tempting to conjecture that we do not rcallv
have. in the reconstituted set of' Vigil cards, a
single pack. but a composite comprising the
numeral cards from one pack and the court Cards
and trumps from another. But this conclusion
would very/ probably be a mistake. Though the
Aces of Swords and llatons are rather similar in
the T'arot de Marseille and in the Belgian Tarot.
the positions of the hands holding the weapons
arc. on both cards, reversed in the two patterns.
and. although the Vigil pack agrees with the
Tarot cle Marseille in having droplets on the two
cards. it agrees with the Belgian Tarot in respect
of the positions of the hands. It is thus not wholly
207
true that the numeral cards coincide in design
with those of the Tarot do Marseille, and we
shall see that. in several respects, those of the
Rouen pack are intermediate between Viévil's
and the Belgian ones. The cards of the
reconstituted pack are all of the same size (125 x
63 mm; the individual style of the cardmaker
seems constant throughout, at some former time
they were all classified as belonging to the same
pack. features in common with the Tarot de
Marseille are not confined to the numeral cards.
For all these reasons. adequate ground is lacking
for doubting the unity of the pack as
reconstituted by .\line Lambert. Fvcn if the
trumps and court cards were held to come from a
distinct pack, it would not be of major import: we
should still have an ancestor of the Belgian
pattern. presumably French and eertainlv of the
seventeenth century.
'l`hc other seventeenth-centurv Farisian pack,
usually assigned to the early part of the century,
is evidently non-standard, but it. too. has some
affinity to the Belgian Tarot pattern. The 2 of
Coins and the 2 and 3 of Cups all bear
inscriptions saying l-IAlc'l` A PARIS PAR
(made in Paris by), the name of the maker having
in each case been deleted: the 4 of Coins similarly
has PAR A PARIS. The pack is linked with
Viévil's by having exactly the same back design,
consisrinq of hexagons each containing a black
cross like a Maltese one but with three points at
the ends of the arms. the intersection of the arms
being left white save br an X. There is no danger
of any confusion between the two packs,
however, since the measurements of the non-
Standard pack are different (127 x 69 mm). Each
card has a double chequered border, unlike the
plain rectangle that appears on the Viévil cards,
and each has an index on a scroll, supported by
two beasts, just under the top border. The suit
cards have indices consisting of the initial letter
of the suit and a numeral or initial letter for the
rank; the trumps have the usual Roman
numerals. In addition. the trumps, court cards
and Aces have their names inscribed at the
bottom in l`uli. the words used for the King,
Queen, (.avalier, .lack and Ace are Roy, Re)-nc.
(.'/lrzvalier, I-'arlel' and At. The Swords are broad-
hladed cutlasses. the Batons irregular trimmed
branches. both are arranged, especially on the
higher numerals. in a very eccentric way. The
Aces carh show an animal bearing a flag on
which the suit-sign appears, a unicorn for
208 Part II: Games with 78 cards
Swords, a winged centaur for Batons, a lion for
Coins and a stag for Cups. The designs of the
court cards and trumps have, for the most part,
no particular resemblance to those of any known
standard pattern. There are two exceptions. The
Hanged Man (XII) is quite close in design to
that of the Tarot de Marseille, while the World
(XXI), unlike that of the Vigil pack, is strikingly
similar to that of the Belgian Tarot. The World is
represented by a naked Figure standing on a
globe divided into three parts, one showing the
sun, one the moon and stars and the third the
earth. The following cards are notable. The
Bateleur (I), wearing a fool's costume, is seated
at a table with one seated and one standing
Figure; the Chariot (VII) is drawn by swans; the
Hermit (IX) holds 8 large rosary and a lantern;
XVI is called La Fouldre (the Lightning) and
shows a hell-mouth with a devil and cowering or
fleeing figures, the Star (XVII) shows a scholar
with a pair of compasses, the Moon (XVIII)
shows a woman with a distaff, and, on the right,
a church tower with a Figure at the top; the Sun
(XIX) shows a monkey holding a mirror up to a
woman - a representation of vanity. There is an
obvious iconographical connection of the XVI
with that of the Geoffroy pack, and of XVII and
XVIII with the Vigil one, but no detailed
resemblance of design. The trumps are arranged
in the same order as in the Tarot de Marseille.
Despite certain connections with the Belgian
pattern, this pack by the anonymous
seventeenth-century Parisian cardrnaker was
evidently another non-standard luxury pack. The
pack made in Rouen and owned by David
Temperley is, by contrast, a second example,
after Viévil's, of the standard pattern which came
to be associated with Belgium, and agrees with
the Belgian cards in all the major respects in
which Viévil's pack differs. Its maker's name is
given on the Ace of Coins as Adam C. de Hautot,
living in the rue du Gros Orloge in Rouen."
D'Allernagne lists several members of the de
Hautot family of Rouen cardmakers, ail of the
eighteenth century, including one Adam de
Hautot, active between 1760 arid 1775,33 but he
also mentions an A. de Hautot as a founder
32 Anyone who has been in Rouen will know that the rue
du Gras Horloge is the most famous street in that beautiful
city. The inscription concludes 'au Coeur Royal', this being
the sign of de Hautot's workshop; the 2 of Coins has 'Cartes
de Adam de Hautot au Coeur Roy'.
33 D'Allemagne, op. cit, vol. II, pp, 138, 610.
member of the confrérie (charitable association)
of cardmakers established in 1658.34 Gurney
Ber ham also lists several eighteenth-century
members of the family, including a Charles de
Hautot, active between 1715 and 1747, and an
Adam de Hautot, active between 1747 and 1761,
who is probably identical with the one mentioned
by D'Allemagne.35 From him we further learn of
a Richard de Hautot, recorded as working in
1671, and of a 'Master Dehoto', attempting to
work as a cardmaker in England in 1648, and
evidently one of those who, as the 1623
remonstrance complained, had been forced by
the tax laws to emigrate to England,3" and we
also learn of an Adam de Hautot active in Rouen
between 1658 and 1707, evidently the same as the
A. de Hautot mentioned by D'Allemagne. The
cards of Temperley's pack have a definite general
appearance of ones made in the seventeenth, not
the eighteenth, century. The probability
therefore is that the pack was made by the earlier
of the two Adam de Hautots,37.some time in the
second half of the seventeenth century, our
discussion will proceed on this assumption.
The de Hautot pack is almost complete, and
contains all the trumps." Save for certain details,
it conforms precisely to the pattern later found in
Belgium. Above all, the Pope and Popess have
already been replaced by two figures never found
in other forms of Tarot pack: trump V shows
Bacchus, and trump II the Spanish Captain,
Capitano Fracasse, a character from the
Comrnedia dell'Arte whose identification I owe
to my son Andy Durnrnett." He has also shown
34 Ibid., vol, II, p. 139.
35
VV. Gurney Ber ham, Playing Cards, London, 1931, p.
63.
so Evidently the national xenophobia was already at work,
since the Company of Makers of Playing Cards fined
Master Richard Robinson for giving work to 'divers
foreigners and strangers to the trade', including Dehoto.
Life cannot have been easy in England for the immigrants
from Rouen.
37 Putting together the information from D'Allernagne
and Gurney Ber ham, we obtain the following details of
members of the de Hautot family: Dehoto, 1648, Adam de
H., 1658-1707; Richard, 1671, Charles, 1715-47, Adam,
1747-75, l\1auriee, 1755-878 the Verve de H., 1756; Pierre
de H. je june, 1760-91, Louis-Amahle de H., 1763-90,
Benjamin, 1766-88.
38 Missing are the 4, 8 and 10 of Batons, the 9 of Swords,
the 6 and 8 of Cups, and the 7 of Coins,
39 See Andv Dummett, 'The Spanish Captain', journal of
the vlayzng-Card Society, vol, III, no. 2, November 1974, pp.
7-8.
 The Early Stages of the Game in France
that the design of the Spanish Captain in the
Belgian Tarot pack has been copied from an
early seventeenth-century engraving of the
character by Michel Lasne.'*0 This by itself
should suggest that the eighteenth-century
Belgian Tarot had a seventeenth-century
prototype; and, indeed, the Spanish Captain of
de Hautot's pack is even more obviously
modeled upon Michel Lasne's engraving. The
trump cards of the pack all bear their names at
the bottom, as well as numerals at the top, as in
the Belgian Tarot, the court cards.also have their
names in full. The name of the Spanish Captain
is correctly given (save for the single S) as
Ca/iitano Fracase, in Belgian packs it is almost
invariably misspelled Capitarzo Eracarse. The order
of the trumps is, with one exception, the same as
K
in the Belgian Tarot, and thus, save for the
3
differences of subject, as in the Tarot de
Marseille. The exception is that the positions of
the Emperor and Empress have been reversed,
the Emperor being trump III and the Empress
trump IIII. It might be thought that this was a
mere error; but we shall later see reason to
consider it intentional. The Hanged Man (XII
is again shown the wrong way up, i.e. with the
figure upright, its intended orientation being
indicated not only by the numeral but by the
name inscribed on the card; it will be recalled
that this inversion is found both in Viévil's pack
and in all Belgian Tarots. The Lightning (XVI)
is inscribed La Audre and is as in the Vievil
pack and the Belgian Tarot, showing a man
approaching a tree struck by lightning, but no
tower. The World (XXI) closely resembles that
of the anonymous Parisian pack and that of the
Belgian Tarot: the numeral is flanked by the two
animal supporters found on all cards in the
anonymous pack, as also happens on the xxI in
Belgian Tarot packs. The Chariot (VII) is again
as in the Belgian Tarot, and the Fool is
numbered XXII, as it always is in the Belgian
packs, and is inscribed Le Fo! (sometimes Le For
on the Belgian cards). All the cards have the
double chequered border of the anonymous
I
Parisian pack, instead of the linear frame of
Vigil; in the Belgian packs this has usually been
reduced to a single chequered or dogtooth
40 The engraving is illustrated by Giacomo Oreglia, The
Commedia deZ!'Arte, translated by Lovell F. Edwards from the
original Italian edition of 1961, London, 1968, plate 38; see
also Andy Dummett, op. it.
°~.
1
1.
m
209
border. A curious detail is that the name of
Temperance (XIIII ) has been misspelled
ATRENPANCE, like the ATREMPANCE
found in the anonymous Parisian pack and in
some, but not all, Belgian packs, for instance in
one made by .Jean Galler of Brussels (active 1738
to 1760).41 As in the Belgian Tarot, there is a bird
on the 2 of Swords and a crown on the '3 of
SwordS, the 2 of Coins has, as in the Belgian
pack, lost the S-shaped scroll. The back design is
of a common type, consisting of hexagons
enclosing a sun with a face, often found on
Belgian Tarots, for instance on examples of that
by Galler and that by Vandenborre.42
In certain respects, de Hautot's pack
resembles Viévil's rather than the Belgian ones.
Thus there are droplets on the Aces of Swords
and Batons, missing on the Belgian cards. These
droplets also appear on de Hautot's Moon
(XVIII), as on that of Viévil; in Galler's pack,
they have turned into something like feathers,
and, in one by FI. Vandenborre .of Brussels
(active 1726 to 1803), into stars." More
importantly, the 2 of Cups retains its dragon-
heads, to which, indeed, scaly necks have been
attached; in Belgian packs, they have been
converted into flowers. In other respects, it is
transitional. Thus the Figure on the Star (XVII)
holds an hour-glass, in place of the book with an
hour-glass design on the cover, as in Viévil's
pack; this hour-glass has disappeared in the
Belgian Tarot. The Ace of Coins and 2 of Cups
lack the curious inscription found on Viévil's.
cards, but the latter of these cards has acquired
the inscription to be seen on all Belgian examples
reminding the player that in Cups and Coins the
lower-numbered cards beat the higher-numbered
ones.44 The cards are described on the Ace of
Coins as 'Cartes de Taros Tres Fines', and not as
'Cartes de.Suisse', as they usually are in Belgian
packs, on this card or on the wrapper -
41 For an illustration, see Kaplan, op. cit., p. 152, six
cards, not including Temperance, are shown by Hoffmann,
op. cit., plate 16a.
42 See Kaplan, p. 8.
43 Carta Mundi, of Turnhout, issued in 1974 a
reproduction of Vandenborre's Tarot pack; for illustrations,
see Kaplan, pp. 6, 145, 284.
44 In Belgian Tarot packs, this always runs, 'Pour
conoistre que la plus base de Deniez et de Coupes enporte
les plus hautes quad au fait dujeu', de Hautot's wording is
almost identical, namely 'Pour conoistre que la plus basso
de Deniers et de Coupe enporte les plus haute quand pour je
fait dujeu'.
210 Par! II: Games with 78 cards
perplexingly, since there is no known connection
between this pattern and Switzerland. In
particular, the shape of the Batons on the
numeral cards is half-way between that in
Viévil's pack and in the Belgian Tarot. The
Batons are rounded, rather than Hat, in which
respect they resemble the Belgian ones, but they
retain the widened tips found in the Tarot de
Marseille and in Viévil's pack. The .Batons in the
Belgian Tarot are simply straight rounded sticks,
of uniform width from end to end, and have a
striking resemblance to those found in the
Tarocco Bolognese and in the Primiera
Bolognese pattern for the regular Italian-suited
pack.
In regard to a few details, de Hautot's pack
seems not to be on a direct line between Vievil's
and the Belgian Tarot. Thus the Ace of Cups is
even more rounded than its Belgian counterpart,
and has a circular, not octagonal, base, two
fronds sprout from the stem. Cupid, on trump
VI, has the bow and arrow oddly missing in
Viévil's pack and in the Belgian ones. The Figure
of justice in de Hautot's pack has unmistakable
wings, whereas the corresponding details in
Viévil's pack and in the Belgian Tarot could
equally well be parts of a chair-back, which is
presumably what they were originally meant to
be; this mistake frequently occurs on this card in
Tarot de Marseille-derived packs such as the
Lombard pattern. De Hautot's Wheel of Fortune
shows a man's head at the left, where both Vigil
and the Belgian Tarot have a donkey, and, unlike
both Vigil and the Belgian cardmakers, de
Hautot puts no flag on the angel's trumpet on
trump XX. De Hautot's Hermit holds nothing in
his right hand whereas, in the Belgian packs, he
holds a book; the right leg of de Hautot's Hanged
Man is not even attached to the crosspiece of the
(inverted) gallows, as it is in the Belgian Tarots.
These packs have been described in detail
because those by Vigil and de Hautot have
previously been unknown, save for a 'few of the
Vigil cards; and they radically alter our picture
of the history of the Italian-suited Tarot pack in
France. Quite obviously the two packs testify to
the existence in France of a tradition of design
distinct from the Tarot de Marseille; one which,
by the seventeenth century, overlapped with it
only in respect of the numeral cards of the suits
and a few of the trump cards, and which
underwent a quite independent evolution. It
seems probable, for two reasons, that the pattern
had already been in existence for a considerable
time before Viévil made the earliest surviving
example ofit. First, there is the mistake about the
orientation of the Hanged Man, a mistake
occasionally found in some other packs, for
instance, in one seen by Court de Gébelin and in
a Minchiate pack now in the Correr Museum in
Venice, but in no other case incorporated into a
standard pattern. If Viévil's Hanged Man is
turned the other way up to that intended by its
maker, the crosspiece of the gallows can be seen
very convincingly to rest in a fork of one of the
uprights. The design must therefore have been
very accurately copied from one originally made
by a cardmaker who understood what the card
was supposed to represent; or, if not, Vigil
himself must have understood this, but have been
too constrained by tradition to invert the design.
Secondly, the substitution of Bacchus and the
Spanish Captain for the Pope and Popess seems
likely to have occurred at a time close to the date
of Michel Lasne's engraving, from which the
Spanish Captain design was rather exactly
copied. If so, it must have been made, in some
versions of this pattern, in the early seventeenth
century, and so before Viévil's career began.
Exactly what role the anonymous Parisian pack
had in its subsequent evolution is unclear;
possibly the design of the World was not copied
directly from it. In view of the absolute identity of
the back designs, it is possible that both packs
came from the same studio, and that Vigil
himself or some associate or successor issued
other versions of the pattern in which the
alternative design for the World was used. But, in
the main, we have a fairly straightforward
development from Vigil to, say, Vandenborre.
The Tarot de Marseille itself, celebrated as the
characteristic standard French pattern for the
Italian-suited Tarot pack, and produced in large
numbers during the eighteenth century, has left
surprisingly few early traces. The sheet in the
Toulouse museum might possibly be from a
Tarot de Marseille pack: the catalogue assigns it
to Toulouse and, tentatively, to the seventeenth
century, without categorising it as from a Tarot
pack of any kind.45 However, being Italian-
suited, including Cavaliers of Cups, Coins and
Swords and Queens of Swords and Coins (all
four court cards of Swords are present), and
bearing inscriptions giving the titles of the cards
45 See footnote 27.
 The Early Stages of the Came in France
in full, the Queen being called RENE, it must
surely be. Unfortunately, I have not seen the
sheet itself nor an illustration of it; in any case,
one could not identify it as a Tarot de Marseille
from the court cards alone. There is no other
possible example of a Tarot de Marseille pack
from before the eighteenth century. A pack made
by Pierre Madenie of Did on in 1709 in the British
Museum may be a Tarot de Marseille, but, since
the Fool and all the trumps are missing, it cannot
be identified as that rather than as an example of
the early Piedmontese pattern.'*6 The earliest
certain example of the Tarot de Marseille is not
by a French, but by a Swiss, cardmaker, Francois
Héri of Soleure (Solothurn), whose pack of 1718
is in the Swiss Landesmuseum in Zurich," the
earliest French example may be one by jean
Noblet, who worked in Paris between 1721 and
1760, the pack being now in the Bibliotheque
Nationale." But it would be a mistake to
estimate the antiquity of the pattern from the
accidents of survival. The Piedmontese and
Lombard patterns are plainly derivatives of the
Tarot de Marseille, not conversely, even though
jean Dodal's Piedmontese pattern pack may be
earlier than any surviving example of the Tarot
de Marseille, and the same is even more
evidently true of the pattern known as the Tarot
de Besancon, of which the earliest surviving
example, several copies of which are known, one
being in the Cincinnati Art Museum, was made
byjohann Pelagius Mayer of Constance in about
1680.49
The 1659 .Maison académique informs its readers
that 'the Swiss and the Germans do not
ordinarily play at any other game' than Tarot.
We know, therefore, that it was well established
in both countries by the mid-seventeenth
century. It may_have reached Switzerland direct
from Italy at the same time that it arrived in
46 FM. O'Donoghue, Catalogue of the Collection of Playing
Cards bequeathed to the Trustees of the British A/fuseum by the late
Lady Charlotte Schreiber, London, 1901, F-4.
47 For an illustration, see the catalogue Schweitzer
Spielkarten to the exhibition at the Kunstgewerbemuseum in
Zurich in 1978, no. 142.
48 For a colour illustration, see D'Allernagne, op. cit., vol,
~lI, opposite p. 78,
49 For illustrations, see C.P, Hargrave, A History of Playirzg
Cards, New York, 1930, 1966, pp. 259, 261, and Kaplan, op.
cit., p. 136, the date 1680 is not on any of the cards, but is
assigned by Hargrave, pp. 259, 261, 266, who says on p. 262
that Mayer worked in Constance in the later part of the
seventeenth century.
211
France. But in is unlikely to have reached
Germany much, if at all, before the seventeenth
century; and when it did, it arrived there via
French-speaking areas. So far as we know, the
Italian-suited Tarot pack was known in
Germany and the Habsburg dominions only in
forms closely related to the Tarot de Marseille,
such as the Tarot de Besancon and the Lombard
pattern; invariably the trump and court cards
bore their names in full, and invariably those
names were printed in French. As in the case of
eighteenth-century Lombardy and Piedmont,
this fact is surely conclusive evidence that it was
with such inscriptions that the Tarot pack first
reached parts of Europe where neither French
nor Italian was spoken. If Tarot cards without
inscriptions had previously been known, then,
while it is conceivable that the French custom of
adding such inscriptions might later have been
adopted, they would surely have been in
German, not in French, the universal use,
everywhere in Europe outside Italy, of the French
language for these inscriptions compels us to
suppose that it was in that form that the cards
were First known in non-French-speaking lands
(Italy of course excepted). Although our
historical deductions are hampered by the
paucity of surviving seventeenth-century Tarot
cards of any kind, all this points Firmly to the
conclusionthat the Tarot de Marseille must have
crystallised into an established standard pattern,
complete with inscriptions and with the trump
order known from later examples, by 1600 at the
latest.
The Maison acadér/zique speaks of the game of
Tarot as being much played in Lyons, Marseilles
'and other places' in France, and we have seen
that it was played in Grenoble in the sixteenth
century. By the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, we Find it Hourishing in the
eastern part of France, above all in Dijon,
Besanqon and Chambéry. We saw also that it is
possible, though not certain, that Lorraine was
the First French-speaking region to which the
game travelled from Italy. Lyons, Marseilles,
Strasbourg and Besanqon were all, at various
times, great centres for the manufacture of Tarot
cards. It is apparent from these facts that the
game of Tarot took root in the eastern strip of
what is now France, and continued to be
tenaciously played there from its first
introduction right down to modern times. During
much of this era, the game has been largely or
 212 Part II: Game; with 78 cards
wholly unkown in the rest of France. This eastern
strip, extending from Nancy in the North to
Marseilles in the South, includes many areas
politically independent of France when the game
was first introduced. Lorraine became part of
France only in 17663 Alsace was French from
1648 to 1870 and again from 1919; Franche
Comte, in which Besancon is situated, came
under the French crown in 1679; and Savoy,
which included Chambéry, became French as
late as 1880. To this eastern strip of France and
contiguous French-speaking areas, in which
Tarot has been continuously popular since the
sixteenth century, should be added the French-
speaking cantons of Switzerland, where the
evolution o f t he game has been strongly
influenced by developments in France. Tarot is a
game almost always played only at a local level,
that is, by players in a particular locality who do
not play with those living even a short distance
away; it is for this reason that such divergent
traditions of play have evolved. We shall, for
example, find, at the ,beginning of the present
century, quite different traditions of play in
Chambéry and Besancon. Nevertheless, we
should probably see the entire. eastern strip of
France, with its French-speaking neighbours, as
maintaining one very roughly unified tradition of
Tarot play.
The name 'Tarot de Marseille' was given to
the standard pattern which it denotes because, in
the eighteenth century, Marseilles became the
great centre for its production; we have no right
to infer that .it was in Marseilles that it
originated. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to
associate the pattern with the area just discussed,
the eastern strip of France and the French-
speaking cantons of Switzerland. Now we have
seen that, in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, Tarot packs were manufactured in
Rouen, and, from the late sixteenth to the mid-
eighteenth century, in Paris. We cannot
immediately infer that these were made for local
consumption. Parisian cardmakers supplied
other regions of France, and Rouen was a great
centre for the export of playing cards,
particularly to England and the Low Countries;
it is presumably for that reason that it was the
pattern used by Adam de Hautot, and,
doubtless, other Rouen cardmakers, that was
adopted in Belgium." Indeed, what became the
50 A report of 1696 mentions playing cards as one of the
English standard pattern for the regular French-
suited pack, and is now the Anglo-American or
International pattern, was originally the Rouen
pattern. But this very fact about the English
standard pattern has implications for the Belgian
Tarot. The Rouen cardmakers did not export to
England the type of cards there used, a type of
which we now have no knowledge: they simply
used their own local pattern for French-suited
cards, and exported those, so successfully that it
became the English pattern. In the same way, it
is quite unlikely that de Hautot was conforming
to a pre-existing Belgian type of design for the
Tarot pack solely in order to make such packs for
export. If we suppose that, then we have to
presume that the game of Tarot, and the type of
pack used for it, reached what is now Belgium by
some route that did not lead through France,
which is most unlikely. There is no indication
that de Hautot's pack was made for export,lbut,
even if it was, it almost certainly exemplified a
pattern already used locally, or at least in some
part of France. It isnot that Rouen cardmakers
employed what became the Belgian Tarot
pattern because they wished to export their cards
to the Spanish (subsequently Austrian)
Netherlands; rather, Belgian players became
accustomed to the pattern because they
originally imported their cards from Rouen.
Thus, even if we did not know of Vievil's pack, we
should naturally conclude that what became the
Belgian Tarot pattern was formerly used in some
part of France.
If the pattern was originally a French one, but
later came to be exclusively associated with
Belgium and forgotten in France, the natural
explanation is that it was used in some area in
which the game of Tarot died out. This cannot be
anywhere within the eastern strip of the country,
because there the game did not die out. The most
obvious hypothesis, therefore, is that the
predecessor of the Belgian Tarot pattern was
used injust those a'reas where we know it to have
been manufactured, namely in Normandy and in
Paris itself. The successive editions of the /\/Iazkon
avadémique, like the card-game books of the
chief industries of Rouen, its products being exported to the
North and to Spain and Portugal; see D'Allemagne, op. cit.,
vol. II, p. 122. A remonstrance by Rouen cardmakers
against taxes in 1746 said that Rouen supplied Flanders,
Artois, Hainault, the Low Countries, the greater part of
Holland and the North, ibid., p. 126.
 The Early Stages of the Came in France
eighteenth century, were published in Paris and
intended principally for the members of Parisian
society; and although the text suggests that the
game of Tarot was not, in 1659, very widely
popular among the readers of the book, its mere
inclusion, taken together with a substantial
production of Tarot packs by Parisian
cardmakers, prompts the supposition that, in the
seventeenth century, Tarot was not confined to
the eastern strip, but was known in Paris. The
pattern exemplified by Viévil's and de Hautot's
packs, though it came to be associated with
Belgium, is not, therefore, best described as the
Belgian Tarot; it would probably be better called
the Paris or the Rouen Tarot.
This conclusion is supported .by an odd detail
of the A/Iaison académique account. We know that
in one important respect the nomenclature
associated with the Paris/Rouen/Belgian
pattern differed from that used for the Tarot de
Marseille; in the former, the trump XVI was
called La Foudre, in the latter La A/Iazlsorz Dieu. We
also know that in Viévil's pack the order of the
trumps differs from that in the Tarot de
Marseille, although, in the Belgian Tarot, and
essentially in de Hautot's pack, the Tarot de
Marseille order is observed. Probably the order
found in Viévil's pack is the original one used in
France, of which the Tarot de Marseille order
was a subsequent modification. This
modification had already occurred by the time
Catelin Geoffroy produced his pack in 1557,
since, although it is incomplete, the numbering of
the Chariot as VII and the Hermit as IX is
enough to determine that the order of the trumps
corresponded to that of the Tarot de Marseille
rather than to that of Vigil. It appears, however,
that the Paris/Rouen pattern retained what I am
here taking to have been the older trump order
until about a century after the introduction of the
modified one, before falling into line with the
Tarot de Marseille in this respect. Now the
Matron anadémique first describes several French
forms of Tarot, and then concludes with a
subsection describing the game as played in
Switzerland. This concluding subsection
contains a list of the trump cards, with their
numbers; their nomenclature, and, with one
minor exception, their order, tally with those of
the Tarot de Marseille. That such a list should
have been given at the beginning of the entire
section on Tarot would have been in no way
surprising, but it was not, it is incorporated into
213
the subsection on the Swiss game, and those
relating to the French games contain no such list.
Why should this be? The most reasonable
explanation is that readers of the book would
already be familiar with a form of' Tarot pack
differing somewhat either in the ordering or in
the nomenclature of the trumps, or both, and did
not need to be told their names or numbers for
the French games described, but that the Tarot
de Marseille ordering and nomenclature,
appropriate to the cards used by Swiss players,
would have been unfamiliar to Parisian readers,
and so needed exposition.
It thus appears a plausible conjecture that the
game of Tarot was played in Normandy and in
Paris from the mid-sixteenth century until the
end of the seventeenth, and that players in those
areas employed a standard pattern ancestral to
the Belgian Tarot of the eighteenth century.51 If
so, the game certainly died out in those areas by
about 17005 and this would explain why the
pattern in question survived only in Belgium and
not in France. The omission of the game from the
card-game books produced in Paris after 1702 is
one indication of this. We saw in Chapter 6 that
the editor of the 1726 edition of Straparola's Les
facéiieuses nails felt obliged to explain 'the game of
Tarot' to his readers as 'a kind of card game now
obsolete',52 it was, of course, far from obsolete,
but the comment .demonstrates that, by that
date, it must have become utterly forgotten in
cultivated Parisian society. Later in the century,
Court de Gébelin, in Le Monde /limit vol. VIII,
1781, speaks (p. 365) of the game of Tarots as a
'game unknown indeed in Paris, but well known
in Italy, in Germany and even in Provence'; he
explains later (P. 3811 that 'if it did not reach
Paris, that must be attributed to the bizarre
character of its designs and to the number of
cards, things not of a kind to please the vivacious
nature of French ladies'. It will be recalled that
he First encountered the game being played by a
party of Swiss ladies, whom, presumably, he
regarded as less vivacious.
It would be wrong to treat the hypothesis here.
51 The mention of Tarot by Claude Gauehet in 1583, cited
in footnote 6, supports this. Gauchet (1540-c. 1622) was born
in Dar martin or Dampmartin, 35 km, north-east of Paris,
and spent much of his life there and at Senlis, and his early
years at the courts of Charles IX and Henri III, the furthest
he seems to have travelled from Paris was Bayeux in
Normandy, where he served for a time as archdeacon.
52 See footnote 12 of Chapter 6.
214 Part II: Games with 78 cards
advanced concerning the Tarot de Marseille
pattern and that Which we have associated with
Paris and Rouen too schematically. For one
thing, the evidence at present available is too
slender for us to be confident that new data,
coming to light, will not alter the picture, for
another, adherence to standard patterns
sometimes varies, not with large regions, but
with small localities." The affinities of Catelin
Geoffroy's pack are more with our 'Paris/ Rouen'
pattern than with the Tarot de Marseille, save for
the trump order; the Tarot de Marseille order
was known in seventeenth-century Paris, as the
anonymous pack shows. It may be.that Lyons
cardrnakers, too, produced some Tarot packs in
accordance with the Paris/Rouen pattern, it may
be that the latter pattern was quite widely used,
in particular localities within the eastern strip,
until the Tarot de Marseille gained the
ascendancy in the eighteenth century. We must
make the best sense of the evidence we can; but
we must hold ourselves ready for alternative
interpretations of it.
The one difference between the trump order as
given in the Maison aradémique and that in all
known examples of the Tarot de Marseille pack is
that, as in the de Hautot pack, the Emperor is
numbered 3 and the Empress 4; thus the cards
from 2 to 5 run Popess (2), Emperor (3), Empress
(4) and Pope (5), whereas, in all known Tarot de
Marseille packs, they run Popess (II), Empress
(III), Emperor (IIII) and Pope (V). Indeed, in all
other known Tarot packs of any kind containing
the Emperor and Empress and with a known
ranking, the Emperor, as one would expect, ranks
higher than his consort. But the coincidence
makes it likely that the reversal of the order of the
two Imperial figures that occurs in de Hautot's
pack, but not in the eighteenth-century Belgian
ones, was not due to any mistake, there may have
been a vogue for this reversal during the
seventeenth century, affecting both the
Paris/Rouen pattern and the Tarot de Marseille.
In any case, the list of trumps given in the Maison
académique in connection with the Swiss game is
itself evidence that the Tarot de Marseille was
well established, at least in Switzerland, by 1659,
since, the relative order of the Emperor and
Empress apart, in no other form of Tarot pack do
53 I remember noticing in one small town in Sicily, that the
regular packs on sale in the shops and being used for play in
the cafés were, by some quirk of history, of the Piaeentine, not
the Sicilian, pattern.
the trumps occur in precisely that order and with
precisely those names, save in the Piedmontese
and Lombard offshoots; in particular, they did
not do so in the Tarot de Besancon, the other
standard pattern known to have been used in
Switzerland.
The description given in the in/Iaison académlque
is very far from being either lucid or exhaustive,
and I set out the games it describes according to
the best understanding of the text at which I have
been able to arrive, without full confidence that I
have interpreted it correctly. It is not even quite
clear how many distinct games it is intended to
mention. Une might, from one phrase, 'relay qui a
Le Plus de leuée, gagne Za Parll€', suppose that there
was First mentioned a simple trick-taking game,
that is, one in which what counted, for win or
loss, was simply the number of tricks taken by
each player, irrespective of the cards contained in
them, and that the values of the cards, stated in
the next section but one, are intended to relate
only to a different game. However, I reject this
interpretation, since the phrase quoted above is
preceded by a careful explanation of the role of
the Fool as Excuse, including the practice of
taking it back and giving a card in exchange for
it, and there would be no point whatever in this
latter practice in a simple trick-taking game in
which it did not matter which particular cards
one had in one's tricks at the end of play. As I
understand the text, then, there are four games
described, two very straightforward ones, one
with the very unusual feature of a secondary
trump suit, and one a gambling game in which
the taking of tricks plays a very minor role.
The most natural reading of the text is that the
simplified order was employed, i.e. that, in every
suit, the Jack was followed by the 10 and the Ace
was low, the order in Cups and Coins thus
coinciding with that in Swords and Batons. The
convention followed in this respect makes no
difference whatever to the game; but it is
surprising to Find that some French players had
adopted this simplification at so early a date.
Although it is now universal in France, we know
from the inscription on the 2 of Cups in de
Hautot's pack that the original order, in which
the numeral cards run in opposite directions in
the two pairs of suits, was observed by some
players in seventeenth-century France,
presumably those of Normandy, as by those in
Belgium. German and Swiss players almost
always observed the original order, and, on the
 The Early Stage; of the Game in France
assumption that it was from France that the
game spread to Germany, the adoption of the
simplified order by French players cannot have
been widespread until after it had done so.
Indeed, until the early years of this century Tarot
players in Besangon were still observing the
original order. Probably it was a matter of quite
local custom, the most that we can infer from the
Maison académique account is that the simplified
order prevailed in Paris.
Seventeen!l2-cenlury French Tarot (first Jersion)
Terminology
The game is called Le jet de Taros. Trumps are called
triomplzes, the XXI Le A/Iorzde, the I Ze Basteleur and the
Fool je For,
Rank and values of the fardx
The full 78-card Italian-suited pack is used. The
trumps rank in ordinary numerical sequence, with the
XXI lrllonciel highest. In each suit the cards rank, in
descending order, K, Q. C, J 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2,
n
A. The For serves as Excuse (the phrase used is 'Ze For
ser! d 'excuse") , it can be played at any time,
irrespective of any obligation to follow suit or trump,
and is taken back and placed with the cards the player
has won in tricks, another card from among those he
has won in tricks being immediately given in
exchange for it. (All this is stated quite explicitly.) It
is obligatory to follow suit if one can, and, if one
cannot, to play a trump if one can. The values of the
counting cards are as follows :
The Far 5 points
The Monde 4 points
The Basteleur 4 points
Each King 4 points
Each Queen 3 points
Each Chevalier 2 points
Each lack 1 point
Deal and/May
For the rest the description of the game is extremely
vague It is expressly said that the number of cards to
be dealt to each player can vary according to
agreement. Each player plays for himself, but the
number of players is also left unspecified. The dealer
takes no more cards than the other players, and each
player plays with the hand dealt to him, without
discarding any cards. Deal and play are presumably
counter-clockwise, and presumably also it is the player
215
to the right of the dealer who leads to the first trick. At
the beginning of the round, each player puts an agreed
stake on the table, at the end of the round, each counts
up the points on the cards he has won in tricks, and the
one with the highest point-total takes all the stakes.
The language used about the method of counting
points is rather vague. It could be construed to mean
that the only points are those on the countiNg cards;
but it more probably means that a player counts 1
point for each trick he has taken, plus the points for the
counting cards they contain.
Seventeerztl1-wrztwy Franck Tarot (second version)
The terminology, rules of play and rank of the cards
are as in the preceding version. The only counting
cards mentioned are the For, worth 5 points, and the
Kings, worth 4 points each, but it is most likely that
this is due only to the breathless style of exposition,
and that we are intended to assume that all the values
are as in the Preceding game. Each player plays for
himself, and each is dealt twelve cards; as before, the
dealer takes no extra cards, and there is no discard. It
is expressly stated that the number of players can vary
(the maximum will be six), although later versions
specify four. At the end of the round, each player who
has won twelve or more cards in tricks counts 1 point
for each card he has in excess of twelve, plus the
values of his counting cards, a player who has won
less than twelve cards in tricks subtracts from the total
value of his counting cards the difference between 12
and the number of cards he has won (he may thus
have a negative score). If necessary, a running total is
kept from round to round, and the first player to
attain a cumulative score of 50 points wins the game.
La rigueur
In the text, only the peculiarity of this game is
explained, which is that the suit of Swords, called Za
rzgueur, constitutes a secondary trump series. We may
therefore take it to be played in other respects like
either the first or the second version above. A trick is
won by the highest proper trump played to it, or, if
there is no proper trump, by the highest card of the
Swords suit, or, if there is neither, by the highest card
of the suit led. As usual, a player must follow suit if he
can, including playing a trump if trumps are led and
playing a Sword if Swords are led. If Swords are led,
and he cannot follow suit, he must as usual play a
trump if he can. If a plain suit is led, and he cannot
follow suit, he must play either a trump or a Sword if he
can.
216 Part II: Game; with 78 cards
Triompizeforcée
This is a mere gambling game, played by an indefinite
number of players, it would be practicable for
between four and ten. Each player puts up a stake,
and then each is dealt Five cards. If any player has Za
Mort (trump XIII ) in his hand, he declares it
immediately, and takes all the stakes; there is then a
new deal by the next dealer. Otherwise, each player in
turn, starting with the one on the dealer's right,
declares whether he has one or more of Ze For, Le
Basteleur (trump I) and Za Force (trump IX in Viévil's
ordering, XI in others). A player holding either the
For or the Basleleur receives back the value of his stake ,
one having Za Force receives twice the value of his
stake; one holding two or all three of these cards gets
the combined sum. If no stakes are left on the table at
the end of these declarations, there is then a new deal.
If any stakes are left, the hands are played out in
tricks, under the usual rules. The player who obtains
the greatest number of tricks obtains the remaining
stakes, if two players have each won two tricks, the
stakes go tO the one who first won two tricks, if all five
tricks have been won by different players, the stakes
go to the player who first wo.n a trick. It is not made
clear whether the players' stakes must all be equal, or
whether each can choose the size of his stake, the
former seems more likely.
Triomphe force is of course not on the main line
of development of Tarot games; it is merely one
of those gambling games which will always be
devised with any pack of cards that is in regular
use. The game of la rigueur displays the kind of
inventiveness often found in the history of games
in a vigorous condition that are not regarded as
having yet been developed to perfection, but the
particular idea of a secondary trump suit was not
to bear any fruit. But, for the rest, the Maison
académique account, written about a century and a
half after the introduction of Tarot into France,
appears to display the game in a surprisingly
primitive stage of development, of which the most
striking is that not all the cards are dealt out, and
that no one takes extra cards and discards a
corresponding number. These features, present
in almost every other known form of Tarot game,
are found in Swiss Tarot, as described in the
Matron académique and set out in the next chapter.
We have seen that there appear to have been two
different traditions of design for the Tarot pack in
France, distinct though interacting with one
another; one probably prevailing in Paris and
Normandy, and continued in Belgium; the other
the tradition of the Tarot de Marseille, prevailing
in Switzerland and presumably in the entire
eastern strip of France and adjacent French-
speaking areas, and the source for the designs of
all Italian-suited Tarot cards used in Germany
and Central Europe. We have seen, too, that the
game of Tarot had, by the beginning of the
eighteenth century, died out in the area where
the Paris/Rouen pattern was in use; perhaps it
lingered for some time in Normandy after it had
been forgotten in Paris, but probably not for very
long. As we shall see, the Swiss game described
in the Maison académique is precisely of the kind
we should in any case have guessed to be
ancestral to those later played with the 78-card
pack in Germany, Austria, France and northern
Italy, whereas those which the book describes as
played in France itself seem quite remote from
any line of evolution we should expect. The
probability is, therefore, that there were
associated with the two traditions of design two
distinct traditions of play, and that the French
Tarot games described in the Maison académique
belong to that tradition which prevailed in
Normandy and Paris, subsequently to die out in
France. This conjecture would be confirmed if
forms of Tarot play continuous with this
tradition could be shown to have been followed in
eighteenth-century Belgium, unfortunately, l
know of no source that describes the game as
played in that part of the Netherlands, while
Dutch sources give accounts of games strongly
influenced by German or later French modes of
play. If the conjecture is correct, it is probable
that the type of Tarot game played, in the
seventeenth century, in the eastern part of
France, in which the game was to have a
continuous history, was much closer to that
described in the Maison académique as that
ordinarily played by the Swiss than to the games
presented as played in France.
 CHAPTER TEN
Swiss Tarot, Tarock or Troccas
In the catalogue Schweitzer Spiejkarten to the
exhibition of Swiss playing cards held in Zurich
in 1978, Dr Balz Eberhard states (p. 181) that
Tarot cards arrived in Switzerland from France
at the beginning of the eighteenth century. It is
apparent from the description of the Swiss game
in the Maison académique of 1659 that this dating is
too late; as previously noted, the author claimed
that the Swiss, like the Germans, did not
ordinarily play any other game than Tarot.
Although this is obviously a wild exaggeration, it
testifies to the great popularity that the game had
in mid-seventeenth-Century Switzerland; it also
disproves the suggestion sometimes made, that
Tarot was brought to Switzerland by Huguenot
emigrants from France, since this emigration did
not begin on any large scale until 1682, in
response to the persecution by Louis XIV.
Eberhard observes that in the eighteenth century
Tarot was played in every part of the country,
adding that it was particularly popular in the
higher ranks of society; he cites as an example
the fondness ofjohann Bernoulli II (1710-1790),
professor of mathematics at the University of
Basle, for playing the game with his students. We
cannot put the arrival of the game of Tarot in
Switzerland later than the beginning of the
seventeenth century. As explained later, there is
reason to conjecture that it arrived there
independently from Italy a hundred years earlier
yet, at the same time that it reached France.
From at least the eighteenth century on, many
Tarot packs were made in Switzerland. Ones
employing the Tarot de Marseille pattern, or
slight variations on it, were made for the mainly
Protestant French-speaking cantons. In the
German-speaking cantons, and no doubt
particularly in the Catholic ones, the Tarot de
Besancon was used instead. The name used for
this standard pattern is due to its production by
various cardmakers of Besangon at around the
beginning of the nineteenth century, but there is
no reason to suppose that it originated there; as
already remarked, the earliest surviving example
was made in 6.1680 by _Johann Pelagius Mayer of
Constance. The Tarot de Besancon is plainly a
variant of the Tarot de Marseille, and, like it, has
inscriptions on the court cards and trumps giving
their names in full. Since in Switzerland, as in
Germany, these inscriptions are invariably in
French, it is to be presumed that the game of
Tarot was First played in Switzerland in the
French-speaking cantons, and only later spread
from there to the German-speaking ones. Most
cards of the Tarot de Besancon resemble those of
the Tarot de Marseille, and some of the minor
variations are shared with the Piedrnontese
variant, such as the full face on the Moon (trump
XVIII ), the droplets on the judgment (trump
XX) and the use of the term Le Fo! instead of Le
Mat for the Fool. The furry trousers worn by the
Devil (trump XV) are shared with the Lombard
variant. The Ace of Cups shows a rounded cup
with a lid in place of the Gothic chalice of the
Tarot de Marseille, and a minor but distinctive
detail is that the Jack of Batons has his hands
close together instead of spaced apart. More
surprising is the fact that the Queens are
standing instead of seated; but by far the most
characteristic feature is the replacement of the
Pope and Popess on trumps V and II by Jupiter
and Juno respectively. We have already seen the
218 Part II: Games with 78 wards
Pope and Popess replaced by other figures in de
Hautot's pack and in the Belgian Tarot, and we
shall later note their disappearance from various
Italian forms of the Tarot pack. It is evident that,
to Catholics in many areas, these figures gave
offence; to use the Emperor as a playing card was
permissible, but to use the Pope in the same way
was dubious, and to give him a consort appeared
an outrage. An illustration of the strength of
feeling this could arouse is provided by a Tarot
pack made in Prague now in the Bibliotheque
Municipale in Rouen.' This employs the
Lombard pattern, which of course includes the
Pope and Popess among the trumps. Milan was
awarded to Austria at the Treaty of Utrecht in
1713, and we shall find that Milanese fashions in
Tarot play had a strong inHerence in eighteenth-
century Austria; a Lombard pattern pack made
in Wels at the end of the eighteenth century is
now in the British Museum The pack now at
Rouen has the usual ins'criptions in French on
the trumps and court cards, and, on the 2 of
Cups, the inscription IN BRAG. It is in a carton,
which it fits exactly, and which the catalogue
states to be of German manufacture. The carton
has a Fine marbled exterior, and bears a label
with an engraved design enclosing a hand-
written note in German in what I should judge to
be an eighteenth-century hand. The note reads,
'A rare Tarock pack for which the maker was
beheaded on account of a satirical figure painted
on it', and what may be a later addition to this
inscription refers to trump no. II? The catalogue
assigns the pack to the seventeenth century, but
it can hardly be earlier than 1760. If the story is
true, the unfortunate cardmaker was unjustly
executed, since he was intending no satire, but
merely copying the Italian prototype of the
pattern he was following. I do not know whether,
at that date, so harsh a punishment is likely to
have been inflicted for so minor an offence, even if
it had been intentional; but, whether true or
false, the story exemplifies the sort of reaction to
the figure of the Popess that could be thought
intelligible. It was no doubt because of this
reaction that the Tarot de Marseille itself seems
1 The pack is in the Leber Collection, catalogue no. 1351-
XXIII.
2 G-294 in O'Donoghue's catalogue.
3 The inscription reads, 'Eine seltne Tarock-Karte,
drum der Verfertiger wegen einer dazu gernalten
satyrischen Figur enthauptet Worden', and below 'N° //
Fig: No: II', as best I can read it.
to have been confined to French-speaking areas :
it was the Tarot de Besancon which was used,
not only in the German-speaking cantons of
Switzerland, but also in Germany itself.
The Maz'son académique gives a sketchy
description of a form of Tarot as being ordinarily
played by the Swiss; but the description is
sufficiently detailed for us to recognise the game
as of just the type which later became standard,
with no complications in the way of declarations
of combinations of cards held in the hand before
play, or of special bonuses for particular feats
effected during play.
Seventeenth-cenlury Swiss Tarot
There are three players. Each receives twenty-five
cards, and the dealer takes in addition the last three
cards for himself. He then discards any three cards of
his choice, putting them face down beside him: these
cards count for him at the end of the round just as if
they had formed a trick he had won in play. (In
almost all forms of Tarot in which such a discard is
made, there are restrictions on the cards that may be
discarded: at the very least, the dealer may not
discard the Fou, the XXI (Monde), the I (Basteleur)
or a King, often he may not discard any trump. No
such restriction is stated in the A/Iaison académique
account, but this is more likely than not to be an
oversight.) Each of the three players plays for himself,
a game (Partier) consists of three rounds, so that each
deals once. The terminology given is as in the French
games described in the last chapter, trumps are called
Mom/Jhes, the Fool Le For, the XXI /e A/Ionde and the I Ze
Basteleur. The values of the cards are :
The XXI (la/Ionde) 5 points
The I (Basteleur) 5 points
Each King 5 points
Each Queen 4 points
Each Chevalier 3 points
The Fou 3 points
An obvious eccentricity is that the Jacks are
apparently treated as low cards; but it is just as likely
that they were in fact worth 2 points, and that the
failure to mention them is just a piece of carelessness
on the part of the author. The method of counting
points is not stated; but, from the fact that, apart from
the Fou and perhaps the Jacks, the value of each
counting card is one higher than in the contemporary
French game, the most probable hypothesis is that the
cards were counted in threes, in the sense explained in
Chapter 8: that is, that three low cards together count
1 point, three cards containing a single counting card
 Swiss Tarot, Tarock or Troccas
together count the value of that counting card, two
counting cards and a low card count one less than the
sum of values of the counting cards, and three
counting cards count two less than the sum of their
values. Nothing special is said about the order of the
cards in the suits, from which one would naturally
infer that it was as in the French game, but, since in
the modern game the original order is respected, it is
probable that it was also observed in the seventeenth
century, and that this represents another oversight by
the author. The Fou is explicitly stated to serve as
Excuse; it can therefore be played at any time,
regardless of obligation to follow suit or to trump, and
is withdrawn from the trick and added to the cards
won by the player, from among which he immediately
selects a card to be given in exchange. It is to be
presumed that the standard rules of play apply, that
deal and play are counter-clockwise and that the
player to the right of the dealer leads to the first trick.
Each player records his score in points at the end of
each round, and keeps a running total, the player with
the highest total at the end of the three rounds wins
the game,
Early in the second half of the eighteenth
century there occurred an event of the highest
importance for the history of playing cards,
though of no importance whatever for the
history of Tarot as a game. In the Tarot pack,
the Italian suits of Swords, Batons, Cups and
Coins were replaced by the French suits of
Spades, Clubs, Hearts and Diamonds. The court
cards - King, Queen, Cavalier and Jack -
remained the same; the black suits were regarded
as corresponding to the 'long' Italian suits of
Swords and Batons, and the red ones as
corresponding to the 'round' suits of Cups and
Coins, so that, in Spades and Clubs, the cards
ranked, in descending order, K, Q, C,], 10, 9, 8,
7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, A, while in Hearts and Diamonds
they ranked K, Q o,j, A, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.
With this change of suit-system, the old subjects
disappeared from the trump cards. The Fool
remained a fool or jester of some kind, but the
traditional subjects on the trumps proper were
replaced by arbitrary designs. At first by far the
most popular subjects for the trump cards in
these new French-suited Tarot packs were
different species of animals. Later there were
used instead rural and domestic scenes. At the
whim of the cardmaker, designs of any kind
might be employed for the trumps: famous
buildings, flowers, characters from drama or
Fiction, or even satirical political cartoons.
French-suited Tarot packs became the principal
219
vehicle by which cardmakers could display their
skill at creating new designs, unfettered by
tradition: all that the card player required was
that the number of each trump be plainly marked
upon it, and he identified it by number alone. At
no stage did any of the new designs serve as the
means by which the trump card was identified:
even in the animal packs, the cards were never
called by the names of the animals represented on
them, and so the manufacturer could alter the
selection of animals or their order without the
card players' even noticing. The only exception to
this is that the lowest trump, the I, the Bagatto of
the Italian pack, was very often depicted as some
kind of pedlar, dancer or jester. Naturally, the
practice, observed in all Italian-suited Tarot
packs made outside Italy after the sixteenth
century, of inscribing their names on the trump
cards, was discontinued, and, with it, that of
inscribing in full on the court cards their ranks
and suits. In German-speaking areas, the XXI
indeed usually continued to be known as der
Mood, a corruption of the French Le Monde OI`
Italian IZ Monde (the World): but the derivation
of this name was wholly forgotten, with the result
that, in some French-suited packs, the design on
the XXI shows the Moon in the sky, der A/Iorzd in
German meaning 'the Moon'.
The replacement of the traditional Italian-
suited Tarot pack by the French-suited one
seems first to have been carried out in Bavaria
and in Austria and its non-Italian dominions in
the 1750s, and, after about 1760, the Italian-
suited pack became quite unknown in those
areas. In Italy itself, except in Trieste, the
Trentino and the French-speaking parts of
Savoy, the French-suited Tarot pack was never
viewed as acceptable. But, both in Belgium and
in the rest of Germany, the Bavarian and
Austrian example was followed from about 1760
onwards. In Belgium the French-suited pack
quickly ousted the Italian-suited one. In
Germany the Italian-suited pack continued to co-
exist with the French-suited one down to the end
of the eighteenth century, when it finally died out.
In France, on the other hand, the French-suited
Tarot pack did not make its appearance until the
middle of the nineteenth century. In Switzerland
many of the German-speaking cantons took to
the use of the French-suited pack, with animals
on the trumps, in about 1780. French-speaking
ones, however, remained faithful to the Italian-
suited form until around the end of the
220 Part II: Games with 78 card;
nineteenth century; the Tarot de Besangon
pattern was replaced in Switzerland, in about
1860, by new designs based loosely on it and
retaining Jupiter and Juno in place of the Pope
and Popess on trumps V and II. The Tarot de
Marseille continued to be produced in
Switzerland until quite recent times. There seems
to have been a gap between the French-suited
'animal' Tarot and the modern 'bourgeois'
French-suited Tarot pack, with genre scenes on
the trumps, which first appeared in Switzerland in
the 1890s. It therefore seems that, after a period
when the animal Tarot was in use among them,
the German-speaking cantons reverted in the
nineteenth century to the Italian-suited pack, in
the form with jupiter andjuno, which is still used
by German- and Romansh-speaking players
today; Switzerland is in fact the only country
besides Italy where the Italian-suited Tarot pack
remains in regular use for play. The 'bourgeois'
Tarot, on the other hand, was introduced for use
in French-speaking areas, where it has now
completely replaced the Tarot de Marseille.
Apart from the brief account in the Maison
aradémique , there are not, to my knowledge, any
published descriptions of Swiss Tarot, and so it is
impossible to follow the history of the game in
that country. At the present time, the game has
largely gone out of fashion; but Switzerland is a
country in which local tradition is extremely
tenacious, and it is therefore unlikely to be in any
danger of dying out. As stated by Dr Eberhard in
the catalogue already mentioned, and Confirmed
by the playing-card manufacturers AG MUller, it
is now played only in four areas: in the canton of
GraubUnden (Grisons), the largest but least
densely populated of all the Swiss cantons, a
largely Protestant one of which about half the
population is Rornansh-speaking, Italian being
spoken in a few districts and the rest speaking
German; in the canton of Wallis (Valais),
French-speaking and Protestant in the west,
German-speaking and Catholic in the east; in the
largely Catholic canton of Fribourg (Freiburg),
similarly divided between French and German
speakers, where, according to AG MUller, the
game has almost died out and, according to
Eberhard, is now principally confined to elderly
ladies; and in certain villages of the Jura,
presumably in the French-speaking Protestant
cantons of Vaud and Neuch8tel. The Italian-
suited pack is in use in GraubUnden and Wallis,
the French-suited one in Fribourg and the Jura
villages, and two quite different types of game are
played with the two kinds of pack. That played in
Fribourg and the Jura with the French-suited
pack is very close to modem French Tarot, and a
description of it is therefore postponed until
Chapter 15. The game played with the Italian-
suited pack is peculiar to Switzerland, in
response to an enquiry in 1968, AG miller
kindly sent me a duplicated description, in
German, of this game, and have subsequently
conhrrned that the rules there given are followed
by players in Graubiinden and Wallis. A visit to
Sedrun by Mrjohn McLeod in 1978, undertaken
at my suggestion, provided the opportunity for
observing the game as played there. Sedrun is in
the Romansh-speaking part of Graubiinden,
being a ski resort in the Vorderrheintal. The
game is called Troccas in Romansh, and is the
principal card game played in Sedrun and the
surrounding villages, having enjoyed something
of a revival there recently. It is played by men
and women of all ages, and tournaments are
regularly held; there is, in particular, a women's
Troccas club. McLeod was informed that the
game is less popular in Disentis, but that players
can be found as far down the valley as Ilanz. The
players are unaware of the existence of the
French-suited Tarot pack; the standard form of
the game is a four-handed one, as is also stated in
the MUller leaHet, and the version described in
the leaflet resembles very closely that observed
by McLeod, with certain differences stated
below. The players at Sedrun attribute the
introduction of the game to their region to the
invasion by French troops in 1798. It is hard to
say how much substance there may be to this
tradition, in any case, the game, as played in
Sedrun, and as described in the miller leaflet,
displays no French characteristics, and lacks the
complications of bidding, bonuses and
declarations, and therefore probably represents
an indigenous Swiss tradition of a mode of play
that has changed little since the seventeenth
century.
German and Romansl2 terminology
The game is called Tarock in German and Troccas in
Romansh. Trumps are called Tarock in German
(invariable in the plural), and Trows; in Romansh.
The suit of Coins is known as Rosen in German and
Rosas in Romansh; that of Cups is called Keir/zen in
German and Cu/yas in Romansh. The suits of Swords
 Swiss Tarot, Tarock or Troccas
and Batons are called S/Jada; and Easlurzx In
Romansh, the MUller leaflet does not cite the names
of these suits. The Fool is called der Nair in German
and in Nary in Romansh. The trump 21 is simply
called Der eznurzd.3wan.zzg5Ze in German, but i n M u n d in
Romansh, similarly, the trump 1 is called der erst in
German but in Bagar in Romansh. The King is called
der Kzfnig in German and in Retq in Romansh; the Queen
is called die Ifzinigin in German and la Regina in
Romansh, the Gavalier is called der Reiter in German
and zl Cavagl in Romansh, and the jack is called d e r B y
in German and i t B o o b in Romansh. The obvious
German etymology of the Romansh terms it Nair and in
Buoy suggests, at the very least, that the game as played
amongst Romansh speakers has been influenced by
German-speaking players.
A/Iodern four-handed Swim" Tfoccas or Tarock
Rank and values of the cards
An Italian-suited 78-card pack is used. In the suits,
the cards rank in their original order: that is, in
Swords and Batons, they rank, in descending order, K,
Q, C, J, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, A, and, in Cups and
Roses (Coins), K, Q, C, J, A, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.
The trumps rank in their natural order, from 21 down
to 1. The values of the counting cards are :
the 21 5 points
the 1 5 points
the Fool 5 points
each King 5 points
each Queen 4 points
each Cavalier 3 points
each .Jack 2 points
The cards are counted in fours. The dealer's side will
have two odd cards, which count as if there were four
of them: that is to say, two odd low cards count
I together 1 point, two odd cards consisting of a
counting card and a low card count together the value
of the counting card, and two odd counting cards
I count together one less than the sum of their values.
There are thus altogether 72 points.
I
8
Deal
There are four players, who are to play in two fixed
partnerships. To determine partners, the Miller
leaflet lays down that, after the top card has been
placed in the middle of the table, the cards shall be
dealt out, face up, one by one to each of the players in
rotation, as soon as a trump is dealt to any player, he
4
I receives no more cards. When all the players have a
trump, those with the two lowest trumps become
221
partners, as do those with the two highest, the one
with the lowest trump becomes the first dealer. The
players arrange themselves so that partners are facing
each other across the table.
According to the la/Hiller leaflet, deal and play are
counter-clockwise, and this is the practice at Sedrun,
at Disentis, however, deal and play are clockwise. As
is usual,the dealer shuffles and the player to his left
(to his right when the deal is clockwise) cuts the pack.
At Sedrun, it is usual for all the players to look at the
card which is cut, which will become the bottom card
of the pack, this rule is not stated in the miller leaflet.
The dealer gives nineteen cards to each of the other
players, and twenty-one to himself. The normal
method of dealing is as follows: the dealer gives six
cards to each player in rotation, beginning with the
one to his right (to his left when the deal is clockwise);
he then gives six more cards to each; finally, he gives
seven cards to each of the other three players, taking
the remaining nine cards himself. The MUller leaflet
states that the last card dealt to each player, including
the dealer himself, may be dealt face up, this is the
invariable practice at Sedrun, where the,dealer's last
card has already been seen when the pack was cut.
The MUller leaflet states that it is the practice in
many places that, after each of the three rounds of the
deal, including the final one, the players may propose
that the deal be abandoned and that there be a new
deal by the same dealer, but any player, including the
dealer himself, May veto such a proposal. This is the
practice at Sedrun, where, after each round of the
deal, each player in turn, beginning with the one to
the 'dealer's right, says whether he proposes that'the
deal be abandoned, until a player is reached who
wishes it to continue (or play to proceed). It is in fact
rare for the deal to be abandoned in this way. The
MUller leaflet states that, if the dealer has no trump in
his hand at the end of the deal, he may annul the deal,
and deal afresh, even against the wishes of the other
players, only the dealer has this privilege. So far as is
known, this is not the practice at Sedrun.
According to the MUller leaflet, if, at the beginning
of any deal, one side has a cumulative score of minus 9
game points or worse, that side may demand that the
deal be in two rounds only, one of nine cards followed
by one of ten cards each the dealer taking twelve in
the second round). If a side has a score of minus 18
game points or worse, the two partners may gather up
their own cards from the preceding round in any
order that they like, and, having cut the pack, demand
that the dealer give out the cards in a single round
(nineteen to each of the other players and twenty-one
to himself). The rule at Sedrun is slightly different,
namely that, if a side has a score of minus 14 game
points or worse, that side may demand either method,
a deal in two rounds or in a single round, as it wishes.
If either of these exceptional methods of dealing is
222 Part II: Games with 78 cards
demanded, there is still an opportunity to propose
that the hands be thrown in and the cards redealt
after each round of the deal.
Discard
When the deal has been completed, the dealer has to
discard two cards face down beside him to reduce his
hand to nineteen cards. These cards count to his side
at the end of the round as if there were four of them
(see under Rank and values of the cards). According
to the Mtiller leaflet, the general rule is that the dealer
may discard a card worth 5 points only if he discards
two such, but it remarks that some players do not
allow him to discard such a card at all. This latter
rule, that no 5-point card may be discarded, is that
which is observed at Sedrun; but, according to the
players there, there are villages lower down the
valley where the dealer is allowed to discard a King or
the trump 1 (Hagar), but not the 21 (/l/fund) or the Fool
(Nair).
Play
The player to the right of the dealer (or the one to his
left when play is clockwise) leads to the first trick. The
J\'2zrr (Fool) serves as Excuse. If the opponents of
the player who has the Nair win the trick to which he
plays it, he takes it back and puts it with the cards
won in tricks by his own side, immediately taking
from them a low card to give in exchange for it, it is
not allowed to give a card in exchange for the Nary
from the dealer's discard. If the side playing the Nary
has not yet won any tricks, they keep the Nair face up
until they do so and can give a card in exchange. If the
side that has the JVkzrr make no tricks (in German
terminology, is made A/lalxc/1), they must surrender
the N411 to their opponents. It is legal to lead the Mfr
to a trick, in which case the next player may play any
card, which determines the suit of the trick, to which
the others have to follow suit if they can, or, if they
cannot, to play a trump if they can. If the dealer's side
fails to win a trick, it must surrender the dealer's
discard to the opponents.
Play is under the usual rules, but there is a special
rule unknown in any other type of Tarot game. This is
stated in the miller leaflet as follows. If a player plays
the King of a suit to the First trick to which that suit is
led, he may demand, when the trick is completed, that
the Jack be played. If he makes this demand, then the
player holding the Jack must surrender it, taking back
into his hand a numeral card of that suit which has
been played to the table. If, however, the player who
holds the Jack has played the Queen or Cavalier of the
suit to the trick, he takes back that court card in
exchange for the jack. The rule as observed at
Sedrun is slightly different. Here a player who plays
the King the First time that the suit is led is obliged to
call for the jack. If the player who has the jack has
not yet played, he is obliged to play it; if he already
played to the trick, he must surrender the jack and
take in exchange a numeral card of that suit played to
the trick (even when he himself played one of the
other two court cards). If the player who has the King
has the jack himself, he may play both cards to the
trick, taking one of the numeral cards played to it in
exchange. It seems evident that one is not allowed to
use the Nary to escape losing the _Jack in this way, it is
probable that if the player calls for the jack when it is
in the dealer's discard, he does not get it.
The MUller leaflet states another rule, found, in
various forms, in Italian games, but not elsewhere. If a
player has the trump 21, he may, whenever he is first
compelled to play a trump, knock on the table to
signal to his partner his possession of the 21. After the
21 has been played, the same signal may be used to
indicate possession of the 20, and, after the 20 has
been played, to indicate possession of the 19, etc. The
leaflet adds that this rule is not observed in all
localities, and it does not appear to be practised at
Sedrun.
Such a rule is not required at Sedrun, because the
general practice there is to permit any amount of
conversation during play. A player may give his
opponent information about the cards he has in his
hand, or instructions or suggestions about what to
play; this may be done at any stage of the deal or the
play. There is no requirement that the information
given be true: a player may make deliberately false
statements to mislead his opponents. The only
restriction is that every remark be clearly audible and
comprehensible to the others: secret signals are not
allowed. The players at Sedrun stated that the
greatest variation in the manner of play in different
parts of the Vorderrheintal is in the amount and type
of conversation permitted; some schools allow only
limited conversation, or even none at all, but details of
the restrictions are not available to me as yet.
Scoring
A game consists of four rounds, not including
abandoned deals. At the end of each round, each
side scores the difference, positive or negative,
between its total of card points and 363 at Sedrun
these are not written down, but just remembered.
After each round, therefore, the positive score of one
side will be exactly balanced by the negative score, of
the same absolute value, of the other. The winning
side is of course that which has a positive cumulative
score at the end of the four rounds.
In Sedrun the game is played only in this four-
handed version, although it was reported that a
'I Swzm Tarot, Tarock or Troccas
three-handed form is played in Ilanz. The Mflller
leaflet describes versions for six, three and five
players.
A/Iodern six-lzanded Swiss Tarock
The six players form two fixed partnerships of three
each, the members of the two sides sit alternately.
Each player receives thirteen cards in the deal, the
x method of dealing is not stated (it may be in two
rounds of four cards each followed by one of Five
I each). The dealer takes no extra cards, and there is
F
therefore no discard. At the end of the round, the
cards are counted in Thurs, one side will have two odd
cards, which, like the dealer's discard in the four-
handed game, are counted as if they were a full set of
four, so that there are still 72 points altogether. A
game presumably consists of six rounds.All else is as
in the four-handed game.
A/Iodern three-handed Swim Tarock or Trowa;
Each of the three players plays for himself. The dealer
gives twenty-five cards to each of the other two players
and twenty-eight to himself, discarding three; the
2
method of dealing is not stated, but is likely to be in
two rounds of eight cards each and a final round in
which the other two players receive nine cards and the
g
dealer takes the last twelve. At the end of the round,
f
each player counts his points on the cards he has won
in tricks. In this game, the cards are counted one by
one: each low card counts 1 point, and the counting
cards each have their full value. Low cards in the
dealer's discard, however, count nothing, and
counting cards in the discard count one less than their
\ nominal value. There are thus altogether 127 points.
W
The dealer scores, in game points, the difference,
positive or negative, between his point-total and 43
points, each of the other two players scores the
s
difference, positive or negative, between his point-
1
total and 42 points. For the rest, all the rules of the
four-handed game apply, save of course that there is
no conversation and no signalling that one has the
highest trump, since there are no partners.
\H Modernjve-handed Swiss Tarock
* is quite as likely to have been in the French-
Each player plays for himself. The game is exactly like
the three-handed one, save that the dealer gives fifteen
cards to each of the other players and eighteen to
himself, discarding three. The method of dealing is
not stated, presumably it is in three rounds of five
cards each. The dealer scores the difference, positive
223
or negative, between his point-total and 27 points,
each of the other players scores the difference, positive
or negative, between his point-total and 25 points.
The game described in the Maison acadérrzique of
1659 was probably already known in
neighbouring parts of France when that work
was compiled, similar forms of Tarot game may
well have been played throughout eastern
France. It is plain that players in the French-
speaking cantons of Switzerland kept in touch
with developments in the game as played in
France and adapted their mode of play
accordingly. The game as now played by the
Romansh and German speakers of Graubiinden
and Wallis, on the other hand, represents a
purely Swiss tradition, which seems wholly
unaffected by French influence; it has been
untouched by the complications of the later
forms of the game in France, or, for that matter,
in Germany. It has, however, two very
recognisably Italian features: the pause after
each round of the deal to see if all the players
agree to throw in their hands; and the signal used
in some circles to indicate possession of the
highest trump. Because of the unwavering use,
save for the interlude with the French-suited
animal Tarot, of a pack with French inscriptions
on the trumps and court cards, it may be
presumed that the German-speaking cantons
originally imported the game from the French-
speaking part of the country. But it is quite likely
that it arrived in Switzerland in the first place
direct from Italy, rather than through France:
the two Italian features just mentioned, at least
the first of which was already common in Italian
card games in the sixteenth century, may well
have already characterised the Swiss game when
the Maison académique was written, though
omitted from the very cursory description of it
given in that book.
If the game of Tarot racked Switzerland direct
from Italy, the most likely date for it to have done
so is in the period when the Swiss were involved
with the wars for the control of Milan, up to their
defeat by Francis I at Marignano in 1515. If so, it
speaking part of Switzerland as anywhere else
that the Tarot de Marseille pattern achieved its
definitive form, possibly by the end of the
sixteenth century; it is at least suggestive that the
Maison académique should have regarded the Tarot
de Marseille nomenclature and numbering (save
224 Part II: Cames with 78 card;
for the reversal of the Emperor and Empress) as
characteristically Swiss. We have too few clues to
decide this with any assurance, but we may
conjecture, with greater confidence, that the
Tarot de Bes ancon was a Swiss invention. The
invention must have occurred at some time in the
hundred years before the date, 41680, of the
earliest surviving pack. Tarot de Besancon packs
were produced in many widely separated towns
of Germany during the eighteenth century, as
well as in Switzerland and, presumably in large
part for export, in Strasbourg. The pattern may
have been a German invention rather than a
Swiss one: but there is at least a strong chance
that the Swiss were responsible both for the most
celebrated of Tarot patterns and for its principal
offshoot.
\
 CHAPTER ELEVEN
Classic Eighteenth-century Tarot Outside Italy
Two games, a three-handed and a four-handed
one, are to be regarded as the fundamental forms
of the game of Tarot. In both, the full 78-card
pack is used; in both, the Fool serves as Excuse,
each honour counts 5 points, each Queen 4, each
Cavalier 3 and each Jack 2, the honours being the
four Kings, the XXI, the I and the Fool. In
neither game are there any bids, declarations or
special bonuses: the only way of scoring points is
on cards won in tricks. In the three-handed form,
each plays for himself in each round; the dealer
receives twenty-eight cards in the deal and
discards three, the others receive twenty-five
cards. The dealer's discard counts for him at the
end of the round, and he may not discard
honours. The cards are counted in threes, so that
there are 78 points altogether. In the four-handed
game, the players form two fixed partnerships,
partners facing each other across the table. The
dealer receives twenty-one cards and discards
two, the others receive nineteen each. The
discarded cards may not include honours, and
count for the dealer's side at the end of the round.
The cards are counted in sets of four, the two
discarded cards being treated as a complete set,
so that there are 72 points altogether.
Of these two fundamental forms of Tarot, we
can recognise the modern Swiss four-handed
game as diverging from the fundamental four-
handed one only in a few respects, such as the
rule allowing one who plays a King to the first
trick in its suit to demand the jack; and we can
recognise the seventeenth-century Swiss game as
being essentially the fundamental three-handed
form, save that the Fool was valued at only 3
points (and possibly also that the Jacks were
treated as low cards). We shall meet repeatedly
with other games that diverge only slightly from
one or other of these two fundamental forms.
They are fundamental to the entire evolution of
Tarot outside Italy, with the sole exception of the
French games described in the Maison académique:
every Tarot game developed anywhere but in
Italy from the eighteenth century oNwards may
be seen as constructed on one or other of the two
fundamental forms as a basis (unless it be true
that Belgian players continued the tradition of
the Maison académique games). Since the
Bolognese and Sicilian forms of Tarocchi, and
the game of Minchiate, .cannot be viewed in this
way, there is good reason to regard all Tarot
games played outside Italy, save those we have
conjectured to have been played before 1700 in
Paris and Normandy, as stemming from a single
source, namely the tradition of play established
at some early date in eastern France and its
iMmediate neighbours, including the French-
speaking part of Switzerland. Very often, indeed,
the further developments were extremely far-
reaching, and involved not merely additions to,
but radical modifications of, the fundamental
games. Nevertheless, the history of Tarot, from
the eighteenth century to the present day, can be
understood only by taking the two fundamental
forms to be the starting-point.
The hundred years between about 1730 and
1830 were the heyday of the game of Tarot; it
was played not only in northern Italy, eastern
France, Switzerland, Germany and Austro-
Hungary, but also in Belgium, the Netherlands,
Denmark, Sweden and even Russia. Not only
was it, in these areas, a famous game with many
226 Part II: Games with 78 cards
devotees: it was also, during that period, more
truly an international game than it had ever been
before or than it has ever been since. At no stage
in its history has it ever been an international
game in the sense that Bridge and chess are
international games, namely that there are
international competitions and internationally
agreed rules, it has always been one played at
home or in the local tavern, coffeehouse or club,
and therefore constantly liable to develop local
variations. But international games in this sense
are a fairly modern phenomenon, and it is rare
for card games to achieve that status. During the
century that begins in about 1730, however, there
was less variation in the manner of playing Tarot
with the 78-card pack from one country to
another than at any other time. The game
assumed more or less the same general form
wherever it was played, with countless small
local variations in the exact rules or method of
scoring, but little deviation in the broad
principles of play from one country to another.
The substitution, in some areas, of the French-
suited for the Italian-suited Tarot pack made no
difference whatever in the manner of playing the
game, any more than it made a difference to the
game of Orb re whether it was played with a
Spanish-suited or French-suited pack. The type
of Italian-suited pack used in Germany and
Central Europe, namely one deriving from the
Tarot de Marseille and with inscriptions in
French, provides one reason for regarding the
game of Tarot as having travelled there via
French-speaking lands and not, say, direct from
Italy; a second reason is the conclusion argued
for above, that virtually all non-Italian games
have a common source. just when the game
reached Germany is problematic. The
affirmation of its great popularity there by the
Mazson académique of 1659 sets an upper bound.
Detlef Hoffmann has argued that it must have
been known there as early as 1557, on the ground
that Gatelin Geoffroy's Tarot pack of that year,
using as it does the non-standard suit-signs
introduced by Virgil Solis of Nuremberg, must
have been intended for export to Germany. The
argument is not conclusive. Non-standard suit-
signs were not unknown in France, though this is
the only recorded instance of their use, either in
France or Germany, in a Tarot pack. Moreover,
although D'Allemagne indeed states that
Geoffroy was principally concerned with making
cards for export, 'export' would include sending
cards to Lorraine, and D'Allemagne also remarks
that in the sixteenth century Lorraine obtained
playing cards chiefly from Lyons;' the reference
by Duke Charles Ill to playing cards made under
the name of Catelin Geoffroy has already been
quoted. There is, however, further support for a
sixteenth-century date in the statement of Ivan
I
Honl, unfortunately without a precise reference,
that Tarot cards were first mentioned in
Bohemia in 1586.2 ` Nevertheless, a weighty
argument tells against a date earlier than 1600. *E
This is the fact that Fischart, the German et
translator of Rabelais, very greatly extended
Rabelais's list of the games played by
Gargantua, but omitted from it the game of
Tarot, which Rabelais had included. Fischart
was born in 1546 or 1547 in Strasbourg; he died
at the end of the year 1590. The first edition of his
version of Rabelais came out, under the title
Gesc/lic/ztklz terung, in 1575, the second in 1582,
and the third, expanded, one, in which the list of
games was yet further enlarged, in the year of his
death, 1590.3 Fischart must have gone to
immense pains to discover the names of as many
games as possible to include in his list: his
omission of a game that appeared in Rabelais's
list is powerful evidence that it was not played in
Alsace during his lifetime. This iS particularly
strong evidence, in view of the fact that Alsace is
the obvious route for the game of Tarot to have
taken from France to Germany.
Were it not for Honl's Bohemian reference in
1586, the obvious conclusion would be that Tarot
did not reach Germany until around 1600; but
we can accept such a conclusion only by
dismissing Honl's reference as spurious. There is,
however, one possibility of reconciling the
conflicting evidence, namely by supposing that
the game first reached Germany, not from
France, but from Switzerland. Even so, it is
surprising that it should have reached Bohemia
before Alsace; we shall therefore do well to leave
that precise route and date of its arrival in
Germany an as yet unresolved mystery.
1 Both remarks are to be found in H.-R. D'Allemagne, Lex
Carter djouer, Paris, 1906, vol. II, p, 212
2 Ivan Honl, Z Minuloslz karetrzfhry U Cec/nic/1, Prague, 1947,
p. 31.
3A modern reprint of the third edition of the
Geschichtklzherung of .Johann der Taufer Friedrich Fischart
was published in DUsseldorf in 1963, edited by Ute Nyssa.
The chapter on games is chap. 25, pp. 238-51 in the 1963
edition, the list of games being on pp. 239-49.
 Classic Eighteenth-sentury Tarot Outside Italy
However the mystery is to be resolved, the
game must have become well established in
southern Germany in the early seventeenth
century; and, even if it did not originally enter
from France via Alsace, direct French influence
must have made itself felt at an early stage. By
the eighteenth century, Tarot de Besanqon packs
were being made not only in Kempten, Augsburg
and Mannheim, but also in Alsace, in
Strasbourg and Colmar. The most striking
evidence of French influence is the French
terminology used by German Tarot players.
We have seen that in the Maison- académique
the mode of playing the For was expressed
by saying that 'Ze For ser! d'excuse'. In the
eighteenth century French Tarot players
began calling the Fool !'Excuse, as they do to this
day. In German-speaking countries this name
was corrupted to der S6lzkis, der Skye, Der S6u"§, etc,
the form now in general use in Austria being der
Skzis; and the derivation must be from the French
word rather than from Italian musa, which was
not in the same way used as the name of the card.
Likewise, we have already seen that the XXI is
regularly known by German-speaking Tarot
players as Der Mood, or, in earlier times,
occasionally as der Mongue or der A/Iongu f,
corruptions of French Le II/Iond6. This could,
indeed, equally well be thought to 'be derived
from Italian it Monde, while the term sans Prendre
could be taken from French Orb re players, and
the term a troys instead of ,nu dot! for a three-
handed game regarded as a part of a general
Frenchified card player's vocabulary. But we can
only see the term Ifavallerie, for a set of court
cards in one suit, as an adaptation of the French
c/zevalerie, especially as there was no cognate term
in Italian, and can only take as based on a
French original the practice of saying 'avec'
(with) or '5an§' (without) to indicate whether or
not the trump I was included in a declaration of
ten trumps. The most striking example is the
term Try!! or Troupe, a corruption of French yous
Les troys, used in both Austria and Germany, for
the set of all three Tarot honours (the XXI, the I
and the Fool).
Almost the earliest account in the German
language of any form of Tarot game is that
given in a book entitled Die Kunst, die Welt
erlaubt mttzunehmen in den uerschiedenen Array
published in Vienna and
der Spieled (KW),
Nuremberg in 1756; and the second edition,
of 1769, contains the earliest account of a game
227
specifically said to be played in Austria. This
gamers said to be the newest form of four-
handed Tame played in Vienna, and employs the
Italian terms reals and doP/2i0. It proves in fact to
be precisely the type of four-handed game played
in Lombardy, which was then one of the Austrian
dominions, a game very close to the fundamental
four-handed form described at the beginning of
this chapter. We should therefore certainly see
this game as an importation from Lombardy,
but that in no way takes us outside the circle of
the 'international' form of Tarot that flourished
during that period, because, as we have seen, the
games played with the 78-card pack in
Lombardy and also in Piedmont during the
eighteenth century had probably themselves been
imported from France. Despite the vogue in
Vienna for a Milanese form of Tarot, the game of
Tarot in general must have been known in Vienna
before the Austrian acquisition of Milan in 1713,
at least if it was known in Bohemia by 15863 and,
in any case, the infly°ence of the German form of
the game soon proved greater than any influences
from Italy, and, at least in the second half of our
'international' century, Tarot as played in
Germany and in Austria are not to be
distinguished from one another. In the very book
already referred to, KW, there is also described a
game of the characteristic classic international
eighteenth-century type. The mutual influence
was certainly very much assisted by the shared
language: KW Was only the first of many card-
game books in German to be published
simultaneously in Vienna and in some German
city, books which must have helped to introduce
players to new modes of play which had
originated elsewhere and to maintain a common
tradition in German-speaking lands.
Before describing the developments that went
to form the classic international type of Tarot
game, it is best to set out the straightforward
four-handed Viennese 'game imported from
Lombardy, a game included in other German
card-game books up to the early nineteenth
century, and in Dutch ones up to 1836. From the
eighteenth century on, despite the great variety
of games played, the values of the counting cards
are, except in Italy, almost always the same,
namely those given for the fundamental games
described at the beginning of the chapter: 5
points each for the XXI, the I and the Fool; 5
points for each King; 4 points for each Queen; 3
points for each Cavalier, and 2 points for each
228 Partll: Games with 78 cards
jack. The method of counting points - whether in
twos, threes or fours, or in some other way -
varies considerably; but the actual values are
almost always constant (with, as it happens, one
exception in the game about to be described). It
will therefore save space henceforth, when,
describing non-Italian games, to refer to these
values as 'standard", noting any divergences. In
describing Italian games, however, the values
will still be stated explicitly, because there is
great variation.
Vzérznesefour-handed Tarot lmzd-eighteenth cerzturyl
TgrmMology
Trumps are called Taro's, the XXI is called the
II/Iorzgue, the I the Pagan and the Fool the S6u"r. The suits
are referred to by their Italian names, the discard is
called der Star arid a slam is called Volata.
Play
The four players form two Fixed partnerships, the
partners facing eachlother across the table. The full
78-card Italian-suited pack is used, the cards rank in
their original order. The dealer gives nineteen cards to
each player, and takes the last two for himself. It is
not stated how the cards are to be dealt. The last card
dealt to each player is turned face up by the dealer; he
himself turns face up the extra two cards that he is to
take, and, if either of them is a trump or a King, he
continues to turn his cards face up, beginning with
those last dealt, until two cards neither of which is a
trump or a King are visible. (Presumably the Sci is
counts for this purpose as a trump, though this is not
stated.) Then all pick up their hands, and the dealer
discards two cards, which may not be Kings or
trumps, but, if counting cards, count for his side at .
the end of the round. The counting cards have their
standard values, save that the XXI (Mongue) counts
6 points. The player to the dealer's right leads to the
first trick, the direction of play being counter-
clockwise, and the hands are played out under the
usual rules of play, the Sci is serves as Excuse. If the
opponents of the player who has the ScUs win the trick
to which it is played, they receive a card in exchange
for it. (By analogy with the Lombard game, they do so
either immediately or as soon as possible, and the
Sctis is surrendered if the side who played it win no
tricks, but this is not stated.) At the end of the round,
the cards are counted in fours, the two cards of the
dealer's discard count nothing if both are low cards,
and one less than the value of each counting card
otherwise. There are thus altogether 72 points. The
winning side scores the difference between its point-
total and 36 points. A game (Partie) consists of four
rounds. The winning side is that which has the higher
cumulative point-total; they score 1 game point for
the win, plus one more (for Do/Jbio) if the opponents
have scored no points (i.e. have not won a round); the
winners also receive a bonus of 1 game point (for
Reals) if they have scored 36 or more points more than
the losers. The bonus to be paid when, in any round
one side gives Volala to the other, i.e. wins all the
tricks, is to be settled by agreement, but, if a side wins
all the tricks in one round, but fails to win the game as
a whole, neither side pays the other. Usually six
games are played, two each with each possible
selection of partners, but sometimes the same
partners play together for all six games, this being
called apartitaferma.
Probably quite early in the eighteenth century,
Tarot players in France and Germany
introduced two new complications into the
fundamental three- and four-handed games.
These two new features were already well
established by 1755, on the testimony of the
Palameder Redivivus IPR) published in Leipzig in
that year; and, to judge by the French
vocabulary of that and other early German
accounts, it was in France that these new ideas
originated. The First new feature was that of
bonus scores for declarations or melds, before
play, of particular combinations of cards in the
hand of a Single player. This was not, indeed, a
wholly new idea; not only was it well known in
other games, but it had characterised certain
Italian forms of Tarocco from as early as the
sixteenth century. But, as we shall see, the typical
Italian rule was that one scored both for having
these special combinations in one's hand before
play began, and for having them among the cards
one had won in tricks at the end of play; and in
four-handed games with partners, these bonuses
tended to swamp the points won on individual
cards. In the classic games played outside Italy,
on the.other hand, the bonuses applied only to
combinations of cards held in hand before play.
Moreover, the combinations recognised were
different. It is thus probable that the introduction
of this feature into 'international' eighteenth-
century Tarot did not result from the imitation of
any Italian prototype, but from the independent
application to the game of Tarot of an idea
generally familiar in card play.
The bonuses for such declarations were an
extraneous feature superimposed upon the basic
 Classic Eighteenth-century Tarot Outside Italy
game: the payments for them were made
immediately, but a player who had made such a
declaration did not usually gain points which
counted towards the winning of the round, which
was determined in the ordinary way solely by the
number of points each player had on the cards he
had won in tricks. The most usual combinations
of cards that could be declared were: ten or more
trumps; all three of the trump XXI, trump I and
the Fool; all four Kings; and a Clzevalerie, that is, a
set of all four court cards in one suit. This was
very often complicated by the use of the Fool as a
wild card for purposes of declarations: it could
substitute for any one missing card in a
declaration, save, of course, that of the XXI, I
and Fool, in which it figured in its own right.
Usually however, it was held that a declaration
made only by treating the Fool as a substitute for
a missing card was worth less than one entirely
made up of genuine cards. A further
complication arose from an imitation of the idea
of 'la/Iatadors' from Orb re. In Orb re the
Matadors consisted of an unbroken sequence of
trumps from the top trump down held in the
hand of a single player. In Germany, however,
this idea was, in Tarock, grafted on to the
declaration of 'all three' of the XXI, the I and the
Fool. These three cards were called the principal
Matadors, but, if a player was lucky enough, he
could add to a declaration of three Matadors any
further trumps in unbroken sequence from the
XX down, thus increasing his bonus for the
declaration.
The second new feature was that of a bonus for
a particular feat effected in play, or a penalty for
a particular misfortune suffered in play.
Originally, such bonuses and penalties related
only to the trump I OI` Pagat; the word Pagan is, of
course, a corruption of Bagatto, and since it, or
some very similar Word, was almost universally
used for the trump I, we shall henceforth refer to
that card as the Pagat save in connection with
Italian games. Indeed, it seems'probable that the
idea of a penalty antedated that of a bonus. If, in
the three-handed game, the Pagat was beaten by
a higher trump in the trick to which it was
played, and so lost, the player who had the Pagat
had to pay a penalty of 5 game points to each of
the other players. It should be noted that this can
be construed only as a penalty for losing the
Pagat, not as a bonus for capturing it. If it had
been a bonus for capturing the Pagat, then we
should have expected only the player who
229
captured it to be paid, perhaps by each of the
other players, or perhaps by the one who lost it
alone. The rule was, however, that the player
who lost it paid both the one who captured it, and
the third player. If the Pagat was lost in the last
trick, the penalty was doubled. If there was a
stage at which only these penalties existed,
1
without any corresponding bonus, we have no
record of it. If there was such a stage, it must
quickly have come to seem unsatisfactory to
make possession of the Pagat so dangerous,
without the chance of a compensatory reward;
and hence the rule was introduced which we
actually Find in the accounts, namely that, if the
last trick was won by the Pagat, the player
received a bonus payment of 10 game points from
each of the other two. It is quite likely, however,
that there was a preliminary stage in which only
the penalties, and not the bonus, existed, since,
in the earliest accounts, we find no bonus for
winning any trick before the last one with the
Pagat. Later, the rule was made symmetrical, so
that a player who brought the Pagat home by
winning a trick other than the last one with it was
paid by each of the other two players a bonus of 5
game points. Like the bonuses for declarations,
these bonuses and penalties were superimposed
upon the basic game: except, of course, in so far as
the actual possession of the Pagat, as a counting
card, was concerned, they did not affect the
determination, at the end of the round, of who
had won the round and by how much, which still
depended solely on the cards won in tricks. A
subsequent development was to extend the same
principle to the four Kings, with bonuses of 5
game points for bringing them home and
corresponding penalties for losing them, again
doubled if it happened in the last trick. Usually,
when this was done, the bonus for winning the
last trick with the Pagat was increased to 15
game points, as being harder to achieve than to
win the last trick with a King.
Thus was conceived what was to become of the
most characteristic and interesting features of
many of the later varieties of Tarot, the bonus for
Pagat ultimo, that is, for winning the last trick
with the Pagat; this survived, and developed into
one of the most important elements of many
forms of the game, long after special bonuses and
penalties for bringing home or losing the Pagat,
or a King, in tricks earlier than the last, had been
dropped. It was certainly not in Italy that this
important invention occurred, but either in
230 Part II: Games with 78 catdx
Germany or, with slightly less probability, in
France. We do indeed find the ide'a in some of the
games played in Piedmont, though not in those
played in Lombardy, in the eighteenth century,
and this may explain the use in Austria of the
Italian term ultimo; but, as already remarked, the
games played in northern Italy from the
eighteenth century on were not of Italian origin.
The idea of the Bagatto ultimo is wholly absent
from those Tarot games played in Italy which we
know to be free of foreign influence, that is, in the
Bolognese and Sicilian forms of the game and in
Minchiate, and there is no hint of it in any of the
early Italian references to Tarocco.
The bonuses and penalties relating to the
Pagat were originally developed for the three-
handed game. There was a problem in
transferring them to'the four-handed game with
partners, for two reasons. One question that
arose was what was to happen when the trick to
which the Pagat was Played was won by the
partner of the player who had the Pagat. Should
that side be awarded a, bonus, since they had
after all saved their Pagat from capture° Or
should they pay a penalty, because the Pagat had
been beaten by a higher trump° No one felt that
such an easy feat, which could, after all, be
effected by leading the XXI towards one's
partner, merited a bonus. But it was generally
regarded as unfair to penalise that side; and so
such an event normally carried with it neither a
bonus nor a penalty. In later games, however, the
stricter interpretation has sometimes been
adopted. The second question was who deserved
the bonus or incurred the penalty: only the
individual player, or his partner as well° Here
the principle of collective responsibility
prevailed: the partner has assisted or hindered
his colleague by his play, and must be rewarded
or penalised along with him. Thus, in the four-
handed game, if a player won a trick with the
Pagat, he was paid 5 game points by one of the
opponents, or 10 if it was the last trick, and his
partner was paid the same by the other
opponent; and, if the Pagat was captured by the
opponents, the player who lost the Pagat paid 5
game points to one opponent, or 10 if it happened
in the last trick, and his partner paid the same to
the other opponent .
In Germany a third new feature was
introduced, a restriction on when the Fool,
Excuse or Scijs could be played. This usually
took the form of a prohibition JH playing it to any
of the last three tricks; in later forms, this 'was
varied to a deprivation of the Sciis's immunity
from capture in the last three tricks, so that a
player might legally play it to one of those tricks,
but then lost it. This change was imitated, in a
muted manner, namely as applying only to the
last trick, in some French forms of Tarot,
including that now played, but did not have any
very general importance for the future
development of the game
From the mid-eighteenth century onwards,
Germany was prolific of card-game hooks. The
two earliest accounts of classic eighteenth-
century Tarock known to me are from the two
books already mentioned, the first edition of KW
(1756) and the 1755 edition of PR. To these may
be added one in L'Hombre Royal (HR , a volume
published in Vienna and Prague in 1824, since,
although it is so very much later, the description
of Tarock that it contains must, save for one
footnote, have been copied from some much
earlier original. These three accounts, though
differently worded, describe exactly the same
three-handed game; but one can still detect some
historical development. The KW text consists of a
general description followed by a set of
numbered rules, and there is a little
inconsistency between these, notably over the
payment for a Cavallerie. It is therefore probable
that the first half is a reprint of some earlier
description to which a more up-to-date set of
rules has been appended, without eliminating the
contradictions, in the account that follows, I
shall accordingly indicate this by means of the
terms 'earlier stratum' and 'later stratum'. The
HR account appears to be more archaic than
either of the other two. The use of French
terminology, particularly, in PR, of the term
Excuse for the Fool, makes it very likely that an
identical or similar game was played in France.
It cannot be told from the PR text whether the
game was to be played with an Italian- or
French-suited pack, but KW and HR specify a
French-suited one, KW mentioning the animal
figures on the trump cards. KW refers to the
Italian-suited pack, but says that it is mostly
used for a four-handed game, going on (in
the second edition) to explain the
Lombard/Viennese game described above. It
also says that the game of Taroc had only
recently been introduced into Germany, a
statement we know to be erroneous, it
presumably testifies to the spread of the game to
some new area.
 Classic Eighteenth-century Taro! Outside Italy
German Taroc (mid-eighteenth century
/
Terminology
Trumps are called Tarot (PR and KW) or Taroks
(HR). The XXI is called Der II/Iongue (KW and HR), der
Mona' (HR) or simply no. 21 (PR), the I is called der
Pagan (all three), der Beget (PR) or der Pacat (KW), the
Fool is called der Excuse (PR), der Seek (PR and KW),
Der Scl1/vis (KW), der Skis (KW) or der Scu"s (HR). The
discard is called der Skas (KW).
Deal and dixcafa'
There are three players. A full 78-card French-suited
pack is used. Deal and play are counter-clockwise.
The dealer gives twenty-Five cards to each player, in
Five rounds of Five cards each, beginning with the
player on his right, and taking in addition the last
three cards for himself in the last round. He discards
three cards face down beside him, which count for
him at the end of the round. He may not discard
Kings. If he has exactly three trumps including the
Pagat, he may, if he wishes, discard all three of them,
if he has the Skis, the Pagat and exactly one other
trump, he may, if he wishes, discard these three cards.
In no other circumstances may he discard a trump.
HR states that some players allow that the deal is to
be cancelled, and the cards redealt by the same
dealer, if any player has only one or two trumps, but
PR and KW do not mention this rule. Note that there is
no general prohibition on discarding the Skis.
Declaralzonx
After the dealer has discarded, he makes any
declarations he chooses of combinations of cards in his
hand, the other two players then do the same in turn.
The dealer cannot declare any cards he has
discarded, according to PR and KW, all declared
cards must be shown to the other two players (HR is
silent on this point). No player is obliged to make any
declaration even if he is able to. The, possible
declarations are 1
(i) Matadors. HR and the earlier stratum of KW
allow the declaration only of three of these, which
must consist of the Mongue (XXI), Pagat and Skis.
KW gives a value of 10 game points for this, but HR
says that some players value it at 10 and some at 20
game points, agreement being necessary before sitting
down to the game. PR and the later stratum of KW
allow a declaration of three or more Matadors,
consisting of the Mongue, Pagat and Skis and, in
addition, other trumps in consecutive sequence from
the XX down, with a value of 10 game points plus 5
more for each l\4atador in excess of three.
231
(ii) Cavallerie. This consists of all four court cards
in one suit, and is valued at 4 game points by HR and
the earlier stratum of KW, and at 10 game points by
PR and the later stratum of KW. PR and the later
stratum of KW also allow the declaration of a half
Cavallerie, consisting of any three court cards of one
suit together with the Skis, with a value of 5 game
points, a whole Cavallerie and a half Cavallerie cannot
be declared in the same suit. HR and the earlier
stratum of KW do not recognise half Cavallerie
declarations.
(iii) Ten trumps. HR says that this declaration is
recognised in many localities, and that the players
must agree on the value to be set on it. KW allows the
declaration unreservedly, with a value of 10 game
points, which, however, are not to be paid
immediately, but only at the end of the round, and
then only if the player concerned has made more than
26 points on the cards he has won in tricks. PR allows
a declaration of ten or more trumps, with a value of 10
game points plus 5 game points for each trump in
excess of ten; this is paid immediately, with no proviso
about points won on cards. In no case does the Skis
count for this purpose as a trump.
(iv) PR, but not KW or HR, allows a declaration of
all four Kings, valued at 10 game points; alternatively,
one may declare three Kings with the Skis, with a
value of 5 game points. One may not, of course, make
both these declarations.
The payment
. for any declaration is made
immediately by the other two players, who each pay
its full value, save in the case of a declaration of ten
trumps under the KW rule.
Play
When all three players have had a chance to make
declarations, the player to the right of the dealer leads
to the first trick. Play is under the usual rules.~The
cards rank in their original order (i.e. in black suits K,
Q, Q/, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, A, in red suits K, Q, C,
J, A, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10). The Skis serves as
Excuse. The player takes it back from the trick to
which he played it, and, if he can, gives a low card in
exchange for it, otherwise he does so as soon as he
can. If he makes no tricks, however, he does not
surrender it. If a player has no more trumps in his
hand, then, according to PR and KW, he must play
the Skis, if he has it, as soon as a plain suit is led in
which he is void, HR does not impose this obligation.
The Skis may not be played to any of the last three
tricks. PR and KW do not allow the Skis to be led to a
trick, if a player finds himself with the lead to the
twenty-second trick, and has the Skis, he must
surrender the lead to the player on his right, and must
play the Skis to that trick. According to HR, however,
custom varies over whether the Skis may be led to a
trick, and, again, agreement over this must be reached
,v
 232 Part II: Games with 78 card;
before playing: when the Skis is led to a trick, among
those who allow this, the other two players must play
.r trumps if they can. It is not explained what happens if
neither of them has any trumps left, presumably the
player who led the Skis wins the trick.
Bonuses arzdperzallzes
Apart from a passing reference to Pagat ultimo in a
sentence that appears to have been borrowed from [fl V
in a misplaced attempt to bring the antiquated account
that was being copied up to date, HR mentions only
penalties: the player who has the Pagat pays an
agreed sum to each opponent if it is captured, and
twice that sum to each if it is captured in the last trick.
According to PR and KW, 5 game points are paid to
each opponent if the Pagat is beaten by a higher
trump, and 10 game points if this happens in the last
trick, but a player who wins the last trick with the
Pagat is paid 10 game points by each opponent.
Scoring
The counting cards have their standard values. The
cards are counted in threes. If the player who had the
Skis made no tricks, he counts 4 points for his Skis,
while the player who won the trick to which he played
it counts his two odd Cards as if they were three.
There are thus in all cases 78 points altogether. Each
player with fewer than 26 points pays, in all, as many
game points as he has card points short of 26, each
player with more than 26 points receives, in all, as
many game points as he has card points in excess of
26. (Et. if A has 29 card points, B 24 and C 25, B
pays A 2 game points and C pays him 1 game point; if
A has 29 points, B 30 and C 19, C pays 3 game points
to A and 4 game points to B.)
From France itself we have only one
eighteenth-century account of Tarot, and that
from an unexpected source, de Gébelin's Le
Monde print dating from 17814 together with
his speculations on the Egyptian origin and
esoteric significance of the cards, recounted in
Chapter 4, he included a description of the game.
He did not know the game himself, but retails
an account given to him by his friend Monsieur
L'A. R. We therefore cannot be certain that de
Gébelin succeded in transmitting all the details
correctly. The game he describes is a two-handed
one, which can hardly have been the principal
form, but the fact that in modern French Tarot
the cards are counted in twos probably indicates
that at some stage a two-handed version was
regarded as important and in some way typical.
De Gébelin's two-handed game is played with a
Mort, a dead hand of twenty-Five cards. It is
therefore obvious that it has been rather
mechanically adapted from a three-handed game,
which it is easy to reconstruct With a high degree
of probability.
Two-handed eighteenth-century French Tarot
lefter de Gébelin)
*
Terminology
Trumps are called Atour, the XXI Le Monde, the I Le
Pagad and the Fool Le? l/[at or Le For. These last three
cards are called collectively Atous- Tarots, and they
together with the four Kings are known as 7-arols. The
he top trumps (XVII to XXI) are called grarzrlr Atoms
and the Hve lowest trumps (I to V) PeNn Atoms. The
pack used is a 78-card Italian-suited one.
Deal and discard
The dealer gives out three hands of twenty-Five cards
each, in five rounds of five cards each, one hand to his
opponent, one to form the Mort (dead hand), which is
not touched until the end of the round, and one to
himself. In the last round of the deal, he takes the last
three cards for himself, and discards three, which
count to him at the end of the round. He may not
discard Kings, the Fou or trumps.
Declaralzony
Each player in turn may make any of the following
declarations :
All three Aloux- Tarots (lVlonde, Pagad and Fou) - 15
points
Ten trumps - 10 points
Thirteen trumps - 15 points
A11 four court cards of one suit - 5 points
All five top trumps - 15 points
All Five lowest trumps - 15 points
Any four of the Eve top trumps - 10 points
Any four of the five lowest trumps - 10 points
Any three of the Eve top trumps - 5 points
Any three of the five lowest trumps - 5 points.
/
If a player has just two of the three Atous-Tarots, he
asks his opponent, 'Qui Ne l'a9': if the opponent has the
third Aoou-Tarot, he shows it, and neither of them
scores; but, if the opponent cannot show the third
one, the player holding two scores 5 points, A player
declaring ten or thirteen trumps must show that many
to his opponent, for the other declarations, the cards
r
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Tarocco in Piedmont and Lombardy
It was explained in Chapter 8 that, from the
beginning of the eighteenth century, cardmakers
in Lyons were exporting to Savoy 78-card Tarot
packs in a pattern only very slightly modified
from the Tarot de Marseille, with French
inscriptions on the trumps and court cards; that
in about 1735 Piedrnontese cardmakers started to
produce precisely similar packs, still with French
inscriptions; and that this pattern was the
ancestor, through one intervening stage, of the
modern Tarocco Piernontese, the inscriptions
being translated into Italian at the intermediate
stage. It was also explained that only a little
later, in the 1740s, cardmakers in several other
Italian cities, particularly in Bologna, which did
a brisk export trade in playing cards to other
parts of Italy, began producing 78-card packs in
a distinct pattern, also very close to the Tarot de
Marseille, and also with French inscriptions.
This we called the 'Lombard pattern', because
the evidence indicates that, within Italy, it was
used only in Lombardy; in the nineteenth
century the pattern was produced by Milanese
cardmakers, now with Italian inscriptions
replacing the French ones, but has since died out,
superseded, everywhere in Italy that the 78-card
pack is used, by the Tarocco Piemontese. It was
argued that the introduction of these two
patterns, embodying the hitherto un-Italian
practice of putting names on the trumps and
court cards, and moreover at First doing so in the
French language, must represent the
reintroduction of the game of Tarocco from
France into regions where it had formerly been
played but had died out. Since, by the end of the
seventeenth century, the 78-card pack was
probably no longer in use in Florence or Rome,
and had long been forgotten in Bologna, it was
very likely obsolete everywhere in mainland Italy
before the introduction of the Tarot de Marseille-
derived patterns. At any rate, by 1739 we have
travellers' reports of Tarocco being played in
Turin, and by the 1760s reports of its popularity
both in Piedmont and in Lombardy] The style of
play in these two regions was significantly
different; in Piedmont a large number of different
forms were known, in Lombardy there was no
such variety. I shall begin by describing the
Piedmontese forms .
The only actual account of these games'known
to me is the Prime Elements e Regale del Giuoco de'
Ta rocclz i (PE) published in Turin in 1787. Some
further information is provided by a book by r
Carlo O..., published in Turin in 1830, called
Resole inalterabili /Jer tutti igiuoclzi do Tarocco deli do
commekio (RI). This, however, does not describe
the games, but takes them as known: it is a
collection of laws governing penalties for a
1 See The Letters of Thomas Cray chronologically arranged from
the Walpole and Mason Collections, vol. I, London, 1827, p. 54,
Gray, writing from Turin on 16 November 1739, speaks of
having seen taroc played there. De La Lande, Voyage d'un
Francois en [taliefazt dans les annis 7765 8° 1766, vol. I, Venice
and Paris, 1769, p. 217, refers to 'Les Taroeehi, espece de
cartes particulieres' as being made in Turin..Joseph Baretti,
An Amount of the Manners and Customs of ltoly, vol. II, London,
1768, pp, 219-21, speaks of the game of Tarocco as in vogue
in Piedmont and Lombardy, and says of it and of
Minchiate: 'Both games may be played by only two, or only
three people in several ways; but the most ingenious as well
as the most in use are two or three games that are played by
four people; and more especially one which is played by one
against three, much after the ruling principle of orb re, and
another played two against two, not unlike whist. '
 Tarawa in Piedmont and Lombardy
misdeal (called a giuow fallow, a revoke and other
misdemeanors. It is, however, possible to glean
f
some substantive information from it, by way of
direct statement or of implication.
General rules and terminology 0f Piedmontese Tarot
games
In PE the generic word for trumps is trio fji, but in RI
the word zfarowlzi is used in this sense. The usual term
Bagatto is used for the lowest trump, the I. The Fool is
called the Folic instead of the Matte, and a Queen is
called a Donna rather than a Regina. The XX is called
the Angelo (Angel = Judgment). Other names for
particular trumps worth noting are: XXI - Monde
(World); XVII .- Ze Slelle (the Stars), XVI - Casa
( House = Tower), XII - Z'Appicato (the Hanged
Man); XI - Za Forma (Force = Fortitude), IX .- Eremita
(Hermit), and VI - !'Amore (Love). The Angelo,
Bagatto, Folle and the four Kings are called collectively
'honors' (rori).
The suit cards are always ranked in their original
order. The order of the trumps is peculiar to the
Piedmontese games: the XX or Angelo is highest,
followed by the XXI or Monde, then the XIX, XVIII
and so on in numerical sequence down to the I or
Bagatto. Save in Trentuno and Sediei, the values of
the counting cards are as follows :
Angelo 5 points
Bagatto 5 points
Folly 5 points
Each King 5 points
Each Queen 4 points
Each Cavalla 3 points
Each jack 2 points
Thus the Angelo is a counting card, but the Mondo is
not: in fact, the XX simply usurps the place of the
XXI in the French, Swiss and German games.
Play and deal are counter-clockwise. Play to a trick
is under the usual constraints. Except in Trentuno
and Sedici, the Folle. serves as Excuse: it is not
actually played to the trick in which it is used, but is
shown to the other players, and then put down on the
pile of cards won in tricks by that player or side. At
the end of the round, that player or side surrenders
any one card of their choice to the player or side that
won the trick in which the Folle was used; if they have
won no tricks, they must surrender the Folle. The lead
to the first trick is always by the player to the right of
the dealer.
In games in which the dealer has to make a discard,
he is never allowed to discard an honor (card
counting 5 points). RI permits no exceptions to this,
PE admits two. First, if the dealer has the Bagatto and
259
neither the Folle nor any other trump, he may discard
the Bagatto. Secondly, the Folle may be discarded in
the case that the dealer believes that, without it, he
can make a vols (slam), i.e. win all the tricks. It is not
explained what happens if, having discarded the
Folle, the dealer loses a trick, a suitable rule would be
that, at the end of the round, he must surrender the
Folle, in exchange for any one card of their choice, to
the side or player who won the first trick from him. If
the dealer or the dealer's side make no tricks at all,
they must surrender the discarded cards to the player
or side winning the last trick. As soon as the dealer
has made his discard, he must say 'Ho soartato' ('I have
discarded') and play proceeds, he may not thereafter
alter his discard.
In some games, the dealer has a certain latitude
about the number of cards he is to distribute in each
round of the deal. He must, however, announce,
before he starts dealing, how many cards he will give
in each round.
In all games in which the whole pack is dealt out,
there is a pause after the first round of the deal to
decide whether or not to continue it. If all the players,
after looking at the cards so far dealt to them, agree to
abandon the deal in favour of a new one by the next
dealer, they can do so: this is called arzdare al monte
(going to the mountain). A proposal to abandon the
deal is expressed by saying 'A monte'. - This was a
general practice in many Italian card games from the
sixteenth to the nineteenth century.
The term for a slam (winning all the tricks) is vols,
and a vols usually carries an agreed bonus. The term
marco, which in some other games means 'slam', here
means a win in which the opponents do not reach half
the points needed for victory (or, according to an
alternative convention sometimes observed, a third of
those points), a mania is paid double.
In Permesso games, and in four-handed games with
fixed partnerships, other than Consiglio, many
players were accustomed to use certain conventional
signals to direct or instruct their partners. PE is severe
on this practice, saying that, while badly educated
people were not to he blamed for doing it, it was
dishonorable in anyone well-bred. RI, however,
allows certain signals as established by ancient
custom. These signals, which are made when leading
to a trick, are: to strike (batters) the table with one's
hand, by which the partner is asked to take the trick if
he can and lead the same suit, to pinch (Pizzicare) the
card, in order to show that the Bagatto is in danger of
being lost, and a signal called 'going away' (ender via)
or 'letting go' (mollee), which may have been
performed by dropping the card on to the table from a
height above it, which requested the partner to switch
to another suit.
It was suggested in Chapter 8 that the curious
 260 Part II: Games with 78 €ard5
inversion of the XX and XXI - the more curious
in that there was no attempt to change the
|
numerals on the cards in that form of pack which
for many decades was used only in Piedmont -
was probably due to there having been some
players of the newly introduced game who
remembered having played Tarocco in some
indigenous form in their youth; in many Italian
Tarot games the Angel ranked higher than the
World, for example in Tarocchino and in
Minchiate. The inversion was unknown in
Lombardy.
Some of the descriptions in PE are rather
inadequate, and I shall indicate uncertainties
where they occur. Unfortunately, this applies
particularly to some of the simpler forms, with
which, nevertheless, it seems appropriate to start.
Three-handed Ventzkinque
This game figures in the list given at the beginning
of PE, but, presumably through an oversight, is not
then described in the text that follows. The laws
governing it are given in RI; from these it is evident
that one of the rules given in the slightly confused first
section of PE, which attempts simultaneously to
describe Sedici and to give general rules relating to all
games, applies particularly to this. one. Each of the
three players receives twenty-five cards, and the
dealer takes the last three cards and discards three;
the deal is specified in RI to be in three rounds, the
first of five cards each and the second and third of ten
cards each. After each round of the deal, the players
may go a monte if all agree. The discard is subject to
the restriction stated in the General rules; RI allows
the discard of three trumps, provided that they are all
below the XVII, but specifically forbids the discard of
the Bagatto, it is unclear what the motive for such a
discard would be.
Each player plays for himself. The cards are
counted in threes, so that there are 78 points
altogether. A game lpartila) consists of three rounds.
in each round, each player records a score, positive or
negative, equal to the difference between his point-
total and 26, and keeps a cumulative total from round
to round. The winner of the game is that player who,
in the last round, is the first to attain a positive
cumulative score. If, by the end of the last round, the
other two players both have negative or zero scores,
each pays the winner 1 game point; but if one of them
has a positive score, he pays and receives nothing, and
the third player pays the winner 2 game points. If,
after the First two rounds, any player has a cumulative
score of more than 26, he must have a positive score at
the end of the third round, since he cannot lose more
than 26 points, hence, when the cards have been dealt
out, he announces 'Fuora' (Out), and becomes the
winner of the game. The same applies as soon as, in
the course of the last round, any player has won
sufficiently many card points in the tricks he has
taken to guarantee that he will have a positive Final
cumulative score. PE says that, as soon as a player has
announced 'Fuora', he places his cards face down on
the table, and takes no more part in the play, the
other two players continue the round, in order to
determine whether one or both will pay. (It would
seem reasonable that, in this case, the cards won after
the winner has gone out should be counted in twos,
but nothing is said about this.) PE adds, however,
that the winner may continue to play, unloading
counting cards on the tricks of one of the two players
to help him attain a positive score; the author regards
this as an ungentlemanly act lotto [2060 grazioso. RI,
however, requires him to continue playing, but dafuon
(from outside). This apparently Means that his cards
are deprived of trick-taking power, it is unclear
whether or not he remains subject to the usual
constraints of following suit and of playing a trump.
In any case, he is obliged to try to throw counting
cards to that one of the other two players who has, at
that moment, the lower cumulative total, and is
penalised for failing to do this?
Three-lzarzded Partita
This game is not mentioned in RI. The deal and
discard are as in Ventieinque. Each plays for himself,
but all play on until the end of each round. At the end
of the round, the cards are counted in Zwoy; there are
91 points altogether, and an odd low card counts 9-1
point. The player who gains the highest number of
points, even by - point, is paid by both opponents,
1
2
apparently the payment is fixed, and does not vary
with the points gained.
2 The passage in RI which I have interpreted as meaning
that a player who has gone out plays on, his cards being
deprived of the power to win a trick, but as leaving it
uncertain whether he remains subject to the usual
constraints in play, runs as follows: 'Quando no dei
giuocatori Sara giunto a quel terrine di vinita he non pub
pin perdere la partita, cioé avram nell'ultima distribuzione
pin di ventisei punti di guadagno, Sara obbligato a giuocare,
come si dice, do ferrari, coe tutte je sue carterme sena pin
tirade alcuin partita sulle Lnferiori, e quindi dovendo
perderle je dark a quell dei giuocatori he imparzialmente
occorreré. Contravvenendo a tale obbligo pagl*1er8
l'onoranza di cinque punti per Volta a caduno dei due
avversari', this orzoranza being equal to what in the text I
have designated l game point,
 Tarocco in Piedmont and Lombardy
Partita
I
Four players take part, they form two fixed
partnerships of two each, partners facing each other
across the table. (Partnerships are determined by
each player drawing one card from the pack, those
drawing the two highest cards play together, and the
one drawing the highest card becomes the first
dealer.) The dealer gives nineteen cards to each
player, the method of dealing is not stated. The dealer
gives himself the two last cards, and discards two,
under the usual restrictions, RI imposes the same rule
as in Venticinque. The cards won in tricks by each
side are counted in fours at the end of the round,
making 72 points altogether; presumably the two
cards of the discard count as if there were four of them
(it. two odd low cards count 1 point), though this is
not explicitly stated. PE states that some prefer to
count the cards in twos, in which case there are 91
points altogether. Play is as usual. The winning side
receives an onoranza of 10 game points: if both sides
have 36 points, neither pays. Presumably the onorarzza
is doubled for a marco (when the losing side has not
attained 18 points), and trebled for a vols (when the
winners have taken all the tricks). There is no mention
of any further payment, but it would be possible to
reckon l additional game point for every 5 points the
winners.have above 36.
Two-handed Verzticin/que
The dealer gives twenty-five cards to his opponent and
twenty-eight to himself, taking three more cards than
his opponent on the last round of the deal, the method
of dealing is left unstated. The dealer discards three
cards under the usual restrictions, and when he has
said 'Io /to scartaZo', the opponent leads to the first
trick. Play is as usual, and, at the end of the round,
each counts his cards in twos: the player who has the
highest number of points wins the game. Players must
agree in advance what special payment shall be made
for a marco, i.e. for the winner's having more than
twice as many points as the loser, and for a vols, i.e.
for winning all the tricks; there may also be a special
bonus for a trzblice, i.e. for having more than three
times as many points as the opponent, and for a
quadriplzre, i.e. for having more than four times as
many points. (Fig. there could be 1 game point for a
simple win, 2 game points for a marco, 3 for a trzblice, 4
for a quadtzf/Zzte and 6 for a vols.) This game is
mentioned only in PE.
261
Motto
This is another two-handed game, exactly like two-
handed Venticinque, save that the twenty-five undealt
cards are placed face down as a stock in the middle of
the table. After each trick the winner of that trick
takes the top card of the stock, shows it to his
opponent, and then adds it to the cards he has won in
tricks. In this way every card of the pack will by the
end of the round belong to one or other of the two
players, who will thus have 91 points between them,
an odd low card counting point. This game is also
mentioned only in PE.
Bafonetti
This is a two-handed game for children, an excellent
way of teaching them Tarocchi by means of a game
that is very easy to play, and has a large component of
chance. The dealer gives ten cards to his opponent,
one by one, the opponent does not pick them up, but
they remain face down in a pile on the t'able in front of
him, save that the dealer turns the top card of the pile
face up. Next, the dealer deals himself a pile of ten
cards, of which only the last (top) one is turned face
up, in exactly the same way. He then deals two more
piles of ten cards to eaehjust as before, again turning
up the top card only of each pile. Finally, he deals a
pile of nine cards to his opponent, turning the top
card, and a pile of nine cards to himself, again turning
the top card. The two players now play according to
the usual rules, the dealer's opponent leading to the
first trick. A player may, at any time, play only one of
the cards that are exposed at the top of one of his piles
of cards. When both have played to a trick, each turns
up the next card of the pile from which he played,
unless, of course, he played the last card of any pile.
The obligations to follow suit if one can and, when
one cannot, to play a trump if one can hold as usual,
but, of course, only in respect of the exposed cards. At
the end of the round, the cards are counted in twos,
and the player with the higher number of points is the
winner. This is another game mentioned only in PE.
The next game, Mitigati, is the Piedmontese
version of the classic three-handed game
described in Chapter 11.
Three-handed /l/[ilzgati
The games known as Mitigati, also spelled Mittigati,
are ones in which players score bonuses for
combinations of cards held in hand and announced at

262 Part II: Games wil/1 78 cards
the start of play. In the three-handed game, the dealer
gives twenty-Hve cards to each player, which he must
do in three rounds; the first of Eve cards each, the
second and third of ten cards each. The dealer takes
I
the last three cards himself and discards three.
According to Rl, not only may he not discard
honours, but he may not discard trumps either.
The declarations are to be made after the dealer
discards and says 'Ho scarta!o', but before the player to
the dealer's right leads to the first trick. There are
three possible declarations: Mitigati, Hof ours and
Trumps. A declaration of Mitigati means possession
of the Angelo, Bagatto and Folle: it is worth 10 game
points in itself. Hof ours may be declared by a player
having three or more honours (i.e. the Angelo,
Bagatto, Folle and the four Kings). Three honours are
worth 10 game points, 5 game points are added for
each honour above three. Four honors are thus
worth 15 game points, but, if they include the Angelo,
Bagatto and Folle, the player can declare Mitigati as
well, worth another 10 game points, and if he has just
the Angelo, Bagatto and Folle, he may declare both
Mitigati and three honours, each worth 10 game
points. Trumps may be declared by a player having
ten or more: such a declaration is worth just as many
game points as there are trumps. It is not expressly
stated that, for this purpose, the Folle may be counted
as a trump, but, in the absence of a statement to the
contrary, that is the probable presumption. A player
mut t make any declaration that he can, and there are
penalties for failure to do so; he does not, however,
show his cards, or specify their exact identity. A
player making a declaration is paid its value in game
points immediately, not at the conclusion of the
round, by ear/2 of his opponents.
Play is as usual. The cards are counted in threes,
making 78 points in all. If only one player makes 26
points or more, he is paid an onoranga of 10 game
points by each of the opponents, if two players each
make 26 points or more, the remaining player pays
each of them 10 game points.
A player who wins the last trick with the Bagatto is
paid 30 game points by each of the opponents. If he
loses the Bagatto in the last trick, he pays 30 game
points to each opponent. If he loses the Bagatto in any
trick before the last one, he pays 5 game points to each
opponent. There is no bonus for winning a trick, other
than the last one, with the Bagatto.
PE notes that some players award 30 game points
for a declaration of Mitigati, and that some award
more or less than 10 game points for three honours.
RI envisages a possibility, not allowed for in PE, of
announcing the Bagatlo ultimo, that is, the intention to
win the last trick with the Bagatto. Presumably this
must be done, if at all, at the time when the
declarations are made, after the discard and before
the lead to the first trick. A player who makes such an
announcement is not permitted to play his Bagatto
\
until he is forced to. He gains 30 game points from
each opponent if he succeeds, but pays each 30 game
points if he fails, even if his Bagatto is not captured. In
addition, there is a special pot, called glzzln.g/zelta, to
which presumably all players contribute whenever it
is empty, which is won by a player successfully
making an announced Bagatto ultimo, and which
must be doubled by a player announcing Bagatto
ultimo and failing. A player who has announced
Bagatto ultimo is not allowed, unless compelled to by
having no other cards except the Bagatto, to lead any
of the top five trumps. RI apparently envisages the
possibility of a player's responding to an
announcement of Bagatto ultimo by announcing the
intention of capturing the Bagatto. A player who has
announced this intention is not allowed, unless
compelled, to lead a trump lower than the XVII. If he
succeeds, the player who announced Bagatto ultimo
pays him 60 game points, and nothing to the third
player, if the player who announced Bagatto ultimo
succeeds, he is paid 60 game points by the one who
announced that he would capture the Bagatto. It is
not clearly stated what happens in other cases, but it
would be logical that, if the third player captures the
Bagatto, both the other two pay him 30 game points
each, while, if the player with the Bagatto wins a trick
other than the last with it, he pays each of the other two
30 game points as usual.
Two-handed /Witigati with the /W0rZo
This game is mentioned only in RI. It is apparently
exactly the same as the game of Motto described
above, save that the players may make the same
declarations as in Nlitigati, scoring for them in the
same way, may score for winning the last trick with
the Bagatto, and may perhaps also announce the
intention of doing so. The dealer may discard neither
honours nor trumps.
Two-handed Al ilzga tz' with a large discard
The description in PE is exceptionally vague, but the
following reconstruction is probably correct. The
dealer first gives twenty-Hve cards to his opponent,
and twenty-six to himself. The opponent next discards
twelve cards and the dealer discards thirteen, so that
each has thirteen left. The dealer now gives twelve
cards to his opponent and to himself, and also takes
the last three cards for himself; he then discards three
more cards. At the end of this process, each has
twenty-Five cards. Neither player may discard
honours, RI adds that they may not discard trumps
either, but this may occasionally be necessary.
As in three-handed Nlitigati, declarations may be
made before the play to the first trick, and there is the
 Tarocco zrz Piedmont and Lombardy
same bonus for winning the last trick with the
Bagatto, and the same penalties for losing the
Bagatto. It is unclear whether one may announce
I
Bagatto ultimo. At the end of the round, the cards are
counted in twos: all the discarded cards count to the
player who discarded them. The winner is the player
who makes 46 points or more. The probable
interpretation of the scoring system, from indications
given in RI, is as follows. The winner receives from the
loser 10 game points, or 20 game points if the loser has
not attained 23 card points, plus as many game points
as the winner has above 46. If the winner has made
vols, i.e. has taken all the tricks, then the loser must
surrender to him all the cards he discarded, so that
the winner has all 91 card points. He should then
receive 65 game points, by the above system, but for
vols the payment is doubled, so that he receives 130
game points.
Doltore
Five players take part, the dealer giving fifteen cards
to each and taking the last three cards for himself, and
then discarding three cards, which must not include
honors. Each player plays for himself not only in the
, y
game as a whole but in each round. Play is as usual.
According to PE, the cards won in tricks are
sometimes counted in threes, sometimes in twos, and
sometimes singly, in the latter case, each counting
card is given its full value and each low card counts 1
point, so that there are 130 points altogether. There is
no information about the system of scoring. RI
mentions declarations (ac€u5a3z0rzz), presumably like
those in la/litigati games; but, so far as appears, there
is no bonus for winning the last trick with the Bagatto.
PE seems not to envisage any declarations being
made.
Corzszglio
There are four players, divided into two fixed
partnerships of two each. What differentiates this
from other such games is that partners sit next to each
other, preferably beside each other on a long side of a
rectangular table, and may show each other their
cards and freely consult one another in a low voice.
The dealer gives nineteen cards to each player, and
takes the last two cards for himself, discarding two,
which may not he honors, nor, according to RI,
trumps. RI specifies that the deal shall be in four
rounds, one, the First or the last, of four each and three
of five each. According to PE, the cards are counted in
twos, so that there are 91 points altogether. There are
no bonuses, and a game consists of four rounds. Each
side records its points for each round, whether it won
263
or lost, and keeps a running total: the winners are
those who make the most points in the course of the
four rounds. RI describes the game rather differently,
and its author waxes lyrical over the merits of the
game. He apparently envisages the cards as being
counted in fours (the two cards of the discard
counting, as before, as a set of four), so that there are
72 points altogether. Each round is scored for
separately, and the winning side receives as many
game points as it won card points over 36. Though
there are no declarations, there is an additional bonus
of 30 game points for winning the last trick with the
Bagatto. Presumably there is also a penalty of 30
game points for losing it in the last trick to the
opponents, and perhaps also one of 5 game points for
losing it in any other trick.
The next game introduces for the first time a
feature that was to become of the very greatest
importance in the history of Tarot, the use of a
shortened 54-card pack. So far as we are able to
say, the idea o`f such a shortened pack originated
in Germany in about 1750. The practice never
caught on at all in Switzerland, France or
'Belgium it was only of minor importance in
Italy, though it has not yet died out there. It does
not appear to have been known to the author of
PE, but figures in RI, we should therefore put its
introduction into Piedmont at around 1800. Such
a shortened pack was there known as a matzo
cartraloi it was formed by omitting from each suit
those six cards actually ranking lowest in the
suit, the Ace to 6 in Swords and Batons and the 5
to 10 in Cups and Coins.
Cbnsigfio Caszfrato
This game, mentioned only in RI, is exactly like
ordinary Consiglio as described in RI, save for being
played with a shortened 54-card pack, containing the
Folle and the usual twenty-one trumps, and, in
Swords and Batons, the K, Q, Q/, 10, 9, 8, 7, ranking
in that order, and, in Cups and Coins, the K, Q, J, A,
2, 3, 4, ranking in that order. Each player receives
thirteen cards, and the dealer gives himself the last
two cards, discarding two. The cards are counted in
fours, making 66 points in all, presumably the two
odd cards belonging to the dealer and his partner
count as four cards. Scoring is as in ordinary
Consiglio, with the same bonus of 30 game points for
winning the last trick with the Bagatto.
The next set of games to be described are the
Permessi, which are of a type known elsewhere as
 264 Part II: Games wills 78 cards
Tarocc'Ombre. Comparatively crude as they
are, they represent a development of the very
highest importance in the history of Tarot,
namely the introduction of the idea of bidding. In
I
Italy itself, this idea was not to Find much favour,
it was never much developed, and died out,
probably in the course of the nineteenth century,
except for the Bolognese game of Terziglio, still
played there. In France, in Germany and, above
all,'in Austria and the other countries which once
were part of the Empire, such as Hungary and
Czechoslovakia, it was refined to form the basis
of a great many different games, including many
of the most subtle and skilled of Tarot games .
We saw in Chapter 7 that the idea of bidding
originated with the Spanish game of Tresillo,
known elsewhere as Orb re or l'Hombre, a game
that dates from the mid-sixteenth century. It
was, in its time, the most successful card game
ever invented, and the first of any to have
elaborate treatises devoted to the strategy of the
play. It underwent a rapid evolution, under
which it became ever more complicated,
particularly by the introduction of new forms of
bid, and it spawned numerous variants,
including adaptations to different numbers of
players, of which the most important was the
four-handed form, Cuadrillo or Quadrille. The
reason for its amazing success is easy to
understand: other games were based on long-
established principles, but Orb re introduced
players to a radically new principle of play, that
of bidding, an innovation as exciting as that of
trumps had been. It eventually died out, almost
everywhere but in its native Spain, crushed by
the weight of its ever-increasing complexity. But,
before that happened, the idea of bidding was
borrowed from it and transferred to a great many
trick-taking games in which, originally, bidding
had not figured. It is easy to recognise that it was
from Orb re that the practice had been derived,
because the transference was often rather
mechanical, various Orb re bids being rather
awkwardly superimposed upon the existing
game, and because the terminology was
frequently also borrowed from Orb re.
Throughout this process, the fundamental idea of
Orb re bidding survived intact: the purpose of
the bidding was to determine who should play
against whom, and under what conditions; once
play began, what one side had to do in order to
beat the other remained unaffected by the
bidding. This was even true of four-handed
games like Quadrille: the bidding would settle
whether the declarer was to have a partner, or
whether he was to play alone against the other
three, and who, if anyone, his partner was to be.
The most usual means of determining a partner
was for the declarer to name the King of a plain
suit, the King being in Orb re games the highest
card, the player holding that King would be his
partner, but did not announce the fact, which
became apparent only in the course of play. This
idea, with the Ace replacing the King in games
like Schafkopf and Call-Ace Euchre in which the
Ace is high, is found in countless other games,
including Tarot games, having been adapted
from Quadrille; it is indeed of basic importance
for the later history of four-handed Tarot games.
In one respect, however, the example of Orb re
was not copied in other games. In Orb re proper,
the declarer's object was to win more tricks than
either of his two opponents taken separately:
there were nine tricks in each round, and, if the
declarer won four, while his opponents had won,
respectively, three and two, the declarer had won
the round. But in all the games into which
Orb re bidding was imported, whether three- or
four-handed, no distinction was made between
the tricks won by those in temporary alliance.
Whether two were playing against two, or one
against three, or one against two, the object of
the declarer and of his partner, if any, was, if the
game was a simple one, to win more tricks
between them than did the opponents taken
together; if the game was a complex one, it was to
make more points between them on the cards
they won in tricks than did the opponents taken
together,
Bridge, which belongs to the Whist family, is
now the most famous trick-taking game in which
there is bidding; but the Whist family, although
dating back to the game of Triumph played in
England at the beginning of the sixteenth
century, was virtually the last family of trick-
taking games into which bidding was introduced.
This is because games of the Whist family are
characteristically played by four players in fixed
partnerships, it was for just such games that
bidding, as originally understood, was otiose.
The First game of the Whist family to adopt
bidding was Boston, which abandoned the
feature of Fixed partnerships. Boston reached
France from North America during the
American War of Independence, and rapidly
became the rage, the First game to challenge
 Tarocco in Piedmont and Lombardy
Orb re for supremacy, and the first of many
imports into European card play from the United
States. It was a simple trick-taking game for four
I
players, with a complicated bidding system in
which, as in Quadrille, the successful bid
determined whether, in that round, one was to
play against three or two against two, and which
one or which two. But Boston, of which the
simplified living descendant is Solo Whist, also
underwent some evolution, in the course of which
a new idea became prominent, that of bids which
affected what was required in order to win. It was
this idea which was later to be so successfully
introduced into Bridge, originally a Whist
variant with a dummy but no bids; only on this
basis could bidding, in a game with fixed
partnerships, have a role to play.
That the introduction of bidding into Tarot
games was originally a conscious` adaptation
from Orb re and its offshoots is shown by the fact
that, in Germany, the earliest such games were
known as Tarok-l'Hombre or Tarok-Quadrille,
and, in Lombardy, as Tarocc'Ombre.' In
Piedmont such games were known collectively as
Permessi; but the Orb re origin is clearly shown
by the use of the term ombfa for the player playing
alone against the others, and by that of the term
561775Prendfe, borrowed from French Orb re
terminology, as the name of a bid. The
adaptation was probably first effected in Italy,
since in the German Tarok-l'Hombre games an
Italian terminology, a due, ad Una, etc., was used
for the bids. The Permesso games probably
originated in the l750s; we know from Baretti's
book that a four-handed form was in existence by
1768.
three-handed Permesso
The dealer gives twenty-Hve cards to each player,
which he may do in any manner that he pleases; but
he must announce his intended manner of
distributing the cards before he commences the deal,
and is penalised for failing to do so. In the last round
of the deal, he takes the last three cards for himself,
and discards three. He may not discard honors, nor,
according to RI, trumps either. After the dealer has
said, 'Ho scartato' ('l have discarded'), the bidding
begins.
The bidding is opened by the player on the dealer's
right. There are four possible positive bids, which are,
in ascending order: 'Permesso' ('Allow me'); 'A due'
265
('With two'); 'Ad Una' ('With one'l; and 'Sans
prendre' ('Without taking'). No player is obliged to
make a positive bid, if he does, he must make the
lowest that he legally can. If a player wishes to pass
before any positive bid has been made, he says 'Io
pass' ('I pass'), to pass in response to a positive bid,
he says 'Airdate' ('Proceed'). Once a player has
passed, he has no opportunity to re-enter the bidding.
Presumably, if no player makes a positive bid,
the hands are thrown in and there is a new deal
by the next dealer in rotation. The mechanics of
the bidding constitute what we shall call a single-
round bidding procedure, which is used in a number
of Tarot games in which there is bidding. The First
player, in opening the bidding, has the option of
saying either 'Perrnesso' or 'Io passo'. If he says
'Permesso', the player to his right must choose
between passing by saying mAndate' or overbidding
with 'A due'. If the second player says 'A due', the
First player is the next to speak, for the second time: he
may pass by saying 'Airdate', or he may, if he wishes,
claim the prior right to make an 'A due' bid, which
he does by saying 'A due anch'io' ('I also with two').
If he says 'A due anch'io', the second player must
again choose between passing and making the next
higher bid, which is now 'Ad Una'. The first and
second players continue in this way, before the third
player (the dealer) has an opportunity to speak, until
one of them has said 'Airdate', while the auction
between the first and second players continues, the
First player has only to equal the last bid made by the
second, while the second player must bid one level
higher. If the second player reaches the highest level,
'Sans prendre', the bidding ends with the First
player's saying 'Airdate' or 'Sans prendre aneh'io',
without the third player's getting the chance to bid.
Otherwise, the third player has the option of either
passing or making a bid one higher than the last bid
made, and there then occurs an auction between him
and the survivor from the auction between the first
two players, in exactly the same form as before. If,
after the first player says 'Perrnesso', the second
player immediately says 'Airdate', the third player
then has the choice of saying either 'Airdate' or 'A
due', and, in the latter case, an auction then occurs, as
before, between him and the first player. Likewise, if
the first player says 'Io passo', the second player may
either pass or say 'Permesso', if he says 'Permesso',
the third player may pass or say 'A due', and, in the
latter case, there is an auction between him and the
second player. If both the first two players pass, the
third player may pass or say 'Permesso', in either case
ending the bidding.
The following example may illustrate this
procedure: A is the player to the dealer's right, and C
is the dealer.
 266 Part II: Games with 78 cards
Permesso.
B1 A due.
I
A due anch'io,
Ad Una.
A: Airdate.
C: Sans prendre.
B: Sans prendre anch'io.
C cannot outbid B's 'Sans prendre', so the bidding is
concluded, and B is the declarer at the level of sans
Prenrlre. Here is a further example :
A: Permesso.
B: A due.
A: A due anch'io.
B: Andante.
C; Ad Una.
A: Ad Una anch'io.
C: Sans prendre.
A: Ardath.
This time C becomes the declarer at the level of .vans
Préndre, These examples are' rather unlikely, and are
meant only to show how the procedure works.
A bid does not determine the level at which the
successful bidder or declarer is to play, but only sets a
lower bound to it. Hence, when the bidding is over,
the declarer, who, as 'umbra', is to play alone against
the other two, who are temporary allies, has to decide
the level at which he will play. There are, in ascending
order, four possible levels: a try, a due, ad Una, and sans
Prendre. If the declarer said only 'Permesso', he may
play at any level; if he made one of the other bids, he
may play at the level indicated by his highest bid or
at a higher one. If he plays a are, he selects three low
cards from his hand and places them face down in the
centre of the table, he then announces any three par-
ticular cards which he does not have in his hand (and
which, if he is dealer, he has not discarded); for
instance, he may announce, 'Angelo, Bagatto and
King of Batons°. The player or players who have these
cards in their hands have to surrender them to him for
inclusion in his hand; they each replenish their hands
from the three cards on the table, without showing
them, each taking as many cards as he surrendered. It
is not explained what happens if the declarer calls for a
card that the dealer has discarded, a Queen for
example. Since, in discussing four-handed Permesso,
PE mentions the possibility of asking for a Queen or
even a Cavallo, he is presumably given the discarded
card for which he had called, the dealer substituting for
it one of the cards on the table; if the rule were that he
had to forgo a card he had called for when it was in the
discard, it would never be safe to call for anything but
an honor or a trump .
When the declarer plays a due, he places only two
cards on the table and calls for two, when he plays ad
Una he places only one on the table and calls for one.
At farm Prendre, he places no cards on the table and
calls for none, if he did not bid 'Sans prendre', he
announces it now. When he is playing at any lower
level, he need not announce it, his actions make his
intention obvious.
The player to the dealer's right leads to the first
trick, regardless of who the declarer is. Play is as
usual. The two opponents of the declarer behave
during the round in all respects as partners: they keep
in a single pile the cards either of them wins in tricks ,
if one of them plays the Folle, but takes no tricks, he
will need to surrender it at the end of the round only if
the other opponent has also taken no tricks. At the
end of the round, the cards are counted in twos,
making 91 points in all, an odd low card counts 1
point. It appears from PE that if the declarer makes
45 points, there is a draw, and no payments are
made. If the declarer makes 46 points or more, he has
won. If he was playing a He, the two opponents each
pay him an orwranga of 2 game points, if a due, the
onoranza is of 3 game points, if ad Una, of4 game points,
and if ans Prendre, of 5 game points. In addition, his
card points are rounded up or down to the nearest
multiple of 5, 47 being rounded down to 45, but 48
rounded up to 50, and he is then paid by each
opponent l game point for every 5 points he has above
45. If he has 45 points or fewer, he has lost: he then
pays the appropriate onoranga to each opponent, and,
in addition, 1 game point for every 5 points he is
below 45 points, 43 points being rounded up to 45 and
42 rounded down to 40. RI states instead that there
is no on(/ranga when the declarer played a he, and that
the onoranza is of 1 game point a due and of 2 game
points ad Una, the book does not appear to envisage
playing sans Prendre. It can hardly be, however, that,
when the declarer makes, say, 47 points a ire, he is
paid nothing at all, so we should reckon that, on this
system, he receives 1 game point from each opponent
for a score between 46 and 47, 2 game points from
each for one between 48 and 5242, and so on, plus the
rmoranga if any. The upshot will be that he is awarded
just 1 game point less by each opponent than on the
PE system.
In order to decide whether, and how high, to bid, a
player must estimate the number of points he <can
reasonably count on making by means of the hand he
will have when he has asked for and received cards
from the other players. A void in a suit is probably
worth at least 9 points. Length in trumps is not so
important in the three-handed game, what matter are
the court cards, suitably guarded.
The bidding procedure given here is borrowed
from Orb re, and is found, with variations, in a
great many European trick-taking games; it is,
for instance, essentially that used in the German
national game of Skat. (By the 'procedure' I
 Tarocvo in Piedmont and Lombardy
mean the mechanics of the bidding, not the
particular bids made.) It stands in contrast to the
method of simple escalation, in an indefinite
l
number of rounds, used in Bridge, those Tarot
games which admit bidding usually employ
either the single-round procedure or some
intermediate one.
Four-handed Permesso
The dealer gives nineteen cards to each player, and
takes the last two for himself, discarding two. The
cards are counted in twos, since each will have an
even number of cards, no draw is possible. All else is
just as in three-handed Permesso. Length in trumps is
here a much more important consideration in
deciding whether to bid.
Five-handed Permesso or Quirzlifio
The dealer gives fifteen cards to each player, and
takes the last three for himself, discarding three. All
else is as in three-handed Permesso.
Sextzfio
This is simply a six-handed Permesso. It is not
mentioned in RI, and is said by the author of PE to be
uncommon. Thirteen cards are dealt to each player,
the dealer takes no extra cards and of course discards
none. Bidding is as usual, but it is unlikely that
anyone will make a bid higher than 'Perme5s0' or
attempt to play at a level higher than a are. If someone
plays a [re and wins, he is paid 2 game points by each
of the others, plus one game point for every 5 points he
makes above 45, as at three-handed Permesso. If, in
the bidding, all six players pass, the hands are not
thrown in, but each player plays for himself in what is
called a giuoco sciolto (loose game): the player to win
the highest number of points wins the round, and is
paid 1 game point by each of the other players. When
a giuoco sci/alto is played, a player who plays the Folle
gives a low card in exchange to the winner of that trick
immediately, if he has one among the cards he has
won, or as soon as he can, for fear of forgetting who
won the trick.
Setlilio
This is a seven-handed Permesso, also unmentioned
in Rl, and called a bizarre game by the author of PE.
267
The dealer gives eleven cards to each player, and takes
the last card for himself, discarding one. Alllelse is as in
Sestilio.
Permesso Castrato
This game is mentioned only in RI; it differs from
ordinary Permesso only in being played with the same
shortened 54-card pack as Consiglio Castrato, that is,
with one from which the Ace to 6 have been omitted in
Swords and Batons, and the 5 to 10 in Cups and
Coins. It may apparently be played either with three
or with four players, jacopo Gelli, who will be
mentioned below, lists a five-handed version, though
this seems rather unlikely. lilith three players, each
will receive seventeen cards, and the dealer will take
the last three for himself and discard three; on the
assumption that the cards are counted in twos, there
will be 79 points in all. With four players, each will
receive thirteen cards, and the dealer will take the last
two, and discard two. With 79 points on the cards
altogether, 40 will be needed to win. If there really
was a'Nve-handed form, the dealer would have to give
ten cards to each player, and take the last four for
himself, discarding four, which would give him a great
advantage.
Permesso with Bagatto ultimo
This form of Permesso is also mentioned only in RI.
Apart from the additional feature of the Bagatto
ultimo, it is exactly like ordinary Permesso. Since RI
treats of ordinary Permesso (Permerso semfulice),
whether three-, four- or five-handed, under a single
head, the Bagatto ultimo feature can presumably be
added to a Permesso game with three, four or five
players, though there is no explicit statement to that
(or the contrary effect. It is possible to announce an
intention to win the last trick with the Bagatto,
unfortunately, it is impossible to make any more
detailed deductions about the game from the
statement in RI of the laws governing penalties. It is
thus not possible to say whether or not there was a
bonus for winning the last trick with the Bagatto
without having announced an intention to do so;
whether any player had the right to announce an
intention to make the Bagatto ultimo or only the
declarer, or what was the bonus for making for
penalty for losing) the Bagatto ultimo. A reasonable
guess would be to allow any player to announce
Bagatto ultimo; to award a bonus of6 game points for
an unannounced Bagatto ultimo, with a penalty of 6
game points for losing the Bagatto in the last trick and
of 1 game point for losing it in any trick before the
last; and to award a bonus of 12 game points for an
 Tarocco in Piedmont and Lombardy
will be paid 1 game point by each opponent if he wins
a due, and 2 game points if he wins ad Una, plus the
usual game point for every 5 points above 45, and will
pay each opponent correspondingly if he loses. It
would therefore seem reasonable to set the basic
payment when the dealer calls a King at 1 game
point. This is, however, only a conjecture.
Giulio del Meta
This is a reverse game, mentioned only in PE. It may
be played by two players with twenty-five cards each,
by three players with twenty-five cards each, by four
players with nineteen cards each, by five with fifteen
cards each, by six with thirteen each or by seven with
eleven each. There are no partners, but in each case
every player plays for himself. The dealer does not
take the odd cards at the end of the deal, and so there
is no discard. There are no bids, declarations or score
for Bagatto ultimo. Play is as usual, but, at the end of
the round the cards are counted in twos, and the
player with the lowest number of points wins the
round.
The last three games to be described reflect a gives any clue to practice in this respect
quite different circle of ideas.
Sedici
There are four players, and the dealer gives four cards
to each, not taking any extra cards himself or
discarding. He may deal as he wishes: in one round of
four each, in two rounds of two each, in four rounds of
one each, in a round of three each followed by a round
of one each, or in a round of one each followed by a
round of three each. Whatever he does, he must
announce in advance how he is going to deal, failure
to do so is penalised.
In this game the Folle does not serve as Excuse,
but, instead, as the lowest trump, it behaves precisely
like the other trumps, but is beaten by all of them,
including the Bagatto. Play is otherwise as usual, the
player to the dealer's right leading to the first trick.
The cards are counted singly, the Folle counting 1
point, the other counting cards having their full usual
values and the low cards counting nothing. Each
player plays for himself, and bears in mind how many
points he has so far gained. As soon as a player attains
16 points, he announces 'Fuora' ('Out'). If he is
correct, each player who has 8 points or more pays
him 1 game point, and each who has not reached 8
points pays him 2 game points. If, however, the player
who said 'Fuora' is found not to have reached 16
points, he pays 1 game point to each of the other
players (or 2 if he has not even reached 8 points).
269
Since it will often happen that in four tricks no one
makes 16 points, the question arises what happens in
this case: although PE says nothing explicit about
this, a reasonable guess is that there is a further deal
of four cards to each player by the same dealer, and so
on until someone goes out. If this is right, the
continued deal must take place without returning to
the pack the cards already played, since there is talk
in PE of an opponent's challenging a player who has
said 'Fuora' to count his cards.
Trerztuno
Trentuno is said to be played exactly like Sedici, save
that each of the four players receives eight cards in the
deal, and 31 points are needed to go out, probably 15
points are enough to save a player from having to pay
the winner double, However, even with two deals it
will be quite common for no one to reach 31 points,
and more are impossible without returning the cards
already played
, to the pack. It may be that in
Trentuno the round was, in such a case, abandoned
without payment, or that all the cards were shuffled
and redealt by the same dealer, neither PE nor RI
Trentuno al menu
This is a reverse game. Eight cards are dealt to each of
four players, and the play and method of counting
points on cards is as in Trentuno. No one claims
'Flora ', and there can be no further distribution of
cards in that round when the eight tricks have been
played: the winner is that player who has the fewest
points. PE mentions a similar reverse form of Sedici.
RI mentions one other game, called Sessan-
tatre (Sixty-three), which does not figure in PE,
but it is impossible to deduce anything about it
save that a very small number of cards were given
out in each deal. .Jacopo Gelli, who contributed
3 PE states explicitly (in the section on Baronetti, p. 51)
that in Sedici and Trentuno the cards are counted singly,
and also states explicitly (pp. 13-14, 38) that in these games
the Folle counts 1 point and the other counting cards have
their standard values. It does not expressly say that low
cards count nothing, and it would be possible to suppose
that they counted 1 point each, rnakingit much easier to
reach the winning score in both games, but, if this is so, it
is odd that it is not mentioned. Sedici and Trentuno are
dealt with first in PE (as they also are in RI, as if they had
some kind of priority), so that the ordinary method of
counting, e.g. in twos, with two low cards counting 1 point,
is not explained until after Sedici and Trentuno have been
described.
270 Part II: Game; wil/1 78 cards
most of the article on games to the Encyclopedia
Italians (vol. XVII, la/Iilan, 1933, s.v. 'Giuoco'),
had evidently seen a later edition of RI or some
similar work, but not, apparently, PE or any
other actual description of the games. At any
rate, the section on Tarocchi in his En c iclopedia
article consists almost wholly of the laws about
misdeals, revokes and the like, without any
actual account of how to play, while his entry on
Tarocchi in his own book Piccvla Encyclopedia do
Giuoclti e Passatempi (4th edition, Milan, 1929, 6th
edition, Milan, 1965) contains almost word for
word the laws given in RI for three-handed
Venticinque and for Partita, together with the
same general 'codice piemontese' of laws for all
Tarocchi games given in the Erzciclopedia, and the
barest description of the composition of the pack
and the ranking and values of the cards, in
Piedmontese style, that is with the XX superior
to the XXI, but without explaining the manner
of playing the Folle. Both the Encyclopedia article
and the Giuodzi e Pas satempi cite a list of
Piedmontese Taroechi games, without
explaining how they are played. This list
comprises all those for which the laws and
penalties are given in RI, with two others beside:
Undici e mezzo (Eleven and a half) and Quindici
(Fifteen). These may not be irrecoverable: the
list and the 'Piedmontese code' were probably
taken from IZ Giuovatore do Ta rocrll i (Turin, 1846),
which I have not seen. Gelli's list appears to
fascinate some people: it reappears in CIoClzi do
Carle, vol. II, lVIilan, 1969, s.v. 'Tarocchi', again
with no explanation of the games save for three-
handed Venticinque and Partita, and a cursory
mention of Mittigati.
The other region in which Tarocco became
extremely popular after the reintroduction of the
78-card pack from France in the eighteenth
century was Lombardy, where the predominant
form was the four-handed one. There was also a
three-handed game known as Reseghino, and
versions of Taroec'0mbre, with bidding as in the
Permesso games of Piedmont, for various
numbers of players. To judge by the invaluable
bibliography of books on card games by A.
Lensi,4 the earliest published account of these
games was contained in It Maestro de' Giuoclii
published in Milan in 1811. I have not seen this
first edition, but, of the editions published in
'* Alfredo Lensi, Bibliografia Italians do Giuochi Di Carte,
Florence, 1892.
1830, 1832 and 1879, I have seen that of 1832,
and, as far as I can judge, this same account was
copied in IZ Giuocatore de' Taroachi (Milan, 1817)
and in In Giuocatore in Co n zze rsaziofze (1st edition,
l\1ilan, n.d.; 2nd edition, Milan, 1820; 3rd
edition, Milan, 1843), It Giuocatore nella Solo do
Converraziofte (Milan, 1825, 1838, 1848) and II
Nuevo Ciuofalore in Conversazione (Milan, 1857),
with the most minor variations. We have thus
essentially a single account of these games, of
which the section on Tarocc'Ombre is most
carelessly written. A description of all the
Lombard forms of the game is given by Louis
d'Aguilar Jackson, writing under the pen-name
'Aquarius', in his Italian Games at Cards (London,
1890). Jackson was an engineer who was also an
enthusiast for foreign card games, about which
he published a number of small books. He even
devised a game which he called English Tarocco,
to be played with a special pack of 64 cards
which he succeeded in inducing the Hrrn of
Goodalls to produce; this pack was quite unlike
any ordinary Tarot pack, consisting of 52 suit
cards and twelve 'Taro' cards, named the Castle,
the Warship, the Dove, etc., and the game
likewise differed from any known form of Tarot.
Unfortunately, comparison of]ackson's accounts
of games with what can in many cases be
identified with certainty as his sources reveals
that he frequently misunderstood his material, so
that little reliance can be placed on them. In the
present case, there is no reason to suppose that
he had seen anything but the often reprinted
account mentioned above.
We have already encountered the four-handed
game now to be described, namely as played in
Vienna in the mid-eighteenth century, and
subsequently included in card-game books
published in Germany and the Netherlands.
Four-handed Tarocco in Lombardy
Terminology
Trumps are called larocc/zi, high trumps are called
mattatori. The XXI is called the .Monde and the I the
Bagaltog others are referred to by number. The Queen
is called Dams, and a set of all four court cards of one
suit in a hand is called an in/zperiale; a numeral card of
a suit is called a Carlina or a paglia. The Fool is called
the Malta. The Mondo, Bagatto, Matto and the four
Kings are called collectively honours (orwri).
 Tarawa in Piedmont and Lombardy
Ranks and values of the cards
In the suits, the cards rank in their original order. In
trumps, they rank in numerical order, so that the
Mondo or XXI is the highest, and the I or Bagatto is
the lowest. The Matto serves as Excuse, and may be
led to a trick. The cards are counted in fours; two odd
low cards count nothing. The values of the counting
cards are :
Mondo 6 points
Bagatto 5 points
Mano 5 points
Each King 5 points
Each Queen 4 points
Each Cavalla 3 points
Each jack 2 points
There are thus 72 points altogether.
Deal
The dealer gives nineteen cards to each player lit is
not specified how). In the last round, he turns face up
the last card that he deals to each of the other three
players. He then gives himself the last two cards,
turning them face up. If either or both of these last
two cards is an honour or a trump, he continues to
turn cards of his hand face up until there are two
exposed cards that are neither honors nor trumps (or
until he has exposed his entire hand). When all have
looked at the exposed cards, each picks up his hand.
Any player may, before the dealer discards, propose
going a Monte. If all agree, the cards are thrown in,
and there is a new deal by the next dealer. Otherwise
the dealer discards two cards face down, which will
ordinarily count for him and his partner. He may
never discard an honour, he may not discard a trump
unless he is compelled to by the requirement of not
discarding an honour, but, if he does, he need not
announce the fact. The player to the right of the
dealer (called the eletlal asks the dealer if he has
completed his discard, and, on receiving an
affirmative answer, leads to the first trick. Play and
deal are counter-clockwise.
Play and string
Play proceeds under the usual rules. The four players
are divided into two Fixed partnerships, partners
facing each other across the table. A game (Paulita)
consists of four rounds, so that each player is dealer
once. If, before a round is played, it is decided to go a
Monte and have a new deal, that counts as one of the
four rounds, although there is no score: that dealer
does not get to deal again in that game. The cards
that each player wins in tricks are kept beside him,
adjoined to those won by his partner only at the end
271
of the round; the dealer keeps the two cards he has
discarded separately. When the Matto is played, it is,
as usual, withdrawn and placed on top of the cards
the player has won in tricks. The one who played the
l\Iatto immediately replaces it, before the trick is
gathered up, by a card he has won in a previous trick 1
he may not take a card from among those won by his
partner, nor, if he is the dealer, from those he has
discarded. He may nevertheless play the Matto before
he has won a trick, in that case, he must surrender a
card to the player who won the trick to which he
played the Matto as soon as he himself wins a trick. If
he never wins a trick, he must surrender the Matto at
the end of the round. If the dealer does not win a trick,
he must surrender his two discarded cards to the
winner of the last trick.
At the end of the round, the cards won by partners
are put together and the points totalled. If both sides
have won 36 points, neither scores. Otherwise, that
side that has~gained more than 36 points records the
excess of its score over 36, e.g. a side that has made 47
points records 11. At the end of the four rounds, the
points recorded by each side are added up, and that
side which has the highest total has won the game. If
the winning side has between 1 and 35 points more in
recorded score than the losers, it has a simple win
.
l§eml7!z6€) , and each winner is paid 1 game point by
one of the losers. If their total recorded score exceeds
that of the losers by between 36 and 71 points, they
have won a reals, and are paid 2 game points each, if
they have an excess of between 72 and 107 points,
they have won another reals, and each receives 3 game
points, and so on. If the losers have no recorded score
at all, the winners have won a doppia and receive an
additional game point each, For winning every trick
in a round, which is called making a cappotto (slam),
there is an additional bonus of 2 game points. If a
single player wins every trick in a round, it is called a
fappoltone, but there is no special bonus apart from
that for cap/Jolie,
Reseglzino
This is a very straightforward game with three
players, each playing for himself. The rank and values
of the cards are as in the four-handed game, save that
the Mondo or XXI is worth only 5 points, the cards
are counted in threes, so that there are 78 points in all.
The dealer gives twenty-five cards to each player, and
takes the last three for himself, discarding three, under
the same restrictions as in the four-handed game;
there is no mention of any cards being exposed. If the
player who has the Matto makes no tricks, he
surrenders the Matto at the end of the round to the
player who won the trick to which it was played, if the
dealer makes no tricks, he surrenders his discardto
272 Part II: Games with 78 cards
the winner of the last trick. A game consists of three
rounds. At the end of each round, each player records
the difference, positive or negative, between the points
he has made and 26: the winner of the game is the
player with the highest total score.
Three-handed Tarocc'Um[ne
This is a game with bidding, similar to the
Piedmontese Permesso, but played with a shortened
54-card pack. The Ace to 6 are omitted from Swords
and Batons, and the 4 to 10 from Cups and Coins, in
Swords and Batons, the cards rank in descending
order, K, Q, CJ, 10, 9, 8, 7, and, in Cups and Coins, K,
Q, C, J, A, 2, 3, 4. The values of the cards are as in
Reseghino, that is, 5 points each for the Mondo,
Bagatto and Matto, ~and 5, 4, 3 and 2 points
respectively for each King, Queen, Cavallo and jack,
The cards are counted in threes, so that there are 70
points altogether.
The dealer gives seventeen cards to each player,
and takes the last three cards for himself, discarding
three, he may not discard honours, and may discard a
trump only if he has to. There are, in ascending order,
three possible positive bids: 'Entre on due carte' (`I
come in with two cards'), 'Ad Una' ('With one') and
'A nienle' l'with nothing'). (The bid of 'A ire' had
evidently dropped out as making it too easy to
succeed.) The bidding is opened by the player to the
dealer's right. The bidding procedure is very
carelessly described, but, as far as can be determined,
it is as follows. Any player may pass rather than make
a positive bid, but, once he has passed, he may not re-
enter the bidding. In the first round of the bidding,
each player must either pass or make a bid higher
than any yet made; the First player to make a positive
bid need not make the lowest possible bid of 'Con due
carter, but may start at the level of 'Ad Una', which he
does by saying 'Entre non Una carts' ('l come in with one
card'). (Presumably he may, if he wishes, say 'Entre
con nzente', which will terminate the bidding.) If more
than one player has made a positive hid, the bidding
is still open. In the second round of the bidding, the
first player who has not yet passed may now pass if he
wishes, but also has the right instead to bid again at
the same level as the last bid, if he passes, this right is
acquired by the next player; a subsequent bidder
must make a higher bid or pass. Thus, if the first
player says,, 'Entre 6072 due carte ', the second player
passes, and the dealer says 'Ad Una', the First player
now has the right himself to say 'Ad urea'; the dealer
must now either pass or say 'A niente and, if he
passes, the First player becomes declarer at the level of
'Ad Ana If, in this example, the dealer does say 'A
nienZe', the first player again has the right himself to
say 'A nz'enle', which ends the bidding, the first player
becoming declarer. The first player has, of course., the
right to pass after each of the dealer's bids, if he wishes.
Another example will illustrate the difference from the
procedure in the Piedmontese Perrnesso games. The
First player says 'Entry can due carte' and the second
player overbids him with 'Ad ma'. Unlike in
Permesso, the first player does not yet have the right
to speak again until the dealer has spoken. The dealer
may either pass or say 'A nien£e': suppose he does the
latter. There is now a second round of bidding. The
first player may either say 'A nierzte' himself, in which
case the bidding is over, or pass: if he passes, the
second player must either pass or say 'A nierz!e'.
If the declarer has bid 'Con due carte', he asks for any
two cards he does not have in his hand: the player or
players who hold these cards must surrender them,
and the declarer gives two low' cards from his hand,
face down, in return. If he has bid 'Ad Una', he asks in
the same way for one card, if 'A nzerzte', then of course
he asks for none. (There is the same ambiguity as with
Permesso about what happens if he asks for a card
discarded by the dealer, but this is less likely in this
game.) Now the player to the dealer's right leads to
the first trick, and the hands are played out under the
same rules as in Reseghino. If the declarer makes 36
points or more on the cards he wins in tricks, he has
won, if he makes 35 points or fewer, he has
unreservedly lost. If he has won, each opponent pays
him 2 game points if he was playing a due (asked for
two cards before play began), 3 game points if he was
playing ad Una, and, presumably, 4 game points if he
was playing a nienfe, though this is not stated, in
addition, he receives from each opponent 1 game
point for every full set of 5 points he has above 35,
Likewise, if he loses, he pays to each opponent 2, 3 or
4 game points, according to the level of the game, plus
l game point for every full set of 5 points by which his
score falls below 35. It is stated that, if the declarer
makes a raP/10130 (slam), i.e. wins all the tricks, each
opponent pays him 12 game points if he was playing
a due, 13 game points if he was playing ad Una (and,
presumably, 14 if he was playing a nienfe). This
appears to imply a bonus of 3 game points for cappotto.
If the dealer has made a Positive bid, but one of the
other players becomes declarer, the declarer may
surrender the round before a card has been played: in
this case, he pays simply the basic payment to each
opponent. The purpose of this is to make a sacrifice in
order to prevent the dealer from achieving a cappotto.
Umbra armlJiata
This is simply the four-handed version of the
preceding game. All the Tarocc'Ombre games are
described together in a single account, and this four-
handed form suffers particularly badly from a failure
l
Tarocco in Piedmont and Lombardy
to be explicit. The 54-card pack is used, and each
player receives thirteen cards, the dealer taking the
last two and discarding two. It appears that the points
are reckoned as in ordinary four-handed Lombard
Tarocco: that is, the Mondo (XXI) is worth 6 points,
the other counting cards have their usual values and
I.
the cards are counted in fours, two odd low cards held
by the dealer counting nothing, making a total of 66
I points altogether. All that is actually said is that 34
points suffice for a win, which is consistent with there
being 66 or 67 points in all, the above conjecture
seems the best way of accounting for this. The
declarer will, if he wins, receive from each opponent
the basic payment, according to the level at which he
plays, plus 1 game point for every full set of 5 points
he has above 33; if he loses, he will pay each opponent
the basic amount plus 1 game point for every full set of
5 points he has below 33. The basic payment is stated
to be 14 game points a due, 15 game points ad Una (and,
presumably, 16 a nientel. This seems unreasonably
» .
high, and, since the sentence immediately follows one
relating to the scores for capbotto in the three-handed
game, it is probable that the text has become garbled
(a not infrequent occurrence when an account of a
game is repeatedly reprinted from one book to
another), A reasonable guess would be that the basic
payment is 4 game points a due, 5 game points ad Una
and 6 game points Hz niente, with a bonus of 4 game
points for 6aP/y0!!/1. All else is as in three-handed
Tarocc'Ombre.
2 produced by all Italian cardmakers. The game
Five-handed Tarot 'Orb re
For this game a full 78-'card pack is used, Fifteen cards
being dealt to each player and the last three being
taken by the dealer, who discards three. When the
declarer, if playing ad Una or a due, has asked for and
received one or two cards from the other players, he
then 'calls', that is, names, any other card that he
does not have, say the Mondo or a King, and the
player who holds that card becomes his partner,
without announcing the fact. It does not become
certain who the declarer's partner is until the called
card is played to a trick, and, at least until then, each
player keeps separately the cards he has won in tricks.
The only guidance to how the points are reckoned is
the vague remark that, in Tarocc'Ombre games, 36
points are 'generally' needed for a win: since this is
expressly stated not to be so in the four-handed game,
it is likely to be so in the have-handed one. The only
way that it appears possible to secure this is by
counting the cards in fours, and valuing the Mondo at
only 5 points, so as to make 71 points altogether. (If
one, two or three odd low cards count nothing, there
will be only 70 points when both sides have three odd
cards, but this will not matter. ) The general
273
inaccuracy of the account leaves it possible, however,
that the cards were counted in fives, giving a total of
67 points (if three odd low cards count nothing), with
34 needed to win. Nothing is said about the details of
payment for win or loss. (One could make the value of
each game twice its value in Ombra arrabiata for the
opponents, three times that value for the declarer and
his partner. E.g. if the declarer and his partner
achieve a bare win a due, worth 4 points on the method
suggested above for the four-handed game, then each
opponent would pay 8 game points and each of the
winners would receive 12, if they had a bare loss a due,
declarer and his partner would each pay 12 game
points and each of the opponents would receive 8.)
Seven-handed Tarot 'Orb re
The full 78-card pack is used, and each player receives
eleven cards, the dealer taking the last one and
discarding one. Play is as in the five-handed game.
The account says that, if a player bids 'A rziente', he
has to play without a partner, but this seems to make
an absurd gap between the difficulty of winning ad Una
and that of winning a niente; it is again possible that
the text has become garbled. No details are given
either of the method of reckoning the points or of the
system of scoring.
The 78-card Tarocco Piemontese pack is still
appears to have been on the wane throughout the
twentieth century, but it is still played in both the
Piedmontese and Lombard traditions. So far as I
have been able to discover, it has died out
completely in Milan. Signor Giampaolo Dossena
has informed Me that it is still played in
Piacenza, a simple three-handed form, very
close to the Reseghino described above, is played
in Como, although the name Reseglzino has been
forgotten and the game is simply called Tarocc/zi.
I have unfortunately had no opportunity to visit
Piacenza or Como, but Mr john McLeod was
given a verbal description of three-handed
Tarocchi as played in Como by a gentleman from
that town who had moved to Milan. Printed
descriptions of modern Tarocchi games as played
in Lombardy are rare. One account was given by
Rino Fulgi Zaini in his book Gioclti do Carte, first
published in 1934 (7th edition, Milan, 1968). He
gives two forms of the game as being then played
in Lombardy, the simple three-handed game,
which he says has no variants, and a modern
form of Mitigati, of which the early Piedmontese
form was explained earlier in this chapter, and
274 Part II: Game; with 78 cards
which he says exhibits slight variations from
place to place. Some confusion seems to have
crept into Zaini's account of the simple game.
For one thing, he says that, when the three cards
discarded by the dealer count for him, a King
counts 4 points, a Queen 3 and a Cavallo 2, while
a Jack does not count; this statement is hard to
reconcile with the earlier statements that a King
may not be discarded and that there are 78
points altogether. Furthermore, he says that, in
certain circumstances, the discarded cards do not
count for the dealer, these circumstances appear
to be that the dealer°s trumps are exhausted
before those of one of the other two players. The
passage is, however, very obscure, and it is
difficult to frame a clear rule on the basis of'it.
The likeliest explanation is that Zaini has
mistaken some description of strategy for a rule
of play: the strategy would be for the other two
players to enter into a temporary alliance at the
beginning of the round in order to try to exhaust
the dealer's trumps, so as to prevent him from
trumping their court cards, because he may by
his discard have created one or even two voids. I
shall, on this assumption, ignore these passages
in stating the rules of the two games he
describes.5
The following account is based on Zaini's
description and on that given to john McLeod by
the gentleman from Como. There are slight
differences between them, indicated by 'Zaini'
and 'Como'. McLeod was informed that the
game is played for a small Fixed stake, usually a
drink.
5 In case anyone can put a better interpretation on it, the
passage from Zaini runs as follows: 'Per Una convenzione je
figure dello sarto (escluso it Fante) song dovute alto
scartante, quando non sia state smontato di tarocchi, prima
he Si sano verifieate uscite net some scartato. It mazziere
he facesse sortie di tarocchi, giocando di Mano, perderé it
diritto all scarto. Lo scarto é dovuto al mazziere solo se it
giocatore non riusciré a Farsi je proprie Figure. Le figure
dello sarto anno palate al rnazziere in ragione di quattro
punt per it Re, tre per la Damp e due per it Cavallo. Esiste
pure la convenzione he quando due giocatori abbiano
salvato lo scarto taroccando, si debbano rispettare je press
di figure in quel sere net limit del possible. Per it Fante la
convenzione Tessa. PerO due giocatori perfetti rispettano
anche quells press se appena possible. L'alleanza finisce a
searto salvato, e non ha neppure logo quando no dei due
cessasse o non iniziasse l'offensiva a tarocchi eontro lo
seartante. Allora it rispetto per je Figure dell sarto essa,
ed ognuno dei due cercheré di prenderne pin che put
all'altro' (Zaini, op. cit., 1968, pp. 94-5).
Three-llanded Ta rofclz z (Lombardy, twenlietll cerztutyl
The terminology is exactly as in the four-handed
Lombard game described above, save that the XXI is
simply called Venluno (Twenty-one). The ranking of
the cards is also the same, so that the XXI is the
highest trump and the suits rank in their original
order. The values of the cards are :
XXI 5 points
Bagatto 5 points
Each King 5 points
Matto 4 points
Each Queen 4 points
Each Cavallo 3 points
Each.Jack 2 points
A 78-card Tarocco Piemontese pack is used, and the
cards are counted in threes. The rules of play are as
usual, and the l\Iatto serves as Excuse. The one who
plays it withdraws it as usual from the trick to which
it was played, and places it with the cards he has won
in tricks (or simply puts it on top of those cards
without playing it to the table), he does not, however,
give a card in exchange for it, either at that time or at
the end of the round. When he counts his cards, he
counts the Mulatto by itself, reckoning 4 points for it,
and the rest in threes. Conversely, the player who won
the trick to which the la{atto was played will count the
two cards of that trick (or the two cards remaining
when he has counted the rest in threes as if they were
three, i.e., as worth 1 point if they are both low cards,
as having the value of the counting card if they include
just one such, and as one less than the sum of their
values if both are counting cards. Thus the reduction
of the value of the Matto to 4 points is no more than a
formal difference due to its not being replaced by a
low card, there are therefore still 78 points altogether.
No rule is stated by Zaini to the effect that, if the
player who has the Matto makes no tricks, he has to
surrender it; it is uncertain what the practice is in this
regard in Como.
Deal and play are counter-clockwise. The dealer
gives twenty-five cards to each of the other players
and twenty-eight to himself, discarding three.
I \ccording to Zaini, he deals the cards in five rounds
of Five cards each, beginning with the player to his
right, and taking, in addition, the last three cards for
himself. In present-day Como, he deals in a single
round, giving the first twenty-Five cards to the player
to his right, the next twenty-Hve to his other
opponent, and taking the remaining twenty-eight for
himself, in so doing, he turns face up the last card
dealt to each player, including himself. If any player
has no trumps, the deal is annulled, and there is a new
deal by the same dealer, for this purpose, the la/latto
 Tar0c60 in Piedmont and Lombardy
counts as a trump. The cards discarded by the dealer
count to him at the end of the round. The restrictions
on his discard observed by players in Como are not
known. According to Zaini, he may not discard
Kings, and he may not discard either trumps or the
Matto save in a special case. This special case is that
in which he has the Bagatto and just two other
trumps, counting the Matto as a trump. In this case
alone, he may discard all three trumps, but he must
discard all or none. The player to the right of the
dealer leads to the First trick. Each player scores, at
the end of the round, the difference, positive or
negative, between his point-total and 26 points; at
Como, a game consists of three rounds, the winner
being of course the player with the highest cumulative
score, who is paid a Fixed stake by each of the other
two. It is not stated by Zaini that, if the dealer makes
no tricks, he has to surrender his discard, and it is
probable that this is not the rule; but the practice in
present-day Como in this respect has not been
ascertained.
Zaini's account is the only evidence known to
me that the game of Mitigati, which must have
been imported from Piedmont, is OF has been
played in Lombardy in the twentieth century. It
is certainly played in present-day Piedmont, as
will be explained below; but the differences are
sufficiently great to make it worth setting out
Zaini's game separately.
Mitigate (Lombardy, twentieth cerzturyl
There are three players. The play and the points on
cards won in tricks are just as in the preceding game,
as are the ranking and values of the cards. The deal
and play are counter-clockwise. The cards are dealt in
five rounds of five cards each, beginning with the
player to the dealer's right, the dealer taking eight
cards in the last round of the deal. After each of the
second, third and fourth rounds of the deal, when the
players each have, respectively, ten, fifteen and twenty
cards, there is a pause to decide whether or not to
continue the deal. Each looks at the hand so far dealt
to him. The player to the right of the dealer then
either says 'I pass', meaning that he would like to
abandon the deal, or calls for the deal to continue. If
he passes, the second player has the same choice, and
if he also passes, the dealer decides whether or not to
continue the deal. As soon as any player demands the
continuation of the deal, the next five cards are dealt
out to each player, if all three pass, the hands are
thrown in, and there is a new deal by the same dealer.
After the final round of the deal, there is no longer an
opportunity to call for a new deal. The dealer discards
275
\
three cards, under the same restrictions as those
stated by Zaini for the simple three-handed game
described above.
The player to the right of the dealer leads to the
first tFi':k. Each player, just before he plays his card to
the first trick, has the opportunity to make any of the
following declarations of cards he holds in his hand:
Tawcchi. This consists of ten trumps, the Matto
counting for this purpose as a trump. The player has
to show his ten trumps to the other two players. There
is no additional bonus for having more than ten
trumps, if he has more, he may select the ten that he
shows, and need not say how many he has. He is
immediately paid 5 game points by each of the other
two players ,
Orzori. The honors (rori) are, as usual, the four
Kings and the XXI, Bagatto and Matto. A
declaration of Onori may be made by a player having
any four of these: they do not have to be shown to the
other players, a.nd there is no bonus for having more
than four, so that it is unnecessary to say how many
one has. The player is immediately awarded 5 game
points by each of the other two.
/l/Iilzgati dz Tarocchi. This consists of the XXI,
Bagatto and Matte. The player is paid 10 game points
by each of the other two.
Mztzgatz dz Re. This consists of all four Kings; one
may not claim Oman in addition. The player is
awarded 15 game points by each of the other two.
If a player is fortunate enough to be able t,o make
more than one of these declarations, he may do so, the
same cards may be used in two or more declarations,
kg. the three cards of the /l/Iiligati dz' Ta rocclzz may
count also among ten Tarocclii, or, with a King, as
three of four Onorz. A combined declaration of /l/Iiligah
and Tarowhi (worth 20 game points
do Ta rocclz i, Onori
from each opponent) is called a Piano (plate), and one
of Mitigate dz Tarocc/ti, Alztzgatz dz Re and Ta rocchi
(worth 30 game points from each) a Piattone (dish).
Zaini recommends, as a minimum on which to call
for a continuation if the deal after receiving ten cards,
five trumps or three trumps and one honour, and, as a
minimum after receiving Fifteen cards, the so-called
roiiura (breakage), namely one King and either the
XXI, Bagatto or Matto, unless one has hopes of
obtaining ten trumps.
At the end of the round, each player who has more
than 26 points receives in all, as many game points as
he has card points in excess of 26, and, conversely,
each player who has less than 26 points pays as many
game points as he has card points below 26.
Published information about Tarocchi as now
played in Piedmont is even harder to come by.
276 Part U: Games with 78 cards
The two-volume anonymous compilation Gioc/zz
dz Carle published by Edizioni Librex in Milan in
1969 has an article on Tarocchi which describes
the game according to the Piedmontese tradition.
Three forms of the game are recognised: a simple
three-handed game, called in The e Ventzrinque, a
four-handed game, called ParMa, played in two
Fixed partnerships; and three-handed /\/Iitigati.
The accounts are very sketchy, and should not be
relied on too heavily. Mr John McLeod was able,
on a recent visit to Turin and the nearby town of
Pinerolo, to obtain more detailed information
from actual players. The simple three-handed
game is called Scarto in Pinerolo, to distinguish it
from Mitigati, which is very popular there, but is
called simply Tarocchi in Turin. In Turin the
simple four-handed game, with partners, is more
often played -than the three-handed one, but is
also simply called Tarocchi. These games are
ordinarily played for small stakes, but Mitigati,
which is also played in Turin, is usually played
for quite high ones. There are slight differences
between the games as played in the two centres,
which do not call for separate description.
Sfarto (Pinerolo and Turin, Present day)
This is a simple form of game for three players, called
Scarto in Pinerolo but simply Tarocchi in Turin.
Trumps are called taroachi, the XX is called the Angelo
and the XXI the rl/[ond/1, according to Librex, the I is
called the Bigatto and the Fool in Folie, though players
in Turin and Pinerolo appear normally to call the
latter zl A/Iatlo. Deal and play are counter-clockwise.
The rank and values of the cards are as in the
Piedmontese tradition: that is to say, the suits rank in
their original order, the Angelo (XX) is superior to the
Monde (XXI), but otherwise the higher-numbered
trumps beat the lower-numbered ones, and the point-
values are as follows:
Angelo (XX) 5 points
Bigatlo (I) 5 points
Each King 5 points
Fondle or Mateo 4 points
Each Queen 4 points
Each Cavalla 3 points
Each jack 2 points
The dealer gives twenty-five cards to each of the other
two players and twenty-eight to himself. In Turin, the
deal is in a single round, starting with the player to
the dealer's right, the dealer gives each of his two
opponents his twenty-five cards in a single batch, and
takes the last twenty-eight cards for himself. In
Pinerolo the cards are dealt in five rounds of five cards
each, starting with the player to the dealer's right, the \
dealer taking the last eight cards. In neither ease is
any card exposed in the deal. The dealer discards
three cards, which count to him at the end of the
round, he may not discard a King, the Angelo (XX) or
the Folic or Marin. He may discard the Bigatlo (I) only
fit is his only trump.
The player to the dealer's right leads to the first
trick. Play is under the usual rules. The Folic or Marlo
serves as Excuse, but no card is given in exchange for
it. It is legal to lead it to a trick, in which case the next
player may play any card, to which the third player
has to follow suit, if he can, or, if he cannot, to play a
trump if he can. At Pinerolo, the player who has the
Folic or Marta retains it even if he makes no tricks,
likewise, the dealer retains his discard even if he
makes no tricks. In Turin, the players spoken to, who
normally played the four-handed game, did not know
what happened in either of these cases. At the end of
the round, the cards are counted in threes; the Folic or
A/Iatlo is counted separately, and the player who won
the trick to which it was played counts his two odd
cards as if they were three. There are thus 78 points
altogether, just as in the game played in Lombardy.
Each player scores the difference, positive or negative,
between his point-total and 26. A game consists of
three rounds, the object being to avoid having the
lowest score: the player with the lowest cumulative
score pays a small stake to each of the other two,
usually buying them a drink.
The simple four-handed game, popular in
Turin, is not much played at Pinerolo, though it
is known there. The name Partita does not appear
to be still in use for it.
Four-lzarzded Tarocchi (Turin and Pinerolo, Present day)
Deal and play are counter-clockwise. There are two
fixed partnerships, partners facing each other across
the tal5le. The rank and values of the cards and the
rules of play are as in Scarto. The dealer gives
nineteen cards to each of the other three players and
twenty-one to himself; he deals the cards in a single
round, beginning with the player to his right, so that
each player receives all his cards in a single batch.
The dealer discards two cards, which count to his side
at the end of the round, under the same restrictions as
in Scarto. In Turin, the cards are counted in fours, the
dealer's discard of two cards counting as if it were a
set of four: there are thus 72 points altogether. Since,
as in Scarto, no card is given in exchange for the Folly
or Mano, it is counted separately, the side which won
the trick to which it was played counting three cards
 Tarocco in Piedmont and Lombardy
as if they were four. At Pinerolo, however, the cards
are apparently counted in threes, so that there are 78
points altogether.6 In Turin, if the side having the
FolZe or Marlo takes no tricks, they must surrender it to
their opponents; likewise, if the dealer's side makes no
tricks, the dealer's discard must be surrendered. At
Pinerolo, the discard is in such a case retained by the
dealer's side and the Folie or Malta by the side that
held it.
In Turin it is permissible for each player to give
information about his hand immediately after playing
to any trick. No secret code can be used, and the
information must be true. The type of information is
normally that the player has the highest outstanding
card of some specified suit, or the highest outstanding
trump, or that he has a certain number of trumps, or a
certain number of cards in some suit, or that he has a
particular card. Information about trumps can be
given only immediately after playing a trump;
information about the plain suits can be given at any
time. The only allowable means of making a
suggestion to one's partner about what card to play is
by means of a signal effected by drawing the card
being played towards the player: that is, he makes as
at to play to the trick, but then, keeping hold of the
card, briefly slides it back towards himself before
finally putting it back in the trick. This signal is a
request to his partner to allow him to take the trick.
At the end of each round, each side scores the
difference, positive or negative, between their point-
total and 36 (or 39 in Pinerolo). A game consists of
four rounds: the losers pay a .fixed stake, usually a
drink, to the winners.
Mitigati is still played enthusiastically both in
Pinerolo and in Turin, usually for high stakes,
and in forms somewhat different fro m t he
Lombard one described above.
6 Given that no card is given in exchange for the Folic or
Mario, great care will be needed to obtain a correct tally
when the cards are counted in threes in a four-handed
game. The difficulty arises in the case in which the side
which has the Folic has two cards left over when their cards
are counted out in threes, and the opposing side has just one
odd card. If the usual principle is followed that two odd low
cards count 1 point and one odd low card counts nothing,
then, in such a case, when the Folie is counted separately,
each side will have one odd card, and the combined point-
totals will come to only 77. The correct rule, in such a case,
should be that, if the side holding the Folie won the trick to
which it was played, they should count an extra point,
while, if their opponents won that trick, they should count
the extra point.
277
Three-handed A/[itigati (Pifzerolo, Present day)
J
Deal and play are counter-clockwise. The rank and
values of the cards are as in Scarto. However, the
cards are counted singly, each low card counting l
point and the Folic or A/[atM counting 4: there are thus
altogether 129 points. The rules of play are as in
Scarto, including those governing the Folle or Malta,
which always belongs to the player who holds it, even if
he makes no tricks, similarly, the dealer's discard
belongs to him, even if he makes no tricks.
As a result of each round, each player will receive a
positive or negative score. The scores of the three
players always add up to zero, and a player's
cumulative score for any number of rounds represents
the total amount of money he is to pay or receive. At
three stages during the deal, there is a bargaining
session in which the players may agree what each
player should score for the round, the three figures
totaling zero, If agreement is reached, the hands are
thrown in, those scores are recorded and there is a
new deal by the same dealer.
The dealer gives twenty-five cards to each of his
opponents and twenty-eight to himself. He deals the
cards in five rounds of Eve cards each, starting with
the player to his right, and taking the remaining eight
cards in the final round of the deal. The bargaining
sessions take place when each player has ten cards,
when each has Fifteen, and when each has twenty.
Each player in turn, beginning with the one to the
dealer's right, may do one of four things ;
(i) he may pass, by saying 'Passo', thus proposing to
throw in his hand for a zero score,
(ii) he may demand a given number of game points,
which he does by saying 'C/ziedo ...', naming a
number, thus agreeing to abandon the hand for the
stated positive score ,
(iii) he may offer a given number of points, which
he does by saying 'Offero ...', naming a number, thus
agreeing to abandon the hand for the stated negative
score, or
(iv) he may demand that the deal should continue,
which he does by saying ' Vedo'.
The moment any player says 'Veto' CI see'), the
bargaining session comes to an end and the deal is
continued. Otherwise, the bargaining continues in
rotation until the scores offered and demanded add
up to zero, in which case the hands are thrown in and
the score recorded. At his second and subsequent
turns to speak in a given bargaining session, a player
is not allowed to modify his proposal so as to make it
more favourable to himself. Thus, if he has made an
offer, he may make a better offer, but may not make a

278 Part II: Games with 78 cards
lower one, still less pass or make a demand, if he has
passed, he may pass again or make an offer, but may
not make a demand; and if he has made a demand, he
cannot demand more, though he may demand less, or
pass or even make an offer. Any player is at liberty to
say ' Veda' at any time. These restrictions affect only
what is said in one bargaining session; what a player
said in one such session does not restrict what he may
say in a later one during the same deal.
If agreement is not reached by the third bargaining
session, the deal is completed, and the dealer discards
three cards, under the same restrictions as in Scarto.
The player to the dealer's right leads to the First trick.
Each player, just before he plays to the first trick, has
the opportunity to make any of the following
declarations :
Ten or more Tarocshz' 10+1
Reale (four Kings) 20+5
A/Iiligati (the XX, the I and the A/Iatto) 15+5
Onorz 10+5
The Figures shown on the right are the payments made
by each opponent for the given declaration. Thus one
who declares ten Tarocclti scores 20 game points, 10
from each opponent, while the opponents each mark a
score of minus 10 game points. '10 + 1'means that the
payment is 11 game points for eleven Tarocc/zz, 12
game points for twelve, etc. In making a Tarocc/ii
declaration, a player may count the Folie or A/Iatto as a
trump, and must show the trumps to the other
players. Hof ours (onori) are the four Kings, the X X ,
the I and the F0116 or in/Iatto: 'a declaration of Orwri
requires the player to hold any four of these. The '+ 5"
after the values of the Reals, Mitigate and Orzoti
declarations indicates that, to any of these, the player
may add any additional honour, for an extra score of 5
game points ftgm, each opponent: thus a Reals
accompanied by the XX is worth 25 game points,
Mitigate accompanied by a King 20 game points, etc.
No card may be used in more than one declaration of
Reals, A/Izfigati and Onori, but it is permissible to
include a card both in one of those declarations and in
a declaration of Tarocr/ti. In making Reade, /l/Iitigati and
Onori declarations, the cards are not shown.
At the end of each round, each player scores the
difference, positive or negative, between his point-
total and 43.
The game is played under slightly different
rules in Turin, and I am uncertain of the
accuracy of the following account.
Three-handed /l/Iitigati Turin, Present day)
All is as in the form played at Pinerolo, save that it is
l
uncertain whether the bargaining sessions take place,
and the allowable declarations are different, as
follows:
Tarocc/zi 10
r
/Vlitigati 20
Reals 10
(Mori 10
Unly eight trumps are required for a declaration of I
'I-aro6c/ii, and there is no additional score for having
more than eight. It is not permissible to add an
ho no r t o a A{iZzgatz, Reals or Onori declaration.
Probably the rules about using the same card twice
are as in the Lombard form, namely that a Reade
declaration may not be combined with one of Onori,
but otherwise any card may be freely used twice. The
score given for Onori is uncertain.
There is also a form for four players, about
which my information, derived, as with all the
games currently played in Turin and Pinerolo,
from Mr l\1c Leod, is somewhat uncertain.
Four-llanded A/Iiiigaiz' l Pifzerolo and Turin, Present days
Each player plays for himself. All is as in the three-
handed game, with the following exceptions. Each
opponent of the dealer receives nineteen cards, and the
dealer receives twenty-one, discarding two. The
method of dealing is not known. At Pinerolo, the
allowable declarations are :
Tarocahi 5
Reade 15
Mitigate 10
Onori 5
Only eight trumps are required for a declaration of
Tarorchi. If the player making this declaration holds the
Bigatto (I), he must show it together with his seven
highest trumps, if he does not hold it, he must show his
eight highest trumps. There is no extra score for having
more than eight trumps. It is likewise not permissible
to add an honor to a declaration of Reals, Mitigate or
Onori; only three honors are needed for the Orator'
declaration. As before, the figures indicate the
payment from each opponent, so that one who makes a
declaration of Mitigate marks a positive score of 30
game points, each of the three opponents marking
minus 10.
In Turin, the declarations are as follows :
Tarocchi 10
Reade 10
A/fitigati 20
Onori 10
 Tarocco zrz Piedmofzl and Lombardy
As at Pinerolo, only three honors are needed for an
Orwri declaration, but only seven trumps are required
for one of Tarocc/zi.
At the end of each round, the dealer scores the
difference, positive or negative, between his point-total
and 33 points, while the others each score the
difference between their point-totals and 32.
54-card Tarocco Piemontese packs have
continued to be fitfully produced throughout the
later nineteenth and twentieth centuries; one is
currently issued by Viassone of Turin. I have no
information, however, about the games currently
played in Piedmont with this shortened pack. A
curiosity is a non-trick-taking game played in
Turin at the present day with the 78-card Tarocco
Piernontese under the name of Dzavolo, it is so
called because any player receiving the XV (the
Devil) as his first card wins outright. It is a for him to wait to see if his opponent passes, so as to
gambling game of a familiar type.
Diavolo (Turin, Present day)
There are two players,f using a 78-card Tarocco
Piemontese pack. Each player's object is to obtain
cards totaling nearer to 15 than his opponent's cards,
without exceeding 15. Every court card is valued at 10
points, each trump and each numeral card at face-
value, and the Folic or Mafia at 1 point. The dealer
gives one card face down to his opponent and one face
down to himself. His opponent, having looked at his
card, may, if he wishes, demand further single cards
to be dealt to him, face up, one at a time until he is
satisfied. The dealer can then deal himself single
cards face up until he is satisfied. If either player's
total overshoots 15, he must immediately throw in his
cards, and his opponent scores for the round.
Betting occurs immediately after both players have
seen their first card, the dealer's opponent bets first.
Betting also takes place after each card dealt face up
to either player, and before that player has indicated
whether he wants a further card, the recipient of the
card bets first. Each round is initially worth 1 game
point. The player who begins a particular session of
betting can either pass or propose to increase the
score for the hand by any amount he pleases. If he
passes, his opponent can either pass or try to raise the
score. If both players pass in the first betting session,
when they have one card each, the cards are thrown in
with no score for the round. If both players pass in a
later betting session, the round is continued with no
279
change to the score. If one of the players proposes an
increase in the score, his opponent may either
surrender or accept. If the opponent surrenders, the
cards are thrown in and the round comes to an end,
the player who proposed the increase scoring the
value at which the round stood before he made his
proposal. If the opponent accepts, he then has in turn
the option of either passing or proposing a further
increase, if he passes, play continues for the newly
agreed score. If the stage is reached at which the
dealer has given his opponent all the extra cards he
wants, and has then taken as many cards as he wants
himself, without either player having overshot 15 or
surrendered, both players then expose their hands
and the player with the larger total gains the score for
the round, if both players have the same total, the
opponent of the dealer wins. If a player is dealt the
trump XVI or higher as his first card, he is
immediately over the limit, but it is in this case legal
be able to throw in his card for no score without
having to expose it; it is not legal, however, for him to
raise or accept a raise. In all other cases, a player
must immediately throw in his cards as soon as he
overshoots 15. A game continues until one player has
attained a cumulative score of 50 game points. The
same player deals for the whole game. Cards which
have been used in play are not replaced in the pack,
and the pack is not shuffled or cut between rounds,
The used cards are employed to keep a tally of the
score, a card face down in front of a player
representing 1 game point, and one face up
representing 10 game points.
There is also a game, called Giuoco del Nove,
resembling Baccarat, of which the following is an
incomplete description.
Giuoco de!JVove (Turin, Prexefzl day)
There are several players, a 78-card Tarocco
Piemontese pack being used. The dealer is banker.
The values of the cards are the same as in Diavolo.
The object is, as in Baccarat, to make a total whose
remainder when divided by 10 is as large as possible.
The players other than the banker place their bets,
and each player, including the banker, receives two
cards and may, if he wishes, ask for a third. The
banker then settles tip with each of the other players
separately. A player who gets a total of 9 takes over
the bank.
 CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Tarot in France in the Nineteenth and
Twentieth Centuries
I
Apart from Italy itself, and with Switzerland
possibly equalling, but certainly not surpassing,
it, France is the country in which the game of
Tarot has been played for the longest continuous
' \
e
time. It was also the chief source of transmission
of the game to other European countries. Even if,
as we have seen to be possible, Tarot first entered
Germany from Switzerland rather than from
France, the mode of play in Germany very
quickly became subject to French influences. It
was of course from France that the game became
known in Flanders, and we have seen that there
was French as well as German influence in
Holland. It appears to have been from France
that the game of Tarocco was reintroduced into
both Piedmont and Lombardy in the eighteenth
century, so that, although there was direct
Milanese influence on the playing of Taroc in
Austria, it was a tradition stemming indirectly
from France that was thus being transmitted,
even if that tradition was, in turn, ultimately
derived from Italy, and probably from Milan
itself. France is also the country whose
cardmakers it probably was that devised the
classic Italian-suited Tarot pattern, the Tarot de
Marseille. We have seen it to be possible that
that pattern first assumed its definitive form, not
in France, but in Switzerland, but it is equally
possible that it did so in Lyons, and, in any case,
it was France that became the chief centre for its
production. On that pattern were based all those
used in German-speaking lands and, from the
eighteenth century, in northern Italy: the
Tarocco Piemontese, the Lombard pattern and
the Tarot de Besangon. Though the Tarot de
Besangon almost certainly did not originate in
France, it was unquestionably a derivative of the
Tarot de Marseille; so France may reasonably be
considered the source for the type of Italian-
suited Tarot pack used, from the eighteenth
century on, everywhere in Europe north of
Bologna, with the sole exception of Belgium; and
we have seen the distinct pattern used in Belgium
also to have been based on a French prototype.
For all that, it is not easy to trace the history of
the game of Tarot in France. We have the
seventeenth-century account of the French game,
set out in Chapter 9, and of the Swiss game,
probably also played in France, set out in
Chapter 10. We have a glimpse of the classic
eighteenth-century game, for which we are
indebted to de Gébelin. After that, we have no
record until the late nineteenth century. This is
due to the circumstances, already emphasised,
that, from the beginning of the eighteenth
century down to very recent times, the popularity
of Tarot in France has been strongly localised,
confined to the eastern strip of the country,
Provence, the Dauphin, Lyonnais, Burgundy,
Franche Cornté, Lorraine and Alsace, together
with Savoy and Switzerland, in both of which the
game was played both in the French- and in the
non-French-speaking areas. In all this time, the
game remained unknown to those living in the
central and western regions of France, and, in
particular, to those in Paris, where the writers
and publishers of books were. principally to be
found; and so, despite the wealth of French books
on card games from the mid-seventeenth century
onwards, the game of Tarot was largely ignored
by the compilers of such books throughout the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
288 Part II: Games with 78 cards
For all that, we can gain a fair general idea of
its development. We have good ground for
assuming that in the eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries the game was played in
France in the same general manner as the classic
game in Germany. But when we are next able to
obtain any evidence about the mode of play in
France, we find games more or less closely
related to Tarok-l'Hornbre, though not called by
any such name. The idea of introducing bidding
into Tarot games must have entered France from
Germany, probably some time in the first half of
the nineteenth century; and it has thereafter
remained an integral feature of French Tarot.
The French were much slower than other
European countries to adopt the new fashion of
French-suited Tarot cards - with the exception,
of course, of Italy, which has never done so, save
in outlying regions like Trieste. In France the
French-suited pack did not appear at all until
shortly before 1850, and to this day is known as
'Tarot Nouveau', at Besancon they were still
using Italian-suited cards in 1880, and probably
up to the turn of the century. The Tarot de
Marseille is still manufactured in France, but
advertised only for purposes of fortune-telling,
and French-suited cards are in standard use for
play; for all that, I have heard reliable reports by
travellers, one from about fifteen years ago and
one from about five, that they have seen people
playing (not telling fortunes) with Tarot de
Marseille cards.
Tarot has, always and everywhere, been a
game whose mode of play is highly localised.
Players in different cities or localities do not
know each other, and very often do not even
know of each other. The game has undergone a
long evolution, and particular varieties become
frozen in particular places as the local manner of
play, or, again, evolve independently of
developments elsewhere, By the end of the
nineteenth century, there were at least two quite
separate traditions of Tarot play in France, one
at Chambéry and the other at Besancon and
Dijon. Quite possibly there were yet others,
which have since vanished; for instance, Pierre
Berloquin, in his Régles du jeu de Tarot, Paris,
1973, mentions a book called Le ]en der Tarots, by
F.S., published in Strasbourg in 1852, which I
have not had an opportunity to see. We may
begin with the Chambéry version, as described in
a booklet, Le Tarot frangais, published at
Chambéry in 1902. The players were using a
French-suited pack with flowers on the trump
cards, and observed an idiosyncratic card order
in the suits, the same in all four. The game has
several archaic features, including the method of
reckoning the points, which coincides with that
we have conjectured to have been the original
method when the game of Tarot was first
invented. It will be remembered that the same
method is given in the Dutch booklet of 1846
whose French terminology suggests that it may
have been a translation from some French
account, or at least a description of a game
originating in France (see Chapter II); so,
although the game was entirely different from the I
Chambéry one, we have some confirmation of its
authenticity. The name given to the trump I in
Chambéry, Ze Baba, coincides with that which
appears, together with names of many other
trump cards, in the punning inscription on the
Ace of Coins in the mid-seventeenth-century
pack by Jacques Vievil discussed in Chapter 9.
The principal game played at Chambéry was a
five-handed one.
Five-handed ClLambéry Tarot
Terminology
Trumps are called tarots, the Fool is called Ze For, the
trump I is called je Baba.
Deal and discard
A 78-card French-suited pack is used. Deal and play
are counter-clockwise. The dealer gives fifteen cards
to each of the five players in three rounds of five each,
beginning with the player on his right, in the last
round, he takes the last three cards for himself. He
then discards three, which count to him at the end of
the round, he may not discard Kings, the trump 21 or
the Fou. He may discard trumps other than the 21,
including the Baga, but only on condition that he has
no trump remaining in his hand, if he discards the
Baga, he must announce the fact, saying 'Bags ii
Z'écart'.
Bidding
There are three possible positive bids, which are, in
ascending order: je Marche soul a` deus caries' (' I play
alone with two cards'), 'je rnar6lze soul 8 one carte' CI
play alone with one card'); and 'je Marc/ze ii Point' ('l
play with none'). The bidding is opened by the player
 Tarot in France in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
on the dealer's right and continues in rotation. No
player is obliged to make a positive bid. A player may
make any bid, provided that it is higher than any bid
so far made, an earlier bidder has no right to 'hold' a
bid made by a subsequent bidder (i.e. to claim a prior
right to become declarer at the same level).
If, when the bidding is completed, a player has
become declarer d deus carter, he is going to play on his
own against the other four in temporary partnership,
but, before play begins, he may ask for any two cards,
other than the Fou, which he does not have in his
hand, and the player or players who hold these cards
must surrender them, the declarer then gives any two
cards in his hand, other than the Fou, in exchange for
them. If a player becomes declarer d one carte, he can
in the same way ask for any one card he lacks, other
than the Fou, giving in exchange any card other than
the Fou, he then plays on his own against the other
r four, If a player becomes declarer 6 Point, he plays
alone against the other four without asking for a card.
If all five players pass, the dealer 'calls' a King of a
specific suit, and the player who holds the King
becomes his partner for that round against the other
three. If the dealer has all four Kings, he may in the
same way call a Queen. Unlike every other Tarot
game in which this practice is observed, the player
who holds the called King or Queen immediately
announces the fact.
Play
The player to the dealer's right leads to the first trick,
and the hands are played out in accordance with the
usual rules. In all four suits, the cards rank, in
descending order :
K, Q, CJ, A, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2.
The For serves as Excuse: when the player who holds
it wish~*s to play it, he shows it to the other players
and puts it with the cards he or his side has won in
tricks, but he does not give any card in exchange for it.
S€07Z*7lg
At the end of the round, the two sides reckon their
points on cards won in tricks. They count 1 point for
each trick of Five cards; the trick to which the Fou was
played will contain only four cards, but that, too,
counts 1 point~; the Fou by itself does not constitute a
trick. The dealer or the dealer's side also counts 1
point for the three cards of the discard. In addition,
there are added in the points on the counting cards, as
follows 1
The 21 4 points
The Baga 4 points
The Fou 4 points
289
Each King 4 points
Each Queen 3 points
Each Cavalier 2 points
Each jack 1 point
There are thus 68 points altogether (52 points for the
counting cards, 15 points for the tricks and 1 point for
the discard).
If both sides have made 34 points, no payments are
made. Otherwise, the payment for losing, when the
declarer bid 'A deus' or the dealer called a King,
consists of as many game points as the point-total of
the losing side falls short of 34, or double this amouNt
if their total is less than 17. When the declarer bid ' A
one parle', this payment is doubled, and, when he bid
'A />oint', quadrupled. The payment so determined is
that made by each loser; if there is more than one
winner, the payment is divided among them. Thus, if
a player has bid 'A one carte', and wins by making 36
points, he is paid 4 game points by each of the four
opponents, thus receiving 16 game points in all, but if
he loses by making only 32 points, he pays only 4
game points in toto, each opponent receiving 1 game
point. If the dealer calls a King, and he and his
partner win by making 38 game points, each of the
three opponents pays 4 game points, the total
payment of 12 game points is divided between the two
partners, each receiving 6. If, on the other hand, they
lose by making only 31 points, each partner pays 3
game points, the total of 6 game points is then divided
between the three opponents, each obtaining 2 game
points. Such a method will, if followed strictly, often
give rise to fractional payments, and nothing is said
about how to avoid these. The easiest means of doing
so is for each of the losers to round up his payment to
the next highest multiple of the number of winners: if
there are two winners (the dealer and his partner),
each of the three losers pays 1 more game point than
the excess over 34 points when the latter is odd; when
there are three winners (the opponents of the dealer
and his partner), each loser rounds up his payment to
the next highest multiple of 3, and when there are four
winners (the single declarer having lost), the loser
rounds up his payment to the next highest multiple
of4.
There were also versions for three and for four
players, including some without bidding and
some with a shortened pack.
Four-handed C/zambéry Tarot
All is as in the Five-handed game, with the following
exceptions. The dealer gives nineteen cards to each
player, in a round of four each followed by three
rounds of five each, and takes the last two cards for
290 Pat! II: @amer with 78 cards
himself, discarding two. Bidding is as before. When
the points are reckoned, each trick of four cards
counts 1 point, and the discard of two cards counts 1
point: there are thus 72 points altogether (52 + 19 +
1). To win it is necessary to have gained more than 36
points: the payment is calculated according to the
number of points the losers fall short of 36, doubled if
they have less than 18.
Clzambéry Tarot Croixé
There are four players, in two fixed partnerships, the
partners facing each other across the table. There is
no bidding. Otherwise all is as in the above four-
handed game.
Three-handed Clzambéry Taro!
Each of the players plays for himself, and there is no
bidding. The dealer gives twenty-Five cards to each
player, in five rounds of Eve each, and takes the last
three for himself, discarding three. At the end of the
round, the points are reckoned, on the basis of 1 point
for each trick and 1 point for the dealer's discard, plus
the points on the counting cards: there are thus 78
points altogether. Each player with fewer than 26
points pays, in all, as many game points as his point-
total falls short of 26, and each player with more than
26 points receives, in all, as many game points as his
point-total exceeds 26. However, if a player makes less
than 13 points, his payment is doubled; if both other
players have more than 26 points, they divide this
double payment iN proportion to their excess over 26.
Et. if A makes 12 points, B 32 and C 34, A makes a
double payment of 28 game points, of which B takes
12 and C 16. Further examples: (i) A makes 12 points,
B 10 and C 56: A pays 28 game points, B pays 32 and
C receives 60; (ii) A makes 12 points, B 23 and C 43;
A pays 28 game points, B pays 3 and C receives 31;
(iii) A makes 14 points, B 21 and C 43; A pays 12
game points, B pays 5 and C receives 17. In all other
respects, the same rules apply as in the preceding
games.
Four-handgd Taro! Simp!y'ié
A 62-card pack is used, formed by discarding the 2 to
5 from every suit. In all four suits, the cards rank, in
descending order :
K, Q, c,j, A, 10,9,8,7,6.
The dealer gives fifteen cards to each player, in three
rounds of Hve each, taking the last two cards for
himself and discarding two. Bidding is as in the five-
handed game, see that the dealer is not permitted to
make a bid of 'A deus cartel". When the points are
reckoned, there is 1 point for each trick and l point for
the discard of two cards: there are thus 68 points
altogether, as in the live-handed game. Payments are
therefore calculated just as in the Have-handed game. 4
Tarot Sim[1lé Croix
There are four players in fixed partnerships, partners
facing each other across the table. The 62-card pack is
used. All is as in the preceding game, save that there is
no bidding.
Three-handed Tarot Simply9é
There are three players, each playing for himself, and
there is no bidding. The 62-card pack is used. The
dealer gives each player twenty cards, in four rounds
of five each, and takes the last two cards for himself,
discarding two. When the points are reckoned, there
is 1 point for each trick of three cards, but no point for
the discard; counting cards in the discard have their
usual values. There are thus 72 points altogether.
Payments are made as in the three-handed game with
78 cards, save that the base from which excess or
deficit is reckoned is 24 points, and payment is
doubled if a player has fewer than 12 points.
Note
In Le Tarot frangais, the general account says that in
the three-handed game with 78 cards the discard
counts 1 point and there are 78 points altogether.
The section on three-handed Tarot with the 78-
card pack then says that the discard does not count
and that the base score for each player is 24 points.
In the above, I have assumed that the description of
three-handed Tarot sirnplifié has been carelessly
transferred to the section on the three-handed
game with the full pack.
I do not know whether games of this type,
which, without bidding, are simply basic Tarot
games, and, with bidding, cognate to Tarok-
l'Hombre, are still played in or near Chambéry;
most likely not. At any rate, it has not been the
tradition of play indigenous to Chambéry and
Savoy from which modern French Tarot has
descended, but, rather, that of Besancon and
Dijon, of Franche Comte and Burgundy. This
comprised a three-handed and a four-handed
game, both involving bidding, and with several
 Tarot in France in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
peculiarities in common. In both, the cards were
counted in twos, yielding a total of 91 points. The
rules of play differed from those of all other Tarot
games by imposing an additional constraint: in
playing a trump, one must, if one can, play a
higher trump than any so far played to the trick.
This rule makes it more difficult to save the
trump I from capture, and correspondingly
renders the hunt for it a more skilful operation.
Furthermore, both games differed from all other
Tarot games in making the criterion of winning
more than a simple matter of gaining more points
than the opponents. The number of points
needed to win depends upon the number of
oudlers one has in one's tricks, the oudlers being the
21 and 1 of trumps and the Fool: with all three,
one can win with as few as 36 of the 91 points,
with none, one needs as many as 56. The original
four-handed game was very similar to Tarok-
Quadrille: it had exactly the same set of bids,
and the additional cards always went to the
dealer. The three-handed game, on the other
hand, was more advanced: not only did the talon
consisting of the six cards not originally dealt out
go to the declarer rather than to the dealer, as in
the later form of Tarok-l'Hornbre, but the two
highest bids were differentiated by whether the
declarer did or did not have the right to take
them immediately into his hand and then discard
six. The old four-handed game is now obsolete: it
is the three-handed form. from which modern
French Tarot has developed, giving birth in the
process to four- and five-handed versions.
Since there has been some historical
development in these games during the course of
this century, it is best to set them out in stages,
but we may start by expounding those rules
common to all forms.
Basic rules of modem Frerwll Tarot
Terminology
Trumps are called alouls. The Fool is called l'Excuse,
the trump 1 was originally called Le Paguet, later Ze
Petit. The 21, the Petit and the Excuse are collectively
called oudlers, or sometimes, more recently, bouts. The
cards remaining over at the end of the deal, L ' placed
face down in the centre of the table in the course of
the deal, form what is known as the talorz, or, more
recently, the 6lzien, corresponding to the Ska! in
German.
291
Rules 0f/Jlay
A 78-card pack is used. Deal and play are counter-
clockwise. As usual, it is obligatory to follow suit if
possible, including playing a trump if a trump is led;
and, as usual, a player who cannot follow suit must
play a trump if he can. In addition, when playing a
trump, it is obligatory, if one can, to play a higher
trump than any so far played to the trick; this applies
whether a trump or a plain suit was led. The Excuse
of course serves as Excuse, one who plays it is
absolved from the duty of following suit or playing a
trump. If the trick to which it is played is w°on by an
opponent, it is taken back by the one who played it
and placed among the cards he or his side has already
won in tricks, any one of those cards being given in
exchange for it. It may not be taken back, however, if
it is played to the last trick, but i_ captured by the
player or side that wins that trick. There is one
exception to this: if the player who has the Excuse, or
his side, has won all the preceding tricks, then, 1.. the
last trick, the Excuse beats every other card, as if it
were the highest trump. The Excuse may be led to a
trick; when this is done, the next player may play any
card, to which later players have to follow suit if they
can, or, if they cannot, to play 2, trump if they can,
according to the usual rules.
Note
Of all the accounts of this game published from
1880 onwards, only one, published in 1977,
envisages either the case in which a player plays
the Excuse before he or his side has won a trick, or
that in which the player who has the Excuse, or his
side, wins no tricks. The 1977 text says that, I . the
former case, the ,Excuse is retained face up beside
the one who played it until he or his side win a trick
and can give a low card in exchange for it, and that,
in the latter case, the Excuse must be surrendered
to the winning side. In default of further
information, this may be taken as the general rule,
although it would be possible to imagine a rule
whereby the Excuse could not be played until the
player or his side had won a trick, it would then
automatically be forfeit in the last trick, unless that
was won by the player's partner.
Snoring
The counting cards have their standard values.
r
Whatever the number of players, the cards are
counted in toy: there are therefore 91 points
altogether. An odd low card counts -1' point. Since
there is bidding, there are always, in every round, just
two sides. The number of points on cards taken in
tricks which the declarer or the declarer's side needs
292 Part II: Games with 78 cards
in order to win depends upon the number of oudlers
there are among the cards won in tricks, as follows :
36 points are needed if there are 3 oudlers
41 points are needed if there are 2 oudlers
51 points are needed if there is 1 oudler
56 points are needed if there are no oudlers.
Note that the opponents need point less in each case :
et. if the declarer's side has two oudlers, the opponents
must have one, by making 50-Q points, they restrict the
declarer's side to 40, in which case the declarer's side
has lost.
Bytes
The game is normally played with a pot, originally
called a byte, and later a mouse, additional to, the
ordinary payments between players. To prevent the
pot's becoming exorbitantly large, there is often more
than one byte on the table at a time; this is effected as
follows. Before the first deal, or at any time at which
no byte is on the table, the dealer contributes 20 game
points, and the other players 10 game points each, to
form the First byte. Whenever there is a byte, or several
176165, on the table before a deal, the dealer adds 5
game points to the largest one. If, in any round, the
declarer wins, he takes the largest byte on the table, or
divides it with his partner if he has one. If the declarer
loses, then, if there is only one byte on the table, and
that has not already been doubled, the declarer now
doubles it, there is then still only a single byte on the
table. If, however, there is more than one byte on the
table, or there is a single byte that was previously
doubled, the declarer who loses pays to the table an
amount equal to the largest byte, that amount forming
a new bile.
For example, in a four-handed game, the original
byte will consist of 50 game points (20 from the dealer,
10 from each of the others). If, in the first round, the
declarer wins, he takes that byte, and the players
contribute to a new one, likewise of 50 game points. If
the declarer in the second round loses, he doubles that
byte, and the dealer to the third round adds 5 game
points to it, so that there is now a single byte of 105
game points. If the declarer in the third round loses,
he gives 105 game points to form a new byte, to which
the dealer to the fourth round adds 5 game points, so
that there is now one byte of 110 game points and
another of 105. Suppose that the declarer in the fourth
round also loses: he pays 110 game points to form a
third byte, to which the dealer to the Fifth round adds 5
game points, so that there are now bytes of 115, 110
and 105 game points. If, now, the declarer in the hath
round wins, he takes the largest byte, of 115 game
points: the dealer to the sixth round adds 5 game
points to the largest remaining byte, that of 110 game
points, so that there are now two bytes, of 115 and 105
game points respectively.
Bonus and penalty
Winning the last trick with the Paguet or Petzl ) known
as the Paguel a Za jin or the Petit au bout, is always
awarded a bonus of 10 game points, while losing it to
an opponent in the last trick incurs a corresponding
penalty of 10 game points. There are, however,
variations in the manner in which this bonus or
penalty is paid.
The earliest account of this game known to me
is the Traits du jeu du Taro's (YYTI, by M.A., a.
member of the Cercle Granvelle of Besancon,
published in Besancon in 1880, of which a third,
unaltered, edition was issued in 1902. This was
followed in 1927 by Le jeu de Tarots: metlrode
théorique et Pratique UT), by M.L.A. and the
members of the Académie de Tarots of Dijon,
and subtitled Réglex gérzérales adoptees Par yous Les
eereles et cafes de la Bourgogne, de Za Fronehe-Comte et
de l'E§t de la France. This booklet was published
by Bornemann of Paris, and repeatedly reissued
by them, at least up to 1967. These two accounts
do not differ very greatly. It is best to start with
the old form of the four-handed game, given by
TjT as the only way of playing Tarot with four
players, but by ]T, under the heading 7
TO
métlzode, date orzeienrze ou d'appeZ, as the older of two
forms then in current USC. It reappears in Pierre
Berloquin, Régler dujeu de Tarot, Paris, 1973, as a
traditional method still practised, though on the
wane; but it has probably been little played since
the 1930s.
Tarot d'AppeZ( 7880-6. 7935)
Deal and discard
There are four players, a 78-card pack is used.
According to T]T, even in the 1902 edition, the pack
is an Italian-suited one, the Coins suit being called
either Derziers, as usual, or Roses. The cards then
ranked in their original order, that is, K, Q, C, t, 10,
9, ..., 2, A in Swords and Batons, but K, Q, CJ, A, 2,
..., 9, 10 in Cups and Coins. By the time ]T was
written, however, the French-suited pack had come
into use, and, in every suit, the cards ranked K, Q, C;
J, 10, 9, ..., 2, A. In T.7T, the trump 1 is called Le
Paguet, in j"T, it is also called Ze Paguel, but, for
preference, Le Petit; Berloquin uses only the latter
I'18.1T1€_
The dealer gives eighteen cards to each player in six
rounds of three each, starting with the player to his
right. T]T allows hirn, as an alternative, to deal in

Tarot in France in tNe Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
four rounds only, in any of the following ways: rounds
of three, four, five and six each, in that or the reverse
order, or rounds of four each and Five each alternately,
starting with either. Having completed the deal, he
has six cards remaining, which form the talon; when
he has counted these to verify that he has dealt
correctly, he takes them into his hand without
showing them to the other players. He then discards
six cards face down beside him, which count to him at
the end of the round. The sources differ slightly over
the restrictions on the discard. All agree that it is
forbidden to discard a King, the 21 or the Excuse.
According to Tj'T and to Berloquin, the dealer may
discard the Paguet or Petit if he has no other trump (the
Excuse not counting for this purpose as a trump); in
no other case may he discard a trump. According to
]'T, the Petit may never be discarded, though there is
no prohibition on discarding trumps in general.
Berloquin allows any player who has the Petit, but no
other trump nor the Excuse, to demand an annulment
of the deal; the dealer, too, has this privilege if he
chooses to exercise it. Neither Tj"T nor _IT recognises
this rule.
Bidding
There are three ordinary positive bids, which are, in
ascending order: app! (call), solo or aciwt (purchase),
and solz§5zm0 or jouerie. In an appel contract, the
declarer 'calls' any card of his choosing that he does
not hold, the player who holds this card becomes his
partner, but does not announce the fact. T]Tand ]T
state clearly that if the called card is in the dealer's
discard, the dealer becomes the declarer's partner,
Berloquin says, on the contrary, that the declarer
must, in this case, play alone, paying or being paid by
the other three players at the level of an appel contract.
(Presumably the dealer does not announce that the
called card is in the discard, the declarer discovers
this only at the end of the round.) In an aciza!
contract, the declarer names any suit card that he
does not have (not the Excuse or a trump), the player
who has this card surrenders it to him in exchange for
any card the declarer chooses to give him from his
hand. There is the same disagreement here. T]T and
]T say that if the declarer names a card in the
discard, the dealer gives it to him in exchange for one
of his, which goes into the discard, but Berloquin
rules that he does not receive the card he asked for,
but has to play with his original hand. The declarer
must pay 10 game points to the player who surrenders
the card he named; T]T recommends instead a price
of one fifth of the largest byte, while ]T says that in
some places the price is equal to that byte, which seems
quite exorbitant. The declarer then plays alone
against the other three. In a so Zzsszmo contract, the
declarer plays alone against the other three without
the benefit of being able first to buy a card.
l
293
A player who undertakes an appel but inadvertently
calls a card he holds, or, if he is the dealer, has
discarded, must play a solo instead, but is paid or pays
only at the rate for an rappel. Likewise one who
undertakes a solo and tries to buy a card he already
has must play a solzSsimo, but is paid or pays only at
the rate for a solo.
The dealer is the First to make a bid or pass, the
bidding then proceeds in strict rotation. A player is
never obliged to make a positive bid; if he does, he
must make one higher than any previously made, but
need not make the lowest such bid. According to
Berloquin, a player making an app! bid names the
card he is calling as part of his bid, by saying
']'appelle ...'; likewise, one making an aoitat (solo) bid
names the card he wishes to buy, as part of his bid, by
saying ']'achete ...'. In T]T and ]T, the declarer in
an chat names the card he wishes to buy only after the
completion of the bidding; they almost certainly
intend that the declarer in an app! should likewise call
a card only after the completion of the bidding,
though it would be possible to read them as meaning
that he calls it as part of his bid.
Varian!
Berloquin mentions a variant form in which the
talon is not taken by the dealer, but remains on the
table during the bidding. Players who make appeal
or ach al bids do not name the cards in question as
part of their bids. When the bidding is completed,
the declarer then takes the talon, apparently
without showing it to the others. Having discarded,
he then calls a card or names one he wishes to buy,
unless, of course, he bid solissimo.
The three sources differ concerning a cheer or slam
(making all the tricks). ]T allows a special bonus for
this feat, whether accomplished by two partners or
alone, but does not allow it to be made as a bid in this
game. T]T recognises a special bonus, and also
permits cheer to be announced in the course of the
bidding, in which case it overrides all other bids. The
thus announced may be played under the
6/telem
conditions of any of the three ordinary bids: the
declarer may call a card to obtain a partner, he may
purchase a card and then play alone, or he may play
alone without purchasing a card. Berloquin
distinguishes two types of bid: a c/zelem avec appeal, the
called card being named as part of the bid, and a
choler solo, as a variant, he allows a cheer avec acitat as r
ranking between these. It is recalled from the Basic
ruler of modern Frenrlz Taro! that the Excuse will win
the last trick if the player or side that has it has won all
the preceding tricks.
294 Part II: Games with 78 cards
Declaratzons
A player who has ten trumps may, if he chooses,
declare them when it is his turn to play to the first
trick, and before he does so, the Excuse counts for this
purpose as a trump. Berloquin, however, requires a
round of declarations, beginning with the player to
the dealer's right, before play begins. One who
declares ten trumps must show them to the other
players; if he has more than ten, he need not say so,
and may show any ten. If the one declaring ten
trumps is the declarer (successful bidder), he is paid
10 game points by each of the other three players,
including his partner, if any, at the end of the round,
provided that he has won the round; if he loses the
round, he pays the 10 game points to each of the other
three. If the player declaring ten trumps is not the
declarer, he is paid 10 game points by each of the
other players immediately, irrespective of the later
outcome of the round. T]T and Berloquin also allow
a declaration of thirteen trumps, on the same
conditions, with a payment of 20 game points, ]T
does not. There is no indication that it is then
unlawful to declare only ten trumps having thirteen or
more. Berloquin further allows a declaration of
eighteen trumps, with a payment of 30 game points,
on the same conditions. He also allows one of 'No
trumps', by a player having none (the Excuse not now
counting as a trump), and of 'Misere', by a player
having no counting cards, both for a payment of 10
game points: neither UT nor j'T recognises any of
these last three.
Play and scoring
The player to the right of the dealer leads to the first
trick. In an appeal, if the declarer and his partner win,
they divide the largest byte between them. If they made
the exact number of points required for a win (given
the number of oudlerr they have), there is no direct
payment between the players, if they obtained more,
each receives, from one opponent, as many game
points as they had card points above the required
total. If they lose, the declarer alone doubles the byte
(as explained under the Basic rules), and, in
addition, he and his partner each pay, to one
opponent, as many game points as they had card
points below the required total. In this and the
following cases, the points are frequently rounded up
or down to the nearest multiple of 5.
If the declarer plays alone and wins, he takes the
largest bile, and is paid by each of the three opponents
as many game points as he had points in excess of the
required total, plus 10 game points if he bid solo or 20
game points if he bid rolirsimo. Conversely, if he loses,
he doubles the byte and pays to each opponent as
many game points as he had card points below the
required total, plus 10 game points at solo and 20
game points at so!issimo. Berloquin has a different
system, however. Under this, a declarer who bid solo
adds 10 game points to the largest byte before play
begins, and one who bid solissimo adds 20 game
points; at the end of the round, the payment by or to
the opponents is simply the excess or deficit of the
declarer's score in card points as compared with the
required total.
According to T]T, if a player wins the last trick
with the Paguet, he or his side will need 10 points less
to win: e.g. if they have two oudlers in their cards at the
end of the round, they need only 31 points instead of
41. This of course affects not only their chances of
winning, but also the payments they receive if they
do; in the example given, 31 points becomes for this
purpose too the 'required total'. Conversely, if a
player loses the Paguet in the last trick, he or his side
will need 10 more points to win: if, e.g., they have one
oudler, they will need 61 points instead of 51. This
practice, called copter Le Petit en dedaizs, is mentioned
i n ] T , but strongly deprecated. Instead, it is
advocated that one should copter Ze Petit en delmrs: that
is to say, the payment for the round should be
calculated in the ordinary way, but 10 game points be
added to the payment received, or subtracted from the
payment made, by each member of the side that won
the last trick with the Petit or captured the Petit in the
last trick. E.g. if a ,rot declarer is to receive 13 game
points from each opponent, but one of them captured
his Petit in the last trick, or won the last trick with the
Petit, each opponent pays him only 3 game points
instead. Or, again, if in an appel the declarer and his
partner each have to pay 5 game points to an
opponent, but one of them won the last trick with the
Petit, they each receive 5 game points from an
opponent instead, although the declarer still doubles
the byte. Berloquin is neutral between the two systems.
He also mentions a variation on the en dedans system.
Under this, a side that wins the last trick with the
Petit, or captures it in the last trick, has to make, in
order to win: 31 points if they have 3 oudlers; 36 if they
have 2, and 41 if they have only the one (the Petit).
(Conversely, if they lose the Petit in the last trick, or the
opponents win the last trick with it, they must make: 51
points if they have the other 2 oudlersg 56 if they have
one; and 61 if they have none.) To win the last trick
with the Petit is called rnener (or conduit) to Petit au
bout.
The value of a cheer is 250 game points according
to T]T and Berloquin, 200 according to ]T.
According to T7T, this is paid whether the chelern was
.announced in the bidding OF not, and according to
]T, it is paid if the choler was made UT does not
recognise a choler bid in this game); but Berloquin says
that it is paid only if the cheer was bid and made. If
the clzelem was made by two partners, each is paid its
value by one of the opponents, if it was made by the
 Tarot in Franee in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
declarer playing alone, he is paid its value by each of
the three opponents. If a c/zelem is bid and lost, and the
declarer had a partner, each pays the value of the
6lzelem to one opponent; if the declarer was playing
alone, he pays its value to each opponent. In all cases
where there is a cheer payment, points on the cards
and consequent payments are ignored. Berloquin says
that the byte is also left untouched in such a case; T]T
and ]'T are silent on the point, but probably intend
the b618 to be taken or doubled as usual.
The three-handed game has undergone
considerable evolution, particularly in regard to
the bidding, from 1880 to the present day. It will
I therefore be clearest to set it out in several stages,
beginning with the game as described in T]T.
Three-lzarzded Tarot lBe.tan§on, 7880- 79021
Deal
An Italian-suited pack is used. The dealer gives
twenty-four cards to each player, in eight rounds of
three each, beginning with the player on his right.
The last six cards are placed in the centre of the table
to form the salon.
Bidding
There are three bids, which are, in ascending order:
the simple game or /wire, the sans ac/zat, and the sans
érart. In all cases, the declarer plays alone against the
other two. In a simple game, the declarer, when the
bidding is over, turns the six cards of the ialorz face up
for the other two players to see. He then takes them
into his hand, and discards six, face down, beside
him; these count to him at the end of the round. He
may not discard Kings, the Excuse or trumps. He
then asks for any suit card not in his hand or in the
discard, but may not ask for the Excuse or a trump :
the player who has the card he asks for must
surrender it, and is given in exchange a card from the
declarer's hand and of the declarer's choice, the
declarer also pays him 10 game points, or, under an
alternative convention, one Fifth of the value of the
largest byte. This is called the ach al (purchase). In a
game sans aclzat, the declarer exposes and then takes
the salon, discarding six cards, as before, but has no
right to purchase a card. In a game sans carl, the talorz
belongs to the declarer at the end of the round, i.e. he
reckons the points in it towards his point-total, but he
may not look at it until the round is finished; he
therefore makes no discard, and he also has no right
to purchase a card. If, however, a declarer has bid sans
ach at or sans cart, and becomes the declarer, he may,
295
when the bidding is over, and when, in the case of sans
asllat, he has discarded, announce a c/zelem, i.e.
contract to win all the tricks. If he does s , he acquires
the right to purchase a card.
The dealer is the first to bid, although it is stated
that, among some players, the player to the dealer's
right bids first. A player is never obliged to make a
positive bid, but, having passed, he may not re-enter
the bidding. In order to bid a simple game, a player
says 'je trends' ('I take'): if the first player to make a
positive bid wishes to make one of the two higher bids,
he says je Prendr San; ac/tal' or 'je Prendr sans cart'. If a
player has said 'je Prerzds', and a subsequent player
wishes to bid a sans acitat, he says ']eP0us5e' ('I push').
The previous bidder may then, if he wishes, claim the
prior right to become declarer at the sans ac/zat level: if
so, he says 'je gard' ('I hold'), if he does not wish to
do so, he says 'A yous' ('Yours'). If he says 'je gard',
the later bidder may now either say 'Sans érart' or
surrender by saying 'A yous'. If he bids a sans cart, the
earlier bidder again has the choice of claiming the
prior right to play at that level by saying 'je gard' or
of surrendering. The same applies whenever a lower
bid is overbid by one of sans cart, since a player earlier
in the bidding order always has the prior right to
become declarer at any given level. There is therefore
only one round of bidding.
Play
There are no declarations. The player to the right of
the dealer leads to the First trick. In the suits, the cards
rank initheir original order.
Storing
The declarer has a certain required cola! he must attain
in order to win, depending upon the number of oudlers
he has among the cards he has won in tricks (see Basie
rules). This required total is diminished by 10 points
if he wins the last trick with the Paguel or captures it in
the last trick; it is increased by 10 points if he loses the
Paguet in the last trick, or if one of the opponents wins
the last trick with it. If the declarer attains the
required total, he takes the largest byte; if he does not,
he doubles the byte (see Basie rules). If he surpasses
the required total, each opponent pays him as many
game points as he has card points in excess of it; if he
falls short, he pays to each opponent as many game
points as his card points fall below the required total. I
In either case, an odd ,} point gained by the declarer is
ignored. In addition, if the declarer bid sans ach at, each
opponent pays him 10 game points if he wins (reaches
the required total), and he pays each of them 10 game
points if he loses, if he bid sans carl, this extra
payment is 20 game points. Whatever the bid, if the
declarer makes a cheer, announced or unannounced,
296 Part II: Games with 78 aardx
he is paid 500 game points by each opponent, if he
announced a choler but failed to make it, OI` if he
makes no tricks, whatever the contract, he pays 500
game points to each opponent. In either of these cases,
ordinary payments between players are suspended,
although there is no indication that the byte is not
treated as usual.
The principal change in j"T lies in the manner
of bidding, although the bids themselves remain
the same. The author of ]T was evidently
familiar with T]T, whose phraseology he
frequently echoes, so that all divergences may be
assumed to be fully deliberate.
Three-handed Tarot lDuon, 7927)
All is as in the preceding form, with the exceptions
here stated. A French-suited pack is used, in every
suit, the cards rank,.in descending order, K, Q, C, J,
10, 9, ..., 2, A.
The player to the dealer's right is the First to speak
in the bidding. A bid Of sans aciza! is always expressed
by saying 'je .bous5e°. It is no longer possible for an
earlier bidder to claim a . prior right to become
declarer at a given level: the bidding proceeds in strict
rotation, each player who has not yet passed having
either to pass or to make a bid higher than any yet
made. A player is never obliged to make a positive
bid, nor need he make the minimum lawful bid. An
announced clzelem is given as the fourth, and highest,
possible bid. The conditions under which the declarer
plays when he has bid a cheer are not clearly stated:
probably they are the same as for sans cart, i.e.
without purchase of a card or use of the Zalon. (This is
suggested, though not entailed, by the remark that it
is often dangerous not to overbid a bid of 'je Prend§',
because the declarer, with the help of a purchased
card, may make an (unannounced) cheer, and the
further remark that some players have suppressed the
bid of 'je Prerzds' and, with it, the practice of
purchasing a card.)
A declarer who has said 'je prerzds' or 'je posse' may
not discard Kings or oudlers, he is not forbidden to
discard other trumps. When he has discarded, he
leads to the first trick, if he is on the dealer's right, or,
if he is not, tells the player in that position ' Vouspouvez
joker' ('You may play'). A player who has fifteen
trumps may declare them at his turn to play to the
first trick and before he plays a card; the Excuse
counts for this purpose as a trump. He must show his
fifteen trumps to the other players; if he has more
than Fifteen, he shows any fifteen of his choice, and
does not reveal that he has more. If he is the declarer,
then, at the end of the round, if he has won it, each
opponent pays him an additional 10 game points, but,
if he has lost it, he pays each opponent an additional
10 game points. If he is not the declarer, he is
immediately paid 10 game points by each of the other
two players.
If the declarer wins the last trick with the Petit, or
captures the Petit in the last trick, each opponent pays
him 10 game points. If he loses the Petit in the last
trick, or one of the opponents wins the last trick with
the Petit, he pays each opponent 10 game points.
These payments are separate from the payments for
winning or losing the round, and do not affect the
required point-total.
The payment for a 6lzelem is 250 game points from or
to each opponent.
]T describes a more recent method of playing
four-handed Tarot, exactly analogous to the
three-handed game, so that in every round (unless
all pass) one player plays against three.
Four-handed Tarot n y o n , 7927)
All is as in the preceding three-handed game, save
that the dealer gives each player eighteen cards in six
rounds of three each, and a declaration of ten trumps
replaces that of Fifteen.
The game underwent a further evolution after
the Second World War. The earliest account of
this new phase was Victor Mornieux's Méthode
modern du jeu de Tarots, published at Oullins,
which is just outside Lyons, in 1952.
Subsequently, several playing-card manufac-
turers included with their French-suited Tarot
packs leaflets giving the rules of the game. Catel's
leaflet was anonymous; Héron's was by R.A.C.,
stated to be a founder member of various Tarot
clubs' and that issued, in 1962 according to
Pierre Berloquin, by La Ducale, and later by
Grimaud, was by P.B.V., honorary President of
the Grand Cercle Francais de Tarots.
Mornieux's booklet and the leaflets describe a
third stage of the three-handed game, with
corresponding adaptations to four and ,even five
players. An account of this stage is also to be
found in Pierre Berloquin's Le Livre des jéux
(Paris, 1970), and in the same author's Régles du'
]'eu.de Tarot Paris, 1973), already mentioned. In
this third stage, the bids remain largely the same,
although the terminology has changed: apart
from the inessential matter of the way the Zalon is
dealt out, the principal change lies in the
declarations.
 Tarot in France in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
Three-handed French Tarot ac. 7950-7970)
Deal
A 78-eard French-suited pack is used. Mornieux gives
the following terms as used for combinations of court
cards of the same suit held in hand; maNage (King and
Queen), grand rnariage (King, Queen and Cavalier),
Petit mariage (Queen and Cavalier); grande cavatterie (all
four); Petite ravatterie (Queen, Cavalier and Jack).
There is no score for having these combinations, they
are simply valuable holdings. Deal and play are
counter-clockwise, although Berloquin (1973) states
that the deal rotates, from round to round, in a
clockwise direction. The dealer gives twenty-four
cards to each player in eight rounds of three each,
starting with the player to his right. In the course of
dealing, he puts six cards face down in the middle of
the table to form the talon. He may, in the middle or at
the end of a round of dealing, deal one, two or three
cards to the tatofz, but he may never put more than
three cards into it at a time, nor may he put any of the
First three or of the last three cards into it, apart from
this, he may constitute the talon in any manner that he
pleases. Mornieux, however, requires the deal to be in
six rounds of four cards each, one card is dealt to the
talon at the end of each round of the deal. If any player
has the Petit but neither the Excuse nor any other
trump, the deal is annulled, and there is a new deal by
the next dealer. Mornieux does not admit this rule,
but gives instead the variant rule stated below under
Bidding.
Eiddirzg
There are three ordinary positive bids, which are, in
ascending order: je Prerzds' (or je Prise' in the Héron
leaflet), je _{)ou§se'; and 'je gard' (Berloquin expresses
this by 'sans cart' (1970) or by 'je Barde sans cart'
(1973)) According to all three leaflets, the only
distinction between the First two, the .arise and the
Pousse, lies in the scoring (see below). Mornieux,
however, recognises only the Pousse and the Barde, not
the Prise, he calls the declarer the Pousseur. If arise or a
Pousse has been bid, then, when the bidding is
completed, the declarer exposes the talon and then
incorporates it into his hand, he then discards six
cards face down beside him. The discarded cards
count to him at the end of the round: he may not
discard either Kings or oudlers. Berloquin
distinguishes between the Prise and the Pousse in the
same way as in the earlier forms of the game, namely
in that, when he has discarded, a declarer who has
made the lower bid, je Prerzds', may ask for any suit
card (but not for a trump or for the Excuse) that is not
in his hand or in the discard; the player who holds
297
this card must surrender it in exchange for any card
the declarer chooses to give him from his hand, and is
paid 10 game points for it by the declarer. A declarer
who has bid jepousxe' does not have this privilege. The
practice is unmentioned in any of the three leaflets,
and Berloquin agrees that it is falling into disuse.
The garden (sans érart) is indeed like the sans cart of
the earlier versions. If the declarer has made this bid,
the talon is set aside without being looked at; but at
the end of the round it belongs to the declarer and
counts for him, i.e. he adds the points on the cards it
contains to his point-total. According to the Grimaud
leaflet, some players admit a bid of je gard avec cart'
as intermediate between je Pousse' and je gard (sans
cart)'; this bid is given by Berloquin (1973) as
expressed simply by 'je gard', but stated not to be
admitted by some players. When it is admitted, it is
distinguished from 'je Pousse' (and from 'je Prerzds' as
understood by the three leaflets) only by the scoring.
Variant
Berloquin (1973) gives the following rule as
optional; Mornieux treats it as the invariable
practice. A player having the Petzt but no other
trump or the Excuse has the option of annulling the
deal, but need not exercise it iMmediately. If, and
as soon as, any player bids.a Poudre or higher, the
player with the Petit may, if he wishes, declare it
tmprenabte (uncapturable). The last bidder then has
the option of retracting his bid. If he does so, and no
one else bids, or if no bid is made higher than Prise,
the player with the Petit may annul the deal. If the
bid is not retracted, the Petit retains its ordinary
power as a trump and remains subject to the usual
rules governing when it may or must be played,
but, if beaten by another trump, it is taken back
and a low card is given in exchange for it, as if it
were the Excuse. For Mornieux, the holder of a
singleton Petit has no power to annul the deal
immediately, but, since there is no bid lower than
pousre, does not need it, if there is no positive bid,
the deal is automatically anulled, and the same will
happen if a bid ofpousse is withdrawn when the Petit
is declared imprenabte, unless the third player
chooses to bid.
Berloquin and the Grirnaud leaflet recognise two
bids, Petzt cheer (small slam) and grand c/zelem (grand
slam), higher than the gard sans cart, although the
other two leaflets do not. The grand cheer is a contract
to take all the tricks, the Petit cizetem one to take all the .f
tricks but two, in both cases after taking the talon and
discarding. In a Petit helen, the Excuse does not have
its special power of winning the last trick (see Basic
rules). \Vhen these bids are admitted, there is no
special bonus for an unannounced c/zelem. Berloquin
observes that some players do not recognise the Petit
298 Part II: Games with 78 cards
chelerrz, and that others do not admit cheer bids at all.
Variant
Mornieux does not recognise cheer bids. He admits
a special score for an unannounced cheer, by the
declarer or by his opponents. But he also allows the
declarer to announce the intention to make a clzelem
before play begins; this is called a c/zelem armonk or
grand clzelem. The announcement is made by the
declarer's saying 'je derrzarzde Le grand 6/zelem' as soon
as he has discarded, he then exposes his hand on
the table, and, if the choler is not conceded, leads to
the first trick. In a 6lzelem, announced or
unannounced, the Excuse has its usual power of
winning the last trick when the preceding twenty-
three tricks have all been won.
The bidding is opened by the player to the dealer's
right, and proceeds in strict rotation. A player is never
obliged to make a positive bid, if he does so, be must
make one higher than any bid yet made, but need not
make the minimum such bid. If all pass, there is a new
deal by the next dealer. Except when all pass, the
bidding ends after two players in succession have
passed. The declarer must play at the level of his last
bid.
Variants
Mornieux does not allow the player who makes the
first positive bid to bid a garden; this may be used
only as an overbid after a bid of mousse. Berloquin
(1973) mentions with disapproval the practice
admitted by some players of allowing the declarer
to announce a higher level than that of his last bid,
and with equal disapproval that of allowing the
first player to make a positive bid after all have
passed on the first round of the bidding.
Declarations
If he so chooses, a player in a position to do so may
make any of the following declarations of cards in his
hand. According to Mornieux and to the three
leaflets, he does so at his turn to play to the First trick
and before playing his card. Berloquin (1973),
however, requires a round of declarations, starting
with the player to the dealer's right, before play
begins, the former rule is the traditional one.
Po igrzée (thirteen trumps) - 10 game points
Double Pozgnée (fifteen trumps) - 20 game points
Triple Poignée (all twenty-two trumps) - 30 game
points (Grimaud and Berloquin) or 40 game
points (Héron and Catel)
Pa; d'alouls (no trumps in hand) - 10 game points
Pas de Point; (no counting cards in hand) - 10 game
points
Mornieux calls a double Po igrzée a Poignée d'atouts or
grande fzoigrzée; he does not recognise a triple Poignée.
For the purpose of the Poigrzée declarations, the Excuse
counts as a trump. When declaring a simple or double
Pozgrzée, a player must show to the others as many
trumps as he is declaring. If he has more trumps than
he is declaring, he need not say so, and may choose
which ones he shows, but he may show the Excuse as
one of his trumps only if he has the exact number that
he is declaring. The divergence over the payment for a
triple /yoignée may be only apparent, in view of the fact
that, when one player is able to make this declaration,
the others must be able to declare Pas d'atoul§: perhaps
the value of40 game points is gross, and that of 30 game
points net. According to the leaflets, one who holds the
Excuse is debarred from declaring Pas d'alouts,
according to Mornieux (who calls it sans about) and to
Berloquin, he is not. The Pas de Points declaration
(called misfire by Mornieux and Berloquin) may be
combined with Pas d'atouts or with a Poigrzée (the latter
combination is called misfire dore by Mornieux and
Berloquin). Mornieux, the Grimaud and Catel
leaflets and Berloquin (1973) all agree that if the
declarer (successful bidder) makes any of the poignée
declarations, he is paid the value of his declaration by
each of his opponents, but only at the end of the
round, and then only if he has won the round, if he
has lost the round, he must instead pay the value of
his declaration to each of his opponents. The Huron
leaflet omits this rule. Except under this rule, a player
making a declaration is paid its value by each of the
other two players immediately.
Play and searing
There is no unanimity about who leads to the first
trick. According to Mornieux, the Héron leaflet and
Berloquin (1973), it is the player to the dealer's right;
according to the Catel leaHet, it is the declarer,
according to Berloquin (1970), it is the dealer; and the
Grimaud leaflet forgets to say. The first of these rules is
surely the more correct. Under Mornieux's rule, the
declarer leads to the first trick in a helen anrzonré.
What were formerly called bytes are now called
mow/zer, but the principle remains exactly the same
(see Basic rules). According to the Grimaud leaflet,
some players omit the addition by the dealer of 5
game points to the largest mouclze that normally occurs
whenever there remains at least one mow/ze on the table
Mornieux requires the dealer to add 10 game points,
rather than 5, in the latter case, but for him a separate
moue/ze is formed on every occasion when the declarer,
4
having lost, doubles the moue/ze. The declarer takes the
largest moue/ze if he wins, and doubles it if he loses.
According to Mornieux, he does neither if a cheer was
announced or made unannounced, but, for the other
sources, the rule applies even in the case of a reeler
 Tarot in France in the Nineteenth and Twentietll Centuries
bid. Mornieux describes an alternative system under
which the declarer always pays or receives a fixed
mouehe of 80 points; in this case, whenever there is less
than this amount on the table, the dealer contributes
40 and the other two players 20 each, and on other
occasions the dealer contributes 20.
The name Paguet for the trump 1 appears only in
Mornieux, the other sources use only the term Ze Petit,
which Mornieux says is more usual. There is a bonus
of 10 game points for winning the last trick with the
Petit, and a penalty of 10 game points for losing it in
the last trick. The payment of this bonus or penalty is
quite independent of the ordinary score for the round,
and does not affect the determination of whether the
declarer has won or lost the round. A player who has
won the last trick with the Petit is paid the bonus by
each of the other two players, even if he is one of the
two opponents of the declarer, likewise, if the Petit is
captured in the last trick, the player who lost it pays
the penalty to each of the other two players, even if he
is one of the two opponents and it was the other
opponent who captured it. This rule is inferior to the
usual one, under which both partners enjoy the bonus
or incur the penalty, because it creates a divergence of
interest between the two temporary partners.
Mornieux, however, gives it as a matter of local
custom whether the Petz't is, in the manner just
described, counted en delbert, with the payment for t he
Petit au bout (in the last trick) independent of the score
for game, or en dedarzs, Berloquin (1973) also
recognises the en dedarzs rule as an alternative. Under
this latter rule, if the declarer wins the last trick with
the Petit, or captures it in the last trick, the required
point-total which he must attain in order to win is
reduced by 10 points; conversely, if he loses the Petit in
the last trick, or one of the opponents wins the last
trick with it, the declarer's required total is increased
by 10 points. What happens.under this rule when one
opponent's Petit is captured in the last trick by the
other opponent is left unclear; probably it has no
effect. The rule has at any rate the advantage of
making the two opponents unqualified allies.
Apart from the mouses, paymentsfor the round are
made between the players as follows. A declarer who
has made more points than he needed in order to win
is paid by each opponent as many game points as he
has points in excess of the required total, and one who
loses pays to each opponent as many game points as
his points fall short of the required total. In addition,
a declarer who wins is paid 10 game points by each
opponent if he bid a Pousxe, 15 if he bid Barde avec carl
and 20 if he bid garden fans é6art, one who loses pays the
same sum to each opponent, according to his bid, in
addition to his deficit payment. There is no such basic
payment in the case of a Prise. Mornieux mentions this
system, but stigmatises it as incorrect. He recognises
the basic payment of 10 game points in a Pousse, with
the payment for exceeding or falling short of the
299
required total, so that, in this case, his system is as
already stated. Bot, when a .Barde has been bid, he
requires all payments to be doubled, making a basic
payment of 20 game points, and 2 game points for
each excess or deficit point; payments for the Petit au
bout and for declarations are also doubled, including
the payment for a Pozgnée made to his opponents by an
unsuccessful declarer. (It will be recalled that
Mornieux does not admit a prise bid.) Berloquin has a
different system again. Under this the payments
between the players are in all cases equal to the excess
or deficit in relation to the required total, but, if the
bid was higher than Prise, then, before play begins, the
declarer adds 10, 15 or 20 game points to the largest
m0uclt6, according as he bid Pourse, Barde avec cart or
garden ans érart.
If the declarer bid a clzelem, the card points are
ignored and payments are at a flat rate; on
Berloquin's system, the declarer adds nothing to the
moue/ze. A successful declarer is paid 100 game points
by each opponent for a Petit chelerrz, and 250 for a grand
choler, an unsuccessful one pays each the
corresponding sum. Berloquin (1970) agrees with
these evaluations, but Berloquin (1973) allows only
200 game Points for grand clzelem, while mentioning
variant payments of 250 or even 500. If clzelem bids are
not admitted, a declarer who makes clzelem (wins all
the tricks) is paid 250 game points by each opponent,
the Huron leaflet recommends an alternative payment
of 350 game points. If the declarer makes no tricks at
all, he pays the value of th e h elen to each opponent.
Whenever a c he e r payment is made, other payments
between the players for the round are ignored, as is
that for the PeN: au bout (in the last tricks if it is
normally counted en dedarzs; payments are still made
for declarations and, when it is counted en delzors (paid
for separately), for the Petit au bout. But when c/zelem
bids are allowed, the special bonus (or penalty) is
paid only when a choler was bid. For Mornieux, the
payment for c/zelem depends on whether there are fixed
or variable rnouc/tes. When the size of the mow/ze varies
in the usual way, the payment for an unannounced
c/zelem is 200 game points, from or to each opponent,
but when the alternative system of Fixed moue/ze; is
employed, it is 400 game points. In either case, the
payment for a 0/zelern anrzoneé, won or lost, is twice that
for an unannounced clzelem.
It is evident that some confusion occurred
during the transition from the old method of
bidding recorded in T]T to the later and simpler
method, in the course of which the original
meaning of 'j e Bar de ' was lost, and it came to be
interpreted as a particular bid, usually that of 'sans
cart'. As before, all the sources describe a four-
handed game closely analogous to the three-
handed one, although the author of the La
300 Part II: Eaves with 78 cards
Ducale/Grimaud leaflet states firmly that Tarot
'was invented to be played by three people'.
Four-handed French Tarot ac. 7950- 7970)
All is as in the preceding three-handed game, with the
variations there mentioned, save for the following
differences. The dealer gives eighteen cards to each
player, in six rounds of three each, on Mornieux's
method, the dealer again puts one card in the talon
after each round of the deal. A simple lvoigrzée
consists of ten trumps, a double one of thirteen and a
triple one of eighteen: in the last case, the eighteen
trumps have to be shown. There remains the same
difference as before in the score for a triple Poignée,
Berloquin and the Grirnaud leaflet allotting it 30
game points and the Héron and Catel leaflets 40; this
can no longer be explained as a difference between net
and gross scores, since none. of the other players may
be able to ~declare Pas d'azout§. If c/zelem bids are
admitted, a grand clzelem is worth only 200 game
points, likewise, when they are not admitted, the
bonus for an (unannounced) cheer is only 200.
Mornieux's payments for announced or unannounced
c/zelem remain as before. According to the Grimaud
leaflet, but not to Berloquin, a peril c/zelern requires
winning all the tricks but one. The bidding is the same
as in the three-handed game. It will be recalled that
Berloquirl's two accounts are the only sources to allow
a player who bid 'j"eprerzds' in the three-handed game to
purchase a card; he allows the same in the four-handed
game. In his 1970 account, he also allows the declarer
in a prise to call for a partner, if he wishes to do so,
instead of buying a card. He does this by saying
']'appe!Ze ...' ('I call ...') and naming a suit card that is
not in his hand or in the discard (he may not name a
trump or the Excuse), the player holding the card thus
called becomes his partner, but does not accounce the
fact. At the end of the round, each of the two partners is
paid by, or pays, one of the opponents. Berloquin
(1973) does not admit this possibility; nor does
Mornieux or any of the three leaflets: according to
them the declarer always plays alone against the other
three. On Mornieux's alternative system of fixed
rrzouc/ies, each moue/ze is now set at 100 game points.
Berloquin (1973) mentions another form of
four-handed game as being occasionally
practised, which eliminates the occurrence,
frequent according to Berloquin, of rounds in
which all four players pass; it is intermediate
between the game just described and the older
Tarot d'Appel.
Four-handed French Tarot with calling ac. 7970)
All is as in the preceding game, save that the declarer,
having made his discard, if any, in every case calls a
suit card to obtain a partner, who, as usual, does not
reveal his identity. A declarer who has said 'je Prends'
does not have the right to purchase a card. It is legal
for the first player to pass, but he will seldom have a
motive for doing so. If, in a Barde sans érarl, the declarer
calls a card in the Zalon, he plays without a partner.
In this third stage in the evolution of the game,
there is also a Five-handed form, again analogous
to the basic three-handed one, but always played
by two against the other three. Mornieux scarcely
bothers to describe this form, saying that it
destroys all the subtlety of the game.
Five-handed French Tarot (c. 7950- 7970)
All is as in the preceding four-handed game, with the
following exceptions. The dealer gives fifteen cards to
each player, in five rounds of three each, and, in the
course of the deal, constitutes a talorz of three cards
only. The bidding is the same as before, Berloquin
allows the declarer in a Prise to purchase a card, but
the three leaflets do not. The declarer, having made
his discard, if any, calls a King that he does not have;
if he has all four Kings, he calls a Queen. The player
who has the called King or Queen becomes his
partner, but does not announce the fact. If, in a garden
sans cart, the declarer calls a card in the lalorz, he
plays without a partner. A simple Poignée consists of
eight trumps, a double one of ten and a triple one of
fifteen; there is the same disagreement over whether
the latter is worth 30 or 40 game points. A Petit clzelem,
if admitted, requires winning every trick but one. At
the end of the round, if the declarer and his partner
win, they divide the movie between them, and each of
the three opponents pays the amount stated for the
three-handed game, the two partners divide these
payments between them. If the declarer and his
partner lose, they share between them in paying to
each opponent the amount stated for the three-handed
game; Berloquin (1973) states that only the declarer
doubles the mowiie (the leaflets are not explicit about
this, but merely say generally that the two partners
share equally in winnings or losses). The fixed mouciie
in Mornieux's alternative system will now be of 120
game points.
As was noted in Chapter 10, the game of Tarot
is still played, with a French-suited pack, in
certain French-speaking areas of Switzerland,
 Tarot in Franee in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
the canton of Fribourg and some villages in the
Jura, in a manner closely resembling modern
French Tarot. A leaflet in French issued by the
playing-card firm of AG MUller gives the three-
handed game as the principal form. Another
leaflet in French, lent to me by Mr _Jim Simons,
has a different text, but describes precisely the
same game; it came from a French-suited Tarot
pack, of the kind used in both France and
Switzerland, whose manufacturer is
unfortunately not known. Entitled Régle du jeu de
Tarot, it will be referred to as the RAT leaflet. The
game has a few differences from the French game
just described, notably the more severe
restriction on the discard.
Modern Swiss three-handed Tarot
A 78-card French-suited pack is used. The game is
like the preceding three-handed FrenCh one (c_. 1950-
70), with the following exceptions .
Bidding
The bids are: je brerzd, je [10usse", je gard', 'pmt
clzelerrz' and rand cheer'. In a Pfisz or Pousse, the
declarer may not discard either oudlers or any court
card. There is no right of ac/zat (asking for a card held
by another player) in a Prise contract. The Excuse has
its special power of winning the last trick in a Petit
cheer contract as well as in a grand choler, as in the
French game, the former is an undertaking to win all
the tricks but two. The variant rule about a player
holding the Pm: but no other trump does not apply;
the deal is automatically annulled in this case (the
Excuse counting for this purpose as a trump).
Declarations
These are as in the preceding French game, the value
of a triple Poignée being 30 game points, and possession
of the Excuse debarring a player from declaring Pas
d'alouZ. The declarations are made by each player
before h.e plays to the first trick. If the declarer makes
a poignée declaration, he is paid at the end of the round
provided that he has fulfilled his contract, but, if he
has failed, he pays each opponent for the Poignée.
Play
Alilmugh deal and play are counter-clockwise, and
tlw player to the dealer's right opens the bidding, it is
tine player to the left of the declarer who leads to the first
trick.
301
The system of rnouc/tes is as under the BaNc ruler of
modern French Tarot above. A player who wins the
last trick with the Petit is paid 10 game points by each
of the other two players, irrespective of whether he is
the declarer or an opponent; if he loses the Petit in the
last trick, he pays 10 game points to each of the other
two.
The scoring system is as usual: if a player fulfils his
contract, he takes the largest rnouc/ze, and is paid by
each opponent as many game points as he has card
points in excess of his required total, plus 10 game
points in a Pousxe contract and 20 game points in a
Barde; if he loses, he pays to the table an amount equal
to the largest moue/ze, and to each opponent as many
game points as he fell short of the required total of
card points, plus 10 game points for mousse and 20 for
Barde. If a clzetem was bid, the card points are ignored:
the value is 100 game points for a Petit cheer and 250
for a grand clzelem, for win or loss; there is no special
payment for an unbid chelerrz.
Variarztf
The RAT leaHet gives a few variants of a familiar
kind. These are:
(i) There is no prohibition on putting any of the
first three or the last three cards of the pack into the
Zalon.
(ii) A bid of 'je garden avec cart' is recognised,
higher than 'je Pousse' and lowe than 'je gard', the
declarer takes the talorz, as in a mousse, but the basic:
payment is 15 game points.
(iii) The contribution of the dealer to the original
rrwuo/ze, or when no moue/ze remains, is of only 10
game points, like that of the other two players.
(iv) The contribution of 5 game points by the
dealer to an existing moucize is suppressed.
(v) The size of the rrzouc/ze, as gained by or paid by
the declarer, is invariable.
The game is also played by four.
Modern Swiss four-handed Tarot
All is as in the three-handed game, with the following
exceptions. The dealer gives only eighteen cards to
each player, again three at a time. As in the French
game, a Poignée now consists of ten trumps, a double
one of thirteen and a triple one of eighteen. A grand
c/zelem is worth 200 game points, a Petit clzelem, gained
by winning all the tricks but one, 100 game points :
but the Excuse retains its power of winning the last
trick in petit helen contract. The declarer plays alone
against the other three in all contracts.
 Tata! in France in the /Vtneteentl2 and Twentieth Centuries
has any independent authority, this leaflet will be
referred to separately at the end of the following
account. All these texts treat the four-handed
game as basic, save for Simpkins, who accords
this position to the five-handed version. Mr john
McLeod has also communicated to me his
observations, from two different occasions of
playing Tarot with Freneh players, on one of
which I also took part. In the following account,
the main text will give what seems to be the
typical rule, or that common to most sources,
with alternatives stated as variants, but in some
cases the divergence is too great for this, and then
the various alternative rules will be listed as
'Variations', without any standard rule in the
main text.
Contemporaryfour-handed French Tarot
Terminology
The talon is called the c/zien, the oudlers are often called
bouts and the declarations are called ifzciderwes.
Deal
Deal and play are counter-clockwise as usual. The
dealer gives eighteen cards to each player, in six
rounds of three each, starting with the player next in
rotation to himself.
Varzants
(i) Simpkins, alone of the sources, specifies that
deal and play be clockwise.
(ii) Arnett allows the dealer, at his discretion, to
deal in nine rounds of two each.
In the course of the deal, the dealer constitutes a Allier
of six cards face down in the centre of the table.
Varialzons
(a) Laurent and the F.F.T. rules prohibit putting
any of the first three OF the last three cards into the
c/zien; they also require the dealer to put only one card
at a time into it, at his discretion.
(b) Arnett imposes the same prohibition on using
the first or last three cards, but states the usual method
as being to deal two cards to the chien at the end of each
of the first three rounds of the deal.
(c) Simpkins requires the cards to be dealt to the
0lzien three at a time, at the dealer's discretion.
303
(d) AT1ays down that the dealer puts one card into
the Allier at the end of each of the six rounds of the deal.
Varian!
Arnett and the F.F.T. rules state that if any player
has the Petit but no other trump nor the Excuse, the
deal is annulled. AT says that a player with such a
singleton Petit has the option of annulling the deal if
he wishes.
Bidding
The bidding is opened by the player next in rotation
to the dealer, and proceeds in strict rotation, each
player must either pass or make a bid higher than any
yet made, and none is obliged to make a positive bid.
If all four pass, there is a new deal by the next dealer.
Provided that all four have spoken, the bidding ends
when three players in succession have passed.
Variant
A Tlays down that each player has only one chance
to bid, so that the bidding ends when each has
spoken once.
The possible positive bids, in ascending order, are :
/Jelzte or Przse ,
bourse (or, according to McLeod, Pouch (thumb), an
obvious corruption) ,
gard;
garden sans Le c/zien, and
garden centre Le chief .
The poise, [masse and garden contracts differ only in the
payments involved (see Scoring). In all of them, the
declarer turns the clzierz face up and then adds it to his
hand and discards six cards at his choice, which count
to him at the end of the round: he may not discard a
King or a bout. In a garden ,vans je chierz, the c/zien is set
aside without being looked at, but counts at the end of
the round to the declarer; in a garderontre Ze chief, it is
also set aside, but counts at the end of the round to the
opponents.
Variants
(1) The F.F.T. rules suppress the Pousse bid; AT
suppresses the simple garden, which comes to the
same thing. In one of the games observed by
McLeod, gard sans /e c/zien was not admitted.
(ii) Arnett prohibits the discard of a trump. AT
says that it is forbidden unless unavoidable, in
which case the declarer must announce to the other
players the number, but not the rank, of the trumps
he has discarded.
304 Part II: Games with 78 hards
(iii) Laurent allows any player, as part of the
bidding, to double (fontrerl another's bid, unless
another positive bid is made, this of course has the
effect of doubling payments on the round, for win
or loss. Laurent is the only authority to allow
doubling in French Tarot. More surprisingly, if a
bid has been doubled, he allows any other player,
not the one who made the bid, to redouble
(surcontrer), thus quadrupling the value of the
round. (That this is really his intention is shown by
an example.
(iv) McLeod reports the admission, in both
games in which he took part, of the special rule
given by Mornieux and by Berloquin (1973)
allowing the holder of a singleton Petzt to declare it
zm/Jrenable (uncapturable). This rule was stated as a
variant under Bidding in the preceding three-
handed French game (see above).
There is no unanimity whatever in the matter of clzelem
(slain); the various alternative rules are listed as
variations.
Variatzonx
(a) The F.F.T. rules permit grand clzelem as a bid
higher than garden centre Le c/zierz, the declarer takes the
Allier and discards, leads to the first trick, and fulfils his
contract if he wins all the tricks. The F.F.T also allows
a bonus, smaller than that for a successful 5lzelem bid,
for winning all the tricks having made a lower bid.
(b) Laurent agrees with the F.F.T. rules, save that,
when (grand) clzelem has been bid, the lead to the flrst
trick is as usual made by the player to the dealer's
right.
(c) Arnett does not admit a c/zelem bid, but allows the
declarer to announce grand choler having made his
discard, if any: he grants a bonus for c/zelem only fit has
been so announced. If such an announcement has been
made, the declarer leads to the first trick.
(d) AT admits no reeler bids, but allows the declarer
to announce either petit chelerrz or grand 5/zelemjust before
he plays his card to the first trick. Grand clzelem is as
usual a contract to take all the tricks, Petit reeler one to
take all the tricks but one, the Excuse not then having
its special power of winning the last trick (see Basic
rules). (Note that a declarer who has the Excuse and
expects to lose a trick to, say, the 21 or the 20 cannot
announce petit c/zelem unless the card in question is
played to the first trick before his turn to play, in which
case he may announce petit c/zelem and play the Excuse
to the first trick.) There is no special bonus for an
unannounced reeler, but, if one side makes all the
tricks, the other side forfeits the Excuse if they had it ,
the declarer does not forfeit his discard (or the c/zien) if
the opponents make all the tricks.
(e) Simpkins admits no clzelem bids, but allows an
announcement of/Jeri! clzelem or ofgrandchelem before the
tenth trick, a Petit choler is won if the declarer makes all
the tricks save one, or all save two if he has the Excuse.
There is again no bonus for an unannounced the/em.
The rule is stated for the five-handed game, and it is
possible that in four-handed Tarot the limit for
announcing clzelem should be later, say before the
twelfth trick, I
Denlaratzotzs
Declarations of cards held in hand may be made by
any player in a position to do so just before he plays
his card to the first trick, they are never obligatory.
Variant
Sirnpkins, alone of the sources, specifies a round of
declarations before the lead to the first trick.
There are usually five possible declarations, a Poignée
or Petite Po zgrzée of ten trumps, a double lJoignée or grande
Poignée of thirteen trumps, and a triple Poignée of fifteen
trumps (note the reduction in the last case from the
number of eighteen trumps required in the four-
handed form in the third stage of the game). Simpkins
still demands eighteen trumps for the triple Poignée,
however, while AT admits four Po igrzée declarations,
the highest of eighteen trumps, McLeod reports a
game in which eleven trumps were required for a
simple pozgrzée. A player making a Pozgnée declaration
must show trumps to the number he is declaring, he
may count the Excuse as a trump for this purpose, but
may show it only if he has the exact number that he is
declaring. AT, in an example, admits the legality of
making a lower Poignée declaration than one is entitled
to. The other two declarations usually admitted are
those of Pas d'atout§ (no trumps) and Pas d'/zormeurs (no
counting cards), AT and McLeod, however, replace
the latter by the less demanding Pas de carter habilléer
(no court cards). One who makes one of these last
declarations, generically known as rrzisére declarations,
does not, of course, have to show his hand; and AT
allows him simply to say 'A/Iisére' without specifying
whether he is declaring 'no trumps' or 'no court
cards', though this will fairly quickly become
apparent in the course of play. A player who has the
Excuse may not declare 'no court cards', according to
AT; possession of the Excuse likewise debars a player
from declaring 'no trumps°, according to A T, Arnett
and Simpkins, whereas Laurent and the F.F.T. rules
expressly state that it does not. The various
admissible declarations, with their values in game
points, are tabulated at the top of the next page.
It is permissible to combine a declaration of 'no
counting cards' or 'no court cards' with one of 'no
I
Tarot in France in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries 305

AT F.F.T. Laurent Arnett Simpkins McLeod

10 trumps 10 20 20 10 10
11 trumps 10
13 trumps 20 30 30 20 20 20
15 trumps 30 40 40 30 30
i
l~
18 trumps 40 4-0
no trumps 10 10 10 10 10 10
no counting cards 10 10 10 10
no court cards
I 10 10

trumps' or with a Poignée, AT remarks that many
players suppress the misfire declarations.
The payment for declarations is made at the end of
the round. The misfire declarations are intended as
compensation for a poor hand, and so they benefit the
individual player, who receives the value of his
declaration from each of the other players including
the declarer. There is disagreement concerning
payment for Poignée declarations.
Varzatzonx
l (a) For Simpkins and the F.F.T. rules, payment for a
Poignée declaration is personal and independent of the
outcome of the round. One who made such a
declaration, whether he is the declarer (successful
bidder) or an opponent, is paid its value at the end of
the round by each of the other three players, whether
the round was won or lost by the declarer.
(b) Laurent and Arnett follow the traditional rule
that if the declarer (successful bidder) declares a
Poignée, he is paid its value by each of the opponents at
the end of the round, but only on condition that he
won; if he lost the round, then instead he pays the value
l
of the Poignée declaration to each of the three
opponents. If an opponent made a lJoignée declaration,
on the other hand, he is paid personally by each of the
other three players whatever the outcome of the round.
(c) AT extends the principle of the solidarity of the
opponents to all declarations of ten or more trumps. If
the declarer made such a declaration, then, as under
(b), he is paid by each of the opponents if he wins the
round and pays each of them if he loses it. If an
opponent makes such a declaration, then, if the
declarer loses the round, he alone pays the value of the
declaration, and pays it to each of the opponents; if, on
the other hand, the declarer wins the round, each of the
opponents pays the value of the declaration to him.
Play
The lead to the first trick is made by the player next in
rotation to the dealer, i.e. the player to the dealer's
right except when play is clockwise, under the rule
given by the F.F.T. and by Arnett (see under
Bidding), there is an exception when a grand 5/zelem has
been bid or announced, the declarer leading to the
First trick in this case.
Variant
Simpkins lays down the unusual rule that the lead
to the first trick is to be made by the first player to
have made a positive bid.
Play is in accordance with the Basic rules of modern
French Tarot (see above). There is a bonus for
winning the last trick with the Petit and a penalty for
losing it in the'last trick. The bonus or the penalty is
always paid independently of the outcome of the
round, but there remains a divergence of
interpretation.
Variatiofzs
(a) According to Laurent, the bonus or the penalty is
Persons! to the player who has the Petit. If he wins the
last trick with the Petit, then, whether he is the declarer
or an opponent, each of the other three players pays
him the bonus. Conversely, if he loses the Petit in the
last trick, he pays the penalty to each of the other three.
This should logically imply that if one opponent loses
the Petit in the last trick to another opponent (which
will, indeed, very rarely happen), the player who lost it
should pay each of the other three, but this is not
explicitly stated.
(b) AT maintains the principle of the solidarity of
the opponents. The declarer is paid by each opponent
if he either wins the last trick with the Petit or captures
the Petit in the last trick; and he pays each opponent if
any of them wins the last trick with the Petit or if he
loses the Petit to one of them in the last trick. If one
opponent then captures the Petit from another in the
last trick, there is neither bonus nor penalty. (The
F.F.T. rules seem to agree with this, though the text is
ambiguous.)
(c) For Arnett, only the declarer can gain the bonus
or incur the penalty. If he wins the last trick with the
Petit, each opponent pays him, and if he loses the Petit in
the last trick, he pays each opponent, but if an
opponent plays the Petit to the last trick, there is neither
bonus nor penalty.
 u

306 Part II: Games with 78 cards

As on several of the points concerning which there is
variation, the best rule seems to be that given by AT.
Scoring
The payments for declarations have already been
stated, their size is unaffected by the contract
undertaken by the declarer.
If the declarer wins the round, he is paid by each
'McL(1)' and 'MeL(2)' designate systems adopted by
different French players as reported by_John McLeod.
The base value is always unaffected by the multiplier,
which applies only to the excess or deficit score. This
latter score is, in the McL(1) system, rounded to the
nearest multiple of 5; Laurent states that this is often
done, before the multiplier is applied. Simpkins says
that it should be rounded to the nearest multiple of
10, but does not say whether 5 is rounded up or down. 8
i
1

opponent, and if he loses it, he pays each opponent. In Others reckon the exact amount. McLeod did not
both cases, the payment each player makes to or learn the clielem scores, in the other sources, these are a

receives from the declarer has two components: the
base value of the contract, and an amount
proportional to the difference between the declarer's
actual point-total and the total he required in order to
win, given how many bouts were in his tricks. The
detailed scores differ greatly from one account, or
circle of players, to another, but there is only one
distinction of principle, according to whether or not
there is a multiplier. The successful declarer of a Prise
always receives from each opponent, besides the base
as given in Table 2 below. In this table, the heading
'Sim(1)' designates the scoring for c/zelem as given by
Simpkins, and 'Sim(2)' an alternative system stated
by him as used by some players .
It will be apparent from these two tables that
something approaching complete chaos prevails at
present in the scoring system of this game. It will
come as a relief to learn that the Petit au bout (in the
last trick) is universally recognised as being worth 10
game points. Even here, however, there is Pi

value, as many game points as he had points above disagreement: in the systems of Laurent and of *he
the required total, and the unsuccessful one likewise F.F.T., the score for the Petit as bout is subjected to the
pays to each the base value plus as many game points multiplier according to the contract, each payment
as his point-total fell short of the required one. In the being of Z0 game points when the multiplier is 2, and
scoring systems of AT, Simpkins and McLeod, the so on, when grand cheer has been bid, the multiplier
same is true for other contracts. But in the systems of should logically be 24 in the F.F.T. system and 40 in
Arnett, Laurent and the F.F.T., the amount in game that of Laurent, but nothing is said by either about
points that the declarer receives from each for an the Petit au bout in the case of a clzelem. In the systems
excess over the required total, or pays to each for a with no multiplier, the value of the Petit au bout
deficit, is equal to that excess or deficit multiplied by a remains fixed at 10 game points. Arnett also gives it a
number (the multiplier) depending on his contract. fixed value: the declarer is paid 10 game points by
This multiplier is always equal to the ratio of the base each opponent if he wins the last trick with the Petit,
value of the contract to the base value of aprise. When but pays each of them 20 game points if he loses it in
there has been a bid or announcement of petit or grand the last trick.
cheer, or there is a special payment for an In the F.F.T. rules, it is stated that there are no
unannounced grand c/zelem, then, whether the helen moueiies in tournament games. Simpkins also omits all
has been won or lost, the point-total is ignored and mention of them. Berloquin (1973) remarks
there is a fixed payment from or to each opponent. indignantly that many players, principally in the
The scoring systems are in detail as in Table 1 West and in regions far from the traditional home of
below.
Table 1 F.F.T. Laurent Arnett AT Sump. McL(1) McL(2)
base mull. base mule. base mule.
prise 25 1 25 I 10 1 0 10 0 10
mousse 50 2 20 2 10 20 20 20
Barde 50 2 100 4 40 4 40 40 30
garde sans
Ze chief 100 4 200 8 80 8 50 80 80
garde centre
je chien 150 6 300 12 120 12 100 160 160 50

Table 2 F.F.T. Laurent Arnett AT Szlm(1) Sim(2)

unannounced
300 500
grand cheer
petit cheer 150 800 200
announced
grand cheer
bid or announced 600 1000 1000 250 1600 300
 Tarot irz France irz the Nineleerzth and Twerztielh Centuries
Tarot, suppress the mouthes and thereby 'denature' the
game. All the other sources provide for them,
however, exactly the system described above under
the Basic rules is specified by Laurent. Under this, at
the start of play, and whenever there are no mouses,
the dealer contributes 20 game points and each of the
other players 105 whenever there is a mouse, the
dealer adds 5 game points to the largest. A successful
declarer takes the largest moue/ze. If there is only one
r o c h e , which has not yet been doubled, an
unsuccessful declarer doubles it, if there is more than
one moue/ze, or one that has already been doubled, he
pays as much as in the largest moue/ze to form a new
one. A number of variants are described.
Variants
(i) AT gives the same initial contributions, but,
when there is already a rnouc/ze, the dealer adds 10
game points to the largest one. A mouse is never
doubled; the payment by an unsuccessful declarer
forms a new mouse in all cases, and is equal to the
largest existing moue/ze.
(ii) Arnett gives the initial contributions as 10
game points from the dealer, and 5 from each of the
other players, when there is a mouclze, the dealer
adds 5 game points. On the other hand, the mouclze
is never split; there is never more than one, which
could obviously quickly grow very large.
(iii) According to McLeod, the initial
contribution is only 10 game points, from the
dealer alone, the dealer adds 10 game points to an
existing mouse only when all passed in the last
round. An unsuccessful declarer's payment forms a
new moue/ze whenever it is of 100 game points or
more.
(iv) Laurent gives several variants. Some
suppress the 5 game points added by the dealer to
an existing moue/ze; among some the initital
contribution is of 10 game points from each player,
including the dealer; sometimes it is of 10 game
pain,ts from the dealer alone, as in (iii). Some
impose a fixed payment to the table from an
unsuccessful declarer.
Note
The rules given in the Fournier leaflet referred to above
are as follows. The skien is constituted two cards at a
time, at the dealer's discretion, none of the first three
or the last three cards of the pack may be put into it,
but the players may agree not to observe this rule. If
all four players pass, there is a new deal by the same
dealer. The lead to the first trick is always made by
the player to the right of the declarer, even when grand
choler has been bid. With this exception, the rule
governing cheer is as given by Laurent. Pa; d'atouts
307
may not be declared by a player holding the Excuse.
The declarations, with their values, are as given by
Laurent. If the declarer has declared a Poignée and fails
to fulfil his contract, he pays to each opponent the
value of the Poignée. The rule governing the Petit in the
last trick is obscurely stated, it may be meant to agree
with Arnett or with AT. The scoring system and the
scores for choler agree with those given by Laurent.
However, the scoring system appears to be differently
interpreted: the base value is not paid by or to each
opponent; the opponents pay or are paid only the
excess or deficit, subject to the multiplier. The base
value is, instead, stated to be a 'prize' won by a
successful declarer, it is unclear from what source,
nothing is said about a corresponding penalty for an
unsuccessful one. This, if intended, is probably a
mistake. In any case, the clzelem payments are made
by or to each opponent. The payment of 10 game
points for the Petit in the last trick is unaffected by the
multiplier. A/[ouc/ter are left unmentioned.
Although the four-handed game has replaced
the three-handed one as the dominant form,
there are still both three- and five-handed
versions of the contemporary game. The F.F.T.
rules relate only to the four-handed form, and
McLeod's observations were also of the four-
handed version; otherwise all the above
mentioned sources describe forms for three and
for five players .
Contemporary three-handed Frerwh Taro!
All is as in the preceding four-handed game, save for
the exceptions to be stated. Almost certainly all the
variants and variations given for the four-handed
game are found here too, but those dervived from the
F.F.T. rules and from McLeod are unconfirmed.
The dealer gives twenty-four cards to each player,
constituting a rhien of six cards in the process. For
Arnett, Laurent and Simpkins the deal is in eight
rounds of three cards each, with the chierz constituted
as before, for AT, it is in six rounds of four cards each,
with one card dealt to the chien at the end of each
round of dealing.
The bidding is exactly as before, with the variations
stated, save that Laurent admits a bid of petit cheer in
this game as well as one of grand c/zelem, for him petit
choler is a contract to take all the tricks but two. Note
that, both for Aland for Simpkins, an announcement
of Petit cheer, like one of grand 0/zetem, is subject to the
same conditions and has the same significance as in
the four-handed game.
For Laurent and Arnett, a simple [Joigrzée requires
13 trumps, a double one 15 trumps and a triple one 18
308 Part II: Games with 78 cards
trumps. For Simpkins, declarations of'13 trumps', '15
trumps' and '22 trumps' replace those of'10 trumps',
'13 trumps' and '18 trumps' respectively. For AT,
there are declarations of '13 trumps',,'15 trumps', '18
trumps' and '21 trumps', replacing those of 10, 13, 15
and 18 respectively. In all other respects, the rules
governing declarations given by the four sources
remain exactly as before. This yields the following
table, the Fournier leaflet again agreeing with
Laurent.
Arnett
AT Laurent Simpkins
13 trumps 10 20 10 10
15 trumps 20 30 20 20
18 trumps 30 40 30
21 trumps 40
22 trumps 40
no trumps 10 10 10 10
no counting cards 10 10 10
no court cards 10
The play and scoring are as before, with the
variations there noted, save that in this game Laurent
Fixes the value of a grand c/zelem bid at only 250 game
points, and that of a peN; cheer at 100 game points, it
is not clear whether he allows a special score for an
unannounced c/zelem, as he does in the four-handed
game, where it was worth half the value of one that
was bid. These low values for cNelerrz accord very badly
with a scoring system, such as Laurent's, in which
there is a multiplier according to the contract, since
one who makes all the tricks will have 55 points (91 -
36) in overshoot points, he will gain 320 game points
from each opponent if he bid garden on the ordinary
system of scoring, so that it will pay him not to bid
grand enelem. Some adjustment is therefore necessary.
Arnett maintains his value of 1000 game points for an
announced grand c/zelem, and Simpkins his scores of
800 and 1600 for announced Petit and grand cNelem. For
Arnett, the score for overshoot points or for deficit is
reckoned in whole numbers, for Laurent, it usually is,
but is often rounded to the nearest multiple of 5, for
Simpkins, it is rounded to the nearest multiple of 10.
In the first case 8 point, in the second 2J, points and in
the third 5 points should be rounded to the
disadvantage of the declarer.
Laurent, Arnett and Simpkins describe a Five-
handed form in which the declarer calls a King,
as in the five-handed game set out above.
Cofztem/Joraryjive-lzarzded French Tarot with calling
Deal and play are counter-clockwise according to
Laurent and Arnett, clockwise according to Sirnpkins.
The dealer gives fifteen cards to each player in Five
rounds of three each, starting with the player next in
rotation to himself. In the course of the deal, he
constitutes a e/zierz of three cards only, at his discretion,
one at a time according to Laurent, all at once
according to Simpkins, and not using the first three or
the last three cards according to Laurent and Arnett.
According to Arnett, the deal is annulled if any player
has the Petit but no other trump or the Excuse.
The bidding proceeds as in the four-handed game,
with possible positive bids of prise or Petite, Pourse, Barde,
gard sans to 6/lien and gard eontre je chien. Laurent
allows a bid ofgrarzd cheer, in which the declarer takes
the chien. Arnett does not admit a c/zeterrz bid, but
allows the declarer to announce grand c/zetem having
made his discard, if any. Simpkins also admits no
elzetem bids, but allows the declarer (not his partner) to
announce Petit ehelern or grand ehelern before the tenth
trick. To succeed in Petit e/zetem, it is necessary to win
all the tricks but one, or all but two if the declarer has
the Excuse.
Except in a Barde rant to c/zien'or Barde centre te chien,
the declarer takes the c/zien and discards three cards.
He may not discard a King or a bout, nor, according to
Arnett, a trump. Having made his discard, the
declarer calls a King he does not have, or, if he has all
four Kings, a Queen. The holder of the called card
becomes his partner, but does not announce the fact.
Note that the permission accorded by Laurent to an
opponent to double a bid (or to a second opponent to
redouble it) in the course of the bidding must be
withdrawn in this game, although he does not say so,
since a player will not in general know whether he will
be the declarer's partner or not. If doubling is allowed
at all, it must take place after the declarer has called a
card, but Laurent says nothing about this. None of
the sources states what happens, in a Barde sans Le rhien
or Barde centre Ze r/zierz, if the called card is found to be in
the chien. Presumably the declarer is then deemed to
have played alone, but it would be logical if the chief
were to be his even though he had bid Barde centre Le
cozen.
Possible declarations are: bozgnée (eight trumps),
double boigie (ten trumps); triple Poigrzée (fifteen
trumps according to Laurent and Simpkins, thirteen
according to Arnett and the Fournier leaflet), Pay
d'atout (no trumps), and pas d'/wfmeur (no counting
cards). According to. Laurent, a player with the
Excuse may declare 'no trumps', according to Arnett
and Simpkins, he may not. Trumps to the number
required for a Poignée declaration must be shown, the
Excuse counts for this purpose as a trump, but may be
shown only if the player has no other trumps. No
declaration is obligatory. A declaration is made just
before a player plays to the first trick according to
Laurent and Arnett; according to Simpkins, there is a
round of declarations before play begins .
The values of the declarations are as at the top of the
left-hand column on the next page 2
 Tarot in France in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
Laurent Arnett Simpkins Fournier
8 trumps 20 10 10 20
10 trumps 30 20 20 30
13 trumps 30 40
15 trumps 40 40
no trumps 10 10 10 10
no counting cards 10 10 10 10
According to Simpkins, each declaration is personal
and independent of the outcome of the round, and the
player making it is paid its value by each of the other
four players. Laurent and Arnett recognise the same
rule for misfire declarations ('no trumps' and 'no
counting cards'). For them, Po igrzée declarations are
paid at the end of the round. If such a declaration was
made by an opponent, he is paid its value, irrespective
of the outcome of the round, by each of the other four.
If it was made by the declarer or his partner, its value
is added to the amount that each opponent has to pay
if the declarer's side won the round, or to the amount
each opponent receives if the declarer's side lost.
According to Laurent, the player to the dealer's
right always leads to the first trick, according to
Arnett, this is so unless a gmrzd reeler has been
announced, in which case the declarer leads,
according to Simpkins, the lead is made by the player
who made the first positive bid. Simpkins prohibits
the player who leads from leading the suit of the
called card, unless he is the declarer. Play is in
accordance with the Baric rules of modern French Tarot
(see above).
If a player wins the last trick with the Petit, then,
according to Laurent, each of the other four players
pays him 10 game points multiplied by the multiplier
corresponding to the contract (see below); if he loses
the Petit in the last trick to any other player, he pays a
corresponding penalty to each of the other four.
According to Arnett, if the declarer or his partner
wins the last trick with the Petit, each of the three
opponents pays 10 game points, irrespective of the
contract, which the two partners divide between
them, there is no bonus or penalty if one of them
captures his partner's Petit in the last trick. If the
declarer or his partner loses the Petit to one of the
opponents in the last trick, each pays 30 game points,
which are divided between the three opponents. If an
opponent plays the Petit to the last trick, there is no
bonus or penalty. Simpkins does not mention the Petzt
au bout at all, but has in private correspondence
acknowledged the omission as an error.
The value of the round has three components: the
base value of the contract, the score for the difference
between the point-total of the declarer's side and the
required total, according to the number of bouts in
their tricks (see Basic rules), and, as already stated,
the value of any /Joignée declarations made by the
declarer or his partner. (On Simpkins's system, this
last component is missing.) The base values are as
follows, the Fournier leaflet agreeing with Laurent:
309
Laurent Arnett Simpkins
prise 25 10 10
pousse 50 20 20
garde 100 40 40 .
garde sans je chief 200 80 80
garde centre je chief 300 120 160
According to Arnett and Laurent, the difference score
is first rounded to a whole number, or to a multiple of
5 (1 point or 2,3 points being rounded to the
disadvantage of the declarer's side), and then
subjected to a multiplier, as follows :
Price - 1; Pousse - 2, garden - 4, garden Sam Ze chierz - 8;
gard centre Ze chief - 12.
Simpkins does not apply a multiplier: the difference is
simply rounded to the nearest multiple of 10, 5 points
being rounded to the disadvantage of the declarer's
side. When the value of the round has been computed
from these three components (two under Simpkins's
system), each opponent pays the resultant sum if the
declarer's side has won, and the declarer shares the
proceeds with his partner, if the declarer's side has
lost, the corresponding sum is received by each
opponent, the declarer and his partner sharing
equally in the payments. Thus, on the system of
Laurent and Arnett, if the declarer and his partner
lose, they pay for the Poignée declarations they have
made.
A grand c/zelem, when bid, is paid at a flat rate of 200
game points, whether won or lost, according to
Laurent; point-totals are ignored. This would imply a
payment of 100 game points for an unannounced
grand clzelern, if recognised (the point is left unclear).
The same remarks as under the three-handed game
apply even more strongly in this case: it would
actually become advantageous for the declarer of a
bourse unnecessarily to lose one trick, if it contained no
counting cards, the score for the round would then be
154 game points, all the other tricks being won.
Arnett allows 1000 game points, for win or loss, for an
announced grand cheer; Simpkins values announced
petit cheer at 800 game points and announced grand
choler at 1600 (with alternative values of 200 and 300).
If there are rnourhes, the declarer and his partner
divide the largest mouse if they win, but the declarer
alone doubles it if they lose.
Note
Though Simpkins devotes the bulk of his account
to the five-handed game, the notices of it by
Laurent and Arnett are very cursory, simply listing
a few points of distinction from the four-handed
one. It is therefore possible that they have over-
looked some such points. In particular, individual
payments for the Petit au bout and for Poignée
declarations seem an especially bad idea in this

310 Par! II: Games with 78 cards
game. It would be preferable to treat both as
contributing to the payments between the two
sides. The value of every Poignée declaration would
then be paid by - the losers to the winners,
regardless of who had made it. The payment for
the Petit au bout would be independent of who won
the round: if the last trick was won by the Petit,
payment for it would be added to or subtracted
from the payment for the round according as the
feat had been accomplished by one of the winners
or one of the losers; likewise when the Petit was
captured in the last trick, but only when it was
captured from a member of the opposing side.
AT recognises only a five-handed version in
which the declarer plays alone, as he does in the
three- and four-handed games. This development
is in line with the general direction of evolution of
modern French Tarot: first the old Tarot
d'Appel was replaced by a four-handed form in
which the declarer played alone, then a Five-
handed version was introduced which employed
the old idea of calling a card; now some players
have eliminated that in favour of a form with five
players in which the declarer plays alone.
Contemporaryive-handed French Tarot with a 5010
declarer
Deal and play are counter-clockwise. The dealer gives
fourteen cards to each player in five rounds, the first of
two cards each and the remainder of three cards each,
beginning with the player to his right; in the course of
the deal, he constitutes a cllien of eight cards by
dealing two cards to it at the end of every round of the
deal except the First. A player who has the Petit but no
other trump nor the Excuse may, if he wishes, annul
the deal, and there is a new deal by the next dealer.
The bidding is opened by the player to the dealer's
right. Possible positive bids are, in ascending order:
Wise or Petite; Pounce, gard sans je c/iien, and gard centre je
chien. There is no clielern bid. No player is obliged to
make a positive bid, the bidding terminates as soon as
each player has spoken once or when gard centre Ze c/zien
has been bid, each player must either pass or make a
bid higher than any yet made, not necessarily the
minimum such bid. The declarer plays alone against
the other four. In aprise or a Pousse, he exposes the ciiien
and then takes it into his hand and discards eight
cards, he may not discard a King or a bout, and may
discard trumps only if he is compelled to, in which case
he must announce their number, but not their rank. In
a gorge sans Ze chien, the chien is set aside unseen but
counts to the declarer at the end of the round, in agarde
centre Ze c/zierz, it is set aside unseen and counts at the end
.as
of the round to the opponents.
The player to the dealer's right leads to the first
trick. During the First trick, each player may, before
playing his card, make a declaration if he wishes, he is
never obliged to do so. The only declarations
permitted are those of '8 trumps', '10 trumps' and '13
trumps', misfire declarations are not allowed in this
game. A player making a declaration must show
trumps to the number he has declared, the Excuse
counts for this purpose as a trump, but may be shown
only if the player has no trumps he is not showing. It
is permitted to make a lower declaration than one is
able to. The declarer (successful bidder) may, before
he plays to the first trick, announce either Petit clzelem
or grand choler. Grand choler is a contract to win all the
tricks, the Excuse having its special power of winning
the last trick (see Basic ruler); pm: clzelem is a contract to
win every trick but one, the Excuse not having its
special power. Play is in all cases in accordance with
the Basic rules.
If the declarer wins, each of the four opponents
pays him as many game points as he has points in
excess of the required total. In addition, each pays
him a base value of 10 game points in a mousse, 50
game points in agarde sans Ze clzien and 100 game points
in a garden centre je chien. There is no multiplier in the
higher contracts, and no base value in a Prise, if the
declarer of a prise makes the required total exactly, he
receives nothing from the opponents. If the declarer
loses, he pays to each opponent as many game points
as his point-total falls short of the required total,
together with the base value in a contract other than
Przke. Whether he wins or loses, an odd -Q point is
rounded to the disadvantage of the declarer. If any
player, whether the declarer or an opponent, made a
declaration, its value is added to the payment the
declarer receives from each opponent if he won, or to
that which he makes to each opponent if he lost, who
pays and who receives the value of a declaration
therefore does not depend upon who made it, but only
on who won the round. The values of the declarations
are: 8 trumps - 10 game points, 10 trumps - 20 game
points, 13 trumps - 30 game points. If the declarer
made a cheer announcement, his point-total and his
previous bid are disregarded: he receives 150 game
points for Petit c/zelem, and 250 for grand c/zetern, from
each opponent if he is successful, and pays the same
amount to each if he is unsuccessful, payments for
declarations and for the Petit au bout still apply. If the
declarer makes all the tricks without having
announced clzelem, payment is made on the ordinary
basis; if the opponents had the Excuse, they must in
this case surrender it, though in a garden centre je chief
they retain the chien. Similarly, if the declarer makes
no tricks, payment is on ordinary principles, he
surrenders the Excuse if he had it, but retains the
discard or cizien (except in a garden centre Le c/lien).
The Petit au bout is worth 10 game points, payment
 Tarot in France in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
for it is independent of who won the round. Such
payment is, however, still governed by the principle of
the solidarity of the opponents. If the declarer won the
last trick with the Petit, or captured it in the last trick,
each opponent pays him 10 game points; if the
declarer lost it in the last trick, or if an opponent won
the last trick with it, the declarer pays each opponent
10 game points. If one opponent captures the Petit in
the last trick from another opponent, there is neither
penalty nor bonus.
At the start of the game, or whenever there is no
moucize, the dealer contributes 20 game points and
each of the other players contributes 10 game points
to form the First moue/ze, When there is at least one
rrzouc/ze on the table at the start of a deal, the dealer
adds 10 game points to the largest one. A successful
declarer takes the largest moucize; an unsuccessful one
pays to the table an amount equal to the largest movie
to form a new one.
Many French Tarot players do not shuffle the
pack before a deal, but only cut it, in order to
make the hands more interesting, this practice
can hardly be regarded as having the status of a
rule.
Modern French Tarot, in all its forms, and the
Besancon/Dijon game from which it is derived,
constitute the only variety of Tarot game in
which win or loss of the round does not depend
straightforwardly on the number of points made
on the cards taken in tricks, except for games like
Tarocchino and Minchiate in which points are
gained for having special combinations of cards
among those won in tricks. This is, of course,
partly a matter of the form of computation
adopted for historical reasons. If one were to
assign 10 points instead of 5 to each oudler or bout,
and to reckon an additional 5 points for having
two OF more oudlers, the total number of points
would be 111 instead of 91, and one could say
that in all cases the declarer won if he made at
least 56 points; the effect would be just the same
as under the existing rules. But, however
calculated, the game is one in which the oudters
play a yet more important part in determining
win or loss than in most Tarot games. This
means that to capture or bring home the Petit
assumes an especial importance. It is effectively
worth at least 10 points, to a declarer who has
one other oudter, the loss of the Petit is in effect a
loss of 15 points, to one who starts with only one
oudler, the capture of the Petit is worth 15 points.
A declarer who does not have the Petit must
decide at the outset whether or not he is going to
311
try to capture it. If he is, he should eschew a
discard that leaves him void in any suit, because
the opponents, if they discover it, will keep
leading that suit to weaken his trump holding. If
he is not attempting to capture the Petit, and has
a good length in trumps, a void is, as in most
Tarot games, an advantage, because of the
probability that he will be able to trump the King
and other court cards of that suit, it is also
advisable for a declarer who has the Petit but only
a short trump holding, because it affords him the
best chance of saving the Petit. In the three-
handed game, unless the declarer has a solid
sequence of top trumps, his best plan, if he
wishes to capture the Petit, is to begin by leading
a medium high trump (the 13 or thereabouts),
and continue by leading lower ones whenever he
regains the lead, with the purpose of forcing out
his opponents' high trumps, until he judges that
the moment has arrived to lead his own high ones
and so capture the Petit. In the four-handed
game, a shorter sequence of top trumps may
naturally serve for the capture of the Petit, but, in
default of this, it is best to lead quite a low one at
the outset. It is often possible to tell, from the
opponent's response to these tactics, where the
Petit lies, because the player who has it will want
to get rid of his high trumps as quickly as pos-
sible, in the hope of being unable to play higher
and so put his Petit on a later trick his partner,
or one of them, will win; the partners Will try to
hold on to their high trumps as long as possible.
An opponent who gets the lead and has the 21 is
often well advised to lead it if he thinks that the
Petit, held by one of his partners, is in danger.
The declarer's best chance of capturing the Petit
occurs when it is in the hand of the player to his
right. If the declarer has the Petit himself, and is
in danger of losing it, he can sometimes throw the
opponents off the scent by playing so as to feign
to be trying to capture it, if his ruse succeeds,
they will avoid trump leads, and will seek a suit
in which he is short so as to force his trumps; he
can then play the Petit to a trick in that suit aS
soon as he is void. The opponents may likewise
play so as to capture the Petit from the declarer;
they will judge whether to do this in part by how
many trumps they have seen in the talorz or ehierz.
An opponent who has the Petit will warn off his
partners from a hunt for it by playing a high
trump. It is important to adapt one's strategy to
the changing situation; a hunt for the Petit
prolonged after it has a real chance of success
312 Part II: Games with 78 cards
may spoil a good hand. If the opponents are not
seeking to capture the Petit and are not worried
about losing it, they will most likely concentrate
on finding the suits in which the declarer is void
or short; the player to his left is well placed to try
out different suits for this purpose.
Tarot players in France are mostly unaware of
the modes of play that exist in other countries,
and therefore unlikely to be influenced by them.
But the game, is now in the most interesting
possible state. It has attained great popularity,
and constantly attracts new players. Most of
those who play it are not conscious of any local
custom or ancient tradition of play to be piously
preserved..Treatises about it are coming out at a
rapid rate; Patrick Arnett is a Bridge expert, and
his book contains a method of evaluating a hand
by points (not just the point-values of the cards)
intended as comparable to those used by Bridge
players, while Alis an analysis of strategy quite
as detailed as any Bridge manual, which,
moreover, does not have to spend time on the
bidding conventions which make Bridge so
wearisome for many beginners to learn. As is
apparent from this chapter, there is still a great
deal of variation in the rules, and it is probably 1
premature for the F.F.T. to have attempted to »
impose uniformity in this respect. It is precisely
when a game has been taken up with enthusiasm
by a wide range of new players, and is the subject
of painstaking analysis, that it undergoes a rapid
evolution, as different players try out new ways of
perfecting it, some ideas may be imported from JL
other games, as the Petit clzelem in Tarot was 3
evidently borrowed from Bridge, but most of the
changes will be due to the needs of the game
itself, as different players come to see them.
French Tarot may be expected to have an
eventful future.
 PART THREE

ITALIAN GAMES AND ITALIAN

CARDS
 CHAPTER 16
Tarocchino or Tarocchi Bolognesi
In the city of Bologna and its environs several
different games are played with a quite
distinctive form of Tarot pack, comprising only
62 cards and predictably called the Tarocco
Bolognese. The name formerly used for this
shortened pack, and applied also to the family of
games played with it, was Tarocchino, which is of
course just the diminutive of Tarocco; this term is,
however, no longer current, and in Bologna the
games are generically referred to simply as
larocchi. This Bolognese type of game is in several
respects the most remarkable of all the many
forms of Tarot. It is extremely complicated, but
its complexity is of the sort that confers an
extraordinary subtlety upon the play, it is
certainly among the very best and most
fascinating of all the games played with the Tarot
pack. It can be shown to have remained very
nearly unchanged since the beginning of the
eighteenth century; in all probability, it has
remained much the same since its invention.
Although even in Bologna it is probably known
only to a minority of card players, it is still played
there with enthusiasm by people of all ages and
social classes. What makes it remarkable above
all else is the fact that, throughout its long
history, of about 450 years, it has never been
played anywhere else save in Bologna and its
immediate neighbourhood. It is diff-icult to
explain this fact, but it is so without a doubt; it
has at no time become known in other parts of
Italy, let alone elsewhere. This of course makes
it, to its devotees, not only a game more
captivating than any other, but a symbol of local
patriotism.
The Tarocco Bolognese pack is an Italian-
suited one from which the 2 to 5 have been
omitted from each of the plain suits; it thus
comprises forty suit cards, twenty-one trumps
and the Matto. The date of origin of this
shortened pack, and of the game played with it, is
very difficult to determine. The earliest pack that
can for certain be identified as a Tarocco
Bolognese pack is the copper-engraved pack
specially designed for the Bentivoglio family by
Gioseppe Maria Mitelli in 1664,1 the earliest one
using the standard pattern is . one in the
Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris from the end of
the seventeenth century? This pattern was then
already very old. It can be very clearly recognised
from the two sheets, in the_Rothschild Collection
at the Louvre and in the Ecole des Beaux Arts,
which, in Chapter 4, were listed as no. (23) of the
various fragments of fifteenth-century packs
there discussed. These two sheets show only
trumps, but, with the one exception of the Devil,
which is entirely different in design from those of
the later packs, comparison with the single-
ended Bibliothéque Nationale pack (or even with
a modern double-headed one) reveals a
1 Mitelli's pack is completely non-standard, the numeral
cards of Batons and, more particularly, of Swords have a
certain general resemblance to those of the anonymous
seventeenth-century Parisian Tarot pack, and, in the Swords
suit only, to the Leber torocchi (see p. 392). A reproduction of
the version of the engravings that was issued in book form was
published in 1970 by Huber and Herpel, of Offenbach am
Main, under the title Bologneser To rookspie! des 77. jahrhunderts.
For illustrations, see C.P. Hargrave, A History of Ploying Cards,
New York, 1966, opp. pp. 99 and 232, and S.R. Kaplan, The
Encyolopedio of Tarot, New York, 1978, p. 54. The date 1664 is
due to Hargrave, op. cit., p. 245.
2 In the volume Kh-34.
316 Part III: Italian Games and Italian Card;
constancy of design, down to the smallest details,
persisting through the centuries
lt seems certain, then, that the
Rothschild/Beaux Arts sheets, which may be of
the early sixteenth rather than the late fifteenth
century, but cannot be any later than that, come
from Bologna. Unfortunately, we have no ground
for saying that they come from a Tarocchino,
that is, from a shortened pack. Apart from
an isolated card by Agnolo Hebreo, which
shows the Devil and has the same general design
as the Devil on the Rothschild sheet, no two
popular Tarot packs that have survived to us
from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
display the same design. Nevertheless, it is
a universal law for playing cards in all
countries and at all times that the designs
quickly crystallise into standard patterns to
which all makers of cards of a given type in a
particular area conform; It is not to be supposed
that Italian Tarot cards of the later fifteenth and
of the sixteenth century formed any exception to
this law: the diversity of designs in the few packs
that have partially survived must reflect a
divergence between the different standard
patterns in vogue in different localities. All that
we can say, therefore, is that the distinctive
Bolognese designs, which came to be
characteristic of the shortened Bolognese pack,
had, at least for a great many of the trumps other
than the Devil, already assumed their definitive
form at the time the Rothschild/Beaux Arts
sheets were made. We cannot say that the step of
shortening the pack by omitting the 2 to 5 from
every suit had yet been taken.
There is no ground for believing that the
inventors of the game of Tarocchino had any
intention of devising a special pack with which to
play it. They invented a game played with a
Tarot pack from which sixteen cards had been
omitted, just as many games were played with
shortened regular packs; but they imported no
new feature into the pack. In the Tarocco
Bolognese pack of today four of the trumps do
indeed differ in subject from those of other Tarot
packs: but this was not an original feature, and is
due to adventitious circumstances. Again, to
judge from the Bibliotheque Nationale pack and
from a single-ended one made after 1725 in the
British Museum,4 there must, around the period
3 See Chapter 20 for further discussion,
4 1-37 in O'Donoghue's catalogue of the Lady Schreiber
Collection.
1690-1730, have been a custom of replacing the
_]acks of the Cups and Coins suit by Maids. They
subsequently disappeared, however; and since
they do not figure in Mitelli's pack of 1664, and
accounts of the game published in 1753 and 1754
refer only to Fanni lacks) and not to Farztirze or
the like, the period when the pack had this
feature must have been relatively brief; in any
case, it is not wholly without precedent (the
Minchiate pack has Maids in these two suits),
and little importance should be attached to it.
Thus, apart from the omission of the sixteen suit
cards, the pack differed originally from other
Tarot packs only in the design, the standard
pattern, employed. A particular standard pattern
may sometimes come to be associated with a
particular game, even exclusively with that game,
as has the pattern used for the Spanish-suited
pack with which the largely Breton game of
Aluette is still played; but no-one devises a
special pattern to go with a new game, if the pack
to be used for it is to contain only familiar cards.
The Bolognese pattern very probably existed for
78-card packs before the idea of shortening the
pack had occurred to anybody. Indeed, as
regards the suit cards, the pattern of the Tarocco
Bolognese is shared with that of the Bolognese
40-card regular pack used for the game of
Primiera, still extant and almost certainly going
back to the sixteenth century. The Primiera
Bolognese pattern may have been adapted from
the Tarocco Bolognese; but it may also simply
represent the pattern formerly used in Bologna
for regular packs and Tarot packs alike.
Documentary evidence is very sparse. The
inscription on the seventeenth-century portrait of
Prince Castracani Fibbia, mentioned in Chapter
4, credits the game with having been invented
before 1420; but, as we saw, no weight can be
attached to this testimony: all that it proves is
that by the seventeenth century Tarocchino was
already very much an object of civic pride. Other
early references show only that the Tarot pack
was known, and manufactured, in Bologna
continuously from the mid-fifteenth century.
Among the goods stolen in a robbery there on 8
August 1459 was a pack of triumph cards (urzum
Par cartarum a triumplzzs);5 and in 1477 a certain
Pietro Bonozzi is recorded as making both
playing cards and triumphs (Le carte e triumpizz do
5 Emilio Orioli, 'Sulle carte do giuoco a Bologna net secolo
XV', I! Libra e la Starla, anno II (n. s.), 1908, pp, 109-l9; see
p. 112.
 Ta rocchino or Tarocchi Bolognese
In 1588 one Achille Pinamonti obtained
.3ugare).6
from the Pope the income from a tax on playing
cards, 5 sold for a Primiera pack, 10 sold for a
pack of tarocchig7 and in 1668 there was written an
unpublished tarocchi appropriate poem in which
various ladies of Bologna were identified with the
Tarocco trumps, and another one about the
same time relating to the canons of S. Pietro
None of these references tells us anything of the
number of cards in a pack or of the game played
with it. The earliest account of the game known
to me is that in It Giuoco Portico, a card-game book
by R. Bisteghi, first published anonymously in
Bologna in 1753; in 1754 a very full description
by Carlo Pisarri was published anonymously
there under the title Istruziorzi rzeaessarie her the Si
volesse imparare it dilettevole giuoco dei Tarocchini.
Pisarri tells us that he has read a 'very old'
manuscript describing the mode of play in former
times, which he explains together with the
contemporary game. Though this is of great
value in tracing the history of the game, it tells us
nothing useful about its antiquity. Unfortunately
there are, so far as I know, no certain sixteenth-
century references to the game; since,
presumably, it was, then as afterwards, confined
to Bologna, this is not surprising. The earliest
possible reference to it is by Francesco Berni in
his Capilolo del gioro defla Prirrziera published at
Rome in 1526. In the prose commentary
accompanying that poem, he scoffs at the game
of Tarocco, and, at one point, employs the
expression 'Smirzclziale'.9 That term is otherwise
6 Ibid., p. 113 and pp. 117-19, where an entire notarised
agreement is reproduced, distinguishing, throughout,
between carte and lriumphi.
7 See Lodovico Frati, La Vita Privater do Bologna day recolor XIII
al serolo XVII, Bologna, 1890, p. 133.
a I.e. to the canons of the Cathedral. See L. Frati, op. cit., p.
184.
9 The relevant words from Berni's light-hearted diatribe
are: 'Un altro ... ha trovato che Tarocchi song un be gioco, &
pargli essere in regna suo quando ha in mano un numero di
dugento carte che a Pena je pro tenere, et per non essere
appostato je mescola cost it meglio che pro sotto la tavola,
visa proprio di Tarocco colui a Chi piaee questio gioco, che
altro non vuol dir Tarocco che ignocco, sciocco, Balocco
deg no di star fro fornari & calzolari & plebei a giocarsi in
tutto di un Carlino in quarto a tarocchi, O a trionh, O a
Sminchiate che si sia'. ('Another has found that Ta roccli i is
a fine game, and thinks himself in his kingdom when he has in
his hand some two hundred cards which he can hardly hold,
and so as not to be spied on shuffles them as best he can under
the table, one who likes this game is a real Tarocco-face - for
Tarocco means nothing else but a trifle, a stupid man, a toy .-
worthy to live among bakers and cobblers and common
317
known only in connection with the game of
Tarocchino, in which it was used, up to the
nineteenth century, as an instruction to one's
partner to play his highest trump. It is therefore
possible that Berni was alluding to Tarocchino.
He was, however, a Florentine; he visited
Bologna, but not, so far as I am aware, until
1529. There is thus no obvious reason why he
should refer to a Bolognese game, moreover, he
jests about the enormous number of cards a
player has in his hand at tarocchi, whereas in
Tarocchino a player has only fifteen cards at the
start of play. It is, thus, quite likely that
'Sminchiate' was a term formerly in general use
in Tarot games, of which we do not hear save in
Tarocchino principally because the other games
did not survive into the eighteenth century.
Despite our lack of any decisive proof, the
belief in the great antiquity of Tarocchino to
which the portait of Prince Fibbia attests makes
it likely that it was invented before the
seventeenth century. We should probably place
its origin in the first half of the sixteenth century,
perhaps early enough for Berni to have been
alluding to it. The reason lies partly in its generic
resemblance to Minchiate, which we know to
have been in existence by 1543, and partly to the
way in which the pack was shortened. We have
seen that at Chambéry in the nineteenth century
a game, otherwise unrelated to Tarocchino, was
played with a pack shortened in exactly the same
way, by the omission of the 2 to 5 from every suit ,
this practice may well have gone back to the
eighteenth century. If so, it could be explained as
a mechanical imitation of the method of
shortening the French-suited regular pack for
such games as Piquet, when this game was still
people to play for as much as a Carlino at la rocchi, or at triorfi,
or at Smmchzate or whatever'.) 'Visa dz ...' ('face of ...') is an
idiomatic expression introducing an insulting epithet, as in
'verso Di ladro' (literally, 'face of a thief'); Berni is pretending
that the word tarocro has the same meaning as the other words
with the -0660 ending. A Carlino is a coin, which had various,
often quite high, monetary values; presumably u Carline in
quarto specifies the particular type of such coin intended,
equivalent to a quarto d'ore: Berni is indicating the extravagant
losses that could occur in play. The verbs sminchiare and
minchiare were used by speakers from southern Italy and
Sicily with a sexual connotation, which is now accorded to
them by all Italian speakers, by the seventeenth century, this
meaning was known in Genoa, where there would have been
many Neapolitans; but people living in Florence, Bologna
and even Rome probably did not become aware of it until the
nineteenth or perhaps the twentieth century.
 318 Part III: Italian Games and Italian Cards
played with 36 cards. In Piquet, the Ace is high,
and the cards omitted are therefore the four
lowest of each suit. In most forms of Tarot, the
Aces have no especial significance, and there is
no reason why a 62-card pack should not be
formed by omitting the Ace to 4 from each suit
(almost exactly this occurred in Sicily). The
natural explanation of the method adopted for
shortening the pack in Chambéry Tarot is that it
was simply taken over from that used to obtain
the 36-card regular pack.
It is natural to suspect the same to be true of
the Tarocco Bolognese pack. Especially is this so
in view of the fact that in Tarocchino the original
ranking of the suit cards is preserved, so that, in
Swords and Batons, the cards rank, in
descending order, K, Q, C, J, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, A,
while in Cups and Coins they rank K, Q, CJ, A,
6, 7, 8, 9, 10. The omission of the 2 to 5 contrasts
sharply with the method of shortening the pack
to 54 cards we have seen to have been used in
Piedmont, namely by omitting those six cards
which are actually lowest in each suit, the Ace to
6 in Swords and Batons and the 5 to 10 in Cups
and Coins; the Bolognese method is not readily
intelligible save as an imitation of an already
known means of shortening the regular pack. It
has to be admitted that, on two counts, the case
is not as strong as for the Chambéry game. For one
thing, although a game using a 36-card regular
pack, namely Trappola, was well known in Italy
during the sixteenth century, this omitted, not
the 2 to 5, but the 3 to 6, from each suit. There
was a special reason for this, in that the Zs, the
lowest cards of their suits, had a special role in
the game. A sixteenth-century writer, Sperone
Speroni, after describing the Trappola pack and
the 40-card Primiera pack, says vaguely that
there were other ways of shortening the regular
pack for other games.l0 It is therefore possible
10 Sperone Speroni, 'Trattatello de Gioco', in Opere, vol. V,
Venice, 1740, pp. 441-2. Speroni lived from 1500 to 1588.
He first mentions the Italian and the French suit-systems.
He then says that sometimes you play with additional cards
called tarocrhz, sometimes without them. When you play
without them, you sometimes use the full pack, sometimes a
shortened one. Having mentioned Trappola and Primiera,
for the latter of which you discard the 2s, is and 4s, he says
that in several other games, played in various places, you
discard other cards. In some games, he continues, you deal
out the whole pack, in others each player receives only two,
three or more cards. There are some games with two
players, some with many. In some games you draw new
cards as play proceeds, in others you use only the original
that a pack missing the 2 to 5 was known; but, if
so, it was much less famous than the Trappola
pack (which Marcolino used for his fortune-
telling booklet). Furthermore, the Aces do play a
particular role in Tarocchino, alone among
Tarot games.
It seems most likely, nevertheless, that
Tarocchino was invented at a time when the
custom of shortening the regular pack had
already come into fashion, that is, not until the
sixteenth century. It seems likely, too, from the
fact that in Tarocchino there are the same four
cards omitted from each suit, that this occurred
when the most usual shortened regular pack was
a 36-card one, as in France and Germany, before
the 40-card Spanish form came to predominate
in Italy, as it does to this day. This would place
the invention of the game no later than the
sixteenth century. If, as seems plausible, we
regard the game as likely to have been a little
older than Minchiate, it probably came into
existence in the first quarter of that century.
This, in the absence of more definite clues, is the
best guess that we can make.
The trumps of the Tarocco Bolognese differ in
their order and numbering from those of the
Tarot de Marseille, and, therefore, of the
Tarocco Piemontese; but, as we saw, the latter
order is probably, in detail, a French invention,
and the order in the Tarocco Bolognese
represents a distinct tradition, one of several
known in different parts of Italy. There was,
indeed, a peculiarity in the order as observed in
play. As can be seen from Mitelli's Tarocchino
pack and from that in the Bibliotheque
Nationale, before 1725 the Pope, Emperor,
Popess and Empress were present in the trump
sequence, which had just the same subjects,
though differently arranged, as the Tarot de
Marseille." As usual, these four cards ranked
above the Bagatto and below all other trumps.
But, unlike the practice in all other Tarot games,
they had no order of precedence amongst
themselves, but ranked as equal, being referred
to collectively as Papa (Popes). If two or more Papz
l
hand dealt. In some games the player who makes most wins,
in others the one who makes least. In some games the court
cards are the highest of each suit, in others there are cards
that beat them,
11 See Chapter 5.
12 Mitelli actually has two Popes and two Emperors.
 Tarocc/zino or Tarow/12 Bolognese
were played to a trick, the one played last beat
the others.*3
The divergence in the subjects of the trump
cards in the modern Tarocco Bolognese from
those in other Tarot packs arose out of an
imbroglio that occurred in 1725. In that year
there was produced by Canon Luigi Montieri of
Bologna a geographical Tarocchino pack.
Geographical, heraldic and other instructional
packs, in which the faces of the cards carried
information together with an indication of their
rank and suit as ordinary cards, were popular in
the late seventeenth and early eighteenth
centuries. Montieri's cards had a small panel at
the top, depicting a card of the Tarocco
Bolognese pack, save that each suit had the Ace
and 2 to 6 instead of the Ace and 6 to 10, a fact
noted on the Ace of Cups. The body of each
trump card retailed geographical information;
the suit cards showed the coats of arms of the
aldermen (anziarzil and standard-bearers
(gonfalieri) of Bologna from 1670 onwards. The
publication of the pack caused annoyance to the
I
Papal authorities, who had Montieri and all
others concerned with its production arrested
and the pack publicly burned. Bologna was then
I in the Papal States, but, under an agreement of
1447, enjoyed considerable autonomy. What
annoyed the Roman authorities was that, in the
list of forms of government given on the Matto,
Bologna was cited as having a 'mixed'
government. It was, however, quickly perceived
that to proceed against Montieri and the others in
this matter would cause deep resentment in a city
proud of its ancient liberties; so the case was
hurriedly dropped, and Montieri and the rest
13 See Playing cards of various ages and countries selentedfrom the
3 Collection of Lady Charlotte S6/zreiber, vol. III, London, 1895, p.
x 14, where an account of the Montieri affair is quoted from a
manuscript of 1820. This states that on 19 September 1725
the Papal Legate ordered 'che net Gioco dei Tarocchi fossero
sostituiti at 4 Papi 4 Mori'. That the four Papa were treated in
play as equal in rank is a deduction from the fact that this has
certainly always been so for the four Moors (two of them even
coincide in design), and the fact that Pisarri, in his careful
account of how the manner of play of 'gli Antichi' differed
from that in contemporary usage, gives no hint of a difference
in this respect. Although he does not specifically mention the
use of Papa in place of Moors, it can hardly be that the 'very
Old' manuscript from which he was quoting in 1754 dated
from after 1725. Further corroboration comes from the fact
that, in Mitelli's pack, in which the trumps are all
unnumbered, as was then the practice in Bologna, there is no
differentiation of subject between the two actual Popes,
I though the designs are not the same.
I
319
released after a few days' imprisonment. The
Papal Legate contented himself with demanding
that the Papa be replaced by four Mori (Moors)
and the Angelo Angel), which of course
represented the Last judgment, by a D a m s
(Lady). The first change, but not the second, was
made, and the pack reissued, with full
ecclesiastical sanction, with Moors replacing the
Papa in the upper panels of those cards.
Presumably, with the affront to Papal dignity
thus allayed, there was felt to be no need to press
the objection to the depiction of a sacred subject
on the Angelo."
The replacement of the Papa by the Moors was
effected, not merely in Montieri's geographical
pack, but, henceforth, in all Tarocco Bolognese
packs, the new cards depicting Moorish kings
being occasionally referred to as 'Satraps'. It may
at First seem puzzling that the Papal authorities
should have been so touchy about the presence of
the Papal figures on trump cards in the Tarocco
Bolognese, when this was a feature of the Tarot
pack from its first invention. But what went
without remark in Renaissance times was not so
readily tolerated in the stern era of the Counter-
Reformation and afterwards. We have seen that
the figures of the Pope and Popess were
constantly liable to give offence, offence so great
as to deprive the unfortunate cardmaker of
Prague of his head." In all the German-speaking
parts of Europe the two Papal figures were
replaced, during the seventeenth century, by
.Jupiter and Juno, and, in Normandy and
Belgium, by Bacchus and the Spanish Captain.
In the Minchiate pack, which in the eighteenth
century was well known in Rome, the five lowest
trumps were known collectively as Papa, though
they ranked in sequence: but this nomenclature,
in An example of Montieri's pack in book form, is in the
British Museum, no. 1-43 in F.M. O'Donoghue's catalogue
of the Lady Schreiber Collection Illustrations will be found
in Playing muds of various ages and countries, vol. III. An actual
pack is in the collection of Mr David Temperley of
Birmingham. A reproduction of the pack was published by
the Edizioni del Solleone in 1973, edited by Signor Vito
Arienti, it includes a very informative leaflet by Signor
Franco Presicci. For an illustration of this reproduction pack,
see S.R. Kaplan, op. cit., p. 147. A detailed discussion of the
Montieri affair is contained in 'It Govern "mist" in
Bologna dal 1507 al 1797 e je carte do giuoco del Can.
Montieri' by G.B. Comelli, Anti e remorse della Reale
Deputazione do Scoria Patria Per la Romagna, ser. 3, vol. XXVII,
1909.
15 See Chapter 10.

320 Part III: Italian Games and Italian Cards
which was not used in the sixteenth century, was
not reflected in the trump subjects, which
included neither Pope nor Popess. There is, in
the Leber Collection at Rouen, a non-standard
sixteenth-century Tarot pack, probably from
Venice, which still includes the Pope, but a
fragmentary one made in the early seventeenth
century in Rome by a cardmaker using the trade-
name 'alla Colonna' evidently no longer included
him. The trumps in the alla Colonna pack must
have been numbered from 1 to 218 trump 5 is a
Sultan and trump 6 is Love. Love is always
superior to the Papal and Imperial cards in every
pack, and it is unthinkable that a Sultan should
be superior to the Pope (especially in a pack
made in Rome): so it is clear that the Pope and
Popess had been replaced, in the alla Colonna
pack, by other figures. Unfortunately, the
absence of the nine lowest trumps from all
surviving examples of a type of pack made in
seventeenth-century Florence by a cardmaker
using the trade-name 'Orfeo' leaves us unable to
say what happened in that case, but by 1725 the
78-card pack was probably no longer in use in
either Florence or Rome. Hence, apart from the
Tarot de Marseille and its Piedrnontese variant
(which may not as yet have reached Piedmont
itself), the Tarocco Bolognese was probably at
that date the only pack that still included the
Papal figures.
The Tarocco Bolognese was one of the very
first packs to become double-headed, adopting
this practice some time between 1760 and 1780, a
century before it was accepted in England, By
contrast, it was the very last form of the Tarot
pack to inscribe numerals on the trumps to
indicate their order: this custom seems to have
been introduced at the same time that the cards
were made double-headed. Bolognese
terminology differs from the norm principally in
respect of the lowest trump, most usually called
the Bagatto (with the stress on the second
syllable). In Bologna in the eighteenth century it
was called the Bagattifw: now it is called the
Begato (with the stress on the first syllable). The
Fool is called the Matte, and the trumps are
generically known as trzOnj, or also, nowadays,
simply as rzumeri (numbers). Nevertheless, the five
lowest trumps - the Begalo and the four Moors _
and the four highest ones - the Angelo, Monde
(World), Sole (Sun) and Luna (Moon) __ are left
unnumbered: the numbering begins at 5 with the
Amore (Love) and continues to the Stella (Star) as
8
16. The numbered trumps are nowadays referred
to by their numbers: but before the introduction
of the numerals on the trumps, a player had
simply to remember the order of the trump
subjects. The ranking of the trumps in
Tarocchino, in descending order, is as follows,
the names of the numbered trumps being those
used in the eighteenth century before the
introduction of the numerals: where necessary
the more usual equivalent appellation has been
indicated in brackets.
Angelo (Angel =]udgrnent)
Monde (World)
Sole (Sun)
Luna (Moon)
16 - Slella (Star)
15 - Saetta (Thunderbolt = Tower)
14 - Diavolo (Devil)
13 - Matte (Death)
12 -- Tradilore (Traitor = Hanged Man)
11 - Vecchio (Old Man = Hermit)
10 - Ruota or Roda (Wheel)
9 - Forma (Strength = Fortitude)
8 Giustina (Justice)
7 - Tempera nza or Tempera (Temperance)
6 - Carlo (Chariot)
5 - Amore (Love)
The four Mori (Moors)
Bagattirzo or Begato.
Both now and in the eighteenth century, there
are several games played with the Tarocco
Bolognese, which have in common certain basic
rules, of which the distinctive ones are those
governing the different methods of scoring points.
Both now and then, however, a four-handed
game is regarded as the principal form. It will be
easier to proceed by first describing the modern
games, and then the older forms. The principal
modern game is Ottocento: the basic rules are
stated under that head.
Ottocento
Fundamentals
The game is for four players, who play in fixed
partnerships of two each, partners facing each other
across the table. Deal and play are counter-clockwise.
The hands are played out in tricks, under the usual
rules and the usual constraints; the Matto serves as
 Ta rocc/uno or Ta rocchi Bologrzesi
Excuse. Cards won in tricks by partners are kept face
down in a single pile; when the Matto is played, it is
5 withdrawn from the centre of the table and placed
I with the cards won in tricks by that side. If the other
»
side wins the trick to which the Matto is played, the
side who played it surrender any one card they have
won, at their choice, to their opponents at the end of
the round. If the side playing the Matto does not win
any trick, they must surrender the Matto at the end of
the round to their opponents: in no other
circumstances can the Matto be lost. The Matto may
be led to a trick, in that case, the second player may
play any card, to which the third and fourth players
must follow suit if they can, and, if they cannot, must
play a trump if they can. The trumps rank, in
descending order :
Angelo, Monde, Sole, Luna, 16, 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9,
8, 7, 6, 5, the four Moors, Begalo.
If two or more Moors are played to a trick, the one
played last beats the others. The suit cards rank in
of their original order, that is, in Swords and Batons :
K, Q, C,], 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, A
and, in Cups and Coins :
K, Q, C,], A, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.
Points on cards
The counting cards, with their values, are :
Angelo 5 points
Mondo 5 points
Begato 5 points
Matto 5 points
Each King 5 points
Each Queen 4 points
Each Cavalla 3 points
Each jack 2 points
There are also 6 points for winning the last trick. The
Angelo, Mondo, Begato and Matto are collectively
called la rocchi: the taroccizi and the Kings are
collectively called carte do cinque (cards worth 5
points). The cards are counted in twos. All twenty
counting cards, taken together with twenty low cards,
score 76 points. There remain twenty-two low cards,
together making II points, to give, with the 6 points
for the last trick, a total of93 points in all.
Deal and discard
The dealer gives Fifteen cards to each player, in three
rounds of five to each, starting with the player on his
right. He takes the last two cards for himself, without
showing them, and discards two cards, again without
showing them. He may not discard carte do cinque, i.e,
321
or Kings, but may discard any other card,
tarotchi
including trumps. The two cards discarded by the
dealer count at the end of the round to his side, unless
they have made no tricks at all, when they must
surrender them to their opponents. The deal passes in
rotation after each round.
Declarations (Melds)
The player to the right of the dealer always leads to
the first trick. Each player, just before he himself
plays to the First trick, may declare any one or more of
certain special combinations of cards, if he holds them
in his hand. He is not bound to make these
declarations, if he does not wish to, and may, if he
wishes, declare fewer cards of a given combination
than he actually has. He must lay down all the cards
that he declares of any combination face up on the
table for the other players to see. Such declarations
score points for the side to which the player making
them belongs, and are noted down: these points are
added in to the points made on cards won in tricks at
the end of the round. The dealer may not include in a
declaration the cards he has discarded.
There are two kinds of combination: sets of three or
four cards, called crzrc/ze, and sequences. The possible
crztn/ze are 1
Three taroechi 18 points
Four tarocc/zi 36 points
Three Kings 17 points
Four Kings 34 points
Three Queens 14 points
Four Queens 28 points
Three Cavalli 13 points
Four Cavalli 26 points
Three Jacks 12 points
Four jacks 24 points
Three or more crick/ze together form a criccorze, and all
the points for crick/ze are then doubled.
There are seven kinds of sequence. Four of these are
the sequences in each of the four suits. To have a
sequence in a suit, you must have the King and any
two of the remaining three court cards, if you have all
four court cards of a suit, you may count them all as
belonging to the sequence; and, if you have the King
and at least two other court cards and also the Ace of
the suit, you may include the Ace in the sequence.
Other numeral cards may not be included in a suit
sequence. A sequence in trumps is called a grande or
grarzda. To have a grande, you must have the Angelo and
at least two of the next three trumps, the Monde, Sole
and Luna: if you have all three of these, you may count
them all as part of the grande. In addition, you may
count as part of the grande any of the numbered
trumps from 16 down in unbroken sequence. There are
322 Part III: Italian Games and Italian Cards
two remaining sequences, which are not sequences in
the literal sense: a sequence of Moors, consisting of
three or of all four Moors, and a sequence of Aces,
consisting of three or of all four Aces. The Aces may
be used both to make a sequence of Aces and in their
respective suit sequences.
The Begato and the Matto are called, in this
connection, contatori, and have a special, and twofold,
privilege. First, they may function as wild cards, able,
within certain limits, to substitute for certain cards
needed to make up a sequence. The restrictions are
these. A corztatore cannot substitute for a King or t h e
Angelo: a suit sequence must really have the King,
a g r a n d e must really have the Angelo. Further,
a suit sequence must really have at least one of the
court cards below the King: you cannot make a
sequence of the King and two contatori, but you may
make one of the King, one other court card, and one
contatore, and can add in the Ace if you have it.
Likewise, a grande must really have at least one of the
three unnumbered cards higher than the 16: you
cannot make a grande of the Angelo and two contatori,
but you can make one out of the Angelo, one of the
Monde, Sole and Luna, and one aontatore, and add in any
trumps in sequence down from the 16 that you have.
A sequence of Moors must have at least two genuine
Moors; a sequence of Aces must have at least two
genuine Aces. It is important to note that the same
coniatore may be used repeatedly for this purpose, to
replace different cards in different sequences. The
second privilege of the corzlatori is that either or both
may be added to any sequence, even if they are not
needed to replace missing cards. Again, they may be
used repeatedly for this purpose. Thus, if you have all
four court cards and the Ace of Batons, and both
corttatori, you may claim a sequence of seven cards in
Batons, whereas, without the contatori, the maximum
length of a suit sequence is five, and if you have, as
well, the other three Aces, you may claim a sequence
of six in Aces, consisting of the four Aces and t h e t w o
cnntatorr. It is only with sequences that the contatorz have
either of these two privileges: they play no role in
rrtcche, except in virtue of their being tarocc/ti.
In a grande, either or both corztatori may also be used
to replace missing numbered cards. Of course, no one
conlatore may be used to replace more than one missing
card in any sequence, nor may a contatore be added to
a sequence if it has already been used to replace a
missing card. So if you have the Angelo, the Sole, one
conlalore and the 15, you can claim only a grande of
three, because you need the contalore to substitute for
the A/Iondo or the Luna, and do not have the 16. But, if
you have the Angelo, the Sole, the 16 and 14 and two
contatori, you can claim a grande of six: one conlalore
goes to replace the A/Iondo, and the other to replace the
15. This is subject to the restriction that you cannot
use both contatori to replace two adjacent numbered
trumps, for instance the 16 and 15, or the 14 and 13.
Thus if you have the Angelo, Monde, 15 and 14, with
both corzlatori, you can claim a grande of six (one
contatore replaces the Sole and the other the 16), but if
you have the Angelo, Monde, Luna and 14, with both
contatori, you cannot include the 14 in your grande,
which therefore, with the corzlatori, comprises only five
cards.
All sequences score only according to the number of
cards they contain: 10 points for a sequence of three,
and 5 additional points for each card beyond three. A
sequence of six thus scores 25 points. All scores for
sequences are doubled, however, if you have three or
more of them.
Tlzejfnal more
If there were only the scores for cards won in tricks,
for the last trick and for rricc/ze and sequences declared
during the first trick, the Bolognese form of Tarocchi
would not differ very markedly from other Tarot `\ ..
games. Its salient feature, however, is that, at the end m.
of each round, each side scores points, not only in
these ways, but also for any cricche and sequences that
can be made out of the cards the two partners have
together won in tricks. Naturally, there will normally
be a great many more of these than ones which
individual players could declare on their initial hands.
They are scored for in exactly the same way as those
declared during the first trick. The only remark that
needs to be made is that, if a side should be lucky
enough to have a grande extending, with the possible
help of rorztatori, down to the 5, it may count as
belonging to the grande any Moors that it may also
have, scoring separately for a sequence of Moors if it
has one. The scores for rricc/ze and sequences at the
end of play will usually swamp the points won on
individual cards.
In order to compute the scores made by each side
for aricc/ze and sequences, it is usual for one side to lay
out its cards, or the relevant ones, in rows and
columns: it is possible then to see quickly both what
aricahe and sequences that side has, and also what the
other side has. There are Five columns, for trumps and
for each of the four suits. The cards laid out in suits
are the court cards and the Aces. Those laid out in
trumps are the Zaracc/zi and the l\floors, together with
any cards belonging to the grande, if that side has t h e
Angelo. H the side that does not have the Angelo is
laying out the cards, they include as many trumps as
are needed to determine whether the other side has a
grande, and, if so, of what length.
Consider the lay-out at the top ofp. 323.
This side has two crztr/te, namely three Zaroca/ti, scor-
ing 18 points, and three Cavalli, scoring 13 points,
making 31 points together. It has three sequences: a
grande of Hve (Angelo, A/Iorzda, Bemata, 16, 15), scoring 20
 Tamcchino or Tarocchi Bolognese
Trumps Swords Batons Cups Coins
Angelo K such as to be apparent to the opponent also - secret
K
Mondo
Q table with the closed fist: it asks the partner to play
C C C his highest card in the suit led and to return it if he
J J
16 A A A
15
One Moor
Begato
points, a sequence of four in Swords (King, Begato,
Cavallo, Ace), scoring 15 points, and a sequence of
four Aces (three genuine Aces and the Begato), also
scoring 15 points. This makes a total of 50 points,
which is doubled because there are three sequences,
to make 100 points for sequences altogether: 131
points for both Erica/ze and sequences. The opponents
have one ricca of three Queens, scoring 14 points.
They have two sequences, one of three cards in Batons
(King, Queen, Matto), scoring 10 points, and one of
four cards in Moors (three genuine Moors and the
Matto), scoring 15 points. They have, therefore, 39
points for crick/ze and sequences. If the other side had
been laying out the cards, they would have put out all
their court cards and Aces, together with the Sole,
Luna, 14, three Moors and Matto. Since the first.side
had only one con tatore, namely the Begato, which they
needed to replace the Sole in order to form their grande,
it is necessary for their opponents to put out only one
numbered trump to show where the grande ends, if the
first side had had, in addition, the Sole, Luna or Matto,
their opponents would have needed to lay out the 13 as
well as the 14.
If we assume that the side laying out the cards in
this example won the last trick and has, besides the
cards in the lay-out, fifteen low cards, it will have
scored 53 points on the cards, making in all 131 + 53
= 184 points (plus any for initial declarations); the
opponents will therefore have scored 93 - 53 = 40
points on the cards, making a total of 39 + 40 = 79
points (plus those for initial declarations). The scores
in this example are comparatively low.
At the end of each round, the score for each side is
rounded up or down to the nearest multiple of 5, and
is usually recorded as the result of dividing the
rounded total by 5, e.g. a score 0f192 as 38. Both sides
record their score for each round, a running total
being kept, and that side wins the game which, in
several rounds, First reaches 800 points (160 reduced
points). If a side can do this by means of declarations
during the first trick, it has won the game, otherwise
the round must be played out, and, if both sides have
reached 800 points, that with the higher score is the
winner.
There are three signals that a player, while leading
323
to a trick, is permitted to make to his partner: they are
signals are illegal. A busto is effected by striking the
wins. The vol is executed by tossing the card lightly
in the air so that it 'files' down to the table, and
signals that the player has no more cards in that suit.
It may be accompanied by the b1/550, in which case the
intention is either to trump the opponents' court cards
in that suit, to save an important trump or to exhaust
the trumps in the hands of the player making the
signal, so that he can then throw his high cards on his
partner's tricks. If not accompanied by the busto,
however, it warns the partner not to lead that suit
again. Finally, the striscio is made only when leading
trumps, and is done by scraping the card led across
the table. It invites the partner to lead trumps as
much as possible, if he deems it advisable, one motive
may be to capture the Begato, and another that the
player making the signal has very few trumps, and
wishes to exhaust them for the same reason as before.
The basso and 0010 signals occur also in
Tressette, but in that game are made verbally.
The play of Ottocento needs extreme care,
because there are only twenty cards in the pack -
the 6 to 10 of each suit - that cannot contribute to
fo rm in g a ricca or sequence. As in all Tarot
games, the Begato is highly vulnerable; but here
it is of prime importance, not only as being a
larocco but above all because of its role as a
nontatore, it may, for example, enable the side that
saves or captures it to form three sequences
where, without it, they would have formed only
one. The Kings are also of great importance, not
only as forming a valuable ricca but because they
are essential for sequences in the plain suits.
Having secured two sequences, it is an important
objective to obtain a third, since that will double
the scores for all of them; note that at least one
side must have a sequence of Aces, and at least
one must have a sequence of Moors. All court
cards are obviously important, the side which
lacks the Angelo will want to ensure an early.gap
in the opponents' trump sequence. A player Must
try to keep in mind which of the many important
cards have been captured by his side or by the
opponents, but must be ready to make sacrifices ;
too exclusive a concentration on a single
objective can easily ruin a game.
There are five other games currently played
with the Tarocco Bolognese, which will now be
described.
324 Part III: Italian Games and Italian Cards
Terziglio
This is a three-handed game, with a rudimentary
form of bidding. Eighteen cards are dealt out in three
rounds of six each, starting with the player on the
dealer's right. The remaining eight cards are placed
face down in the centre of the table. One of the players
is to play alone against the other two. The bidding is
opened by the player on the dealer's right. He may
pass if he likes, or make a positive bid, of which there
are only two: 'Gioco' ('I play'), also colloquially
effected by saying, 'Se si prO' ('If it is possible'); and
'Solo'. Suppose that he makes the lower of the two
bids, 'Gioco', and that the other two players pass. The
first player then picks up the eight cards from the
centre of the table, without showing them to the other
two players, and adds them to his hand. He then
discards eight cards face down beside him on the
table; he may not discard Kings or tarocc/zi. These
eight cards will count for him at the end of the round
like the cards he wins in tricks, unless he is
unfortunate enough to win no tricks, in which case
they are surrendered to the opponents. The hands are
then played out in the usual way, the player to the
dealer's right leading to the First trick, each player,
before playing to the first trick, may declare crew/le or
sequences. The opponents of the declarer keep the
cards they win in a single pile. At the end of the
round, points for cards, for the last trick and for cricche
and sequences included either in the cards won by the
declarer or in those of the opponents taken together
are calculated as in Ottocento. The cards are counted
in twos: an odd low card does not count, an odd
counting card scores 1 point less than its nominal
value. If the total score of the declarer exceeds that of
the opponents, he has won; if it is equal or less, he has
lost. If the declarer wins, his total score is rounded to
a multiple of 50: if it falls short of a multiple of 50 by 4
points or fewer, it is rounded up, otherwise it is
rounded down (thus 296 is rounded to 300, 295 to
250). He then scores as game points one more than
the result of dividing this rounded total by 50; his
opponents score nothing. If the declarer loses, he
scores nothing, and each of his opponents scores the
same number of game points, calculated in the same
way on their combined total point score. If, however,
the declarer has made a capote (slam), that is, has
won all the tricks, he scores 40 game points, and
conversely if he has lost them all.
If the First player passes, the second player may
then either pass or make a positive bid, and, if he
passes, the third player has the option. A player who
has passed cannot re-enter the bidding. It is very rare
for the second player to pass, because of the danger
that the third player will make a capote. If the second
player says 'Gioco', and is not overbid by the third
player, all proceeds as before, save that the declarer
must show the eight cards from the centre of the table
to the other two players before taking them into his
hand. It is still the player to the dealer's right who
leads to the first trick. The procedure is the same if the
first two players pass, and the third says 'Gioco'.
If the first player has said 'Gioco', the second or the
third player may overbid him by saying 'Solo';
likewise, if the second player says 'Gioco', the third
may say 'Solo'. In such a case, the player who opened
the bidding does not have the right to claim to play the
Solo instead, he must simply become one of the
opponents. It is also allowed for the first positive bid
made to be 'Solo'. When a Solo is played, the eight
cards in the centre of table are set aside unlooked at,
and belong, at the end of play, to the winner of the last
trick; the player to the dealer's right still leads to the
first trick. The number of game points won by
declarer or opponents is doubled when a Solo is
played.
When four take part in Terziglio, the dealer sits out
the round, and scores the same as the opponents of
the declarer. At Monzuno, near Bologna, a variation
is played in which nineteen cards are dealt to each
player, and only five are placed in the centre of the
table. Terziglio is extremely difficult, because it is
very hard to estimate, from a hand, what score is
likely,
A/Iillone
This is a popular two-handed game. The dealer gives
twenty cards to himself and his opponent, in four
rounds of five each, and, in the last round, gives two
extra cards to himself. Each then discards ten cards
face down, which will count to him at the end, unless
he makes no tricks; he may not discard Kings or
tarocc/zi. The dealer then deals ten more cards to each
player, in two rounds of five each, and himself discards
two more cards. Some play instead that, before the
discard of ten each, the dealer gives himself only
twenty cards, taking twelve on the completion of the
deal after that discard, but this is not the original rule.
Declarations, play and scoring for cards won in tricks,
for the last trick and for rricc/ze and sequences are as
usual; the opponent of the dealer leads to the First
trick, and the cards are counted in twos. Each player
records his score at the end of each round, and a
running total is kept. The game is completed at the
end of that round in which one or both players
reached 1,000 points, and is won by the player who
then has the higher score. If, during any deal, either
player finds himself able to reach 1,000 points by
making declarations of crick/ze and sequences on his
first twenty or twenty-two cards, before he has
 Tatoca/zzrzo or Y-arocc/zz Bolognese
discarded, he may do so, and wins the game. Once
each has discarded his ten cards, however, the round
must be played out to the end before the winner can
be determined. Except in the case mentioned,
declarations can be made only on the cards held in
hand after the discard.
Cerztino
This is another two-handed game, played with a
reduced pack of forty-two cards, from which all the
numeral cards save the Aces have been omitted
from all four suits. Each player receives only Five cards
in the deal, and there is no discard for the dealer. Any
player who has a rrieca or a sequence can declare it
before playing to the first trick, and the points for it
are noted: but, at the end of the round, when the total
points for the round are reckoned, only the player
with the higher total score records it and adds it to his
running total. The first player, in any number of
rounds, to gain 100 points wins the game: he receives
l game point if his opponent has attained 50 points or
more, 2 game points if he has not.
Centocinquarzta
This is yet another two-handed game, in which the
full pack is used; the dealer gives fifteen cards to each,
in three rounds of Eve each, and takes an additional
two for himself in the last round of the deal, he
discards two cards, under the usual rules.
Declarations and play are as usual. At the end of the
round, the points of each player are reckoned in the
usual way, and then rounded to the nearest multiple
of 10: 25 points are rounded up to 30, 24 points are
rounded down to 20. The recorded score is the
rounded total divided by 10. The game is won by the
First player to reach 150 points as recorded. (Some,
however, prefer to play to 200 up.) When the players
are approaching the winning score of 150, there are
some special rules. The dealer, if he is close to 150
points, leaves the last two cards face down on the
table, and looks at his hand before picking them up. If
by declaring criticize and sequences he can reach the
winning score, he may declare them immediately,
winning the game before his opponent has a chance
to make his declarations, and however close his
opponent was to the winning score. If the dealer
cannot do this, he picks up the two extra cards and
discards. If, now, the dealer's opponent can reach the
winning score by declaring rricehe and sequences, he
declares them and wins the game. In any other case,
the last round must be played out, this applies even if
the dealer can, after his discard, make declarations
325
that bring him up to the winning score. If both players
attain 150 points (as recorded) in the course of the last
round, the one who has the higher grand total wins.
Ma ttazza
This is a very popular reversed game which may be
played by any number of players from two to six; the
most usual number is four. Ten cards are dealt to
each player, in two rounds of five each, and there is no
discard. Each player plays for himself, and, in each
round, there is a loser, or sometimes more than one
loser, rather than a winner. There are no initial
declarations. The loser, in any round, is the player
who makes the most points, on cards won in tricks, on
the last trick, and on crick/ze and sequences included in
the cards he has won. The cards are counted in sets
equal to the number of players, e.g. in fours in the
four-handed game. If two or more players make an
equal number of points, greater than that made by
any other player, both (or all) are losers. If, however,
a player makes no points at all, that is, wins no trick,
then he is the loser, and the player with the most
points does not lose; if two or more players make no
points, both or all are losers. After each round, one
adverse game point is marked to the loser, or to each
loser if there is more than one. The game ends when
either two players have each scored three or more
adverse game points, or one player has scored six: in
the former case, the two players who have scored
three or more adverse points pay the rest between
them, in the latter case, the one player with six
adverse points pays all the rest on his own. In any
round, at any stage, a player with a strong hand may
say 'A du70'. This is an invitation to any other player
who cares to co-operate to join with him in trying to
deny tricks to the other players, or at least to one of
them. If they succeed, the player or players with no
tricks will become the losers, but, of course, if they
fail, one of them will almost certainly be the loser, and
it is very difficult to prevent a trick, especially the last
one, from inadvertently going to a player who has so
far made none. If a player chooses to co-operate with
one who has said 'A dum', he may not announce the
fact in any way: it becomes evident only through the
play. The score is usually kept by drawing spokes of a
wheel on the table to each player (when there are
four, it forms a cross), and marking a short line across
the appropriate spoke to indicate the adverse points
awarded to losers. Note that the player with the
Matto can at the end of the round give in exchange for
it to the one who took the trick to which it was played
that card which most increases the latter's point-total.
It is convenient next to describe the most
ancient form of the game of which we have an
326 Part III: Italian Games and Italian Card;
account, that contained in the old manuscript
from which Pisarri carefully cites all the
differences from the eighteenth-century game. I
shall assume that this manuscript was at least
fifty years old, and therefore recorded the
seventeenth-century form of the game. It is
surprising in two ways. First, because every
detail of the modern game featured in its ancestor
of three centuries ago: this extraordinary
conservatism makes it highly likely that the
present-day game is, in all essentials, the same as
that invented in the sixteenth century. It is
surprising, secondly, because, while Ottocento
appears complicated enough, the seventeenth-
century game is even more complicated. In fact,
in its basic structure it is almost exactly identical
with Ottocento: but, superimposed on this, there
is an additional level of complexity which has
subsequently simply been shorn off. Pisarri does
not describe the earlier form of the game all at
once, but merely notes its differences from the
eighteenth-century form as he goes along; but I
base the following account on his express
assurance that he has recorded all the
differences. As now, the principal game in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was a four-
handed one; the earlier game was called Partita.
Partita In the sewrzleentll century
Four players take part, in fixed partnerships of two
each, the par triers facing each other across the table.
There is no game, to be won or lost over several
rounds: a settlement is made after each round (or
after an arbitrary number of rounds), in the manner
explained below. The deal, play and allocation of
points for cards, rricc/ze and sequences are all as in
Ottocento, save in the respects to be stated.
Terminology
The same terms are used as in modern Bolognese
Tarocchi, save that the lowest trump is called the
Bagatlino, the trumps are called only tri0ty9, not humeri,
and are all referred to individually by name, Pa/Ji
replace the Moors, and the term Pariglie is used as an
alternative to rrzrc/ze.
Deal
After the first five cards are dealt to each player, the
players look at them. If all four players agree, it will
be possible to arzdare a Monte, literally 'to go to the
mountain', that is, the cards will be thrown in and the
player to the dealer's right will shuffle the pack and
become dealer for a fresh deal. (This used to be a very
general Italian practice in a great many card games, it
is referred to by Francesco Berni in his Capitolo della
Prim zéra of 1526 as a peculiarity of the game of Ronfa.)
The player to the dealer's right speaks first: he may
say either 'La tango ('I hold') or 'A Monte'. If he says 'La
lerzg0', the dealer resumes giving out the cards. If the
first player says 'A Monte', the dealer's partner may
then do one of three things: he may say 'A Monte',
indicating that he has very bad cards; or he may say
'Ho cattivo, regolatevz on Le vostre' ('I have bad cards,
decide it on the basis of your own'), or he may simply
put his cards face down on the table without saying
anything, indicating that he does not wish to go a
Monte, but without definitely making it impossible.
Whatever the second player does, the third player
now has the right to say either 'La tango' or 'A mole'. If
he says 'La tefzg0', then, as before, the dealer must
resume dealing out the remaining cards. If he says 'A
morzte', then the dealer must determine, from his own
cards and what his partner has said, whether to
resume the deal or to throw in his cards, his actions
show what he has decided. As will be seen, if either of
the opponents of the dealer holds, i.e. says 'La 48n80
he increases the stake for the round: if the opponents
win the round, they will gain more, if they lose the
round, the dealer and his partner will gain more. The
dealer, on the other hand, risks nothing by continuing
the deal.
Play
The declarations during the first trick are as in
Ottocento, save for certain additional declarations to
be noted under Snoring. The play is just as in
Ottocento, save for the signals that a player may make
to his par trier. The first is the expression 'Sminc/zzaZe', by
which, when a player has the lead, his partner may
instruct him to lead his highest trump. Pisarri remarks
that originally this was the only signal allowed to be
given. Secondly, if a player chooses, when playing a
card, to strike (battwel the table in the middle, he
informs his partner that he holds the highest card of
that suit, including trumps, not yet played, if he strikes
the table at the side, he indicates that he has the second
highest card of the suit. Finally, in leading to a trick, he
may choose to draw back (tirare irzdietrol the card
slightly towards himself before laying it down, by
which he signals that he does not want his partner to
take the trick, or, at least, to play his highest card. Only
one of these three signals may be given at a time.
Points
The allocation of points for uric/ze and sequences,
 Tarocchino or Tarocc/zz Bolognese
either declared during the First trick or in cards won in
tricks at the end of the round, is exactly as in
Ottocento, and there are 6 points for the last trick.
However, the cards are counted in fours, not in twos.
The dealer and his partner will have two extra cards :
two such low cards count nothing. (If counting cards
are included in the two odd cards, each counts 1 less
than its nominal value.) There are 31 pairs of cards in
the pack, and only 15 sets of four, so that the total
number of points on cards, including the 6 for the last
trick, is 77, exclusive of crick/ze and sequences, of
course.
Scoring
The principal difference between Ottocento and
Partita lies in the fact that, in the latter, there is an
additional scoring system superimposed on the
allocation of points. This was done by means of chips
(in the sense of Poker chips) called Pest. A single bowl
was on the table, and a side placed in the bowl the
number of Pest that it had won, the number of pesi still
possessed by a side, or, rather, the difference between
that number and the number possessed by the
opponents, indicated how much they owed. This is
confusing for a modern reader, and I will instead
speak of chips lpesi) being awarded to a side. Since it
is on the basis of the chips that the settlement was
made, they could be called game points; but it is more
convenient to refer to them simply as chips. Chips
have two functions: partly to represent points, 1 chip
being equivalent to 25 points, and partly as
independent bonuses, some of these bonuses are for
things that do not in themselves score points, and thus
affect the play of the game.
A round is won by the side that obtains the higher
total number of points in that round. The point-total
of the winning side is rounded down to the next highest
multiple of 25, et. 374 is rounded down to 350. The
winning side is then awarded the number of chips that
results from dividing that rounded total by 25, the
losing side obtains nothing. If the winning side has
obtained 500 points, it also gains an additional bonus
of 20 chips, and 10 more chips for each 100 points
above 500. Thus a score of 729 obtains 29 chips plus a
bonus of 40 chips, making 69 chips in all. If a side has
given marco (slam) to its opponents, i.e. has made all
the tricks, the number of chips is doubled. Since there
are 846 points for all possible fricc/ze and sequences,
when marco is given the winning side will have 846 +
77 = 923 points, i.e. 36 chips plus 60 chips bonus; the
total of 96 chips, when doubled, yields 192 chips. It
was, however, frequently the custom to award 200
chips for giving marco. If the winning side are the
opponents of the dealer, they gain 5 additional chips
for not having had the advantage of the discard, ii
they said 'La ten go' during the deal, they gain a further
5 chips. If, however, the opponents of the dealer said
327
'La £eng0', and the dealer and his partner win, they
gain 5 additional chips. If the dealer throws in his
cards and goes a monte, the opponents are awarded 5
chips. There is a bonus of 10 chips for being the First
to win a round. If the winners obtain 500 points
without having the Angelo, then, in addition to all that
has gone before, they obtain a further bonus of 10
chips; if they have 600 points without the Angelo, this
bonus is increased to 20 chips, and, if700, to 30 chips.
If the winners, whatever their score, have neither
contatore, they gain an additional 10 chips.
When cricche and sequences are declared during the
First trick, the points so obtained are recorded by
means of counters called Zupini or ferlini, quite distinct
from the chips. Each counter represents 10 points, but
the points are first rounded down to the next highest
multiple of 10, so that a player who declares a cricaa of
Queens and a sequence of four, thus obtaining 29
points, may take only 2 counters. At the end of the
round, the number of counters is multiplied by 10 to
obtain the points to be added to the points on cards,
and those on cricche and sequences among the cards
won, in order to determine how many points each side
has and, thus, which has won the round. In addition,
however, the winning side is awarded twice as many
chips as the total number of counters belonging either
to themselves or to their opponents; declarations are
therefore dangerous if you do not have a chance of
winning the round. Furthermore, there are bonuses in
chips for some, but not for all, the regular
declarations, and also for some declarations that do
not score points. 10 chips are awarded for declaring
three Kings, three tarocchi or three Pa/Ji, 20 chips for
declaring four of any of these kinds. Declarations of
rricche of Queens, Cavalli or.Jacks do not in themselves
gain any chips: but if a player declares a criccone of
three rrztcize, his side obtains 20 chips, if he declares
one of four crick/ze, they obtain 40 chips, arid, for one of
five crzrc/ze, 80 chips. A declaration of three sequences
gains 10 chips, of four sequences 20 chips, of five
sequences 40 chips and of six sequences 80 chips.
There are three kinds of declaration which score no
points, but are to be made, if the player wishes, in the
usual way, namely just before playing his card to the
first trick, and showing all the cards to the other
players. One consists of ten or more trumps; for this
purpose the Matte may be counted as a trump. Ten
trumps are awarded 10 chips, eleven trumps 20 chips,
twelve trumps 40 chips, thirteen trumps 80 chips,
fourteen trumps 160 chips and fifteen trumps 320
chips. The second consists of ten or more cartaccie, that
is, numeral cards of the plain suits; the Matto may
again be counted as a rartaccia (but the Bagattino may
not). The scores in chips are the same as for ten or
more trumps. The third kind is a declaration by a
player that he has no trumps in his hand, in which
case he must show his whole hand. For this his side is
awarded 20 chips. If the declaration is made by the
328 Part III: Italian Games and Italian Cards
dealer, however, he must put his two discarded cards
on one side, and show them at the end of the round, if
they contain a trump, his side must surrender 10 of
the 20 chips.
Finally, if one side captures the Bagattino or the
Mondo in play from the other side, it gains a bonus of
5 chips.
The scoring system is complicated, but does
not affect the game as much as one might at First
think, since, for the most part, the feats for which
the bonuses are awarded are fairly rare. It seems
clear that the accretion of this system of chips
and bonuses must have taken place gradually
after the invention o f t h e game; but this
reinforces our conclusion that the basic
structure of the game must date back to its
original invention, since it takes time for such a
superstructure to be erected. Probably, therefore,
the way in which the game is now played is closer
to how it was First played in the sixteenth century
than at any previous time, save that counting the
cards in fours was almost certainly the original
practice. The custom of counting them in twos
must reflect a period when the various two-
handed games were more popular than the four-
handed one.
Partita, as described by Pisarri as being played
in his own day, is very similar to the seventeenth-
century form, save for some modifications and
further complications of the scoring system. The
principal difference lies in the growth of an
elaborate system of signals. These have now all
become verbal signals, and in effect allow one of
the two partners to direct the play, while the
other gives him (and his opponents) information
about his hand. However, it is not permitted for
the players to say anything they like to their
partners: information or instructions must be
conveyed only by means of set conventional
formulas, and Pisarri rejects many formulas in
actual use as unlawful because excessively
informative. H e r e I shall indicate only the
principal ones; full details will be found in the
appendix.
Partita in the eighteenth century
All is as in the seventeenth-century form, save for the
exceptions here stated. Moors replace the Papa.
Deal
Instead of saying 'La lego' or 'A monte', the player to
the right of the dealer may, after the first round of the
deal, say 'Come vuoZe'. By this he indicates to his
partner that he has fairly strong cards, but not strong
enough to say 'La tango' outright. (Pisarri's
recommendations are startlingly strict: he advises the
first player to say 'La ten go' only if he has three of the
eight carte de cinque in his First Hve cards.) Pisarri
frowns somewhat on this practice, but admits it to be
widespread.
Chips
The chips are now called Partite, and there are also
large chips called Ollie, 1 Oca simply representing 10
Partite. Instead of both sides putting chips into a
central bowl, each side has a bowl into which they put
the chips they have gained.
The awards of chips remain the same, with the
following exceptions. The number of chips gained is
no longer doubled for giving marco (slam). A
declaration, during the First trick, of five sequences
gains only 30 chips, one of six sequences only 40. A
declaration of a criccone still gains 20 chips, but there is
no increase for declaring four or five critic/ze. At the end
of the round, the winning side may claim only as
many chips as the total number of counters belonging
both to them and to their opponents (to record the
points on declarations during the first trick), not twice
as many, as in the earlier form of the game.
Gamepoints
In the eighteenth-century game, there is
superimposed upon the system of chips yet a further
level of game points, in terms of which settlement is
made. A game carlita) is concluded when, after
several rounds, one side has reached 150 chips. The
game comes to an end as soon as this happens, even if
it is in the middle of a round, as a result either of the
bonus for capturing the Bagattino or the Monde, or of
the declarations during the first trick: for this
purpose, note that while the bonus for capturing a
tarorco is gained only on the completion of the trick,
that for a declaration is gained as soon as the
declaration is made. The winners of the game acquire
l game point if their opponents have gained 75 chips
or more, 2 if they have less than 75 chips, and 3 if they
have no chips at all. There are, however, additional
bonuses of game points in the course of the game. A
side that wins a round by making 500 points or more
gains a bonus of 1 game points, plus 1 additional
game point for every 100 points above 500, and a side
that gives marco (slam) to the other, i.e. wins all the
328 Part III: Italian Games and Italian Card;
dealer, however, he must put his two discarded cards
on one side, and show them at the end of the round; if
they contain a trump, his side must surrender 10 of
the 20 chips.
Finally, if one side captures the Bagattino or the
Mondo in play from the other side, it gains a bonus of
5 chips.
The scoring system is complicated, but does
not affect the game as much as one might at first
think, since, for the most part, the feats for which
the bonuses are awarded are fairly rare. It seems
clear that the accretion of this system of chips
and bonuses must have taken place gradually
after the invention of the game, but this
reinforces our conclusion that the basic
structure of the game must date back to its
original invention, since it takes time for such a
superstructure to be erected. Probably, therefore,
the way in which the game is now played is closer
to how it was first played in the sixteenth century
than at any previous time, save that counting the
cards in fours was almost certainly the original
practice. The custom of counting them in twos
must reflect a period when the various two-
handed games were more popular than the four-
handed one.
Partita, as described by Pisarri as being played
in his own day, is very similar to the seventeenth-
century form, save for some modifications and
further complications of the scoring system. The
principal difference lies in the growth of an
elaborate system of signals. These have now all
become verbal signals, and in effect allow one of
the two partners to direct the play, while the
other gives him (and his opponents) information
about his hand. However, it is not permitted for
the players to say anything they like to their
partners: information or instructions must be
conveyed only by means of set conventional
formulas, and Pisarri rejects many formulas in
actual use as unlawful because excessively
informative. Here I shall indicate only the
principal ones; full details will be found in the
appendix.
Partita in the eighteenth century
All is as in the seventeenth-century form, save for the
exceptions here stated. Moors replace the Papa.
Deal
Instead of saying 'La tango' or 'A rrzonte', the player to
the right of the dealer may, after the first round of the
deal, say 'Come vuo!e'. By this he indicates to his
partner that he has fairly strong cards, but not strong
enough to say 'La ten go' outright. (Pisarri's
recommendations are startlingly strict: he advises the
first player to say 'La tango' only if he has three of the
eight carte de cinque in his first five cards.) Pisarri
frowns somewhat on this practice, but admits it to be
widespread.
C/zip;
The chips are now called Partite, and there are also
large chips called Oc/ze, l Oca simply representing 10
Partite. Instead of both sides putting chips into a
central bowl, each side has a bowl into which they put
the chips they have gained.
The awards of chips remain the same, with the
following exceptions. The number of chips gained is
no longer doubled for giving marco (slam). A
declaration, during the first trick, of Five sequences
gains only 30 chips, one of six sequences only 40. A
declaration of a criccone still gains 20 chips, but there is
no increase for declaring four or five crick/ie. At the end
of the round, the winning side may claim only as
many chips as the total number of counters belonging
both to them and to their opponents (to record the
points on declarations during the First trick), not twice
as many, as in the earlier form of the game.
Gamepointx
In the eighteenth-century game, there is
superimposed upon the system of chips yet a further
level of game points, in terms of which settlement is
made. A game lpartila) is concluded when, after
several rounds, one side has reached 150 chips. The
game comes to an end as soon as this happens, even if
it is in the middle of a round, as a result either of the
bonus for capturing the Bagattino or the Manda, or of
the declarations during the first trick: for this
purpose, note that while the bonus for capturing a
tarorco is gained only on the completion of the trick,
that for a declaration is gained as soon as the
declaration is made. The winners of the game acquire
1 game point if their opponents have gained 75 chips
or more, 2 if they have less than 75 chips, and 3 if they
have no chips at all. There are, however, additional
bonuses of game points in the course of the game. A
side that wins a round by making 500 points or more
gains a bonus of 1 game points, plus 1 additional
game point for every 100 points above 500; and a side
that gives marco (slam) to the other, i.e. wins all the
 Taroccluno or Tarocc/zz Bolognesz
tricks in the round, obtains an additional bonus of 1
game point.
Irzstructz0ns and mformatzorz
By the eighteenth century, the custom had developed
of allowing a player to advise his partner what to play,
or to give his partner information about his own hand,
by means of a large number of partly conventional
expressions. A player could do this on either of two
occasions: either when his partner had the lead, and
before he led his card, or as he himself played a card
to a trick, whether he was leading or not. He was not,
however, permitted to give whatever instruction or
piece of information he chose: he could do so only by
means of certain set formulas, called, rather oddly,
giuorhz (games), of which he was not permitted to use
more than one at a time. This meant that, in order to
be able to play the game, one had to learn by heart all
these phrases and their significance. In practice, that
one of the two partners who had the stronger hand
would assume direction of the play, the other merely
supplying him with information about his hand. No
rule of the game required a player to follow the
instruction given to him by his partner, though for
some instructions it was considered bad play not to do
so, for others not. Equally, no rule forbade a player to
mislead his opponents by using a phrase indicating
that he had certain cards when in fact he did not,
obviously, however, such a practice was very
dangerous, and only to be undertaken when there was
no danger of seriously misleading his partner. Not
surprisingly, there was disagreement about which
expressions should be allowed, Pisarri cites a large
number which he regards as improper, as giving an
excessive amount of information, but which were in
use among some players.
I give here only the most important of the phrases
(giuoc/zz) listed by Pisarri; others will be found in the
Appendix to this chapter (pp. 335-7). First are those
which may be used when the partner is about to lead to
atrick.
Sminc/zi; also Sminclii in Pin' Bella - Lead your highest
trump. (The difference in the form of the verb from
the earlier 'Sminc/ziate' merely registers the eighteenth-
century introduction of the polite use, in addressing
another person, of the third person singular in place of
the second person plural. I
La Posro setvire d'un Picco/0 (I can help you by means
of a little one) - I have the leading trump, lead a small
one to it.
Tiff de' trionfetti (Draw small trumps). -.- Lead a
fairly low trump, but not the lowest; continue to do SO
when you next get the lead.
329
Gioc/zi (Play) - Lead the suit in which I announced
a sequence.
Gioc/zi con Zero (Play with theirs) - Lead the suit in
which the opponents announced a sequence.
Gioc/zz dz quesle (Play these) - Lead the suit just
played.
Gioc/zi Ze sue (Play your own) - Lead a King,
particularly one you showed in an announcement.
Goof/zi sempre Ze sue (Keep on playing your own) -
Lead out all your certain winners.
Gioc/zi Pur sempre (Keep on playing) - Lead that suit
in which the opponents have a card they are anxious
to save.
Li fascia andre (Make them go) - Lead a suit in
which the opponents are short, to force their trumps.
Next are the phrases that may be used when
playing a card to a trick, whether or not he is leading
to it. There is one signal given without words, namely
when a player draws back (tz'ra indietro) his card before
laying it down: this signifies that the player wishes his
partner to let the trick go, and not attempt to take it,
or, at least, not to play his highest card on it, The
principal phrases used are as follows :
Bazfto (I strike) - I have the leading card (in the suit
being played, or in trumps if trumps are being
played). (By the eighteenth century the word had
replaced the action.)
Batto indielro (I strike behind) - I have the second
highest card not yet played (in the suit being played,
or in trumps).
Song zn qualclze Zuog0 (I am somewhere) - (When the
trick is in trumps) I have one of the three trumps
after the Angelo; (when the trick is in a suit) I have the
Cavallo or the jack.
St r i c t - I have just one more card left (in the suit
being played, or in trumps if trumps are being
played).
Striccando - I have just two more cards left (in the
suit being played, or in trumps).
There are also phrases for indicating any number of
cards left up to four in a suit, or up to nine in trumps:
In rasa (At home) - (When a suit is being played)
play the highest card you have in the suit, (when
trumps are being played, and the partner has no more
trumps) throw a King or other good card on the trick,
the opponent to your right will not beat it.
Tire a me (I draw to me) - I have the Bagattino
but no other trump, keep your high trumps in order to
save it.
 330 Part III: Italian Games and Italian Cards
Co ada wlpiu' Bella (Go here with the finest) - (Said
only when the trick is in trumps) play your highest
trump.
Cz Nada 60rz quell() the ha (Go here with the one you
have) - Play your highest card in this suit.
Copra solamenle (Cover only) - Beat the opponent's
card, but with a card as low as you can.
V0/0 (I Hy) or Vado (I go) - I have the highest trump
and no other.
There were also phrases that could be used after the
first round of the deal to reveal one's holdings to one's
partner, so as to help him decide whether or not to go
a Monte; but Pisarri totally disapproves of these.
Pisarri also briefly describes eleven other
games played with the Tarocchino pack. He
unfortunately fails to state whether the cards are
always counted in fours or in sets equal to the
number of players. His silence on this point
might lead one to suppose that they were counted
in fours, however many players were taking part ;
but it is difficult to believe this for all the two-
handed games. The games are as follows.
Six-handed Paulita
The six players are divided into two Fixed
partnerships of three each, members of opposing sides
being seated alternately. Each player is dealt ten
cards in two rounds of five each, the dealer taking the
last two cards on the last round and discarding two;
presumably both partners of the dealer have the same
options in the a mole procedure as his single partner
in the four-handed game. Everything proceeds as in
four-handed Partita, with the following exceptions. In
the declarations during the first trick, a player may
declare two tarocrhz, two Kings or two Moors. His side
receives no points for such a declaration, but they gain
10 chips for each such pair. If a ricca of three tarocc/zi
or Kings, or a sequence of three Moors, is declared,
the side gains 20 chips, as well as the usual points.
Furthermore, a player may declare three pairs of any
of the kinds which form circ/ze, i.e. taroccizi, Kings,
Queens, Cavalli and jacks: no points are awarded,
but the side gains 20 chips. If, for instance, a player
declares two tarocc/zi, two Queens and two jacks, his
side gains 30 chips, 10 for the two tarocciti and 20 for
the three pairs, if he declares three tarocc/zi, two
Queens and three jacks, they gain 40 chips, 20 for the
three tarocc/zz and 20 for the three pairs, and the
normal 30 points, 18 for the ricca of tarocc/zz' and 12 for
the ricca of jacks. Sequences can be declared only
under the usual rules, but a player declaring two
sequences gains 10 chips for his side, or 20 chips for
three sequences and 40 chips for four. A player who
declares six trumps or six carlaccie gains 10 chips for
his side, or 20 chips for seven, 40 chips for eight, and
so on. The game is won by the side First obtaining 150
chips.
Pa rt itaccia
This four-handed game is a simplified version of
Partita, without chips; settlement is made at the end
of each round on the basis of the points alone. It is the
custom to change partners at the end of every four
rounds. There are three ways of scoring. According to
the simplest, the winners of any round each receive 1
game point, paid by one of the opponents, without
regard to their score. Under the second method, the
winners receive 1 game point each if they have a
point-total below 500, 2 game points if they have 500
points or more. Or, finally, they may receive l game
point each for less than 500 points, 2 if they have 500
but less than 600, 3 if they have 600 but less than 700,
and so on. Pisarri states that, while this game is
played in Bologna itself, it is particularly favored in
the countryside. It probably represents the original
sixteenth-century game.
MiZ[onz
This is exactly the modern game of Millone. The
dealer gives himself his extra two cards at the end of
the first stage of the deal, before the discard of ten
cards by each player,
A/laltacsia
The only difference between this and the modern
game of Mattazza is that it is specified to be for five,
six or more players, and that the number of cards
dealt to each depends on the number of players
(presumably twelve each to five players, ten each to
six, eight each to seven, and so on). The expression
'Dura' is used just as 'A dur' is used now.
Quarafzlfacinque
This can be played by two or by three players. Each
receives ten cards, in two rounds of five each, and each
keeps a running total of the points he makes. There is
no discard for the dealer, but there are the usual
declarations during the first trick and the usual rules
governing points. The winner is the first player to
 Tarocc/zzrzo or Tarocdzi Bolognese
reach 45 points. There are two variant forms.
In the first form, each circa or sequence is reckoned
at its exact value, and a player may claim to have
reached 45 points, by saying 'Ho pinto' ('I have won'),
at any stage during a round. If his claim is sound, he
wins the game, even if another player has more points
than he. If his claim is false, the game comes to an
end: his opponent wins, or, in the three-handed game,
that one of his opponents who has the most points. If a
player wins the game in a single round, he is paid
double by each opponent, if in more than one round,
he is paid singly by each. A player who has, in the
course of a round, attained 45 points in virtue of his
score on that round and on a previous round or
rounds, may claim victory but elect to continue the
round to the end: if he succeeds in scoring 45 points
on that round alone, he is entitled to a double
payment. However, if either of his opponents has, by
the end of the round, reached a higher total score than
the total score of that player, the game goes to that
opponent, and the player who claimed victory is paid
nothing.
In the other form, the points a player makes on
and sequences declared during the first trick are
criticize
rounded up or down to the nearest multiple of 10, an
odd multiple of 5 being rounded uP (e.g. 15 is rounded
up to 20). A player is not allowed to claim victory
until a round has been completed. The game ends
when, at the end of some round, at least one player
has made 45 points or more as a running total: when
more than one player has done so, the one with the
highest score wins. In the two-handed game, the loser
pays l game point to the winner if he has won in
several rounds, and 2 game points if he has won in a
single round. A variation is to add 1 game point for
every 10 points by which the winner has surpassed 45
points: thus if he has 66 points, and has won in several
rounds, he gets 3 game points; if he has 66 points in a
single round, he gets 4 game points. In the three-
handed game, there are again variations concerning
the award of game points. On one method, if the game
has been won in several rounds, the player with the
fewest points pays l game point to the winner, the
third player neither paying nor being paid; but, if the
game has been won in a single round, each of the
other two pays 1 game point to the winner. On
another method, each opponent pays 1 game point
when the game is won in several rounds, and 2 when it
is won in a single round, and some add the additional
game point for every 10 points above 45.
Settanla
Sett anta is another two-handed game in which each
player receives ten cards in two rounds of Hve, and
there is no discard for the dealer. It also has two
331
forms. In the First form, each ricca or sequence
declared during the first trick counts the exact
number of points at which it is valued, and the
same holds for points on cards and on circ/ze and
sequences at the end of the round. Play and scoring
are subject to the usual rules, and the winner is the
first to reach a running total of 70 points, which he
may claim in the middle of a round, under the same
procedure as in Quarantacinque.
The second variant is more interesting. Points on
crzrc/ze and sequences declared during the first trick
are rounded up or down to the nearest multiple of
10, an odd multiple of 5 being rounded uP (kg. 15 is
rounded up to 20). The same happens to the points
for cards and for crick/ze and sequences at the end of
each round. At any stage of play, either player may
propose to the other that the score for the last trick be
doubled, to make 12 points. The opponent may do
one of three things. He may refuse the proposal; in
this case, the player who proposed the increase
receives the usual 6 points for the last trick, whether he
in fact wins or loses it. Or the opponent may accept
the proposed increase, in this case whoever wins the
last trick obtains 12 points. Or, finally, the opponent
may propose a further increase to 18 points. In this
last case, the First player has, in his turn, the same
threefold option. He may refuse, in which case the
second player will score 12 points for the last trick,
whether he in fact wins or loses it. He may accept, in
which case the winner of the last trick will score 18
points. Gr he may propose a further increase to 24
points. This process is continued indefinitely until one
player either accepts or refuses. Once any such
proposal has been refused, no further proposals of the
kind may be made in the course of the round, but, as
long as they are accepted, several such proposals may
be made at different times in a round. The game ends
at the end of that round in which a player first reaches
70 points, and the player who then has the higher
score is the winner.
Lecchznz
Yet another two-handed game, each player being
dealt ten cards in two rounds of five each, with no
extra cards for the dealer. The remainder of the pack
is placed face down in the centre of the table. After
each trick, the winner of the trick draws the top card
of the stock, shows it to his opponent, and adds it to
his hand; the other player then draws the next card,
shows it to the first player, and adds it to his hand.
When the stock is exhausted, the hands are played
out. In this way, all sixty-two cards will, at the end of
the round, have been captured by one or other player.
Before playing to the first trick, each player declares
any crick/ie or sequences that he has in the usual way. If,
332 Part III: Italian Games and Italian Cards
in the course of the round, a player draws a card that
can be added to any of the crick/ze or sequences he
declared in the first trick, he may redeclare them,
augmented by the new card, and score again for them,
even though he no longer has some of the cards that
originally went to make them up. He may do this as
often as he draws such a card; moreover, if he originally
had three or more cries/ze, and draws a card that
augments one of them, he may redeclare all the cricclie,
and similarly with sequences. He may not, however,
add to a sequence any card that he did not originally
declare, other than that he has .just drawn (et. if he
originally declared a grande, and draws the Stella (16),
he may not add in the Saetta (15) that he already had in
his hand). In no case may a player declare a new Wicca
or sequence that he did not declare during the first
trick. Some, however, allowed that, whenever a player
made a redeclaration, he could redeclare of! the cricclze
and sequences that he originally declared, even though
the card he had drawn augmented only one of them.
Furthermore, every time that a player has ten trumps
in his hand, he may declare them, and scores 100
points for doing so: he does not need, in this case, to
have declared ten trumps during the first trick. At the
end of the round, there will be large point-totals.
There are two methods of scoring, resembling the
older and the later forms of Partita. Under the First
method, a settlement is made after each round of play.
The winner's point-total, for declarations made
during the course of play and for points on cards,
rrzrclze and sequences at the end of play, is rounded
down to the next highest multiple of 25, he then
receives, in chips, the result of dividing that Figure by
25, and, in addition, 20 chips if he scored at least 500
points plus 10 additional chips for every 100 points
above 500. Settlement is then on the basis of the chips
so acquired. Under the second method, a game may
take more than one round. Chips are awarded in
accordance with the same principle as on the first
method, and the first player to obtain 150 chips wins
the game. If his opponent has obtained 75 chips or
more, the winner obtains 1 game point; if he has fewer
than 75 chips, he receives 2 game points. If a player
wins any round with 500 points or more, he also gains
1 game point, plus one for each 100 points above 500,
even though he has not yet reached game.
Topper
Toppa is yet another two-handed game, but this time
each player is dealt five cards only. Play and
allocation of points are as usual, and the player who,
in any round, has the higher point-total receives 1
game point. Whenever, during the course of play, a
player captures from his opponent a King, the
Mondo, a Moor or the Bagattino, he may say
'Toppa', and then receives 1 game point. If he forgets
to say 'Toppa', he cannot claim the game point, some
allow that, in this case, his opponent may say 'Toppa'
instead, and claim 1 game point. If one player gives a
marco to the other, that is, wins every trick, and his
opponent had the Matto, the Matto must, as usual,
be surrendered to the winner at the end of the round :
the winner may then say 'Topper', and score an extra
game point for doing so.
Cerzlinz
This is like the modern game of Centino, but differs
from it in that the full 62-card pack is used instead of
the shortened 42-card one. It differs also in having a
four-handed as well as a two-handed form. In both
forms, each player receives only Five cards: the four-
handed form is played with fixed partnerships,
partners facing each other. The winning player or side
is the one first reaching a running total of 100 points ;
if the other player or side has not reached 50 points,
the loser or losers pay double.
Cinquina
This is another two-handed game in which each
player is dealt five cards. Settlement is made after
each round, on the basis of the number of points made
by the winner, the loser's point-total makes no
difference. The score was recorded in the same way as
in seventeenth-century Partita, that is, by the
winner's placing chips for his winnings into a single
bowl on the table, but the chips simply represented
the points.
Calirzz
This is one of the few Tarot games that is not a trick-
taking game, but, rather, what was earlier called a
"fishing" game. It may be played by two or by three.
The dealer gives three cards to each player, and
places the next six cards face up, and separately, upon
the table. Each player, in turn, plays a card from his
hand to capture one of the exposed cards, putting the
two cards face down beside him like cards won in
tricks; if he cannot capture any card, he must put
whichever of his cards he chooses face up on the table
with the rest of the pool. It is stated that a card is
captured by a 'higher' card, but unfortunately this
term is not defined; the case in which a player cannot
capture any card, and has therefore to play a card to
the table, is vaguely expressed by saying that he has
only cards 'lower' than those on the table. Probably
we should interpret the term 'higher' as meaning that
 Tarocdzino or Tarocc/zz Bolognese
a card can capture another card if it would beat the
other card if the latter had been led to a trick in the
usual type of game: that would mean that a trump
can be captured only by a higher trump, a Moor by
another Moor or by a higher trump, a suit card either
by a higher card of the same suit or by a trump, and
the l\latto by nothing, although not itself capturing
anything; there is unlikely to be any restriction on a
player's capturing a suit card with a trump even
though he has another card of that suit in his hand.
When each player has played three times, and so has
no more cards in his hand, the dealer gives out three
more cards to each player, and play proceeds as
before, each time that the players have no more cards
left, the dealer again deals three to each. This is said
to continue until the pack is exhausted; the cards
remaining on the table at the end of play belong to the
player who last captured a card. It is not explained
what happens to the last two cards in the pack; since
the game may be played by three people, they are
probably dealt to the table after the last distribution
of cards, but it may be that they are set aside and go
to nobody. There is no score for last trick, but, at the
end of play, each player reckons the points on his
cards and on wztc/ze and sequences that can be made
with them, and the player with the highest number of
points wins.
Partita continued to be played well into the
nineteenth century. In 1841 Dr Tommaso
Verardini published anonymously in Bologna an
account of the game as then played, entitled I!
Tarocco ossa Giuoco della Partita, a second edition
appeared in 1872. Verardini obviously knew
Pisarri's book, since he occasionally repeats a
phrase from it; but his book is far from being
(like so many card-game books) a piece of
plagiarism, and he evidently knew the game well.
It had hardly changed in the course of a century.
Partita in the nineteen!iz century
All is as in the eighteenth-century form, with the
following exceptions. There is no longer any doubt
about the legality of the utterance 'Come vuole' by the
player to the dealer's right during the process, after
the first round of the deal, of deciding whether to go a
Monte. If a player declares five sequences during the
Host trick, his side is awarded 40 chips instead of 30, if
he declares six sequences, they are awarded 80 chips
instead of 40: this is a reversion to the seventeenth-
century practice. Similarly, if a player declares four
rrirc/ze during the first trick, his side is awarded 40
chips, if give rrzrc/ze, 80 chips; this is also a reversion to
the seventeentl century rule. If in any round one side
333
gives a mario to their opponents; i.e. wins all the tricks ,
then their score for cards and for last trick is doubled.
Since the points on cards (including last trick)
amount to 77, and there are 846 points for all possible
frzrche and sequences, this means that they make
exactly 1,000 points, plus any they may have made for
declarations during the First trick. The bonuses in
chips for winning with 500 points or more are the
same, in addition, if the winning side has 300 points
but less than 400, they gain a bonus of 12 chips (plus
the 12 or more for their point scores, and, if they have
400 points but less than 500, they gain a bonus of 16
chips.
The phrases lgiuor/ii) used to give instruction or
information have changed somewhat, and have
become even more numerous. I give here only the
principal ones, the rest will be found in the Appendix
to this chapter (pp. 335-7). Among the directives that
may be given to one's partner when he is about to lead
are 1
SmzM/zi or IZ bello .- As before.
Tiff un trionjetto - Like Tiff de' triorzfeiiz before.
Tziz un triorzfo - Lead your second highest trump .
Giuoclzz Alla Zunga - Lead your longest suit,
Giuoclzi Alla cora .- Lead your shortest suit.
Giuoc/zi Ze sue - As before.
The following are used when one's partner is about to
lead for the purpose of giving him information only:
Buorze - I have three or four Kings.
Qualm/ze to/Za -I have two Kings.
Urza bona ~I have only one King.
Captive - I have no Kings.
La servo - I have two high trumps.
I.a 100550 service - I have the leading trump and one
other high one.
Unzramenie or Per /2060 or Perl/zé Zo sappier or Non said
capote or Prenderzi Una Volta .- I have the Angelo but very
few other trumps.
Per zmfiic/zetto or Per un Piccolo - I have the Angelo.
Per un trionfo ... I have the IWorzdo.
The following are among the phrases used when
playing a card $10 a trick to give information to one's
partner:
Batik - (Said only
. when the trick is in trumps) I
have the leading trump.
334 Part III: Italian Games and Italian Cards
Quz bat!/1 - (Said when the trick is in a plain suit) I
have the leading card of this suit.
Strztcando - As before.
Indigo - (Said only when the trick is in trumps) I
have the second highest trump not yet played.
Vols - As before.
Sons in quiche logo - As before, but said only when
the trick is in trumps.
Strict in niente - (Said only when trumps are
played) I have a small trump and the Matto.
In niente - (Said only when trumps are played) I
have the Mateo but no more trumps.
The principal phrases used when playing a card to
give a directive to one's partner are the following :
Vada giuocando - When you get the lead, lead a plain
suit not yet played.
Giuoc/zi nuovz - Lead that one suit that has not yet
been played.
Giuoc/zz' je we -- Lead the King of the sequence you
announced.
Ha vedulo Ze mia - Lead the suit of the sequence I
announced.
Torii lf- Lead the suit of the preceding trick.
Tornz ld - Lead the suit of the last trick but one.
C1iuoc/zz Pure - Keep leading that suit in which the
opponents wish to save a card.
Li faccia andre - Lead a suit in which the opponents
are void.
In casa - As before,
Facda a me Do not play your highest card to this
trick,
VI men if Bella - Play your highest trump to this
trick,
Copra append - Like Cc/pra 50lamente before.
Verardini also allows that, when both the opponents
of the dealer have said A Monte, the dealer's partner
may give him information by means of one of the
following phrases :
Sons aattzve or Cinque carlawie - I have nothing at all.
Varna azfanlz or Le dada bent - I have almost nothing.
Si regal? dale we -I have some moderate cards.
.
Due, no dei quasi Miata - I have two trumps, one of
them higher than the 15. (Each of the 11l0nd0, Sole,
Luna and 16 or Stella was called a trzonf0 6lze iota; a
low trump was called a.ttzr/zetto.)
Un trionfetto e eattivo or Una carteltina con un trzbnfetto
If ave a King and a low trump.
Una goccia -I have the Matto.
Una gocctetta -I have the A/Iondo and no other trump.
Una piccolo goccia -I have the Bagattino.
Una regola - I have two carte do cirque, or the Angelo
and another high trump .
Una regotina - I have two Kings and a low trump.
Due trianfetti - I have two low trumps.
Verardini also lists certain phrases which, though in
use amongst some, he regards as unlawful.
Partita probably died out around the turn of the
century, having become excessively complicated,
even by the standards of the Bolognese form of
Tarocchi. But, in the form of Ottocento and the
other games, Tarocchi continues to be played in
Bologna with great enthusiasm, and Bologna is
one of the places where Tarot is still vigorously
alive. The particular form of the game which that
city has contributed is surely one of the most
skilled and subtle of all.
At the beginning of this chapter, we discussed
the problematic date of origin of the Bolognese
game under the assumption that the use of a
shortened pack was one of its essential features.
But reflection on the rules of the game shows that
this is not necessarily so. If the game were to be
played with a full 78-card pack, it would be
possible to make the rules governing sequences in
suits more closely analogous to that governing a
grande. Without contatori, a sequence in Swords or
Batons would then consist of the King, at least
two of the next three court cards, and then any
cards in unbroken sequence 10, 9, 8, down to
Ace; and a sequence in Cups or Coins of the
King, at least two of the next three court cards,
and then any cards in unbroken sequence Ace, 2,
3, down to 10. If there had been such a game,
perhaps the first effect of shortening the pack
would have been to prevent a sequence in Cups
or Coins from continuing beyond the Ace, later,
the same requirements for a sequence might have
been transferred to the suits of Swords and
Batons. If t hi s were in fact the historical
development, then the shortening of the pack
must actually have brought about a
simplification of the game. I am not definitely
 Tarocclzino or Tarocnhi Bolognexi
advancing this hypothesis: the sixteenth-century
origins of the game are hidden from us; but it is a
possibility that cannot be dismissed out of hand.
Appendix: Other Giuoc/zz
Among phrases to be used when one's partner is
about to lead to a trick, Pisarri cites the following as
not often used or of dubious legality :
Vadi gioearzdo or Mina, rninei - Lead a suit that has
not yet been played.
Cioelzi dz Luelle (Play those) - Lead, not the suit that
has just been played, but the one played a little
earlier.
Gioc/zi sempre dell blame (Keep on playing good ones)
.- Lead court cards; I have the Kings.
Gioehi sempre delly calli/e (Keep on playing bad ones)
.- I do not have a single King; lead numeral cards.
He gives the following as used by some, but as to be
absolutely prohibited:
La box so service Per dei biecoli (I can help you by means
of little ones) .- I have the two leading trumps.
Vadi giocando Ze sue (Go ahead with playing your
own) - Lead the lowest card of a suit sequence you
have announced.
Mi fascia andre (Make me go) - Lead the suit in
which I am void and can trump .
Among phrases to be used when playing a card to the
table, Pisarri cites also the following :
Me ne restano (Some remain to me) - I have three
more cards of the suit being played, or (when trumps
are being played) three more trumps.
Pa rtirina - (When the trick is in trumps) I have four
more trumps.
Parte gusta - (When the trick is in trumps) I have
five more trumps.
Pia' della Parte - (When the trick is in trumps) I have
six more trumps.
Condo (I break) - (When the trick is in a plain suit)
I have four more cards of this suit, (when the trick is
in trumps) I have seven more trumps.
Quanta se Ne Put avers (How many more of these can
be had) - (When the trick is in trumps) I have eight
more trumps.
Ne giachi sempre do quesle (Keep on playing these) -
Lead this suit when you get the lead.
Qui bzztto via (Here I am throwing away) - I have no
high card in this suit.
Faccia a me (Do to me) or A me (To me) - Do not play
your highest card, or keep back your high trumps; I
have a card we need to save,
He lists the following phrases as unlawful:
335
Batto forte (I strike hard) .- I have the two highest
cards of the suit, or (when trumps are being played)
the two highest trumps.
Bottofortissimo (I strike very hard) -I have the three
highest cards of this suit, or (when trumps are played)
the three highest trumps.
Indietro forte (Hard back) - I have the two cards
immediately below the highest in this suit, or in
trumps.
Irzdietrofortissimo (Very hard back) - I have the three
cards immediately below the highest in this suit, or in
trumps.
Strioco in niente - (When trumps are played) I have
one small trump left.
Pisarri adds a number of phrases which, he says, are
much in use during the process of deciding whether to
go a Monte, to inform one's partner what one has in the
First give cards dealt. He objects to the practice, and
even more to that of actually showing one's partner
one's five cards. The phrases are :
Ho la regola (I have the rule) - I have three good
trumps, or two good trumps and a King, the
Bagattino or the Matto..
Ho Za regolirza (I have the little rule) -I have one carts
do cinque (King or larocco) and two small trumps. .
Ho Zi bugiardi (I have the liars) -I have four trumps.
Ho l'Ar!Ia - I have two Kings.
Ho due romiti (I have two hermits) -I have the Kings
of Cups and of Coins. (These two Kings are shown as
having beards, and so are called 'hermits'.)
Ho due Pellegrinz (I have two pilgrims) -- I have the
Kings of Swords and Batons. (These two Kings are
shown as clean-shaven.)
Ho un romito -I have the King of Cups or of Coins.
Ho un pellegrino - I have the King of Swords or of
Batons.
Ho [re triorzfettz - I have three low trumps.
Ho Una goccia (I have a drop) - I have one carts do
czrzqw.
Ho un lrz/info the rzuta con un Piccolo -.. I have one of the
high trumps and one low OTl€.
Ho due Zrionfi 6072 Una stanella - I have two trumps and
a Queen.
Verardini cites also the following directives to a
partner about to lead :
Se é in so casa butlarne - I have good trumps but no
Kings, if you have Kings, lead low trumps.
Sarebbe of min raw - I have Kings but poor trumps,
lead a. plain suit.
Se fossero belli .- If you have the al/ffmdo or two high
trumps, lead your highest trump,
Se fosrero Molli - If you have at least seven trumps,
lead your highest.
Se non se Ne serve - If you do not have a King or any
other good lead, lead your highest trump.
336 Part III: Italian Games and Italian Cards
Se Ne lza delly sue - If you have any Kings, lead one.
He further cites the following two informative phrases
to be used when your partner is about to lead:
Non mi Conti -I have poor trumps and no Kings.
I! buttarfze non mi do faM/lzo - I have at least six
trumps.
There are many phrases to be used when playing a
card. The following are informative :
Ana/ze Una Burma -. (When a suit is played) l have a
court card, but not the leading one.
Arzr/ze Una buonina -l have the Ace of the suit.
Una fattiva -I have just one low card of this suit.
Restano - l have three more cards of this suit, or
three more trumps.
Disf0 /a Mano - I have four more cards of the suit, or
four more trumps.
Arzc/ze Za Mano - I have five more cards of the suit, or
Hve more trumps.
Pin' della Mano - (When a suit is played) I have six
more cards of this suit.
Rata la Parte - (When trumps are played) I have six
more trumps.
Pia della Parte -I have seven more trumps.
II/Iolti - I have eight more trumps.
Condo -I have nine trumps.
Qui to/wa - I have the trump immediately above the
one I am playing.
Q_uz dz solo - I have the trump immediately below
the one I am playing.
Uno - I have just one more trump, not the leading
one.
Quasz' vol -- I have the leading trump and one or two
low ones.
Song in un bueo - I have the Luna.
Sons in un Pickle bea .- I have the 16.
The following further directives may be given to one's
partner while one plays a card :
Se ne lea delly sue - When you get the lead, lead a
King if you have one.
Seguiti - Win the trick if you can and lead the same
suit.
Questo e zl sue giuoeo - Lead this suit whenever you
get the lead.
Qui anno .- Lead a low card in this suit to force the
opponents' trumps.
Da Prinrz/9zo - Lead that suit, other than trumps,
which was the first to be played.
Vi melt duello the lza - Play your highest card of this
suit.
Qui busto via - As before.
Per me non Mia - I have the Matto.
Sarebbe al min ease - Play out your trumps as soon as
possible, because all my cards are winners.
Vi' Perzsa lei or Si faeela de/ bene -- I am unable to make
a break in the opponents' grande, I leave this to you.
Tutto é buorw - Do not play your Matto, but capture
this trump, if you are able to.
Sforgi - Cover the opponent's high trump with a
higher one.
Non u? rzmedz0 - I have to play this card, but do not
want to lose it, save it if you can.
N072 salvo Mai nienle - Throw a King on this trick if
you can,
Verso Di me - Play the cards you are afraid of losing.
Se nefaccia - Lead Kings and other certain winners.
Prerzderfi - If you can, win each trick to which the
opponents play high.
Larcifare co quests - Play low.
Bads qui - Keep back the King and court cards of
this suit.
Qui up bad Io -I have good cards in this suit.
So one reeve barre -- Keep back your court cards in
the suit sequence announced by the opponents.
1Maz pat§aZe - If you have the King of any suit, play it
the first time that suit is played.
Quella bona - Play the good card you have told me
that you have.
Quelltma - Lead the single card of a suit you have
told me that you have.
Quells cattiva - Lead the low card of a suit which you
have told me that you have.
Quella bonzrza - Lead the Ace you have told me you
have.
Non se Ne Pin' giuocato - Lead that suit that has been
played only once.
Se 8 mia non X 'zrzcomodi or Terzghi coperto - (Said when
leading a high trump) If the opponent does not beat
this card, do not beat it either.
La copra - Win the trick.
Quello the 52a bent or Quando non v'é irzteresse - (Said
when leading a high trump) Win the trick if the
opponent plays one of the four trumps below the
Anelo, or throws any good card, otherwise not.
iernpo di Par ire - Play the Monde or other high card
of the grande as soon as you safely can.
So dove iza do venire - As soon as that suit is led in
which I have the leading card, throw a card you are
afraid of losing.
Quello the mm fa per lei - Lead the card you least
mind losing.
Finally, Verardini lists a number of phrases he
considers unlawful as follows :
3
La .00.950 5<270zre Per del Pzbcolz -- As before.
Va giuocando /e .sue - As before.
Mzfaccza andre - As before.
(litchi sombre bone - I have all four Kings; lead
court cards.
Balto forte -- I have the three leading trumps. (The
meaning has changed from 'two' to 'three' since
Pisarri's time.)
Battofortzsszmo -I have the four leading trumps.
Batto Zndietro -I have the two leading trumps.
 Tarocclzino or Tarocc/zz Bolognese
Irzdielro forte - I have the second and third highest
trumps.
La Bugia - I have four small trumps. (This and the
following phrases were probably used to guide the
dealer in deciding whether to go a Monte.)
Ho Z'Ar!za - I have the 16.
Ho un romito - As before.
Ho un Pellegrirzo .- As before.
Tre 17z0019 - I have three good trumps.
Per dei trionji - I have two or three of the four cards
below the Angelo.
Per deifliehetti -I have several low trumps.
Un flichetlo ed Una sotlanella - I have a low trump and
a Queen.
Qua ttro/ize/zetti - I have four low trumps.
Una goecia can un trionfo or Una eartellina eon un trionfo- I
have a King and one of the trumps above the 15.
Ne ho dz quests robe - I have a large number of small
trumps. (This was presumably used in play.)
I-~
337
Due the rutarzo - I have two trumps higher than the
15.
It is surprising that, when so large a number of these
phrases had come to be permitted, restraint was
not cast aside altogether, and partners allowed to give
each other what information or instructions they
pleased; but there was evidently always a distinction
felt between what was and what was not permissible.
An oddity not worthy of mention in the main text is
the practice, reprobated by Verardini, of announcing
a sequence of Moors out of turn, even before the
dealer had discarded, as he remarks, this could on
occasion affect the discard. Even in this the
conservatism of Bolognese players is manifest; for
Pisarri also mentions the practice, though only in his
catalogue of penalties for revokes, misdeals, etc., he
thought it should be allowed when three Moors, but
not when four, were announced.
 CHAPTER 17
Minchiate
The game of Minchiate is played with a very
special kind of pack. Unlike other distinctive
forms of Tarot pack, such as the Bolognese and
Sicilian ones, used for special versions of the
game, it did not evolve gradually out of the
standard 78-card pack in the same way that the
variant games evolved from the main stem: it was
quite deliberately invented in order to play a new
type of game. The Minchiate pack differs from all
other forms of Tarot pack in having forty trump
cards. With the Matto and the usual fifty-six suit
cards, this makes a very large pack of ninety-
seven cards, not, however, the largest pack ever
used for Tarot games, for, as we saw, one
containing as many as 103 cards was at one time
used in Munich.
The Minchiate pack was invented in Florence.
There is no evidence of its having existed in the
Fifteenth century: the earliest reference to it
known to me is in the dialogue by Pietro Aretino
(1492-1556) called Le Carte Parlanti, first
published in 1543 and sometimes referred to as
Part 3 of his Ragiofzamenti, of which the first two
parts are highly pornographic. The invention of
the pack should therefore be dated to the first
half of the sixteenth century. Since in Aretino's
dialogue, which is between a cardmaker and his
cards, Minchiate cards figure as something quite
well known, we can safely assume them to have
been invented by the 1530s, but in all probability
not before that decade. The number of trumps is
increased to 40 by the addition of twenty new
subjects: the missing cardinal virtue, Prudence,
the three theological virtues, Faith, Hope and
Charity, the four elements, Fire, Air, Earth and
Water, and the twelve signs of the Zodiac. Since
the ordinary Tarocco pack contains 21 trumps, it
would appear necessary to add only 19 new ones
to obtain the desired number of 40: but, while all
the other standard subjects of the Tarocco
trumps are retained, there are three cards,
numbered IV, III and II, occupying the place in
the sequence usually occupied by the four Papal
and Imperial ones (Pope, Popess, Emperor and
Empress), namely immediately above the
Bagatto. The IV, III and II of the Minchiate
pack are often described, respectively, as being
the Eastern Emperor, the Western Emperor and
the Grand Duke. At any rate the Pope and his
spurious consort have disappeared. This is no
doubt a tiny indication of the altered spirit of the
age. In 1534 Alessandro Farnese assumed the
Papal tiara as Paul III, the first of the Counter-
Reformation Popes and the convener in 1545 of
the Council of Trent. What passed without
offence in the ribald era of the Renaissance was
no longer so readily acceptable. From the Leber
Collection pack, from Aretino 's dialogue and from
many poems we know that the Pope and Popess
continued to figure in the 78-card Tarocco pack,
their omission from the Minchiate pack, however,
was the first instance of a piece of tact or caution
that was often repeated elsewhere, and it is
probable that by the late seventeenth century they
had ceased to adorn playing cards anywhere save
in France, the French-speaking cantons of
Switzerland and, of course, Bologna. Perhaps it
was more a matter of proximity to Rome, for in
Rome itself and throughout the Papal States
(except in Bologna) it was Minchiate that,
among the games of the Tarot family, became pre-
eminently popular.
 Mine/zzaZe
It is, indeed, true that the first five trumps,
from I to V, of the Minchiate pack were
collectively known as Papa (Popes), despite the
absence of the Pope from the trump subjects, the
I representing the Bagatto and the V Amore
(Love). Their being known as Pa/Ji is not easily
explained. It recalls the use of the same term for
the Papal and Imperial cards of the Tarocchino
pack before 17258 possibly the term was in more
general use and was inappropriately transferred
to the Minchiate trumps. In any case, it does not
seem to have been adopted until the seventeenth
century: it is not used by Aretino, nor by the
anonymous author of a larocchi appropriate poem,
I Gerrrzini supra Quaranta Meritrzlae della Cited do
Fiorerzga, published in Florence, 1553, in which
each of the forty trump cards is associated with a
named Florentine courtesan. Nor did the pack,
or the game, originally bear the name Minrhiate,
but, rather, that of Germifzz, as in the title of the
poem and in Aretino's dialogue. Gemini is
obviously a corruption of Gemini (the Twins),
which represents the subject of trump XXXV in
the Minchiate pack, the highest of those showing
signs of the Zodiac. The name /\/lira/ziate
doubtless has a connection with the verb
srnirzclziare as used by Tarocchino players to mean
'to play a high trump':1 it had been introduced as
a name of the game by the end of the sixteenth
century, for, in the form Merzc/ziatte, both it and
the older name G e m i n i appear in _Cohn Florio's
Italian/English dictionary, A W o r l d e of Word's,
published in London in 1598. When used as the
name of the game, the word A/Iirzclziate is treated
!
as a plural feminine noun; but in some parts of
I
4
Italy, it had, as a verb in the second person
plural, an obscene meaning, as it still does today,
though it cannot have had such a meaning in
Florence or Rome (at least before the twentieth
century), in view of the many books in whose title
it figured. Among regions of Italy where the word
did have an obscene connotation were Sicily and
Liguria; hence in Sicily the game was known
instead as Galleritiz and in Liguria as Ganellini. I do
not know the etymology of these names, in one
source the trump I is on one occasion spoken of
as in Gan ellirzo?
The customary identification of the trump
1 The verb was also occasionally used in this sense by
Minchiate players; see Regale Generals del Giuoea delly
Mine/ziale, Florence, 1781 (and later editions), oh. XIII, p.
28.
2 It Gioeo dell MinelNate: Capitolo, Leghorn, 1752, p. 14.
339
subjects in the Minchiate pack is due to Romain
Merlin in his Origins des caries djouer (Paris, 1869).
In the Minchiate pack, all but the top five trump
cards bear Roman numerals, from I to XXXV;
and the necessity for so late a writer to identify
the subjects arises from the fact that neither in
any description of the game that we have nor in
literary references is it usual to allude to any but
a very few of the numbered trumps save by their
numbers. Most of the identifications are quite
obvious, and could not be quarrelled with;
though I know no literary authority for it, this is
true of Merlin's identification of the IV as the
Eastern Emperor and the III as the Western
Emperor. It is not true, however, of his
designation of the II as the Grand Duke. The
Republic of Florence was converted into the
Grand Duchy of Tuscany only in 1569, whereas,
as we have seen, the Minchiate pack was
certainly in existence by 1543. The II of the
Minchiate trumps shows a crowned, seated and,
as was remarked by Sylvia Mann, rather
effeminate figure holding an orb and sceptre.
Antonio Malatesti, in his poem about the
Minchiate pack published in 1683, says ofit that
it is a Pope by name and a King in appearance;
obviously there was not then any traditional
identification of it. The second stanza of IGermini
sour Quaranta Meritrice is devoted to la Lucia, and
begins 'De' Gefmzni m'han fatla la Regina' ('They
have made me the Queen of the Germini'). There
seems no definite intention underlying the design
of the card, or, if there was, it was soon lost. The
figure is royal, but its sex is indeterminate; it is a
King or a Queen, but we may more conveniently
refer to it as the Grand Duke, as long as we
remember that it cannot really be that. All that it
essentially is is the trump II, the Papa due.
The top five unnumbered trumps are called
collectively Arie, and are the familiar top five
trumps of the ordinary Tarocco pack, in
ascending order they are th e Stella (Star), Luna
(Moon), Sole (Sun), Monde (World) and Trornbe
(Trumpets). The Trorrzbe is the Angelo of other
packs, and shows an angel blowing a double
trumpet and hovering over a city; it usually bears
the inscription 'FAMA VOLA', as sometimes
does the Chariot (no. X) also. The twenty cards
foreign to the normal Tarocco pack are inserted
en bloc below the top five cards and above the
Fifteen cards bearing more familiar subjects: first
the four additional virtues, numbered XVI to
XIX, then the four elements, numbered XX to
340 Part III: Italian Game; and Italian Cards
XXIII, and finally the twelve signs of the Zodiac,
numbered XXIV to XXXV. Fire (XX) is
represented by a leopard standing in front of a
blazing Hame, Water (XXI) by a sailing ship
upon the sea, Earth (XXII) by a scene with a
bridge over a stream, a tree in the middle
distance and buildings in the background, and
Air (XXIII) by an expanse of sky with clouds,
birds and stars, and, on the ground beneath,
some sort of beast. The cards from the XXXIII
(Leo) up to the Trombe inclusive all have red
backgrounds, and are known collectively as Rossi.
Trump I is obviously the Bagatto of other packs,
but is never so called, being known simply as
Z'Uno, I! Papa no or, occasionally, it Papzho.
Trumps II to IV consist, as already noted, of the
'Grand Duke', the Western Emperor and the
Eastern Emperor. Trumps V to XV comprise the
remaining standard subjects of the Tarocco
trumps; few require special notice. The Chariot
(X) sometimes bears the inscription 'VIVA
VIVA'. The Gabba or Hunchback (XI), who
appears in the Tarot de Marseille as the Hermit,
here figures more recognisably in his original role
of Time, and is sometimes referred to as it Tempo :
the card shows an aged man on crutches, with a
stag seated on the ground behind him and, above
his head, an hour-glass transfixed by an arrow.
The Hanged Man (XII shows the usual Figure
suspended by one foot, who is, however, readily
identifiable as Judas from the money-bags he
clutches in each hand. Th e X V , which
corresponds to the Tower of other packs (Za
Maison Dieu in the Tarot de Marseille), is called
Za Casa de! Diavolo (the House of the Devil), and
this accords with its design: from the door of the
usual tower, which is being struck by lightning
and from which masonry is falling, emerges the
Devil to lay hold of a naked woman by the hair
and pull her back into Hell.
In the following detailed list of the I\Iinehiate
trumps, Italian names (other than Bagatto) are
given only when they are actually known from
some source as applied to la/Iinchiate cards.
I .- Papa no (Bagatto)
II - Papa due (the 'Grand Duke'l
III - Papa ire (the Western Emperor)
IV - Papa quattro (the Eastern Emperor)
V _ Papa cinque (Love)
VI Temperance
VII -For titude
VIII -Justice
IX - Wheel of For tune
X - Chariot
XI -. it Gabbi the Hunchback) or it Tempo
(Time)
XII - Z 'In/Jicralo (the Hanged Man)
XIII - Death
XIV - in Diavolo or it Demonian (the Devil)
XV - /a Casa del Diavolo (the House of the
Devil)
XVI - Hope
XVII .- Prudence
XVIII - Faith
XIX - Charity
XX - Fire
XXI - Water
XXII - Earth
XXIII - Air
XXIV - Libra (the Scales)
XXV - Virgo (the Virgin)
XXVI .- Scorpio (the Scorpion)
XXVII .- Aries (the Ram)
XXVIII -- Capricornus (Capricorn or the Goat)
XXIX - Sagittarius (the Archer), also called
Chiron
XXX -- Cancer (the Crab)
XXXI - Pisces (the Fishes)
XXXH - Aquarius (the Water-Carrier)
XXXHI - Leo (the Lion)
XXXH7 - Taurus (the Bull)
XXXV - Cernini (the Twins)
(XXXVI ) .- Za Stella (the Star)
(XXXVH ) - Za Luna (the l\Ioon)
(XXXVH1) - it Sole (the Sun)
(XXXDQ .- it Alonzo (the World)
(XL) -- je Trombe (the Trumpets)
Although the top five cards, the Arie, are
unnumbered, they are sometimes referred to by
number both in literary references and in
descriptions of the game.
There are also certain peculiarities in the
design of the suit cards of the Minchiate pack.
The Swords are straight, and, in the suits of Cups
and Coins, though not in those of Swords and
Batons, the lowest court card is female and is
called Fantirza or Fantiglia. Since the Batons are of
the usual smooth Italian type and the Aces have
no dragons on them, it would be somewhat
misleading to say that the Minchiate pack
employed the Portuguese version of the Latin
suit-system, as we have seen, the Portuguese
system resulted from the adoption of what were
originally permissible variations within the
Italian one. But by the sixteenth century, the use
of straight Swords had become very rare in Italy,
and we may therefore regard the Minchiate pack
 A/Iinn/ziate
as exemplifying a hybrid Italo-Portuguese form.
The Kings are all seated, and those of Swords
and Batons wear short tunics, while those of
Cups and Coins wear long robes; the Queens of
Swords and Batons are seated, while those of
Cups and Coins are standing. But the most
remarkable feature is the representation of those
court cards which continue to be called Cavalla.
In Swords and Batons the usual mounted knights
have become centaurs; in Cups and Coins they
have lost even this much of an equestrian
character, and are half-human monsters, in Cups
half-dragon, in Coins half-lion. The centaurs at
least have some precedent. The sheets in the
Rosenwald Collection (no. (22) of Chapter 4)
show what is unquestionably a Tarocco pack,
but one that has many Minchiate characteristics.
The designs of the Gabba and the Hanged Man
resemble those of the Minchiate pack: though the
Gobbo lacks the stag and the hour-glass, he is on
crutches in a very similar posture, and the
Hanged Man grasps the same money-bags.
Although the Swords are curved, the Kings of
Swords and Batons wear short tunics, and those
of Cups and Coins long robes, exactly like their
Minchiate counterparts; and, as in the
Minchiate pack, in Swords and Batons the lowest
court cards are male, in Cups and Coins female.
All four Cavalla in the Rosenwald pack are
centaurs. Very probably the Rosenwald pack
represents the standard Florentine pattern for
the Tarocco pack, from which many features
were borrowed when the Minchiate pack was
First devised.
What was probably the original standard
pattern for the l\1inchiate pack lasted until the
1890s, with hardly any change, several
seventeenth-century examples survive. A second
pattern was introduced in the middle of the
eighteenth century; it did not achieve the
same popularity as its older rival, but survived
it by a few decades. There is no sign
that the game suffered the same decline in
popularity as that which affected, in the later
seventeenth century, the parent game played
with the 78-card pack: it appears to have enjoyed
a steady popularity that reached its zenith in the
eighteenth century. In Part 1 of La Sfinge,
published in 1640, a collection of riddles in verse
by the Florentine poet Antonio Malatesti (1610-
1672), the answer to riddle 20 is 'l'Ufzo de' Gemini'
- the trump I of the Gerrnzrzz pack; and the answer
to riddle 71 in Part 2 (published in 1643) is 'in
341
giuoco delle A/[inc/ziate', the game of Minchiate.
Parts 1 and 2 were republished in 1683 together
with a posthumous Part 3, of which the third
section was entitled 'Quadernari delle
Minchiate', consisting of sixty-six quatrains each
devoted to one of the principal cards of the
Minchiate pack. Malatesti's friend, the
Florentine painter and poet Lorenzo Lippi
(1606-1665), composed a long poem, It
Malmarztil€ Racquistato, of which two stanzas (61
and 62 of the 8th canto) related to Minchiate.
The first edition of this poem appeared
posthumously in 1676, under the anagrammatic
pseudonym Perlone Tripoli, with a commentary
by his friend Paolo Minucci, using the
pseudonym Puccio Lamoni: this commentary
contains the first detailed description of the game
of Minchiate. Minucci's notes were expanded by
Biscioni, with further remarks on Minchiate
games, for a new edition of 1731. These poems
not only give useful detailed information, but
serve to show that, at least in Florence, the game
continued to be well known throughout the
seventeenth century. Minucci states expressly
that it is quite well known, but adds that it is not
much played outside Tuscany, or at any rate is
played elsewhere under different rules; later he
mentions Liguria specifically as a region in which
it is played in a considerably different manner.
We know from other sources that in 1663 it
was introduced into Sicily, probably from Rome,
but that it died out there in the course of the
eighteenth century. In that century, however, we
have much testimony as to its popularity in
Rome. Joseph Baretti, in his Acvourzt of the Manners
and Customs of Italy (London, 1768), speaks of
both Tarocco and Minchiate, the former as
played in Piedmont and Lombardy, the latter 'all
over Tuscany and the Pope's dominions' (vol. 11,
ch. 33, pp. 219-21). In de La Lande's Voyage d'un
Frangozk en Italic fazt dans yes armies 7765 et 7766
(Venice, 1769), a travel-book in eight volumes,
Minchiate is spoken of at length (vol. V, pp. 157-
60) as a game much played in Italy: 'tout Ze monde
l'aime d Rome' ('everybody in Rome is fond of it').
There were many eighteenth-century accounts of
the game. The first, after Minucci, was Luigi
Bernardi's Regale Genetali de! rzobilissimo gioeo delly
Mine/ziale, published in Rome in 1728 and
reissued there in 1742 and 1773. F.S. Brunetti's
Giuoelzi delle Minelziale, Orb re, Seacehi ed altrz
dlngegno, in which the rules of the games are
interlarded with some tiresome allegorical
342 Part III: Italian Games and Italian Cards
matter, was also published in Rome, in 1747. An
anonymous account in Terza rims, I! Giuoeo delly
Minelziate: Cap ilolo, appeared in Leghorn in 1752,
and was republished in Florence in 1827.
Minchiate was included in Raffaelle Bisteghi's
card-game book, I! Giuoeo Pralico, which also
contained the first printed account of
Tarocchino, published in Bologna in 1753 and
reissued there in 1754, 1760, 1774, 1785 and
1820, and in Milan in 1819. The first account to be
published in Florence was another anonymous
one in Terza Lima, the Regale Cerzerali delve Mz'nehz'ale
of 1777; this was followed in 1781 by the prose
account Regale Generals del Giuoeo delle A/line/ziazfe
(RGGM), reprinted in 1790, 1807, 1820 (with a
substantial addition) and 1852. From all this it is
evident that the game was highly regarded, both
in Rome and Florence, throughout the
eighteenth century and the first half of the
nineteenth, as Robert Smith also testified in a
letter to the Society of Antiquaries of November
1803 (published in Arc/zaeologia, vol. xv, 1806, pp.
140-4), saying that it was 'held in high esteem
among the fashionable circles in Tuscany'.
(Smith presented the Society with a Minchiate
pack and a copy of the 1781 edition of RGGM
which are still to be seen at the Society's rooms in
Burlington House). The latest work to deal with
Minchiate was the Preceltz al Giuoratore in
Conversazione (Milan, 1868); but as this borrowed
heavily from I! Giuoco Pratico, it cannot be
considered good evidence that the game still
flourished at that date.
Tarocchino and Minchiate are alike in their
histories in that both variant games, probably
invented at about the same time, retained their
hold upon the affections of card players in their
native cities at the time when the 78-card game
was fading from general esteem, and survived
intact to participate in the widespread
enthusiasm for Tarot games which, in the
eighteenth century, brought the 78-card pack
back to Italy from France. Their histories differ
in that, while Tarocchino remained confined to
the region of its origin, Minchiate became known
in many parts of Italy. Furthermore, while
Tarocchino (though no longer so called) still
flourishes vigorously in Bologna, Minchiate has
long died out. It seems to have survived longer in
Genoa than in its native Florence. Sylvia Mann,
in Collecting Playing Cards, London, 1966, p. 38,
remarks that 'The cards have fallen out of use
and no Florentine I have met has ever heard of
them', but she might.have had more success if
she had asked for Minchiate cards in Genoa,
though not under that name. In Florence the
decline of Minchiate must have begun in the
second half of the nineteenth century, and, though
packs were still being made there in the 1890s, the
game was probably extinct soon after the end of
that century; in Rome, no doubt considerably
earlier.vThecard-making firm of Solesio, in Genoa,
on the other hand, was still producing Minchiate
packs, presumably for local consumption, in the
1920s and 30s, in 1978 Stanley Gibbons sold a
Solesio pack with an Italian tax stamp dated 1929,
and in the 1930s Mr Martin Drayson of New York
imported some Solesio packs for sale to playing-
card collectors. We should probably date the final
demise of the game at around 1935.
According to Minucci, the game was played in
Liguria in a manner differing considerably
from that prevalent in Florence. Unfortunately,
all the accounts we have come either from
Tuscany or from Rome, with the exception of In
Giuoco Pratzro, which was plainly describing the
Florentine/Roman form; there is no hint that
the manner of play differed between Rome
and Florence, but we have no evidence for that
which prevailed in Genoa. It is possible that
there are some still living in that city who
remember it. One curious oddity is a Minchiate
pack made by Solesio and bearing tax stamps
dated 1896 and 1913, in the collection of Mr
David Ternperley. This has, besides the usual
ninety-seven cards, what appears to be an
additional unnumbered trump. Like the usual
unnumbered trumps, it has a red background,
and shows a naked female figure, in a running
posture and holding something resembling a
skipping-rope; her foot is on an arc of a wheel,
and it and she are enclosed within acircle which
is supported by two male figures rising from the
ground. I cannot guess what this design is
intended to represent, but it is hard to interpret
the card as anything but an additional trump. At
present, no other example of a pack containing
this additional card is known to me, and the later
Solesio packs certainly do not include it; but it is
possible that some variant form of the Genoese
game demanded an extra Aria. In any case, the
mode of play of Genoese Minchiate, or, rather,
Ganellini, is, and may for ever be, a gap in the
history of Tarot games.
Not only did Minchiate spread from Florence
to other parts of Italy, to Rome and the Papal
 Mirzchiate
States, to Sicily and to Liguria: it also became
known abroad? At least two descriptions of the
game were published in German. One such was
included in the second edition of Die Kunst, die
Welt erlaubt mitzurzelzmen in den verschiederzen Arden der
Spieled (Nuremberg, 1769); this was a translation
of that given in I! Giuoco Pratico. A separate
account, which appears to be independent, was
published in Dresden in 1798 under the title
Regen des /v[inclziatta-Spiels (RMS), this is a very
careful description, more explicit than any of the
Italian ones and painstaking in its reproduction
of the Italian terminology, which, however, it
sometimes misspells. It is unlikely, though, that
the vogue for Minchiate outside Italy was ever
very widespread. One possible remote
descendant of the Minchiate pack came to light
recently, and provides a curious puzzle. This is a
pack made, possibly in the 1930s, by Piatnik of
Vienna; examples are in the Piatnik collection,
and in those of Miss Sylvia Mann and of Mr
David Temperley. The wrapper is entirely in
French, and is labeled 'Tarot 8 73 cares'. The
73-card pack consists of the usual thirty-two suit
cards of an Austrian 54-card French-suited
Tarock pack, but with 40 trump cards together
with the usual Austrian Skiis (Fool). The trumps
show rustic scenes of the type usual in Austrian
54-card packs, and are numbered from 1 to 40 in
Arabic numerals, half of which are in red and
half in black: specifically, numbers 1, 3, 5, 7, 9,
12, 14, 16, 18, 19, 21, 23, 25, 27, 30, 32, 34, 36, 38
and 40 are in red, and the rest in black. Apart
from Minchiate packs, this is the only Tarot pack
containing forty trumps, and I have found no
other trace of a game played with 73 cards. It is
conceivable that it represents some descendant of
Minchiate that has been subject to influence
from the games played with the shortened 54-
card Tarot pack, though the significance of the
red and black numerals escapes me. It was
obviously made for export to some purely
French-speaking area. The best guess I can make
at the region it was intended for is the Val
3 Catherine Perry Hargrave, A History of Playing Cards,
New York, 1930, 1966, p. 38, illustrates a Minchiate pack
stated to have been made in France. The ground for
assigning it to France is presumably the Bourbon Heur-de-
lys watermark, but this is poor evidence, such a watermark
being quite common outside France. Chiari of Florence
made a pack identical to the one illustrated by Hargrave,
which is almost certainly his. There is thus no reason for
supposing Minchiate to have been known in France.
343
d'Aosta, a somewhat isolated part of Italy where
a highly localised tradition might well survive
without being discovered by anyone from
outside. Whatever may be the explanation of this
apparent freak, it provides another illustration of
the gaps that must surely remain in our
knowledge of the history of the game of Tarot,
however thoroughly we investigate it.
The game of Minchiate is generically similar
to that of Tarocchino. In both cases, the
principal form is a four-handed game with fixed
partnerships. In Minchiate, as in Tarocchino,
there are scores for special combinations of cards,
both when held in the hand of one player and
declared at the beginning of play, and also when
contained among the cards won in tricks by a
pair of partners, and, as in Tarocchino, these
scores swamp the points on individual cards won
in tricks. Both games have a bonus for winning
the last trick, and neither has any idea of a
special bonus for winning it with the trump I. In
detail, however, the two games are very different.
Not only are the scoring combinations wholly
dissimilar, but the selection of counting cards in
Minchiate differs radically from that in any other
Tarot game: exactly half of the forty trumps are
counting cards, of different values, while, of the
court cards, only the Kings retain their point-
values. There are thus twenty-Five counting cards
altogether (twenty trumps, four Kings and the
Matto), so that the ratio of counting cards to low
cards remains much the same as in games with
the 78-card pack (25:72 as against 19:59), lower
than in Tarocchino (20:42) or in games played
with the 54-card pack (19:35) Moreover, unlike
in Tarocchino, with one single exception (the
XXIX), low cards cannot contribute to the
special scoring combinations. The various
printed descriptions of the game agree extremely
closely, so that, while we can probably not
recover the distinct mode of play observed in
Liguria, we have a very clear idea how it was
played in Florence and Rome from, say, 1675
onwards.
/l/line/ziate with Partrzerx
Terminology
Trumps are called tarocc/zi. Counting cards are called
carte dz onto, and trumps which are counting cards
tarocehz rzobili. Trumps which are not counting cards
344 Part III: Italian Games and Italian Cards
are called tarocc/zz ignobili, and low suit cards are called
carliglie or rartaccie. The Fool is called it Matte: the
three highest court cards in each suit are called Re,
Regina and Cavalla, the lowest court card in Swords
and Batons is called Fante and in Cups and Coins
Farztina or Fantiglia. As already mentioned, the live
lowest trumps, from I to V, are called Papz and the top
five trumps Arie. Trumps VI to IX or even XII are
also sometimes called Papa, Papetti or tarocchznz, but
these usages are rare, unnecessary and confusing. The
XXXI to XXXV are called sopralrerztig likewise the
XXI to XXIX are sometimes called sopravenii and the
XI to XIX sotlovefzti. The trumps from XXXIII
upwards, particularly the XXXIII, XXXIV and
XXXV, are called rori, from their red backgrounds.
Malatesti gives the name salamandre for the XVI to
XIX the four additional virtues), while RMS says
that they are called Prey/ze (in the Gemini .copra
Qua ranla Meritrice, they are assigned to four
procuresses or rujane), but these cards have no
special significance in the game. The special scoring
combinations of cards are called z/erJrI¢oZe, z/erzirole or
verzigole, the stock of undealt cards is called Za Fola or
Za Folia, Other special terms will be mentioned as they
become relevant.
Rank and values of the cards
The highest trumps are the Eve Arie, which are, in
descending order, the Trombe, the Manda, the Sole, the
Luna and the Stella. Below them come the numbered
trumps in sequence down from the XXXV to the Uno
(I). The Matto has no trick-taking power and serves
as Excuse. In the suits, the cards rank in their original
order, that is to say, in Swords and Batons they rank,
in descending order :
King, Queen, Cavallo,jack (Fante), 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4,
3, 2, Ace,
and, in Cups and Coins 2
King, Queen, Cavalla, l\fIaid (Fantina), Ace, 2, 3, 4, 5,
6, 7, 8, 9, 10.
The counting cards are the four Kings, the Matto, the
five Papz from I to V, the X, the XIII, the XX, the
XXVIII and the eleven highest trumps from the
XXX to the Trombe inclusive. Their values are as
follows :
Each Aria 10 points
The Uno (I) 5 points
The X 5 points
The XIII 5 points
The XX 5 points
The XXVIII 5 points
Each trump from XXX
to XXXV 5 points
The Matto 5 points
Each King 5 points
Each Papa from II to V
inclusive 3 points
Thus the Arie are worth 10 points each, the Pepi from
II to V 3 points each and every other counting card 5
points. In addition, there are 10 points for winning the
last trick.
Deal and discard
There are four players, in fixed partnerships of two
each, partners facing each other across the table. Four
rounds constitute one grata, in the course of which
each player is dealer once, and it is usual to play a
grata with each combination of partners. Deal and
play are counter-clockwise.
After having shuffled the pack, the dealer presents
it to the player on his left to cut. RMS says that, before
he does so, the dealer looks at the bottom of the pack,
and, if the bottom card is a counting card, removes it
to the middle of the pack, and repeats this operation
until the bottom card is a low card. No Italian source
mentions this detail, which is designed to prevent the
player who cuts doing so in such a way as to ensure
that his partner gets the bottom card when it is a good
one.
The player on the dealer's left lifts a section of the
pack from the top in the usual way (he must leave at
least three cards), but, instead of placing this top
section face down on the table, he turns it over so as to
expose its bottom card. If this card is a counting card,
or, although not a counting card, a trump higher than
the XX, he takes it and lays it face up in front of him.
If the next card is a counting card or a trump higher
than the XX, he takes it in the same way, and
continues to take cards until he reaches one that is
neither a counting card nor a trump higher than the
XX. RMS requires him to stop when he has taken
thirteen cards (if he should be so lucky), even if the
next card is a counting card or a trump higher than
the XX; RGGM, on the other hand, says expressly
that he should not stop, but should continue until he
reaches a low card. To take counting cards and
so/Jraverzti from the pack in this way is called 'to rob'
(rubare) the pack. The opponents of the dealer score
the values in points of all the counting cards which the
player on the dealer's left robs.
The player on the dealer's left now puts the
remainder of the top section of the pack face down on
the table, the dealer places the bottom section on top
of it, and deals a round of ten cards to each player,
beginning with the player on his right. He then deals
a round of eleven cards to each player, in each case
exposing the eleventh card. If the card thus exposed is
a counting card, the side concerned scores its value.
 A/H126lziate
The stock of undealt cards is called the Fola. The
dealer counts the Fola to make sure he has dealt
correctly: it should consist of thirteen cards less any
that have been robbed by the player to his left. The
dealer now robs the pack in his turn. He turns up the
lop card of the Fola: if it is a counting card, or a trump
higher than the XX, he takes it, placing it face up on
the table in front of him. In this case, he then turns up
the next card of the Fola, and, if it is a counting card
or a trump higher than the XX, takes it in the same
way, and continues to do this until he reaches a card
that is neither a counting card nor a trump higher
than the XX. The dealer's side scores the value of any
counting card robbed by the dealer in this way. (It is
important that the dealer should turn the top card
rather than exposing the bottom card, which will
necessarily be a low card.) The dealer now looks
through the remaining cards of the Fola, and, if there
are any counting cards there, he extracts them, and
lays them face up on the table in front of him. They
belong to him, but his side does not score any points
for them. To extract counting cards from the Fola in
this way is called Pzgliareg note that, unlike the case of
robbing the pack, the dealer does not extract from the
Fola trumps above the XX that are not counting
cards. The purpose of this rule is to ensure that all the
counting cards are in play.
The dealer now hands what remains of the Fola to
his partner. The partner looks at it, and sorts it into
suits: he places the trumps face down in a pile in front
of him, but the suit cards, arranged in their different
suits, face up beside the trumps; he also announces
how many cards of each suit there are in the F0!a.'*
(He does not announce the number of trumps, but
this is deducible by subtraction.) In the meantime,
each player picks up his hand, including the exposed
card, and, in the case of the dealer and the player on
4RMS states various conventions governing the
announcement by the dealer's partner or the dealer himself
of the numbers of cards in the different suits. The suits
containing more cards are mentioned first, e.g. 'Four Cups,
three Coins, one Sword, without Batons'. If there are equal
numbers of cards in two or more suits, this is expressed by
'Per sorts' ('of each kind'), leaving those suits unnamed, Thus
'Four Coins, two Per sorts' means 'Four Coins, two Swords,
two Batons, two Cups', 'Four Coins, two Per sorts, without
Batons' means 'Four Coins, two Swords, two Cups, no
Batons', 'Four Per sorts, two Cups, one Baton' means 'Four
Swords, four Coins, two Cups, one Baton'. Swords and
Batons can be referred to collectively as lunglzi (long), and
Cups and Coins as rotondi (round), RMS gives ruse (red) in
place of rotondi, but this is a mistake. Hence 'Three rotondi,
two lunglii' means 'Three Cups, three Coins, two Swords,
two Batons'. If there are, respectively, one, two, three and
four cards of the different suits, the suits are given, without
numerals, in ascending order, according to the number of
cards in each: thus 'Cups, Swords, Coins, Batons' means
'One Cup, two Swords, three Coins, four Batons'.
345
his left, any cards they have robbed from the pack or
extracted from the Fola. If, by robbing or extracting
cards, the dealer or the player on his left has more
than twenty-one cards in his hand, he has to discard
as many as are needed to reduce it to twenty-one
cards. He may not discard a counting card, but he
may discard all other cards, including trumps. The
dealer and the player on his left place the cards they
have discarded face down in front of them on the
table.
It will be remembered that, according to RMS, the
player to the dealer's left may not rob more than
thirteen cards. Of course, it will be very seldom that
he robs that many, but, if he does, the dealer will have
no opportunity to rob or to extract cards: the pack
will be exhausted when the deal is completed.
According to RGGM, on the contrary, the player to
the dealer's left may, if he is lucky enough, rob more
than thirteen cards. In this case, the dealer will not be
able to deal himself a full complement of eleven cards
on the second round of the deal. Instead, he deals
himself all the remaining cards, exposing the last one,
and then waits for the player to his left to make his
discard. This player sets thirteen discarded cards face
down in front of him, and gives the other cards that he
discards, which will necessarily be low cards, to the
dealer to make up his hand.
Brunetti remarks that it was formerly the rule that,
if the dealer was unable either to rob or to extract any
cards from the Fola, he had to pay a penalty of 1 rest
or game point, equivalent to 60 card points,
presumably, in the partnership game, his side had to
pay the opposing side. However, Brunetti says, the
rule was abandoned as being too brutal.
As soon as the dealer and the player to his left have
made their discards, the player to the dealer's right
leads to the first trick. The other players do not
immediately play to the trick, however: there is First a
pause for declarations.
Declaratzorzs
As soon as the player to the dealer's right has led the
first card, each player in turn, beginning with the one
on the dealer's right, announces any of the special
combinations of cards, called versicole, he has in his
hand, and shows them to the other players. There are
two kinds of versicle, regular and irregular. A regular
versicola consists of three or more trumps in strict
consecutive sequence. Not every trump can form part
of a regular versiaola, but only the Papa from I to V and
the trumps from the XXVIII up to the Trombe
inclusive. There are names for various kinds of regular
versinola, although the distinctions between the
different types in no way affect the rules of the game.
A versicola consisting of three or more Papi is of course
called a versicola do Papa; a versioola containing
346 Part III: Italian Games and Italian Cards
numbered cards from the XXVIII up is called a
versicola dz larofc/zz, one containing one or more Arie is
called a versicola d'Arie, one containing the XXX is
called a versifola dz trent, one starting with the XXXI
or XXXII a verMola do sopratrenti, and one consisting
of the XXXIII, XXXIV and XXXV a z/erxicola do
ross .
The irregular uersicole are as follows :
(a) Uno, Trombe and Motto (called verxicola de!
A/lattolg
(b) Uno, XIII and XXVIII (called versztola del
Trea'zci)' 3
(c) the X, XX and XXX, or the XX, XXX and
Trombe, or the X, XX, XXX and Trombe (any of
which is called a verslrola delve diecine) ;
(d) any three, or all four, Kings (a versieola dei Regt).
The player who has the Matto cannot use it as a
wild card, to substitute for a card missing from a
verszeola; but he can add it on to every verszeola that he
has, save, of course, the versicola de! A/Iallo, of which it
is already an integral part.
With one exception, the value of any versieola is
simply the sum total of the values of the cards it
contains, considered as counting cards, including 5
points for the Matto if it is annexed to the vefsicola.
Thus a versieola consisting of the Uno, Papa II and Papa
III is worth 11 points, one comprising the X, XX and
XXX 15 points, and one made up of the XXXIV,
XXXV, Stella and Luna 30 points. The exception is a
versicola containing the XXIX, the only non-counting
card that can form part of a versieola, in such a versicola,
the XXIX counts 5 points, so that the XXVIII,
XXIX, XXX and XXXI together count 20 points.
Each side records the values of the versieola declared
by either partner (see under Seorirzgl.
Completion 0f t/L6 Folk
\Vhen the declarations are completed, and before play
to the first trick is resumed, the dealer and the player
to his left turn over the cards they discarded for the
other players to see, and pass them to the dealer's
partner, who announces which cards each of them has
discarded, and then sets the discarded cards,
according to their suits, with the cards of the Fola, in
this way he reconstitutes a full Fola of thirteen cards.
He then again announces how many cards of each of
the plain suits belong to this reconstituted Fola (the
number of trumps again follows by subtraction).
Having done this, he passes the Fola to the dealer,
who places it face down beside him, At any stage of
the game, any player may ask the dealer to remind
him how many cards of each suit there are in the Fola,
and he is bound to answer, the dealer may himself
look at the Fola at any time. It is also permitted for
any player, at any time, to look at the tricks that his
side has made.
Play
When the dealer has placed the Fola beside him, play
to the first trick is resumed, and the hands are played
out, under the usual rules, in twenty-one tricks. As
usual, it is obligatory to follow suit if one can,
including playing a trump if a trump is led, and, when
one cannot follow suit, to play a trump if one can.
There is a special rule governing the first trick to be
played in any one of the four plain suits. If the player
who holds the King of that suit is not the one who led
to the trick, and if, before his turn comes to play,
another player has played a trump to that trick, he is
bound to play his King, regardless of whether he has
the Matto or another card of that suit. This rule does
not apply when the trick is not the first one to which
that suit has been led, nor does it apply when a trump
has not yet been played to the trick, even if the player
who has the King knows that a later player will play a
trump.
Whenever one side captures a counting card from
the other side, that counting card is said to 'die'
(moire). In each such case, the side winning the trick
immediately scores the value of that counting card as
a bonus.
The Matto serves as Excuse. That is to say, a player
who has the Matto may play it at any time, regardless
of the obligation to follow suit or to play a trump, save
that he may not play it in place of his King in the
special case mentioned above. If the opponents win
the trick to which he plays it, he takes it back from
the centre of the table and places it among the cards
won in tricks by his side. If he can, he then gives in
exchange for it a low card from among those won in
tricks by his side. If his side has not yet won a trick, or
has not yet won one containing a low card, he may
wait and give a card in exchange at the end of the
round. If, at the end of the round, his side has won
only counting cards in its tricks, he must give any one
of those counting cards of his choice in exchange for
the Matto: the counting card he gives is then regarded
as dying, so that the opponents score its value as a
bonus, as if they had captured it (as well as adding its
value to their point-total on cards won in tricks. If the
side which had the Matto makes no tricks at all, it
must surrender the Matto itself: this is the only case
in which the Matto can die. The opponents then score
5 points as a bonus for the death of the Matto, in
addition to adding 5 points to their point-total and
being able to annex the Matto to every verricola. It
does not seem to be envisaged that a player will ever
lead the la/Iatto to a trick.
RMS mentions a rule otherwise cited only by
Brunetti, namely that a player who has no more
trumps left in his hand is allowed to 'drop' (rascare) his
cards: he lays them face up on the table, is not
permitted to win another trick, and takes no more
part in the play, in each subsequent trick, the player
 Mirza/ziate
who wins it takes a suitable card from the exposed
hand to complete the trick. It is plainly inadvisable to
take advantage of this rule if one has a King or the
Matto still in one's hand; but, when one has no
further chance of winning a trick, it may be helpful to
one's partner thus to let him know how matters stand.
Scoring
There are several possibilities of gaining points before
the end of the round: for a counting card exposed as
the last card dealt to either of the partners; for
counting cards robbed from the pack; for versicle
declared during the first trick, or for causing the
deaths of the opponents' counting cards (it. capturing
them). The points recorded for any of these reasons
during the round are always those by which one or
other side is ahead of the other, so that, at any stage, one
side has a positive score and the other a null score,
points gained by the side currently behind the other are
subtracted from the score of the leading side. For
example, the third player (left of the dealer) robs the III,
so his side (side A) marks 3 points. The first player's
exposed card in the deal is the XIII, so sideA changes its
running total to 8 points. Now the dealer robs the
XX, so side A reduces its total to 3 points again. The
third player declares a versirola of the I, II and III (11
points), and side A's score is raised to 14 points, but the
dealer declares the XX, XXX and Trombe (20 points),
so side A's score is deleted and side B scores 6 points. In
the play, side A captures the XXVIII, reducing side
B's score to 1 point, later, side A captures the Luna,
wiping out side B 's score and marking 9 points.
At the end of the round, each side reckons up its
point-total, of which there are five possible
constituents. First are the points gained by one of the
two sides during the round, as just explained.
Secondly, there are 10 points for the side winning the
last trick. Thirdly, the side that has won more than 42
cards altogether in the tricks scores as many points as
it has cards in excess of 42 (42 being the number of
cards the partners had between them at the start of
play). Fourthly, each side scores points for all the
counting cards it has won in tricks, according to their
point-values: the counting cards are counted
separately, and do not have to be accompanied by low
cards.5 Finally, each side scores for each versivola
contained in the cards it has won in tricks, the side
5 It was conventional to arrange the cards, when counting
them, in packets (magzetti) of three, with a counting card on
top, and two non-counting cards, say a tarorco ignoble and a
cartacria, underneath: 14 such packets made up 42 cards.
This practice had, however, no actual significance for the
counting: its purpose was only to facilitate the subsequent
shuffling of the pack by preventing all the counting cards
from being grouped together.
347
that has the Matto adds it to every versicola (save, of
course, the versicola del Matte).
The winning side is obviously that with the higher
point-total, and payment is made in accordance with
the difference between the totals of the winning and
losing sides. Payment is made in game points called
rest, one rest for every 60 points or part of 60 points :
thus if the difference is between 1 and 60 points
inclusive, 1 recto is paid, if between 61 and 120 points
inclusive, 2 resli are paid, and so on.
If, however, at any stage during the round one side
attains a score of 60 points or more, the other side
immediately pays them 1 rest, and the 60 points are
deducted from their score and, as having already been
paid for, do not go towards their final point-total.
This may be to their disadvantage. Suppose, e.g., that
side A, having robbed several counting cards and
declared several versicle, attains a score of 63 points
during the course of the round. Side B pays 1 rest to
side A, and side A's score is reduced to 3 points. Later
in the round, side B is more fortunate, and finishes up
with a point-total 9 points higher than that of A. A
has now to pay B 1 rest, and the round is in effect a
draw. If, however, A had not been paid in the middle
of the round, but had been allowed to keep all 63
points, they would have finished with a point-total 51
points higher than that of B, and would have received
a (net) payment of 1 recto.
RMS states that if one side wins all the tricks, their
payment in rests for the Final score is doubled,
although not any rests they may have received during
the round. This privilege is not mentioned in any of
the Italian sources.
The later editions of RGGM (1820 and 1852) give
the name g r a ta to a set of four rounds with the same
partners, and the name giro re to a set of three pirate,
one with each possible combination of partners. The
overall winners of a grata receive an additional bonus
of 3 rests.
Terms relating lo llze Play
The object of the play is, of course, to save one's own
counting cards, help one's partner save his and
capture those of the opponents, and particularly those
forming versicle. There are certain cards which are of
special importance, and are called carte gelose (jealous
cards). These are: the Uno, because it forms part of
three different versicle, the Papa III, because without it
one cannot form a versieola of Papa; the XX, because
without it one cannot form a versicola dell dieeine; the
XXX, for the same reason, and because it may also
belong to a regular versieola, and the Sole, without
which one cannot form a versicola composed entirely of
Arie. The XIII and the XXVIII may to a lesser degree
be considered carte gelose. Cards the loss of which will
destroy an existing versicola (particularly the middle
348 Par! III: Italian Games and Italian Card;
card of a regular veryieola such as XXXI, XXXH and
XXXIII) are also to be treated as carte gelose. Except
when one isforced to do so, one should never play a
rata Melosa to a trick one cannot be sure of.
A player holding the King of a suit in which he
suspects, from the discards or the composition of the
Fola, that one of his opponents is void may, when he
obtains the lead, lead another card of that suit. This is
called to 'hang' (impiccare), or, less frequently, to
'smother' (affogare), the King. He should always do
this if the suit has not yet been led to a trick and he
does not know the player to his left to have a card in
that suit, for fear of having to surrender his King
under the special rule requiring him to do so when the
first trick in that suit is trumped. But, if he has length
in the suit - five or six cards - he may also continue to
lead cards of that suit in the hope either that his
partner will become void in the suit before the player
to his left does, and will then, when he eventually does
lead the King, be able to overtrump the player to his
right, or that he will be able to exhaust both
opponents' holdings in the suit, and then, later, will
be able to throw the King on a winning trump of his
par trier. This latter tactic is, of course, in place only
when the player with the King has a small number of
trumps.
A player may with advantage repeatedly lead a suit
in which his partner is void, or will soon become void,
so that his partner may win the trick with a Carla Melosa
or other tarocco mobile. It is his responsibility, however,
to do this only so long as he is sure that there are other
cards of that suit still in play, taking into account the
number already played, the number in the Fola, and
the number in his own hand. If he does this, and the
player to his right trumps, his partner will know that
he can safely overtrump with a carts gelosa, since the
other opponent will have to follow suit: to lead a card
in a plain suit in which the player to one's left has one
or more cards is called a ryitta, and is always the safest
possible lead. If a player has been leading a suit, and
comes to the point where there are no cards of that
suit left save in his own hand, he must not continue to
lead that suit without First making some other lead,
which is a signal to his partner that the suit is no
longer safe. The only occasion on which this does not
apply is when he leads the last card of the suit in his
hand, since his partner can be expected to know fit is
the last card of the suit in play. A particular case of a
ryitta is that in which the player knows that the
opponent to his left still has a King of the suit, as yet
unplayed; it is normally bad play to lead towards
one's partner's King.
In general, it is not good play to lead trumps early
in the round; but it may be advisable to do this if the
two partners hold between them a great many
trumps, including most of the high ones. A signal to
one's partner that one has the Trombe is called afumata,
and is made by leading either a Papa or a sopraventi (a
trump from XXI to XXVII If the whereabouts of
the Trombe is already known, such a signal is taken as
indicating possession of the Monde, or, in general, of
the highest Aria whose whereabouts is not known.
RMS states that some players recognise it as a signal
that one has the Trombe that one plays the X the first
time one trumps a trick in a plain suit, but warns that
many do not recognise this convention, it also states
that, among some, afurnala with the XXV, XXVI or
XXVII indicates possession of the two highest
trumps, or of two Arie, and one with the XXI, XXII,
XXIII or XXIV possession of the three highest
trumps, or of three Arie. When a Murata is given, the
partner, if he has strong trumps, may decide to
initiate a giuovo do giro, that is, play in which the two
partners play out their high trumps with the intention
of exhausting their opponents' trumps, in doing this,
they may catch an Aria belonging to the opponents if
one partner leads f0pratrerzti towards the other par trier
who holds a higher Aria, which he holds back until the
opponents' Aria falls. A signal to commence a giuoco dz
giro is to 'turn' (girare) a card to one's partner, that is,
to lead the Uno or other aorta Melosa, in the knowledge
that he is certain to be able to take the trick, the
partner must, of course, play his highest trump.
A Zenuta consists of playing a trump, to a trick in a
plain suit or to a trump trick, that is higher than an
important counting card known or believed to be in
an opponent's hand, with the intention either of
capturing it or at least of preventing the opponent
from bringing it home. Thus, with a trump from the
VI to the IX one can make a tenuta to a Papa, with one
from the XIV to the XIX a tenuta to the XIII, and
with a soprano/enh a terzuta to the XX.
The prior history of the game is far from easy
to determine. There are two quite separate
questions. First, how old are the fundamental
rules - the selection of counting cards, their
values, the composition of the versicole and the
procedure of robbing the pack? Secondly, how
old is the four-handed form with partners' The
literary sources throw little light on the First
question. Malatesti's riddle 20, in Part l of La
Sfinge (1640) has, as its answer, 'L'Uno de J
Germzrzi', and he explains this answer by
remarking that the Uno can form part of two
vergicole, namely Uno, 13 and 28 and Uno, Matto
and Trombe. One might wonder whether a
versicola of Papa was not yet recognised, but
Minucci's account of Minchiate in his notes of
1676 to Lippi's In Malmanlile Rarquislaio gives the
rules governing counting cards and versicole
precisely as in the eighteenth-century
descriptions of the game. So far as the evidence
goes, therefore, the fundamentals of the game
 Minchiate
seem to have been the same in the seventeenth
century as in the eighteenth. Minucci's account
also explains the procedure of robbing the pack,
just as in the eighteenth-century form; and,
indeed, Lippi's stanza 61 of his 8th Canto
concerns the fury of a player who is penalised for
having forgotten to discard after he had robbed
the pack.
The sixteenth-century sources unfortunately
give no clue, one way or the other, to the play of
the game. Since the pack itself was obviously a
E deliberate creation, the game must be assumed to
have been one too, and on this ground we might
suppose that its fundamental rules were the same
from the start. It is, however, impossible not to be
struck by the unnatural character of those rules.
That the lowest and the highest trumps should
be counting cards is understandable: but why
l
also the X, the XIII, the XX and the XXVIII?
I
That the U no, Trombe and la/Iatto should form a
v e rszrola is an obvious echo of games with the 78-
card pack: but why the Uno, XIII and XXVIII?
Obviously, to ensure that every counting card
can be a member of a versirola; but that brings us
back to the question why the XIII and XXVIII
were selected as counting cards. And why should
the XXIX, alone of all non-counting cards, be
able to form part of a versicola? The purpose of
these questions is not to depreciate the rules of
the game: it gains greatly from these various
quirks and irregularities. But they look like
complications introduced later in order to
enhance the subtlety of the game, not like
principles anyone would have thought up when
First inventing a new variation on the existing
game of Tarot. Moreover, if the pack and the
game were invented together, it is curious that,
while both are rather odd, their oddities do not
correspond. There is nothing in the design of the
trumps to distinguish tarocrlii rzobili from tarocrlii
igrzo/Jz!i: one could never guess, by looking at
them, that the X and the XIII were counting
cards, but the XI and the XII were not, or that
the XXVIII and the XXX were counting cards,
but the XXVII and XXIX were not. Conversely,
many special features of the design are
unmatched by any feature of the play. The
Queens, Cavalla, Farzti and Fantirze look as though
they should be important cards: but they are
mere cartaccie. The most striking feature is the red
backgrounds of the trumps from XXXIII
upwards. Anyone looking at the cards would
assume that these cards had a quite special role
349
in the game; and yet, in fact, there is nothing to
distinguish the XXXIII, XXXIV and XXXV
from the cards immediately below them.
It is therefore natural to conjecture that, when
it was first invented, the rules of the game were a
good deal simpler. If so, it seems very probable
that, originally, all the court cards were counting
cards, with their usual Tarot values of 5, 4, 3, and
2. It would probably be going too far to pay
attention to the fact that, in that case, if the only
other counting cards were the Matto, the Uno
and the five Arie, each with a value of 5, and the
last trick had been worth 6 points, as in
Tarocchino, there would have been a total of 97
points altogether, to tally with the number of
cards in the pack, as the 78 points of three-
handed Tarocco tally with the 78 cards of that
pack. But we might speculate that only the
Matto, the Uno and the eight red-coloured cards
were originally counting cards, in addition to the
court cards, say with their later values of 10
points for the Arie and 5 points for the others.
Versicole must have been a feature of the game
from the start, but, on the present conjecture,
may have included sets of three or four Queens,
Cavalla or Fanli, and otherwise, save for the Uno,
Trombe and Matto, have consisted solely of
sequences, including sequences of court cards in
one suit. In such a case, we should have had a
game much more similar to Tarocchino. On this
hypothesis, a change must have occurred
somewhere around the turn of the sixteenth
century, involving the demotion of the court
cards other than the Kings and the promotion of
trump cards that had previously been igrwbili.
This could have happened in stages: first the
promotion of the Papa from II to V, with their odd
value of 3 points, and of the XXX, XXXI and
XXXII, and, later, the addition of the X, XIII,
XX and XXVIII. All this is, of course, mere
speculation, and may be on the wrong track
altogether: quite possibly, the rules governing
counting cards and versicole were a feature of the
game from its origin.
The question of the antiquity of the four-
handed partnership game is also puzzling. All
the eighteenth-century sources treat it as the
principal form of Minchiate (with the possible
exception of Bernardi's volume of 1728, reprinted
with additions in 1742 and again in 1773, which I
have not seen). It would be highly plausible that
it had always been so, since games of this form
were well known in the sixteenth century; but in
 350 Part III: Italian Games and Italian Cards
fact Minueci's account of 1676 does not even
mention it, but, instead, briefly alludes to two-
handed and three-handed forms and devotes
most of the space to the four-handed game in
which each plays for himself (ad ognurz Per se). It
may therefore be that the partnership game was
an invention of the eighteenth century, or it may
be that it was much older, but was temporarily
out of fashion in the later seventeenth century.
Of one feature we can feel confident that it was
an innovation of the eighteenth century, namely
the practice whereby the dealer, having First
robbed the pack, looks through what remains of
the Fola and extracts all counting cards from it.
This practice is not mentioned by Minucci; and
this omission cannot be due solely to his
confining himself to the game in which each
plays for himself, because Brunetti, in his
account of the four-handed game ad ognun Per se,
includes the practice. Brunetti also says,
however, that the four-handed game with
partners is sometimes played without the
practice, to which he gives the odd Spanish-
sounding name of enlragnos (entrarias = entrails), a
word not used in other sources. Indeed, Brunetti
promises to give a separate account of the
partnership game without Venlragnor, a promise
which he fails to keep. Brunetti's account of the
procedure with the Fola is very slightly different
from that given above, in that the dealer's
partner plays no role. When the dealer has
robbed the pack, he then, according to Brunetti,
himself exposes the entire remainder of the Fola,
and takes any counting cards contained in it for
himself. He and the player to his left then make
their discards if any) face down, and the player
to the dealer's right leads to the first trick. The
dealer and the player to his left then expose their
discards, which are then presumably put
together with the rest of the Fola to be kept to the
right of the dealer. On the assumption that, when
the game is played without the entragnos, it is
played in exactly the same way save that the
dealer does not extract counting cards from the
Fola, we arrive at the following.
Varzalzon
All proceeds as in the foregoing account up to the
point at which the dealer has robbed the pack, and
has come to a card which is neither a counting card
nor a trump higher than the XX, He then turns over
the remaining cards of the Fola for all to see, but, even
if it contains counting cards, he does not take them.
All then pick up their cards; if the dealer or the player
to his left have robbed any cards, he discards an equal
number of cards, which may not be counting cards,
face down. The player to the right of the dealer then
leads the first card to the first trick. The dealer and
the player to his left now turn their discards face up
for all to see; these discards are then gathered up and
placed, together with the undealt cards, face down to
the right of the dealer to form the Fola. Declarations of
versicle held in hand are then made in turn, starting
with the player to the right of the dealer, and all
proceeds as before.
It seems evident that the original intention was
that the dealer should not be more privileged
than the player to his left, and that the process
whereby, having robbed the pack, he then
extracted any remaining counting cards was a
slightly clumsy device, later introduced, to
ensure that all counting cards were in play.
The two- and three-handed games, briefly
mentioned by Minucci, are referred to with equal
brevity by Bisteghi in I! Giuoco Pratico (1753).
Because of the cursory character of these notices,
it is difficult to feel certain of how they were
played, but the following represents what
appears to be intended.
Two-handed Mind/ziale
There is no robbing of the pack. The dealer gives
twenty-five cards to each player, starting with his
opponent. (It is not stated how the deal is made:
possibly in two rounds of eight cards each followed by
one of nine.) Apparently the last card dealt to each
player is not exposed. The undealt cards are not
looked at, but are set aside face down. The opponent
leads a card to the first trick, and then declares any
z/ersicole he has, and scores for them; the dealer then
declares his versicole, scores for them, and completes
the First trick. The play is under the usual rules (of
course there can be no case in which a player is
compelled to play a King if he has other cards of that
suit or the Matto). Each player scores for any
counting cards he captures from his opponent. At the
end of the round, each player scores for having won
the last trick, for having won the majority of the tricks,
for counting cards he has won, and for verszrole
included in the cards he has won in tricks, just as in
the four-handed partnership game, save that the
player who has won the most tricks scores as many.
points as he has cards in excess of 25. That player
with the lower total pays to his opponent the
difference between their totals. Rests are used only to
 Minchiate
represent an exact number of 60 points, so that there
\ is no distinction between points and game points.
Tlzree-handed Minchiate
l
All is as in the two-handed game, the dealer giving
i twenty-five cards to each player, starting with the
i,
i player to his right, who leads to the first trick.
4
I
Settlement for declared versicle takes place between
1
1 each pair of players, according to the difference in
their scores, and the same applies to settlement at the
end of the round. A player who loses a counting card
s
during play pays its value to each of his opponents, in
9
this game the rule requiring a King to be played if a
trump is first played to the first trick in that suit does
apply. If a player who has the Matto makes no tricks,
he surrenders it at the end of the round to the winner
of the trick to which he played it.
Much more interesting is the four-handed
game in which each player plays for himself. As
already mentioned, Minucci, writing in 1676,
i devotes most of his account to this game, and it is
described in almost the same way by Bisteghi in
3 1753. Brunetti, writing in 1747, devotes a
separate section to the game, from which,
however, he omits a crucial feature of it as
described by Minucci and Bisteghi, he remarks,
however, that it is nowadays in disuse. This is not
at all the impression given in RGGM, written in
1781, in which the game without partners is
repeatedly referred to, as a well-known form, but
is not accorded a separate description, the rules
being taken to be identical with those of the
partnership game. In the 1820 edition of RGGA/I,
however, a new section on the game without
partners is added, and this describes a form that
differs at several points both from the partnership
game and from that described by Minucci. It
seems best, therefore, to set it out in three stages :
the Minucci/Bisteghi form; the Brunetti-RGGM
(1781) form; and the RGGM (1820) form.
Four-handed A/Iinnhiate without parzfners ljirszfforfrz
7676- 7753)
As in the two- and three-handed games, there is no
effective distinction between .points and game points,
rests being used solely as a strict equivalent of an exact
sum of 60 points. The deal is exactly as in the
partnership game, the player to the dealer's left
robbing the pack in the process of cutting it, and the
351
dealer robbing the pack at the end of the deal; the last
card dealt to each player is exposed. If the dealer or
the player to his left robs counting cards from the
pack, each of the three players pays him their value;
similarly, if the exposed card dealt to any player is a
counting card, each of the other three players pays
him its value. Minucci (1676) does not allow the
dealer, after he has robbed the pack, to extract any
counting cards remaining in the Fola; Bisteghi (1753)
does. The dealer now exposes the Fola, and he and the
player to his left make their discards face down. Now
the player to the right of the dealer says, on the basis
of his hand, whether he wishes to play or not. If he
chooses to play, the player to his right has the same
option, but not otherwise, since at least three players
must play. If the first and second players have opted
to play, the third player says whether or not he will
play, and, if he does play, the dealer finally has the
option of dropping out. A player who drops out of the
round puts down his hand face down, and it is added
to the Fo/a; it does not appear that any other player
has the right to inspect the hand of the player who has
dropped out. A player who has dropped out has, at
the end of the round, to pay a certain sum to the
winner of the last trick, depending upon which player
it is who has dropped out. According to Minucci, if
the first player (the one to the right of the dealer)
drops out, he pays 30 points to the winner of the last
trick, if the second player does, he pays 40 points; the
third player pays 50 points; and the dealer 60 points.
Bisteghi's payments are less severe: 20 points for the
first player, 30 for the second player, and 40 for the
third player or the dealer. According to both Minucci
and Bisteghi, however, any player who, during play,
loses a counting card must pay its value to the player
who has dropped out as well as to each of the two
other active players.
When any one of the players has dropped out, or all
four have said they will play, the player to the right of
the dealer, or, if he has dropped out, the second
player, leads to the first trick. Then the discards of the
dealer and of the player to his left are exposed and
added to the Fola, and each of the active players
declares any z/ersicole he has: each pair of active players
settle between themselves for verricole. Play to the first
trick is then completed, and the hands are played out
according to the usual rules; if the player with the
Matto makes no tricks, he surrenders it at the end of
the round to the winner of the trick to which he played
it. Any player who loses a counting card in the course
of the play has to pay its value to each of the other
players, including one who has dropped out, as
already noted. At the end of the round, points for the
last trick, for the total number of cards won, for
counting cards won in tricks, and for versicle included
in cards won in tricks are reckoned in the usual way,
save, of course, that each player counts up the points
352 Parle III: Italian Games and Italian Cards
only on the cards he himself has won; a player who
has won more than 21 cards in tricks scores as many
points as he has cards in excess of 21. Settlement is
made between each pair of active players, and, of
course, a player who has dropped out pays to the
winner of the last trick what he owes him.
Four-handed II/firmlziale witlzoutparMers lsecondform
7747-87)
All is as in the preceding version, save that no player
is allowed to drop out, the dealer is definitely allowed
to extract counting cards from the Fola after robbing
it, and payment is made in rests: at the end of the
round, settlement is made between each pair of
players, the one with the lower total score paying to
the other 1 rest for every 60 points or part of 60 points
in the difference between their total scores in points.
The game is therefore played in every respect like the
partnership game, save for the essential differences
arising from the fact that each player is playing for
himself.
Four-handed /l/Iirzclziate witlzoutparMers (15lzirdform
7820)
An additional versztola is recognised, consisting of the
XIV (the Devil), the XXXV (the Twins) and the
Monde, this is called the Demonic, Monde e Came (the
World, the Flesh and the Devil, the Twins being taken
to represent the Flesh). It is worth 20 points, the XIV
being treated as worth 5 points when included in this
versicola.
A versieola containing one or more Arie is treated as
a multiple one, that is to say, its value is multiplied by
a certain figure, the multiplier. The multiplier
consists of the number of Arie included in the versieola,
plus 1 if the Trombe is included and plus 1 also if any
cards that are not Arie are included. Thus the Sole,
Monde and Trombe form a quadruple verricola, because
there are three Arie, one of them the Trombe. The
Stella, Luna and Sole form a triple versicola, because it
consists of three Arie, but the XXXV, Stella and Luna
also form a triple versieola, because, although there are
only two Arie, there is also a card that is not an Aria.
The XXXIV, the XXXV and the Stella thus form a
double versieola. Practice varies concerning the versieola
del A/!CZllO or about any verrieola to which the Matto has
been added. Some do not allow the presence of the
Matto to affect the value of the multiplier; some add 1
to the multiplier of any versicola containing the Matto,
and some add 2 to it. Agreement on this point must be
reached before the start of play.
The player to the left of the dealer does not rob the
pack in the course of cutting it, nor does the dealer rob
the pack when he has completed the deal. The deal of
twenty-one cards to each player is carried out in the
usual way, save that the last card dealt to each player
is not exposed. The Fola of thirteen cards is now
handed, face down, to the player to the right of the
dealer. This player looks at his own hand, but not at
the Fola, and may now choose to do one of two things.
He may choose to play in this round, in which case he
looks through the Fola and extracts from it any
counting cards it contains; these cards belong to him,
although he is not paid their value by the other
players, and he makes a corresponding discard of
non-counting cards. He may, alternatively, choose not
to play, but to drop out of the round. In this case, he
puts the Folk, still unseen, up for auction. The bidding
is carried out in rests and lupznz, 30 lupinz being
considered equivalent to one recto. A starting price is
agreed before play for each such auction; it is usually
taken to be 10 Nerti. The second player is deemed to
have bid this starting price for the Fola, if there is no
bid from the other two players, he must take the Fola,
and is deemed to have bid 10 tests, or whatever
starting price has been agreed, for it. Gtherwise, of
course, the Fola goes to the highest bidder. Whoever
obtains the Folk in the auction extracts the counting
cards from it and adds them to his hand, discarding
an equal number of non-counting cards. The cards
extracted from the Fola, either by the first player or, if
there is an auction, by the highest bidder, are
presumably shown to the other players, but the rest of
the Fola and the discarded cards are set aside face
down, and not shown to the other players. The
payment to the auctioneer - the player to the right of
the dealer who has dropped out of the round - is made
only at the end of the round, in accordance with the
principles stated below.
If the player to the dealer's right is playing, he leads
to the first trick, if there was an auction of the Fola,
the second player leads. When this lead has been
made, the players declare in turn any versicole they
have. Each records the points for the verszrole he
declares; in addition, each player is immediately paid
by each of the other active players one recto for each
veriicola he declares. In computing these payments, a
double versicola (et. XXXIV, XXXV and Stella)
counts as two versicle, a triple one (et. XX, X X X
and Trombe) as three versicole, and so on. After the
declarations, play to the first trick is resumed, and the
hands are played out according to the usual rules.
Any player who loses a counting card subtracts its
value from his current score, if this would leave a
negative score, then instead each of the other active
players adds its value to his score.
If there was an auction of the Fola, and one of the
two players who did not buy the Fola wins the last
trick, he is paid 1 recto by the auctioneer (the player
who dropped out). A player who neither bought the
Fola nor won the last trick, but who lost one or more
 /l/Iindziate
i counting cards in the cause of play, must pay 1 rest to
the auctioneer. The player who bought the Fola pays
the auctioneer at the end of the round, as already
stated. The rules governing this payment are slightly
complicated. Suppose, First, that he bid an exact
number of rests, say 12 rests. If he neither won the last
trick nor lost any counting cards, he pays his exact bid
I to the auctioneer, in our case 12 re32z. If he won the last
trick, then, whether or not he lost any counting cards,
he pays one resin fewer than he bid, in our case 11 rests.
If he did not win the last trick, but lost one or more
counting cards, he pays one rest more than he bid, in
\ our case 13 rests. This is quite straightforward: in
effect, he simply pays the value of his bid, but also
l development of the first version, not of that
receives the bonus for the last trick, or pays the
penalty for the death of counting cards, like the other
active players .
Suppose, now, that he made a bid consisting of so
many rests and so many lupine, let us say that he bid 12
rest and 10 lulJini. If he lost no counting cards, all is as
if he had bid only 12 rests: he pays 11 rest' if he won the
last trick, and 12 if he did not. If he lost counting
cards to a total value of less than 20 points, 20 being
the difference between the additional 10 lupinz that he
bid and the number of Zu/2zrzz (30) that make up one
res lo, again all is as if he bid 12 rests: he pays 11 rests if
he won the last trick, and 13 rests if he did not. If he
lost counting cards to the exact value of 20 points, on
the other hand, he pays 12 rests if he won the last trick
and 13 if he did not; and if he lost counting cards to a
value of more than 20 points, he pays 13 rem whether
or not he won the last trick.6
6 At least, this is the best understanding I have been able
to attain of the somewhat confused account in RGGM
(1820). The following system would be more rational.
Whatever the original bid of the player who bought the Fola,
the points on any counting cards he loses are converted into
Zupinz and added to that bid. If he wins the last trick, he pays
one resin less than the number of full rests in his adjusted bid.
If he does not win the last trick, then, if the adjusted bid is
<
an exact number of rests, he pays that, but if it comprises
some lupine in addition, he pays one more rest than the
number of full rests in his adjusted bid. Fig., if he bid 12 rests
and lost no counting cards, his adjusted bid is still 12 rerli
and so he pays 11 rests if he won the last trick and 12 if he did
not. If he bid 12 rest and lost counting cards to the value of
20 points, his adjusted bid is 12 rexti, 20 lupine, and he pays
11 res!z if he won the last trick and 13 rerli if he did not, the
same applies if he bid 12 rests, 10 lupine and lost counting
cards to the value of 10 points. If he bid 12 rests, 10 Zupinz and
lost counting cards to the value of 20 points, his adjusted bid
is 13 rerli (10 lupinz + 20 lupine make 30 lupine = 1 rest): hence
he pays 12 rests if he won the last trick and 13 if he did not. If
he bid 12 rests, 10 lupirzi and lost counting cards to the value
of 25 points, his adjusted bid is 13 resli, 5 lupine: in this case,
therefore, he pays 12 rerli if he won the last trick, but 14 if he
did not. It will be recognised that this system, which is
based on a clear principle, produces the same result as that
stated in the text in every case except the last. It cannot,
353
The active players reckon up their point-totals,
which are comprised of points for uersicole declared
during the first trick, less points for losing counting
cards in play, together with the usual 10 points for the
last trick, points on counting cards won in tricks, and
points for versicle contained among cards won in tricks ,
there are no points for having more more than 21
cards. Settlement is made between players according
to the difference between their total scores, in rests, at
the rate of 1 rest for 40 points or part of40 points.
It is plain that this latest version of the four-
handed game without partners was a
which did not allow a player to drop out of the
round. The First version must therefore have
continued to be played at the time when others
were playing the second version. The strength of
the four-handed game, especially in the form
with partners, over the two- and three-handed
games is not only that all or most of the
important cards are in play, but also that at the
start of play the players have a good deal of
information about the whereabouts of the cards.
It is a matter for much regret that a game which
indeed deserved its epithet of nobzZis.vimo should
have died out.
In his addition of 1731 to Minucci's notes,
Biscioni described two simple gambling games,
A' see [acc/ii and A! Patio, played with the
Minchiate pack. Though they are in no sense
Tarot games, they may be recorded here to
illustrate the sort of non-standard use to which a
form of Tarot pack has been put.
A 1 .S`€Z* tock/zz'
There can be two, three or four players. Seven cards
are dealt to each player, which are placed face up in
front of him on the table. The dealer now deals cards
face up to the table one by one from the stock of
undealt cards. If a player has, among the cards in
front of him, a card of the same suit (including
trumps) as the card turned up by the dealer, and
adjacent to it in rank, above or below, he says 'Tocco'
('I touch'), thereby claiming the card, which he takes
and places face up in front of him with his other cards ,
et. the XXVI can be claimed by a player having the
however, be reconciled with what is said in RCGM (1820),
which clearly states that, in the last case, he pays 13 resit
even if he won the last trick. What is proposed here may
nevertheless have been the original rule, about which it
would not be surprising if players later became confused.
354 Part III: Italian Game; and Italian Cards
XXV or XXVII, the 5 of Swords by one having the 4
or 6 of Swords. If, however, two players have cards
adjacent to the card turned up (et. the 5 of Swords is
turned up, and one player has the 4 of Swords and
another the 6 of Swords), neither can claim it, and it
remains in the centre of the table. If a card is turned
up to which some player has both adjacent cards, e.g.
the 5 of Swords is turned up and a player has both
the 4 and the 6 of Swords, that player is said to
have made a Pappoleggio, and he wins the round;
otherwise, the round continues until some player has
acquired six cards in addition to the seven with which
he started, and he is the winner. The loser or losers
pay an agreed stake to the winner.
T-his is the basic game, but it can also be
complicated by side payments called Patti. The other
players pay one chip each to the player who first
acquires a card (makes the primo Rocco), or 2 chips if he
does so with the first card turned up by the dealer
lprirfto Zocco in Zavala). They also pay 1 chip for a gusto,
i.e. when a player has a card next but one to the card
turned up (et. the XIX or XV when the XVII is
turned up), and 1 chip also for a Privilege, i.e. when a
player has a card next but two to the card turned up ,
in neither case does that player acquire the card.
Finally, they pay l chip if a player is able to make a
versicala with cards acquired by him and/or dealt to
him at the outset, When the game is played in this
more complicated way, any loser who has acquired
only three cards or fewer pays a double stake.
Alpazw
This is like A ' see torchy, with the following differences.
A game consists of several rounds: the winner of a
game is the first player to win 10 points (or, among
some, 12 points). When a card is turned up, it is
acquired by a player who has a card closer to it than
does any other player, but not necessarily one
adjacent to it: but, if a player acquires a card that is \
in fact adjacent to one he already has, he is notionally
deemed to have acquired two cards. The first player x
to acquire twelve cards (under this convention) scores
1 point, and the round ends. If a player acquires the in
first card to be turned up, and it is actually adjacent
to one of his, he scores 2 points, otherwise, the first
player to acquire a card scores 1 point fit is adjacent \
to one of his. A player who makes a versicola from
cards dealt to him and/or acquired by him scores l 8
l
point; but if it is a versirola d'Arie, he scores 2 points. A 1
player who makes a Pappoleggio scores l point, but the x
s
round does not end; but if by making the jbappoleggio
he attains his total of 12 cards acquired (under the l
9
above convention), he scores 3 points. The winner of
the game receives an agreed stake from each of the 5
other players. Side payments (palm) may be added as \
in A ' sez tour/ti.
Note on Aretino f Le Carte Parlanti
The date of this work, as containing the earliest
reference to the Minchiate or Gemini pack, is of some
importance. S.R. Kaplan, on p. 28 of The Encyclopedia of
Tarot, after saying that Aretino wrote the third part of
his Ragionamerzli in about 1540, adds that 'The
supplement dealing with cards - Les Carle; Parlances -
was not actually published until 1589 and cites in his
bibliography (p. 349) an edition (in Italian, not
French) published in London in that year, a copy of
which is in his own collection. There is no earlier
edition in the Bodleian Library, the British Library or
the Bibliotheque Nationale; but the date, 1543, cited
on p. 338 above for the First publication of this dialogue
of Aretino is that given by the Dizionarzo letterario
Bom/Jiani, Obese, vol. II, Milan, 1947, s.v. Dialog() delve
Carte Parlanli.
m
 CHAPTER 20
The Grder of the Tarot Trumps
Those who, in the eighteenth century, when the
Italian suit-signs of the traditional Tarot pack
were replaced by French ones, also substituted
animal figures for the traditional trump subjects,
and those who later replaced these with rural
scenes, views of buildings or characters from the
drama, obviously did not think they were
depriving the pack of any essential feature. What
was essential to a trump card was its position in
the sequence, indicated by its number; for the
rest, antiquated mediaeval figures were being
replaced by subjects more to modern taste. Many
people, however, have been fascinated by the
figures on the trump cards of the Latin-suited
Tarot pack, and have sought to uncover a hidden
symbolism lost to us. They have been convinced
that these figures must have a deeper meaning
than appears on the surface, and, in particular,
they have believed that there is a significance, not
only in the individual cards, but in the precise
order in which they are arranged. Foremost
among these have, of course, been the occultists,
but, as we saw in Chapter 6, their interpretations
have been completely arbitrary, or based on false
premisses such as the ancient Egyptian or
Hebrew origin of the cards. In so far as the
occultist interpretation has rested on anything
more than whim or demonstrably spurious
history, it has been based on the details of the
trumps in the Tarot de Marseille pattern. If we
are seeking the symbolic intentions of those who
first designed the Tarot pack, the Tarot de
Marseille is a dubious guide. We cannot feel sure
that the pattern is, as a whole, any older than the
seventeenth century; and, although the order of
the trumps which it observes goes back at least to
Catelin Geoffroy's pack of 1557, we do not know
it to have any exact Italian prototype.
Speculations based on false data are obviously
worthless.
Not all of those who have sought to decode the
symbolism of the Tarot pack have been
occultists, some have been serious scholars, well
versed in the iconography of late mediaeval and
early Renaissance art. One W.M. Seabury wrote
a book to prove that the symbolism of the pack
was based upon Dantegl Miss Gertrude
Moakley, in her Fine book about the Visconti-
Sforza pack, advanced an interpretation of the
pack, supported by much evidence from Italian
art and literature; Mr Ronald Decker has
engaged in complicated speculations, linking the
pack to the astrology of the time. I am not going
to advance another such theory. I do not even
want to take a stand about the theories that have
been advanced. The question is whether a theory
is needed at all. I do not mean to deny that some
of the subjects, or some of the details of their
conventional representation, may have had a
symbolic significance obvious to fifteenth-century
Italians, or, at least, to educated ones, that
escapes us and may be revealed by patient
research, that is very likely to be the case. But the
question is whether the sequence as a sequence
has any special symbolic meaning. I am inclined
to think that it did not: to think, that is, that
those who originally designed the Tarot pack
were doing the equivalent, for their day, of those
who later selected a sequence of animal pictures
to adorn the trump cards of the new French-
1 William Marston Seabury, The Tarot Cards and Dante 'J
Dwirze Comedy, New York, 1951 .
388 Part III: Halian Games and Italian Cards
suited pack. They wanted to design a new kind of
pack with an additional set of twenty-one picture
cards that would play a special, indeed a quite
new, role in the game, so they selected for those
cards a number of subjects, most of them entirely
familiar, that would naturally come to the mind
of someone at a fifteenth-century Italian court. It
is rather a random selection: we might have
expected all seven principal virtues, rather than
just the three we End - and, of course, we do find
all seven in the Minchiate pack, and they were
probably present also in the Visconti di Modrone
pack. With the Sun and Moon we might have
expected the other five planets, instead of just a
star, with the Pope and the Emperor, we might
have expected other ranks and degrees. But, of
course, in apack of cards what is essential is that
each card may be instantly identified; so one
does not want a large number of rather similar
figures, especially before it occurred to anyone to
put numerals on the trump cards for ease of
identification. Certainly most of the subjects on
the Tarot trumps are completely standard ones
in mediaeval and Renaissance art, there seems
no need of any special hypothesis to explain
them. Whatever may be the truth about those
who first designed the Tarot pack, the inventors
of the Minchiate pack surely approached their
task in the spirit I have suggested: they wanted
twenty additional subjects, and they chose ones
which it was natural for men of the sixteenth
century to think of - the four elements, the
remaining virtues, the signs of the Zodiac - and
inserted them en bloc in a convenient place. do not
think that anyone has suggested that there is any
hidden sighificance in the sequence of Minchiate
trumps.
That is my opinion; but I do not want to insist
on it. It may be that those who first devised the
Tarot pack had a special purpose in mind in
selecting those particular subjects and in
arranging them in the order that they did:
perhaps they then spelled out, to those capable of
reading them, some satirical or symbolic
message. If so, it is apparent that, at least by the
sixteenth century, the capacity to read this
message had been lost. There are many
references to tarocclii in sixteenth-century
Italian literature, in which their symbolic
potentialities were exploited, but always in an
obvious way: no hint survives that any more
arcane meaning was associated with them.
'What else', asks Flavio Alberto Lollio in his
Ifwettiva contra it Giuoco del Taroco, 'do they signify,
the Popess, the Chariot, the Traitor, the Wheel,
the Hunchback, Fortitude, the Star, the Moon,
Death, Hell and all the rest of this revolving
bizarrerie, save that this man [the inventor of the
game] had an empty head, full of smoke, caprices
and idle tales?' Lollio, of course, had no interest
in making much sense of the Tarot trumps, but
he could hardly have written in quite this vein if
there was generally acknowledged to be some
particular interpretation to be placed on them.
The search for a hidden meaning may be a
unicorn hunt; but, if there is a hidden meaning to
be found, only a correct basis of fact will lead us
to it. The hidden meaning, if any, lies in the
sequential arrangement of the trump cards, and
therefore, if it is to be uncovered, we must know
what, originally, that arrangement was. In
all Italian-suited packs made outside Italy since
1700, the order is always and everywhere the
same, namely that found in the Tarot de Mar-
seille. There is, as we have seen, some variation
in the subjects: the Pope and Popess are replaced,
in the Tarot de Besancon, by Jupiter and Juno,
and, in the Belgian Tarot, as in de Hautot's pack,
by Bacchus and the Spanish Captain. But, from
the beginning of the eighteenth century, the
order of the trump subjects and their numbering
remain constant, in the Belgian Tarot as well as
in the Tarot de Marseille and its various
offshoots. In the seventeenth century, we have
Viévil's pack with a significantly different order:
we also have, in de Hautot's pack and the list
given in the Maison académique, the minor
variation in which the Empress was higher than
the Emperor. But we also find the exact Tarot de
Marseille order in the anonymous seventeenth-
century Parisian pack, and, as remarked, we also
find it in Geoffroy's pack of 1557, so that it is
plainly of considerable antiquity in France. The
use of just the same order in all other countries of
Europe, other than Italy, simply reflects the fact
that it was to France and other French-speaking
regions, including those in Switzerland, that the
game of Tarot first spread from Italy, and from
which it spread further to yet other lands. Since
the eighteenth century, the Tarot de Marseille
order has been well known in Italy itself, being
observed in the Lombard pattern and in the
Tarocco Piemontese which remains in wide use
to this day, both patterns being descendants of
the Tarot de Marseille. It will, however, already
have been apparent to the reader, from what we
 The Order of the Taro! Trumps
have seen of the Tarocco Bolognese, the Tarocco
Siciliano and the Minchiate packs, that the Tarot
de Marseille order was not and is not the only
order for the trump cards known in Italy. In fact,
there is no clear evidence that the Tarot de
Marseille order was ever known in Italy before
the appearance of the Lombard and Piedmontese
variants of the Tarot de Marseille in the
eighteenth century. There is, however, no one
trump order which we could set over against that
o f the Tarot de Marseille as being the
predominant Italian one, rather, the evidence
yields a number of distinct orders used in
different places or by different players.
There are three types of source that we have
for the different orderings of the trumps observed
by Italian card players. First, there are the three
variant types of pack, the Tarocco Bolognese, the
Tarocco Siciliano and the Minchiate pack. The
Minchiate pack has, of course, twenty additional
trumps: but since these were inserted en bloc at a
certain point in the sequence of standard trump
subjects, we can remove them and study the
resulting order in reasonable confidence that it
represents an order observed for the trumps of
the 78-card pack at the time the Minchiate pack
was invented. Secondly, there are the early packs
that survive to us. Not all of these are any help,
since we noted that the trumps in the Fifteenth-
century hand-painted packs lack numerals, and
we therefore cannot tell how they were ordered;
but we have a few packs, mostly popular ones
printed from wood blocks, in which the trumps
bear numerals. Finally, there are literary sources.
The earliest of these is the sermon against
gaming in the anonymous volume of sermons
once owned by Robert Steele; it is dated between
1450 and 1480, probably towards the end of that
period, and gives a list of all the trumps with
their numbers. A well-known list, without
numbers, is given by Tomaso Garzoni (1549-
1589) in his La Piazza Universale (Venice, 1585).
Garzoni uses a phrase which has been
understood to mean that he has taken the list
from an earlier writer, Ra ffaele Maffei
Volterrano (1455-1522), but no such list is
known to occur in Volterrano's writings,
Garzoni's remark may not be so intended The
2 Tomaso Garzoni, La Piazza Univenvale dz Tuite Ze
Profexsioni de! A/Iondo, e nobili et zgnobzfi, Venice, 1585. The list
occurs in the chapter 'de' Giocatori in Liniversale, et in
particolare', which is Discourse 69 of the later editions, and
is to be found on p. 574 of the Venice, 1586 edition.
389
remaining two sources known to me are
examples of a curious form of verse fashionable in
Garzoni's turn of phrase is curious: he says, 'Alcuni altri son I
giuochi do tauerne, come la mora, je piastrelle, je chiaui, e je
cars, 6 eommuni, 6 Tarocchi, di nuoua inuentione, second
it Volteranno: one si vedono danari, coppe, spade, bastoni,
dieci, none, ...', and continues by listing the remaining
twelve cards of each suit, followed by the trumps in
descending order and finally the Matte; after a mention of
the French suits (as used 'con je carte fine'), he lists a [
number of card games, beginning with Tarocchi and
Primiera. (In English, the quoted passage runs, 'Some
others are tavern games, such as Mora, quoits, keys and
cards, either ordinary ones, or tarocchi, recently invented
according to Volterrano: in which are to be seen Coins,
Cups, Swords, Batons, the 10, the 9, ...', Mora is a well-
known game in which each of two players simultaneously
holds up a hand, with five, two or no Fingers extended, I do
not know what 'keys' are.) For some reason, Garzoni's
reference to £0w66/ii is much the best known of the sixteenth-
century ones, and is cited by a whole string of later writers,
including Senftleben (Andreas Senftlebius, De alva veterum
0puseulum Portltumurn, Leipzig, 1667), who mistranslates
Forlegza as propugrzaeulum (fortress), and the notes to Saverio
Bettinelli's I! gzuoeo dell carte, Poemetto (Cremona, 1775),
many of these attribute the list to Volterrano. Garzoni's
phrase 'second it Volteranno' appears, however, to relate,
not to the list of trumps, but to the apparent observation
that tarot/zi are a recent invention. Even on this
interpretation, the remark is baffling, since Tarot cards are
nowhere referred to in the Commentariorum Urbanorum
XXXVIII libri of Raffaele Maffei, called Volterrano after his
place of birth, which were First published in Rome in 1506,
nor, so far as anyone has discovered, in any other of his
writings, as was observed by Robert Steele in 1900,
moreover, the Tarot pack had existed for a hundred and
fifty years when Garzoni was writing, and for at least Fifteen
when Maffei was born. The explanation appears to be that
Garzoni meant that playing cards in general were a recent
invention, and that he was alluding to the remark by Maffei
that 'Chartarum veto & sortie & divinationis ludi précis
addis sunt ab avarice as perdition inventi' ('To the ancient
games have been added those of cards and of lots and of
divination, invented by covetous and dissolute men'). This
remark occurs in the section 'De ludo diverse quo sur mi
viii quandoque occupati fuerunt' of book XXIX of the
Commentary Urbana (p, 421 verso of the Rome, 1506, edition,
p. 313 verso of the Paris, 1511, edition, and p. 694 of the
Basle, 1559, edition; the second ampersand, present in the
1506 and 1511 editions, is missing from that of 1559). Maffei
is meaning to convey by this observation no more than that
the games he is referring to were not played in classical
times. Garzoni was not, therefore, quoting him in support of
any thesis that tarorchi were of recent invention, only as saying
that playing cards are of modern, as opposed to ancient,
origin. (I am uncertain to what Maffei was referring as
sortie 8 dzuznatzonz5 Judi, but I do not think the passage can
be treated as evidence that cards were used for fortune-
telling; we have in all three modern types of game, cards, lots
and divination, and the mention of avari suggests that Maffei
has gambling games principally in mind.)
390 Part III: Italian Game; and Italian Cards
the sixteenth century and known as tarocclzi
We have already come across one
as/Jropriati.
example of this form, namely the Germirzi supra
Quararzla Meritrice, in which the Minchiate
trumps are used. In a poem of this kind, a set of
people is described by associating each of them
with one of the trump subjects from the Tarot
pack. In some cases, the trumps are not arranged
in any particular order, and these poems are of
no help to us; but, in two of them, the trumps are
arranged in sequence. One of these is an
anonymous poem first published by Giulio
Bertoni in an essay on 'Tarocchi versificati' in
191783 it describes the ladies of the court of
Ferrara, and is dated by Bertoni to between 1520
and 1550, more probably nearer the later date. I
shall refer to this as 'the Bertoni poem'. The
other is a poem that has been attributed to
Giambattista Susio (1519-1583), an attribution
that has been contested. The poem has never
been published in full, but excerpts are given by
Ridolfo Renier in his essay 'Tarocchi di M.M.
Boiardo' of 189454 it concerns the ladies of the
court of Pavia, and may have been written about
1570.
Before we look in detail at these various orders,
a word needs to be said about the names of the
cards. Tarot de Marseille trumps, and in fact all
those in Italian-suited packs made anywhere
outside Italy, bear their names as well as their
numbers, with some slight variation on these
names from one pack to another. By contrast, in
Italian Tarot packs, other than those which
derive from the Tarot de Marseille, the trumps
never have their names inscribed on them, save
for isolated cards like the Miseria of the Tarocco
Siciliano and a few non-standard packs such as
that at Rouen. We have, therefore, to appeal to
literary sources for the names. Here, of course,
other sources, those which name the trumps
without arranging them in order, become useful.
One such is a set of five sonnets on the Tarot
trumps by Teofilo Folengo (1491-1544), a
Mar tuan author of macaronic verses, these were
included in his Cao; del TrzperUno, a work
published in Venice in 1527 under his
pseudonym Merlin Cocai.5 Another is Pietro
3 In Poexie, leggende, coftumange del media ego, Modena, 1917,
pp. 215-29, see pp. 220-1.
4 In Study so Matteo Maria Boiardo, ed. by N, Campanini,
Bologna, 1894, see pp. 256-9.
5 Le opere mannheroniche do Merlin Cocas, ed. by Attilio
Portioli, vol. III, Mantua, 1890, pp. 128-33.
Aretino's Le Carte Parlanti, published in Venice in
1543; and a third is Lollio's poem, already
mentioned, published in Venice in 1550. There
are also two other £am66lti appropriate, both
concerning cardinals at a conclave: one relates to
the conclave of 1522, which elected Adrian VI,
and the other to that of 1549-50, which elected
Julius III." We may add to these the lists of the
trumps of the Tarocco Bolognese given in the
earliest eighteenth-century accounts of the game
of Tarocchino and written before numerals had
been added to any of the trump cards, Bolognese
players were evidently as conservative in their
nomenclature as in their manner of play.7
Most of the cards have the same name, save for
trivial variations of spelling, in all the sources.
Among these, the ones with names coinciding
with those used in modern Tarocco Piemontese
packs, and also corresponding to those of the
Tarot de Marseille (given here in the right-hand
column), are as follows.
The Fool in z\4all0 Ze Mal
The Empress l'Im[7eratrice l'[r/ipératrice
The Emperor Vlmperatore l'Empereut
The Popess la Papessa la PalJesse
Temperance la Temperarzga Tempéranw
Justice Za Gzu5Zz3ia Za justice
The Devil in Diaz/olo Le Diablo
The Moon la Luna Za Lune
The Sun in Sole LeSoleil
The World in A/Iondo je Monde
There are Hve more whose names always appear
in the same form in the early sources :
6 The first is no. XXXII of the Pasquinade Dr Pietro Aretzho ed
Anonime Per al Corzolaoe a l'Ele3zone all Adriano VI, ed. by
Vittorio Rossi, Palermo, 1891, also to be found in Mario
dell'Arco, Parquino e Ze Patquirzate, Milan, 1957, pp. 87-8. The
second, an imitation of the first, was published by V. Cian
in his 'Gioviana', Giornale vlorreo della Letteratura Italians, vol.
XVII, 1890, PP~ 338-40.
7 Stuart R. Kaplan, in his The Encyclopedia of Tarot, New
York, 1978, cites yet another source, on p. 30 he states that
Antonio Francesco Grazzini wrote in TuM 1 lrionfi, earrz,
Marc/zerale 0 anti oarnascialese/ii andali Per Firenze dal tempo del
mognyioo Lorenzo de' illedieijino all 'anno 1559 about the larorehz
trumps. On p. 359, he repeats this claim, attributing the
whole book to Grazzini. Poems by Grazzini (it Lasca) are
indeed included in this collection, which he in fact edited, but
I can find no reference in them or in any other poems in the
volume to tarocchi. Perhaps Mr Kaplan was misled by the
occurrence of the term trionfi in the title: it does not there refer
to Tarot trumps or triumphs, but is used in the sense of
'triumphal processions', see the section on Festivals in J.
Burckhardt 's Civilization of the Rerzaixsance.
 The Order of the Tarot Trumps
Fortitude always appears in them as Za Fortezza,
it is Za Force (Strength) in the Tarot de Marseille,
and likewise Za Forma (Strength) in the Tarocco
Piemontese.
Love always appears in the early sources as
l'Amore; in the Tarot de Marseille it is l'Amoureux
(the Lover) and in the Tarocco Piemontese gli
Amandi (the Lovers).
Death is always called la Merle, as in the
Tarocco Piemontese, in the Tarot de Marseille, it
is almost always left unnamed.
The Star is always Za Stella in the early sources;
in the Tarot'de Marseille it is, likewise, l'Elozle
(the Star), but in the Tarocco Piemontese Le Stelle
(the Stars).
The Angel is always l'Angelo in the early
sources, save in the l\1inchiate pack, in which it is
je To/mhe (the Trumpets). In the Tarot de
Marseille it is je jugefrzenl (the Judgment), though
a pack made in Strasbourg has la Trompelle (the
Trumpet), and it is similarly referred to as la
Thorpe in Viévil's pack. In the Tarocco
Piemontese it is sometimes labelled II Giudigio
(the judgment), but usually as l'Angelo.
This leaves six cards whose names vary in the
early sources. For three of these, the differences
are trifling.
The Bagatto, called Ze Batelear in the Tarot de
Marseille and, usually, zt Bagatto in the Tarocco
Piemontese, is referred to as it Bagatetla in most of
the early sources; Pietro Aretino alone uses the
name it Bagatto, and only as an alternative. In the
poem on the 1549 conclave, the form used is it
Bagatelto. The term is It Bagattno in the Bertoni
poem, like the form in Bagattifzo used by Bolognese
players.
The Chariot is usually called it Carlo, as it is in
the Tarocco Piemontese, corresponding to Ze
Chariot in the Tarot de Marseille. In the Steele
MS. and in Aretino it appears more explicitly as It
Carlo trtumphate (the triumphal Chariot).
The Wheel, called Za Roue de Fortune (the Wheel
of Fortune) in the Tarot de Marseille and
likewise to Ruota dz Fortuna in the Tarocco
Piemontese, is usually abbreviated to to Rota or to
Raota (the Wheel) in the early sources; only the
two poems on the conclaves use the full term.
However, the idea is just the same, and Fortune
391
is almost always mentioned in connection with
this card.
The only serious variations in nomenclature are
confined to three cards :
The card known to modern players as the
Hermit - Z'Ermite in the Tarot de Marseille (Ze
Capucirz in some related packs) and Z'Efemita in the
Tarocco Piemontese - has three names in the
early sources, In the Steele MS., in the Bertoni
poem and in Lollio, if is IZ Gabba (the
Hunchback). In Garzoni, in Susio and in the
poem on the 1522 conclave, as also for Bolognese
players, it is in Vecchio (the Old Man); compare
Viévil's term Ze Vielart. In Teofilo Folengo it is in
Tempo (Time). (Aretino and the other conclave
poem fail to mention it.
The Hanged Man - Le Pendu in the Tarot de
Marseille and in Penduto in the Tarocco
Piemontese .- is Vlmpicrato in the Steele MS. and
in Garzoni, and l'Appzcato in Teofilo Folengo,
both meaning 'the Hanged Man'. For all the rest,
including the Bolognese players, it is in Traditore
(the Traitor).
The Tower, called Za Torre in the Tarocco
Piemontese and la A/Iairon Dieu (the House of
God, or, perhaps, the Hospital) in the Tarot de
Marseille, bears a variety of names in the early
sources. In the Steele MS. it is Za Sagitla, literally
'the Arrow' but more probably meaning 'the
Thunderbolt'; for Bolognese players it was Za
Saetta, also meaning 'the Thunderbolt' (compare
la Foudre (the Lightning) in the anonymous
seventeenth-century Parisian pack, those of
Viévil and de Hautot and in the Belgian Tarot).
The Bertoni poem calls it la Casa del Diaz/olo (the
House of the Devil), by which name it was also
known to Minchiate players; the poem on the
1549 conclave has the variant [ii Casa de! Dannalo
(the House of the Damned), while that on the
1522 conclave calls it simply Za Casa (the House).
In Garzoni, Folengo and Susio it is it Fuoro (the
Fire). Lollio calls it Vlrzfemo (Hell) outright.
Aretino leaves it unmentioned.
In order to have a uniform terminology for
making comparisons between different orders,
without falsely implying that a particular term is
used in each of the sources, I shall in what follows
use English names (save for the Bagatto). For the
last three cards mentioned above, I shall use 'the
392 Part III: Italian Games and Italian Catdx
Hermit', 'the Hanged Man' and 'the Tower'.
Among the variant packs, the Tarocco
Bolognese, considered in its older form before the
Papa were replaced by Moors, contains precisely
the standard trump subjects; it merely fails to
yield an order among themselves for the Pope,
Popess, Emperor and Empress. The Tarocco
Siciliano has several unfamiliar subjects: but the
Globe obviously corresponds to the World, we
know from Villabianca that the Ship is a
replacement for the Devil and we may reasonably
assume that Jupiter stands in place of the Angel.
In the Minchiate pack, the 'Grand Duke' does
not correspond precisely to any card or other
packs, but clearly belongs with the two Imperial
cards. It is evident that the insertion of the
twenty extra cards has not been allowed to
disturb the order of the familiar ones, it is
especially striking that the four additional
Virtues have not been placed next to the three
that were already there, but have been grouped
together with the other new cards. We are
therefore justified in extracting from the
Minchiate pack an order for the standard Tarot
trumps. This is confirmed by a certain feature of
the design of Minchiate trumps. The trumps
cards from XVI to XXXV, that is, the twenty
additional ones, bear rosettes in the two top
corners. Of the remaining trumps, the top five
unnumbered ones and those from I to XV, only
trumps I and II have rosettes in the top corners.
A possible explanation is that the original
designer of the Minchiate pack, whose designs
were thereafter faithfully copied, used existing
designs for the trumps of an ordinary Tarocco
pack as far as he could, and invented new designs
for the additional cards. Some adjustment would
be necessary with the lowest cards, owing to the
reduction in number of the Imperial/Papal cards
from four to three, the purpose of the rosettes
may have been to indicate to the cardmaker
himself which designs he would be unable to use
for ordinary 78-card Tarocco packs.
In Chapter 4 a list was given of all known
surviving sets of fifteenth-century Italian Tarot
cards. The first twenty of these consisted of the
hand-painted cards, made for the nobility, which
have survived in considerable numbers; but, in
addition, there were listed, as nos. (21) to (24),
four popular packs, dating from the end of the
fifteenth century, from which one or more uncut
sheets have survived; the Boiardo pack and the
copper-engraved Sola-Busca tarocchi, being to a
high degree non-standard, were not included in
the list. The dating of the four popular packs,
(21) to (24), as late fifteenth-century, is
admittedly not unshakable: any of them may be
assignable to the beginning of the sixteenth. We
may now extend the list to cover Italian Tarot
cards of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
The vogue for expensive hand-painted packs died
away in the sixteenth century; accepting nos. (21 )
to (24) of Chapter 4 as of the fifteenth century,
we are left with only four sixteenth-century
Italian Tarot packs of which we have any
knowledge. With the numbering continued from
Chapter 4, these are :
(25) A set of thirty cards belonging to the Leber
Collection in the Bibliotheque Municipale at Rouen.
They comprise the King, Queen, Cavalier, Jack, 9, 6
and Ace of Swords, the King, Cavalier, 9, 7, 5, 4, 2
and Ace of Batons, the 9, 8 and 7 of Cups, the King,
Jack, 9 and Ace of Coins; and the Fool and seven
trumps. The trumps are numbered with Arabic
numerals, and are the Emperor (4), the Pope (5), the
Chariot (7) the Wheel of Fortune (10), Time,
3
corresponding to the Hermit (11), the Devil (14) and
the Star (16). The pack is obviously non-standard,
and is a classicised one: the court figures are labelled
with inscriptions in Latin identifying them with
characters of classical history (e.g. the King of Coins
with Midas, King of the Lydians), while the trump
cards, although clearly identifiable with the usual
subjects, also have Latin inscriptions interpreting
them in terms of classical mythology (et. the Devil is
represented by Pluto and is labeled 'Perditorum
Raptor'). The numeral cards are very elaborate, the
Batons, in particular, being depicted as whole trees.8
(26) A complete pack, very closely related to the
one at Rouen, but not identical with it, was known to
Count Leopoldo Cicognara, and was described by
him in his book on playing cards of 1831.9 He
illustrated it by all four Aces and trump cards
showing Apollo and Cupid, obviously representing
the Sun and Love cards. This pack has now
disappeared, it evidently did not have inscriptions on
8 Catalogue number 135-XIV. The cards measure 134 x 70
mm. Four are illustrated in color by D. Hoffmann, Die Welt
(let Spielkarte, Leipzig, 1972, plate 23b, nine in black and white
by Kaplan, op. cit., p. 133, and five by H.-R. D'Allemagne,
Let Cartesajauer, vol. I, Paris, 1906, opposite p. 186.
9 See L, Cicognara, Memarie spettanti alla Stoma della
Calcografia, Plato, 1831, pp. 163-6 and plate XIV, A.M.
Hind, Early Italian Engraving, vol. I, London, 1938, pp. 241
and 243, and vol. V, London, 1948, pp. 139-40, and D.
Hoffmann, op. cit,, fig. 6. Hind attributes the pack to
Nicoletto da Modena.
 The Order of the Tarot Trumps
the trump or court cards, nor, apparently, numerals
on the .trumps. The Aces differ considerably from
those at Rouen, furthermore, the Fool of the Rouen
pack is quite different from that described, though not
illustrated, by Cicognara. Cicognara's Fool was a
drunkard lying on his back, supporting, with his legs
in the air, ajar marked MUSCATELLO. The Fool of
the Rouen set shows a man armed to the teeth and
dressed in armour, but with genitals exposed and
urinating, the inscription reads 'VELIM FUNDAM
DARI MIHI'. Nevertheless, Cicognara's pack was a
classicised one of very much the same kind as that at
Rouen,
(27) A single card, showing the Devil, is in the
British Musuem."' The back gives the maker's name as
Agnolo Hebreo. It is unnumbered, and the design is
very similar to that on the Rothschild sheet (no.
(23) ), but it is much cruder in execution.
(28) Another isolated card is in the Museo
Nazionale dell Arti e Tradizioni Popolari in Rome: it
is numbered VIII and represents Love.l' It shows two
musicians playing a viol da gamba and a lute, and,
behind them, a pair of embracing lovers: above them,
as usual on all versions of this card, hovers Cupid
aiming his bow. The design does not correspond in
detail to any other known version, but is in no way
surprising.
This may appear a meagre crop for a whole
century, but compares favourably with the single
surviving pack from sixteenth-century France. As
before, we cannot be certain, when dealing with
Italy, that we have identified all surviving cards
from Tarot packs; it is possible that some of the
suit cards that have survived in fact come from
such packs, without our having any means of
knowing this. The wealth of literary references
assures us that the game continued, in the
sixteenth century, to enjoy both popularity and
renown. It is unnecessary to list Tarocchino and
Minchiate packs made in the seventeenth
century, since they are readily identifiable as
such; when these are set aside, our list may be
extended to the seventeenth century as follows :
129) A set of six la rocc/zi was found, among other
cards, at the Castello Sforzesco in Milan during
restoration work. They consist of the 6, 7 and 9 of
Swords, the 8 of Batons, the 6 of Coins and the World,
numbered XXI. They measure 138 x 68 mm., and
have backs showing a complex design identified by
10
Illustrated in D. Hoffmann, op. eit., plate 14a.
11 Illustrated in Antic/ze Carte do Ta rocchi, Rome, 1961,
plate XII. The back shows a standing Cupid.
393
Francesco Novati as depicting Ruggero and Angelica;
the design has a dotted border, folded over to form a
similar border for the faces of the cards. The backs,
and consequently the borders, have peeled off from
the 8 of Batons, 9 of Swords and the World. The suit
cards resemble those of the Tarot de Marseille very
closely, with the major exception that they bear no
numerals to indicate their rank, and the minor one
that, on the odd-numbered cards of the Swords suit,
the crosspiece of the single sword is straight, not S-
shaped as in most Tarot de Marseille packs (a Tarot
de Besancon made in 1784 by Bernhard Sehaer of
MUmliswil being an exception). The single trump, the
World, is similar in general design, though not in
precise detail, to the corresponding card in the Tarot
de Marseille, showing a naked female Figure enclosed
in an oval wreath, with the symbols of the four
Evangelists at the corners. The card does not bear an
inscription giving its name. It is inscribed XXI above
the top margin, but this inscription would have been
covered by the border folded over from the back when
the card was in its original condition. Novati assigns
these cards to the early sixteenth century; but they
seem more likely to be from some date in the
seventeenth.12
(30) Two incomplete uncut sheets from a
Portuguese-suited Tarot pack are in the British
Museum. One shows the Maids of Swords and
Batons, the Cavalier of Batons and fragments of the 3
of Swords and Cavalier of Coins. The other shows
trumps bearing Arabic numerals but not names: they
consist of the Wheel (11l, the Chariot (10), Love (6l,
a card depicting a Sultan and numbered 5, and two
fragmentary cards numbered 20 and 21, presumably
the World and the Angel respectively. The 2 of
Swords bears the inscription 'Alla Colonna in Piazza
Nicosia'. Italian cardmakers from the sixteenth to the
eighteenth century identified themselves by signs
which, like English inn-signs, presumably hung
outside their workshops; usually the sign itself and its
name appear on the backs of the cards. The pack is
thought to have been made in Rome, there being a
Piazza Nicosia in that city. There are also in the
British Museum two fragmentary sheets from a
regular Portuguese-suited pack by the same maker,
showing the Kings, Cavaliers, Maids and Aces of all
four suits, and the 2 to 6 and fragments of the 7 and 9
of the Swords suit. A column, which was also the
heraldic emblem of the Coloma family, appears on a
shield borne by the Maid of Swords in both packs,
and on one borne by the Maid of Cups in the regular
pack; on the 2 of Swords of the regular pack appears
the date 1613. The small details of design of the cards
12 The cards are in the Raccolta delle Stamps Achille
Ber tarelli at the Castillo Sforzesco. For Novati's articles, see
footnote 22.
394 Par! III: Italian Games and Italian Cards
common to both packs are not precisely the same, but
the pattern used is identical, and corresponds closely
to that of other Portuguese-suited packs made at the
time when this had become recognised as a quite
distinct suit-systern. In both packs, the Maids are
girls with long gowns, and the Swords are straight but
intersecting; further, each suit card has an index at
both top centre and bottom centre (FS, FB, FC and
FD for the Maids, RS, etc., for the Kings, CS, etc., for
the Cavaliers, AS, etc., for the Aces and $2, $3, etc.,
for the numeral cards from 2 up). In the regular pack,
the Kings are seated, there are dragons on the Aces
and the Batons have a shape very characteristic of
Por tuguese-suited packs."
(31) There are several extant examples of a
puzzling kind of pack made by a cardmaker using the
name 'C)rfeo': the backs of his cards give this name
with an elaborate design of Orpheus playing his lute,
The Beinecke Library at Yale has two nearly
complete ones and another, very fragmentary, one,
two others are in the British Museum, while the
Fournier Museum in Vitoria has fragments of three
packs (and one card from a fourth).*'* These packs are
invariably catalogued as incomplete Minchiate packs.
The reason is that the trumps display exactly the
designs of the Minchiate ones: the top Five trumps, left
unnumbered in the Minchiate pack, are unnumbered
in the Orfeo packs also, and those that are numbered
bear the same numbers as in the Minchiate pack.
Furthermore, as in the Minchiate pack, the Swords
are straight but intersecting. In other respects,
however, the Orfeo packs deliberately diverge from
the highly constant Minchiate designs. This is true of
the Fool and of the Aces, and in some degree of the
Kings; but the most striking divergences are in the
two lower court cards. In the hlinchiate pack, the
Cavaliers, although still called Cavalla, are centaurs in
Swords and Batons, and other half-human, half-
animal creatures in Cups and Coins, but in the Orfeo
packs, they are the conventional mounted knights. In
the Minchiate pack, the Cups and Coins suits, though
not the other two, have Maids instead of jacks as the
lowest court cards, but in the Orfeo packs, there are
distinctly male Jacks in all four suits, and their
designs in no way resemble the la/Iinchiate ones. If
13 See Playing Cards of Various Ages and Countries seleeledfrom
the Collection of Lady Charlotte Schreiber, vol. HI, London, 1895,
plates 44 and 45. The Tarot pack, but not the regular one, is
illustrated in Kaplan, op. cit., p. 134.
14 The new catalogue no. of the more complete Orfeo pack
in the Cary Collection at Yale is ITA-63, the old no. was I-
11, the other Orfeo pack being 1-96. The Orfeo packs in the
Fournier Museum are grouped as no. 10 in the Italian
section of the catalogue. For the British Museum ones, see
F.M. O'Donoghue, Catalogue of the CollectiOn of Playing Cards
bequeathed to the Trustees of the British .Museum by the late Larry
Charlotte Schreiber, London, 1901, 1-59 and 1-60.
there were anything to compel us to regard the Orfeo
packs as intended for the game of Minchiate, we
should have to treat them as exhibiting certain
deviant features, but there is not. Although the
designs of all surviving trump cards from Orfeo packs
coincide with those used in l\Iinchiate packs, no Orfeo
pack is known which has any of those twenty trump
subjects which are peculiar to the Minchiate pack,
which, unlike every other form of the Tarot pack, had
in all forty trumps (in addition to the Fool). The
probability is, therefore, that the Orfeo packs were
originally 78-card ones. Perhaps the designs used
were not at that time regarded as the exclusive
property of the Iylinchiate pack, which had probably
taken them over, at the time of its invention in the
previous century, from some local standard pattern
for the normal Tarot pack, or, possibly, the
cardmaker using the sign Qrfeo found it more
economical to use l\4inchiate blocks, so far as he
could, to produce ordinary 78-card Tarot packs. This
conclusion cannot be regarded as certain, however,
because one oddity remains. In none of the Orfeo
packs I have mentioned is there any trump below IX
(or VIIII as it is written). To make a complete set of
Tarot trumps, there would have to be nine such
trumps, perhaps leaving the Bagatto unnumbered, or,
just conceivably, with a trump XVI to insert between
the extant XV (the Tower) and the five top
unnumbered trumps: in any case, they would have to
diverge in some respect from the l\Iinchiate trumps,
which do not include the Pope and Popess and have
only the eight trumps numbered I to VIII below the
IX. It may be mere coincidence that these nine
trumps happen to be missing from all surviving
examples of the Orfeo pack; but, until an example is
found that includes some of them, it remains a fact
that seems to call for explanation, and, until one is hit
on, we cannot feel assured that we have correctly
interpreted the pack.
Considering the rarity of pre-eighteenth-
century cards generally, we cannot regard this as
a poor haul, and we have, in addition,
seventeenth-century examples both of the
Minchiate and Tarocchino packs. Nevertheless,
the dearth of literary and textual references, save
to Minchiate, from this century suggests that the
popularity of the game of Tarocco, as played
with the 78-card pack, was distinctly on the wane
in mainland Italy, though Minchiate and
Tarocchino continued to flourish. In the next
century, of course, games with the 78-card pack
were to enjoy a great revival in Lombardy and
Piedmont.
Of all these packs, made in Italy between the
fifteenth and seventeenth centuries inclusive,
 The Order of the Tarot Trumps
there are,apart from the Minchiate and
Tarocchino packs, just nine that yield an
order, complete or incomplete, for the trump
cards. Two of these are fifteenth-century ones
printed from wood blocks and preserved in the
form of uncut sheets: that in the Metropolitan
Museum, New York, no. (21) of Chapter 4; and
that in the Rosenwald Collection in Washington,
no. (22) of Chapter 4. The Metropolitan set
includes an almost complete sequence of trumps,
of which the World is definitely unnumbered,
and the rest appear to have borne Roman
numerals from I to XX. The sheets are
mutilated, so that a few of the trumps are missing
or fragmentary. Cnly the tops of the Pope,
Emperor, Popess and Empress survive, bearing
the numerals II to V, but only the Popess (III )
can be identified with certainty, although, given
that, the positions of the others admit of little
doubt. Another card of which only the top
remains may be either the Bagatto or the Fool:
no numeral is to be seen. There is only the right-
hand half of the Chariot, without the numeral. Of
three cards, only the left-hand halves survive: one
is easily identified as the Hanged Man, with a
numeral beginning XI.. that can only be XII;
one appears to be the Star, with a numeral
beginning XV.., which would have to be XVI,
but may possibly be the Moon, in which case the
numeral must be XVII; and the third, which is
also truncated below, is unidentifiable and shows
no numeral, but is probably Fortitude. Save for
the relative positions of Fortitude and the
Chariot, it is possible to reconstruct the order
completely with virtual certainty.
In the Rosenwald set, all the trumps, without
the Fool, are printed on one sheet, together with
three Queens. The only mutilated card is the
Wheel, on which the numeral, if there was one,
can no longer be seen. Unlike on the
Metropolitan sheets, the trumps are arranged on
the sheet more or less in sequence. The bottom
line contains the three Queens and the First five
trumps from the Bagatto (I) to the Pope (V). The
middle line begins with Love (VI), Temperance
(VII ) and Justice (VIII ). These are followed by
Fortitude, also numbered VIII, and the Chariot,
numbered X. Evidently the VIII on Fortitude is a
mistake for VIIII. There follows the Hermit,
numbered XII, the Hanged Man, which is
definitely unnumbered, and the Wheel, of which
we cannot tell whether it had a numeral. The
cards on the top line, running from Death to the
395
Angel, are all unnumbered, and are arranged in
a plausible order, indeed, in what, by analogy
with other packs, is the only possible order, given
the numbers assigned to the other cards. There
are two possible hypotheses about the end of the
second line. One is that the cards are arranged in
the correct sequence, but that the Hermit has
been misnumbered XII instead of XI. Un this
hypothesis, proposed by Sylvia Mann, the Wheel
was not numbered, and the numbering stopped at
XI. An alternative hypothesis seems to me a little
more probable. This is that the Hermit is
correctly numbered XII, and that the Wheel was
numbered XI, but was located slightly out of
sequence on the block. I shall follow this second
hypothesis in the comparative table given below.
Although fifteenth-century hand-painted
packs do not usually have numerals on the
trumps, there are two exceptions to this. One is
the celebrated 'Charles VI' pack, no. (4) in
Chapter 4. A fact seldom referred to in the
extensive discussions of this pack in the literature
is that the trumps bear lower-case Roman
numerals at the very top, in a fifteenth-century
hand. Robert Steele listed these in his 1900
Arclzaeologia article. The cards are in fact printed
from a wood block with the colours subsequently
painted by hand, and, on the basis of some
technical considerations concerning the process
of production, Steele asserted that the numerals
were written on the cards before they were
painted. Detlef Hoffmann has denied this,
maintaining that the numerals were added later,
and were not intended to be part of the original
designs. In this he is almost certainly right. They
do not lose their importance for that reason: they
represent an order which, at an early period,
their owner at the time thought they ought to
have. I have not seen these cards myself, and rely
on Steele for the numbering. In one particular, he
seems likely to be wrong: he gives the numeral for
the Pope as ii, and adds a question mark to show
his uncertainty about the reading. But the Pope
can hardly rank lower than the Emperor, which
is iii; moreover, in every other case, a terminal i is
written j. It is therefore probable that the
numeral on the Pope was intended to be iii .
The other exception is the very incomplete
Catania see no. (7) in Chapter 4. On three of the
four surviving trumps Arabic numerals have at
some time been inscribed in ink, these
inscriptions cannot be contemporary with the
cards, and may be conjectured to have been
396 Part III: Italian Games and Italian Cards
made in the seventeenth century. The fourth
surviving trump is the figure on the stag, which
Ronald Decker has interpreted as an unusual
representation of Temperance, to this no
numeral has been added, presumably because
whoever added them could not identify the
subject.
From the sixteenth century we have two
remnants of packs with numbered trumps. One
is the single card at Rome depicting Love and
numbered VIII, no. (28) above. The other is the
classicised pack at Rouen, no. (25) above, whose
trumps, readily identified with their counterparts
in ordinary packs, bear Arabic numerals and
inscriptions giving their names in Latin; I differ
from Detlef Hoffmann in equating Pluto, not, as
he does, with Death, but with the Devil.
Finally, there are three fragmentary packs
from the seventeenth century. One is the very
incomplete sheet of trump cards for the
Portuguese-suited alla Coloma pack, no. (30)
above; this has Arabic numerals, which were
presumably borne by all the trumps, since they
go up to 21. The second is the Orfeo pack, no.
(31) above, of which several examples exist, this
has Roman numerals, but the top Five trumps are
unnumbered, as in the Minchiate pack. Finally,
there is the set of six Tarot cards found at the
Castello Sforzesco, of which only one is a trump,
the World, numbered XXI.
From the four literary sources and from the
three variant types of Tarot pack, we obtain
complete orders for all the trumps; from the nine
fragmentary early packs with numbered trumps,
we obtain further orders with varying degrees of
incompleteness, of which those of the
Metropolitan Museum, Rosenwald and Charles
VI packs can be reconstructed in their entirety
with very little uncertainty. Of the orders which
we know in complete detail, only two agree
exactly, those given by Garzoni and in the
Bertoni poem, the order in the Metropolitan
Museum pack almost certainly also nearly
coincides with that in these two sources, and that
of the Rouen pack may very well have done so as
well. The order in the alla Coloma pack may
have been the same as that in the Rosenwald
pack, save for carrying the numbering through to
21 and having a Sultan in place of the Pope; the
order underlying the numbering on the three
Catania cards may have been the same as in the
Orfeo pack, save that the numbering is carried at
least as far as 19. All the rest have at least minor
differences between them. Ignoring the isolated
Love card at Rome, we thus have eleven distinct
orders, all differing from the Tarot de Marseille
order.
This is a very surprising fact. Games players
do not in the least mind having to master a
complicated and arbitrary sequential ordering
(for instance, the ranking, in 'civil' and 'military'
suits, of dominoes in Chinese domino games),
but they do require that any such ordering be
held constant. It is of the essence of Tarot games
that there be a determinate means of deciding
which card in any trick is the winning one, and
this necessarily requires an agreed ordering of
the trump cards; in special cases there may be
exceptions, such as the equal ranking of the Papa
or Moors in the Bolognese game, but anything of
this kind is necessarily an exception, not the
general rule, and, indeed, this is the only known
such exception. If play is to be possible, the
ranking of the trumps must be apparent to all
players and subject to no dispute.
How, then, are we to explain the variations
that we find in the order of the trumps in Italy
from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century?
One explanation, which we glanced at earlier,
can be ruled out immediately, although it has
been proposed by some, the suggestion, namely,
that the Tarot trumps did not originally have an
order at all. If what, in the early chapters of this
book, we called the triumph cards did not have
an order, they were not trumps, and the game
played with the pack cannot have been a trick-
taking game; in that case, the suit cards cannot
have had an order either, since it is only in trick-
taking games that an order is required. We should
then have to suppose that, at some time between
the First invention of the Tarot pack in the 1430s
and its spread to France and the appearance of
packs with numbered trump cards, say around
1480, a new type of game was invented, for play
with the Tarot pack, and a new employment,
within this game, found for the triumph cards,
namely as genuine trumps. We should have to
assume this, to account for the etymological
connection between triumplzz' and 'trump', for the
subsequent history of the game of Tarot in Italy
and in France, and for the reversed ranking, in the
two pairs of suits, of the numeral cards, already
going out in Italy by the beginning of the sixteenth
century, as the game of Trappola shows. Above
all, we should have to assume it to explain the fact
that, from the author of the fifteenth-century
 The Order of the Tarot Trumps
Steele sermon on, writers assign an order to the
trump cards. But then we are faced with the same
problem as before: why are the orders different in
different sources? The hypothesis completely fails
to explain that which it was its sole object to
explain. We have no evidence that the trump
cards ever lacked an order; we have abundant
evidence that they had an order: our problem is
that this order is not constant. It is no explanation
of the variations in the order to propose that, at the
start, there was no order at all.
A more specious explanation is that, once it
became the practice to inscribe numerals on the
trumps, it ceased to be important to maintain a
fixed order for the trump subjects. Our surprise
at the variations in order is due, on this view, to
our being accustomed to the Italian-suited packs
used outside Italy, with their unswerving
uniformity of order: but there was in fact
no need for such uniformity. In the early French-
suited packs which have animals on the trumps,
it is common to find the same selection of
animals arranged in different orders; in the same
way, the standard selection of trump subjects in
the Latin-suited packs may have varied without
causing any confusion.
The idea underlying this suggestion is that,
once the trump cards bore numerals, the players
would have identified them from those numerals
and not from the subjects depicted, as they
unquestionably did from the start with the
French-suited packs. But this idea is borne out
neither by the early Italian Tarot cards that
survive to us, nor by the literary references. It is
correct, indeed, for the Minchiate trumps, which
were too numerous for anyone to mernorise the
order of any but the five top cards, the Arie, and,
accordingly, in literary sources, the first thirty-
five l\Iinchiate trumps are virtually always
referred to by number and not by name; we do
not even know what subject Minchiate trump II
was intended to represent. By contrast, the
trumps are never referred to by number; of
tarocclzi
the various literary texts that mention them, only
one, the Steele MS. sermon, even cites their
numbers. Of the four sets of Fifteenth-century
sheets for Tarot cards, the Cary sheet and the
Rothschild/Beaux Arts sheets have no numerals
at all, while the Rosenwald sheet leaves as many
as nine cards unnumbered; and we know that at
Bologna it was not until the later eighteenth
century that any of the trumps began to be
numbered. Un the trump cards of the later
397
French-suited Tarot packs, the numerals form
one of the most prominent features. In those used
in Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and, even-
tually, France, these numerals are contained in a
separate panel extending across the card, though
this is not true of the packs made in the Austrian
Empire, the numerals are still very prominent.
This is not so with the early Italian cards. Only
on the alla Coloma trumps are the Arabic
numerals clear and regularly placed. The
numerals on the Metropolitan Museum trumps
are quite insignificantly placed, for instance, the
figures XV appear on the left of the head of the
Angel, while the remainder of the numeral, HH, is
set on the right; on the Sun card, the figure XVIII
is set more than half-way down the card, just
above the trees on which the Sun is shining. One
can hardly suppose that these numerals were
intended as more than a last resort in identifying
the cards. Something very interesting happens in
the Minchiate pack. On the trumps peculiar to
that pack, trumps XVI to XXXV, the numerals
are placed in a scroll at the top of each card,
making them easy to pick out; but, on the fifteen
lowest trumps, the numerals are placed in a much
more random fashion in blank spaces of the
design. It is probable that these lowest trumps - or
at least those from V to XV - represent designs
originally used for trumps of a 78-card zfarocdzi
pack, taken over when the Minchiate pack was
first invented. The numerals on the Orfeo trumps
are, of course, placed in the same way, and those
of the Rosenwald sheet, though clearer than the
Metropolitan Museum ones, are also far from
being very prominent. As for the numeral on the
Castello Sforzesco World card, it would have
been invisible to a player, and perhaps was
intended only as a reminder for the cardmaker
himself.
From all this it is plain that Italian players
were highly conscious of the trump subjects, and
did not rely principally upon the numerals in
order to identify the cards. If the true explanation
of the variation in the order of the subjects were
that the subjects did not matter, the cards being
identified by numeral, we should expect that at
least the subjects of the really important cards
would have been held constant, yet we shall find
that the variation affects even the top three
trumps. In some orders, the Angel is the highest
trump, followed by the World and then by the
Sun; in others, the World is the highest, followed
by justice and only then by the Angel; or, again,
398 Part III: Italian Games and Italian Cards
the World may be the highest, the Angel second
highest and then the Sun. For the variations to be
explicable on the ground that the players were
indifferent to the subjects associated with the
numbers, they word have had to be altogether
oblivious to them for the variations at this level to
have passed unnoticed, whereas, from the way in
which the trumps are referred to in the literary
sources, it is apparent that they were not. The
most striking example of the importance of the
subjects, at least at the highest level, is the
persistence in Piedmont of the tradition that the
Angel beats the World, in face of the contrary
numerical ordering on the cards being used. It
seems probable, rather, that the very reverse of
the present suggestion is close to the truth, that
just as, at Bologna, a player of tarocclii had, until
the later eighteenth century, to make the fixed
conventional ordering of the trumps second
nature to him, so players of other varieties of
Tarot, save for Minchiate, identified the trump
cards principally by subject, and were aware of,
and could have stated, the order of those
subjects.
If this was so, it would have been hopelessly
confusing for the players if the order of the
trumps had varied even in minor respects from
one pack of cards to another. The observable
variations in the order must therefore be due, not
to the absence of a fixed order, but to that
phenomenon evident throughout the entire
history of the game of Tarot: the extreme
localisation of specific modes of play. Again and
again we find that the players in one city or town
play only amongst themselves and do not know
those of a neighbouring town, the detailed rules,
and sometimes the whole type of game played,
diverge from locality to locality, the players in
one circle being quite unaware of the manner of
play of those in another, and, often, of their
very existence. The different orders for the
trumps that we find in Italy must represent
different practices adopted in different cities,
presumably at a stage earlier than that at which
numerals came regularly to be inscribed on the
trump cards, Evidently, quite a short time after
the game of Tarot had first been invented,
players in various cities or regions developed
local peculiarities in their modes of play, which,
in Italy, extended to the conventional order of the
trumps; this must have happened before it
became usual anywhere to inscribe numerals on
the trump cards, and hence before the end of the
Fifteenth century. Modern players might feel that
it would be impossible to memorise the order of
twenty-one trump subjects so accurately as to be
at once aware, without the need for reflection,
which card was superior to which; but, as we
know from the Bolognese game, this doubt is
quite misplaced. The different orders of the
trumps testify, not to a reliance on the numerals
alone, but to the existence, at an early date, of
wide local variation in the manner of play.
When we look closely at the various orders, we
find that there was far from being total chaos. A
first impression is of a good deal of regularity
which, however, is hard to specify. Now the cards
which wander most unrestrainedly within the
sequence, from one ordering to another, are the
three Virtues. If we remove these three cards, and
consider the sequence formed by the remaining
eighteen trump cards, it becomes very easy to
state those features of their arrangement which
remain constant in all the orderings. Ignoring the
Virtues, we can say that the sequence of the
remaining trumps falls into three distinct
segments, an initial one, a middle one and a final
one, all variation in order occurring only within
these different segments.
The first segment consists of the Bagatto and
the four Papal and Imperial cards (three in the
Minchiate pack, two only in the Tarocco
Siciliano). Save in the Tarocco Siciliano, where
the .Mz}verza or Poverld comes below it, the Bagatto
is always the lowest trump. The Pope, when
present, is always the highest member of this
initial segment. In all known Italian trump
orders, the Emperor ranks higher than the
Empress, as one might expect; but it will be
recalled that in the pack made at Rouen by
Adam de Hautot, and also in the list given in the
Matron aradérrzique des jeux of 1659, the Empress
outranks her spouse. in Italian trump orders, on
the other hand, the only opportunity for variation
within this segment lies in the position of the
Popess. In different orders, she occupies one of
three possible positions: immediately below the
Pope and above the Emperor, below the
Emperor but above the Empress, and below even
the Empress.
The middle segment consists of five cards, of
which the typical order is, from lowest to highest:
Love, the Chariot, the Wheel, the Hermit, the
Hanged l\flan. That very order is found in the
Tarocco Bolognese, the Charles VI numbering
(the Wheel cannot have come anywhere but at
 The Order of the Tarot Trumps 399

no. 10), the Rosenwald pack (on the above card. In type A, the Angel is the highest trump,
hypothesis as to the intended order), the Steele the World coming immediately below it. The
sermon, Susio's poem and the Vigil pack; the three Virtues, Temperance, Fortitude and
alla Coloma pack must also have had that order, justice, occur consecutively, usually interposed
unless the Hermit and the Hanged Man were just above the lowest card of the middle segment,
reversed. In all other cases, the order within this which, in orders of this type, at least whenever we
segment results from interchanging some one can tell, is invariably Love. Type A is not attested
pair of adjacent cards: in the Minchiate and by any of our four literary sources. On the other
Orfeo packs (and presumably in the numbering hand, it is well supported by actual packs. All
of the Catania cards), the Wheel and the Chariot three variant packs - the Tarocco Bolognese, the
have been interchanged; in the Tarocco Siciliano Tarocco Siciliano and the Minchiate pack -
the Hermit and the Hanged Man; in Garzoni's belong to this type; so do the Charles VI
book, the Bertoni poem and probably the numbering and the Rosenwald and Orfeo packs.
Metropolitan Museum pack, Love and the So also must the alla Colonna pack have done: at
Chariot; and, in the Tarot de Marseille, the least, if the three Virtues did not come between
Wheel and the Hermit. (If l\Iiss Mann's Love as no. 6 and the Chariot as no. 10, the order
hypothesis, mentioned above, concerning the must have been very non-standard. Almost
order in the Rosenwald pack be adopted in certainly the Catania numbering also exemplifies
preference to mine, that pack forms the sole this type: the numbering of the Chariot as 10 and
exception to this rule. ) the Hermit as 11 surely implies that all three
The final segment consists of Death, the Devil, Virtues ranked below the Chariot, and the World
the Tower, the Star, the Moon, the Sun, the as 19 must have ranked below the Angel.
World and the Angel. These always occur In orders of type A, the three Virtues rank
(ignoring possible intervening Virtues) in immediately above Love, except in the Tarocco
precisely the order just stated, with the sole but Siciliano pack, where they rank immediately
very important exception that, sometimes, the below it, and in the Tarocco Bolognese, where
position of the World and the Angel are reversed, they outrank the second lowest card of the
the World coming highest. middle segment, the Chariot. In type A orders,
If, now, in the light of this analysis, we look at Temperance is always the lowest of the three
the actual orders, we see that they divide into Virtues, whenever we can tell. In the Tarocco
three sharply distinct types, which I shall Bolognese and the Rosenwald pack, Fortitude is
arbitrarily label type A, type B and type C. higher than Justice, but in the Tarocco Siciliano,
These types are to be distinguished according to the Minchiate pack and the Charles VI
two principles: where the Virtues come; and numbering, it is Justice which is higher.
whether the Angel or the World is the highest
Tar. Bolognese Minchiate Tar. Siciliano Charles VI Rosenwald Alla Colonna Grfeo Catania
Angel Angel 20 .Jupiter 20 Angel Angel 21 ? Angel
World World 19 Globe 19 World World 20 ? World 19 World
Sun Sun 18 Sun 18 Sun Sun Sun
Moon Moon 17 Moon 17 Moon Moon Moon
16 Star Star 16 Star Star Star
15 Tower 15 Tower 15 Tower Tower 15 Tower
14 Devil 15 Tower 14 Ship Devil 14 Devil
13 Death 14 Devil 13 Death 13 Death Death 13 Death
12 Hanged Man 13 Death 12 Hermit 12 Hanged Marx Hanged Man 12 Hanged Man
II Hermit 12 Hanged Man 11 Hanged Man 11 Hermit 12 Hermit 11 Hermit 11 Hermit
10 Wheel 11 Hermit 10 Wheel ? 11 Wheel 11 Wheel 10 Chariot 10 Chariot
9 Fortitude 10 Chariot 9 Chariot 9 Chariot 10 Chariot 10 Chariot 9 Wheel
8 .]ustice 9 Wheel 8 Love 8 justice 9 Fortitude
7 Temperance 8 Justice 7 .Justice 7 Fortitude 8 _Justice
6 Chariot 7 Fortitude 6 Fortitude 6 Temperance 7 Temperance
5 Love 6 Temperance 5 Temperance 5 Love 6 Love 6 Love
Pope 5 Love 4 Constancy P 4 Pope 5 Pope 5 Sultan
Popess
Emperor
I 4 Eastern Emperor
3 Westcm Emperor
3 Emperor
2 Empress
3 Emperor 4- Emperor
3 Empress
Empress S 2 'Grand Duke' 1 Bagatto 2 Popess
Bagatto 1 Bagatto Poverty 1 Bagatto T2/PE A
400 Part III: Italian Games and Italian Cards

In orders of type B, something completely we might dismiss type C as a minor curiosity;

different happens. In these, the World is the but, as the type to which not only the Tarot de
highest trump, and justice is promoted to the Marseille order, but all those used outside Italy,
second highest position in the sequence, corning belong, it is of course of great importance. Susio's
immediately below the World and above the order is considerably different from that of the
Angel, the third highest card. There is clearly Tarot de la{arseille, it is, in fact, almost precisely
here an association of ideas: the Angel proclaims the order found in Viévil's pack, save for the
the last Judgment, at which justice will be relative order of the Empress and Popess. In an
dispensed. In orders of type B, Temperance order of type C, the World is again the highest
always comes immediately above the Pope, and card in the sequence, but, this time, the Angel
is separated from Fortitude, which comes three comes immediately below it. Of the Virtues, it is
cards later, after Love and the Chariot. There is Temperance that is promoted to a relatively high
very little variation in these orders: the Popess position, namely to just above Death and just
does not have a stable position, and, in the Steele below the Devil, any symbolic appropriateness in
MS., the positions of Love and the Chariot have this escapes me. The remaining two Virtues are
been reversed. again separated and scattered within the middle
Type B has by far the best literary attestation, segment, justice in all cases coming lower. In
namely in three out of our four sources, including Viévil's and Susio's orders, justice comes just
the earliest one, the Steele MS. The other two are above the first card of the middle segment, Love,
Garzoni and the Bertoni poem, which give and Fortitude just above the next one, the
exactly the same type B order. The type is also Chariot. In the Tarot de Marseille, Justice comes
exemplified by the Metropolitan Museum pack, above the first two cards of the middle segment,
and, incomplete as it is, by the Rouen pack. The Love and the Chariot, and Fortitude above the
isolated card at Rome, Love, numbered 8, next two, the Hermit and the Wheel. The single
probably also comes from a pack with a type B trump card, the World, numbered XXI, from the
order, although this cannot be certain, there Castello Sforzesco set, in itself of course indicates
being one type A order, that of the Tarocco no more than that the order was of type B or type
Siciliano, in which Love bears the number 8. C.
Garzoni It will be remembered, in connection with the
Steele MS. 8/' Berton Metros. Mus. Rouen following table, that, in Vievil's pack, as in those
21 World World World of de Hautot and of the anonymous Parisian
20 Justice .Justice 20 justice cardmaker, as well as in the Belgian Tarot,
19 Angel Angel 19 Angel trump XVI is actually called the Lightning and
18 Sun Sun 18 Sun
17 Moon Moon ?17 Moon does not show a tower; nor does that by Catelin
16 Star Star or ?16 Star 16 Star Geoffroy, though we do not know what name it
15 Tower Tower 15 Tower bore. The order in the anonymous Parisian pack
14DCV11 Devil 14 Devil 14- Devil
13 Death Death 13 Death coincides with that of the Tarot de Marseille; so
12 Harrgcd Man Hanged Man 12 flanged Man do those of the Tarot de Besancon and of the
11 Hermit Hermit 11 Hermit 11 Hermit Belgian Tarot, save for the difference of subjects
10 Wheel Wheel 10 Wheel 10 Wheel
9 Fortitude Fortitude ? ?Fortitude on trumps II and V. With the same reservation,
8 Chariot Love 8 Love the order in de Hautot's pack coincides with that
7 Love Chariot ? Chariot 7 Chariot given by the Maison académique. It is apparent
6 Temperance Temperance 6 Temperance
5 Pope Pope 5 ?Pope 5 Pope from the table that the order in Catelin
4 Popess Popess 4 ?Ernperor 4 Emperor Geoffroy's pack, unless very eccentric, must have
3 Emperor Emperor 3 Popcss been that of the Tarot de Marseille; virtually the
2 Empress Empress 2 ?Empress
1 Bagatto Bagatto T' ?Bagatto only alternative is that the Wheel was numbered
TYPE B VIII and justice and Fortitude X and XI, which
is quite unlikely.
We have only one certain attestation to an While literally true, it is somewhat misleading
order of type C as being used in Italy before the to say that ten or eleven distinct orders were
eighteenth century, namely Susio's poem. If we known in Italy before the eighteenth century.
knew nothing of" non-Italian Tarot cards, or of the The variations within type B are very minor ones.
post-1700 Lombard and Piedmontese patterns, Those within type A are more considerable: but
 The Order of the Tarot Trumps 401

Susie Weevil Geoffrey T. de Marseille Maison aead.

World 21 World 21 World
Angel 21 World
20 Angel 20 Angel 20 Angel 20 Angel
Sun 19 Sun 19 Sun 19 Sun
Moon 18 Moon 18 Moon 18 Moon
Star 17 Star 17 Star 17 Star
Tower 16 Tower 16 Tower 16 Tower
Devil
16 Tower
15 Devil 15 Devil 15 Devil
Temperance 14 Temperance 14- Temperance 14 Temperance 14 Temperance
Death 13 Death 13 Death 13 Death 13 Death
Hanged Man 12 Hanged Man 12 Hanged Man 12 Hanged Man 12 Hanged Man
Hermit 11 Hermit 11 Fortitude II Fortitude
Wheel 10 Wheel 10 Wheel 10 Wheel
Fortitude 9 Fortitude 9 Hermit 9 Hermit 9 Hermit
Chariot 8 Chariot 8 justice 8 justice
justice 7 _Justice 7 Chariot 7 Chariot 7 Chariot
Love 6 Love 6 Love 6 Love
Pope 5 Pope 5 Pope 5 Pope 5 Pope
Emperor 4 Emperor 4 Emperor 4 Emperor 4 Empress
Popcss 3 Empress 3 Empress 3 Empress 3 Emperor
Empress 2 Popsess 2 Popess 2 Popess 2 Popess
Bagatto 1 Bagatto 1 Bagatto 1 Bagatto 1 Bagatto
TyPE C

if we set aside the Tarocco Siciliano, in which we
know that some dislocation occurred, the major
deviation is seen to occur in the Bolognese order,
in which the Virtues are placed after the Chariot
instead of before it; for the rest, the variations
within this type are, so far as we know, again
comparatively minor. We may thus regard
Italian Tarot players of the fifteenth to
seventeenth centuries as having observed three,
or perhaps four, distinct basic orderings of the
trumps, with small variations from one area to
another.
So far we have paid no attention to the
numbering of the trumps; it might be thought
that this followed automatically from their order,
but this is not so. If we study the various
numberings, we find very little in the way of any
close association of numbers with particular
subjects. Almost the only such association is that
of the number 13 with Death. Even that is not
invariable: but it occurs more frequently than the
association of a particular number with any other
card, even that of the number 1 with the Bagatto.
It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the
cardmakers, or those for whose tastes they were
catering, regarded this association as particularly
appropriate, and strove to arrange for it. Even
today, some superstition attaches to this card
among certain card players: a student who
played French Tarot with lorry drivers in France,
using a Tarot de Marseille pack, reported that
they considered it bad luck to be dealt trump
XIII, and would not, in such an event, enter the
bidding, however strong a hand they otherwise
had.
Now if one has the trumps arranged in an
order of type A, and begins the numbering with
the lowest trump, Death receives the number 14.
This can be seen from the Rosenwald pack,
where the numbering stops at 12: if it had been
continued, the number 14 would be assigned to
Death. It is probable that this consequence was
accepted in the alla Coloma pack, it must have
been accepted if the order in that pack was truly
of type A, and none of the cards of the middle
segment was promoted above Death. But there
was a solution which allowed Death to be
assigned the number 13 in an ordering of type A,
and this can be seen from the Tarocco Bolognese.
In the Tarocco Bolognese, only trumps 5 to 16
are numbered: but if the numbering is continued,
it will only reach 205 the Moon will become no.
17, the Sun no. 18, the World no. 19 and the
Angel no. 20. This is because Love, as no, 5, has,
not four, but five cards below it. We could not
number the Moors, because they are all equal:
but, if they were numbered, they would occupy
positions 1 to 4, leaving no number for the
Bagatto, which would thus have to be regarded
as an unnumbered card ranking below the
numbered ones, like the /Vliseria in the Tarocco
Siciliano.
We can see that the principle of starting the
numbering with the second lowest trump,
followed in the Tarocco Siciliano and, in a
concealed fashion, in the Tarocco Bolognese, also
402 Part III: Italian Games and Italian Cards
underlies the numbering of the Charles VI
trumps. In that numbering, the Angel holds the
highest place, and has the number 20. There is
no other card which could possibly rank above it
as no. 21: the World is numbered 19, and justice
is numbered 8. On the assumption that the
Popess and the Empress were present to occupy
between them the positions numbered 1 and 2,
the numbering must have begun after the
Bagatto, in order to bring Death out as no. 13.
The numbering of the Catania cards provides
another example.
The Orfeo pack presumably supplies yet
another instance of the practice: there can hardly
be any cards other than the five unnumbered
ones to rank above the highest-numbered one,
the 15, so that, to have a full complement of
twenty-one trumps, there must be nine cards
below the lowest-numbered one surviving in any
of the packs, the 9. If the Orfeo packs are
representative of the type of 78-card pack from
which the Minchiate pack was derived, there are
two possibilities. The sequence may have
continued down from 8 to 3 as in the Minchiate
pack, with 4 and 3 as the two Emperors, and then
have had two corresponding Empresses as nos. 2
and 1, and, below them, an unnumbered
Bagatto. Alternatively, it may have run from 8
down to 1 exactly as in the Minchiate pack, the
Bagatto thus being numbered 1, and have had
some unnumbered card ranking below the
Bagatto like the Miseria of the Tarocco Siciliano.
Cf these two possibilities, the former seems a
little more likely; but yet others are thinkable,
and it would throw great light on the history of
the Italian Tarocco pack in the seventeenth
century if a complete Orfeo pack were to be
discovered.
In orders of types B and C, one of the Virtues .-.
Justice in type B and Temperance in type C - is
promoted higher than Death, with the result
that, when all the trumps are numbered in
sequence from the Bagatto up, Death comes out
as no. 13, without the necessity for any special
device to secure this result. In consequence, we
never find a trump sequence of either of these
types that leaves the Bagatto unnumbered and
starts the numbering with the next card. It is for
this reason that it has been possible to classify the
incomplete Rouen set as exemplifying type B. In
the Rouen pack, the Star is numbered 16. If the
pack is at all like others that are known, there are
only two possible explanations of this. Either
only four cards rank above the Star, in which
case the numbering must start with the card
above the Bagatto; or five cards rank above the
Star, and, in that ease, one of them must be
justice. The former possibility seems, in the
Rouen pack, to be ruled out by the fact that the
Pope and Emperor are numbered 5 and 4
respectively.
We have now to enquire in which areas the
different orders were observed; and we must use
whatever clues we can extract from the four sets
of late fifteenth-century wood-block printed
sheets for popular Tarot packs, numbered (21) to
(24) in Chapter 4. just as there is a temptation to
say, at first glance, that there was no fixed order
for the trumps in Italy before the eighteenth
century, so there is the parallel temptation to say
that no standard pattern was adopted for the
Tarot pack, because, among the early cards that
survive, one can scarcely find two sets exhibiting
the same type of design. This temptation is
equally to be resisted. We have seen it to be a
universal law, applying to Indian and Chinese
cards as much as to European ones, that in any
locality any specific type of playing-card pack
very rapidly assumes a stereotyped design to
which all cardmakers conform, for the simple
reason that players need to be able to recognise
each card at a glance. There is no ground
whatever to suppose that the Tarot pack was any
exception to this rule. The variations in design
that we can observe amongst surviving cards are
to be explained in the same way as those between
different orders of the trumps subjects, namely as
representing different standard patterns used in
different regions. This does not, of course, apply
to the hand-painted packs, which were luxury
items, nor to obviously non-standard packs
such as the Rouen one or the Sola-Busca tarocc/ii:
but, though we can never with certainty identify a
design as a standard pattern when we have only
one example of it, it is highly probable that each of
our four sets of sheets (211 to (24) exemplifies one
of the standard patterns in use towards the end of
the Fifteenth century in some particular locality.
We must therefore investigate whether it is
possible to identify the areas in which those
standard patterns were used, simultaneously with
our enquiry into the regional associations of the
various trump orders.
The easiest set of sheets with which to start is
the pair divided between the Ecole des Beaux
Arts and the Rothschild Collection (no. 23).
 The Order of the Tarot Trumps
Detlef Hoffmann describes these as Minchiate
cards, and W.L. Schreiber, presumably with the
same idea in mind, assigns them to Florence;
Stuart Kaplan characteristically hedges his bet,
describing them as 'Tarot or Minchiate cards'.l5
Hoffmann mentions, only to reject, an
identification of them by Sylvia Mann as
Tarocchino cards; but a comparison between
them and a modern Tarocco Bolognese pack will
at once bear her out, revealing striking
correspondences in design. If, instead, the
comparison is made with the seventeenth-
century standard single-ended Tarocco
Bolognese in the Bibliotheque Nationale, the
designs will be found to tally in almost every
detail; the one exception is the Devil, the design
of which on the Rothschild sheet is completely
different from that of the later Tarocco
Bolognese. The resemblance between the
seventeenth-century pack and set no. (23) is
overwhelmingly close in the eases of the Angel,
the World, the Sun, the Moon, the Star, the
Tower, the Hermit and the Chariot; note
particularly the rayed arcs which appear in the
upper corners of several cards in both packs.
Death in the later pack faces the opposite way,
but is otherwise similar, down to the band at the
top of the card, save for the position of the horse's
head. The direction of motion of the Wheel, and
a few other details, differ in the later card, but
they are still fairly similar. The arms of the
Traitor or Hanged Man of the later pack differ
from those of the earlier one in being bound
behind him, instead of hanging down grasping
money bags. It is only in the design of this last
card in set no. (23) that there is any similarity
with Minchiate cards, whereas, on the eight
cards singled out above, detail after detail
corresponds exactly with the Bolognese cards.
This is not, indeed, to endorse Miss Mann's
characterisation of these as Tarocchino cards,
since the use of this term presupposes that the
pack had already been shortened to 62 cards, and
this, of course, we cannot judge from twelve
surviving trumps; on the whole, it is probable
that the shortening had not yet taken place. But
we can confidently assign set (23) to Bologna,
and conclude that the standard pattern used
there from the seventeenth century to the present
15 D. Hoffmann, op. cit., p, 66, W.L. Schreiber, Dze ilteslen
Spielkarten, Strasbourg, 1937, p. 104, S.R. Kaplan, op. cit.,
pp. 128-9.
403
day was already in existence by the end of the
fifteenth century. It will be recalled that the
single sixteenth-century unnumbered Devil card
by Agnolo Hebreo in the British Museum (no. 27
above) resembles that on the Rothschild sheet,
and is therefore presumably also to be assigned
to Bologna: the change in the design of this card
must have occurred between the mid-sixteenth
and the mid-seventeenth century.
The next in order of difficulty is the
Rosenwald set (no. 22 of Chapter 4). This is
certainly not a Minchiate pack, since it has only
twenty-one trumps. But, although the Swords
are curved, it has several Minehiate
characteristics: Ii) the Cavalla, in all four suits,
are centaurs, like those in Swords and Batons in
the Minchiate pack; (ii) the lowest court Figures
in Cups and Coins are Maids, while those in
Swords and Batons are jacks, and (iii) the Kings
in Swords and Batons wear short tunics, those
in Cups and Coins long robes. It is true that
there is no close relation between the designs for
the trump cards and the corresponding ones of
the Minchiate pack, save for a noticeable
similarity in the case of the Hermit and the
Hanged Man; but the order of the trumps is of
type A, nearly, though not quite, corresponding
to that of the Minchiate trumps when the twenty
additional ones are removed (the positions of
Fortitude and justice, and, apparently, those of
the Chariot and the Wheel, are reversed). It
therefore seems probable that the set represents
an early form of that standard pattern for the
Tarot pack on which the Minchiate designs were
later based, or some closely related pattern. The
Rosenwald sheets are thus very likely to have
been made in Florence (or possibly in some other
city of Tuscany such as Pistoia).'
The type A orders are associated with
Florence (by the Minchiate and Orfeo packs,
and, on the basis of its resemblance to the former,
by the Rosenwald one); with Rome (by the alla
Coloma pack, which was certainly made there,
and also by the Minchiate pack, which was
16 The statutes of Pistoia exempt triumphs and a game called
Za dirirla from the general prohibition on card games (Slatuta
Pixtoriensium lzbrz reptem, Florence, 1579, Lib. V, rubrics LX,
p. 152). Whether the word lrzumphz refers to Tarot or to a
game with the regular pack is unclear. 1579 is very late for the
use of the word in the former sense, but the statute may be
much older than the collection, it is repeated, word for word,
in the Lewes Municzales Pistoriensium nuder mandate serenisyimo
Cosmo IIIMagno Duke, Florence, 1682, p. 210.
404 Part III: Italian Games and Italian Carrlx
popular there, though it originated in Florence);
with Sicily; and of course with Bologna. The
Charles VI and Catarina packs were probably
made in Ferrara, but this does not help us, since
in both cases the numbering was added later,
presumably by an owner of the cards, and we do
not know their early history. The Charles VI
numbering does show, however, that type A
orders go back to the fifteenth century, and the
Rosenwald pack takes us back to the same date
(or possibly a little later, since it could be from
the early years of the sixteenth century). We
know by documentary evidence that Tarot cards
were in use in Bologna in 1459, of course, we do
not know what order was there observed for the
trump cards at that date, but, in view of the
intense conservatism of Bolognese players, it
seems more probable than not that it was already
of type A. Type A thus had an early origin; as
shown by the Alla Coloma and Orfeo packs, it
lasted through the seventeenth century, and
survives, in the Tarocco Bolognese and the
Tarocco Siciliano, down to the present day. The
Sicilian pack provides further evidence that type
A orders were observed in Rome, since it was
probably from Rome that the 78-card pack was
introduced into Sicily in 1663, together with the
Minchiate pack. It may not have been until the
later fifteenth century that the game of Tarot
reached Florence, and it was almost certainly
from there that both Minchiate and the 78-card
game travelled to Rome, probably some time in
the course of the sixteenth century. Florence is
thus likely to have been the place of ultimate
origin of all those type A orders other than that
observed in Bologna (which, as noted, differs
from the others in placing the Chariot below the
Virtues). Although we have no direct evidence to
this effect, it is also probable that some type A
order travelled to Piedmont by at least the
seventeenth century, on no other hypothesis is it
intelligible that, after the reintroduction of the
78-card pack from France, Piedmontese players
should have insisted on treating the Angel as
ranking higher than the World,
We have now to consider the orders of type B.
In the only other set of early popular Tarot cards
in which the trumps are numbered, the sheets at
the Metropolitan Museum (no. 21 in Chapter 4),
the order is of type B. This is the only set of early
Tarot cards that has stylistic affinities to any
surviving regular cards. There are two sheets
(I-1009 and I-1010) in the Cary Collection at Yale
University, evidently for the same pack, no cards
being duplicated on the two sheets. In an article
about them written in 1939,17 Cary illustrated
them, together with other copies from the Magyar
Nemzeti Museum in Budapest, which I have been
told are no longer there, and of which he stated
that duplicates (which I have not seen) were sold
to the Metropolitan Museum in New York
in 1922. By comparison of Cary's sheets and
those at Budapest, it can be seen that
together they made up a complete regular pack of
48 cards (that is to say, without the 10s). The
three sheets of the Metropolitan Museum Tarot
pack include no numeral cards of any of the suits,
but they have three Kings, three Queens, all four
Cavalla and two jacks. The Kings from the two
packs are highly similar, though not identical: in
both they wear short tunics and sit beneath
arches. The Cavalla of Batons (not quite complete
in the Budapest sheet) appears to be identical in
the two packs, a rather curious design in which
the mounted knight holds the open-mouthed
head of some animal. The Cavalla of Coins is
quite different: on the Budapest sheet, the knight
appears to be riding an ostrich, whereas, in the
Metropolitan Museum Tarot pack, he is
mounted more conventionally on a horse, and
holds one coin while another is at his horse's feet.
Not enough of the other two Cavalla on the Cary/
Budapest sheets can be seen to he sure how far
they resemble the Metropolitan Museum ones.
The jack of Cups on the Cary sheet is identical
with that in the Metropolitan Museum Tarot
pack: he is drinking from a cup held in his left
hand, and carries a pipe in his right hand. The
_]acks of Swords in the two packs are, however,
quite unlike: that on the Cary sheet is in the act
of sheathing his sword, while the Metropolitan
Museum one bears his upright.
Other early Italian cards survive having close
affinities with these two packs. In the Benaki
Museum at Athens there is a 3 of Cups identical
with that shown on 1-1010, and therefore
probably from an identical pack, it appears to
have been discovered in Egypt, and hence to be
from an Italian pack exported there during the
MamlUk period." Also in the Cary Collection is
17 Melbert B. Cary, or., 'A stencil sheet of playing cards of
the late 15th century with two related uncut sheets ofeards',
The Prznl C'oZleeZort'QuarZerZy, vol. 26, 1939, pp. 392-423.
lx See M. Dummett, 'A note on some fragments in the
Benaki Nluseum', Art and Archaeology Research Papers (AARP),
no, 4, December 1973, pp. 93-9.
I
 The Order of the Tarot Trumps
another sheet (I-1008), discussed by Cary in his
1939 article, and again with another copy then in
Budapest and with a duplicate in the
Metropolitan Museum. This is not a sheet for the
same pack, the sizes of the cards being different,
and the sword on the Ace of Swords being held
by a lion instead of by a human hand as on
1-1010, but there are close similarities. 1-1008
shows only numeral cards, of Swords and Batons,
and includes 10s of both suits. Finally, there are
four sheets, all for the same pack, in the Fournier
Museum in Vitoria (no. 1 in the Italian section of
the catalogue). Although a few cards are
damaged, they together make up a virtually
complete regular pack, again of only 48 cards.
The Kings are again highly similar both to those
on 1-1009 and to those in the Metropolitan
Museum Tarot pack, without being identical
with either; the jacks and Cavalla bear no
resemblance to those of the other two packs; the
Ace of Swords seems to be identical with that on
1-1010, and those of Batons and Cups highly
similar.
There are two distinctive features on the
numeral cards of Swords and Batons in all these
packs, save for the Metropolitan Museum Tarot
pack, of which, as remarked, no numeral cards
survive. In all three of the other packs, the
Swords, though curved (save for the odd straight
one) and mostly extending the length of the card,
are arranged so as not to intersect, being concave
towards the nearest edge of the card; on the
higher-numbered cards, one or more swords are
often placed horizontally at top or bottom. On
1-1008 and in the Fournier pack, the swords are
encircled by a crown, on 1-1010, they are tied
together by a scarf. In all three packs, the
numeral cards of the Batons suit bear a scroll on
which is written in full the number of the card.
The pack in the Fournier Museum is dated 1462
in the first edition of the catalogue, but this is
presumably due to a misreading of the scroll on
the 2 of Batons, which should probably be read
duobs: on 1-1008 the form used is duo's, and on
1-1009 duos. A safer dating would seem to be 1490-
1510.
The similarities between all four packs,
including the Tarot pack at the Metropolitan
Museum, imply an origin from the same locality,
and the use of identical designs for some of the
cards in different packs must surely indicate that
they all came from the same studio, one
employing a selection of alternative designs for
405
the court cards and Aces. In his article, Cary
proposes Venice as the place of origin of the three
sheets he is discussing. He quotes the Budapest
museum as describing their copies as Venetian,
and cites two authorities on prints, Campbell
Dodgson and Franz Schubert, as concurring with
his attribution of them to Venice; the catalogue
of the Fournier Museum also assigns the pack
there to Venice. The only reason given for this
attribution by any of these writers is, however,
one advanced by Cary himself, namely that the
form diexe used for the word 'ten' on the 10 of
Batons of 1-1008 belongs to the Venetian dialect,
the modern Venetian form, in use at least by the
sixteenth century, being diese. Though linguistic
evidence of this kind is perfectly valid, it would be
pleasant to have a broader basis for the
attribution, especially as some of the linguistic
forms used seem distinctly odd (one cannot in
general expect very accurate spelling from
cardmakersl. In default of any other evidence,
however, we may resonably fall in with the
prevailing opinion, and agree in regarding all
these packs as Venetian, it is very plausible that
the pack exported to Egypt, from which the
Benaki card comes, should have been made in
Venice.
We may thus tentatively assign the
Metropolitan Museum pack, no. (21), to Venice,
and regard it as exemplifying, if not exactly a
standard pattern, at least a general style of Tarot
pack in use there at the end of the fifteenth
century. There is a curiously persistent tradition
in the literature on playing cards of referring to
-/8-card Italian Tarot packs as 'Venetian Tarots',
as distinguished from Bolognese Tarots and
'Florentine Tarots', i.e. Minchiate packs, often
the term 'Venetian Tarots' is applied even to
packs made in or after the eighteenth century
with designs derived from the Tarot de
Marseille." Venice is definitely not among the
places in which the game of Tarot was played
after its reintroduction from France in the
eighteenth century, and there is no clear evidence
19 The latest to follow this tradition is Mr Stuart R.
Kaplan, op. cit. On p. 49, under the heading 'Tarocchi of
Venice', he speaks, rather oddly, of 'the so-called Tarocchi
of Venice or Lombard pack more commonly known as
Piedmontese tarot', and illustrates this type on p. 48 with a
pack in the Fournier Museum made in Gorizia, captioning
it 'Piedmontese or Tarocchi of Venice Cards'. The pack is
no. 12 in the Italian section of the Fournier catalogue, where
it is also described as 'tarocchi de Venecia' and assigned the
406 Part III: Italian Games and Ilalidrz Cards
that it was ever very popular there in the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries, so the tradition of
speaking of 'Venetian Tarots' is a thoroughly
misleading one, in the la{etropolitan Museum
sheets we have the one example of a popular pack
that may plausibly be described as a Venetian
Tarot.
We have now established one tentative
association of the type B orders, namely with
Venice. This is corroborated by the Rouen pack,
which also has the trumps arranged in a type B
order, and has also been associated with
Venice?" There remain the three literary
references. Unfortunately, I know no way of
assigning a geographical origin to the Steele MS.
volume of sermons. Tomaso Garzoni's Piazza
Un iaersa le was published in Venice, but that is not
very significant, since Venice was a great
publishing centre. He himself, though he studied
law at Ferrara and Siena before joining the
Lateran Congregation in 1566, was a native of
Bagnacavallo, near Ravenna, and also died there.
As for the Bertoni zfarocclzi ap/1r0przlatz, they relate
to the ladies of the court of Ferrara. Ferrara was
never within the Venetian dominions, though it
was very close to their border; but the Sola-Busca
tarot/ti, made by a Ferrarese artist but dated
from the foundation of the city of Venice, testify
to a link between the traditions of Tarot play in
the two cities. Ferrara was, of course, one of the
principal centres where the game of Tarot was
played in the early period, and very likely the
birthplace of the game; the Bertoni poem
provides incontrovertible evidence that the type
B order prevailed there. It seems quite possible,
therefore, that the type of design exemplified by
the Metropolitan Museum sheets, which we have
assigned to Venice, was equally characteristic of
Ferrara; indeed, we should keep open the
possibility that those sheets are not from Venice
but from Ferrara. In any case, it seems safe to
assign type B orders to Venice as well as to
date 1650; Kaplan more cautiously says 'circa late 17th to
mid-18th century'. In has inscriptions in French, and
represents that adaptation of the Tarot de Marseille used in
Lombardy, but made in a wide range of areas, different
from the adaptation characteristic of Piedmont, it can
hardly be earlier than 1740.
zo See Pompeo Molmenti, La Scoria do Venetia Della vzla
Privala, vol. II, Bergamo, 1906, p. 525. Francesco Novati, on
p. 19, fn. 1, of the first of his articles cited in footnote 22,
expresses the same opinion. How well founded it is, I am not
sure.
Ferrara, and they probably prevailed in the
whole of Emilia except for the city of
Bologna. On the evidence of the Steele sermon,
type B orders go back to at least about 1470-805
since they are associated with Ferrara, they quite
possibly go back to the original invention of the
Tarot pack. On the evidence of Garzoni's book,
they lasted until at least the late sixteenth
century.
That leaves us with the type C order and the
Cary tarocc/zz sheet, no. (24) of Chapter 4. Susio's
poem, which is our only source for type C orders
in Italy, concerned the ladies of the court of
Pavia.2* This city was in the dominions of both
the Visconti and Sforza dukes of Milan, who
styled themselves Princes of Pavia and for whom
it was a second capital; it contains a great
Visconti castle, begun by Galeazzo II and
completed by Giangaleazzo Visconti, who also
founded the Carthusian monastery near Pavia
and began the building of Pavia's Cathedral, and
was the first to bear the title of Duke of Milan.
We may therefore reasonably assume that it was a
type C order which prevailed not only at Pavia
but at Milan, the second great early centre, after
Ferrara, for the game of Tarot. Now despite the
variations that occurred, all the trump orderings
used by French and Swiss cardmakers were of
type C. If we had no evidence that an order of
this type was ever used in Italy before the
eighteenth century, we should most naturally
infer that it was invented in France or
Switzerland. But, as it is, we are forced to
conclude that either the French or the Swiss, or
both independently, picked it up from Italy. Even
if we did not know of Vievil's pack, the
occurrence in both Susio's trump order and in
the Tarot de Marseille of the intrinsically rather
implausible placing of Temperance between
Death and the Devil would seem unlikely to be a
coincidence. Indeed, this is another case in which
a conjecture made in the original version of this
book received additional confirmation while it
was in proof: for the almost exact agreement
between Viévil's trump order and that given by
21 In my earlier discussion of this subject, 'The Order of
the Tarot Trumps', journal of the Playing-Card Society, vol. II,
no. 3, February 1974, pp. 1-17, no. 4, May 1974, pp. 33-50, I
made the mistake, for which I cannot now account, of
saying that the Susio poem was about the ladies of the court
of Mantua. S.R. Kaplan, op. cit., pp. 30, 373, also cites
Susio's poem, though he gives no reference, and also makes
the same error, possibly mine was the source of his.
 The Order of t/ze Tarot Trumps
Susio, presumably used in Milan in the sixteenth
century, converts a plausible hypothesis into a
certainty. The modification of the Milanese order
which resulted in that used in the Tarot de
Marseille had obviously occurred by the mid-
sixteenth century, without gaining universal
acceptance in France for another hundred years :
whether it originated in France, in Switzerland
or even in Milan it is hard to judge.
If the French and Swiss did pick up the type C
order in Italy, by far the likeliest place for them
to have done so is Milan. Charles VIII of France
invaded Italy in 1494, originally on the invitation
of Lodovico Sforza (it Moro), Duke of Milan.
Louis XII, the grandson of Valentina Visconti,
claimed Milan by right of succession, and
launched a second invasion in 1499, the city was
then under French rule until 1512, when Louis
was defeated at Novara by an alliance which
included the Swiss. Up to 1515, when Francis I
secured their exclusive services, Swiss
mercenaries played a prominent role in these
wars; and from 1512 to 1515, Duke Massimiliano
Sforza was maintained in power by Swiss arms.
In 1515 the French, under Francis I, again
invaded Italy, defeated the Swiss at Marignano,
and once more occupied Milan until 1522.
Especially during the reign of Francis I (1515-
1547), there was a great vogue in France,
centring upon Lyons, for Italian culture. The
period of the French incursions into Italy, from
1494 to 1525, may therefore well have been the
time when the game of Tarot first entered
France. It may have reached Switzerland
independently in the same period, for, as we saw
in Chapter 10, certain details of Swiss Tarot play
suggest a direct derivation of the game from
Italy. If this is true, of France alone or of both
France and Switzerland, it must surely have been
a Milanese style of Tarot game, and a Milanese
version of the Tarot pack, that were adopted;
with them would naturally go the order of the
trumps observed in Milan. If the game of triumph/ze
played by Duke René II of Lorraine in 1496 were
truly one played with the Tarot pack, his
knowledge of the game may have been due to his
contact with the Swiss, with whose help he had
achieved his great victory in 1477 outside the
walls of Nancy against Charles the Bold, Duke of
Burgundy, who was killed in the battle. Even if
this is so, the adoption in the sixteenth century of
the French version tarots of the new term larocc/1I
argues a continued contact with Italy in the
407
domain of card play as in other spheres.
On this theory, then, a type C trump order,
and, specifically, that given by Susio, was in use
in Milan; and it was from Milan that the French,
and probably the Swiss, First learned the game of
Tarot. They must, therefore, originally have used
whatever type of design was standard in Milan:
but we cannot immediately deduce what this
was, since, as we saw in Chapter 9, there were
two distinct traditions of design for the Tarot
pack in the French-speaking lands, one culmin-
ating in the Belgian Tarot and the other in the
Tarot de Marseille. We have, however, still
to determine the geographical origin of the
sheet in the Cary collection (no. 24). After
what has gone before, this affords us very
little difficulty, because of the close resemblance
of certain of the cards, despite their lack of
numerals or other inscriptions, to those of
the Tarot de Marseille. Specifically, the Sun
(of which the left-hand part is missing) is, so
far as can be seen, exactly like its Tarot de
Marseille counterpart; a small naked boy is to be
seen at the bottom of the card, the sun has a face
and rays and sheds the characteristic Tarot de
Marseille droplets. The Chariot, incomplete at
the top, is likewise, so far as can be seen, exactly
like that of the Tarot de Marseille. The Moon
resembles the Tarot de Marseille one, save that
there are no dogs, and the buildings are much
smaller: there is the same pool with a lobster or
crab in it in the foreground. The Tower again has
a close similarity to the Tarot de Marseille
Maixorz Dieu: round thunderbolts are falling
about a round, bricked tower, though no
lightning is apparent. The Star resembles the
Tarot de Marseille one in general conception,
though not in detail: a very large star,
surrounded by four smaller ones, shines on a
naked girl pouring water into a stream. The
Emperor has the same general pose and
appearance as in the Tarot de Marseille, though
the positions of his shield and sceptre are
different. The Bagatto has the same posture as
the Tarot de Marseille one, though he does not
face in the same direction, and his hat and table
are differently shaped. The Love card, of which
only the lower half survives, is particularly
interesting. Only two figures can be seen,
corresponding perhaps to the left-hand and
central figures of the Tarot de Marseille card:
but they are highly reminiscent of the couple on
the corresponding card in the Visconti di
408 Part III: Italian Games and Italian Cards
Modrone pack (no. 1 in Chapter 4). The Wheel
of Fortune, another card whose top half is
missing, has the same orientation, and the same
handle, as in the Tarot de Marseille, and the
Empress, though again with shield and sceptre
reversed, has the same chair-back that, on several
cards, keeps threatening, in Tarot de Marseille
derivatives, to turn into a pair of wings. Not
much can be seen of the Fool, save that, as in the
Tarot de Marseille, he is striding off to the right,
a staff over his shoulder; no dog is to be seen,
however. The two suit cards, the 7 and 8 (or 9) of
Batons, are exactly like those of the Tarot de
Marseille, save for the lack of inscribed
numerals; the Batons have just the same flat
appearance, with widened ends, found both in
the Tarot de Marseille and in Viévil's pack.
Other cards, however, have little or no similarity
to their Tarot de Marseille counterparts:
Temperance, the Devil, Fortitude and the Popess
(on this sheet, a Bishopess), of the Pope, not
enough can be seen to be sure.
These resemblances cannot possibly be
coincidence: it is evident that the French
cardmakers borrowed these designs, which thus
became ancestral to the Tarot de Marseille
pattern. It follows that the origin of the Tarot de
Marseille goes right back to the First introduction
of the Tarot pack into France, and perhaps also
into Switzerland, around the beginning of the
sixteenth century. It also follows that we can
Firmly identify the Cary sheet as being from
Milan, and hence as exemplifying the standard
pattern employed in the late fifteenth or early
sixteenth century for popular Tarot packs in the
city from which came the finest of the early hand-
painted cards; that city where, as we have
argued, the French and probably also the Swiss
first encountered the game of Tarot and took it
back with them to their home countries. This
hypothesis fits well with the fact that the trumps
on the Cary sheet are unnumbered. It was stated
earlier that, of all the literary references, only the
Steele sermon assigns numbers to the trumps,
but this was not strictly accurate: the lines of the
Susio poem are also numbered, but in the reverse
order, the World being numbered 1, the Angel 2
and so on. This is the most explicit testimony
possible to the fact that the trumps of the pack in
which this type C order was used were not
numbered: if they had been, it is inconceivable
that the poem could have given the numbering in
the reverse order. In whichever form of pack
the ordering of the trumps given by Susio was
employed, the players accustomed to play with it
must have had to memorise the trump sequence,
just as the Bolognese ones had to do. Because of
the affinities which both the trump order and the
designs of the Cary sheet have to the cards used
in France, it is highly probable that the kind of
pack for which the type C order was used was
that of which the Cary sheet is an instance.
These conclusions are corroborated by the set
of six Tarot cards (no. 29 above) found at the
Castello Sforzesco in Milan during the
restoration work of 1908, and by others found
there at the same time, again, these were not
known to me in detail until this book was in
proof, and provided strong confirmation of the
hypotheses set out above concerning Milan. The
cards found at the Castello were cursorily
described by Francesco Novati in two articles of
1908.22 His darings tend to be uniformly too
early. He considered all the cards to date from
the fifteenth, sixteenth or seventeenth century,
whereas some demonstrably exemplify the
eighteenth-century Lombard variation on the
Tarot de Marseille. One such example is a set of
five cards (Cavallo of Swords, torn at the bottom,
5 and 7 of Coins, and 6 and 8 of Swords, the last
four all having Roman numerals at the sides)
made by the cardmaker who used the trade-
name 'Al Soldato' and operated in Bologna
during the eighteenth century. Another is a
Cavallo of Batons, bearing a legible French
inscription at the bottom. There is also a set of
three cards, which appear to have been trimmed
at top and bottom, and are probably from a
French Tarot de Marseille pack of the
Revolutionary period: they consist of the Sun,
numbered XVIIH, the lower inscription having
been trimmed off, the Cavalier of Cups, of which
the same is true, and the 4 of Swords, with
Roman numerals at the sides. There are also a 10
of Coins, with the trade-name 'Al Leone' on the
back, and a 5 of Cups, with the trade-name 'Al
Mondo'; both these names signify other
Bolognese cardmakers of the eighteenth century.
However, besides the set of six zfarocchi
classified as no. (29) above, there are also other
22 Francesco Novas, 'Carte do giuoco dei secoli XV, XVI
e XVII rinvenute net Castello Sforzesco', Bullettino dei oivici
muse arlistico ed arc/zeologico do Milano, anno III, num. 3, 1908,
pp. 17-20, and 'Per la storia delle carte do giuoco in Italia:
appunii', I! Libro e Za Slampa, anno II (n.s.), 1908, pp. 54-695
see pp. 65ff.
 The Order of the Tarot Trumps
cards evidently dating from before the eighteenth
century, none of which we have any reason to
regard as being from a Tarot pack. just as in
Bologna the same standard pattern was used for
the regular Primiera pack and for the suit cards
of the Tarocco pack, so the same may well have
been true in Milan. Qne of these earlier cards is a
5 of Batons, exhibiting the usual flat shape, with
widened ends, of Tarot de Marseille Batons, but
without numerals, but only floral decoration, at
the sides. Another is a much damaged Cavallo
(of Swords?), not coinciding in design with any
known standard Tarot pattern. This may come
from the same pack as the 5 of Batons, but from
both the back design has peeled off; they may be
of the sixteenth or seventeenth century. A set of
nineteen cards, some very fragmentary, all of the
same size (102 x 69 mm.) and presumably by the
same maker, though not from the same pack, is
assigned by Novati to sixteenth-century Venice.
The back of each card depicts a classical deity,
whose name is inscribed on a scroll; nine
different deities appear on different cards, Each
back design is surrounded by a wide border with
lozenge-shaped dots, which fold over to form a
border for the face of the card." Of these,
fourteen are numeral cards, of all four suits, in
every case, they tally precisely in design with the
corresponding cards of the Tarot de Marseille,
save that they lack Roman numerals at the sides.
The remaining Five, all fragmentary, are court
cards. They are: the top half of a King (of
Batons?), the back showing SATURNO; the top
half of aback (of Coins?) and the bottom half of a
.Jack (of Cups?), both backs showing
PROSERPINA; and the top half of a Cavallo of
Cups and the bottom half of aback of uncertain
suit, both backs showing IOVE. These court
cards do not show the same close correspondence
with Tarot de Marseille designs. In particular,
the Cavallo of Cups holds in his left hand a Cup
shaped like that on the Tarot de Marseillejaek of
that suit, instead of the Spanish-style Cup held in
the right hand of the Cavalier in the Tarot de
Marseille; while the King, who is bearded, holds,
with his left hand, a Baton (or sceptre) over his
left shoulder. Nevertheless, the jack of which we
have the top half wears the celebrated wide-
brimmed hat found in the Tarot de Marseille on
23 Compare the backs of seventeenth-century Italian cards
from the Correr Museum, Venice, shown by Hoffmann, op.
cit., as plate 7b.
409
the _lacks of Coins and Swords and the Cavalier
of Batons; and the King likewise wears the same
hat surmounted by a crown, as do all four Kings
in the Tarot de Marseille. These nineteen cards,
from nine distinct packs, could be either of the
sixteenth or of the seventeenth century. There
seems no reason, however, to regard them as
Venetian rather than Milanese, Swords and
Batons on the numeral cards of the Venetian
standard pattern, and on older cards assignable
to Venice, have a different shape from those
found here.
One of the oldest cards found at the Castello is
a King of Cups of which, again, the top half is
missing. The posture of the King resembles that
of the King of Coins in the supposedly Spanish
fifteenth-century pack which, in Chapter 2, we
tentatively assigned to Naples, and, more
generally, of several early German Kings; it may
be of the early sixteenth or even of the fifteenth
century. The most interesting of all the cards
found at the Castello is a 2 of Coins which bears
the scroll in the shape of an inverted S which, in
Chapter 9, we noted as always occurring
(sometimes not inverted) in Tarot de Marseille
packs, and also in the pack ofjacques Viévil. As
on the French cards, the scroll is inscribed with
the maker's name and the date; the inscription
reads PAVLINVS [DE] CASTELETO FECIT
1499. Novati cites documentary evidence of the
presence in Milan in 1508 and 1513 of a
cardmaker by the name of Paolino di Castelletto.
There is no reason to regard Paolino's 2 of Coins,
any more than the other cards just discussed, as
having belonged to a Tarot pack: it nevertheless
provides good evidence that a distinctive feature
of French and Swiss Tarot card design was
borrowed from Milan. The S-shaped feature is
found to this day on the 2 of Coins in certain
standard patterns for the Italian-suited regular
pack, the Primiera Bolognese and Brescia
patterns; in these however, it no longer has the
character of a scroll; and does not bear the
maker's name.
We have no pre-eighteenth-century Milanese
example of the 2 of Cups, which is so distinctive
of French Tarot packs, including Viévil's and de
Hautot's as well as the Tarot de Marseille. But
the curious and prominent feature of the two
dragon-heads on the French versions of the card
provide a particular reason for considering the
design to have been derived from some very early
prototype. As first remarked by M r J a n
 410 Part III: Ila liafz Games and Italian Cards
Bauwens, these dragon-heads have an
extraordinary similarity to the dragon-heads in
which certain of the suit-signs terminate on some
cards of the Polo-Sticks suit in the Istanbul
MamlUk pack.2'* It looks as if we had here a
detail, faithfully copied for centuries, that had
originally been borrowed from Islamic cards; if
so, the design of at least that particular card must
go back to a period when Islamic cards were
familiar to European players or cardmakers.
This, too, Hts very well with our conclusion that
the designs on which the Tarot de Marseille was
based were ones used in Milan, the birthplace of
that Valentina Visconti whose inventory, upon
her death in 1408, had listed ung juju de quarter
sarraxines along with one; quarter de Lombardze.25
Qne's first impression, looking at the various
cards found at the Castello Sforzesco together, is
of their uniformity of style. It would be a great
mistake to suspect them for this reason of all
dating from after 1700. The 2 of Coins by Paolino
proves incontrovertibly that some are much older
than that; and there is a clear criterion of
"Jan Bauwens, Mulzik we Nuwwéb, Aurelia Books,
Leuven (Louvain), 1972, booklet issued with a reproduction
of the Istanbul MamlUk pack, pp. 36-7, figs. 8-11. (It should
be noted that the reproduction pack is not a faithful copy of
the original, but involves a good deal of'reconstruction', to a
large extent unsound: see the review by me in the journal of
the Playing-Card Society, vol, II, no. 2, November 1973, pp. 15-
26. This does not, of course, affect the present point, which
is a very interesting one)
25 F.M. Graves, Deus Zrwentairef de la Mazson d'Or!éan§, Paris,
1926, pp. 49, 134, see Chapter 3. Un p. 84 it was strongly
argued that the references to tripp/ze of 1482 and 1496 must
relate to Tarot games. Such a hypothesis would contradict
the idea that Tarot first entered France during the French
occupation of Milan, since, as explained in footnote Z to
Chapter 9, the 1482 reference must concern a game played in
France proper. But there is no difficulty in supposing the
game to have spread to different parts of France at different
times and by different routes; possibly it was the non-
Milanese ancestor of the Paris/Rouen pattern that was the
earlier arrival, and would have been used in 1482. If the game
of 1482 was that played with the regular pack, the only
reasonable hypothesis is that it also had an Italian origin, in
which case an Italian game, involving trumps but played
with the regular pack and known as hionj, must have been in
existence well before the end of the fifteenth century, and
even longer before the earliest recorded use, in 1516, of the
term taforchz if so, the reference to Mumps cited by \V.I,.
Schreiber from the statutes of Bergamo, Brescia, Salo and
Reggio nell'Emilia may not have been to Tarot games. On
balance, this does not seem to me very likely, but without
doubt the 1482 reference generates perplexity. An
examination of the document at the Archives Nationales
might yield further clues.
distinction between post- and pre-eighteenth-
century cards, the presence or absence of
numerals on the numeral cards of the suits, and
of names on the trumps and court cards. By this
criterion, the set of six tarocc/zi is to be assigned to
the earlier category, probably to the seventeenth
century. What the cards found at the Castello
together demonstrate is the absolute constancy of
the Milanese designs for the numeral cards of the
Italian-suited pack, and the equal constancy of
the same designs as borrowed by the French
cardmakers and employed in the Tarot de
Marseille. If you ignore the inscription on
Paolino's 2 of Coins, you might think that you
were looking at an eighteenth-century card made
in Marseilles. In the same way, apart from the
absence of the Roman numerals at the sides, the
numeral cards from the set of six Zarocc/zz, those
with classical deities on the backs, and the odd 5
of Batons are virtually indistinguishable from the
eighteenth-century Lombard pattern. This may,
at first sight, raise a doubt whether our original
hypothesis, stated in Chapter 8, was after all
correct, namely that the Lombard variant on the
Tarot de Marseille signalised the reintroduction
of the game of Tarot into Lombardy after a
period in which it had been defunct there.
Perhaps, we may now think, the Lombard
pattern was a direct continuation of the standard
pattern always used in Lombardy for Tarot
cards, and for Italian-suited ones generally, and
represented no more radical a change than a new
vogue for putting names on the trump and court
cards and numerals on the numeral cards. But
reflection shows that we have no reason to doubt
our original hypothesis. Whether that hypothesis
is sound or unsound, the cards found at the
Castillo prove conclusively that the Tarot de
Marseille designs for the numeral cards had
faithfully preserved the Milanese prototypes on
which they must have been modelled in the early
sixteenth century, and that these same designs
remained unchanged in Milan itself. Given this, a
close resemblance between those made in pre-
eighteenth-century Milan and those of the later
Lombard pattern is precisely what we should
expect, even if our hypothesis is true, that we Find
just such a resemblance is therefore no argument
against that hypothesis. Our original ground for
the hypothesis remains as suasive as ever,
namely that, if inscriptions had been added to an
existing pattern for a pack used to play a living
game, they would have been in Italian, the fact
 The Order of the Tarot Trumps
that, for several decades, they remained in
French clearly indicates that the Tarot de
Marseille designs were being introduced from
France, and that can have happened only if the
indigenous tradition had, however little time
before, died out. What the Cary sheet and the
Castello Sforzesco cards make clear is that, in
adopting a form of pack derived from the Tarot
de Marseille, the players of tarocclzi in Lombardy
were welcoming home a descendant of the type of
pack with which their ancestors had played, and
a close relative of that used by their fathers.
How close a relative? The World card in the
Castello Sforzesco set suggests that, as on the
Cary sheet, the trump cards were without
(visible) numerals, just as were those of the
Tarocco Bolognese at that date; but the
conclusion is uncertain, since there could have
been numerals on all the trumps except the
highest, as in the Metropolitan Museum pack. In
any case, it is a presumption, though not a
certainty, that the trump order was as given by
Susio rather than as in the Tarot de Marseille.
Indeed, were it not for the Cary sheet, we might
suspect Viévil's pack, rather than the Tarot de
Marseille, to preserve the Milanese tradition of
design; for it will be recalled that Viévil's World
resembles that of the Tarot de Marseille, and
hence also the Castello Sforzesco card, much
more closely than it does that of de Hautot or of
the Belgian Tarot. The few pre-eighteenth-
century court cards from the Castello Sforzesco
show that the Milanese designs of the time were
far from wholly identical with those of the Tarot
de Marseille. The French cardmakers introduced
Batons of Spanish type for the Cavalier and jack
of that suit, and a straight-sided Cup of Spanish
type for the Jack of Cups. Probably they
departed in many other respects as well from the
Milanese prototypes, and the same may easily be
true for the trump cards. But, at the same time,
the wide-brimmed hats found in two of the court
cards of the classical deities set corroborate our
general conclusion that the Tarot de Marseille
was of Milanese origin.
We have, then, a surprising result: the Tarot
pack entered France with a pattern of design
ancestral to the Tarot de Marseille but with a
trump order almost identical with that of Viévil's
pack. Viévil's trump order was thus not, in the
first place at least, especially associated with the
Paris/Rouen standard pattern. Rather, it must
have been a survival from an earlier epoch:
411
perhaps the modified order which is found in
Geoffroy's pack of 1557, in the anonymous
Parisian pack and in the Tarot de Marseille
existed alongside the original Milanese one for a
considerable time. What, then, can have been the
origin of the Paris/Rouen pattern which finished
its career as the Tarot pattern proper to
Belgium? It has certain particular affinities with
Italian Tarot cards. The man with the compasses
found on the Star appears on the Moon card in
the Minchiate pack and the Tarocco Bolognese,
and also in the hand-painted 'Charles VI' set
(no. 4 in Chapter 4); and the woman with the
distaff on the Moon card appears in the Tarocco
Bolognese and the 'Charles VI' set on the Sun.
There is also a resemblance between the World
in de Hautot's pack and in the Belgian Tarot and
the World in both the Minchiate pack and the
Tarocco Bolognese, and also in the 'Charles VI'
set and the Catania set (no. 7 in Chapter 4). We
cannot be sure how significant this last point of
affinity may be, since the Rouen and Belgian
World seems to have been copied from the
anonymous Parisian pack, Viévil's version being
quite different. It is unlikely that any French or
Belgian cardmaker would know anything about
Florentine, Bolognese or Ferrarese cards. The
likeliest hypothesis seems to be as follows. It has
been argued that a Tarot pack with a type A
order for the trumps, such as prevailed in
Bologna and Florence, must, before the
eighteenth century, have been in use in
Piedmont. The game presumably spread there
from somewhere like Bologna, Florence or Rome,
just as the game of Minchiate had by the
seventeenth century spread from Florence to
Genoa. The designs for this former Piedmontese
pack may, then, have become the original of the
Paris/Rouen pattern; they could easily have
passed via Savoy into France, existing French
tradition being too strong to allow this type of
Tarot pack to retain its type A trump order.
(Possibly the employment of a shortened 62-card
pack at Chambéry points to Bologna as the most
likely place of origin.) On this hypothesis,
therefore, the ancestor of the Belgian Tarot was
this lost Piedmontese pattern. A small piece of
evidence in its favour is the preservation in Savoy
into the 1900s of the form Baba employed by
Viévil to name the trump I.
The Playing-Card Society is engaged upon a
definitive classification of all standard patterns
that can be indubitably recognised as such, and
 412 Part III: Italian Games and Italian Cards
for this purpose assigns numbers to each pattern:
thus the Tarot de Marseille is IT-1, the Tarocco
Bolognese IT-2 and the Belgian Tarot IT-3, the
letter I indicating an Italian-suited pattern and
the letter T a Tarot pack.26 Numbers with more
than one digit indicate derivatives from the
pattern whose number is found by deleting the
last digit: thus the Tarot de Besancon, regarded
as a modification of the Tarot de Marseille, is IT-
1~4, and the romanticised nineteenth-century
version, still used in Switzerland, that is its only
modern descendant is IT-1-41. The Tarot de
Marseille has lasted down to the present day,
though now mostly used for fortune-telling. The
Tarot de Besancon, which was used, though not
of course exclusively, almost everywhere in
Europe except Belgium and Italy, died out, save
for the IT-1 ~41 form, in the nineteenth century."
Of the Italian derivatives from the Tarot de
Marseille, the earliest form of the Tarocco
Piemontese receives the number IT-1~2. It was
subsequently modified, making it less precisely
similar to the Tarot de Marseille, and replacing
the French inscriptions by Italian ones, this
second stage is labeled IT-1~21. A further
modification resulted in the double-headed
version of the Tarocco Piemontese used today,
labeled IT-l»2ll. The Lombard pattern,
whether with French or Italian inscriptions, is
designated IT-1~1. In the early nineteenth
century it was replaced by a romanticised
version, sufficiently different to merit a distinct
numeral after the decimal point, and thus
designated IT-1~3, subsequently succeeded by a
slightly modified double-headed version, IT-
1-31. The IT-1-31 tradition, sometimes
inaccurately called the Tarocchino Milanese, in
its turn died out, leaving the modern Tarocco
Piemontese, IT-2-11, as the sole form of 78-card
pack now used in Italy. (The term tarocc/zino has
ze The Society issues a four-page sheet for each standard
pattern, illustrating characteristic cards, giving its history
and listing prominent makers past and present.
27 The Playing-Card Society sheet on IT-1.4 says that,
although 'it was not until about 1800 that any quantity of
these cards were made in Besancon, the pattern can
barely have survived the early part of the 19th century,
being replaced in most areas by the French-suited Tarot
packs', This latter remark is certainly true of Germany and
the Austrian Empire; but, as reported in Chapter 15, a
booklet on the game first published in Besancon in 1880 still
describes it as played with an Italian-suited pack, so the
Tarot de Besangon probably survived in Besancon itself
until the end of the century or later,
been applied to IT-13 because of the small size
of the cards; properly it should relate only to a
reduced number of cards in the pack.
What, then, of the subsequent history of our
conjectural four early Italian standard patterns 2
The Bolognese one presents no problems. We
know the stages through which it went: the
replacement of the old design for the Devil by a
new one, say around 1600, the substitution of the
lVIoors for the Papa in 17255 the introduction of
numerals on the trumps and the change to a
double-headed form in the later eighteenth
century. The Metropolitan Museum pattern,
which we have taken to characterise Venice and
perhaps Ferrara, has a single possible surviving
later exemplar, the isolated Love card in the
Museo Nazionale delle Arti e Tradizioni
Poplari in Rome (no. 28 above). The design is
more complex than that of the corresponding
card on the Metropolitan Museum sheet, of
which only the top half remains. The latter shows
only a Cupid in the air aiming his how, with a
man below on the left and a girl on the right. The
later card has an additional Putto in the air, and,
below, an embracing couple on the left and, in
front of them, two musicians, one in a feathered
hat playing a viol da gamba and the other
playing a lute. This could, however, be seen as a
development of the earlier design: what makes it
probable that it represents a descendant of the
same pattern, or comes at least from a pack with
a type B order, is its being numbered VIII, like
the lYletropolitan Museum card (as it would
presumably also have been numbered in the
Rouen pack and in any with the Garzoni/Bertoni
version of the type B order). The Museo
Nazionale card is cited by the anonymous editors
of Antztlze Carte de Tarocc/zz as Venetian, of the late
sixteenth century; it may be as late as the
seventeenth century. By Garzoni°s testimony, the
type B order was still known in the 15805. It
seems likely, however, that the game of Tarot
suffered a general loss of popularity, in Venice
and Ferrara, during the sixteenth century. The
verse diatribe by Lollio, a Ferrarese author
whose poem was published in a collection
printed in Venice, was obviously less than half
serious, like Berni's earlier derisory remarks, but
it evidently indicates a decline in the esteem with
which the game was regarded in the mid-
sixteenth century. Probably we shall not be far
wrong if we see the Venice/Ferrara pattern, and,
with it, the type B order, as having died out not
4 The Order of the Tarot Trumps
I long after 1600.
From the set no. (29) of tarocchz found at the
Castello Sforzesco, it seems likely that the
Milanese pattern, of which the Cary sheet is the
I earliest example, survived into the seventeenth
I century, although the dating of that set is far
from certain. The reintroduction in about 1740 of
the 78-card pack in its IT-1 -1 form represented a
revival of an ancient tradition; but it is difficult to
guess how long the interval had been during
which Tarocco had no longer been played. As for
the ancient Piedmontese pattern whose
existence, as the ancestor of the Paris/Rouen
pattern, we have conjectured, that can hardly
have died out much more than thirty years before
the introduction of IT-12, if there were to be
players who still remembered that the Angelo
used to be superior to the Monde.
The Florentine pattern represented by the
Rosenwald sheets had, by contrast, a very
eventful history. At some time before the
invention of the Minchiate pack in the first half
of the sixteenth century, the pattern must have
assumed a partly Portuguese type of suit-system,
by changing the shape of the Swords from curved
to straight. It is, presumably, this type of 78-card
pack that is represented in seventeenth-century
Florence by the Orfeo packs. Save for the
Marchese di Villabianca, there is no known
literary reference alluding to any type of Tarot
game other than Minchiate played in Florence or
in Rome during the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. Yet the Orfeo and alla Coloma packs
testify to the continued existence in both cities of
the 78-card pack. On Villabianca's testimony,
the 78-card pack was introduced into Sicily by
the Viceroy in 1663. Since the Minchiate pack
was, according to him, introduced at the same
time, it must have been in Florence or in Rome
that the Viceroy had become acquainted with
these games, and he is much more likely to have
visited Rome than Florence. This is confirmed by
the fact that the 78-card pack introduced into
Sicily must have had a type A order, and,
moreover, as we have seen, probably had
'Portuguese' suit-signs. From the alla Coloma
pack, it is apparent that in Rome the Florentine
type of Tarot pack had evolved into one using a
fully-fledged 'Portuguese' suit-system, and it
must have been a pack of this kind which was
ancestral to the Tarocco Siciliano. We know, in
broad outline, the later history of the Tarot pack
in Sicily. The Minchiate pack died out in Sicily
413
during the eighteenth century, but continued to
flourish in Florence until almost the end of the
nineteenth, and, in Genoa, until the 1930s. As for
the Portuguese or Italo-Portuguese versions of
the 78-card pack, descended from the Florentine
pattern, and used in Rome and Florence, we must
suppose them to have become obsolete some time
in the second half of the seventeenth century.
Though we have been forced to rely on a good
deal of conjecture, we have been able with its
help to reconstruct in outline the entire history of
the Latin-suited Tarot pack, which can be
illustrated by a diagram. For this diagram, the
Playing-Card Society numbers for standard
patterns have been supplemented by some
additional ones. A zero after the decimal point
may be used to indicate an ancestor of a single-
digit pattern: thus the postulated Milanese
pattern represented by the Cary sheet, ancestral
to the Tarot de Marseille, is designated IT-1~0.
The original and the later Minchiate patterns
are designated IPT-1 and IPT-1 -1 respectively in
the P.-C.S. system, the letters IP, which refer to the
suit-system, standing for 'Italo-Portuguese', while
IPT-2 is used for the early version of the Taroeco
SicilianO, IPT-2~1 representing the later form
(from the Fortuna pack down to Modiano). It
seems better to alter these numbers so as to be
able to indicate the relationship with patterns for
78-card packs. Thus the Orfeo packs may be
designated IPT-5, the Florentine pattern
represented by the Rosenwald sheets IT-5-0, and
the Minchiate patterns redesignated IPM-5 and
IPM-5 . 1 . It seems better to indicate a fully-fledged
Portuguese pattern by the single letter P: if the
two stages of the Taroeco Siciliano are then
redesignated PT-6 and PT-6-1, we can use
PT-6-0 for the Alla Coloma pattern. The
Rothschild/Beaux Arts sheets agree with later
Tarocco Bolognese designs closely enough to
justify the use for them of the straight designation
IT-2, while the Venetian pattern represented by
the Metropolitan Museum sheets can be called
IT-4. The pack made by de Hautot in Rouen
obviously exemplifies just the same pattern as the
later Belgian Tarot, IT-3 in the P.-C.S.
numbering, although Viévil's pack has many
differences, in particular having a different trump
order and including the Pope and Popess, we may
use the same number for it, keeping IT-3»0 for the
conjectural Piedmontese ancestor of this pattern.
We thus arrive at the following code, where an
asterisk denotes a number not used by the
P.-C.S.:
414 Part III: Italian Games and Italian Cards
IT-1~0* : Milanese pattern (Cary sheet and Castello
. Sforzesco set)
IT-1 : Tarot de Marseille
IT_1,1 : Lombard version of the Tarot de
Marseille
IT-1-2 Taroceo Piemontese (early form)
1T-121 : Tarocco Piemontese (intermediate
form)
IT-l 211: Taroeco Piemontese (modern double-
headed form)
IT-1 3 : romanticised Milanese version ofIT-1 1
IT-1 -31 : double-headed version ofIT-1 -3
IT-1 4 : Tarot de Besangon
IT-1 41 : romanticised Swiss version ofIT-1 ~4
IT-2 . Tarocco Bolognese
IT-30* 1 conjectural early Piedmontese pattern
IT-3 : Paris/Rouen pattern and Belgian Tarot
IT-4* . Venetian/Ferrarese pattern (Metro-
politan Museum sheets)
IT-5~0* early Florentine pattern (Rosenwald
sheets)
IPT-5* 1 later Florentine pattern (Orfeo packs)
IPM-5* original Minchiate pattern (P.-C.S.
number IPT-1 )
IPM-5-1* later la/Iinchiate pattern (P.-CS. number
IPT-1 - 1)
PT-6~0*: Roman pattern (alla Coloma sheets)
PT-6* Taroeco Siciliano, early form (P.-C. S.
number IPT-2)
PT-61* : Tarocco Siciliano, later form (P.-C. S.
number IPT-2~ l )
The diagram is principally concerned to show
where the different patterns were used, rather
than where they were made; thus, although
Bologna cardmakers produced both Minchiate
cards and Lombard pattern packs, neither is
shown under Bologna because neither was used
there. A solid line indicates that cards of the
given type and made in or for the given area
survive to us from the given period, a short line
indicates a single surviving set, a longer one
the existence of packs sufficiently close in date
to warrant a presumption of continuous
manufacture and employment. In some cases, of
course, the dates are only approximate. A dotted
line indicates the conjectural use of the given type
of Tarot pack, the grounds for such conjectures
vary in strength, and have been set out in this
chapter. Where a given pattern has travelled
from one area to another, this is indicated by a
nearly horizontal line with an arrow; where one
pattern has developed out of an earlier one which
then continued to co-exist with it, this has been
shown by a nearly horizontal line without an
arrow, whether the new pattern was used in the
same area or another, where a pattern was
replaced by a new one that had developed from
it, this is shown by a small horizontal bar across
the vertical line. French-suited Tarot patterns
are not shown. The part of the diagram from
1700 on is not open to doubt; that before 1700 is
highly conjectural. Further research may yield a
different picture. The diagram will be found on
the end-papers.
It may be asked which of the trump orders was
the original one, that which was intended when
the Tarot pack was first devised. If we knew
nothing about the geographical associations of
the different orders, it would be natural to guess
that a type A order was the original one, for
several reasons. First, it seems more intelligible
that the Angel, which undoubtedly represents
the Last judgment, should be placed at the end
of the sequence than in the penultimate or ante-
penultimate position. Secondly, save for the
association of justice with the judgment, it seems
difficult to discern any appropriateness in the
scattering of the Virtues through the sequence in
orders of types B and C. And thirdly, if a type A
order were the original one, it would be possible
to explain the invention of types B and C as
devices for bringing the Death card to position 13
once the practice of numbering the trump cards
had been introduced. The evidence of
geographical association shows this guess
unlikely to be right. Of the two possible
claimants for the birthplace of the Tarot pack,
Ferrara certainly observed a type B order and
Milan very probably a type C order,
furthermore, we saw that it is likely that, in Italy,
the trumps in packs with a type C order were not
numbered, so that we cannot explain the genesis
of this order in the way suggested. In the present
state of knowledge, the question concerning the
priority of the three types of order does not seem
to be a fruitful one. What the variations do
strongly suggest is that there was never any very
great symbolic significance in the precise order in
which the trump subjects were arranged. It will
be recalled that the Visconti di Modrone pack,
the earliest that has survived to us, differed from
all later ones in having six court cards, and thus
sixteen cards altogether, in each suit, and also in
containing Faith, Hope and Charity, as well as
Fortitude, among its trump cards, and therefore,
probably, all seven Virtues. It was suggested in
Chapter 4 that it may have had as many as
 The Order of the Taro! Trumps
twenty-four trumps, the constant factor being the
3:2 ratio of trumps to cards per suit. There is, of
course, no way of being sure of its exact
composition. It is possible that the Visconti di
no drone pack was no more than a freak, and
that what was later the standard composition of
the Tarot pack was standard from the time of its
first invention. But it is also possible that the
Visconti di lVlodrone pack represents the original
form of the Tarot pack, and that the 78-card pack
as we know it is the result of a modification
adopted early in its history. If so, the standard set
of twenty-one trumps must itself be the slightly
mutilated remnant of the original, and possibly
larger, set. In that case, we could not expect any
ordering of the trumps in the standard set to
make perfect sense, even if there was any
particular symbolic intention underlying the
original sequence of Tarot trumps, which there
may not have been, we could expect fully to
understand it only if we knew which subjects the
original set contained and in what order they
were arranged. It is unlikely that we ever shall.
This chapter has attempted a reconstruction,
no doubt to be improved as further evidence is
uncovered, of the history of the Latin-suited
Tarot pack. Despite two centuries of research on
playing cards, it was only very recently that this
history began to be investigated. Until then,
writers on playing cards were content to rely on a
standard traditional account, amounting only to
a static classification into types (Tarocchino,
la/Iinchiate, etc.), as if these had all come into
existence on the eighth day of creation; among
such types, the so-called Venetian Tarocchi
formed a mere ragbag comprising all 78-card
Italian Tarot packs. The reason for this failure
has been the lack of any clear concept of standard
patterns: without this theoretical tool, a historian
cannot set aside luxury packs and other
obviously non-standard ones, and hence can
make only the crudest distinctions within the
heterogeneity of the data that then confront him.
As in other areas of the subject, such as
Portuguese-suited cards, the first steps towards
an analysis of the evolution of Latin-suited Tarot
cards were taken by Sylvia Mann. As explained
in the introduction, I have refrained from
cluttering up the preceding exposition with
repeated acknowledgments to her. Her
contribution has, however, been so substantial
that it requires more than a generalised
recognition. This is particularly so for two
415
reasons: academics working in the Held are prone
to underestimate the contributions of a non-
academic; and the magnitude of her contribution
cannot be estimated from her published writings.
Probably the most enduring monument to her
work will be the Playing-Card Society's
anonymous classificatory sheets, mentioned
above, a project inspired, and in considerable
part executed, by her. A great many of her ideas,
freely offered, have been incorporated into the
work of others and First expressed in print in their
writings; of that process, this book contains many
examples. I have been happy to be able to work in
this field as a member of the school of which she is
the leader.
A number of observations by her formed the
basis for my own work on the subject. She first
drew attention to the importance of the Orfeo
packs, which had escaped the attention of
everyone else, and proposed that, rather than very
incomplete Minchiate packs, they were nearly
complete 78-card ones. She also identified the
Rothschild/Beaux Arts sheets as from what she,
probably mistakenly, described as a 'Tarocchino '
pack, but at any rate from Bologna. She
emphasised the problem posed by the Belgian
Tarot, and remarked on the affinity between
certain of its cards and some of the Italian ones.
She also noticed that the Tarot de Marseille was
restricted to French-speaking regions, and that
the Tarot de Besancon was originally used in
German-speaking ones.
All these observations are, in my opinion,
sound and illuminating. But the most important
thesis advanced by her, concerning the Italian
Tarot de Marseille-derived packs, proved more
problematic. She was the first to distinguish
between the two standard patterns, that
ancestral to the Tarocco Piemontese (IT-1-2),
restricted to Piedmont, and that with narrow
cards and fold-over backs (IT1~1), made in
many parts of Italy. (The ground for describing
the latter as 'the Lombard pattern' rests on
information from literary sources concerning
where it was used, evidence which, whenever
possible, ought to supplement that based on
place of manufacture.) She remarked that these
patterns appear to have been introduced only in
the eighteenth century, and proposed that this
was to be explained on the hypothesis that the
78-card pack, and the game played with it, had
died out in Italy during the seventeenth century,
and had been reintroduced from France.
416 Part III: Italian Games and Italian Cards
Principally because of the French inscriptions
originally used on these two patterns, I continue
to view this thesis as essentially correct.
Nevertheless, as first propounded, it was
misleading in two respects. First, it rested on the
idea that there was something describable as 'the
Italian 78-card pack', and something describable
as 'the Italian game with 78 cards'. In fact, there
has been much more interplay between the
designs of Tarot cards and the modes of play
with the 78-card pack between countries other
than Italy than there has ever been within Italy.
The distinct traditions of design and of play
evidently established before the close of the
fifteenth century appear thereafter to have
remained without influence on one another, and
to have evolved, in so far as they did evolve, quite
independently. What first made this clear was
the investigation into the different trump orders.
The various orders could have been established
only at a date at which there were as yet no
numerals on the trump cards; and, in each of the
different centres, the order there observed could
have been fixed only at the moment of the first
introduction of the Tarot pack, since, once a
trump order had been agreed on, utter confusion
would have resulted among players if it were to
be changed, at least so long as each trump card
was identified primarily by its subject rather
than by an inscribed numeral. But, even if Miss
Mann's thesis, as originally stated, incorporated
an error in this regard, it was she herself who
prompted its correction; for, although it was I
who carried out the investigation into the trump
orders, it was she who saw the importance this
might have and first suggested to me that I look
into it.
Secondly, the thesis suggested, what I at first
assumed, that no designs resembling the Tarot
de Marseille were known in Italy before the
eighteenth century; from this it appeared to
follow that the Tarot de Marseille was a purely
French invention. As explained above, this is not
so at all: the Cary sheet and the Castello
Sforzesco cards show that very similar designs
were in use in Milan from the fifteenth to the
seventeenth century. It therefore appears that the
Tarot de Marseille was derived from a Milanese
prototype, and this conclusion weakens, though it
does not destroy, the ease for assuming that the
introduction of the Lombard pattern occurred
only after an interval during which the 78-card
pack had been defunct. Moreover, the natural
presumption is that the form of Tarot game
played outside Italy with the 78-card pack was
descended from the Milanese game. On this
assumption, it ceases to be of such importance
whether or not there was an interval before the
adoption of the Lombard pattern: the game
played after the interval would still have been, in
broad outline, similar to that played before it.
In the end, therefore, it appears that Sylvia
Mann's thesis rests on a slenderer base of
evidence, and has less far-reaching consequences,
than at first appeared. That is not to disparage
the importance of the step taken by her in
advancing it. For one thing, it served as a
surrogate for the realisation of the independence
of the four Italian traditions of Tarot play, by
making what is probably to be regarded as the
Milanese tradition appear as an eighteenth-
century importation from abroad. For another, it
was a first attempt to make sense of the very
confusing evidence, which those who spoke about
'the Venetian Tarot' as a single type alongside
the Tarocchino and Minchiate packs had simply
declined even to try to interpret. At the present
stage, the history of Tarot cards in Lombardy
before the eighteenth century stands in need of
further investigation. We cannot be sure that
there was indeed an interval during which they
were no longer used. We cannot be sure that the
trump order used in the Tarot de Marseille was
really a French invention, and that, before the
eighteenth century, players in Lombardy
remained faithful to the Susio/Viévil order. In
both cases I have suggested affirmative answers;
but more evidence is desirable. We do not know
just how the indigenous Milanese trump designs
evolved, or how close they came to be to those of
the Tarot de Marseille, nor do we know whether,
before 1700, Milanese players continued to use
trumps without inscribed numerals. As for
Piedmont, the uncertainty concerning it is
greater still. We have sufficient reason to assume
that the game was known there before the
eighteenth century, and that there was indeed
some break in continuity; but it is conceivable
that this break occurred earlier, and was ended
by the introduction of Milanese designs, some
time before the latter were in turn replaced by
the earliest form of the Tarocco Piemontese.
Until these problems, and those relating to the
exact evolution of the 78-card pack in Florence,
Rome and Sicily, have been resolved, there can
be no assurance that we have successfully
 The Order of the Taro! Trumps
reconstructed the history of Latin-suited Tarot
cards. But the first progress towards such a
reconstruction was made by Sylvia Mann, and it
would have been improper to have ended this
chapter without making clear that this was so.
Note on classical deities set
As stated on p, 409, there are now nineteen cards, of
those found at the Castello Sforzesco with back designs
of classical deities in the Raecolta dell Stampe
i
417
Achille Bertarelli. Novati, in his article in the Bulletlino
dei civics mu§ez, gives the number found of this type as
twenty-one; there is some discrepancy between the
numbers cited by him of cards with particular back
designs and those at present in the Raccolta. In detail,
the numbers are as follows (the Figures in brackets
being those given by Novati): love - 4(7); Mercurio -
1(1)8 Proserpina - 4(2); HErcule - 1(3); Marte - 2(0);
Pluto - 2(0); Venere - 1(1 ), Veritas - 3l3); Saturno -
1(1 ), Diana - 0(2), unidentified - 0(1 I. It will be seen
that the discrepancies are not all in the same direction,
which makes them very puzzling.
 CHAPTER 21
The Early Italian Game
We can construct a detailed history of Tarot
games, in almost all countries, from the mid-
eighteenth century to the present day, with no
more than the unavoidable minimum of lacunas.
Of the first three hundred years of their history,
on the other hand, we have only the patchiest
evidence. From the seventeenth century we have
only two explicit accounts of Tarot games of any
kind: the description of French and Swiss Tarot
in the 1659 I1/Iaison académique, and Paolo
Minucci's account of Minchiate in 16769 to these
we may add the citations in Carlo Pisarri's
Instruzioni of 1754 from his 'very Old' manuscript
relating to Tarocchino. For the rest, we must
rely on indirect evidence and backwards
extrapolation.
The diversity of orderings of the trumps which
we have seen to prevail in different regions of
Italy points to an early diversification in the
manner of play. Variations in the local design of
cards using the same suit-signs are not always
closely associated with variations in the games
played; but a difference in the order of the
trumps affects the actual practice of play. It is
therefore likely in principle that, where different
trump orderings were observed, there were also
concomitant variations in the rules of play. The
variations in the trump order must have
developed at an early date, before it had occurred
to anyone to put numerals on the trumps. Since
there are such numerals on all but one of the
trumps on the Metropolitan Museum sheets, and
on more than half of those on the Rosenwald
sheet, this means that the differentiation in the
type of Tarot game played in the various regions
probably occurred well before the end of the
fifteenth century.
*
We should beware of distorting the manner in
which Italian players perceived Tarot cards and
the games played with them by the use of such
expressions as 'the game of Tarot' and 'the Tarot
pack'. Outside Italy, even when Tarot has been
extremely popular, the Tarot pack has,
naturally, always been seen as something quite
special and exceptional. Until the Italian suit-
signs were replaced by the French ones, even the
suit-system was quite unfamiliar, except to those
who knew that other oddity, the Trappola pack,
But in Italy, at least during the sixteenth century,
when Tarot cards had existed far too long to be a
novelty, but Tarot games were still sufficiently
popular and widespread for the cards not to
appear a mere local peculiarity, they do not seem
to have been regarded as forming a special pack.
Rather, the Tarot trumps were simply special
cards which you needed to add to the ordinary
ones in order to play certain games. Originally
called Mum/2lti, a set of cards including them were
carte do trzumpiii, cards with trumps. Thus, in the
passage of his Cao; de! Triperuao leading up to the
five sonnets on the Tarot trumps, Teofilo Folengo
has Triperuno speak of being led to a room where
there were carte [Marie de trzanj, 'playing cards
with trumps'; and Sperone Speroni, in his brief
tract on games, says that to the cards of the four
suits one sometimes adds certain other cards
called Zaracclii, so that the first distinction to be
made concerning the cards used is whether they
are with tarocclzi or without Zarocclti. Something
viewed as being a special kind of pack, quite
different from ordinary playing cards, for
instance the Aluette pack, the Trappola pack or
the Tarot pack itself outside Italy, is likely to be
treated as an instrument of just one game, even if
 The Early Italian Game
one played with a number of variations in its
rules. But, where the Tarot trumps are regarded,
not as a part of any such special pack, but merely
as cards which, for some games, are added to the
ordinary pack, one would no more expect them
to be used in just one game than one would
expect ordinary playing cards to be used for only
one game. This expectation is corroborated by
the remark made by Pier Antonio Viti at the end
of his commentary on the special Tarot pack
devised by the poet Matteo Maria Boiardo: with
these cards, he says, many other games can be
played, just as many as is continually done with
the ordinary (Tarot) pack.' The point should not
be overstated: Francesco Berni and others refer
to Tarocchi as a specific game. Nevertheless, it
would almost certainly be wrong to suppose that
there was just one such game known in each
region of sixteenth-century Italy where Tarot
games were played. The Tarot trumps were
introduced in order to fulfil a novel function in
card play, and were used in games in which they
fulfilled that function; but there was probably a
considerable variety of such games.
We know of four main centres where Tarot
games were played in fifteenth- and sixteenth-
century Italy: Ferrara, Milan, Bologna and
Florence. It was also played in Reggio nell'
Emilia, SalO, Brescia, Bergamo and Urbino, and
very probably at Mantua and Venice. By the
beginning of the seventeenth century
it had spread to Rome, and, in the course of
that century, it spread to Sicily and presumably
to Piedmont. Of the mode of play in Bologna
we can feel fairly certain. We know that the
game was, in all its essential features, played there
in the seventeenth century in the same manner as
it is played now. The extreme conservatism of
Bolognese players, and the great complexity of
the seventeenth-century game, in which various
additional features that have since fallen away
were superimposed on the basic rules, make it
very likely that those basic rules go back to the
first half of the sixteenth century, when the
shortening of the pack probably first occurred;
and they may well date back to the time before
the pack had been shortened. Minchiate, too, we
know to have been played in the seventeenth
century in essentially the same manner as it was
played in the eighteenth; it is highly probable
* 'Cum Ii quali multi altri se fariano, e tans, quant con it
commune di continuo se fa. '
419
that the fundamental principles of the game were
established when it was first devised.
Of the Milanese manner of play, we have no
direct evidence whatever. Since, however, we
have concluded that it was from Milan that the
game of Tarot first spread to France and
Switzerland, from those countries to reach
Germany and other parts of Europe, .., have to
regard Milan as the ultimate source of all the
Tarot games played outside Italy, as well as
those played in present-day Piedmont and
Lombardy. This means that the original
Milanese games were probably very close to
what, at the beginning of Chapter 11, were
described as being the fundamental three- and
four-handed forms of Tarot game, ones in which
all the cards are dealt out, save for three or two
additional ones taken by the dealer, and in which
the counting cards are the court cards and the
XXI, Bagatto and Fool, the Fool serving as
Excuse. The very existence of the early
Piedmontese game rests only on a hypothesis,
and our principal evidence to its nature consists
of the later Piedmontese games of Sedici and
Trentuno, which look like a survival from before
the introduction of games after the French
fashion in the eighteenth century. These have
two striking characteristics, namely that the Fool
does not serve as Excuse, but is the lowest trump,
and that not all the cards are dealt out and there
is no discard. The French games described in the
Manson académique have the second of these
characteristics, though not the first, unlike the
Swiss game described there, which lacks both.
Since we have conjectured that the French games
were played in those areas, Paris and Normandy,
where the Paris/Rouen pattern was used, and
that, in the East of France, Tarot play was more
akin to that described as prevalent in Switzerland,
and since we have also conjectured that the
Paris/Rouen pattern derived from Piedmont, this
affords a partial confirmation of the idea that
Sedici and Trentuno represent some earlier form
of Piedmontese Tarot play. As for the other cities
mentioned above, probably the mode of play in
each of them conformed to that of one of the four
main centres; if any of them was a centre for some
other tradition of Tarot play, it is now
irrecoverable.
Minchiate was, of course, a deliberate
invention, a conscious variation upon existing
Tarocco games; but we know that in both
Florence and Rome the 78-card pack continued
420 Par! III: Italian Games and Italian Cards
to be in use down to the seventeenth century.
Our best clue to the nature of such games
consists in those played in Sicily; the Sicilian
game was probably first imported from Rome,
and the traditions of Tarot play in Rome seem to
have been strongly linked with those of Florence.
If this hypothesis is sound, then what Minchiate
shared with the game played in Florence and
Rome with the 78-card pack was not the versicle
but the fact that, in addition to the Bagatto and
the Fool, all Hve top trumps, the Arie, were
counting cards; the versicale, special combinations
of cards for which one scored not only when they
were contained in a single hand at the start of
play, but also when they were included in the
cards won by partners at the end of play, formed
a point of resemblance with Tarocchino as
played in Bologna.
What emerges as the principal point of
distinction between the different local traditions
of play is the number of counting cards. In all
games other than Minchiate, the court cards are
always counting cards. In Milan there can have
been only three others, the XXI, Bagatto and
Fool, as in every Tarot game played outside
Italy. In the Bolognese form of Tarocchi, there
are four, the two top trumps, Angelo and Monde,
the Bagatto and the Fool. In Sicilian Tarocchi,
and therefore, on our hypothesis, in the 78-card
game as formerly played in Florence and Rome,
there are seven, the five top trumps, the Bagatto
and the Fool; and in Minchiate there are twenty-
one, the eleven top trumps, the live lowest ones,
four others and the Fool. On the other hand,
both in Sicilian Tarocchi and in Minchiate,
though not in Tarocchino, there are signs that
the three usual counting cards have a special
role. In Sicilian Tarocchi this lies in the fact that
these cards have a point-value twice that of a
King or of one of the other four Arte, in
Minchiate, it consists in the existence of a versicola
consisting of the Trombe, U n o a n d Matte,
corresponding to the Angel, Bagatto and Fool.
Tarocchino, Minchiate and Sicilian Tarocchi
also all have a feature presumably absent from
the Milanese game, since scarcely a trace of it is
found in any Tarot game played outside Italy: a
fixed score in points for winning the last trick.
This is, indeed, a well-known feature of many
card games played with a regular pack; it is
found, in particular, in the Venetian game of
Trappola. On the other hand, no Italian Tarot
game which we know to have been uniniiuenced
by foreign modes of play has a vestige of that idea
which became so characteristic an element of
Tarot games as played elsewhere, the special
bonus for winning the last trick with the Bagatto.
In Tarocchino and in Sicilian Tarocchi, and
presumably also in the early Milanese game, the
whole pack is distributed, even in Minchiate,
there is a device for ensuring that all the counting
cards are in play and that the players know how
many trumps are not in play. Virtually the only
varieties of Tarot that form exceptions to this
general rule are some of the minor Bolognese
games, the Piedmontese games of Sedici and
Trentuno and their hypothetical predecessors,
and the French games described in the Maz'son
académique.
We hav e , thus, some idea of the type of Tarot
game played in early times in Bologna, in
Florence and in Milan. We cannot in the same
way use the method of backwards extrapolation
to deduce the kind of game played in Ferrara,
and probably also in Venice and other cities
where the type B order prevailed, because this
game appears to have died leaving no progeny
behind. Our only, uncertain, clue of this kind is
the Venetian game of Trappola, which may have
been invented by card players familiar with
Tarocco. The only direct evidence we have
consists of two literary items, of which,
unfortunately, neither proves as illuminating as
we should wish. The first is the commentary by
Pier Antonio Viti already mentioned. Matteo
Maria Boiardo (1441-1494) was the celebrated
author of the verse epic Orlando Irznamomto which
preceded the even more famous Orlando Furioso of
Ariosto. Boiardo composed two sonnets and five
capzloli which were first published posthumously
in 15212 and have subsequently become known
as I Tarocc/zi, though not so entitled by Boiardo.
They were included in a selection of Boiardo's
work edited by G.B. Venturi in 1820, and were
accompanied, in Angelo Solerti's collected
edition of Boiardo's poetry of 1894, by an
Illustrazione or Commentary by Pier Antonio Viti
do Urbino (c. 1470-1500) not previously
published and taken by Solerti from a
2 In a volume containing poems by various authors and
entitled Amore do Hierorzimo Beniueni Fiurzntino, A110 Illurttis. S.
Niccolo do Correggio. E! Una Cacilia de Amore bellzrszma Tb' cinq:
Capituli, supra el Timore, Zelofia, ESperanza, Amore, GO uno
Triorzp/L0 del Monde, Compoxtz Per it Conte Matteo Maria Bozardo
et alt re use diverse (Venice, 1523). The volume was reprinted
five more times in the years up to 1537 and again in 1808.
 The Early Italian Game
manuscript.3 Viti's commentary is addressed to a
lady of the court of Urbino, though not to the
Duchess Elisabetta herself; Ridolfo Renier
suggested as the recipient Emilia Pia, a close
friend of the Duchess.'* Viti explains that the
poems are intended to be engraved on the cards
of a specially designed pack, and expresses the
hope that his patroness will order such a pack to
be made. There are to be eighty cards altogether,
two of which are to bear nothing but the two
sonnets: the remainder are to comprise four suits,
twenty-one Mary? and the Macro (i.e. Matte). The
composition of the pack, apart from the two
sonnet cards, was thus to be standard for a 78-
card Tarot pack; but the suit-signs and the
trump subjects were to be non-standard. The
suits were to be Arrows, Vases, Eyes and Whips;
each of the trzbfji was to symbolise a quality,
represented by a historical or mythological
character. The trump subjects for the most part
show no correspondence with those of the
standard set, and, when they do, occupy a
different position; for instance, the highest trump
was Forlezza (Fortitude), represented by
Lucretia; in a reversal of the usual arrangement,
the A/facto, called Folic by Boiardo himself, was
designated A/Iondo (World), and shown as a fool
riding a donkey. The Figures on the court cards
were to be identified with characters from
classical mythology. Each of the seventy-eight
cards was to bear a tercel from the appropriate
eapzioloz those of the Arrows suit from the capitolo
on Love, of the Vases suit from that on Hope, of
the Eyes suit from that on Jealousy, and of the
Whips suits from that on Fear; the ferrets for the
trionj and the Marlo were to be taken from the
fifth capitols, the Triumph of the World. Wood-
engraved packs were actually made to Viti's
precise specifications. One example, missing the
Matto, the trumps and twelve other cards is
mentioned by Merlin in his book of 186955 what
3 Le Poesy V0lga7i e Latina do M.M. Boiardo, ed. by A. Solerti,
Bologna, 1894, pp. 313-38, with notes pp. xxii-xxxv. Poems
and commentary can also be found in Trite Le opere do M.M.
Boiardo, ed. by A. Zottoli, vol. 2, Milan, 1937, pp. 702-16,
with notes pp. 748-9.
4 See R. Renier, 'Tarocchi di Boiardo', in Study so
Malta Maria Boiardo, ed. by N. Campanini, Bologna, 1894.
Elisabetta Gonzaga, Duchess of Urbino, sister of Francesco
Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, and so sister-in-law of
Isabella d'Este, is, like the Lady Emilia Pia, famous from
Castiglione's The Courtier.
5 R. Merlin, Olzgzne des caries djouer, Paris, 1869, pp. 94-6
and plate 28.
421
was probably the same copy was sold in London
in 1971 to Signor Carlo Alberto Chiesa of Milan.
Another example, missing the Matto and the
court cards, but including the trumps, was
mentioned by Carlo Lozzi in 1900.6
Viti gives some instructions for playing with
Boiardo's pack. Although Viti himself was from
Urbino, and although his commentary is
addressed to a lady at the court of Urbino, it is
not unreasonable to connect this piece of
evidence with Ferrara, at least if Viti be assumed
to be setting out the intentions of Boiardo
himself. Boiardo was brought up in Ferrara and
studied there; he spent some time at court, and
was highly esteemed by Borso d'Este, Marquis of
Ferrara from 1450. Borso was made Duke of
Modena and Reggio by the Emperor Frederick
III in 1452, and Duke of Ferrara by Pope Paul II
in 1471, the year of his death. Boiardo was in the
service of his successor, Ercole I, the father of
Isabella and Beatrice, acting as ducal captain of
Modena from 1480 to 1482 and as governor of
Reggio from 1487 until his death there in 1494. It
must, therefore, have been the Ferrarese type of
Tarocco game with which he was familiar; it is
possible that they played in the same manner at
Urbino. Viti's instructions, though interesting,
are of far less value for us than we might have
hoped, because, as is plain from the remark
quoted above, Viti takes it for granted that his
reader will know all about the games normally
played with the ordinary Tarot pack, and
restricts himself to an account of a special game
to be played with Boiardo's cards. This game
falls into four parts. The two cards bearing the
sonnets are first set aside, and then each draws a
card to determine the dealer, who is the one
drawing the highest card. When the cards have
all been dealt out, the first part of the game
consists simply in each player's reading out the
verses on his cards, from which, Viti naively
remarks, much amusement may be had. It is not
explained what happens when the number of
players is such that the cards cannot be
distributed equally and exhaustively. The second
part of the game consists in playing out the cards
in tricks: it is necessary to follow suit when
possible, and, when not possible, to play a
6 Carlo Lozzi, `Le Antiche Carte da Giuoco', La Bibliofilia,
vol. I, Florence, 1900, pp. 37-46 and 181-6. For more
detailed discussion of this pack, see M. Dummett, 'Notes on
a 15th-century pack of cards from Italy', journal of the
Playing-Card Society, vol. I, no. 3, February, 1973, pp. 1-6.
422 Part III: Italian Games and Italian Cards
trump. Nothing is said about the way the Matto
is played. Among the numeral cards, the higher-
numbered beat the lower-numbered in the suits
of Arrows and Vases, but, in those of Eyes and
Whips, the lower-numbered beat the higher-
numbered; among the trumps, the higher-
numbered win. At the end of the play, each
player is paid by every other player who has won
fewer tricks than he has as many scuti as the
difference in the number of tricks they have won.
At this stage, those who have won no tricks fall
out of the game, the third part of which now
takes place. Using the cards they have won in
tricks, each player reckons up points as follows :
he counts one positive point for each card he has
in the suits of Arrows and Vases, and one
negative point for each card in the suits of Eyes
and Whips; presumably trumps do not count
either way. When the points have been thus
reckoned, each player may demand from.any
other who has a lower score that he hand over to
him any card of the demander's choice.
Presumably it is meant that one card is to be
surrendered for each point of difference in the
scores, and presumably also, if a player asks for a
card which the other does not have, he cannot try
again. In choosing which card to ask for, a player
will have an eye on the fourth part of the game :
this consists in each player's putting together the
longest sequence of consecutive cards which he
now has in his hand. The winner - the player
with the longest such sequence - can demand
from the loser (presumably the player with the
shortest sequence) everything that he has about
his person, clearly, one needs to deposit one's
valuables elsewhere before sitting down to play
this game.
This somewhat jejune entertainment is hardly
a serious card game, it is more consonant with
the kind of society game described in various
works such as Ringhieri's Cento Giuochi Liberals.
There is no reason for assuming that any of its
special features derive from already existing
games played with the ordinary Tarot pack,
although we cannot exclude such a possibility;
the main value of the account, for our purpose, is
in respect of those few fundamental features
which it does share with Tarot games as we know
them. It is a trick-taking game; the trzbnji serve as
permanent trumps. It is obligatory to follow suit
if one can, and to play a trump if one cannot. Not
only do all the court cards beat the numeral
cards of a suit, but the order of the numeral cards
runs in one direction in two suits and in the other
direction in the remaining two. Without Viti's
commentary, we should have assumed that these
were all features of Tarot games from the first,
but it is pleasant to have confirmation of that
assumption, and, although Viti is not purporting
to describe ordinary Tarot games, the fact that
his, or Boiardo's, game has these features is some
confirmation. On the other hand, there is not a
trace of the principle of assigning different point-
values to the court cards and to some of the
trump cards, the second part of the game is a
simple trick-taking game in our technical sense,
where only the number of tricks count. This can
hardly be called evidence that simple trick-taking
games were ever played with the ordinary Tarot
pack; but it hints at the possibility.
The most frustrating feature is Viti's silence, in
the section on how to play with the cards, over
the Matto. Possibly he simply assumed that
everyone knew how to use the Matto; but the
other possibility is that he intended it to be
treated as the lowest trump, as in the eighteenth-
century Piedmontese games of Sedici and
Trentuno. The allusions to it in Boiardo's verses
and in the parts of Viti's commentary relating to
the cards are maddeningly ambiguous. In the
fifth capitol, which deals with the trionj, the tercel
to be inscribed on the Matto stands first, the
subject of the card being given as Monde, there
follow the tercets on the twenty-one trio in
ascending sequence. From the two lines in the
first sonnet relating to the triorj, it is difficult to
tell whether Boiardo is counting the Fool as a
lrzorzfo OF not: he writes_ 'Con vinti et un
Trionfo e al pin vil loco/E un Folly, poi che'l
folle el monde adora' ('With twenty-one
Zrionfi, and in the lowest place there is a Fool,
because the fool adores the world'). In Viti's
commentary the Matto is not spoken of as a
trionfo in the paragraph devoted to it, and the
next card, Ohio (Idleness) is called the First triorzf0,
each of them being given a number up to the last
one, Fortitude, said to be in the twenty-first
place. At the end of the section on the Irion/5, Viti
speaks of Boiardo's capitolo as divided into
twenty-two tercel about 'twenty-two trump
cards, with the Matto' (in vinlidue carte de Trizmji,
con el A/Iatto); the phrase could not have been
better designed to leave us in uncertainty
whether Viti regards the Matto as a trump or
not. Clearly, the Matto is regarded as in some
way different from the twenty-one ordinary
 The Early Italian Game
lri0mj: but whether that is because it plays a quite
different role in the game, as it does when it
serves as Excuse, OI` merely because, like the
Mireria of the Sicilian pack, it does not bear a
number, it is impossible to tell.
The only other early source giving any
information about how Tarocco was played may
be definitely associated with Ferrara. It is not,
alas, an account of the rules, but a verse diatribe
against the game by Flavio Alberto Lollio (1508-
1568), entitled Itwettiva contra in Giuoco del Taroco
and First published in Venice in 1550.7 Lollio was
born in Florence, but lived most of his life in
Ferrara, where he died, and he is referred to in
the by-line of the poem as 'Flavio Alberto Lollio
Ferrarese'. He assumes the game to be known to
his readers, but describes a game in progress; this
description is both illuminating and puzzling.
The one thing that is absolutely clear is that
three players take part in the game. The cards
are dealt out in several rounds almost certainly
five at a time, the poem follows the fortunes of a
single player, referred to, save in an occasional
line, in the second person singular. Evidently,
after each round of the deal there was a pause,
during which it was possible for a player to
increase the value of the round, and also for one
to propose going a Monte, that is, abandoning the
deal. This latter was, as we have seen, a very
general custom in Italian games, but normally it
required the agreement of all the players for the
deal to be abandoned at any stage. The player
whose fortunes are followed does not appear to
be the dealer, for it is said at the outset only that
the deal 'is begun', not that 'you begin' it. But his
first five cards are good ones; the result is stated
7 The [nz/etlivo appears on pp. 272-82 of Rzrrze Piaceoolz,
Venice, 1550, a collection of verses by various authors. A
second edition was published in Ferrara in 1590. A selection
from the poem as printed in the 1590 edition was included
by Samuel Weller Singer as appendix XIII to his Researcher
of Playzng Cards, London, 1816, pp. 354-6. This
info [he History
selection includes most of the part describing the play, but,
unfortunately, not quite all, in part because Singer evidently
wished to spare the blushes of his readers by suppressing
lines containing words like orinale and cacapensieri. He does
not give a translation. A translation of part of the poem,
without the original, is given by Stuart R. Kaplan, The
Encyclopedia of Tarot, New York, 1978, pp. 29-30. The
selection coincides very nearly, but not quite, with that
made by Singer, but, unfortunately, no indication is given of
the places where some lines have been omitted, and the
omissions occasionally affect the sense; a reader with no
other source to refer to would suppose that the whole of the
poem had been translated.
423
to be that 'you hold the invitation, and make it
again' (to tiers Venvito, 8? Zo rzfai). The word I
have here rendered 'invitation' is actually
printed enutto in the first edition, a non-existent
word. In the second edition of 1590 it appears as
irzvitlo ('unconquered'), which makes little sense; 4
the most likely reading is envilo or invilo =
'invitation'. Presumably the invitation is to 1
continue the deal for an increased value; our
I
l
player not only accepts this invitation, but I
proposes a further increase. The player's next
five cards are bad ones. Our player then goes a
movie (van d Monte). This cannot mean, as it is l
rendered by Mr Kaplan in his partial and largely
accurate translation, that he throws in his cards,
because the deal continues, and we Find him,
after four rounds of dealing, with twenty cards;
he is merely proposing an abandonment of the
deal, but in vain, since another player is going to
increase the stake, that is, the value of the round.
There follow two more rounds of the deal, one
good for our player, the other bad. He then
expects some help from the last cards, but when
they arrive, they are terrible, the opposite of what
he needs. Presumably, then, he is dealt a final
five cards, unfortunately, there is here an obscure
line. When you are expecting the last cards to
help you (quando/L'ultime as/yetti, the to dion
soccorso), Lollio says, and now comes the obscure
line: 'Having already invited them from the
stock' (°); you then, he continues, see arrive
hideous cards to make you die, etc. (To to ved2'
arrival (oh dolor grande)/Carte galioffe do fart'
moore,/Totalmente rontrarie al Zoo birogno). The
obscure line contains a questionable reading: in
the 1550 edition it is printed Havendogli invitata did
do! recto which is' ungrammatical. The grammar
is corrected in the 1590 edition by the reading
Havendola irzvitata did day recto ('Having already
invited it from the stock'), but there is nothing for
the singular pronoun to refer to. Probably
Ha vendoglz was correct, the gli, in what would
now be considered a grammatical error, referring
back to the ultimo [carte] (last cards), and irwitala
should be Invitale. Assuming this to be so, we are
left unclear in what sense the player has invited
these last five cards (if there are Five of them):
perhaps by his invitation after the first round of
the deal, perhaps by his acceptance of the
increase in the stake after the second. Now, Lollio
says, enraged by the miserable cards he has
received at the end, the player hurls reproaches
at 'the remainder of his cards, which are twenty'
424 Part III: Italian Games and Italian Cards
(Lo avango de je Carte, the X071 verdi), presumably
these are the cards he received on the first four
rounds of the deal, which is why I said that the
dealer gave each player five cards at a time.
Our problems of interpretation are by no
means over. The player now sorts his hand into
the trumps (triorzji) and the four plain suits. Now
comes the remark, 'quindi x'lzai quattro,/O cirque
Carte do Ronfa, to zfemilClze non to rnuoia in Re, con Ze
]?sure': 'if you then have four or five carte dz rona,
you are afraid that your King and the court cards
will die'. We know from accounts of Minchiate
that a King 'dies' when it is captured by another
player's trump; but what does Lollio mean by
carte do 70n/21? We saw in Chapter 7 that the term
rona had a curious double meaning, sometimes
referring to the play of a trump and sometimes to
a long holding in a suit. This line of Lollio's is the
only known instance of the L1SfI of the word in
connection with a Tarot game. At this stage of
his description, actual play has not yet started,
and the reference to the King and the other court
cards makes it evident that he is speaking of a
holding in a plain suit. But that does not resolve
all uncertainty. Why should our player be so
anxious at having four or five cards in a suit, even
if they are all high ones? If we are to understand
that each player finishes with 25 cards (perhaps
with the dealer taking the last three and
discarding three - nothing is said about this), an
average holding in a plain suit will be about 4~6.
If there was no discard, it will be very unlikely
that either of the other two will have a void in a
suit in which one holds four or Five cards, even if
the dealer discards three cards, there is no
especial danger that he will have created a void in
that suit. Possibly four or five Carle dz rona are the
top four or Five cards of a suit in which the player
has much greater length, say seven or eight
altogether, though that seems a complex
meaning for the simple phrase carte do rona to
bear. Probably there was a penalty for losing a
King; possibly there was a rule, as in Minchiate,
obliging a player to surrender his King if a trump
had been played to the first trick in that suit. But,
with all these suppositions, the anxiety displayed
- 'your heart aches and your mind is racked' -
seems disproportionate to the actual danger.
It will be recalled that the French Tarot games
described in the 1659 Maison académique were
ones in which not all the cards were distributed
among the players, and there is no mention of a
discard. On the other hand, the Swiss three-
handed game there described resembles later
three-handed games played with the 78-card
pack and without bidding in that the dealer gives
25 cards to each of the other two players and 28
to himself, discarding three. We saw that the
Swiss manner of playing Tarot appears to have
changed little between the seventeenth century
and the twentieth; and two details of the modern
game strongly suggest that the Swiss mode of
play is based very directly upon Italian models.
One is the option of abandoning the deal, by
agreement, after each round of the deal, that is,
in effect, of going a monte. The other is the signal,
made by striking the table with the fist while
leading trumps, given by a player to convey that
he has the XXI. This signal, unknown except
in Italy and Switzerland, is the batto of
Sicilian tarocchi and of the old Bolognese game,
and is related to the basso of the modern
Bolognese game and also of Tressette, which is
popular in Italian-speaking areas of
Switzerland. The signal probably represents a
feature of Italian Tarot play already present by
the mid-seventeenth century. Both the Bolognese
and Sicilian games bear witness to the same
general principle, namely a complete distribution
of the pack between the players save for two or
three extra cards, going to the dealer except
when there is some form of bidding. If it were not
for the passage in Lollio's poem about the carte dz
rorzfa, the most natural interpretation of the game
he describes would be similar. The player
receives twenty cards, and then, after that, some
last ones, on which he has counted to redeem his
hand; the obvious assumption is therefore that he
receives 25 cards altogether, perhaps with the
last three going to the dealer, who has to discard.
This is reinforced by Lollio's later complaining
about the tedious necessity of counting every
trump that is played. When all the trumps have
been distributed, or when, as in Minchiate, the
players know just how many remain undealt, the
counting of trumps is an utter necessity for
successful play, above all for a player who wants
to save or to capture the lowest trump. In a game
in which a large number of cards remain undealt,
it loses something of its importance.
Even with the mysterious passage about the
carte do rona,this remains the most probable
interpretation, but that passage does raise a
doubt. The most likely meaning of 'four or five
carte do rorzfa' is the four or five top cards of a suit,
irrespective of whether or not the player has
 The Early Italian Game
other cards in that suit. If so, the alarm of Lollio's
player at Finding himself with such a holding
remains exceedingly overwrought, if we suppose
every player to have 25 cards. The Swiss game is,
if our analysis is correct, in the Milanese
tradition, Bologna had its own tradition, and the
Sicilian game probably ultimately derives from
Florence. But Lollio was surely describing
Tarocco as played at Ferrara; and it is possible
that the game played there differed from that
played in, say, Milan in respect of the number of
cards each player had when play began. How
could such a supposition fit with what Lollio
says? We have seen that it is unlikely that, in
Lollio's game, there remained any undealt cards,
and that, after the first four rounds of the deal,
the player received some last cards; but we may
ask why Lollio draws explicit attention to the
number of cards - twenty -. dealt out in the First
four rounds of the deal, without mentioning,
what is of greater importance, the number of
cards the player held when the deal was
completed. This question suggests the answer
that 20 was the number of cards each player held
before play began: that each player discarded as
many cards as the 'last' ones he received, after
the original twenty cards had been given out.
Perhaps, on this last round of the deal, each
player received six cards, discarding six; or
perhaps the dealer received eight and the other
players Hve each, making corresponding
discards. True, Lollio says nothing at all about
any discard; but, if we make such a supposition,
we can at least make sense about the anxiety a
player might feel if he had all four court cards in
some suit, for then he would be in serious danger
of losing them.
I offer this suggestion only as a possibility; I do
not consider it the most likely one, though I shall
explore possible consequences of it below. For
the present, let us return to Lollio's account.
Actual play now begins: our unfortunate player
finds himself having to keep following suit to the
leads of the other two players, evidently unable to
win a trick. It is, of course, perfectly evident from
the mention of following suit, as from the earlier
reference to the King's dying, that we have here a
trick-taking game, in which the lrionji serve as
trumps. When our player revokes, the voices of
the others are raised in protest; otherwise, one
must keep even more silent than when attending
Mass. Ferrarese players plainly took the game
very seriously. From the remark, in the carte dz'
425
rona passage, about the King dying, with the
court cards, it is apparent that all the court cards
were counting cards, and possible that, as in
Minehiate, one scored not only for having them
among one's tricks, but additionally for
capturing them. But Lollio remarks grumblingly
that it is necessary to take note of every least card
that is played. This suggests that, as in the
Bolognese game, players may have scored not
only for individual cards won in tricks, but also
for particular combinations of cards among those
SO won, otherwise, it would be a grave
exaggeration to say that a player had to take note
of every single card. If it should sometimes
happen that you have a good hand, Lollio says,
you play it so badly that you lose one or two
dozen of them, sometimes all (neperdi/ Urza dozzirza
6 due: Za! lira tutti). If Lollio here means that you
lose one or two dozen of your cards, this would
rule out an interpretation under which the
players received less than 25 cards each, but it
seems more likely that dozzine are here some type
of scoring device or token. And now comes a
remark that is really baffling. How many times,
Lollio asks, are you unable to cover the Matto?
(Quante volte non Puoi coprire IZ Motto?) As a result,
you unwillingly Hnd yourself robbed of the good
you have gained (Orzde ma! grade two, spogliar to
JenN'lDe! buoy c'izavevi). What is it to 'cover' the
Matto, and why does it have such disastrous
consequences? One might conjecture that
'covering' the Matto consisted in giving a card in
exchange for it, the player unable to do so having
to surrender the Matto. But this can hardly be
made to fit the context: a player in such a
position is one who has won no tricks, and such a
player has no other good to be robbed of. The
most natural interpretation of the word 'cover' is
'to play a higher card', i.e. to capture. If this is
right, then, in the Ferrarese game, the Matto
cannot have served as Excuse, as in the
Bolognese and Sicilian games and in Minchiate,
but must have been a trump, presumably the
lowest one, as in Sedici or Trentuno. Lollio does
not mention the Bagatto or Bagalella, save in a
general list of triorji after the description of play;
the Matto is here mentioned in just the context
where we should expect the Bagatto to be spoken
of. The Matto must surely have been a counting
card; but that by itself does not explain why a
failure to capture it (or, possibly, a failure to
bring it home) should have spelled such ruin.
Perhaps there was a high premium for bringing it
426 Part III: Italian Game; and Italian Cards
home, or a high penalty for failing to do so; or
perhaps, if our earlier supposition that a player
scored for particular combinations of cards won
in tricks is correct, the Matto could, as in
Minchiate, be added to such combinations, or
functioned as a wild card, like the two contatori in
the Bolognese game, when such combinations
were being scored.
At this point, Lollio leaves his description of
the play to engage in a general diatribe against
the game and the childish nature of the cards
used. From his poem, I have extracted more
problems than solutions; but the poem is
precious for anyone interested in the history of
the game of Tarot, since it is the only account of
the game, of any kind, from before the
seventeenth century. I therefore give in the
appendix the whole text of the relevant passage,
with the best attempt at a translation I have been
able to make, in the hope that someone will be
able to arrive at a surer interpretation than I have
been able to do.
Now, with very few exceptions, it is
characteristic of later Tarot games, of the most
diverse kinds and whatever the size of the pack,
that there is no stock of undealt cards, but that
every card in the pack counts, at the end of the
round, to one or another player or side. In is
almost equally characteristic that there is a small
residue of undealt cards forming a talon, which,
in games without bidding, goes to the dealer, and
whose distribution, in games with bidding,
depends upon the final bid; in each case, those
receiving additional cards must discard an equal
number, under certain nearly constant
constraints. This practice is not a mere device for
handling the situation when the number of cards
in the pack is not exactly divisible by the number
of players, since it is observed in three-handed
games, even without bidding, played with the 78-
card pack; the most striking example is that of
Tarok-Quadrille, played by four players with
only 76 cards, in which the dealer still takes four
extra cards. Even Minchiate is not a genuine
exception to this rule, because, although the
mechanics are different, there are still discards,
and the principle is upheld that the players
should know how many cards of each suit are in
play, even though not every card belongs at the
end of the round to one side or the other. Both
the Bolognese and Sicilian games incorporate the
standard practice. It therefore seems
overwhelmingly probable that the practice is one
going back to an early stage in the history of the
Tarot games: the fact that it is found in both
Bolognese and Sicilian Tarocchi debars us from
supposing that it was invented outside Italy and
introduced there only at the time of the invasion
of the Tarot de Marseille pattern in the
eighteenth century. This conclusion is reinforced
by an etymological consideration. In the
terminology used in Germany, the discard was
almost always referred to as the Scat, and this
name was also used, by transference, for the
talon, the exception is the game of Cego, in
which the talon is called the Blirzde and the
discard the Legate. In Austria, too, the term Scar,
sometimes in the form Scar, was originally used,
although it was later dropped in favour of the
French word Talon for the talon, with no separate
noun being used for the discard. The words Scar
and Scar are obviously corruptions of the Italian
word sarto, meaning 'discard', and it therefore
seems likely that the practice itself is of Italian
origin. It might be objected that the borrowing of
the term Scar may have occurred only after the
reintroduction of the 78-card game from France
into Italy in the eighteenth century; we know
that Viennese Tarot players of the mid-
eighteenth century borrowed a specific form of
play from Lombardy, and, with it, an Italianate
vocabulary, and that this Viennese/Lombard
game spread into Germany and as far as the
Netherlands. But this objection appears
unsound: classic Tarot games, in which the word
Scar was used, were being played in Germany
before the spread of the Viennese/Lombard
game.
A possible source for the practice may have
been a card game called Scartino, of which we
hear much from a brief period around 1500:
there are over a dozen references to it between
1492 and 1517.8 We have no idea how Scartino
8 For references to Scartino, as played by Beatrice,
Isabella, Ercole, Ippolito and Alfonso d'Este, Lodoyico it
Moro, and others, see: F. Malaguzzi-Valeri, La carte do
Ladaazra it Moro, vol. 1, Milan, 1913, p. 575, A. Venturi,
'Relazioni artistiche tra je cort di Milano e Ferrara net
secolo XV', Arclziaio Storiaa Lombardo, anno XII (pp. 225-80),
1885, p. 254, A. Luzio and R. Renier, Markova e Urbano,
Turin and Rorne, 1893, pp. 63-5, especially in. 3, p. 63, the
same two authors, 'Delle relazioni di Isabella d'Este
Gonzaga con Lodovico e Beatrice Sforza', Archioio Storioa
Lombardo, anno XVII (pp. 74-119, 346-99, 619-74), 1890, p.
368, fn. 1, and pp. 379-80; A. Luzio, I precetlori d'Isal2el!a
d'Erte, Ancona, 1887, p. 22, G. Bertoni, 'Tarocchi
versificati' in Pansie, Zeggende, corlufnanze de! media eve, Modena,
 The Early Italian Game
was played, although it appears to have
demanded a special type of pack; for instance,
Lodovico it Moro wrote in 1496 to Cardinal
Ippolito d'Este complaining that the latter had
not sent him the carte de martino that he had
promised, and there are other references to
orders for packs of Scartino cards. The game
seems to have originated from Ferrara: it was a
favourite game both of Beatrice d'Este, wife of
Lodovico it Moro, Duke of Milan, and oflsabella
d'Este, wife of Francesco Gonzaga, Marquis of
Mantua. The name Martino is presumably
connected with the verb scartare, 'to discard', and
games are often named after their most
characteristic or novel feature. It is therefore a
possibility that this was a trick-taking game in
which a new practice was introduced, namely
that the dealer took some extra cards and
discarded a corresponding number. If so, it could
be that it was from Scartino that this practice
was taken over into Tarocco games, in which it
had been previously unknown, and that Scartino,
after its short-lived popularity, died out, having
made a lasting contribution to card play. This, of
course, is the merest guess: Scartino may not
have been a trick-taking game at all, but, say, one
in which the winner was the player who first
contrived to get rid of all his cards after the
fashion of a Stops game.
If Scartino did influence Tarocco, it is possible
that the practice whereby the dealer took extra
cards and made a corresponding discard was not
an original feature of Tarot games, but was
incorporated into them about the beginning of
the sixteenth century, in time for it to be
imported, as a feature of the game, when Tarot
arrived in Switzerland. In that case, the French
1917, p. 219, and the Diario Ferrarese of 1499 in Muratori,
Rerum Italicarum Sorzptores, vol. 24, p. 376. A letter of August
1493 quoted by Malaguzzi-Valeri and by Luzio and Renier
appears to imply that Scartino was a three-handed game.
The earliest reference is from 1492, one is from 1509, one
from 1517, and all the rest from the 1490s. Several concern
the obtaining or ordering of packs of Scartino cards (Para de
carte do Martino or Para de scartini), which appear all to have
come from Ferrara, what was special about these cards
there is no way of telling. It is just conceivable that Scartino
was itself a particular type of Tarot game, and that these
were therefore Tarot packs of a special type, but, unless
they were very special, it does not seem very likely that
Lodovico Sforza should have been having to obtain Tarot
packs from elsewhere. Most of the references are about
games of Scartino being played.
427
games described in the Maison acadérnique may
represent a yet more ancient tradition; if our
conjecture that they were derived from Piedmont
is correct, Tarot playing in that region may go
back to the very earliest times, the players
remaining exceptionally conservative. But the
hypothesis that the important feature of the
discard was borrowed from Scartino should be
treated with great caution, since it implies a
continued mutual influence between the style of i
Tarocco play in all four great early centres,
Ferrara, Milan, Bologna and Florence. However
this may be, we have every reason to assume that
the principal games played with the Tarot pack
were from the start trick-taking games in which
the Irion/5 were permanent trumps, and in which
it was obligatory to follow suit when possible
and, when one could not, to play a trump if
possible: the only doubt is as to the original use
of the Matto. There is also every reason to
assume that they were from the start complex ones
in our technical sense, i.e. with different cards
carrying differing point-values. There is scarcely
any indication of a Tarot game in which only the
number of tricks taken is significant. What we
have throughout called the 'original' method of
reckoning points, namely by counting 1 point for
each trick, with the point-values of counting
cards reckoned separately, as in the Spanish
game of Malilla, must indeed have been the
original one: on no other assumption can we
explain the genesis of the distinctive method of
computing the point-totals found in almost all
Tarot games. In every Tarot game except
Minchiate, the counting cards of the plain suits
are the court cards, as Lollio's poem suggests,
and, as in many games with the regular pack,
they always have point values increasing by*1
with each card. So constant is this feature that we
can take it as certain that it was original, their
values under the original system being 4 for the
King, 3 for the Queen, 2 for the Cavallo and 1 for
the jack.
Everywhere outside Italy, the three remaining
counting cards are the XXI, the Bagatto and the
Fool or Matto. Since the French and the Swiss
probably imported the game of Tarot from
Milan, and the Germans imported it from
France, the selection of these three counting
cards, in addition to the court cards, is likely
to be the Milanese practice. In Bologna, as we
have seen, the four counting cards other than
the court cards were the top two trumps, the
\
428 Part III: Italian Games and Italian Cards
Bagatto and the Matto; and we should take the
evidence of the Bolognese game particularly
seriously, since the indications are that
Bolognese players have always observed an
extreme conservatism in their manner of play,
which, in essentials, probably therefore faithfully
represents a sixteenth-century style of game.
Nevertheless, as already noted, although both
la/Iinchiate and Sicilian Tarocchi admit several
other counting cards, both games retain features
which set the top trump, the Bagatto and the
Matto aside from the other cards. It therefore
seems likely that the system found in all non-
Italian Tarot games, whereby these three cards
equal the Kings in value, and all the other
trumps are low cards, was the original one. VVe
still have to account for the fact that, in all the
Italian Tarot games surviving from before the
eighteenth century, this system has been
replaced by one under which at least one other
trump has a point-value.
It may be that no further explanation is
required than that this was a means adopted to
make the game more complicated and more
interesting. One fact, however, suggests the
possibility of a more specific explanation. This is
the coincidence that, when the standard manner
of counting points is being used, the cards being
counted in threes, the total number of points,
when the full pack is employed, is the same as the
number of cards in the pack, namely 788 and this
is the same as to say that, when the original
method of counting points was used, the total
came to 78 when the game was a three-handed
one. Perhaps this is merely accidental. But there
is a further coincidence: when there are no
bonuses, the total number of points in Trappola
is also 783 it is hard to avoid thinking that this
was arranged to agree with the point-total in
Tarocco games.
The aggregate number of points gained by all
the players together is not constant, and is
therefore not significant, except in games in
which all the counting cards are in play, or at
least contribute to some player's point-total. If
our supposition that this was not true of the
earliest Tarocco games is correct, the agreement
between the number of cards in the pack and the
total number of points in a three-handed game
cannot have existed until the new style of play, in
which the entire pack was distributed, came into
vogue; it is therefore likely to have been
accidental in the first instance. But, once noticed,
it is likely to have seemed a desirable and
amusing feature: the coincidence of the 78 points
and 78 cards strikes me as just the sort of conceit
that would appeal to men and women of
Renaissance times.
If so, some method would probably have been
devised for extending it to games played with
more than three players. One possibility is that
this was the genesis of the score for the last trick.
It is only because there is such a score in
Trappola that the total number of points comes
to 78, without it, it would amount only to 72. In
assuming that the total number of points was 78
in early, as in later, three-handed Tarocco
games, we have in effect been assuming that in
those games there was no score for the last trick.
But, when the game is played by four players,
each must start with 19 cards, the dealer having
had an extra two and having discarded two, at
least, this is how it must be if we assume that, as
in the later games, only the dealer received extra
cards, and that he received as few as possible. On
the original method of reckoning points, 1 point
is allowed for each trick of four cards. In
supposing the total number of points in the three-
handed game to be 78, we were tacitly assuming
that 1 point was awarded to the dealer for his
discard of three cards; so let us assume that, in
the four-handed game, the dealer was awarded 1
point for his two discarded cards. With no
further adjustment, the total number of points in
the four-handed game will then be only 72:
namely 52 for the nineteen counting cards, 19 for
the nineteen tricks and 1 for the dealer's discard.
This could be brought up to 78 once more by
awarding 6 points for the last trick - its value
both in Trappola and in the Bolognese form of
Tarocco. We may, admittedly, be on quite the
wrong track: but it is conceivable that this was
the original motivation for the score for the last
trick. Five-handed Tarot games are rare, but, if
the painting of 'The Tarocchi Players' at the
Casa Borromeo in Milan deserves its name, they
are as old as the Tarot pack itself. Five players
can receive at most 15 cards each, with a discard
of three cards for the dealer, making a total of 68
points on the cards themselves: this would then
require a score of 10 points for the last trick .- its
value in Minchiate - to bring it up to 78.
The fact that a score for the last trick is
virtually unknown outside Italy makes it
probable that it was not awarded in the early
Milanese game, or at least not in the three-
 The Early Italian Game
handed form of it. It may nevertheless be thought
to be more likely that, in other areas of Italy, it
was an original feature of the game, independent
of the number of players. Without altering our
other assumptions, we cannot reconcile this
supposition with an aggregate total of 78 points
in the three-handed game. It will be recalled,
however, that our inconclusive study of Lollio's
poem yielded a possible alternative
interpretation of the deal, one according to which
each player had an opportunity to discard and
ended with a hand of 20 cards. If points were
awarded, as usual, for counting cards, whether in
tricks or in the discards, but otherwise only for
actual tricks taken, the aggregate total would be
72 points (52 for counting cards + 20 for tricks),
with a score of 6 points for the last trick, this
would yield a total of 78.
As already remarked, the interpretation of
Lollio's account here invoked is not the more
probable one, though it does help to resolve the
problem about the carte dz rona. But suppose that
it were correct: how, then, could the aggregate of
78 points be maintained in a four-handed form?
We already know one answer to this - 19 cards to
each player, a discard of two cards for the dealer,
counting l point, and 6 points for the last trick.
Such a game would, however, lack sufficient
analogy to the three-handed form, we are
hypothesising. If each player were to be able to
make a discard, no points being awarded for the
discards save for the counting cards contained in
them, the aggregate total could be maintained
only by assigning a point-value to another trump.
The most likely assignment of this kind would be
one of 4 points to the second highest trump; the
aggregate total of 78 points would then be
ensured if each player held 16 cards at the start of
play (56 points for counting cards, 16 for tricks
and an extra 6 for the last trick). In such a game,
the remaining 14 cards would be distributed
among the four players, with corresponding
discards (say Five to the dealer and three to each
of the other three players). Such a game, played
with the full pack and without ari€clze or
sequences, might be the remote ancestor of the
Bolognese game. After the cricche and sequences
had been introduced, the aggregate total would
again become variable and hence unimportant;
there would then have been no obstacle to the
subsequent shortening of the pack. In a five-
handed game devised according to the same
principles, yet one more trump would have to
429
acquire a point-value: the players would then
have to begin play with hands of 12 cards each,
with a total discard of 18 (say five by the dealer
and three by each of the others).
It would be wrong to give much weight to
either of these alternative speculations. Whether
the variations in the set of counting cards came
about in this way or in some other, the Sicilian
game, presumably going back to the seventeenth
century, in which, in addition to the Bagatto, the
Matto and the court cards, all five top trumps are
recognised as counting cards, testifies to a
freedom felt in Italy about the selection of the
counting cards never exercised in other countries.
The arte of the Sicilian game may have been
imitated from those of Minchiate; more
probably, those of Minchiate were borrowed
from some earlier Florentine game, played with
the 78-card pack and directly ancestral to
Sicilian Tarocehi. The fact that, nevertheless, the
three cards which, in games played outside Italy,
are always the only ones beside the court cards to
possess point-values seem in Italy also to have
been regarded as in some manner special may be
due to their having been the only original
counting cards, or to their being the only ones
recognised in Milan, or possibly to the three-
handed game's having acquired, save in Bologna,
an ascendancy over other forms. This effect
would have been reinforced if there were, in some
three-handed games, a practice of making
declarations of combinations of cards held in
hand before the beginning of play, and among
such combinations were the set of the three
counting cards of the larorchi (the tour Les lroir of
other lands). Such declarations are not
mentioned in Lollio's poem, but, in view of the
importance that they assumed both in
Tarocchino and in Minchiate, as well as their
presence in non-Italian Tarot games, it is
extremely likely that they figured in some pre-
eighteenth-century Italian games played with the
78-card pack. If a declaration of the set consisting
of the highest trump, the Bagatto and the Matto
were carried over into games with more than
three players, despite there being one or more
other trumps with point-values, this would be
enough to preserve a sense that these three cards
were especially important and in some way
belonged together.
It is in any case likely that it was in its three-
handed form that the game of Tarot first
travelled from Italy to France and Switzerland,
430 Part III: Italian Games and Italian Cards
and from there to other countries; and, as far as
the records show, it was as a three-handed game
that it first appeared both in Switzerland and
Germany. But it did not take with it any score for
the last trick; and this makes it likely that such a
score was absent from the game as played in
Milan. We can associate it firmly with the games
played with the trumps arranged in a type A
order, those of Bologna, Florence, Rome and,
eventually, Sicily. But, in view of its presence in
Trappola, it is very likely to have figured in the
Tarot games played in Venice and Ferrara,
observing a type B order for the trumps.
There is one striking similarity between
Tarocchino and Minchiate. In both of them, the
special combinations of cards for which points
are earned, the criticize and sequences of
Tarocchino and the versicole of Minchiate, play
the predominant role, primarily because they are
scored for when they are contained within the
tricks won by a pair of partners, and in
consequence overwhelm the points made on
individual cards, particularly in Tarocchino. We
have noted that there is some oblique indication
in Lollio's poem that the game he was describing
had the same feature, although we cannot be at
all sure of this. It is a feature that does not appear
in the Sicilian game. It evidently represents one
line along which Tarot games developed in Italy
during the sixteenth century; but either that was
not the only line of development, or it had, by the
seventeenth century, been generally abandoned.
But for the single line in Lollio's poem, 'How
many times are you unable to cover the Mattock",
the only reasonable assumption would be that
the Matto served from the beginning as Excuse;
the Piedrnontese games of Sedici and Trentuno
would then have to be regarded as freaks, with no
historical importance. It seems hard to interpret
Lollio's question, however, save on the
supposition that, for him, the Matto was a low
trump which it was of the highest importance to
capture, and since, as observed, the poem is the
sole direct piece of evidence that we have
concerning the way in which Tarot was played in
the sixteenth century, we must take it seriously.
If, as I have argued, the invention of the Tarot
pack represented, if not the first, at any rate an
independent invention of the idea of trumps, then
it would be a little surprising if, from the first, the
Matto had, in play, its special role of Excuse: for
that presupposes the simultaneous introduction
of two radically new ideas into trick-taking play,
whereas, in games, as in other fields, it is rare for
anyone to have more than one entirely new idea
at a time. The possibility thus arises that
originally the Matto was the lowest trump and
the Bagatto only the second lowest, if, as seems
likely, those two cards were both counting cards
from the start, then, at least in the three-handed
game, the counting cards in trumps consisted
originally of the highest one and the two lowest.
We have seen that Lollio's remarks about the
consequences of failing to 'cover' the Matto
suggest that it was not merely one among several
counting cards with a high point-value, and I
suggested that perhaps it functioned like a
contazfore in Taroechino, that is, as a wild card
able to fill gaps in special scoring combinations of
cards won in tricks. If so, it would have been seen
as a card having a function different from all
others, even though it behaved in actual play
simply as the lowest trump, and this might serve
to explain why it was never numbered or
regarded as occupying a numerical position. On
this hypothesis, the invention of its special role in
play, as Excuse, must have occurred at some
stage after the original invention of the game. If
this is correct, this was only the first of two
changes of role to which the Fool was subjected
in the history of Tarot; as we shall see in Part IV,
it later became a trump once more, this time the
highest trump, beating even the XXI.
Thus the position of the Bagatto in Sicilian
Tarocchi, as bearing the number 1 and as yet not
being the lowest of the trump cards, may not
have been wholly unparalleled. It was suggested
in the last chapter that the practice, in packs in
which the trumps are arranged in an order of
type A, of starting the numbering after the
Bagatto may have been a device for ensuring that
Death received the number 13. If, however, the
Matto was originally the lowest trump, the
numbering nevertheless always starting after it,
an alternative interpretation becomes possible. If
the original order was of type B or type C, then
type A orders may have been a later
development, which took place only after the
Matto had acquired its new role of Excuse; the
practice of starting the numbering after the
Bagatto may then have been an imitation of the
previous practice of starting it after the Matto
when that card was the lowest trump. On this
interpretation, our previous idea should be
inverted: it would in this case have been the
displacement of the numbering one place
 The Early Italian Game
upwards that prompted the rearrangement of the
ordering, all three Virt.ues having to be brought
below Death in order to ensure to that card the
number 13.
I do not pretend to be advancing a satisfactory
theory on this question. On the contrary, it is
definitely a puzzle; and perhaps we lack the
means of solving it. If we knew only of the games
with the 54-card pack, to be described in Part IV,
in which the Fool plays an entirely different role,
and had no more than its name, der Skins, and one
cryptic line from a poem to hint to us of its former
role as Excuse, it is improbable that we should
ever guess how it had been used in other games,
or, conversely, if we knew nothing of the games
with the 54-card pack save the allusions in some
poem like Lollio's, we should never deduce the
function of the Skins in those games. The only
piece of evidence we have for the Matto's having
served as the lowest trump are the passage in
Lollio's poem and the games of Sedici and
Trentuno, which look like a survival from an
earlier epoch, but in which the Matto does not
have a high point-value; to these we may add, as
a very tenuous clue, Pier Antonio Viti's failure to
specify the role of the Matto in the game with
Boiardo's pack, although he specifies almost all
other particulars. Everything else that we know
would Ht more easily with the supposition that
the Matto served as Excuse from the first
invention of the game of Tarot. Even SedfCi and
Trentuno fail to fit perfectly with our hypothesis,
because, when it is assumed, it is most natural to
think of the type A orders as coming into
existence after the introduction of the new way of
using the Matto, as Excuse, whereas the fact that
in Piedmont the Angelo was treated as higher
than the Monde suggests that it was a type A
order that had been familiar there before the
game died out. If the present hypothesis is to be
entertained at all, the invention of the new role
for the Matto cannot be dated later than the
1470s. The reason for this is that, whereas in
Garzoni's book, in Susio's poem and in the
Bertoni poem, the trumps are listed in sequence,
beginning with the highest, it Monde (the World),
with the Matto coming at the end, the
arrangement in the Steele sermon, written at
least seventy years before Lollio's poem, is
different. In the sermon the trumps are listed in
ascending order, beginning with el bagatelle, and
the Matto, cited as el matte Jie nulls (the Fool or
zero), still comes at the end, after the 21, which is
431
oddly cited as '21. E! morzdo coe do Padre' ('21.
The World, that is, God the Father'). Moreover,
the entry for the Bagalella reads in full 'Primus
dicilur el bagatelle et es! omrzium inferior' ('The first
is called the bagalella; and it is the lowest of
all');9 this explicit statement is immediately
preceded by a sentence stating that there are
twenty-one trumps (Sunk emir 21 tfiump/ti . All
this is quite conclusive evidence that the preacher
did not regard the Matto as a trump in the
proper sense, and did not take it as ranking
below the Bagatto. Now Lollio was writing some
seventy or eighty years later. Admittedly, it may
have been some time since he had played
Tarocco, since, earlier in the poem, he describes
himself as having formerly been an enthusiast for
it, and as only later having come to detest it. But
he was not an old man when he wrote the
InvettzVa; he was only 42 when it was published.
This may indicate, therefore, that his line about
the Matto should be understood in some quite
different way from that adopted here. If not, it
must be that the Ferrarese game was in this
respect of a more ancient type than that known to
the preacher of the Steele sermon. This is not
impossible. Games in which the Fool played its
new role as the highest trump and ones in which
it served, in traditional fashion, as Excuse,
coexisted in Germany for a considerable period,
and both are played, in different countries, to this
day. But, as remarked, the whole question is a
puzzle; and I regret having to leave it unresolved.
If there is a problem about the Matto, there is
a surprise concerning the Bagatto, or, more
exactly, concerning the bonus for the Bagatto
ultimo, for winning the last trick with the Bagatto.
Throughout the Austrian Empire, this Pagat
ultimo bonus was to become the most celebrated
feature of Tarock in all its forms. The use of the
Italian term ultimo naturally suggests that the
practice was of Italian origin; and an equally
natural conjecture is that it was an adaptation of
the Trappola idea of a bonus for winning the last
trick with the lowest card of a suit. Trappola as
described by Cardano was a game without
trumps; but it may well be that it had
incorporated the idea of trumps before it
migrated from Venice to more northerly regions.
These speculations, natural as they are, do not
9 The words are here given in full, as in Steele's article,
rather than in the severely abbreviated form in which they
appearinthe manuscript,
432 Part III: Italian Games and Italian Cards
square with the facts. There is no indication of a
bonus for the Bagatto ultimo in Bolognese or
Sicilian Tarocchi or in Minchiate, nor any hint of
it .in Lollio's poem or in any of the Italian literary
sources which refer to the individual Tarot
trumps. As for the term ultimo, this was used in
nineteenth-century Vienna, but there is no
evidence for its use anywhere outside Italy before
the nineteenth century; the bonus itself was a
feature of German Tarok games played in the
eighteenth century, before the term ultimo had
been adopted. The bonus does not seem to have
been imitated from Trappola, but, as we saw in
Chapter 11> to have originated as a correlative to
a penalty for losing the Pagat, doubled when this
happened in the last trick; and it was probably in
Germany that it made its First appearance.
VVe saw that the Bagatto ultimo bonus was
well established in Piedmont by 1787,
presumably having reached Italy from Germany
via France. It may well be that it arrived in
Austria, not directly from Germany, but by the
route Gerrnany-France-Italy-Austria, bringing
the terror ultimo with it from Italy. hiilan was
awarded to Austria under the Peace of Utrecht in
1713. The award was contested by the Spanish
Bourbons, in alliance with the French, but,
under Maria Theresa, Milan came firmly under
Austrian control at the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle
in 1748, and remained so until 1859, save for the
Napoleonic interlude from 1796 to 1814. The
bonus for winning the last trick with the Bagatto
or Pagat presumably reached Vienna from Italy
at some time during the later eighteenth century,
the Italian term ultimo being adopted for a
practice not in origin Italian.
As we shall see in the next chapter, what may
have been copied from Trappola games was the
practice of announcing at the start of play an
intention to gain the bonus for Pagat ultimo. But
this development did not take place until the
early nineteenth century, and then not in Italy,
where Trappola had long been forgotten, but,
almost certainly, in Austria, as an imitation of
the announcement of intention to make a twenty-
six in Hundertspiel; we find it in Austria by 1821,
and in Piedmont by 1830. However the Bagatto
ultimo bonus and announcement originated, we
find no trace of the former before the eighteenth
century or of the latter before the nineteenth: in
both cases the evidence is clearly against an
Italian origin.
We succeeded, in the last chapter, in
reconstructing, from a meagre supply of clues,
the history of the Tarot pack in Italy from
the fifteenth century to the eighteenth.
Unfortunately, no comparable success can be
claimed for the attempt in this chapter to
reconstruct the early history of the game in Italy.
There are as many clues in this case as in the
other, but some are hard to interpret, and some
point in opposite directions. I hope that someone,
reflecting on the evidence, will be better able to
discern a pattern than I have succeeded in doing ;
or perhaps new evidence will come to light.
Appendix
The following is the text of that part of the poem from
the last line of p, 276 to the last line of p. 279 in the
1550 edition, I believe that this includes all that bears
in any degree on the way the game was played. The
footnotes give readings from the 1590 edition, as
quoted by Singer, that represent significant
emendations, together with three other emendations
in square brackets,
Echo the s'incomincia a dar je carte :
La prima man ii fé vna Bella vista,
Tal, che to ten l'enLltto,l & lo rifai:
Quelle, che venison dietro, ultra facenda
Mostrano hayer: ne pill de' Casi tuoi
Tendon memorial alcuna: of de to star
Sospeso al quanta: & di Wada: quell'altro
Ilqual par che it fauor for Si promett8,
Ingrosseraz la posts: all for trafitto
Do vergogna, dolor, d'inuidia, e d'ire,
Ten vai é monte, co'l visa abbassato.
Non é Si Gran cordoglio vn Capitano,
Quando si credo hayer la purina vinta,
E mantra et grids Vittoria, Vittoria;
Da nuouo assalto sopragiunto vede
Anwar la gentle sum rota, o disperse,
Quando he costume. Venison dapoi qLlell'altre
Due man di carte, her liete for triste: & quando
L'vliime aspetti, che ii dion soccorso
Hauendogli3 inuitata gin dal resto,
Tu ii uedi arriuare (oh dolor grande)
Carte galioffe" do fart rnorire,
Totalmente contrarie al two bisogno.
Of de di stizza auampi, e tutto pie no
Di mal tal talento,5 rimbrottando piglet
Lo auanzo de je Carte, che son uenti.
* l'invitto
2 [ingrosseré]
3 Havendola
4 gaglioffe
" mal taler to
 The Early Italian Game
Quests t'empien° je maui, & buona pezza
Ti dan trauaglio e brigs, in rassettare.
Dinar, Coppe, Baston, Spade; 6 Trionfi.
Perl) che ii (;onui€r1 ad Una, ad Una,
\4etterle in ordinanza; & far di lore,
I
J.
Come farebbe it boon pastor, che hauesse
Di multi armenti; apparecchiando mandre
Diuerse per ciascun Quindi s'haiquattro
O cinque Carte di Ronfa, to tern
Che non ii murcia it Re, con je figure :
Code si struggle it cuor, spesma, la mente,7
Star do in bilancia fro speme, e timore.
Quello e lo isfinimento e'l creppacuore,
Che set sforzato 8 tenet per tuo specchio
Certe cartaccie che ii fan languire :
Et, come se to fuss un'Orinale,
Seruir conuienti 8 gli altri due compagni,
Rispondendo, a ciascun giuoco, per giuoco :
Et se per ignoranza, 6 per errors,
Da in Una Carta,8 che non uada 8 uerso,
Tu sent ender je uoci intro al cielo.
Ne ii pensar che quiui Sian finite
Le pane tue: bisogna tender canto
D'ogni minima Carts, the Si giuochi,
Altramerite ogni casa va in ruins.
Perl to bram spesso ia remora
Di Mitridate, di Cesare, 6 di Ciro.
Et s'egli auien tal horc'habbi un be giuoco,
T'andré Si mal giocato, che ne perdi
Vna dozzina 6 due: tal hors tutti.
Quante volte non puoi coprire it Motto"
Of de mal grade tuo, spogliar to sent
Del boon c'haLleui: & sembri la cornaccliia,
Che rests spennacchiata infra gli vccelli,
Allhora se to Rossi uno Aristide,
Vn Socrates, un Zenone, un Giobbe, un lasso,
Too sprezzaresti it fren della patient,
Stracciaresti i Tarocchi in mille pezzi,
Maladicendo it primo che ii post
Mai carte in mano, e t'insegn6 8 giocare.
Doug lasso quel numeral noioso
D'ogni Trionfo, ch'esca fuorip O quanta
Fastidio hai to di questo, che non puoi
Pur ragionar, pur dire Una parole:
Anzi seruar conuien maggior silentio
Che non Si fé Alla Predica, o la Messa.
Ei rostra be d'hauer pock facenda,
Et esser certs Vu be cacapensieri
Colui, che few inuentor di simi baba :
Creder Si de, ch'ei fussi di pintore
Ignobil, scioperate," e senza soldi,
Che per buscarsi it pan Si, rise" a fare
c t'empion
7 spasm la mete
8 Dai Una carts
9 [scioperato]
10 [pan, si rise]
433
Cotali Fllostroccole da puts.
Che vol dir alto it Bagatella, e'l Matto,
Se non ch'ei fuse vm ciurmatore, e vn barre ?
Che significant alto la Papessa,
11 Cairo, it Traditor, la Ruota, it Gobbo,
La Fortezza, la Stella, it Sol, la Luna,
E la Morte, e l'Inferno, e tutto it resto
Di quests bizaria girando l'esca,
Se non che quest hauea it capo suentato,
Pier di fume, Pancucchi, e Fanfalucchep
Et che sia ver, cole che versa i Flaschi,
Ci rostra chirr c:h'ei fosse Vl'l ebbriaco,
E quel Nome fantastico, e bizarre
Di Tarocco, senz'ethimologia,
Fa palest é ciascun, the i ghiribizzi
(Iii harnesser guasto, e zorpiato it ceruello.
Dr Lorenzo l\linio-Paluello very kindly went through
this passage with me, on the basis of his help, and I
hope without importing any errors of my own, I
append the following translation.
See, the cards are beginning to be dealt. The first
hand looks good to you, so that you hold the invitation
[reading Z'inz/zfo in view of the irzvitata that comes later] ,
and make it again. Those [cards] that come next show
a different state of affairs, they no longer have your
chances in mind. You therefore remain in suspense,
and on it goes[?]. That other [player] who seems to
expect their favour [the favour of the cards] will
increase the stake, then, wounded by shame, pain,
envy and anger, you go a Monte, with face downcast.
A Captain who thinks he has won the battle, and,
while he cries, 'Victory, victory!', sees his people
crushed or dispersed by an unexpected new attack,
does not feel anguish so great as does this [player] .
There then come two other hands of cards, first
fortunate, then miserable: and when you are
expecting the last [cards] to give you some help,
having invited them [reading Ha vendogli irwilate] from
the stock pi, you see arrive (oh, bitter pain) hideous
cards to make you die, quite the contrary of what you
need. You are therefore inflamed with vexation, and,
full of an evil disposition, you begin scolding the
remainder of your cards, which are twenty.
These fill your hands, and for a long time they give
you trouble and worry to arrange Coins, Cups,
Batons, Swords and Trumps, because it is useful to
put them in order one by one, to do with them as a
good shepherd would do, if he had many flocks,
preparing different folds for each. Then, if you have
four or Five carte Di rona, you fear that the King will
die, with the court cards; and therefore your heart
aches and your mind is racked, standing in balance
between hope and fear.
That is the exhaustion and the heartbreak, when
you are forced to keep before your eyes, as in a mirror,
434 Part III: Italian Games and Italian Cards
some low cards that make you droop. And, as if you
were a urinal, you must be at the disposal of the two
other players, having to respond suit by suit to each,
and if, by ignorance or mistake, you play a card which
does not fit, you hear their voices go up to the skies.
Do not think that your sufferings are at an end here.
You must take account of every least card that is
played, otherwise everything goes to ruin. You
therefore often long for the memory of Mithridates, of
Caesar or of Cyrus.
And if it sometimes happens that you have a good
hand, you will play it so badly that you lose one or
two dozens, sometimes you lose them all.
How many times are you unable to cover the
Mattock Whence you feel that, against your will, you
are deprived of the good you have, and you look like
the crow that lost its feathers, among the other birds.
Therefore, if you were an Aristides, a Socrates, a
Zeno, a Job, a stone, you would despise the curb of
patience, and would tear the tarocciit in a thousand
pieces, cursing the First person who ever put the cards
in your hands and taught you to play.
Where do I leave that tedious counting of each
trump that comes out? How much annoyance you
have from being unable to discuss anything or say
even a single word: one must keep greater silence than
one does at a sermon or at Mass.
He who invented such nonsense showed himself to
have little to do, and truly to have diarrhoea of the
mind, we must suppose that he was a worthless
painter, out of work and penniless, who, in order to
earn his bread, started making such childish
gibberish.
What else do the Bagatella and the Matto mean,
save that he was a trickster and a cheat? What else
can they signify, the Popess, the Chariot, the Traitor,
the Wheel, the Hunchback, Fortitude, the Star, the
Sun, the l\floon, Death, Hell and all the rest of this
revolving bizarrerie, save that he [the inventor] had an
empty head, full of smoke, caprices and idle tales?
The woman who empties wine-bottles [Temperance]
clearly shows that it is also true that he was a
drunkard. And that whimsical and bizarre name
'Tarocco', lacking an etymology, makes it manifest to
everyone that his fantasies had damaged and ruined
his brain.