Lorenzo de’ Medici mentions the games of La Bassetta and Il Frusso in some of his “Canzoni,” printed before 1492; and there are Italian writers who point to him as the inventor of some games of cards.
In Italy the suits were called Coppe (Cups), Spadi (Swords), Denari (Money), Bastoni (Maces). These continued to be the commonly used marks on the Italian cards from the sixteenth century to a much later period; and the same suits and pips have been used in Spain from the time of their first history to the present day. An Italian writer claims that a native of Bologna invented Tarots or Tarocchino before the year 1419, and says that “there is preserved in the Fibbia family, which was one of the most illustrious and ancient of that city, a portrait of Francis Fibbia, Prince of Pisa, who sought refuge at Bologna about the commencement of the fifteenth century, in which he is represented holding in his right hand a parcel of cards, while others appear lying at his feet. Among the latter are seen the Queen of Batons and the Queen of Denari; the one bearing the arms of the Bentivoglio family, and the other the arms of the Fibbia. An inscription at the bottom of the picture states that Francis Fibbia, who died in 1419, had obtained as the inventor of Tarocchino, from the Reformers of the city, the privilege of placing his own arms on the Queen of Batons, and that of his wife, who was one of the Bentivoglio family, on the Queen of Denari.” Writers disagree as to whether Fibbia invented the emblems of the cards or joined two packs of cards which already had their appropriate emblems into one, or whether he invented a new game to be played with the already well known Tarocchino cards.
Notice should be taken of the fact that printed as well as painted cards are mentioned in the petition of the card-makers of Venice, as it was from this date that each village in Italy manufactured its own cards. After the invention of wood-engraving, Germany and Holland exported cards in large quantities, and this may have called for the protective decree. There was also a difference, which was mentioned in the documents of the period, between the primitive Naïbi and cards proper. As these documents do not define the difference between the packs, we can form no idea of what it was.
GERMANY.
In a German book printed at Augsburg in 1472, called “Gülden Spiel,” or “The Golden Game,” written by a Dominican friar of the name of Ingold, it is stated that cards had been known in Germany since 1300. As this is by no means contemporaneous testimony, it is probable that the German vanity which claims the honor of inventing the art of printing wishes, with no more reason on its side, to appropriate to itself the invention of playing-cards, which in plain words is laying claim to the invention of wood-engraving, as many of the early German packs are engraved and not stencilled or painted. This rather suspicious assertion may therefore well be ignored, and we may only credit the one made by the Italian author of Viterbo, which is apparently more authentic. Unfortunately, the latter gives no details about the kind of cards which he mentions. He only states that cards made their appearance in 1379 in Europe, and came from Arabia under their original name.
In the “Livre d’Or” of Ulm, which is a manuscript preserved in that city, there is an ordinance, dated 1397, forbidding all card-playing.
These are the only authentic witnesses that can be brought forward by which the approximate time of the introduction of playing-cards into Europe may be fixed.
Plate 8.
A German author by the name of Heniken claims for his country the birthplace of cards, and brings forward many ingenious but hardly satisfactory deductions in support of his pretensions. He says that Briefe, which is the name that cards bear in his country, means “letters,” and that the common people do not say, “Give me a pack of cards,” but “Give me a Spiel-briefe” (a pack of letters), and they do not say, “I want a card,” but “I want a Brief” (letter). “We should at least have preserved the name carte,” he says, “if they had come to us from France; for the common people always preserve the names of all games that come to them from other countries.”