Catalogue of the collection of playing cards bequeathed to the Trustees of the British museum by the late Lady Charlotte Schreiber.

2

Ll..TALOG"UE OF CIARDS.

ance); XV. I1 Diavolo (Le Diable); XVI. La Torre (La Maison Dieu);
XVII. Le Stelle (L'Etoilc); XVIII. La Luna (La Lune); XIX. I1 Sole
(Le Soleil); XX. II Giudizio (Le Jugement); XXI. II Mondo (Le Monde);
and, unnumbered, I1 Matto (Le Fou).*
The old French and German tarot packs have Italian suitmarks, and
in every way resemble the Italian tarocchi sequence; but in modern
German packs French suitmarks are used, and the traditional subjects of
the tarots are replaced by fanciful and meaningless designs, frequently
subjects of natural history.
The tarocchi game is of a complicated character and played in a
variety of ways, but in every case the tarots constitute a permanent suit
of trumps and take all cards of the ordinary suits. They also vary in
value amongst themselves, the higher numbers taking the lower. Three
of them, Il Mondo, II Bagatto, and Matto, which in the modern game are
called Matadors, have special powers, and with the four Kings of the
other suits constitute the seven " honours " of the pack.
The question of the country and period which gave birth to Playing
Cards, though it has been the subject of much discussion and research
during the last two centuries, remains as yet undetermined. But that,
as far as Europe is concerned, they first appeared in Italy, and probably
at Venice, in the middle of the 14th century is now the accepted opinion.
It has also been generally assumed, but with less justification, that their
earliest form was the tarot pack (i.e., the combined series of emblematical
and numeral cards as above described), and that the use of the purely
numeral set was a later modification. Merlin t adopted this view, and
formulated the theory that (1) at the time mentioned there was current
in Italy a set of emblematical designs, then termed " Naibis," and later
"Tarocchi," which were used for the instruction and entertainment of
youth, and have probably been transmitted to us in the so-called " Tarocchi di Mantegna"; (2) that a mode of gaming with these was first
devised; (3) that subsequently, by the combination of a portion of these
and others of a moral character with four suits of numerals, the tarot
pack, as we know it, was evolved; and finally (4) that the combined game
thus devised being found too complicated, it was simplified by the rejection, in all but the southern countries above named, of the Tarot sequence
and the adoption of games playable with the four numeral sequences
exclusively. This idea was based mainly on conjecture, having little real
evidence to support it, and, in the face of documents which have come to
light since Merlin wrote, can no longer be maintained.
Of these the most important is a MS. in the British Museum
(Eg. 2419), of which Mr. E. A. Bond printed an account in the AtheneTum
of 19th January, 1878. It was written in 1377 by one Johannes, a
German monk, with the title " De Moribus et Disciplina Humane Con* For a full description and explanation of these symbols, see Willshire, p. 138,
and supp. p. 49.
t "Origine des cartes A jouer;" Paris, 1869.