materially increased by the recent discovery of the _Berlin_ and
_Brussels Prints_. We see that wood-cuts of merit were made during
the first quarter of the fifteenth century, but we see also that they
could not have been the first productions of a recently discovered or
newly revived art. They present indications of a skill in engraving
which could have been acquired only through experience. One has but to
compare them with wood-cuts made by amateurs in typographic printing in
Italy, Germany and Holland between the years 1460 and 1500, to perceive
that the manufacturers of the image prints were much more skillful
as engravers. If there were no other evidences, we could confidently
assume that this skill could have been acquired only by practice on
ruder and earlier engravings. Of this preliminary practice-work we find
clear traces in the stenciled and printed playing cards which were
popular in many parts of Europe before the introduction of images.
[p088]
V
Printed and Stenciled Playing Cards.
Playing Cards not made by the Frotton . . . Their Manufacture
an Industry of Importance . . . Decree of the Senate of Venice
prohibiting the Importation of Cards . . . Early Notices of
Card-Making in Germany . . . Probable Method of Manufacture . . .
Illustrations of a Playing Card of the Fifteenth Century . . . Jost
Amman’s Illustrations of a Print Colorer and an Engraver on Wood
. . . Playing Cards made from Engraved Blocks . . . Early Notices of
Card Playing in France . . . Cards Prohibited to the People in France
and Spain . . . Introduced in Italy in 1379 . . . Not Invented in
Germany . . . An Oriental Game . . . Illustrations of Chinese Cards
. . . Originated in Hindostan . . . Transmitted to Europe through the
Saracens . . . Popularity of Cards in Europe . . . Cards Denounced by
the Clergy . . . New Forms and New Games of Cards, with Illustrations
. . . Unsuccessful Attempts to make Cards a Means of Instruction
. . . Cards not an Unmixed Evil . . . Induced Respect for Letters
and Education . . . Cards probably made before Images . . . Made by
Block-Printing . . . Most largely made by this process in Germany.
* * * * *
After innumerable experiments and disappointments, the art so
eagerly sought and so sorely needed was at last discovered. And
what is strange, although in accordance with the capriciousness of
invention, this art that had eluded all the efforts and aspirations
of intelligence, was discovered by makers of cards. It was by them,
and for the peculiar requirements of their work, that xylography was
invented.
_Bibliophile Jacob._
* * * * *
The hypothesis, for it is nothing more, that all the early prints were
produced by the frotton does not satisfactorily explain the large
production of merchantable printed matter during the first half of the
fifteenth century. Friction would have served then, as it does now, for
trial proofs or experiments, but it was a method altogether too slow
and uncertain to meet the requirements of an extended business. The
playing cards and prints so common during this period must have been
made by a quicker method. That there was an established international
trade in playing cards and in other kinds of printed work, as early as
the year 1441, may be inferred from the following decree of the senate
of Venice: [p089]
1441, Oct 11. Whereas, the art and mystery of making cards and printed
figures, which is in use at Venice, has fallen to decay, and this in
consequence of the great quantity of printed playing cards and colored
figures which are made out of Venice, to which evil it is necessary
to apply some remedy, in order that the said artists, who are a great
many in family, may find encouragement rather than foreigners: Let
it be ordained and established, according to the petition that the
said masters have supplicated, that from this time in future, no work
of the said art that is printed or painted on cloth or paper-that
is to say, altar-pieces, or images, or playing cards, or any other
thing that may be made by the said art, either by painting or by
printing-shall be allowed to be brought or imported into this city,
under pain of forfeiting the work so imported, and thirty livres and
twelve soldi, of which fine one-third shall go to the state, one-third
to Giustizieri Vecchi, to whom this affair is committed, and one-third
to the accuser. With this condition, however, that the artists who
make the said works in this city shall not expose the said works
for sale in any other place but their own shops, under the penalty
aforesaid, except on the day of Wednesday at S. Paolo, and on Saturday
at S. Marco.[23]
The engraved images here noticed were probably prints of saints or
sacred personages like those of which engraved illustrations have been
given on previous pages. The altar-pieces were prints upon cotton or
linen cloth, of a similar character, but of much larger size.[24]
Playing cards, which are twice mentioned in the decree, seem to have
been considered as of equal importance with images and altar-pieces.
The specification of three distinct kinds of printed work, coupled as
it is with the allusion to “any other thing that may be made by the
said art,” is an intimation that the manufacturers, “who were a great
many [p090] in family,” were even then applying the art of printing and
colored stenciling to many other purposes.
The decree says that the art had fallen to decay. When it was in its
most prosperous condition in Venice cannot be ascertained from the
record, nor from any other source. The author[25] who found this
document says that he had fragments of coarse engravings on wood which
represented some parts of the city of Venice as they appeared before
the year 1400. He thinks these rude engravings must have been cut
in the latter part of the fourteenth century. That they could have
been made at this time is not improbable, but the direct evidence is
wanting. There are, however, abundant reasons for the belief that
engravings on wood were made in Venice, not experimentally, but in the
way of business, many years before the decree of 1441. And they must
have been made elsewhere. The printers of playing cards and colored
figures must have been many in family beyond as well as in Venice. If
the foreign printers had not been formidable competitors, there would
have been no request for the prohibitory decree.
Nothing is said in the decree about the nationality of the foreign
competitors, but we may get this knowledge from another source. An
authentic record of the town of Ulm in Germany contains a brief entry
which tells us that playing cards in barrels were sent from that
city to Sicily and Italy, to be bartered for delicacies and general
merchandise.[26] [p091]
The same book contains a defense of the game of playing cards under
the date of 1397. Another old German record, the Burgher Book of
Augsburg for the year 1418, specifically notices card-makers. The
Tax Book of Nuremberg, for the years 1433 and 1435, names Eliza, a
card-maker. The same book, for the year 1438, mentions Margaret,
the card-painter. The words _kartenmacherin_, card-maker, and
_kartenmalerin_, card-painter, which are found in these books, do not
clearly specify the process. It has been suggested that these cards
could have been drawn and painted by means of stencil plates.
The word _formschneider_, form-cutter, the word now used in Germany
as the equivalent of engraver on wood, appears for the first time in
the year 1449, in the books of the city of Nuremberg. The same records
mention one Wilhelm Kegler, _briftrucker_, or card-printer, under the
date of 1420. They also mention one _Hans Formansneider_, in the year
1397, but Formansneider should not be construed as engraver on wood. It
should be read Hans Forman, _schneider_ or tailor. In this, as in some
other cases, it will be seen that the facility of the German language
for making new words by the compounding of old ones, is attended with
peculiar disadvantages. The manufactured words are susceptible of
different meanings.
These notices of card-making are not enough to prove that the process
employed was that of xylography. They prove only that card-making was
an industry of note in the towns of Ulm, Augsburg and Nuremberg. But
when these notices of early card-making are considered in connection
with early German prints, like the St. Christopher of 1423, which were
discovered in the vicinity of these towns, there is no room for doubt.
If prints of saints were made by engraving on wood, cards should have
been made by the same art. The connection of cards and image prints in
the decree of the Senate of Venice is evidence that they were made by
the same persons and by the same process.
It may seem strange that the little town of Ulm, in the heart of
Germany, should establish by a long sea route a trade [p092] in
playing cards with cities on the Mediterranean and the Adriatic. It
is but one of many evidences of the growing spirit of commercial
enterprise which pervaded all the cities of Germany. It is not more
strange than the fact that, in 1505, merchants of Augsburg, a city at a
great distance from navigable waters, joined with the Portuguese in an
extensive traffic with the eastern coast of Africa.
Playing cards may have been made at as early dates in other countries
besides Germany and Italy. We shall soon see that they were in
common use in many parts of Europe at the beginning of the fifteenth
century, but we have no certain knowledge that they were made from
engraved blocks in other places. Our knowledge of the fact that they
were printed in Italy and Germany is based entirely on occasional
notices in old manuscript records. We have indications that they were
printed, but we lack the proof. There are no cards in existence which
can be offered, with any degree of confidence, as specimens of the
block-printing of 1440. The xylographic cards of which fac-similes are
most common in books which treat of pastimes, are of the sixteenth
century; the copper-plate cards described and illustrated by Weigel and
Breitkopf were made either during the latter half of the fifteenth or
in the sixteenth century.
The engraving on the following page is a fac-simile of one of a set
of forty-eight playing cards now preserved in the British Museum. The
entire set, printed on six separate sheets of paper, eight cards to
each sheet, was found in that great hiding-place of discarded sheets,
the inner lining of a book cover, for which, to adopt the bookbinder’s
phrase, it served as a stiffener. The sheets may have been rejected
for imperfections, and put in the book cover because they were
unsalable. The book in which they were found was printed and bound
by some unknown or undescribed printer before the year 1500.[27] If
rudeness of engraving could be considered [p093] as sufficient proof
of superior antiquity, this card should be rated as one of the oldest
pieces of engraving on wood. The cutting of this block could have been
done by any carver on wood, or even by a carpenter. But the quality of
the engraving is not a proper criterion of the condition of the art
of engraving on wood during the period in which it was made. It is
obviously a cheap card, made for the uses of people who could pay but a
small price. There may have been other reasons for the rudeness of the
work. The stiff and conventional manner of drawing the figures may have
been as popular then as a similar method of designing playing cards is
at this day.
[Illustration: A Playing Card of the Fifteenth Century.
[From Singer.]]
Dull red and dark green were the only colors used in illuminating this
set of cards. They were laid on with brush and stencil. The stencil
is one of the oldest forms of labor-saving contrivance for abridging
the labor of writing or drawing. It was used, as has been stated,
in the sixth century by a Roman emperor who could not write; it was
used for the same purpose by Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, and
by the emperor Charlemagne. It is used to this day by merchants who
mark boxes, in preference to writing, printing, branding, or painting.
It has advantages of cheapness and simplicity that commend it to all
manufacturers. It is even used by publishers of books for tinting maps,
fashion plates, and illuminated pamphlet covers.
Jost Amman, in his Book of Trades, has presented us a representation
of the print stenciler, as he practised his work [p094] in 1564. The
method here shown is, probably, the method in general use in 1440,
for the coloring of playing cards and image prints. We see the bowls
that contain different colors, with their proper brushes, on top of
the chest. The colorer is sweeping the brush over the perforated metal
plate, and filling up the outlines of the print. The neat pile of
sheets before him and near his right hand shows that he is working
with precision and with system. Stencil painting was work of care and
neatness, but it was so simple that we can clearly understand that it
could have been done by women in Nuremberg as effectively as it is done
now.[28]
[Illustration: The Print Colorer.
[From Jost Amman.]]
The illustration of the engraver on wood which appears in the same
_Book of Trades_ puts before us a man in a richer dress, plainly a
workman of higher grade than the stencil painter. He seems to be
tracing outlines on the block. The technical accessories about this
engraver are the same as those in use at this day—the graver, the
whetstone, and, possibly, a water globe lens in the corner near the
window casement.[29] [p095]
Playing cards and engraving on wood bear to each other a curious
relation. The introduction of the cards in Europe was soon followed
by the revival, or as Bibliophile Jacob of Paris characterizes it, by
the invention, of engraving on wood. Whatever differences of opinion
may exist as to whether the art was revived or invented, it is certain
that playing cards were the means by which early printing was made
popular. Cards were the only kind of printed work which promised to
repay the labor of engraving. People who could neither read nor write,
and who had no desire to be taught either accomplishment, derived great
pleasure from them. There was no other kind of printed matter, not even
the image prints, which found so many buyers in every condition of
society. The fixing of the earliest practice as a regular business of
engraving on wood in Europe depends, in some degree, on the fixing of
the date of the first introduction of playing cards. The determination
of this date has been made a national question, and the theme of books
containing much curious information.
[Illustration: The Engraver on Wood.
[From Jost Amman.]]
Ambrose Firmin Didot[30] quotes a scrap of poetry from a French romance
of 1328, which alludes to the folly of games of dice, checkers and
cards. Other French writers maintain that playing cards were in use in
France as early as 1350. [p096] Bullet says that playing cards were
used in France in the year 1376. But the testimony in confirmation of
these dates is ambiguous and insufficient. The first unequivocal notice
of playing cards in France is to be found in an account book for the
year 1392, kept by one Charles Poupart, treasurer to Charles VI. In
this book is an entry to this effect: “Paid to Jacquemin Gringonneur,
painter, for three packs of cards, gilded, colored, and ornamented
with various designs, for the amusement of our lord the king, 56 sols
of Paris.” The mind of Charles VI had been seriously affected by
sunstroke, and these cards were provided for his lucid intervals during
which he suffered from melancholy. We are not told how these cards
were made—whether they were first drawn by hand, or whether they were
printed from cut blocks before they were painted. The price paid was
not small: fifty-six sols of Paris in 1393 would be equivalent to one
hundred and fifty francs in 1874. In 1454, a pack of cards purchased
for the Dauphin of France cost but five sous of Tours, the equivalent
of twelve or thirteen francs of modern French money.[31] The difference
in these prices is some indication of a cheapened manufacture.
The earliest and most convincing evidence of the popularity of playing
cards in Paris is contained in an order of the provost of that city,
under the date of 1397, in which order he forbids working people from
indulging in games of tennis, bowls, dice, cards, or nine-pins on
working days. That the game was then comparatively new is inferred from
the omission of playing cards in an ordinance of the city of Paris, for
the year 1369, in which other popular games were minutely specified.
The Cabinet of Prints attached to the National Library at Paris
contains seventeen cards which are supposed to be the relics of the
three packs made for Charles VI by Gringonneur; but these cards were,
without doubt, drawn by hand. This cabinet has no printed cards which
can be attributed to the [p097] fourteenth century. Its oldest relics
of this kind are eighteen printed cards which may have been made in
France during the reign of Charles VII, or between the years 1442 and
1461.[32]
Playing cards seem to have been popular in Spain before they were known
in France. They were supposed to be so demoralizing to the people,
that John I, king of Castile, in the year 1387, thought it necessary,
to prohibit them entirely. To have acquired this popularity, the
cards should have been made by some process as economical as that of
printing. We have, however, no knowledge that the cards were printed.
They could have been made by stencils. Chatto says that the relics of
playing cards which he thought were the oldest were made exclusively
with stencils.
Cards were known in Italy as early as 1379. An old manuscript history
of the town of Viterbo, which states this fact, says that “In this
year, a year of great distress [occasioned by the war between the
anti-pope Clement VII and the pope Urban VI], was brought into Viterbo,
the game of cards, which came from the land of the Saracens, and by
them is called Naib.” [p098]
Many German authors claim that playing cards were in common use
throughout Germany at a much earlier period. Breitkopf quotes the
following passage from a book called the _Golden Mirror_, said to have
been written about the middle of the fifteenth century by a Dominican
friar of the name of Ingold: “The game is right deceitful, and, as I
have read, was first brought in Germany in the year 1300.”[33] Another
writer quotes an old chronicle, that describes the emperor Rudolph
as amusing himself with cards in the old town of Augsburg at some
undefined time before his death in 1291. It cannot be proved that the
cards here mentioned were true playing cards. It is more probable
that the amusement noticed was the game of king and queen, which was
forbidden to the clergy by the synod of Worcester in 1240, and which
has sometimes been erroneously understood as a game of cards. The
notices of card-makers and card-printers in the town books of Nuremberg
and Augsburg should be regarded as the earliest records of the use of
playing cards in Germany.[34]
[Illustration: Chinese Playing Cards.
[From Breitkopf.]]
A review of the dates proves that playing cards were not popular in
any part of Europe before the last quarter of the fifteenth century.
The Italian record which attributes their derivation to the land of
the Saracens is fully corroborated by other testimony of authority.
Students of oriental literature assure us that the Saracens were taught
the uses of playing cards by the inhabitants of Hindostan, in which
country they were invented.[35] Playing cards were made in China from
printed blocks long before the game was known in Europe. [p099] The
introduction of this oriental pastime in civilized Europe has been
attributed to the Moors of Spain, to eastern Jews who traded on the
shores of the Mediterranean, to Gypsies who made their appearance in
Germany at the beginning [p100] of the fifteenth century. Whether
they were introduced by Moor, Christian, Jew or Gypsy is of minor
importance. It concerns us more to know how they were received. We have
abundant evidence that the cards supplied a universal want, and that
they soon became as popular with the poor and ignorant as they had been
with the rich and noble. While the Duke of Milan found amusement, as
he did in 1415, with a suite of cards elaborately painted by artists
of renown on plates of ivory, at a cost of fifteen hundred crowns,
and while Flemish nobles were playing at games of hazard with cards
engraved on silver plates, the working people of France and Spain,
soldiers in Italy, and traveling mechanics in Germany were diverting
themselves in wine-shops and public gardens, in huts and by the
road-side, with similar games, played with greasy cards which had been
printed or stenciled on coarse paper. The cards were adapted to all
tastes, and there was a fascination in them which made men neglectful
of duty.
The evil results of this infatuation were soon perceived. Playing cards
were denounced not only by kings and the provosts of cities, but by
the more zealous and conscientious priests of the church. At the synod
of Langres held in 1404, the fathers of the church forbid all games
of playing cards to the clergy. On the fifth day of May, in the year
1423, St. Bernard of Sienna preached against playing cards from the
steps of the Church of St. Peter, with such effect, that his hearers
ran to their houses, and brought therefrom all the games of hazard
that they owned—cards, dice and checkers—and burnt them in the public
square. One card-maker, who felt that his business had been ruined by
the sermon, went in tears to the saint, and said, “Father, I am a card
maker, and know no other trade. You have forbidden me to make cards and
have consequently condemned me to die from starvation.” Whereupon the
ready priest said, “If you know how to paint, paint this image”—showing
him the figure of Christ, with the monogram I. H. S. in the centre
of a halo of glory. The card-maker, we are told, followed the [p101]
judicious advice. The proper sequel is not wanting: virtue had proper
reward; the converted image-maker soon became rich. In 1452, the monk
John Capistan preached for three hours in Nuremberg with a similar
result. The conscience-stricken people brought into the market-place
“76 jousting sledges, 3,640 backgammon boards, 40,000 dice, and cards
innumerable,” and burnt them in the market-place.
The attacks of the clergy had no permanent effect. At the end of the
fifteenth century, playing cards were more popular than ever. Other
games were invented, and new forms of cards of quainter or of more
graceful patterns were produced. Sometimes they were engraved on copper
plates, and were painted with all the delicacy of fine miniatures.
Despairing of success in their attempts to entirely abolish the
practice, moralists undertook to divert cards from their first purpose,
and to make them a means of instruction as well as of amusement. Of
this character is an old pack of fifty cards engraved on copper plates,
and supposed to be the work of Finiguerra, which has been preserved
in an Italian library. One of the cards bears the printed date, 1485.
The pack is divided in five suites: the first suite contains cards
that represent, by figures and words in the Venetian dialect, the
various conditions of men from the pope to the beggar; the second suite
contains the names and figures of the nine muses, with Apollo added to
make the complement; the third illustrates branches of polite learning
from grammar to theology; the fourth exhibits cardinal virtues,
like justice and prudence; the fifth, displays the heavenly bodies,
the Moon, Saturn, the stars, Chaos and the First Cause. This game,
obviously made up for the benefit of young collegians, was, probably,
no more popular with them than the scientific story books of 1820–30
were with the boys of that period. The combination of abstruse sciences
with a frivolous amusement may rightfully be considered a problem of
despair.