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With The Deck Of Casino Cards To The School Blackboard. Part Two.
The other deck of XVIII century was described by Breitkopf: “this deck has four suits: Ven (civil), Woo (military), Co (science), Juan (& 1072;cademy), nine cards each suit. Each card has a corresponding title within this suit. In such a way we have the most important ranks of the civil hierarchy and in particular the most important officers from minor to senior”.
Prunner has distinguished three main elements in the Chinese cards of XVII: literary quotations; toasts and wishes; suits in the form of monetary denomination (from hundred thousands and tens of thousands to hundreds and coins). Later on the officials and toasts disappeared from the cards and only citation and money remained. The most famous Chinese cards are money cards. The value of the card is determined by the denomination of the money cord.
The most ancient Japanese cards were produced from the shells and were intended for literary entertainments of the educated public. The lines from the poems were depicted on the shells. The aim of the game was to correctly combine the shells (to compose a poem). This game was a predecessor of the game called “one hundred poets”. The classical collection of poems of hundred of poets of VII-XIII centuries was presented on these cards in the following manner: one card with an image of the poet, the other one with a line or lines from his poem. The players should properly match the cards.
Heraldic cards. Their appearance in XVII century is associated with the name of Claude Oronce Fine, who published one of the first decks with coat of arms under the pseudonym of de Brainville in 1660 in Lion: Jeu de Blason, Father Ménestrier, who issued the same deck of cards a couple years later, tells about the first unexpected troubles of Fine: some princes were seriously offended that they were depicted as jacks and aces. The cards were confiscated by the magistrate and Fine had to change the pictures. However, soon the author of the deck became very successful and the cards were reissued with new coat of arms. A community of young noblemen called “Armorists” was formed in Naples; they studied coat of arms of numerous noble families. From Naples the idea reached Venice. In 1682 Benedictine, Dom Kasimir Frescott, offered to the Doge of Venice and to the senate Venetian the deck with coat of arms of Venetian noblemen. The supplementary book to the deck said: “Virtue in game or famous Venetians from patrician families”. Decks of historic gambling cards. The subject of the pictures on the cards were historical personalities. Depicting of the heroes of the ancient times (Alexander the Great, Caesar, Carl the Great, etc.) as card kings, antique goddesses and great women (Athena, Jeanne d’Arc, Judith and others.) as queens, outstanding brave men (Hector, Decius, Lancelot, etc.) as jacks – became a tradition almost from the very birth of the cards production in Europe. The artists painted the card characters similar to real life modern monarchs, commanders and their ladyloves of their times (Karl VII, Agnès Sorel etc.). For example, in time of the Great French revolution, the monarchs on the cards were replaced with free-thinkers and tyrant fighters: Voltaire, Hannibal, Horace, La Fontaine, Molière, Rousseau, Saint-Simon. Many cards of great art value were painted by the famous artists and engravers on the order of the high and mighties. So, the cards present a priceless historical material that enables to conduct numerous researches and studies.
With The Deck Of Casino Cards To The School Blackboard. Part One.
Traditional thinking always associates deck of cards with sin. Even if there is no official ban on gambling and deck of cards is considered to be a sin. This is the opinion not only of the strict moralists like religious personages. However, regardless the common opinion, deck of cards played an important role in culture and first of all in Education. Lets look at the facts.
The deck of cards have been used for educational purposes virtually from the moment of their occurrence in Europe. The cards were used at the lessons of history and geography, logic and law, Latin and grammar, astronomy, mathematics and arts, heraldry and military tactics. These are classical examples of the so-called secondary target usage of cards carefully researched by specialists.
In 1507 Franciscan monk, bachelor of theology in Krakow, Thomas Murner published a book “Chartiludium logicae”, consisting of training cards used by the monk to teach Logic. Murner was so successful in Didactics, that he was even accused of witchcraft hardly avoid to be at stake. But his defence presented at the court the evidence of harmlessness of the methods applied by the Franciscan. They also proved that these methods were based on the well-known in the Middle Ages mnemonic techniques – memorizing with the help of the pictures and as the modern educators would call them “reference signals”.
Much earlier Murner applied the same principle to teaching the Code of Justinian. In 1502 he wrote to Geiler von Kaisersberg that his contribution to the teaching of the code was the most significant. In the other letter to the Strasbourg lawyer, Thomas Wolf, he says: “I confess, that for Kaisersberg constitution, as far as my weak abilities permit, I issued a card game as a commentary and in this way I have managed to facilitate memorizing the text of Code of Justinian using the visual images… In my intention to implant the love of reading I aspired to replace boring and stupid game by the fascinating and exciting one and I would be more than happy if I succeeded in substituting the bad with the good”.
Probably the methodology invented by Murner seemed very efficient to he European teachers if they willingly applied it to educate the monarchs, for example Louis XIV. It is known that the arch bishop of Paris Jardin de Perete, who was teaching the dauphin, used training cards; the engravings for them were done by the greatest engraver ever – Stefano della Bella. When Louis XIV was six years old he had four decks of cards: “kings of France”, “Famous Kingdoms”, “Geography” and “Metamorphoses”. The future The Sun King (in French Le Roi Soleil) in his early childhood learnt who was Karl the Great, the countries of the world and what fairy tales Lucius Apuleius and Publius Ovidius wrote. He learnt it and memorized it only due to the deck of cards.
If to consider thoroughly the educational function of the cards, we cannot do that without Japanese and Chinese cards back in XIth century. By that time there was formed a definite type of cards which is a predecessor of XVIII-XIX century cards. The image on the face side comprises two parts: on the top there is a “cherry picking” from some play; in the bottom there is a picture of the respective scene from the play. Toasts were also written on the cards: “give two glasses to the scholarly guest” or “let people sitting close to each other drink for one another’s health” or “treat the man with a just born son with the biggest glass of wine”.