I'm sure you have played a card game at some point of your life. Today we're learning about the history of card games here in Tergaxon.
The first use made of the deck was not playful, but magical: it was used in the divinatory arts as a means to see the future in a kind of sacred game of symbolic and liturgical character.
Unfortunately, there is NO certainty as to where or when it was invented, although there is a conviction that it may have been in China, where around 1120 Emperor S'eun-Ho distracted his concubines with playing cards because, given his advanced age, he could not do it any other way. 🙂
In any case, YES it is certain that it already existed in this Asian country in the 10th century. Already in the year 969 the Chinese emperor Mu Tsung attributes to the cards the misfortunes of his people. But the prohibitions had no effect and the people returned to play clandestinely.
Other sources claim to be an Indian invention: a maharajah's wife would fight her husband's deep melancholy by making use of this resource. But there is also someone who assigns the invention of the deck of cards to the ancient Egyptians.
As we have said, the origin is uncertain, so there is more than one legend about her invention. Although we do not know the date of its introduction into Europe, it is known that in the 14th century Charles V of France (1338-1388), called the Wise, spent hours doing endless solitaires to fill his sickly leisure and combat his deep depressions.
A century before the Spanish Muslims popularized the game of cards, a term that may have originated in Arabic: the Saracen deck of cards from southern Italy was called naib, from which it is speculated that the Spanish word "naipe" comes.
Although there is no security in this either, and others think that the word comes from Hebrew, whose naibi language means "witchcraft". To complicate matters further on the etymological plane, some claim that the term comes from the initials of Nicolas Papin, whom some believe to be the inventor of playing cards.
Be that as it may, the deck was already widespread in the Middle Ages. At that time they were made with the same material as the codices: parchment and vellum. Their triumph came with the invention of printing in the 15th century.
How many cards did the old deck have? The magic deck had 22 tastings in the Middle Ages. However, in the 14th century it began to be combined with the eastern deck of fifty-six cards, so that the resulting deck of cards came to have seventy-eight pieces. With such a deck of cards they played the game of il taroco in Italy.
The French, in the time of Charles VI, reduced the number of cards to fifty-two figures, giving each suit the names and symbols of the European cards. In the French poem of King Meliadus, around 1330, the two of clubs or the four of gold are represented, and it is known that in 13th century France the back of the cards was used to write messages in society festivities.
In Spain, it was in the Crown of Aragon where there is evidence that around the thirteenth century was played the quarrel, a game that would give rise to the current "brisca", a game persecuted for being considered typical of fulleros and truhanes. In fact, the provisions against them are as old as the cards themselves.
For this reason, although Juan I of Castile banned cards in 1387, the deck of cards continued its ascending course in the taste and appreciation of the people. Neither did the other European nations have better luck in this.
The Church tolerated this game: in fact it was a monk who first wrote a book in 1377 where he collected all that was known about the cards, a book which concluded: "It is an innocent pastime".
Throughout the 16th century many clergymen edited card packs on which they printed verses of the Bible together with the figures of the deck of cards, with great scandal of the Protestants, fanatical heretical people who claimed to be the deck of cards "the sacred book of Satan".
In France, Cardinal Mazarin, preceptor of Louis XIV, taught Geography and History to his royal pupil using cards in which he inserted texts alluding to the discipline he was teaching next to the figures and symbols.
But no one was unaware that in Hampesque "shuffling" means more than mixing the cards before distributing them. This was also the name given to the fact of rolling over in bed with a harlot, in accordance with the brothel language, in which the one of clubs is also a phallic allusion and the "two" alludes to the fact of taking the cane and leaving the one that has already done what it had to do in a place. You may also be interested in the history of the condom.
In 1765 it was used at American universities such as Pennsylvania to pay tuition fees, and in revolutionary Paris it served as a ration card.
Later, the first Canadian paper currency, until 1865 at least, were the cards, with which war debts could be paid. From the 18th century to the present day, the deck of cards has undergone an extraordinary development.
Then, the development of casinos make popular new games such as blackjack and poker