Floskaartjes

Huck

I thought you'd know that quote.

Let me look it up.

Meanwhile, about the Floskaartjes being for moral lessons, I quote Spoonbender's earlier posting

"at the top of some of the sheets, one can read this short, rather macabre rhyme (with my not very literal translation below):


Deez’ prente strekke u, lieve jeugd!
Tot tijdverdrijf, vermaak en vreugd
En leere u, hoe, van keizer af,
Elks deel op ’t laatsten is het graf.

_____

These pictures serve, sweet youth!
As pastime and joy, and that's the truth,
They teach you, how, from the emperor on,
In the end everyone to the grave will have gone"

The more contemporary version -- paired cards, and one left over, if you get stuck with it you lose the game -- is "Old Maid." The Old Maid card was frequently a homely old woman. I played this as a child. The message was "get married."

Lessons in children's games are common but don't carry much weight unless they're reinforced throughout the culture and economy.

Huck said:

What are you talking about? Who stated this when in which context?
1457? 1537? What's the quote?

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I'll guess it was in Cusa's Globe Game. But I'll accept being wrong.

DianeOD said:

These pictures serve, sweet youth!
As pastime and joy, and that's the truth,
They teach you, how, from the emperor on,
In the end everyone to the grave will have gone"

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... come on, that's not the category of "moral lession" ... that's the style of a contemporary advertising

Any other TV-slogan, which tries to sell cars, wash-mashines, deo-dorant, soaps etc. will contribute to this chapter of "moral lessons" ...

Debra said:

The more contemporary version -- paired cards, and one left over, if you get stuck with it you lose the game -- is "Old Maid." The Old Maid card was frequently a homely old woman. I played this as a child. The message was "get married."

Lessons in children's games are common but don't carry much weight unless they're reinforced throughout the culture and economy.

Click to expand...

I didn't know this one, but Wikipedia ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Maid

Holy Wisdom

Have traced the reference to its source.

My secondary source - an article of modern card-games - had no footnote.

I find a reference in Seznec, which perhaps the former source has misquoted (or perhaps they had some other.) It occurs where Seznec is talking about the so-called Mantegna tarocchi.

pp. 139-40 of Seznec's Survival of the Pagan Gods:

gives a paraphrase of Brockhaus, who is said to related that this ['Mantegna']Tarocchi was devised and made in Mantua during a long council held there between June 1454 to Jan 1460 (when) - says Seznec, "they allegedly served as a pastime for three members of the Council, the Cardinals Bessarion, and Nicholas of Cusa, and Pope Pius II"

After summarising and classifying the images of the pack, it is actually Seznec who then says, "... we do not know [this ecclesiastical] game's rules in detail, but there is no doubt it was played seriously, with a feeling that each piece was, as it were, a piece of the divine chessboard (D: or - "map"). And we may apply to it the words used by Nicholas of Cusa (himself) to describe a similar game ... which he uses as an illustration for his philosophical thought: "this game is played, not in a childish way, but as Holy Wisdom Played it for God at the beginning of the world."

There's actually no reason why Nicholas might not have created our numerical games; he had the necessary expertise, experience of critical places and people etc. as any biography will show. The written account of his own construction 'de ludo globi libri duo' is not certainly dated, but is generally supposed to have been written in 1460 or so. Once again, the ludus is set in the atmosphere of the 'tutorial' with imagery used to fix, and explain, the content of a teaching-'text'.

But here - now mathematics and philosophy is the focal subject; and the imagery (verbal or otherwise) rings variations on ball-throwing.

I don't know why the question of Nicholas' possible invention of the number games has not been considered; given his curriculum vita, he'd seem a prime candidate, even as early as Ferrara.

For details of Cusa's book see...
(is this Michael below 'our' Michael, by the way?)

http://www.wlym.com/~animations/ceres/PDF/Michael/history1.pdf

For Nicholas' connections to THe Byzantine court and other regions and peoples equally relevant see: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11060b.htm

And here again is the 12thC Greek angel - already on the pre-1377 thread - but handy here:

Ross G Caldwell said:

I'll guess it was in Cusa's Globe Game. But I'll accept being wrong.

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Brockhaus suggested, that the Congress in Mantova invented the Mantegna Tarocchi. Brockhaus (or somebody else ?) added the observation, that there were young cardinals in Mantova.
But did Cusa, who clearly spoke of "Kugeln" (German "Kugel" = globe, bowl, so Bocchia, Petanque or something similar), say anything about cards?

Didn't you personally state something about a note of a cardinal's game in 1457 recently, not too long ago, in an email?

DianeOD said:

Have traced the reference to its source.

...
gives a paraphrase of Brockhaus, who is said to related that this ['Mantegna']Tarocchi was devised and made in Mantua during a long council held there between June 1454 to Jan 1460 (when) ...

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The congress was June 1459 till Jan. 1460.

The Brockhaus article is online ...
http://trionfi.com/0/m/15/

The story, that Mantegna made the Mantegna Tarocchi was around ca. 1800, but nobody believed it, that it was from Mantegna. Mantegna really arrived in 1459 in Mantova. Somehow this might have led Brockhaus think of Mantova as the right place for the invention of this game. He couldn't rely on the Globus-game as an argument, that was nonsense.

Hind dated the Mantegna Tarocchi on 1465, we find that a development in ca. 1475 is more probable. But there are lots of other opinions; Brockhaus' explanation is very weak, though a nice story ...

There were young cardinals in Mantova, likely they played cards, cause Mantova was at the begin rather boring and it was a hot summer and the climate was unhealthy.

Cardinal's game

I've chucked that history of card-play into the bin.

Don't ask me its author's name. I'm disgusted.

And what I meant to say was (a) that in quoting his conflation of Seznec with Brockhaus as quoted by Seznec, I was placing undue faith in the secondary author - my error.

and (b) the text of Nicholas of Cusa's written record of his ludus shows just how well it agrees with the form of the Mantegna tarocchi. Personally, given Cusa's background, travels, and acquaintences, I don't see why he couldn't have invented number-games of the "picture-plus-text" variety as early as the 1430s.

But I'm too tired to argue. It's 7am, I'm off to college, and haven't been to bed yet.

Will be back if and when able.

Huck said:

Brockhaus suggested, that the Congress in Mantova invented the Mantegna Tarocchi. Brockhaus (or somebody else ?) added the observation, that there were young cardinals in Mantova.
But did Cusa, who clearly spoke of "Kugeln" (German "Kugel" = globe, bowl, so Bocchia, Petanque or something similar), say anything about cards?

Didn't you personally state something about a note of a cardinal's game in 1457 recently, not too long ago, in an email?

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Cusa's essay is available online, but I haven't checked it yet. That's why I "bet" that the quote was something from the Globe Game.

If you compare Diane's allusion -

Diane said:

But doesn't this help make sense of much that otherwise seems to make little sense: such as that reference to the cardinals' game 'not played in the children's way, but as Holy Wisdom contested ('Played') before God.

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to -

Diane said:

And we may apply to it the words used by Nicholas of Cusa (himself) to describe a similar game ... which he uses as an illustration for his philosophical thought: "this game is played, not in a childish way, but as Holy Wisdom Played it for God at the beginning of the world."

Click to expand...

then it is clear that the quote refers to Seznec's quote from Cusanus.

Ross