Ross G Caldwell
“Yet among invented games are ‘pages’, in which, while being played, certain traces of learning are even found, as in Tarots, and in those which are printed together with the sentences of the sacred scriptures and philosophers, by the printer Wechel of Paris. Human desire squanders all the rest, along with those like them, where money comes in the middle, and that desire is going to be felt.”
Inventi tamen ludi sunt foliorum, in quibus dum luditur, vestigia quoque quaedam eruditionis apparent, ut in Tarotiis, & iis cum quibus excusae sunt unà sententiae sacrae paginae & philosophorum, apud VVechellum Lutetiae typographum. Caeterum, & illis & similibus abutitur humana cupiditas, dum prodit in medium pecunia, & habendi desiderium.
[Pierre Gregoire, “Syntagma Juris Universi” (Lyons, 1597), Part III, Bk. XXXIX, §4 (p. 464)]
A few notes :
(translation comments and/or corrections welcomed
It's interesting to note that the canonist Pierre Gregoire considered the game to be "erudite."
It is interesting that Gregoire calls card games “folii,” because the generic name in Latin, as in most of the romance languages, from the beginning of the appearance of cards in Europe circa 1370, had been “chartae,” a plural form of “charta”, the old word for “a piece of paper” or simply “paper” (as a collective singular noun). From this derives Italian “carte”, French “cartes”, English “cards.” Perhaps Gregoire represents an attempt to distinguish in Latin between game “chartae” and maps, also “chartae”.
Gregoire declines “Tarotiis” in the ablative case, so that we may reconstruct a hypothetical nominative form - *Tarotium. This is interesting when compared with the first appearance of the word in Latin, 92 years earlier, where it has the spelling “taraux”. The “x” must then have had the sound “ts” (and not simply “s”); thus the pronounciation of the first is “tarots” (which is an attested form of the word), and the nominative singular of Gregoire would be pronounced “tarotsium” (or “tarotzium”).
(Presumably a spelling “tarocium” would have lead to confusion with the sound “tch” – thus the “ti” was preserved. In the Italian “tarocchi”, the postpositive “h” indicates the hardening of the consonant “c” before the vowels e and i; this orthographic rule is not used in Latin).
I don’t know which impression of Wechel Gregoire is referring to. Does anyone know how to find a list of all books printed by Wechel in Paris?
Inventi tamen ludi sunt foliorum, in quibus dum luditur, vestigia quoque quaedam eruditionis apparent, ut in Tarotiis, & iis cum quibus excusae sunt unà sententiae sacrae paginae & philosophorum, apud VVechellum Lutetiae typographum. Caeterum, & illis & similibus abutitur humana cupiditas, dum prodit in medium pecunia, & habendi desiderium.
[Pierre Gregoire, “Syntagma Juris Universi” (Lyons, 1597), Part III, Bk. XXXIX, §4 (p. 464)]
A few notes :
(translation comments and/or corrections welcomed
It's interesting to note that the canonist Pierre Gregoire considered the game to be "erudite."
It is interesting that Gregoire calls card games “folii,” because the generic name in Latin, as in most of the romance languages, from the beginning of the appearance of cards in Europe circa 1370, had been “chartae,” a plural form of “charta”, the old word for “a piece of paper” or simply “paper” (as a collective singular noun). From this derives Italian “carte”, French “cartes”, English “cards.” Perhaps Gregoire represents an attempt to distinguish in Latin between game “chartae” and maps, also “chartae”.
Gregoire declines “Tarotiis” in the ablative case, so that we may reconstruct a hypothetical nominative form - *Tarotium. This is interesting when compared with the first appearance of the word in Latin, 92 years earlier, where it has the spelling “taraux”. The “x” must then have had the sound “ts” (and not simply “s”); thus the pronounciation of the first is “tarots” (which is an attested form of the word), and the nominative singular of Gregoire would be pronounced “tarotsium” (or “tarotzium”).
(Presumably a spelling “tarocium” would have lead to confusion with the sound “tch” – thus the “ti” was preserved. In the Italian “tarocchi”, the postpositive “h” indicates the hardening of the consonant “c” before the vowels e and i; this orthographic rule is not used in Latin).
I don’t know which impression of Wechel Gregoire is referring to. Does anyone know how to find a list of all books printed by Wechel in Paris?