Will Roya - Card Night: Classic Games, Classic Decks, and The History Behind Them

Japan, 17001730

We cannot be totally sure that playing cards first appeared in the East, though evidence strongly suggests that is the case. Lets head to Europe and the earliest confirmed reference to playing cards, which is found in a Latin manuscript written by a German monk living in a Swiss monastery.

In a manuscript dated 1377, German monk Johannes from Switzerland mentions the appearance of playing cards and names several different card games that could be played with them. In the 1400s, playing cards often appeared along with dice games in religious sermons as examples of gambling activities that were denounced, and there is clear evidence that a fifty-two-card deck existed and was used during this time. The suits in the first European decks of the fourteenth century were swords, clubs, cups, and coins, and they very likely had their origin in Italy, although some connect these early suits with the cups, coins, swords, and polo sticks found on Egyptian playing cards from the Mamluk period. At any rate, these are the four suits still found in Italian and Spanish playing cards today, and they are sometimes referred to as the Latin suits.

The court cards from late-fourteenth-century Italian decks typically included a mounted King, a seated and crowned Queen, plus a Knave. The Knave is a royal servant, although the character on the card could also represent a prince and would later be called a Jack to avoid confusion with the King. Spanish cards developed somewhat differently, with the court cards depicting a King, a Knight, and a Knave, with no Queens represented. The Spanish packs also didnt have a 10, and with the absence of 8s and 9s in the national Spanish card game known as Ombre, the typical Spanish deck usually only included forty cards.

The first playing cards in Italy were beautiful, hand-painted luxury items found only among the upper classes. But as card playing became more popular, and methods were developed to produce them more cheaply, playing cards became more widely available. It was only natural that this new product eventually spread west and north, and the next major development in playing card history occurred as a result of their reception in Germany. One historian has described their rapid spread as an invasion of playing cards, with soldiers also assisting in their movement across the continent.

To establish themselves as a card-manufacturing nation in their own right, the Germans introduced their own suits to replace those created by the Italians, and these new suits reflected the German interest in rural life: acorns, leaves, hearts, and bells; the latter being hawk bells and a reference to the popular rural pursuit of falconry. The Queen was also eliminated from the German court cards, which instead consisted of a King and two Knaves, an obermann (upper) and untermann (under). Meanwhile, the 2 replaced the Ace as the highest card, to create a forty-eight-card deck.