Vanderbilt-Steele Manuscript, circa 1450 - circa 1500

An excellent summary of this item was drafted in 2021 by Thierry Despaulis for a proposed exhibition at Musee de la carte a jouer, Isey-Les-Moulins, Paris. The text of that summary (in English) is copied below.

"By publishing, in 1900, in the prestigious British journal Archaeologia , his study “A notice of the “ludus triumphorum ”and some early Italian card games with some remarks on the origin of the game of cards”, Robert Steele (1860-1944) was aware of opening new perspectives for the history of tarot. The English scholar had detected among the many sections of this manuscript collection compiled at the end of the XVth century, a sermon against gambling, rich new details on several card games and, above all, a complete description of the 78 cards tarot, with list of trumps, named and numbered.

According to Ron Decker (Decker 1989), the complete volume consists of 407 folios written in one hand, most often in two columns, and annotated in the same handwriting. Apart from a few sheets of parchment, most sheets are papers from most of the Venetian area and datable, from the watermarks, the last decade of the XV th century. The sermon " De Ludo" (Of the game) is to be found in ff. 205r-209r.

The date of this manuscript is difficult to establish with precision. First attempted to date it around 1450-1470, Steele had postponed the dating “ in the years between 1450 and 1480 ” in a later article. If the compilation seems to have been made around 1490-1500, the composition of the sermon “ De ludo ” seems a little older. The origin of this sermon had escaped Steele : he first believed it to be the work of a Dominican preacher, then changed his mind and favored the order of Friars Minor. In fact, a recent research (Depaulis 2007) made it possible to discover that the main part of the text was taken from a sermon “ De ludo ” due to Saint Jacques de la Marche (1393-1476), one of the great names of Franciscan order. The sermon in question appears to have been composed around 1460 (cf. Sermones dominicales / S. Iacobus de Marchia , ed. Renato Lioi, vol. 1, Falconara Marittima, 1978, p. 190-205). The edition that Steele gives is a little simplified and integrates without mentioning the additions and marginal notes, which gives the misleading impression of a homogeneous text. This is not the case, as can be seen from the reproduction of the two sheets

We must distinguish here two levels of text : that of the sermon, as we have said, of a fragment of " De ludo " by Saint Jacques de la Marche, slightly reformulated, completed by two new paragraphs bearing, one on the deck of cards (“ De 2 ° ludorum genere sc. cartularum… ”) and the other on the tarot (“ De 3 ° ludorum genere, sc. triumphorum ”), and that of marginal notes. These are sometimes additions to the text (passages forgotten when copying ?), But are most often " technical " comments or markers (in red) indicating a particular game. This annotation is undoubtedly made by the compiler who collected and copied various texts forming the collection Clulow MSS 904. We can therefore see two authors : one, perhaps a Franciscan preacher, close to Jacques de la Marche, who took the text of the sermon “ De ludo »And completed it ; and a compiler copyist, who is not necessarily of the same obedience, but seems well informed about the card games of his time, of which he specifies the names in notes : basseta, ronfa, crica, milaneso, falcinelle, sive a la terza a la quarta, fuxo ( flusso ). The “ Sermon Steele ” offers the oldest known list of Tarot's trumps. The order of these conforms to type B (Ferrara), which seems to indicate that the anonymous preacher (our " first " author) was operating near Ferrara. Bibl. : Steele 1900 ; Kaplan 1978, p. xvi ; Decker 1989 ; Depaulis 2007, p. 39-41 It is useful to give the text here: [f. 208v] ¶ From 3 ° ludorum genere, sc. triumphorum. […] Sunt enim 21 triumphi qui 21 gradus alterius scale in profundum inferi mittentis.[1] ¶ Primus dicitur El bagatella: & est omnium inferior. ¶ 2 '. Imperatrix. ¶ 3 '. Imperator. ¶ 4 '. The papessa. O miseri quod negat christiana fides. O pontifex cur. &vs. ¶ 5 '. El dad. qui debet omni sanctitate polere. & isti ribaldi faciunt ipsorum capitaneum. ¶ 6 '. Temperantia. ¶ 7 '. Lamore. ¶ 8 '. Lo caro triumphale vel mundus parvus. ¶ 9 '. The forteza. ¶1 0 '. The rotta. id is regno. regnaui. sum sine regno. ¶1 1 '. El gobbo. ¶1 2 '. Lo impichato. ¶1 3 '. The dead. ¶1 4 '. El diauolo. ¶1 5 '. The sagitta. ¶1 6 '. The stella. ¶1 7 '. La luna. ¶1 8 '. El sole. ¶1 9. Lo angelo. ¶2 0 '. The iusticia. ¶2 1 '. El mondo cioe dio padre. [f. 209r] ¶ El matto sie nulla. [ above : nisi uelint.]"