Johannes of Rheinfelden

Johannes von Rheinfelden , also Johannes Teuto , Johannes von Basel (* around 1340 in Freiburg im Breisgau ; † unknown) was a Dominican and writer. He wrote the oldest known description of playing cards in Europe .

life and work

Little is known about von Rheinfelden's life; it is only documented by his treatise and the personal information he himself provided. He probably belonged to the Basel Convention on the Dominicans, but lived in Freiburg . The naming Johannes von Rheinfelden for the author has become common.

He wrote the treatise De moribus et disciplina humanae conversationis id est ludus cartularum (also Ludus cartularum moralisatus ), the oldest detailed report on playing cards in Europe, written in 1377 as part of one of the then more frequent bans on playing cards. The model for the treatise is the “chess allegory” of his friar Jakob von Cessoles . The card game is attested for the first time in Europe by the prohibition order of the Signoria of Florence of March 23, 1377. It originally comes from China and came to Europe via India and Egypt probably only a decade before. So John's tract was very topical. Strasbourg , around 50 kilometers from Freiburg, became a center of playing card production in the 15th century. In addition to other versions, the author mentions the still common 4x13 sheet as the basic game, whereby king, upper and lower ("marshals") are mainly named as court cards, but queens and queens are also known.

In the foreword the author explains the purpose of his treatise: firstly, to explain the card game, its components and the rules of the game, secondly, to derive moral instructions for nobles from the card game with reference to the various “courts” (colors) of the game, and thirdly, similar instructions for the game to derive simple people by assigning professions to number cards.

Johannes writes that the newly introduced cards seemed like a revelation to him and that the knowledge that they could be used as a means of understanding and explaining the world moved him. He takes his description of the card figures as a starting point for a broad representation and interpretation of the corresponding functions at court. Thus, the treatise also provides a general insight into the medieval way of thinking, what the social order was like. He shows his enormous wealth of knowledge by referring, for example, to the Bible , the Latin classics, Boëthius , the church father Isidore and the church teacher Thomas Aquinas . Some of Rheinfeldens' views seem natural to us, and he is also not afraid of rather controversial topics.

The original of the treatise has not survived (it may have been destroyed in the Franco-Prussian War ), but has survived in four extended manuscripts:

• Hs. F IV.43 ( University Library Basel ), 1429 ( doi : 10.5076 / e-codices-ubb-F-IV-0043 )
• Hs. 4143 ( Austrian National Library Vienna), 1472 ( digitized online , Joh.'s tract begins on fol.88r, i.e. i. P. 181 of the digitized)
• Hs. 225 (Library of the Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht ), 1472
• Hs. Egerton 2419 ( British Library , London), 1472

A complete printed edition is not yet available; a text-critical edition by Arne Jönsson, professor at Lund University, is in preparation.

literature

• Arne Jönsson: Card-playing as a Mirror of Society - On Johannes of Rheinfelden's Ludus cartularum moralisatus . In: Ferm, Olle och Volker Honemann (eds.), Chess and Allegory in the Middle Ages (Sällskapet Runica et Mediævalia, Münster, Stockholm and Uppsala Universities), Stockholm 2005, pp. 359–372.
• Arne Jönsson: The Ludus cartularum moralisatus of Johannes von Rheinfelden . In: Schweizer Spielkarten , Vol. 1: The beginnings in the 15th and 16th centuries , pp. 135–147. Schaffhausen 1998

• Max Geisberg: The card game of the Royal State u. Antiquities collection in Stuttgart , Strasbourg 1910, p. 14 f. (Reprint: The same: Old Playing Cards ) (= Studies on German Art History, Vol. 66, 132, 205), pp. 116f. Baden-Baden 1973. With an excerpt from the first chapter of the treatise.
• Hellmut Rosenfeld: The age of playing cards in Europe and the Orient . In: Archive for the history of books, 2, Frankfurt am Main, 1958/60, pp. 778–786
• Hellmut Rosenfeld: The relationship between European playing cards and the Orient and original chess . In: Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 42, 1960, pp. 1–36
• Hellmut Rosenfeld: To the preliminary and Early history and morphogenesis of the card game and tarot . In: Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 52, 1970, pp. 65–94
• Lexicon for Theology and the Church , Vol. V, p. 1075
• Hellmut Rosenfeld:  Johannes von Rheinfelden. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 10, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1974, ISBN 3-428-00191-5 , p. 567 ( digitized version ).
• Adolf Lumpe:  JOHANNES von Rheinfelden (J. Teuto, J. v. Basel). In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 3, Bautz, Herzberg 1992, ISBN 3-88309-035-2 , Sp. 539-540.

Web links

• Johannes of Rheinfelden, 1377, by Lothar Teikemeier (English)
• Johannes Teutonicus: De moribus et disciplina humanae conversationis , manuscript Egerton 2419, British Library (with illustration of the first page)