Traditional thinking consistently associates deck of cards with sin. Even when there is no established ban on gambling and deck of cards is regarded as a sin. This is the opinion not merely of the strict moralists like religious personages. But, regardless the frequent opinion, deck of cards played an important part in civilization and first of all in Education. Let us look at the truth.
The deck of cards have been employed for educational functions virtually from the moment of their occurrence in Europe. These are classical examples of the socalled secondary target usage of cards researched by pros.
Murner was so successful in Didactics, that he was accused of witchcraft barely stop to be at stake. However, his defence posed at the courtroom that the signs of harmlessness of those techniques implemented by the natives. They also proved that those techniques were based on the well-HAPPYLUKE in the Middle Ages mnemonic methods – memorizing with the help of the pictures and since the contemporary educators would telephone them”reference signals”.
Much sooner Murner applied the same principle to instruction that the Code of Justinian. In 1502 he composed to Geiler von Kaisersberg that his participation to the instruction of the code was the very crucial. In the other letter into your Strasbourg lawyer, Thomas Wolf, he says:”I confessthat for Kaisersberg ministry, as far as my weak abilities permit, I issued a card game as a comment and in this way I have managed to facilitate memorizing the text of Code of Justinian using the visual images… In my intention to cancel the love of reading I aspired to displace boring and dumb game by the fascinating and exciting one and I’d be more than happy if I triumphed substituting the bad with the good”.
Probably the methodology invented by Murner seemed very efficient to he European educators should they voluntarily employed it to teach the monarchs, for example Louis XIV. It’s known that the arch bishop of Paris Jardin p Perete, who was simply teaching the dauphin, used training cardsthe engravings for them were done by the best engraver ever – Stefano della Bella. When Louis XIV had been six years of age he had four decks of cards:”kings of France”,”Famous Kingdoms”,”Geography” and”Metamorphoses”. He learnt it and memorized it only due to the deck .
Should take into account thoroughly the educational role of the cards, we cannot accomplish that with Chinese and Japanese cards in XIth century. By that time there was formed a definite sort of cards which is a predecessor of XVIII-XIX century cards. The image in the facial side contains 2 parts: on the top there is a”cherry picking” from some play; in the bottom there is a picture of the various scene from the play. Toasts were written on the cards”provide two glasses to the guest” or”let people sitting near one another beverage for one another’s health” or”treat the man with a newly born kid with the biggest glass of wine”.