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Hunt and House: Depictions of Medieval Life in German Playing Cards (2016) (metmuseum.org)
21 points by benbreen on Sept 27, 2017 | hide | past | favorite | 5 comments



This article doesn't really talk about medieval life at all, save for a mention at the end:

"The cards' suit symbols differed, but as in The Courtly Household Cards, the pip cards are individuals of varying social ranks. These cards could not trump the face cards, but they could trump one another in a topsy-turvy order. Thus, the moneylender trumps the nobleman, the priest the moneylender, the bawd the priest, the pimp the bawd, the innkeeper the pimp, the wine merchant the innkeeper, and so on. This upturned order cannot have pleased the authorities. Such decks of cards based on social strata, nonetheless, may well have been common for German playing cards before suit symbols related to the hunt were adopted."

Most of the rest is talking about how great and well preserved the artistry of this particular deck of cards is (admittedly, it is pretty fantastic).


Pimps were higher status than innkeepers and wine merchants?


No, the pimp beats the bawd and the innkeeper beats the pimp.


Right, so for this order to be "topsy-turvy", the pimp would have to have higher status than the innkeeper outside of the game.


I expected the article would also mention illustrations of the standard German playing cards set, which is still quite popular: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_playing_cards

Also check out other regional sets: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playing_card#Modern_deck_for...




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