There is an interesting part in Casanova's autobiography where he is in Paris, and he is trying to sell a Lottery implementation to the governement. If I remember correctly he even meets a minister of Louis XV, but the project never really starts.
Casanova was essentially a conman always looking for new scheme to make money : he started his careers pretending having the knife of St. Peter used to cut Christ's ears, and used it as a divination tool to find buried treasure. And he later used numerology.
That gives you some ideas of who was interested in Lotteries in the XVIIIth century.
> he started his careers pretending having the knife of St. Peter which used to cut Christ's ears
Are you sure you are not confusing "the knife used to cut Christ's ears" with "the sword used to cut the ear of one of the men who came to arrest Jesus"? Because I never heard the former, and I'm under the impression that I whould have.
You are correct my memory is a bit fuzzy, and your interpretation is probably correct.
Edit : after further checking, he was pretending having the knife of st. Peter, used to cut off the high priest servant's ear in the garden of Gethsemane to prevent the arrest of Jesus. (Which makes more sense..)
10 Then Simon Peter having a sword drew it, and smote the high priest's servant, and cut off his right ear. The servant's name was Malchus.
11 Then said Jesus unto Peter, Put up thy sword into the sheath: the cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?
Historically, actually having a relic of a saint is very poorly correlated with claiming to have a relic of a saint, even when people aren't explicitly trying to con people.
We really have almost zero proof that most of the 'real' relics are legitimate. Many value the meaning more than the actual item, especially when considering the perspective of the church.
Casanova was essentially a conman always looking for new scheme to make money : he started his careers pretending having the knife of St. Peter used to cut Christ's ears, and used it as a divination tool to find buried treasure. And he later used numerology.
That gives you some ideas of who was interested in Lotteries in the XVIIIth century.