Card games

The word “Card” in Greek is “Trapoula”, it origins from the Italian word “trappola”. It is a term word which puts us right in the trap. Man always dared his luck, for good or bad, he tried through different games to capsize destiny or fate. Lucky games came to us from the ancient world. The laws of Byzantium forbid any game playing for money and all sort of gambling. But that didn’t stop the lucky games. Later on through the years came the famous card game.

The Cards originally came from Asia, we start seeing them in Europe around 14th century and thereafter they slowly emerged into Europeans lives. Off course in the beginning it was a privilege only for the wealthy, as the cards were handmade and very expensive but later they became very common.
We know for sure that the game came from Asia, but where exactly we don’t know, many assume it can be somewhere between China and India around the 10th century.
In Spain it became known in 1371, in Italy 1376, in France 1377and Germany 1384.

As they spread the church reacted, so the Sienna bishops 1377 and Paris 1389 forbid the Christians to play cards.
Although the many prohibitions, cards managed to survive and thrive through the centuries. Especially since the invention of typography which made the making of the cards very cheap.

Cards became not only a vessel of good and bad luck, but also a mean of education with much different information. In the end of the decade of 1820 in Greece, a phillelenic card deck was published, with figures of Kolokotronis, Mioulis, Kapodistrias. These cards had sure played their part of “communication” in the years of war for independence.

Through the French Revolution there were cards with anti-religious images on them. The same did the Bolsheviks in 1917.
Cards were also used for educational purposes by Thomas Murner(1475-1537) when he presented a system of logic in a deck of cards. Baptist Pendelton in 1651 used the cards to teach grammar and German philosophers’ teached Latin with card in the 17th century.

Many geographers, like DeVal (1599-1677) and Poilly and Mitoire(1763) used cards to expand their knowledge of geography.

In recent years the cards have been used even in science, as the probability theory owe much to them.
Today the back side of the cards are many times a place for advertisements.

In Greece
We don’t really know when they first came to Greece, but in the Ionian islands they played cards from the time of Venetians there.
In 1937 the card images almost wore.. traditional greek rustic shoes, kilts and kerchief! Haha, there were local newspapers that wrote in January 1937: although governments attempts to stop card-playing it decided that Greeks can at least play with card decks which would have Greek images on. But Greek images never showed up.

In a private collection in Germany there is a card deck with Greek images which is
estimated to be from 1822!
Kings are said to be in the form of Alexander Ipsilantis, Odisseas Androutsos,
Georgio Kantakouzinou.
Queens are in the images of princess Mourouzi, Elena Topali, Bouboulina and Ipsilantis sisters.
Jokers appear as agonists from different areas, Idreos, Moraitis, Arnaoutis. From this card deck there have only survived 11 cards which are at the Historical and Ethnological Museum.