Ludus Triumphorum: A Ludological Introduction to Tarot

Ludus Triumphorum argues that tarot originated as a ludic object rather than a divinatory one, emerging in central-northern Italy around 1410–1420 and serving primarily as a game for roughly four centuries before esoteric card-reading practices appeared during the Enlightenment. The work situates this claim within game-studies frameworks, drawing on Roger Caillois and Brian Sutton-Smith, and treats the card sequence of triumphs as a site where play could be understood either as regression or as progression. Its central interpretive contrast is between the anonymous Sermo perutilis de ludo, which describes the triumph sequence as a "ladder to hell," and Francesco Piscina's 1565 Discorso, which reads the same sequence as a constructive moral ascent.

The study's historical evidence centers on sixteenth-century Italian writings and practices that show tarot as a contested social pastime. Preacher condemnations, Alberto Lollio's satirical 1550 Invettiva, and Vincenzo Imperiali's 1554 defense of the game reveal divided opinions about tarot's association with gambling, vice, and social identity. Attention also falls on Dummett's three historical triumph orders (associated with Bologna, Ferrara, and Milan), which the work uses to show how the sequence was understood in practice.

The work further examines play modes such as the Lotto Festevole, a chance-based party game matching players to triumphs, and the tarocchi appropriati tradition, in which courtiers were assigned cards to satirize or honor public figures. These cases are used to explore concepts including the spoilsport, mimesis, and play as identity. The analysis points toward future research on noble heraldic uses of decks and on cartomancy understood through play, while its bibliography draws on Steele, Trotti's De Multiplici Ludo, Vitali, and Sutton-Smith's The Ambiguity of Play.