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Rh fourteenth century. Its oldest relics of this kind are eighteen printed cards which may have been made in France during the reign of Charles, or between the years 1442 and 1461.

Playing cards seem to have been popular in Spain before they were known in France. They were supposed to be so demoralizing to the people, that John, king of Castile, in the year 1387, thought it necessary, to prohibit them entirely. To have acquired this popularity, the cards should have been made by some process as economical as that of printing. We have, however, no knowledge that the cards were printed. They could have been made by stencils. Chatto says that the relics of playing cards which he thought were the oldest were made exclusively with stencils.

Cards were known in Italy as early as 1379. An old manuscript history of the town of Viterbo, which states this fact, says that "In this year, a year of great distress [occasioned by the war between the anti-pope Clement and the pope Urban ], was brought into Viterbo, the game of cards, which came from the land of the Saracens, and by them is called Naib."