Gambling

GAMBLING

GAMBLING. From the early medieval period, various forms of gambling were popular at every level of society, although the types of games played, as well as the freedom to indulge in them, was dependent on an individual's position in the social hierarchy, and subject to sustained criticism from both church and state. Blood sports such as bearbaiting and cockfighting were popular among the peasantry, and regular contests, accompanied by heavy betting, drinking, and general revelry, were a traditional part of community life.

At the other end of the social spectrum, horse racing was a pastime confined to the upper classes. The ownership and racing of horses operated within a system of royal patronage, with successive monarchs—most notably, Charles II of England (ruled 1660–1685), "the father of the British turf"—organizing races and entering horses to compete in their name. Betting was a strictly private affair conducted among the aristocracy, who regarded participation in the sport as their exclusive right.

Lotteries began during the fifteenth century, and, although popular, were governed by politically expedient legislation that made participation irregular and often arbitrarily illegal. The most widespread form of gambling, however, was dice playing, which endured as the standard game of the entire medieval period. The most ancient and simple form of gambling, it was pursued assiduously by all sections of society—including the clergy—despite being subject to innumerable bans and prohibitions. The Saxons, Danes, and Romans all introduced their own varieties of games and their own styles of playing, although most games tended to fall into one of two types: either based on moving counters around boards (such as the Spanish alquerque, a game similar to checkers), or guessing games based on dice throws (such as hazard). Playing cards were introduced into Europe from the East toward the end of the thirteenth century, where they grew, over the next three hundred years, from an elite pastime into a leisure activity popular with every social class. Their route of entry is uncertain: some have suggested that Marco Polo brought them back from his travels in Cathay, while others believe they were introduced by Gypsies or returning Crusaders. Whatever the case, the first mentions of cards in Europe come from Italy in 1299, from Spain in 1371, from the Low Countries (modern Belgium, Luxembourg, and Netherlands) in 1379, and from Germany in 1380. By 1465, they were sufficiently well established in Britain to be subject to an import ban.

These early cards were crafted by hand on copper and ivory as well as card and wood, usually by professional painters who found patronage in aristocratic households. The first woodcuts on paper were, in fact, playing cards. (The term Kartenmahler or Kartenmacher, 'painter' or 'maker of cards', appears in German in 1402.) At first, their expense put cards out of reach of all but the wealthiest in society, with the result that widespread playing was initially restricted to the upper classes. Gambling was fashionable among this group, with high-stakes "betting orgies" frequently lasting for days and serving as a marker of status and prestige as much as a straightforward leisure pursuit. Cards and games were symbolic systems that represented the cultural climate and social order that surrounded them. Medieval card games such as brelan, pair, gleek, and primero were based on the principals of "melds" and "murnivals"—pairing and joining cards in ranks—reflecting the hierarchical social organization, represented as the "great chain of being" in the Middle Ages.

The development of the printing press in the fifteenth century was crucial to the history of cards, transforming them from the playthings of the aristocracy into mass-produced commodities enjoyed by all ranks of society. The presses also gave cards the name they still have today. The medieval Latin charta, 'sheet of paper', was taken as shorthand for the playing cards, which were, for a time, the presses' main industry. The word survives as the standard term for cards throughout Europe, variously as cart, carte, Karte, karta, and kartya.

Despite its widespread popularity, attempts were continually made by both church and state to limit or outlaw gambling. Although ostensibly designed to curb the excesses of the general population, most legislation targeted the poor and was uneven in its application. Initially, prohibitions imposed by the Catholic Church were pragmatic and aimed at steering the population away from sedentary activities that were seen to encourage idleness and toward more organized exertions, such as sports. Ultimately, the aim was to create a fit workforce that could be easily rallied into an indigenous army, a definite advantage in the violent climate of the Middle Ages. As such, various edicts attempted to regulate gambling according to social position. From the time of the Crusades, dicing by any soldier below the rank of knight was forbidden.

Cardplaying on workdays had been banned since 1397, and was further outlawed when a statute of Henry VIII (ruled 1509–1547) confined all gambling among the working population to Christmas, the assumption being that, as they would be celebrating anyway, its disruptive effects would be minimal. After the Reformation, attempts to outlaw gambling were dramatically increased by the Protestant bourgeoisie, who objected to it on the ideological grounds that it undermined the work ethic and squandered time and money.

Criticism continued throughout the Enlightenment, when the emphasis shifted to the disorderly effects of gambling within rational society—again, aimed primarily at the poor. Across the continent, legislation during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries attempted to remove gambling from the mass of the population, primarily by fiscal means: imposing taxes on cards and dice, charging hefty entrance fees for horse races, and increasing the price of lottery tickets.

At the same time, many European countries introduced laws limiting public gambling to licensed premises, while restricting the granting of licenses to members of the nobility and upper classes. The result of such legislation was the stratification of public betting and the effective outlawing of gambling for the majority of the population, with the poor restricted to playing in illegal, unlicensed taverns, and the upper classes free to indulge in a wide variety of games with impunity.

See also Class, Status, and Order ; Games and Play ; Lottery ; Printing and Publishing ; Roma (Gypsies) ; Sports .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ashton, John. The History of Gambling in England. Montclair, N.J., 1969. Originally published in 1898.

Cotton, Charles. The Compleat Gamester. London, 1674.

Kavanagh, Thomas. Enlightenment and the Shadows of Chance: The Novel and the Culture of Gambling in Eighteenth-Century France. Baltimore and London, 1993.

Reith, Gerda. The Age of Chance: Gambling in Western Culture. London and New York, 1999.

Gerda Reith