Recreation in the Renaissance

58 Recreation in the Renaissance
of the soul and to avoid idleness, an ingenious and honest game is proposed,
which is lawful for any sort of people.’ While the work concentrates
on card and dice games, the alternative the author promises in
the frontispiece is, typically, chess. 24
In the middle of the century a work of the same genre was published
by Giovanni Domenigo Ottonelli (1583–1670). The author, a Jesuit professor
of literature, also compiled a lengthy work on the moralization
of theatre. 25 The text alternates twenty-six ‘conclusions’ with as many
‘cases’. The former are rationally argued theses of moral theology; the
latter exempla totally indistinguishable from the medieval tradition. In
fact, they borrow heavily from medieval collections of moralized horror
narratives – tales of what could happen to you if you play, with a few
more recent additions. In the tales, players tend to appear enraged (conclusion
7: ‘sometimes playing drives people into fits of madness’): they
regularly swear, they often assault other people, including their innocent
relatives. (In a similar series of tales collected, before Ottonelli, by
Rocca, they also insist in disfiguring sacred images, a sin significantly à
la mode in the aftermath of Protestant iconoclastic campaigns.) Consequently,
for divine retribution, the death rate is impressive. The oldfashioned
flavour of the text does not automatically require from the
author to be a precise moralist who denies the faithful any chance for
relaxation. On the contrary, Ottonelli allows, at least in theory, both
playing for winning and playing for fun (‘il giuoco esercitato per spasso’)
as per se non-sinful. 26
In the Protestant field, Rocca and Ottonelli had been preceded by
Lambert Daneau, who, together with a treatise on Christian friendship,
published in 1579 a second treatise, whose summary (from the subsequent
English translation) will provide a fairly good indication of its
contents:
A DISCOURSE OF GAMING, AND SPECIALLY OF DYCEPLAY
Chapter 1. Whether it bee lawfull at all for a Christian man or woman to play
and use recreation of their minde
2. Whether it be lawfull for a man to play for money: and the same being
wonne, to keepe to his owne use
3. Of Games, Playes and publique Exercises: and of the Rewardes thereunto
assigned by the Common Wealth
4. Of them, that bestowe their Winnings gained by play, upon a Banquet, or
good cheare for the Whole Companie
5. What kinde of Games and Playes bee lawfull, and what be forbidden and
unlawfull