In his extensive Tractatus de moribus et disciplina humanae
conversationis, the oldest description of playing cards known in
Europe, Johannes von Rheinfelden explains not only the rules of
play, but in addition he explicates the characters of the figures
as well as the entire social order, based on the relation of the
cards to one another. Konrad Schlatter, since 1428 confessor and
later prior of the cloister of the Dominican nuns St. Maria
Magdalena “in den Steinen”, left this treatise to the sisters
for their moral edification.
