Playing Cards And The Famous French Jesuit

I have seen in the possession of M. de Ganieres a pack of cards of the original fashion: there were a pope, emperor, and four kings, who warred against each other, distinguished by different colours. Their size was between seven and eight inches. This invention took place in Italy about the fourteenth century.

I have seen in a little book of Father Claude-Francois Menestrier, the Jesuit, a quotation from an Exchequer account of monies paid for cards, to divert King Charles VI. who was then a madman.

This was in 1391.

Link (here) to the book entitled The French Anas, by Jacques D. Du Perron published in 1805

Picture is not of King Charles VI