The Ludus Triumphorum in Fifteenth-Century Preaching: Condemnation and Normative Status

This article examines the condemnation of ludus triumphorum in an anonymous addition to a sermon preserved in the Vanderbilt–Steele manuscript. It focuses on the author’s objections to the inclusion of sacred, cosmic, moral, and political figures in the game, with particular attention to La papessa, El papa, the sequence of twenty-one figures, the image of a ladder descending into hell, and the polemical explanation of the game’s name. The study distinguishes between the manuscript’s moral and religious rhetoric and the normative force of municipal law. A comparison with fifteenth-century statutes shows that the sermon passage does not, by itself, establish a Church-wide legal prohibition of trionfi. Some municipal provisions, by contrast, exempted trionfi from specified penalties on gaming. Particular attention is also paid to the textual history of the Vanderbilt–Steele manuscript, the limits of attribution to Giacomo della Marca, and the distinction between the recorded sequence of images and the anonymous editor’s interpretation of them. The article argues for a careful separation between moral condemnation, legal regulation, local exemptions, and later historiographical assumptions concerning the status of trionfi in fifteenth-century Italy.