ROME 25/10 – Day 20: BANNED!

  7:23 and 18:28 and 18:45

In the traditional calendar it is the Feast of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, the Visitandine who received the messages of the Most Sacred Heart.

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Luke

Yesterday I treated myself to something fun to take home and frame.  This is an official ban in Rome on certain prohibited games of chance issued on 24 February 1730.

The interesting thing about it is that it was issued between Popes (who were the secular rulers of the Papal States).

It is sede vacante at this moment!  This is sure to make a certain reader’s socks roll up and down.

With this ban, we are 3 days after the death of Benedict XIII (Orsini – instantly recognizable portraits). Clement XII (Corsini) will be elected on 12 July 1730 (until 6 February 1740).

When it is sede vacante almost all curial offices cease except, notably, that of the Cardinal Camerlegno who handles affairs in the meantime.

Benedict XIII

It being the case, public peace was recognized as being disturbed by the outcry and extermination of poor families due to the Games previously prohibited by other General and specific Proclamations; Therefore, the Most Illustrious and Most Reverend Monsignor Giovanni Battista Spinola of Rome, and his General District Governor, and Vice-Camerlengo, by express order and the Most Reverend Lords Cardinals, Heads of Orders, and of the Most Eminent and Most Reverend Lord Cardinal Camerlengo with the present public Proclamation, confirming in all and for all the other Proclamations, both General and particular, issued on the prohibition of games, as if they were recorded here word for word, orders and commands that no person, even if he holds a public, military or Justice office, plays or causes to be played the prohibited games of Fortune, Lotto, Lauca, Biribis, Torretta, Girello, Rissa, Cards, Dice, or other similar games, nor retains or causes to be played any kind of the aforementioned Games, or of a public or secret gambling den in any place, even in the Guardhouse or any other place, notwithstanding any abuse or toleration to the contrary, under penalty of ten years’ imprisonment for the gambling den owner and anyone who attends on his behalf in lieu of the aforementioned games, and for seven years’ imprisonment for those who play at the galleys, and of the loss of any money or property found in the game. Those who happen to be there will be considered idle and vagabonds and will incur the penalty of five years’ imprisonment, even if they were simple spectators or if they happened to arrive at the said games. His Most Illustrious Lordship reserves the right to declare, whatever the gambling den, taking into account the quality of the persons, the place, and the manner of gambling. Warning everyone that the aforementioned penalties will be carried out in all and each of the aforementioned cases without exception, including ex officio, and by inquisition, and in any other manner beneficial to the Court and the Treasury. And it is desired that this Proclamation, posted in the usual places in Rome, immediately bind everyone, as if it had been personally notified. Given in Rome this 24th February 1730.

So there!

I am pretty sure that at this time this ban would also have covered chess, but probably only for clergy. For some time chess was banned as a game of chance because from the 11th-14th centuries dice were somehow used. For clergy and religious, chess was prohibited, but this was often violated famously by St. Teresa of Avila, whose Feast we just celebrated and whose face we just saw on this blog. St. Teresa uses chess imagery in her Interior Castle and she is generally accounted to be the Patron Saint of Chess Players. In the time period of the ban, however, we have the Modenese Masters, Domenico Lorenzo Ponziani (1719–96), Ercole del Rio (1718–1802), and Giambattista Lolli (1698–1769).  In 1764 Ponziani was ordained a priest and became Vicar General of Modena in 1784 and was made a Protonotary Apostolic.

NB: I warmly recommend this book, especially to my fellow priests.  But everyone would benefit.  IT. IS. SIMPLY. AMAZING. … if you use it!

US HERE– UK HERE

In other chessy news, my guy Wesley So – on his day off from the US Chess Championship in St. Louis –  beat in overtime the up and coming German youth Vincent Keymer in the Speed Chess Championship 2025.  It was really close.  Keymer won the last bullet game on demand forcing the tie breaks which Wesley won.   The next pairing in the SCC will be Hikaru Nakamura and Liem Le, will be on Friday, October 17 at 11:00 a.m. ET / 17:00 CEST / 8:30 p.m. IST.

If you have a couple minutes, this is mesmerizing.  I’d like to see it updated.

WAY TOO COOL!

To satellites traveling at ~17,000 mph, other moving objects seem stationary https://t.co/4Xk8hLpTBL

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 16, 2025

I met in the street outside The Parish™ after Mass a couple just arrived in The City.  They recognized me.  Among the things discussed were my food posts.  I like sharing them with you when they are good.  However, since I restrict my budget and am extremely stingy (I must pay rent here whether I am here or not) I cut corners.  Today, that was a bad idea.  Let’s just say that the store-bought vegetable soup that needed heating, really needed the toilet, which is where it went.

Supper leaving me quite hungry, therefore, brought on a bought of spaghetti with onion, tomato with lots of pepperoncino, tuna and capers.   Alas my use of scissors for the parsley did in the scissors and the wine did in the cheap extractor.  Grrr.

Latin for cork screw is “extraculum“.  Really.  It is.

Sigh.

Buy some beer and make the monks happy.