At any rate it appears there as a game at which older people might play without reproach. Long after cards were condemned by synods and civic ordinances, as a game of hazard, grave writers allowed that sober, decent people might enjoy the game provided that they played purely for the sake of recreation, and not for the chance of winning their neighbour's money. Heineken quotes from the 'Güldin Spil,' a book written about the middle of the fifteenth century by a Dominican friar, of the name of Ingold, printed at Augsburg, by Gunther Zainer, in 1472, the following passage relating to cards:[89] "Nun ist das Spil vol untrew; und, als ich gelesen han, so ist es kommen in Teutschland der ersten in dem iar, da man zalt von Crist geburt, tausend dreihundert iar." That is: "The game is right deceitful; and, as I have read, was first brought into Germany in the year 1300." The title of 'Güldin Spil,'--the Golden Game,--appears to have been given to the work by the author, on account of its being a kind of pious travesty of the principal games in vogue in Germany at the period when he wrote: having given each game a moral exposition, that which was formerly dross is converted into gold: the "old man" is put off, and the reformed gambler, instead of idling away his precious time at tric-trac, dice, or cards for beggarly groschen, "goes" his whole soul at the 'Güldin Spil.' That the author had read somewhere of cards having been first brought into Germany in 1300, may be admitted without question; for to suppose that he told an untruth, would require to be backed by a supplementary conjecture as to his motives for falsifying,--a mode of eliciting the "truth," in frequent use indeed with philosophic historians when discussing questions of great import in the history of nations, but not exactly suitable for determining a trifling fact in the history of Playing Cards. Having admitted the good faith of the author of the 'Güldin Spil,' the next question that presents itself is, whether what he had read about the introduction of cards into Germany was in itself true; it is, however, unnecessary to discuss it here, for even if cards were known in Germany at so early a period, there is no satisfactory evidence of their having been common in that country until about a century later.