Tarot and Black Death

Yatima

And BTW, Huck, possibilities are never "dry," they are rich, they "sense" reality to be unearthed; "dry" is only the spirit of negativity...

Yatima
 

Yatima

I would also like to widen my emphasis that the Tarot has not necessarily originated at a court, be it Este or Visconti, but may be an incident of a cardmaker’s creativity – or was it a “necessity” under certain conditions? It might have been carried on by rich people, but it also might have been the child of the street…

* We know that card production since the 1380s must have existed in great amount, also a lot of cardmakers, be they painter (in a more cheap manor) or woodcutter and printer. Enough evidence is there for both.

* We know of the importance of series of saints, probably not only the 14 Nothelfer, as amulet/talisman-icons taken by people widely especially after the initial Black Dearth 1337-51 and every further pestilence, statistically every 11-12 years for centuries.

* We know of the presence of German card-making in Northern Italy at the beginning of the 15th century (and they went not away!); so selling German imports (in content and form) is probable and documented (e.g. Karnöffel, Imperatori).

* We know of a wide interest in picture-figures either as games or as religious amulets from the prohibitions (which would not have been necessary otherwise) and the apocalyptic climate.

* We might also think of Bob O’Neill’s valuable thesis that the confraternities, which also had a strong connection to the spiritual consequences of the Black Death, were also commissioners of cards. All streams named could run together here: card-making, picture-figures of saints, servis to the dying of the Black Death, apocalyptic atmosphere.

I can imagine a confluence of these factors by the following scenario:

1. Cardmakers stood between huge interest of people to get card-games and series of saints, on the one hand, and the prohibition and anti-propaganda, on the other hand.

2. In this situation, a cardmaker could have had the idea to COMBINE both of the elements he was producing and/or selling. Think again of Frederico of Germany in Bologna 1395, who sold “cartas figuratas ad imagines et figures sanctorum”…What an occation of combining “cartas figuratas” for gaming and “cartas sanctorem” into one kind of new set of cards for an higher/lower use at once.

What would be won: He would have sold legal sets of saints with illegal (?) sets of cards for a new instructional game…

I am amused by imagining that such a cardmaker had playing cards with 4x14 structure (which was known since the Dominican John of Rheinfelden’s “Tractatus de moribus”) and also, e.g., the 14 Nothelfer and combined them for a multi-valuable purpose…

3. This does not explain the appearance of the Tarot-subjects, which, BTW, are also not explained by the Visconti-triumph-tradition of the Michelino-16 (as they were 16 gods). But if we relate the combination to the religious atmosphere, which was apocalyptic and immediately time and again under the arc of the Black Death, we can imagine that the Bembo-14 with its apocalyptic atmosphere might have been invented.

That could have been commissioned by a confraternity with its wide range of people across the social layers of the late-medieval society by card-makers who had an understanding of the religios tradition of the commissioner and of card-making as such.

4. A very interesting note related to Bernard of Siena’s preaching may substantiate this “story”. As is known, he preached especially against cards; so a cardmaker would have got the problem I have described.

Simone Wintle has it at trionfi.com that, as Bernard preached at the church of San Petronio, Bologna, against the vices of gaming in general and playing cards in particular, and the hearers threw their cards into the fire, a card-maker who was present and heard the denunciations even against those persons who supplied the obnoxious article, exclaimed: "I have not learned, father, any other business than that of painting cards, and if you deprive me of that, you deprive me of life and my destitute family of the means of earning a subsistence." To this the Saint replied, "If you do not know what to paint, paint this figure, and you will never have cause to repent having done so", and showed the card-maker the figure of a radiant sun, having in the centre the sacred monogram I.H.S.

Was this the birth of the Sun-card? Was it the birth of the idea to produce a combined card-set for repentance and gaming (thereby excepting this “game” from being unholy)? —amusing thought…

Yatima
 

Yatima

Also, we might think again of the possibility that like the series of picture-figures of saints maybe other subjects were in use in a series outside a game and, maybe, at a certain time, within a game that led, finally, to the Tarot we know…

Here is the quote from Andy Polett regarding this matter:

[Begin quote]“TAROTS FOR TEACHING ?
One of the most interesting theories about the choice of trump subjects is that the 22 picture cards might have been an early educational instrument.
An interesting early document, whose reliability though is far from being proven, is the travel diary of a party of Frenchmen who in 1227 visited Italy: their papers mention that in noble courts, children played with small finely decorated illustrations, which are reported as "carticellas", a name suggesting small pictures made of paper or pasteboard.
Although this might be a fantasy, it is exciting to imagine these illustrations as the ancestors of modern trumps, undergoing some changes in time, and slowing becoming the set we know today, or at least providing inspiration for such cards.
The concept of games as means of education, though, is not completely gratuitous. Among the playing cards produced during the Renaissance, the famous deck known as Mantegna's Tarot, though not being a real tarot, dates from around 1460-70. It has 50 cards, which feature the hierarchy of the universe, from the humble human beggar to the structure of the heavens. The cards are divided into groups or "levels", in accordance with the above-mentioned Neoplatonic philosophical beliefs.
Mantegna's subjects and their arrangement strongly suggest a didactic purpose. A similarity between these cards and the tarot trumps is undeniable, as discussed in the relevant gallery, and although the arrangement and number of cards mismatch, the progress is basically the same, and analogies can be found between specific illustrations belonging to the two decks.
Other existing records tell us how during Renaissance some tutors used illustrated cards for teaching the children of the noble. But this does not prove a relation between those illustrations and playing cards.
Nevertheless, 15th century playing cards might have not been merely looked at as a trivial pastime (as they are today), but as an activity whose dual purpose was to entertain and to provide a source of moral precepts, what today would be called an "educational game". This explains well the choice of additional trump subjects introduced by the florentine Minchiate, about 150 years later, as a variant of the standard tarot deck.
Had the early "carticellas" too been a similar instrument, their being found in the hands of children could have been easily explained. Several scholars, though, tend to reject this theory, denying any connection between this record and the 22 tarot trumps.” [end quote]

Altogether, that is, with roppo’s game of the Dominicans, this could be another evidence for the non-gaming sources of the Tarot as a series of cards…

That a “teaching” would especially be related to the eschatological atmosphere and the Black Death as immediate experience of the “truth” of the necessity of such an education, is not off hands…

Yatima
 

lark

Maybe that is why so many of the old cards that have survived have little holes at the top as if they have been nailed or tacked up to be looked at and studied.
 

Huck

Yatima said:
And BTW, Huck, possibilities are never "dry," they are rich, they "sense" reality to be unearthed; "dry" is only the spirit of negativity...

Yatima

:) dry is the opposite of wet; if you're digging for water, then that's not the spirit of negativity, but the very cool answer of life, that you simply search on the wrong place.
And with possibilities .... one should have in the case of interpretations a sense for the probability of having correctly interpreted .... Interpretations need brainstorm, but not fixation on the upcoming ideas.
When 200 000 persons have identified Fortuna with the wheel with the related special Tarotcard and it is also known, that Fortuna was at the given time a very common symbol, then for instance it seems rather superfluous to think of any Nothelfer, which perhaps also had accidently a wheel in his/her hand and also accidently had 13 companions forming an iconographical group.
Nothing is impossible, so also not the possibility that 14 Nothelfer climbed from Germany over the Alps and disguised in Italian carnival as Tarotcards, but it's not really likely.

We've a report from Johannes of Rheinfelden from 1377 and he already knew a deck with special figures, although these special figures were not trumps, but simply connected to the number cards - as it happened in the later German card tradition very often.
And Johannes already can identify a relation to chess in this deck. He identifies professions and professions were already connected to the figures of chess earlier. And we know a deck, which is very near to the description of Johannes and very near in time, from ca. 1455: The Hofämterspiel.
Johannes opinion has "reality", and it's not pur fiction like the Nothelfer interpretation. "Real" is the document of Johannes, "real" is the chess-tradition with professions for the figures and "real" is the Hofämterspiel. And Chess is a likely relative to the Tarotgame, as it is also a game - it's not farfetched like 14 Nothelfer or any fundamental connection to the Black Death.
 

Ross G Caldwell

Yatima said:
And BTW, Huck, possibilities are never "dry," they are rich, they "sense" reality to be unearthed; "dry" is only the spirit of negativity...

Yatima

I agree on Huck with this, which is not always the case :)

It isn't a spirit of negativity, but a spirit of discretion. There is only so much time, effort and money you can spend on research, and after a long time of learning something, you get a sense of what is plausible and what isn't when it comes to hypotheses. I started out by researching intensively the hypothesis that the "Charles VI" cards really *were* the same as the cards painted by Gringonneur, that they dated from 1392 etc. I essentially left no stone unturned, got all the sources and researched all the background. After about 8 months of full-time research, I realized the experts were most likely right - they are Ferrarese productions of the 1470s. I learned a lot in the process, and kept an open mind - and in the end, I got disillusioned and a lot wiser. The truth is the most important thing to me.

At first, it seems like anything can be true. Everything seems possible. Then as you research, the field narrows down to the tiny details, and huge avenues of formerly very interesting things don't have any relevance at all. Wide avenues become dead ends. Yes, the same printers often printed saints AND playing cards - but they kept them distinct. They still do in fact. Saints cards abound. They have a little prayer on the back. And they look nothing like tarot. Let alone trionfi.

The big problem is that the earliest tarots are painted, not printed, and are all connected to a relatively small, privileged circle. Sagramoro painted Madonnas and Christs for the d'Estes as well - but when he painted carte da trionfi, must we think he intended a rigorous Christian doctrine to be represented? All evidence is that the cards were intended for play, and were used for play. Other things existed for teaching doctrine. Everybody knew the doctrine.

It's like being invited to a party where there is somebody you really want to meet. There are scores of people at the party, and they are all connected some way or another, either to the host or to a guest. Do you have to meet every person, and hear their stories, before you can meet the person you want and find out what you need to know?

The cards are the person you want to know, and the whole history of the 14th and 15th century, and everything in it, are the people at the party. The Nothelfer are an interesting person in another part of the house. You are perfectly welcome to go and chat up the Nothelfer, whom I am sure has a very interesting story to tell. But I would prefer to go right to the person I want to meet, the Trionfi, and the people around the Trionfi. Maybe Trionfi will tell me "I know the Nothelfer", but I have been talking to Trionfi for awhile, and so far I haven't heard that.
 

Yatima

I clearly respect your disillusionment, Ross, and your negativity, Huck...but, it is not the way I see it or I approach things...although both may be helpful regarding "truth"--as was shown by Karl Popper's methode of falsification--but finally, in the real scientiffic praxis of gaining truth, he proved wrong...

It is the paradigm of models that forces us to accept something as true; that means: As lonng as we accept a paradigm, we will integrate all in its manor, although additional facts may not fit in smoothly. Only the change of a paradigm let's us see things anew. That was Kuhn's immensly important therory on scientific advance.

(Ross, I have done this for the New Jerusamem against your odds and I have found a lot of evidence in favor for it at lest regarding the Pierpont-Morgan, you haven't respondet yet in the XXI-Le Monde thread).

The 5x15 theory is such a paradigm; it might prove right or wrong....We will see.

To seek for other possibilities because of putting facts together differntly, is another approch; e.g. seeking the connection to the Black Death, which is not far fetched from all the facts we have got; e.g., seeking for pre-Tarot-series of talismans; e.g. seeking the Dominican game, roppo named, e.g., seeking for educational references etc.

You might not be inclined to do so because you have found the paradigma that works for you; I might be inclined to seek further for a paradigm that satisfies my sense for the history of the Tarot...

Yatima
 

Ross G Caldwell

Yatima said:
(Ross, I have done this for the New Jerusamem against your odds and I have found a lot of evidence in favor for it at lest regarding the Pierpont-Morgan, you haven't respondet yet in the XXI-Le Monde thread).

I'm sorry Yatima, I did once respond to a similar post, you know what happened... sigh.

I didn't save the post, and it takes so much effort to recover the hours of thought I put into it. We all have other lives too. One reason I hate the internet.

A new paradigm? Do you think the Nothelfer is a new paradigm? Or the Black Death, or card-shaped talismans?

Copernicus' paradigm explained *everything* - everything that classical astronomy did, and everything it didn't. Except for gravitation - but it opened the door to that. This is why it was a Kuhnian "paradigm shift". The truth of it simply couldn't be resisted.

Heisenberg's uncertainty principle has no bearing on historical events.

What facts don't fit into our paradigm? - That is, that trionfi cards were invented in one of the princely courts of the north of Italy, probably either Milan or Ferrara. Is there something that strongly - or even weakly - suggests otherwise? Or is the argument - the new paradigm - simply this : all of the evidence, even the negative evidence (no mention in prohibitions or allowed games before 1450, no cards datable with certainty before the 1440s) is simply misleading. We can deduce nothing from it. We cannot trust it on principle. We must search elsewhere for an answer because the princely court explanation is unsatisfying, even if there is absolutely no evidence for any other explanation. We must start anew.

If you agree with those statements, I can only ask - why is the court explanation unsatisfying? Why do we need a new paradigm - what is lacking in the explanatory power of the princely court theory?
 

Huck

Yatima said:

The 5x15 theory is such a paradigm; it might prove right or wrong....We will see.

5x14-theory, please.

True, it's a change of the earlier paradigm, which said precisely: "The Pierpont-Morgan-Bergamo-Tarocchi gives reason for Tarot research to assume, that there had been a complete 78 cards before the Pierpont-Morgan-Bergamo-Tarocchi".

But a more precise look at all known documents, in which the word "trionfi" gave the result, that there is nothing (before the Boiardo deck - and that's late) than mere suggestion, which justifies this interpretation. If I'm wrong with this statement, please tell me of a document, which justifies it. The Pierpont-Morgan-Bergamo-Tarocchi itself can be interpreted as a 5x14-deck. This is justified by:

1. the note of Ferrara 1457: "70 cards"
2. the note from Ferrara 1441: "14 Figure"
3. the note in the Marcello-letter 1449, who has no problem to identify the strange Michelino-deck as a "ludus triumphorum", which confronts the alternative paradigm (22 trumps at begin) with the fact, that the use of the word Trionfi could be applied to such a strange deck.

etc.

see: http://trionfi.com/0/f/

Well, we'll see ... what? Will we see, that suddenly the Ur-Tarot jumps out of the corner of a hidden castle somewhere in Italy or that the secret door behind a Nothelfer-tryptychon opens and throws out hundred of card decks with Rochus turning to be the Fool since any Tarot-beginning, telling that the Black Death was not a nice phase during human develoment?

Research can only state the actual level of knowledge - and if the researchers are clever, they try their best to create a platform, where all this knowledge is reachable to anybody, as this gives the best chances to collect until now unknown data, which refines the picture.
In a same way it is allowed to develop projections, which considers all until now known data and treat them more or less free of contradiction - and that's the 5x14-theory: a rather solid projection - if you know of a real contradiction, anybody is ready to hear about it.
A projection serves the intention to get advice for the next steps of research, as it is simply clear: we do NOT know all, what is retrievable out of given sources. The 5-14-theory gives the advice: if you research for the 22-Tarot, then research "after 1457". Also it gives the advice: if you research for the earlier Tarot-decks (before 1457), search for decks with a fifth suit, or research for models with 14 or 16 elements.

The Nothelfer-group has 14 elements, that's good, but the iconographical jump is too big and the group is not from Italy. Beside of that the 14 motifs are not a riddle - there is already a lot of material gathered and the examination tells us, that all this special figures were known earlier. Only few details are really a riddle: What instrument is the 5th symbol on the table of the magician? What means the knight in the background of Iustitia? And some others, but the possible answesr will only refine our knowledge about the details, they will not change the world.

Nobody minds a research about Nothelfer - surely an interesting theme. Actually we've thought of a general research and representation of all Tarot-similar-systems of the European 14th century at Trionfi.com. Astrology, geomancy, surviving neoplatonic schemes, chess-iconography, calendars, other religious systems. Would be a nice catolog. But we do not expect the answer to the system of Tarot in this collection.



To seek for other possibilities because of putting facts together differntly, is another approch; e.g. seeking the connection to the Black Death, which is not far fetched from all the facts we have got; e.g., seeking for pre-Tarot-series of talismans; e.g. seeking the Dominican game, roppo named, e.g., seeking for educational references etc.

You might not be inclined to do so because you have found the paradigma that works for you; I might be inclined to seek further for a paradigm that satisfies my sense for the history of the Tarot...

Yatima

Well ... as I've said, we've an interest in this catalog. We're not negative about it.
 

Yatima

Huck, Ross, that's right, there is a life beyond internet, and so, I will be away the next week or so...without internet excess, fortunately. So, I will respond to questions then, when I am back.

But Ross, I would like you to look at the evidence for the New Jerusalem in XXI-Le Monde, if there is time in your life...

But very shortly, I am not satisfied with the 5x14 theory and the court-theory of the Tarot-invention because (a) of surrounding facts that are not included and (b) because of its often highly inferential nature...I will respond to this later, when I am back, as I said.

Just to make sure we understand one another rightly: My intention is not to devalue what you have found, but to explore more possibilities that are left open...they may not prove valuable, but, for me at least, they are worth of following.

Not every theory that explains all is necessarily right; and there is virtually no theory that explains all leaving space for further considerations. E.g., the non-Euclidian geometry is not more or less right that the Euclidian geometry…The quantum theory has made a MAJOR difference; it is a new paradigm per excellence…

But if someone follows a certain paradigm s/he might become blind for other ways, because of the bias to include all in this paradigm.

Also, I was not bringing up the matter of the 14 Nothelfer in this thread; if you want to read the opening post of mine…It was roppo’s and jmd’s follow up. I was just including St. Roch and the origin of the Death iconography in the theory that the eschatological nature and drive of the Bembo-14 show relations to Black Death more than clearly. Since the iconography of the Bembo-14 cannot be explained just by referring to the Milan triumphal tradition of the Michelino deck because of obvious reasons, it is highly likely that the whole imaginary came in from another side: maybe cardmakers that drew on the iconography of the life under the great plague and the eschatological climate of the time…facts you should consider…

Yatima