BrightEye
LOL - that's so funny!Rosanne said:I was always taught that Sunday was a day of rest- but I never figured out what you rested from exactly as we worked like Trojans on a Sunday.
LOL - that's so funny!Rosanne said:I was always taught that Sunday was a day of rest- but I never figured out what you rested from exactly as we worked like Trojans on a Sunday.
BrightEye said:Which deck would Northbrooke have had in mind? Playing cards without Trumps?
As for Plato's texts being burned, I doubt it. The Mantegna deck from 14-- (the eact date escapes me now) depicts a neo-Platonic world, no?
Who reported that Northbrooke wrote about Tarot?Rosanne said:If John Northbrooke felt that Tarot was Non- pagan (that would mean Christian at that time)...
Because he was a Christian preacher, familiar with the traditional themes of Christian preaching. Northbrooke explicitly cited the 3rd-century pseudo-Cyprian as his source for this. As Benham reports the story:Rosanne said:...why would he think it would bring Idolatry as a tool of the Devil?
Given this description, it is clear that the British were using French-suited cards.John Northbrooke of Bristol, who preached and wrote against plays and dramatic performances, was also vehement against card-playing… [He] asserted that"Dice playing is the mother and Carde playing is the daughter," and both "drawe to ydelness, loitering, blasphemy, misery, infamie, shame, penury, and confusions." He proceeds: "I say with good Father Saint Cyprian: The playe at Cardes is an invention of the Deuill, which he founde out that he might the easier bring in Ydolatrie amongst men. For the Kings and Coate cardes that we use nowe were in olde time the ymages of Idols and false Gods: which since they that would seeme Christians have changed into Charlemane, Launcelot, Hector, and such like names, because they woule not seeme to imitate their ydolatrie herein, and yet maintaine the playe it self, the very inuention of Satan, the Deuill, and would disguise this mischief under the cloake of such gaye names."
(W. Gurney Benham's Playing Cards: History of the Pack and Explanations of its Many Secrets, 1931.
mjhurst said:As for the source, the online Catholic Encyclopedia describes "a homily (the famous De Aleatoribus) long ascribed to St. Cyprian, but by modern scholars variously attributed to Popes Victor I, Callistus I, and Melchiades, and which undoubtedly is a very early and interesting monument of Christian antiquity, is a vigorous denunciation of gambling." The title refers to dice, but by extension it includes all games of chance. (Even chess, a generally respectable game not based on chance, was included by some writers.) Pseudo-Cyprian's complaint included two significant statements about games of chance, calling dice a snare of the Devil (Zabulus, i.e., Diabolus), and comparing it with idolatry. These ideas would be repeated with respect to regular playing cards in 1576 by Northbrooke and in 1599 by Pierre de la Primaudaye. A 1423 sermon by St. Bernardine refers to regular playing cards (again, not Tarot) as the Devil's breviary, and the 1500 Steele Sermon also suggests that dice, cards, and Tarot are tools of the Devil. The idea was apparently a commonplace.
Yes it is.ihcoyc said:The treatment of sixteenth and seventeenth century texts condemning "paganism" and "idolatry" is an interesting subject in itself.
Basically, during the period of the Puritan controversies in England, there was a great deal of fuss and bother about finding and condemning alleged relics of paganism and idolatry. The true targets were not actual pagans, but High Church Anglicans and Roman Catholics. The idea was to reform the church along Calvinistic / Presbyterian lines, and to abolish images, religious practices, and festivals that were not specifically authorized by Scripture.
So for "pagan", read "Catholic." It was all the same to those writers.
I was not concerned about playing cards as how Puritans saw statues in the church-as worshiped articles or icons, but that they were Pagan as in Greek Myth and Legend- they recognised (even though the dress of the Courts was of their times) the image behind the clothing. When Major Tom made his TdM he dressed the figures in Modern clothes- but I still see the Renaissance figure of Traditional TdM under the modern clothesThe condemnation of playing cards was likely actually motivated by a similar animus: they were used by aristocrats and gamblers and other supporters of the established high church. No real proof is given that the court cards were ever actually worshipped as pagan gods, although the tradition of naming them after Lancelot, Hector, Judith, and so forth was apparently known to the author. These cards were French: therefore Catholic; therefore pagan.
That is excellent Ihcoyc! Thank you very much for your informative post and I will seek out books by Ronald Hutton.These seventeenth century tracts were misinterpreted and accepted at face value by nineteenth century folklorists. Their concerns were totally different: they were looking for evidence of "pagan survivals". The fact that the seventeenth century Puritans had an extremely broad reading of "paganism" escaped them; they just heard that maypoles were being cut down as relics of "paganism," so they must actually be pagan survivals. The actual "pagan" survivals were actually Catholic practices preserved in folk religion. If there's any historic paganism (in our sense) in them, it's hard to identify at this remove.
That and more I always thought but now I am not so sure. I think Tarot may be a bit like the Easter Egg. But I will continue to search. Many thanks.The Tarot itself, with its images of popes and angels and the Last Judgment, is fairly obviously Christian in origin.
I found this very interesting- thank you Ross. It is strange but in Italy, when I had the chance to sit with some older village men and watch them play Tarochino- they did this strange wee ritual to the cards before they played. I was amused to see one gentleman throw a pinch of salt on the table as well.Ross G Caldwell said:Speaking of Northbrooke and Pierre de la Primaudaye, both must have been influenced by Lambert Daneau (also a Calvinist), who first translated (it was really more of a paraphrase, from what I can see) Pseudo-Cyprian into French, in 1566.
I found a passage from Daneau's 1566 translation in a 1964 article (if you can call it that) by H. Coumet (historian of mathematics) on line -
http://archive.numdam.org/ARCHIVE/MSH/MSH_1964__6_/MSH_1964__6__23_0/MSH_1964__6__23_0.pdf
page 3.
What is most interesting to me is that Daneau translates ps.-Cyprian's phrase "alea tabulam" as "cartes", and the simple word "tabulam" in a longer phrase as "cards and dice", viz:
Ps.-Cyprian: "ita ut qui vellet studio eius adhaerere, non ante manum in tabulam porrigeret, nisi auctori huius prius sacrificasset."
(thus anyone who would be involved with his invention, could not put his hand before the table, unless he had first sacrificed to the inventor of it).
Daneau: "tellement que quiconque aujourd'huy veut jouer, n'ose mettre la main ni à carte ni à dé, que premierement il n'ait sacrifié & fait hommage à l'autheur."
(so that whoever today would play, dares not place hand on card nor die, unless he has not firstly sacrificed and made homage to the inventor.)
Interestingly enough, Daneau *did* mention tarot in his "translation" of Ps.-Cyprian, although I am not sure in what context. As quoted by Thierry Depaulis, "les premieres cartes estoyent figurées comme sont celles du tarot" (the first cards were figured as are those of the tarot).
As far as I know, Daneau never says "The Devil invented tarot", but since he holds that the Devil invented cards, and the first cards were tarots, it follows that the Devil invented tarot.