A very early magician

A very early Magician

http://www.aeiou.at/aeiou.history.data.jpg/008571.jpg

with comments at

http://www.tarot-astrologie.de/land/gb-index.htm

as a special reply to the following sentence

"....neither tarot cards nor playing cards of any kind were known in Europe prior to 1375 ..."

The images are superb, Huck... thanks so much. So if I understand correctly, what we have here is a book with many pages illustrated with images which recall numerous of the Major Arcana cards, and that this book was made in 1479.

It is well worth going through each of the images on the site, for the Schachbücher (Schah/King/Chess Book) images are quite astounding.

It is getting quite late here, so will re-read your post on Banzhaf's Forum tomorrow, and make comment.

Is that a playing card, Huck? or a page from a manuscript?

The illustration is stunning! Fantastically interesting. I see characteristics of both the Fool and le bateleur here.

I was not able to discover any information from the second link you provided (not yet anyway, still trying) in the meantime, do you have any more information regarding the provenance of this image? Where does it come from? Author? Title? Date?


edited to say: ooops! jmd and I were posting at the same time. LOL.

Sorry, probably you need a description to arrive there ... at the page you've to press "enter forum" - it's an English forum. Then you see title to some articles, this has mentioned "1375" in the title, you should be able to identify it.
The page is framed, so I didn#t realise the difficulty.

The final link in the article leads to pictures of two Schachzabel-books, one is from 1479 and the other of ca. 1465 (if I remember correctly). But there must be much more Schachzabel-books in the world with similar pictures. It's just a second "Tarot"world, the only real play is the Hofämterspiel.

Ray Luberti at LTarot mentioned, that the Hofämterspiel had many early reproductions ... he didn't gave details, so it stayed unclear. I requested, but he forgot to answer. Perhaps he talked of Schachzabel books.

Well, to sum it up: It's a sort of second Tarot and its distribution is not "small". It exists parallel to Tarot and earlier than Tarot.

The idea "professions" as symbols has a second appearance in common astrology with "children of planets". It's a broad phenomen, not depending on "single pieces"

The Tarot in 15th century is only the small Italian brother to that, a regional variation. A sophisticated variation, true, done for very high persons. Common people could much more identify with professions.

Hi Huck, I am very interested in what you are saying, so please be patient with me.

What is a Schachzabel book? It seems like it is a book of illustrations of professions. But does it have something to do with chess? or were these chess pieces that were then inventoried in a book?

Sort of like an early encyclopedia? Are you suggesting that tarot grew out of books like this? In what way is the book a "second tarot", I am afraid I don't really understand.

I have finally been able to read your post on Hajo's forum. You say that Catboxer's date of 1375 is wrong, but you are only quibbling with about four years, it seems to me, is that right? You are saying that the earliest mention of cards being played was 1371?

firemaiden said:

Hi Huck, I am very interested in what you are saying, so please be patient with me.

What is a Schachzabel book? It seems like it is a book of illustrations of professions. But does it have something to do with chess? or were these chess pieces that were then inventoried in a book?

Sort of like an early encyclopedia? Are you suggesting that tarot grew out of books like this? In what way is the book a "second tarot", I am afraid I don't really understand.

I have finally been able to read your post on Hajo's forum. You say that Catboxer's date of 1375 is wrong, but you are only quibbling with about four years, it seems to me, is that right? You are saying that the earliest mention of cards being played was 1371?

Click to expand...

1367 in Bern seems to be reliable. It earlier was claimed to be a later addition, added in 20 years later. So it was believed to be another of the forgeries.
The same happened to the Johannes text. It was thought to have been changed in 1429. A recent research came to the conclusion, that it is correctly dated at 1377. So two suspected "forgeries" have now the perspective to be correct that, what they always claimed to be.

"Zabel" was chess or the board of chess. The term changed with the time. Probably - I would guess so - was Zabel the German transformed word for "Schach" (modern German for chess), with - I might err - goes back to a Persian expression Shah ? (I recall only from memory, I'm unsecure), probably near to Schah, with still was the title of Reza Pahlewi in last century, so meaning King or Kaiser or something like this. I should research that.

Caesar, Kaiser, Schah, Zar, probably all the same root. The Persian word - so I assume - changed to Zabel and was common. Then a time came, when the foreign language corrected it again back to the original expression, and the confused German formed Schachzabel to know in any case what he was talking about

It's a second Tarot in the way, that a special iconography (professions) was developed, which was used in books and on PLAYING CARDS, such allegorizing the playing figures and cards.

A left pawn was not simply a pawn, but for instance a fisher or an inn-keeper. This idea, first only used in books about chess and related to chess-figures, was transported to the play, that Johannes saw in 1377 and what he was very delighted about. The number-cards had "professions", they were painted like persons with professions and they presented the folk and the court cards the regents. A very simple normal idea.

Then we see for 80 years nothing of this kind of deck on existent playing card decks, until the Hofämterspiel appears (ca. 1455).
But there are Schachzabelbooks, which deal with the same idea. And there are astrological books, which sort the professions in groups according to planets.

That is all one family ... of iconographical use.

A virtue in comparition (Iustitia for instance) also exists independent from the media, if it is cardplay, a book, or a statue.
It is also part of an iconographical family, this time called "Virtues".
It's a second Tarot in the way that it has pictures.

But I would prefer to discuss further questions in the English forum there, I've posted it to various groups, so discussion is better organized there.

Thank you Huck.

Okay, so a Schachzabel buch is a book about chess figures, showing them in imaginative ways.

A left pawn was not simply a pawn, but for instance a fisher or an inn-keeper.

Click to expand...

Were these imaginative desciptions also reflected in the chess pieces themselves? or only in the books?

For me to be able to follow you, first of all, I had to find out what the "Johannes text" is. A brief google tour brought me to Autorbis article, Johannes of Rheinfelden, which reveals that the "Johannes text" Huck mentions, is a book about playing cards, written in 1377 by a Dominican monk called Johannes von Rheinfelden.

So it appears that Johannes was enchanted with a playing card game, which emulated the war scenario of chess, and in which the common people were portrayed, also reminding us of the illustrations in the Schachzabel book. Further, the desciption of this early card game, sounds very like the card game which appeared 80 years later, known as the "Hofämterspiel"

I also had never heard of this game, so I looked it up and learned the Hofämterspiel, is a deck of playing cards, as Huck has explained, first appearing ca. 1455, with professions appearing on the numbered cards. They are very beautiful, and certainly remind one of tarot cards. (I wonder how much of these similarities have been explored.) Bye the way, what does Hofämter mean, courtier?


So, summarizing, it appears that the first playing cards using professions for pips, derived their character from the earlier chess books with similar images, and these cards appeared some time, around 1367, that is, about ten years before they were described by Johannes.

Yet, aside from their mention, we have no surviving evidence of these earlier cards, until the Hofämterspiel 80 years later.

But I would prefer to discuss further questions in the English forum there, I've posted it to various groups, so discussion is better organized there.

Click to expand...

I appreciate that Huck. I hope you don't mind if some of us develop the conversation further on this forum.

I do not understand the references to Bern. Perhaps some of the other historians on this forum could help fill in the rest of the blanks of us.

I guess, that the name is not the authentical name the game was found in a chest with another second worthful deck - probably no description, just the decks. Hofämter means something like court professions, but perhaps it simply were "professions".

The Hofämterspiel has a special structure. 1-10 are numbered, King and Queen are unnumbered.

4 Kings, 4 Queens, 4 Hofmeisters (the 10's), 4 Marshalls (the 9's), , 4 Jungfraue (the 6's) and 4 Fools (1's) and 24 professions (against 24 court cards), totally 48 cards

Johannes describes a 60 card deck: 5 court cards (King, Queen, 2 marshalls and a maid). The ranking is King - Queen - upper marshall - maid - lower marshall). 40 or little less professions (the source is unclear, a few professions appear to be double existent ?)
The maid should be the Jungfraue, the two marshalls the Hofmeister and the Marshall in the Hofämter. The Fool should be the new court card in the Hofämterspiel. So ... both decks are really rather similar.

http://l-pollett.tripod.com/cards23.htm

Andy Pollett gives a second perhaps better description of the Hofämterspiel.

"Bern 1367" is just a prohibition. It was discussed, if this entry was a later made addition. In the moment it seems, as if it is not an addition, but authentical from 1367 and with that "true".

It is not known (to me), if there were really chess-figures, which looked like a fisher or inn-keeper. I think, this would have been difficult to produce at this time, I would guess not.

Wonderful reflections and input indeed

Here again, what we see is another wonderful (relevant) adventure into what I see as some of the possible influences in and during the advent or early days of Tarot proper.

What is especially fascinating here is the relatively early date of these upon card stock (I presume), which shows that at least in some European quarters, and therefore also in others with whom there was much rapport, had access to this material and related matter - very importantly for the purposes of this kind of printing!

What it also brings to mind, of course, as I virtually cannot read German, is that it is so much easier to transport imagery from place to place, unless words are in the lingua franca of the times (by the way, I use the term 'lingua franca' in its proper sense, and as the language probably used on some of the the early titles of Tarot cards).

That such cards or books have survived the passage of time attests to their beauty. I cannot but recall how some documents have been surreptitiously or even serendipitously saved from some hearth-fires by the developed eye of some fortunate visitor, and how easily old cards or damaged books would have been consumed by the flames as they assisted some cold inhabitant increase the heat of their home.

What seems to me to need to be carefully considered, however, is not only its possible connection to Tarot in either its iconographic or production, but how these weaved their ways in various regions.

Also, if such were around in the 14th century, than likewise it gives further indirect credence to the possibility of finding yet other card designs which may more properly be Tarot.

I realise that Huck described these as 'in a way', a second Tarot. They certainly seem to have more in common with Tarot than either the Sola-Busca or the Mantegna decks, but cannot, in my eyes, properly call these 'Tarot'.

Nor can I, for the same matter, call carved iconographic cathedral imagery Tarot, even though they may be closely connected.

I look forward to reading some of the links and discussions at greater leisure...

about definitions

Jmd:

I realise that Huck described these as 'in a way', a second Tarot. They certainly seem to have more in common with Tarot than either the Sola-Busca or the Mantegna decks, but cannot, in my eyes, properly call these 'Tarot'.

Nor can I, for the same matter, call carved iconographic cathedral imagery Tarot, even though they may be closely connected.

Click to expand...

Again, we're in the troublesome question how to define "Tarot"

Tarot or Trionfi or all objects painted on paper prepared for playing with it are just on outflow of the general medieval iconography.

A medieval "Iustitia", object in a Tarot game, appears also in oil painting, stone, fresco, metall, as book-painting, in heraldic objects etc..

In any of its appearances it has a similar idea and reflects a similar background.

We've to learn from it, that Tarot or Trionfi was only one way between others of artistic expression in 15th and 16th century.

When I speak of a "second Tarot" in the above context, I of course do not wish to contradict otherwise sensemaking definitions.

It's a "second Tarot" in that way: It displays a logical series of iconographic figures inside a system (chess) - comparable to Tarot. It seems to be similar rich - as Tarot, with some work probably one could carry together as much chess-figure pictures from 14th/15th century as one already did with Tarot/Trionfi cards (I estimate that only from what I've read in relating literature - this kind of chess-manuscript should know many examples).

The chance, that these figures in some context also appeared as "playing cards" is very great - and in some already given examples somehow proven.

Francesco Rosselli (1528): In an inventory of 1528 appears the listing of 4 games, which exist in the form of printing plates or engraving-material in the document. The Rosselli-family was active in Florence during 15th/16th century in various arts, also engraving. A Franceso Rosselli (it's unclear if he is identical to the above mentioned Francesco Rosselli) engraved 1508 a famous world map.
4 games (Dummett accepted, that it are games, we can't judge the context), one uses the Petrarca Trionfi, another one seems to use the 12 Apostles, a 3rd the virtues (perhaps together with vices ?) and a 4th the planets with their borders (? probably the spheres ?).

If we assume, that these "games" are meant to appear as playing cards, they are nearly "Tarot", but iconographical not identical to the Tarot series. But if we accept 5x14-games and also games like Boiardo-poem and Sola-Busca and the Mantegna-Tarocchi as "Tarot-related", then we have to do it again with this objects.

There is simply a combination of intellectual-iconographical concept with playing card - nobody actually is really interested how we do define Tarotcards, there is simply a phenomen and that's playing cards and there are historical artefacts and they are, what they are and not what we define them to be.