Historic Tarot : What We Do NOT Know.

Rosanne

I guess for me, it is not grey enough; because if there was this link, it would be another Eastern or Arabic link. Oh I did not know that about Poker! thank you.
~Rosanne
 

The crowned one

I guess for me, it is not grey enough; because if there was this link, it would be another Eastern or Arabic link. Oh I did not know that about Poker! thank you.
~Rosanne


I hear you :) I was always more worried about its origin, its genesis and evolution. I am not sure we can get that out of its title, but it likely will fill a few gaps when it is settled by some long forgotten document... China to mamluks via Moguls? That was my little pet idea, And that we do not know! I also used to wonder if perhaps the mongols brought the cards to Europe via the Mongol invasion of Hungary/Poland in the 13th century... and from east Europe to West? Spoils of war and war culture? Of course the crusades are the more obvious choice to most.
 

Rosanne

Well, for me it is this nagging thing about the origins and the History of the Christian boys that became the property of another, the Circassion and Georgian links; those Mamluks.
They paid lip service to their forced Islamic conversion, but appeared to have strong links with Coptic Christians and Armenian Christians. These are the guys that went to Florence when the Council of Basel Became the Council of Ferrera and Florence, in 1439. The Armenians in particular had much knowledge about Illumination, and Cosimo Medici got them to oraganise the decoration of floats, music scores etc..... I maybe stretching the bounds of this chain. Not a long jump that they had illuminated playing cards.
~Rosanne
 

Rosanne

So many Blogs about Tarot History......
Even the Wikipedia site has been updated since I looked some years ago.
Well through these I have found a few things I did not know.
Here is one...blogged by a Sherryl E Smith.
In some places, it was customary to give names to the trump suit cards. In Karnoffell, a game that was very popular in German-speaking regions by the 1420s, the trump cards were called names like Devil, Emperor, and Pope. There is no evidence that Karnoffel directly influenced Tarot, but it shows that some Tarot images may be rooted in folk traditions surrounding card playing
If this is correct, it seems to me, a sequence with meaning becomes less important. Just folk traditions possibly.
~Rosanne
 

Huck

If this is correct, it seems to me, a sequence with meaning becomes less important. Just folk traditions possibly.
~Rosanne

The first note about Karnöffel (1426, Nördlingen) gives no info about specific conditions in the game. The Mysner poem, dated to c. 1450, gives the roles "Pope, Devil and Emperor" and further the role of the "Karnöffel", who robs the cloth of somebody else, and a not specified number of "heilije lerer" (possibly 4 "holy teachers" presenting the 4 suits).

The poem seems to contradict the later known rules of Karnöffel (mainly based on a text of 1537), which know 4 different Emperors (related to 2-5, with different trumping possibilities), Pope (related to 6), Devil (related to 7) and the Karnöffel, who beats them all.
Details are somewhere else. Google for "Mysner" and "Karnöffel".

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Added: Comparing the Mysner Karnöffel and the later Karnöffel to Tarot, there's possibly this relation:

1 - Unter / Fante - suit 1
2 - Ober / Cavallo - suit 2
3 - Queen - suit 3
4 - King - suit 4

reduced in games with 3 courts only to ...

1 - suit 1
2 - (Unter = Jack) - suit 2
3 - (Queen = Ober) - suit 3
4 - King - suit 4
(in many common games in Germany King has 4 points, Queen has 3 points, the Jack has 2 points)

Interpreting Mysner and Karnöffel we get:

1 - heilije Lerer (1 for Mysner) (no Aces in common games in Germany - later rules)
2 - heilije Lerer (2 for Mysner) - lowest Emperor (in later rules)
3 - heilije Lerer (3 for Mysner) - a little better Emperor (in later rules)
4 - heilije Lerer (4 for Mysner) - better Emperor (in later rules)
5 - Pope (for Mysner) - best Emperor (in later rules)
6 - Devil (for Mysner) - Pope (in later rules) -
7 - Emperor (for Mysner) - Devil (for Mysner)

... for both sources the Karnöffel has a special function (strongest cards). The specific 4 Emperors (only in "later rules") had different trumping power, some cards they could capture, others not.

In the Mysner poem the Karnöffel robs the clothes of a victim, a context, in which the victim is compared to a female pig (the pig often appeared on the card No. 2, which replaced in Germany the Aces).

In Tarot (1450, PMB) we have a person, which has only a rest of his clothes - The Fool.
The Magician in PMB has very fine clothes. Had he robbed the Fool?

Further we have this row in Tarot:

0 Fool (robbed ?)
1 Magician (robber ?)
2 Popess
3 Empress .... relative to Queen in normal cards
4 Emperor ... relative to King in normal cards
5 Pope ... relative to 5 Pope in Mysner poem
6 Love ... is this the German devil?
7 Triumphal Chariot ... Is this the Karnöffel, who beats them all?

The popess is clearly a development from "Maid" (John of Rheinfelden deck 1377) and Junckfrauwe (Hofämterspiel 1455). She stands in a logical relation to the unmarried knights (Cavallo, Ober), which likely were normally associated to No 2.
The Foot soldier (Unter), the often "funny figure", was associated to 1 and likely was expressed in the pair Fool-Bagatello.
In the Hofämterspiel the 4 Fools were associated to No 1.

The association "playing cards and card playing" related to "sexual pleasures and to the devil" appears in the work of Master Ingold (1432). In the Hofämterspiel the "Junckfrauwe" were associated to No. 6.

At the end of the poem of Mysner the expression appears "Haintz eff mich wohl". At the begin of the "Ship of Fools" (1494) this figure appears ...

haintz.jpg


... with a knife in his ass.
"Haintz Nar"

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Well, the Mysner poem didn't intend to explain, how the game Karnöffel was played. So one meets riddles and one must interpret them. To me it seemed, as if the used deck version had "special cards" (likely 8), as the Tarot had special cards. Later the then very popular Karnöffel game simply used normal playing cards and defined them in the manner of the game.

Occasionally Karnöffel was addressed as Imperatori game or as Keyserspiel.

The Ferrarese record of 1423 speaks of "VIII Imperatori" cards imported from Florence (for a horrible high price, if it really were only 8 cards).
The Imperatori game reappears later 1443 in Ferrara (after a series of Trionfi notes 1440-1442) and in 1452 (again after new interest in Trionfi games since 1449).

If both games were similar (just with a different number of trumps) it's logical, that they appeared together as a card playing fashion.

So it appears a little bit, that early Trionfi decks simply were an extension of special Imperatori/Karnöffel decks with more "special cards", bewaring (and modifying) some content, which already had developed before.
 

Rosanne

That is very interesting Huck. I think I have been tunnel visioned about the 'exclusivity'? of Tarot.
I also found it interesting that the German cards had a style, that seems to have carried over to the Italian Hand-painted cards. The hunting deck is for instance, very like the style and one image -take the falcon out and put in the hand a chalice/cup and you have a Visconti Valet card. The cross pollination of images seems fairly clear. Add to that the 'special cards' and we have some sort of Tarot game base. A 'little' as you say.
~Rosanne
 

Rosanne

I cannot tell what Mysner meant.......something.. me well, but it should be pretty clear really.
It reminds me of the Fool of the Tdm. Bitten in the Hintern Lol.

Those German cards (apart from the polite Hunting decks) are very humorous in the main.
I am sure the Italians, when not in Church had the same sort of Humour.
~Rosanne
 

Huck

I cannot tell what Mysner meant.......something.. me well, but it should be pretty clear really.
It reminds me of the Fool of the Tdm. Bitten in the Hintern Lol.

Those German cards (apart from the polite Hunting decks) are very humorous in the main.
I am sure the Italians, when not in Church had the same sort of Humour.
~Rosanne

.... :) ... I think, that the Germans of this time had more anarchy than the Italians. For instance they hadn't a pope, but a pope in Italy.

The emperor wasn't so mighty. The nobility was going down. The cities were the winners. But the cities in Germany couldn't get so much inhabitants, as in Italy, cause they needed wood in the winter. If the cities became too big, the wood got a longer transport way. So the cities didn't become so big.

Larger cities like Florence, Venice and Milan could develop other internal structures as the the cities in Germany.
German cities didn't suffer those structures and so lived in more anarchy.

The protestant idea was born in Germany. Can one say so? It was and it still is a big victory.

No, I don't think, that the Italians of the time developed the same humor as the Germans.

.... :) ... even nowadays people have difficulties to understand the humor of the Rhinelander.
 

Rosanne

I do not know why the Queens were banished from the German pattern in playing cards.
I would really like an approx. date the Queens stopped appearing.
I also did not know that the 'bells' were actually Hawk Bells. Makes sense.
In the Hunting decks do the suit symbols correlate to the Italian suit symbols?
Example: Lures = Batons, Herons = Swords, I cannot remember where I saw the explanation of 'riches' etc....as part of four suits. I think it was a trionfi game.
~Rosanne
 

Huck

I do not know why the Queens were banished from the German pattern in playing cards.
I would really like an approx. date the Queens stopped appearing.
I also did not know that the 'bells' were actually Hawk Bells. Makes sense.
In the Hunting decks do the suit symbols correlate to the Italian suit symbols?
Example: Lures = Batons, Herons = Swords, I cannot remember where I saw the explanation of 'riches' etc....as part of four suits. I think it was a trionfi game.
~Rosanne

I don't think, that queens were ever banished. For 16th and 17th we have a sum of perhaps 170-200 card documents, something like 7/8 of this findings used male court cards (both numbers only roughly estimated, not really counted; I actually don't really claim to have an overview, it's just "my impression"). This selection had a great part of common cheap decks.

The perhaps about 30 examples known from 15th century are more often expensive products. There's not enough material to give comments for the cheap market. Queens appear relative often.

There's the interesting single observation, that the Schäufelein game (no Aces, no Queens; from Nuremberg, Southern Germany) got additional Queens and Aces in Cologne (close to the Flemish countries, more Northern territory) made by Woensam c. 1530.
So there might have been regions, which played with Queens, and others, which possibly used them not. Generally the known material is more from Southern Germany.

Nonetheless we have also Queens from artful decks of Nuremberg.