MikeH
Ross wrote,
If the Spanish Inquisition didn't in fact burn people whose only crime was cartomancy, that probably helps account for our knowledge of that trade there: the risk wasn't as great there as in other places (assuming that "Judaizing" was really the crime the lady you mention was burned for, and not just the charge that they wanted to publicize). Even then, wearing a yellow cross on one's garment is pretty bad in a culture that attaches great importance to honor, enough of a deterrent that the practice would be kept quiet.
Also, it strikes me that the literati wouldn't have written about cartomancy, even in stories about witches, out of fear that their favorite game implements might end up being banned.
But my main concern was Northern Italy, which was Dummett's focus. What I wrote was, if you continue reading:
Gregory, thanks for reminding me that what was asked for was a book or two. Well, yes, the books associated with Dummett are reliably non-woo-woo and also quite good, as long as you read them critically, as he would want you to. I think the most advanced methodologically is Il Mondo e l'Angelo, 1993, very hard to get. I have translated numerous key passages elsewhere on the Web. For 1770-1870, Wicked Pack does a good job of separating fact from fiction about the French cartomancers. There are also the first two volumes of Kaplan. And O'Neill, Tarot Symbolism. These are all from the late 1970s to early 1990s. I don't know of anything recent that's solid, but it's hard to tell from the selections on the Web.
Thanks for the clarification about Spain, Ross. I didn't mean for that particular remark, about burnings, to apply to Spain in particular. It was a general statement about witches. Fortune-telling was associated with witchcraft. It was right in the standard manual for Inquisitors, written by Bernard Gui, who has a chapter on "sorcerers and fortune-tellers". Witches were, sometimes, burned at the stake. It was a possible charge and outcome, a charge applied in Spain, if not, for that offense, the penalty. for which they had bigger fish to fry (pardon the expression. I mean, "relax to the secular arm"--what a phrase!). Still, the threat is enough to frighten people; they knew about the famous cases, like Joan of Arc, who certainly wasn't offered the chance to do penance and go on a pilgrimage.You're letting your imagination run away with you here, Mike. The facts are that out of 285 cases of hechiceria(withcracft) of the Inquisition Tribunal of Toledo between 1530 and 1815 studied by Estopanan, there is not a single case of being relaxed to the secular arm (which means for burning).Originally Posted by MikeH
Witches were burned at the stake. Even if it was only a few dozen a year in a particular locality, that would have been enough to induce caution.
If the Spanish Inquisition didn't in fact burn people whose only crime was cartomancy, that probably helps account for our knowledge of that trade there: the risk wasn't as great there as in other places (assuming that "Judaizing" was really the crime the lady you mention was burned for, and not just the charge that they wanted to publicize). Even then, wearing a yellow cross on one's garment is pretty bad in a culture that attaches great importance to honor, enough of a deterrent that the practice would be kept quiet.
Also, it strikes me that the literati wouldn't have written about cartomancy, even in stories about witches, out of fear that their favorite game implements might end up being banned.
But my main concern was Northern Italy, which was Dummett's focus. What I wrote was, if you continue reading:
One of my sources (out of three, all published since 2000) is Michael M. Tavuzzi's 2007 Renaissance inquisitors: Dominican inquisitors and inquisitorial districts in Northern Italy, 1474-1527. One quote is from a 1586 account of Inquisitors in the district of Vercelli, Ivrea, Novara, and Como in the 1460s (pp. 149-150)In general, for a century and a half, cartomancy mostly appears in association with witchcraft (http://www.academia.edu/6477311/Brie..._of_cartomancy). Witches were burned at the stake. Even if it was only a few dozen a year in a particular locality, that would have been enough to induce caution. The Lombard Inquisition, which became active in the 1440s, conveniently destroyed its records in 1787, everywhere except in Modena/Reggio Emelia, where the Estense had largely neutralized its power (citation available). From the Lombard Inquisition’s jurisdiction (Northern Italy except the city of Venice, but not Tuscany), most of what is left are the memoirs of individual Inquisitors, who boasted of the hundreds they personally sent to their deaths (citation available).
We don't know whether any of these "witches" practiced card-reading, because the records were destroyed. We know that one in Venice (which had its own Inquisition) did involve the use of the Devil card in a ritual. That's not cartomancy, but it doesn't matter. Divination with such cards is also demonic and sorcery. The rest is the fear factor. Some nobles did what they could to divert the Inquisitors elsewhere (the politically unimportant areas), but it didn't always work. Some invited them in, like Giovan Francesco Pico in 1523, who wrote a defense afterwards (the Stryx)."friar Niccolo Constantini da Biella ... an inquisitor who was extremely severe with the witches and by whom over 300 were consigned to the secular arm, ...friar Lorenzo Soleri, equally terrifying to the witches." Tavuzzi adds: "Analogous remarks could well be made on the four inquisitors drawn from the Congregation of Lombardy" who worked from the 1470s to the mid 1520s.
Gregory, thanks for reminding me that what was asked for was a book or two. Well, yes, the books associated with Dummett are reliably non-woo-woo and also quite good, as long as you read them critically, as he would want you to. I think the most advanced methodologically is Il Mondo e l'Angelo, 1993, very hard to get. I have translated numerous key passages elsewhere on the Web. For 1770-1870, Wicked Pack does a good job of separating fact from fiction about the French cartomancers. There are also the first two volumes of Kaplan. And O'Neill, Tarot Symbolism. These are all from the late 1970s to early 1990s. I don't know of anything recent that's solid, but it's hard to tell from the selections on the Web.