Rothschild, Cary Sheets - and Marseille

northsea said:

Hi Helvetica,
If the Italians did indeed adopt the tarot from the Occitanians, does this mean that the Cary/Rothschild sheets are then adaptations of the Marseille pattern, and not the earlier/original cards?

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Well, my speculation - and it's only that! - is that the ideas, world-view and iconography that made up the tarot came originally into Italy from the Occitan and Provençal travellers and immigrants after the French conquest. The Italian Renaissance, a very rich period intellectually, which started about the time the French fought their Albigensian "crusade", then would have integrated those ideas and imagery, as it did others. But for me, as a student of Occitan culture, and fairly familiar with the Renaissance period too, the intellectual and spiritual traces of the Cathars and troubadours, as well as a fair amount of the archetypal imagery, are very visible. A Popess in 16th-Century Italy would have been impossible to conceive ex nihilo - but a Cathar religious leader and wisewoman was a common figure, the idea of which might have been brought to Italy. But the Occitans did not have tarot cards. In fact the Cathars would have been horrified by a spiritual tool that could be use for gaming - they were very idealistic! (the troubadours - unless they were cathars - on the other hand...).

So to answer your question - I speculate that the Cary Sheet is an adapation of Occitan and Provençal ideas, spirituality and iconography(with other elements integrated along the way, and a fair amount of change of nomenclature) but not of cards.

Frankly, whether the first tarot deck was born in Milan, Marseille or the Moon, I am not too bothered! I am gateful it came to us here - all over the world. I am interested in joining up the dots of cultural history, but when I take out my cards, all that flies out of the window.

I live in Occitania (if that gives my opinion any added authority

My opinion - playing cards of the Spanish type could well have been here (Occitania that is) in the late 14th century - but the swords would have been straight, as they are in all the earliest Spanish packs we have (and are to this day), and in the packs made in Toulouse in the 15th century for instance.

But Tarot cards are an Italian invention, and one of the 15th century. There is no question. This is so clear to me, both on positive and negative evidence, that it seems absurd to suggest, let alone insist, otherwise.

Provence was inherited by the French Crown in 1481, and did not suffer invasion like the Languedoc.

Languedoc was mostly fairly Catholic, but also tolerant of diverse opinions - since it didn't belong to crown yet in 1209, and the Counts of Toulouse weren't the "absolutist" sort, forcing an ideologically unified vision of the country etc., like St. Louis would do a little later. In fact Béziers (where I live) was one of last cities in Septimania to capitulate to St. Louis, in 1262 when Philippe III (le Hardi) married Isabel of Aragon, and Aragon finally gave up all pretensions to influence in the region (Isabel's name is dragged from memory, so I'm not quite sure of it or the exact date - I believe it is 1 July, 1262, for the marriage and the treaty ceding the last of the septimanian cities. Perpignan wouldn't become French until the 17th century, and Avignon until the late 18th).

The language, Occitan, and the playing cards, Spanish, persist to this day however, although clearly overwhelmed by French language and playing cards. I know many people who speak occitan as a first language (along with French of course).

Ross

Ross G Caldwell said:

I live in Occitania (if that gives my opinion any added authority


The language, Occitan, and the playing cards, Spanish, persist to this day however, although clearly overwhelmed by French language and playing cards. I know many people who speak occitan as a first language (along with French of course).

Ross

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I agree - the tarot cards were born in Italy.

I didn't say Provence had been invaded- just that its culture had been overwhelmed and marginalised by the French once it devolved to the Crown of France. The Albigensian crusade against Occitania - you know as well as I - was a catastrophe for Languedoc, politically, religiously and culturally, which people there still speak about with bitterness. As for the "mostly fairly Catholic" - yes it was once the Inquisition had swept through there! but even those who were not Cathar in the religious sense were influenced by the ideas and world-view of the Cathars, on either side of the Pyrenees. The French and the Catholic Church knew that! The Church created one of its most powerful orders in direct competition with the simplicity of the Cathars (the Dominicans, who, from simple missionaries following St Dominic quickly became powerful Inquisitors); and the Inquisition was invented to deal with the Cathars and anyone suspected of harbouring even faintly Cathar ideas. Troubadours were immediately suspect, being seen as free-weeling agents of trouble. I wonder if La Roue did not start as a covert representation of the Inquisition, though its most feared instrument of torture?

You've probably read LeRoy Ladurie's book on Montaillou in the 14th Century - you see how every trace of original culture was stamped out. The wonder, and miracle, was that Occitan language and culture did survive, albeit marginalised, the overwhelming push from Northern France since the 13th century.

I envy you living in Béziers! Part of my father's family comes from Languedoc originally (another from Provence) and I have strong ties to those two regions. I go exploring fairly often.

My mistake with the swords - how do you think they got the curve?

What interested me was to see the clear traces (to me) of ancient Occitan ideas and iconography in the cards I hold in my hands.