origin of the name tarot

kwaw

Blockhead

In the Milanese dialect Tarocch is synonymous with words meaning a trunk, a stock, a log, a block, a stump, a stem without boughes. Also a body without a head. Also a truncheon or a bat. A foot, a base, a foundation, the stock or root of a tree or any thing else, a foot-stool, a support or supporter, a stake or fork to bear up any vine, hops. Used also as figurative* for a mans off-spring, stock, lineage, blood, or descent, the main stock, family tree* or direct line of a pedegree, progeny, or family; figuratively a loggerheaded fellow, a block-headed dunce.

(In the same way the word 'Stock', Old English stocc,"stump, post, stake, tree trunk, log" also took on meaning of "ancestry, family" (late 14c.) as a figurative use of the "tree trunk" (family tree) sense.)

Thus I am inclined to think John Florio's definitions in his Italian – English dictionary 1598 probably lead us to the most straightforward and correct definition.

Quote:

Tarócco. see Datarócco.

Datarócco - foolish, gullish, wayward, forward, peeuish

Taroccáre - to play at Tarócchi. Also to play the forward gull or peevish ninnie.

Gull and ninny are synonyms of 'fool'. Taroccare thus means 'to play the fool'. Tarocchi must simply mean something like fool, dunce, blockhead or perhaps 'folly'.

Kwaw

*The most famous Tree of Life in Christendom - that from God through first Adam to second Adam (Christ), coincidentally like the tarot, has 77 branches (+ 1 for the root (tarocch) G-d the father** = 78). Rather suitable for a game in which the concept of Christian Salvation is allegorised.


A motley fool in well-worn rags,
rip-torn and bejewelled
in bells and baubles,
rides by astride his hobbyhorse:

“I am”, he cries, “a thing of wood,
a Marotte stick that has no feeling.
The Tree of Life’s own loggerhead
with seventy-seven buds, all sprouted.”

“I have no wants of this world
and laugh at its prince. I drink his dregs
and dance his jigs, for they mean
nothing to me.”

“Let the Devil play his trump.
I shall play the Fool for Christ,
and Shakespeare too,
for both know I know nought.”

With one foot bare and one foot shoed
he canters down the ciphered trail:
"Tarry 'til I come again", echoes
through the years.

Blockhead
by Koy Deli

note: **
però dee creder fermamente ognuno
Ch'un spirtito malvagio habbia costej
Supposta solamente al Barattino
Per poter dire i buoni tarocchi mej
Saran, s'avien ch'io giuochi, et questi uno
Vo trare il Matto ch'è cervel divino.

....and I pull this one, the Fool, that is the brain divine.
 

Huck

In the Milanese dialect Tarocch is synonymous with words meaning a trunk, a stock, a log, a block, a stump, a stem without boughes. Also a body without a head. Also a truncheon or a bat. A foot, a base, a foundation, the stock or root of a tree or any thing else, a foot-stool, a support or supporter, a stake or fork to bear up any vine, hops. Used also for a mans off-spring, stock, lineage, blood, or descent, the main stock, family tree* or direct line of a pedegree, progeny, or family; figuratively a loggerheaded fellow, a block-headed dunce.

hi Stephen,

Well ... what's the earliest use of the word "Tarocch", that you found?

A wordbook of 1600 would present a word and its meaning, as it was common in the time of the writer, but not the state of language let's say in 1495.

I know, what a computer is, my grandfather wouldn't. The computer is a new invention. Similar are the Tarocchi cards a new invention, let's assume 1505, then as Tarochi ... the cards were known, but for unknown reason we have a name-change, which finally was accepted.

Once a new word exists, it gets word-children. Is your tarocch older, or younger than the the Tarochus, that Ross found and later Andrea Vitali another, both by two poets which did knew each other, and both around the time, when the river Taro had a natural focus cause a a battle, that took place in July 1495 ?
 

Ross G Caldwell

Summary -

The Taro - region, valley, river, battle - has been proposed as an origin for the name Tarot at least twice before. The "French invasion theory" was first elaborated by Michael Dummett in 1980. Both theories seem implausible to me, the first because it is wildly speculative and has no positive support, while the two preferred etymologies - from tara (deduction, discard), or taroch, have positive evidence for them (particularly the second). The French-invasion theory is implausible because Charles VIII and his army's stay in Italy used Lombardy only as a conduit, constantly on the march, while they were in Tuscany and Naples for months; therefore, if French tarot came from Italy directly from this encounter, we would expect it to be a southern Italian trump style, Florentine, Roman, etc. Secondly, on the assumption of a 1499 and after encounter (Louis XII's invasion), we know that Tarot cards were already being exported from Avignon to Pinerolo in 1505, which makes the timeline incredibly short to have developed such an industry and already exporting to what was supposed to be the source in the first place. Finally, the French invasion theory is simply unnecessary, since social, trade and diplomatic contacts between France and the Italian states were always occurring.

The first person I know of to suggest the Taro theory in any form is Paul Lacroix (pseudo. For P.L. Jacob), L’origine des cartes à jouer (Paris, 1835), p. 7:
“Le nom de tarots dérive de la province lombarde, Taro, où ce jeu fut d’abord inventé.”
(The name tarots comes from the Taro region of Lombardy, where this game was first invented.)

The second is Sylvia Mann, Collecting Playing Cards (Arco, 1966) p. 28:
“My own theory is that these cards were either invented or popularized in the Valley of the Taro river (a tributary of the Po) which runs remarkably close to the locality where some of the earliest tarot cards are known to have existed.”

For the French invasion theory, but without reference to the Battle of Fornovo (Taro) specifically, Dummett summarizes (Game of Tarot, page 407): “The period of the French incursions into Italy, from 1494 to 1525, may therefore well have been the time when the game of Tarot first entered France.”

We know now that this time-frame must be considerably shortened, since packs and woodblocks of the cards were already being exported from Avignon to Pinerolo (near Turin) in 1505.

So the argument must become “The period of the French incursions into Italy, from 1494 to before 1505, may well be when the game of Tarot first entered France.”

Now, in 1980, Dummett writes of Charles VIII’s invasion, in 1494 – “Charles VIII of France invaded Italy in 1494, originally on the invitation of Lodovico Sforza (il Moro), Duke of Milan.” (Actually he was not yet technically Duke, but this is beside the point). Thus, Charles’ presence with a large Franco-Swiss army in 1494 is circumstantial evidence for their possible first acquaintance with the game, in its C family of orders.

I want to note that Dummett is not clear on what happened during this invasion, since he writes in 2004 – “It must have been from Milan, during the wars from 1494 to 1525 in which the French, under Charles VIII, Louis XII and Francis I, fought for possession of that city, that the game spread to France and Switzerland.” (HGT (= A History of Games Played with the Tarot Pack: The Game of Triumphs (Mellen Press, 2004), p. 111)

That Louis XII and Francis I fought for Milan is absolutely true; but nothing could be further from the truth in the case of Charles VIII, which considerably shortens the period for which Tarot must have entered France, on this theory, to between the end of 1499 and 1505.

Also, the period “1494-1525” is a misleadingly solid 32 years inclusive (although Dummett does go to the trouble to narrate the turmoil of the period 1512-1525); in fact Charles’ army was in Italy only from September 1494 to July 1495. They were only in Lombardy for 3 weeks inclusive (both invading and retreating), constantly marching. They never “fought for possession” of Milan, and never had any intention of doing so.

Charles VIII invaded Italy to claim Naples (which included Sicily of course, i.e. all of southern Italy), with the promise to use its strategic position to launch a crusade against the Turks. He never tried, nor intended, to invade Milan or any city in Lombardy, since he was there, as Dummett noted (without realizing the implications?) on the “invitation” of Lodovico Sforza.

Sources for the itinerary of Charles VIII in Italy:
Henri-François Delaborde, L’expédition de Charles VIII en Italie (1888)
Kenneth M. Setton, The Papacy and the Levant (1978), pp. 461ff.
Adelin Charles Fiorato, ed., Italie 1494 (Sorbonne, 1994)
Jean-Louis Fournel and Jean-Claude Zancarini, Les guerres d’Italie: des batailles pour l’Europe (1494-1559) (Gallimard, 2003)

The Itinerary of Charles VIII in Italy, 1494-1495
charlesviiiitinerarysm.jpg

http://www.rosscaldwell.com/italy/charlesviiiitinerarylg.jpg
(click for a much larger version; reproduced from Fiorato, p. 13)

They entered Milanese territory on their march on 10 October 1494; they were assured free passage by Sforza. Charles spent three nights in Vigevano. On the 14th, he was in Pavia. On the sixteenth, he saw the Certosa. On the 17th, he left for Piacenza. The bulk of the army went forward on 20 October, into Tuscany; Charles remained, in Piacenza, until the 23rd of October 1494, when he went to lead them. He was very impatient to conquer Tuscany, Rome and Naples. They had conquered Naples by February 1495, and Charles remained there until 20 May. French affairs required his presence, and he travelled up the peninsula until the league that had been formed against him, the Holy League, met his army at Fornovo (he knew that the League had been formed, but assumed he was assured safe passage and had left enough forces, along with good-will, to defeat whatever actions it might take). The battle took place on 6 July, and both sides buried the dead on 7 July. It was not decisive from a military standpoint, but Charles was leaving anyway. They marched 130 miles to Asti, in Piedmont, for 7 days (8 to 15 July 1495).

The Battle of Fornovo (from a 1516 source)
battlefornovo16thsm.jpg

http://www.rosscaldwell.com/italy/battlefornovo16th.jpg
(click for much larger version)
(Reproduced in Fournel and Zancarini, p. 25; originally published in Le premier (second) volume de la Mer des Histoires: Augmentée en la fin du dernier volume de plusieurs belles hystoires, et premierement des faictz, gestes et victoires des roys Charles VIII et Loys XII. Avec-ques aucunes vaillances triumphantes conquestes et œuvres chevalereuses faictes au temps du treschrestien roy François premier de ce nom (Lyon, 1516))

So the total amount of time Charles spent in Milanese territory was 3 weeks. Most of his army spent less, about 18 days. It was a hectic pace both coming and going.

This is obviously not enough time to pick up the C order, and take it home. Since they spent November, December and January marching from the coast of Tuscany to Naples, and remained there until May – in all, eight months in central and southern Italy, including the march in June -, the game the army would have become acquainted with, if they did at all, was the southern game and A order, the only order known in Tuscany and southern Italy.

So we have to dismiss the first part of the French invasion theory, and with it the years 1494-1499.

The second one didn’t happen until 1499, when Louis XII, with a valid claim to Milan, took it easily, and a French regime administered it until 1512. This makes it a very short amount of time before Avignon is exporting Tarot cards to Italian-speaking Piemonte, an unlikely scenario, if Lombardy had been making enough cards for a Tarok-kartenspiel-invasion of France only a few years before. What happened to the local industry?

I think the French invasion theory was a more or less off-hand suggestion on Dummett’s part, and we can now see it as jejune and unnecessary. French-Italian relations were always profound enough that the game could have gone there any time after it was invented, and we do not have to assume that a mass of soldiers had to encounter the game for it to have begun to be played across the Alps.

My theory is that it is precisely opposite – the French invasion of 1499 is when French Tarot invaded Milan and Lombardy, and whatever native industry there was, was simply overwhelmed and adopted the new, French, game.
 

Yoav Ben-Dov

this looks quite convincing. and in the picture again we see "normal" fighting - nothing special indicating either domination or foolishness.

so it seems that the french invasion story is unfounded - i am ok with that - including the taro river link. of course we can never be certain: history proceeds by many "unreasonable" butterfly effects. it could happen, for example, that a deck of cards from the milan area was being played at an inn near the taro river, just as the french soldiers were coming in.. maybe they had a few free hours, joined the game and liked it, perhaps took the deck with them, and referred to it as "the card game from taro".. later, during their stay in italy, they used the same term for local tarots, and the italians caught it from them.. but this is purely conjectural. we could imagine many alternative stories like this.

so, if we want to stay close to the evidence, it seems that we still have "tarot cards = the fool's cards" as a good possibility - with nothing certain?
 

Ross G Caldwell

so, if we want to stay close to the evidence, it seems that we still have "tarot cards = the fool's cards" as a good possibility - with nothing certain?

What is certain is that two early 16th century writers explained the name of the game as meaning foolish or stupid. Why the game might have picked up such a name is what we have to speculate about (or not).

There is also the tara (French tare) theory. This explanation goes back as far as the venerable Menestrier, in 1704.

"As it was the Germans who first invented woodcut impression, they were also the first to print playing Cards. It is true that they made many extravagant figures, very different from ours, since they showed God, Angels, the Devil, the Pope, the Popess, Kings, Fools etc., and to make them more practical without being easily dirtied or recognized by the backs, they covered them with criss-crossing lines in the form of a Mesh [Rezeüil=reseau] which gave them the name Tarcuits and Cards Tarautées. Because the word Tare, flaw, waste, or stain, is properly a hole, of which the Etymology is the Greek word tiréin, Terebro, torno, vulnero teredòn Teredo, the worm that eats wood, Terebra Tariere to pierce, Terere to crumple, worn off from rubbing. Tare is thus any sort of stain, flaw, or waste; a work taré, is a work punctured, used, scratched, from which was formed the word Tarif for a sheet of paper or a table divided by lines and by squares, to mark the tax on Foodstuffs and Merchandise to pay at the Customs desk, and the tablets on which were marked the price and estimation of payment according to their additions and subtractions. Also in Blazon one says a “casque tarre” [helmet “tarre”], that is to say one which has a meshed (or slotted) visor." (Bibliothèque curieuse et instructive, II, 179)

True, he puts in every meaning and the kitchen sink, but in the penultimate meaning (deduction) he hits on the common etymology found in most lexicographical works, e.g. the Grand Robert: TAROT n.m. --- 1604; 1534, Rabelais; Ital tarocco, de tara "tare", de l'arabe tarh 'Deduction"
(note that he also attributes the invention of Tarot to the Germans; the logic is impeccable, but he didn't have enough facts)

Dummett might have been on to something when he conjectured that the game of scartino (discard), popular in the late 15th century, might have given the "discard" action to Tarot, which might not have possessed it before then (we don't know much about the rules of Tarot until the late 16th century), and so come to distinguish it (Game of Tarot, pp. 426-427):

Now, with very few exceptions, it is characteristic of later Tarot games, of the most diverse kinds and whatever the size of the pack, that there is no stock of undealt cards, but that every card in the pack counts, at the end of the round, to one or another player or side. It is almost equally characteristic that there is a small residue of undealt cards forming a talon, which, in games without bidding, goes to the dealer, and whose distribution, in games with bidding, depends upon the final bid; in each case, those receiving additional cards must discard an equal number, under certain nearly constant constraints. This practice is not a mere device for handling the situation when the number of cards in the pack is not exactly divisible by the number of players, since it is observed in three-handed games, even without bidding, played with the 78-card pack; the most striking example is that of Tarok-Quadrille, played by four players with only 76 cards, in which the dealer still takes four extra cards. Even Minchiate is not a genuine exception to this rule, because, although the mechanics are different, there are still discards, and the principle is upheld that the players should know how many cards of each suit are in play, even though not every card belongs at the end of the round to one side or the other. Both the Bolognese and Sicilian games incorporate the standard practice. It therefore seems overwhelmingly probable that the practice is one going back to an early stage in the history of the Tarot games: the fact that it is found in both Bolognese and Sicilian Tarocchi debars us from supposing that it was invented outside Italy and introduced there only at the time of the invasion of the Tarot de Marseille pattern in the eighteenth century. This conclusion is reinforced by an etymological consideration. In the terminology used in Germany, the discard was almost always referred to as the Scat, and this name was also used, by transference, for the talon; the exception is the game of Cego, in which the talon is called the Blinde and the discard the Legage. In Austria, too, the term Scat, sometimes in the form Scar, was originally used, although it was later dropped in favour of the French word Talon for the talon, with no separate noun being used for the discard. The words Scat and Scar are obviously corruptions of the Italian word scarto, meaning 'discard', and it therefore seems likely that the practice itself is of Italian origin. It might be objected that the borrowing of the term Scat may have occurred only after the reintroduction of the 78-card game from France into Italy in the eighteenth century; we know that Viennese Tarot players of the mid-eighteenth century borrowed a specific form of play from Lombardy, and, with it, an Italianate vocabulary, and that this Viennese/Lombard game spread into Germany and as far as the Netherlands. But this objection appears unsound: classic Tarot games, in which the word Scat was used, were being played in Germany before the spread of the Viennese/Lombard game.

A possible source for the practice may have been a card game called Scartino, of which we hear much from a brief period around 1500: there are over a dozen references to it between 1492 and 1517 (footnote 8). We have no idea how Scartino was played, although it appears to have demanded a special type of pack; for instance, Lodovico il Moro wrote in 1496 to Cardinal Ippolito d'Este complaining that the latter had not sent him the carte de scartino that he had promised, and there are other references to orders for packs of Scartino cards. The game seems to have originated from Ferrara: it was a favourite game both of Beatrice d'Este, wife of Lodovico il Moro, Duke of Milan, and of Isabella d'Este, wife of Francesco Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua. The name Scartino is presumably connected with the verb scartare, 'to discard', and games are often named after their most characteristic or novel feature. It is therefore a possibility that this was a trick-taking game in which a new practice was introduced, namely that the dealer took some extra cards and discarded a corresponding number. If so, it could be that it was from Scartino that this practice was taken over into Tarocco games, in which it had been previously unknown, and that Scartino, after its short-lived popularity, died out, having made a lasting contribution to card play. This, of course, is the merest guess: Scartino may not have been a trick-taking game at all, but, say, one in which the winner was the player who first contrived to get rid of all his cards after the fashion of a Stops game.

If Scartino did influence Tarocco, it is possible that the practice whereby the dealer took extra cards and made a corresponding discard was not an original feature of Tarot games, but was incorporated into them about the beginning of the sixteenth century, in time for it to be imported, as a feature of the game, when Tarot arrived in Switzerland.
In that case, the French games described in the Maison academique may represent a yet more ancient tradition; if our conjecture that they were derived from Piedmont is correct, Tarot playing in that region may go back to the very earliest times, the players remaining exceptionally conservative. But the hypothesis that the important feature of the discard was borrowed from Scartino should be treated with great caution, since it implies a continued mutual influence between the style of Tarocco play in all four great early centres, Ferrara, Milan, Bologna and Florence.

Footnote 8: For reference to Scartino, as played by Beatrice, Isabella, Ercole, Ippolito and Alfonso d'Este, Ludovico il Moro, and others, see: F. Malaguzzi-Valeri, La carte di Locovico il Moro, vol. 1, Milan, 1913, p. 575; A. Venturi, 'Relazioni artistiche tra le corti di Milano e Ferrara nel secolo XV', Archivio Storico Lombardo, anno XII (pp. 255-280), 1885, p. 254; A. Luzio and R. Renier, Mantova e Urbino, Turin and Rome, 1893, pp. 63-5, especially fn. 3, p. 63; the same two authors, 'Delle relazioni di Isabella d'Este Gonzaga con Lodivico e Beatrice Sforza', Archivio Storico Lombardo, anno XVII (pp. 74-119, 346-99, 619-74), 1890, p. 368, fn. 1, and pp. 379-80; A Luzio I precettori d'Esabella d'Este,, p. 22; G. Bertoni, 'Tarocchi versificati' in Poesie, leggende, costumanze del medio evoModena, 1917, p. 219; and the Diario Ferrarese of 1499 in Muratori, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, vol. 24, p. 376. A letter of August 1493 quoted by Malaguzzi-Valeri and by Luzio and Renier appears to imply that Scartino was a three-handed game. The earliest reference is from 1492; one is from 1509, one from 1517, and all the rest from the 1490's. Several concern the obtaining or ordering of packs of Scartino cards (para de carte da scartino or para de scartini), which appear all to have come from Ferrara; what was special about these cards there is no way of telling. It is just conceivable that Scartino was itself a particular type of Tarot game, and that these were therefore Tarot packs of a special type; but, unless they were very special, it does not seem very likely that Lodovico Sforza should have been having to obtain Tarot packs from elsewhere. Most of the references are about games of Scartino being played.

(thanks to MikeH for typing all this out elsewhere)

So, the tara theory may refer to a change in the rules of Tarot that also changed its name, namely the adoption of a discard on the part of the dealer.

I think the taroch(us) and tara theories are the most plausible, since they rely on attested etymologies, and the first has the advantage of contemporary witnesses. Speculations based on invented words or more exotic foreign words are to me not worth considering.

The French invasion theory is not unfounded, it is just much less well founded than Dummett thought. In fact there is no unambiguous evidence of Tarot in France before 1505 (actually Avignon, then a papal state and not French at all), but that evidence itself implies that the game was already well established (because it has a "common" name in what appears to be French rather than Provençal (taraux) and cards are being exported). Since Charles VIII's campaign really didn't allow time for his army to pick up the Lombardian game, which Dummett assumed to be the ancestor to the French pattern (but had plenty of time to pick up the southern style of game and cards), then the scenario is left with Louis XII's invasion in 1499, which actually was an invasion of Milan and which established a stable French presence there.

It seems to be unnecessary as an explanation since there doesn't seem to have been an explosion of the game in France in the wake of the wars. I may be forgetting something, but I think the second reference after 1505 in France only comes about 30 years later, in Rabelais. The game just trickled in France, it seems, until mid-century. This is not the scenario posited by a bunch of soldiers who had picked up a new game in Italy at the turn of the century. It could have trickled in anywhere at any time. The appearance of the game in France does not need the invasion to explain it.

The only definite exception to the assertion that the game is not found in France before 1505 is the deck Jacopo Antonio Marcello sent to Isabelle of Lorraine in Saumur (one of René d'Anjou's castles on the Loire) in 1449. But that is a dead end.
 

Yoav Ben-Dov

i can understand the first part - taré as referring to the crisscross pattern on the back of tarot cards. interesting enough, taré is used in popular french today for "stupid, crazy" (also "damaged"). i wonder if there is any connection with the tarochi-stupid link.. anyway it seems a reasonable possibility: "tarot - the back-tarotted cards".

on the other hand, i didnt get the connection between the change in the rules of the game and the name "tarot". Dummett mentions other terms, like "scat", but not tarot.. did i miss anything?
 

Huck

this looks quite convincing. and in the picture again we see "normal" fighting - nothing special indicating either domination or foolishness.

so it seems that the french invasion story is unfounded - i am ok with that - including the taro river link.

... :) ... hm .. I don't know, how you conclude this. I haven't even understood, what Ross thought, what the terminus "French invasion theory" shall be.

Actually he speaks of different ideas:

The first person I know of to suggest the Taro theory in any form is Paul Lacroix (pseudo. For P.L. Jacob), L’origine des cartes à jouer (Paris, 1835), p. 7:
“Le nom de tarots dérive de la province lombarde, Taro, où ce jeu fut d’abord inventé.”
(The name tarots comes from the Taro region of Lombardy, where this game was first invented.)
Well, that's a production in the region Taro ... this is not a French invasion idea.

The second is Sylvia Mann, Collecting Playing Cards (Arco, 1966) p. 28:
“My own theory is that these cards were either invented or popularized in the Valley of the Taro river (a tributary of the Po) which runs remarkably close to the locality where some of the earliest tarot cards are known to have existed.”
That's another production idea.

For the French invasion theory, but without reference to the Battle of Fornovo (Taro) specifically, Dummett summarizes (Game of Tarot, page 407): “The period of the French incursions into Italy, from 1494 to 1525, may therefore well have been the time when the game of Tarot first entered France.”

We know now that this time-frame must be considerably shortened, since packs and woodblocks of the cards were already being exported from Avignon to Pinerolo (near Turin) in 1505.

So the argument must become “The period of the French incursions into Italy, from 1494 to before 1505, may well be when the game of Tarot first entered France.”

So this shall be one real French invasion theory (about cards, about the use of the word ?) Ross arguments, that Dummett's very global position (1494 - 1525) should be reduced cause the 1505 document of Avignon. But: Avignon wasn't France. Pinerolo wasn't France.

And Avignon and its production had following conditions:
A well established playing card production till 1505. This more or less happened in a longer period, during which cardinal Giuliano de Rovere (later pope Julius II) ruled in Avignon ... so this cardinal wasn't a foe of playing cards, one may assume. Avignon as production city of playing cards clearly was manifested by the nearness of Lyon, which was the greater playing production center in this time, maybe the most important location in Europe in this aspect ... and btw. also called French capital in this period (Paris had lost some importance, France desired the invasion of Italy, cause Italy had become such an important place).

But Giuliano de Rovere was foe to Alexander VI, pope in Rome since 1492. He fled to France relatuively soon after Alexander was elected. So partly Giuliano de Rovere had been behind the French invasions 1494 and 1499. In 1503, Alexander died and Giuliano became Julius II, himself pope in Rome. But he surely hadn't lost all his connections in Avignon, where he had reigned about a period of c. 30 years. If we see, that Alfonso d'Este, new duke in Ferrara in 1505 made for his installation as new duke some Tarochi deck in June 1505, and in December 1505 a production followed in Avignon, then we can't exclude Julius II. (likely from Savona, which if half-France, half Italy in its culture) in this calculation, who naturally knew Alfonso and so probably "responded" to an Italian activity.

The general destiny of Avignon as a playing card production place went bad after Julius had left Avignon, and this already before Julius turned against the French in 1510. From this it seems, that the presence of cardinal Giuliano Rovere / later Julius was indeed rather important for the production in this city.

But do we have now a real production guarantee of Taroch or Taraux in France in 1505 ? No, not really.
But this special knowledge about the state of Avignon naturally doesn't answer, if a French Taraux production existed prior to 1505 or not. It simply leads to the condition, that we in the current research situation don't know.
Further there is no argument, how the word Taroch and later Tarot developed.

We've the values of "first appearances in documents, as far we now about them" for different things and there are:

1. a poem of Bassano Mantovana, who clearly is at "Milanese side" in mid 1490s, containing "Tarochus" (no playing card connection)

2. a poem of Alioni d'Asti, who clearly is at "French side" in mid 1490s, containing "Tarochus" (no playing card connection)

3. 3 card productions notes in 1505, two in Ferrara and one in Avignon, containing "Tarochi" in Ferrara

4. a battle at the river "Taro" at 6th of July 1495

5. Stephen's suggestion, that "Tarocch" is a used word in Milanese-Italian dictionaries from c. 1600. As evidence for a use of Tarocch prior to 1495 isn't delivered for the moment, it somehow mst be ignored in the moment.

My thesis is that the battle caused the use of "Tarochus" by two poets, who were known to each other (at least it is clear, that Alione knew Bassano, cause he titled a work "Macarronea contra macarroneam Bassani") and both poets fall in the category in "poets active in Macaroni literature", which is a form in which vernacular words are mixed with Latin words or endings.

Macaronic Latin specifically is a jumbled jargon made up of vernacular words given Latin endings...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macaronic_language

If we look now at "Tarochus", then we perceive, that it has a Latin ending. Also it's clear, that "Macaroni poets" are naturally good word inventors, so just ideal to use words for a "first time".

So we have a vernacular "Taro" (name of a river) and a Latin ending "-us". Missing is the combining "-ch-".

************

Now there had been another invasion of something French short before 1494, which happened more or less mainly with some intensity in the 1470s. This was the Saint Rochus cult. French "St. Roch", Italian "Rocco", in Latin "Rochus", similar as we meet "taroch, tarocco and tarochus forms in this other questions.

266px-Saint_Roch.JPG


A French pilgrim to Rome from Montpellier, France, normally. He got the plague, and he survived it, and so he became a saint ... giving hope to other also to survive the plague.

French soldiers in 1494/95, who survived all battles and also that of the river Taro, often gave this impression:

232px-D%C3%BCrerSyphilis1496.jpg


Although there's a 1484 at this colored engraving , there is agreement, that it is from 1496 and by Dürer. I remember dark, that the "1484" is considered to have been given cause a bad prophesy in 1484 (or something like this). The picture shall show a victim of Syphilis ... and that was, what many French soldiers got, when they returned from Naples. And Syphilis was just a new plague, so the association to St. Rochus (who definitely had a height of popularity in this time and French connection) is rather natural.

Poets play with words, and occasionally with words, which were never used before, that's a common feature in literature. Forming from Taro and St. Rochus and macaronic inspiration Tarochus isn't a big act.
Mostly such inventions haven't a big success, but occasionally they have. They become then part of language.

Now let's look at one of the poets, and what he really did:

Ad magnifiais dominus Gasparus Vescontus (the honored person, which is of importance in Milan, who died 1499; so that's part of the dating "before 1500"), de una vellania que fuit mihi Bassanus de Mantua (that's the poet himself) ab uno Botigliano Savoyno (this is identified as a porta Botigliano in Vercelli with "Quidam Vercellis stat a la porta Botigliano" in the text

Omnes qui Sessiam facit pagare passantes) apud uncellis, et de una piacevoleza que ego Bassanus fecivi sibi Botigliano.

Unam volo tibi, Gaspar, cuntare novellam
Que te forte magno faciet pisare de risu.
Quidam Vercellis stat a la porta Botigliano
Omnes qui Sessiam facit pagare passantes ;
Et si quis ter forte passaret in uno,
Ter pagare facit : quare spesse voltas eunti
Esset opus Medicis intratam habere Lorenzi,
Hic semper datii passegiat ante botegam,
In zach atque in lach culum menando superbe
Quod sibi de Mutina cum vadit Pota videtur,
Qui de cavalo dicitur seminasse fassolos ;
Sed si cercares levantem atque ponentem
Non invenies quisque poltronior illo ;
Non habet hic viduis respectum nec maritatis
Sed neque pedonihus, nec cavalcantibus, omnes
Menat ad ingualum sicut lasagnia natalis ;
Nec pregat (ut ceteri faciunt) pagare, sed ipso
Sforzat, et illius vox est hec unica : Paga.
Iste manegoldus me vidit a longe venire,
Nec mora, corivit ceu mastinacius unus
Et non avertentis prendit per brilia cavallum.
De montilio quidem parlabam ac ipse zenevra ,
Cujus putinam mihi marchesana locavit,
Et brevitas sensus fecit conjungere binos,
Territus at quadrupes sese drizavit in altum ,
In pedibus solum se sustentando duobus.

Crede mihi non est illo Gasparre, cavallo ,
A solis ortu spaurosior usque ad occasum.
Tene manus ad te, dixi , villane cochine.
Ad corpus Christi, faciam cagare budellas,
Si tibi crepabit, respondit, barba pagabis.
Quis tibi pagare negat, poltrone? dicebam :
Quis poltronus ego? Tu. Mi? Si. Deh rufiane.
Erat mecum mea socrus unde putana
Quod foret una sibi pensebat ille tarochus,
Et cito ni solvam mihi menazare comenzat.

Tune ego fotentis animosus imagine mulli,
Gaspar, eum certe volui amazare : sed ego
Squarcinam nunquam potui cavare de foras.
Ille manum cazare videns ad arma : comenzat
Fugere tam forum quod apena diceres amen,
Parebatque anima de purgatorio cridans :
Altorium , altorium , misericordia Jesus !
Et sic cridando sese in botheca ficavit,
Tam plane quod nasum sboravit contra pilastrum.
Ille sibi videns sanguem uscire de naso,
Me ratus est illam stultus fecisse feritam ,
Et qui debueram strictus stare sicut agnellus;
Non ego negabam unus fecisse ribaldo :
Talia sed tantum dedi sibi vulnera quantum
Que sibi prima fuit dosso vestita camissa.
Inde valenthomus volens cum spata parere
Andavi Sesiam versus bravosando cavallum ,
Atque ego dicebam mecum passando riveram,
Pro quaranta tribus vadat rumor iste quatrinis,
Vos mihi vicino fecit pro ponte pagare[ (paying to cross the bridge),
Et nunquam pontem, neque ponticella passavi.

Ad eundem disticon cordat :
Sobrius hec oro ne legeris, optime Gaspar,
Carmina ; cenato scripsimus ista tibi.

We've a place (Porta Botigliano at Vercelli) and we have a bridge: And a "tarochus" (whatever this means) demanding money for crossing the bridge and we have Bassano, who doesn't like to pay.
Then we have Bassano getting furious, and the demanding Tarochus getting fear, and then stumbling about his own feet in his attemt to escape.
Nonetheless Bassona doesn't cross the bridge (as far I understood, what was going on).

Vercelli is situated West of the river Sesia between Milan and Turin and belonged to Savoy. At the other Eastern side of the river is territory controlled by Milan - at least in 1495, and that's the time, which interests us.
Then, just this year, Vercelli became the center of Italian attention in Setember 1495, cause Milan negotiated with France, what should happen next.

Milan had been Pro-French for a longer time of the invasion to Italy. But then - with the fight of the Italian league at river Taro - Milan changed its sides and opposed France. A major undecided problem in the negotiations was the French occupation of Novara west of the river Sesia ... about 22 km away.

http://maps.google.com/maps?oe=utf-...code_result&ct=image&resnum=2&ved=0CD4Q8gEwAQ

Novara was taken under siege by Milanese troops already earlier and the conditions of the French soldiers in the city were bad, very bad. And with each day of the negotiations the conditions became worse.

It seems plausible to assume, that the poem wasn't written before and the connected story didn't happen before ... why should the Milanese poet Bassano have trouble or cause trouble, when he entered Savoy, when Savoy had an alliance with France and France had an alliance with Milan?
No, the trouble should have happened likely during the unusual situation of the negotiations. These negotiations took a longer time, naturally Milanese persons should have been in Vercelli and naturally they demanded free entrance and wouldn't pay for crossing bridges.

http://www.third-millennium-library.com/readinghall/GalleryofHistory/BEATRICE_D_ESTE/24.html
Immediately after Fornovo (6th of July 1495), the Count of Caiazzo's cavalry had joined his brother Galeazzo's force before Novara, and on the 19th of July (1495)[ the Marquis of Mantua encamped under the walls with the Venetian army. The garrison of the besieged city was six or seven thousand strong, and well provided with arms and ammunition, but already supplies of food were scarce, and men and horses were dying of sickness and hunger.
...
A council of war was held, and Lodovico's recommendation to blockade the town instead of carrying it by assault was finally adopted. On the 5th of August the duke and duchess were present at a grand review of the whole army, which, with Galeazzo's troops and the German and Swiss reinforcements, now amounted to upwards of forty thousand men. (40.000 against 6000-7000 in Novara).
...
In vain Louis of Orleans and his famished soldiers looked out for the French army that was to bring them relief. King Charles had gone to visit his ally the Duchess of Savoy at Turin, and was consoling himself for the toil and disappointments of the campaign by making love to fair Anna Solieri in the neighbouring town of Chieri. Since his reduced forces were unequal to the task of facing the army of the league and relieving Novara, he sent the bailiff of Dijon to raise a body of twelve thousand Swiss in the Cantons friendly to France, and decided to await their arrival before he took active measures.
Meanwhile he and most of his followers were thoroughly tired of warfare, and the queen never ceased imploring him to return home.
....
But Briconnet, the Cardinal of S. Malo, Lodovico's old enemy and a staunch partisan of Orleans, defeated these plans by his intrigues, and the French army, leaving Asti, advanced to Vercelli, in the duchy of Savoy, and prepared to take the field. Both parties, however, were growing weary of this prolonged warfare, and Commines declares that in the French camp no one wanted to fight, unless the king led them to battle, and that Charles himself had not the slightest wish to take the field.
At length, early in September, the first detachment of Swiss levies reached Vercelli, and on the 12th the king himself arrived in the camp (this seems to say, the the French king was now in Vercelli). His first act was to hold a council of war, which decided in favour of peace, and Commines was sent to treat with the Marquis of Mantua. The allies insisted on the unconditional surrender of Novara, while Charles VIII. asked for the restitution of Genoa as an ancient fief of the French crown. Nothing was concluded, but a truce of eight days was agreed upon, and prolonged conferences were held at a castle between Vercelli and Cameriano (Cameriano is at the mid between Vercelli and Novara; so the castle should have 5-6 km distance to Vercelli, which might be Borgo di Vercelli, but somehow it seems to have been not the place; I think, that Milanese troops controlled all the region till the river then, without the exception of Novara itself; the negotiations partly took place at other places, so also in Cameriano in the duke's rooms).
...
The evacuation of Novara, however, was unanimously agreed upon, and on the 26th of September, Orleans and his garrison marched out with the honours of war, and were escorted by Messer Galeaz and the Marquis of Mantua to the French outposts. More than two thousand men had already died of sickness and starvation. Almost all their horses had been eaten, and the survivors were in a miserable plight. Many perished by the roadside, and Commines found fifty troopers in a fainting condition in a garden at Cameriano, and saved their lives by feeding them with soup. Even then one man died on the spot, and four others never reached the camp. Three hundred more died at Vercelli, some of sickness, others from over-eating themselves after the prolonged starvation which they had endured, and the dung-hills of the town were strewn with dead corpses. (I've read other reports, in which the state of the Novara troops was described with more drama.
...
Accordingly, on the 9th of October a separate convention was concluded between the King of France and the Duke of Milan, leaving the other Powers to settle their differences among themselves. Novara was restored to Lodovico, and his title to Genoa and Savona recognized, while Charles renounced the support of his cousin Louis of Orleans' claims upon Milan. In return the duke promised not to assist Ferrante with troops or ships, to give free passage to French armies, and assist the king with Milanese troops if he returned to Naples in person. He further renounced his claim on Asti, and agreed to pay the Duke of Orleans 50,000 ducats as a war indemnity, and lend the king two ships as transports for his soldiers from Genoa to Naples. A debt of 80,000 ducats, that was still owing to Lodovico, was cancelled, and the Castelletto of the port of Genoa was placed in the Duke of Ferrara's hands, as a security that these engagements would be kept on both sides. The (French) king, we learn from Commines, still retained a friendly feeling for the Duke of Milan, and invited him to a meeting before he left Italy; but Lodovico had taken umbrage at certain offensive remarks made by the Count of Ligny and Cardinal Briconnet, and excused himself on plea of illness, while he declared in private that he would not trust himself in the French king's company unless a river ran between them. "It is true," says Commines, "that foolish words had been spoken, but the king meant well, and wished to remain his friend."
(The French king invited, but Lodovico didn't ome, but surely some others of the Milanese party had followed the invitation ... otherwise this would have not very polite.)
From all this I would assume, that a greater Milanese delegation visited indeed the French king in Vercelli after the concluded peace, but not Ludovio himself. Bassano might have well have belonged to this group

I think, that an "after 1495" is possible, too, as the tensions between Milan and Savoy have had some constancy ... after 1495. But before ...? I would doubt that.

**********

The other text, which contains a "Taroch", is from Giovan Giorgio Alione, a promoter of French interests in Italy. The text is very difficult, as written in a rare old dialect near Asti.
Andrea Vitali has found the text and admits, that the text is very difficult.

http://www.letarot.it/page.aspx?id=264&lng=eng

Andrea promotes the text as "likely from 1494", about which I've doubts. All Alione texts have much later printing dates. True is, that Asti got great attention twice, once, when Charles VIII crossed it on his way to Italy and had some waiting there time there, but also, when he came back from Italy, so in 1494 and 1495, before and after the river-Taro-event.
The text is - if I understand Andrea correctly - full of sexistic associations. Syphilis has a certain association to sexual activities. If Syphilis was connected to the new word Taroch, the text would get a rather different interpretation ... the text contains details about the behavior of women, who cheat her husbands and the case of a flourishing Syphilis this might have bad consequences.
 

Yoav Ben-Dov

i am a bit overwhelmed by this wealth of facts and details, although most of it is pure knowledge and not directly relevant to our issue.

what i do get is the reference to tarochus in the Gasparus Vescontus poem. i dont understand the context, but maybe it could be some derogatory - this "idiot" who insisted on getting paid for the passage.

as for the "word-play" - well, we can never know for sure, but popular "word games" have also their linguistic integrity and aesthetics. tarochus = taro (river, battle) + Saint Rochus (Syphilis) + latin suffix? this sounds too artificial and contrived. and why should tarot be connected with syphilis, anyway? more than plain cards?

we still could have taro as provenance, real or fictitious, as in the little story i gave as example. but we have no proof that such a thing indeed happened. so we cannot rule out other possibilities.
 

l'appeso

thanks huck, this is really interesting as I live near Vercelli!
I was thinking of a piedmontese dialect word "tardoch" that means "fool", which could be assimilated to taroch...
 

Huck

i am a bit overwhelmed by this wealth of facts and details, although most of it is pure knowledge and not directly relevant to our issue.

what i do get is the reference to tarochus in the Gasparus Vescontus poem. i dont understand the context, but maybe it could be some derogatory - this "idiot" who insisted on getting paid for the passage.

as for the "word-play" - well, we can never know for sure, but popular "word games" have also their linguistic integrity and aesthetics. tarochus = taro (river, battle) + Saint Rochus (Syphilis) + latin suffix? this sounds too artificial and contrived. and why should tarot be connected with syphilis, anyway? more than plain cards?

we still could have taro as provenance, real or fictitious, as in the little story i gave as example. but we have no proof that such a thing indeed happened. so we cannot rule out other possibilities.

Syphilis cause it was a new plague, and St. Rochus, cause he was a new FRENCH saint against the plague. For Saints there was a general local rivalry about the question, who gets a "new saint". This were "political gifts" similar to titles as "new dukes" or "new counts" or "who (and from which region) gets the next cardinal".
Now St Roch was canonisized in 1590, but veneration and concrete action to prepare his state as saint started in the the 1470's ... well, rather precisely, when the duke of Burgundy died (1477; he had made a lot of Pro-Burgundy propaganda action in Italy, leaving not much place for France to do the same). But when he died, and French king Louis XIth got at the same time the right on Naples by Rene d'Anjou, then the propagation of St. Rochus simply turned to become French propaganda.

See the thread from post 50 till c. post 70

Naturally "Saint-propaganda" was understood as political propaganda at least by some others, who also operated with the same strategy. So some mockery from other side, especially if the intended purpose had gone wrong as it could have gone wrong, isn't surprising.

The situation is clear. The translation of the passage of the text works, if you place "idiot" in the sentence. But "Tarochus" has the situation, that it was never before mentioned in a text (as far we know), and some persons really have stressed the modern search engine to find one.
This first appearance is placed, as far we can get it, most probably short after the battle of Taro, which was a rather big social event, in any case strong enough to cause more than word change in human language.
It's against probability to expect that "first appearance Tarochus" and "river-Taro-battle" have an accidental rather close meeting in time (researchers must have some sense for "probable developments", otherwise they are lost anyway).

So -as long no other findings of the word are done before 1495, it stays, that both activities are related, at least "probably".