Is TdM Reformation Tarot?

[baba-prague]

And that cards were inserted 'as stiffening' - into the spines of books.
Considering that other materials were cheaper, and quicker for this purpose, it looks to me as if the cards were being 'accidentally' protected.

Actually, no. In card production - and I assume this would apply as much then as now as it's never been a simple process - there is quite a lot of wastage. It's because the whole printing and cutting process is more complicated than the printing and binding of a book and so you tend to have a lot of slight mis-prints, poor cuts, damaged cards etc.

To give you some idea of the modern situation (not identical of course, but probably at least indicative) our local card producer, Piatnik, actually uses waste cards as packaging - they have so many.

So logically, it's likely that there would have been card wastage which would be sold off - or given away - cheaply. It would then have provided a source of good quality card stock at a much lower price than clean, new stock. I think it's highly likely that this is why we see it used as stiffening.

One can't of course prove this without finding a receipt or something similar (and, as I say, the waste cards may have been given away in which case there would be little trace of any paperwork) but it seems the most logical conclusion.

By the way, an analogy is the use of slightly off-printed or waste fabric to stuff and weight hems of curtains etc, in the Victorian times (William Morris and Company did this all the time). It looks strange to have beautiful printed fabric used as stuffing in this way, but when you realise it was just wastage that couldn't be used otherwise you can see that it makes financial sense.
_________

Just have to add that it occurs to me that Alex - a great mender of things - has several times used waste cards from our decks as stiffener - even for damaged book bindings once or twice. I do hope that in 450 years no-one discovers this and imagines that we were here saving cards from the great Noughties book burnings. Goodness, now that IS a thought!

 

[Huck]

AS you know, Huck, I usually focus on what I might be able to contribute, not on undermining other peoples' or trying to influence the reception given them.

But this long post of yours is so contrary to your own assertions that you demand rigorous historical proofs of others, that I am amazed by it.

It contains so little fact, and so very much inference, assumption, self-referential conclusion, and sheer wishful thinking, that its apparent 'argument' boils down to a web of imaginary links, made to shimmer by embroidery with 'celebrities'.

I perceive your interpretation with interest

The really solid information is no more than a list of small observations, to wit:

__________

* We have only one entry about Trionfi cards from Siena in 15th century ...
... just from 1452.

* At least we know the Hofämterspiel [cards] ... ..., [dated to about] 1455

- but we don't actually know for whom they were made.

It's, as far I know, a farspread assumption and considering the content of the deck rather logical.

* These cards [link was given] are rather different from Tarot.

In the case, that you speak of the Hofämterspiel, of course these cards are rather different from Tarot. I talked about "Trionfi decks", that is about cards made for triumphal occasions. The argument of my text was, that such decks could have been rather different.

* In 1493/1494 ... [a] marriage took place and the [Sforza] bride brought some playing cards.

Query: Is it documented that the cards were Italian? What sort of cards were they? What sort of game - is documented - as her preferred style of card-play? Do we know the rules? Please cite the primary text's passage.

Would you exspect, that Bianca Maria Sforza brought a German deck with her as a marriage deck? I also wished I'd a primary text for this story. But it's so farspread and I also have seen serious texts telling details of the wedding night concerning the deep interest of Maximilian in just this night - in the cards.

* In 1493 the Nuremberg publisher Danhauser in cooperation with Wolgemut (Dürers teacher) started a project to make a **book** depicting 'Roman triumphs'. The project was never realised.

- and this information, as it stands, may well be irrelevant.

[/quote]
You find details at http://trionfi.com/0/m/00/ in one of the articles.

I paraphrase the next bit..

* In 1494 the "Ship of Fools" was produced...some motifs found in that work appear also on [some/all] tarot cards.

* Rumour (?) or History(?) has it that the new Empress played cards.

- what sort? how did she play - by what rules?

It's not given in the quotes, likely Italian cards.

* In 1496 cards that were **not** like tarot cards were made. (!!?)

* Maximilian later commissioned copperplate engravings of [ancient Roman? monuments?] triumphal archs and triumphal chariots. Are they extant?

Yes, you easily find them in the web. I didn't state, that the 1496 decks were Tarot cards. They were Trionfi cards, as they accompanied a triumphal occasion. They are "trionfi cards" by context.

What do they look like? Where are their antecedents, if any, in medieval art before their time?... How do they compare with the marginal drawings in Michael Scot's astronomy textbook composed centuries earlier? What about The marriage of Mercury and its verbal imagery - any relevance there?

I gave a link, how they do look like. The rest are your questions, not mine.

* The Medici were proud to get the French Fleur-des-lis on their shield.
- This is simple imagination - but I do agree they might have been pleased - always nice to have another kingdom, one would think - but where do they, themselves, say so?

They used it with enthusiasm and endurance.

* We cannot expect courts to precisely imitate each other's form of card-pack.

*The earlier "standard" view of Tarot - i.e. as a series of trumps established from ca. 1450 is not so widely accepted today.

"Trionfi objects" ....were often not even cards

*Woodcut decks ... are dated to (?) 1477 or later.

*The Hermit of the Marseille has a lantern.
*The hermits in the Italian decks of 15th/ early 16th century hadn't a lantern, but an hour-glass.

- (So what about the Charles VI hermit. Isn't that still said to be of italian provenance?)

The hour glass is recognizable.

* And we better leave Luther in Wittenberg ...

oh - I was enjoying his company here.

So what you are saying, is that some eminent families celebrated family occasions my commissioning or purchasing things that may or may not have been cards.

Your commissioning?

I stated, that the name "Trionfi cards" developed from the production of these cards at specific "triumphal occasions."

 

[Huck]

" the bawdy hand...?"

And Huck - don't be silly! You know perfectly well that cards were burned.
And that cards were inserted 'as stiffening' - into the spines of books.
Considering that other materials were cheaper, and quicker for this purpose, it looks to me as if the cards were being 'accidentally' protected.


But it wasn't those indisputable facts - that cards were burned, or that they are discovered in the spines or other parts of book covering, but the other matter... of the well.

You are snippy today, Huck

Diane, you said:

you know what's a funny thing.. the old monasteries tended to put old cards into the spines of books when the burnings started. Indicates they may have been blessed items perhaps.

I don't know, when monasteries put old cards into the spines of books. I would think, that such action was done by printers, which used unusable card misprints as cheap filling. Surely not for blessing reasons.

I don't know, that this had anything to do with any burning of cards.

 

[DianeOD]

Waste cards

Yes I take the point about cards as waste/offcuts.

I was thinking of the imagery on earlier cards - the 'Agnus dei' emblem as seal of the Indulgence and so forth.

I gather that the group at trionfi.com has developed a thesis that the images of the Italian Atouts of the 15thC, as found within the pack, are due to a supposed or documented contemporary equation between important ceremonies - the sort that included public parades - and the classical Roman 'triumphs'.

This, it seems to me, is aimed at providing retrospective support for that proposal made in the 1960s by an American librarian, viz. that the Bembo cards (as she called the Visconti-Sforza Atouts) were used to mark order in parades; in another way, the 'trionfi' thesis seems to be returning (by perhaps an unnecessarily circuitous route) to ideas and/or conclusions made by others - including me and I think Kwaw and Rosemary .. - that the pilgrimage and other series of journey/progress -imagery is involved.

In each case, I think - hope I don't misrepresent the others' views - we are talking about Atout cards, individually or collected into a pack, as forms of memento-memorial or souvenir for series of journey-stages, as points in a temporal and geographical progress. This properly reflects the implications of John of rheinfelden's saying that the activity of the ludus cartarum permitted representation of all the status mundi - back in 1377. (And by the way, his exposition is unlikely to have been a sermon).

This latter idea of the pilgrimage/journey tokens also fits better with the Atout motifs used in the lot-books called 'road-books', of course.

Nor does it require us to ignore the period of *three generations* separating the mid-fifteenth century from those earlier references to card-use, which puts them into monastic and other more-or-less religious environments. One may include John of Rheinfelden's discursus in that group too. I do not think that Dante's 'ridon le carte' or the St.Victor reference, or that I mentioned about the Dominican who made and gave cards to people (the implication is separate religious cards] are irrelevant here.

THe 'journey/pilgrimage' of days and places interpretation also better accounts for the kind of imagery found on some of the early cards - such as that for the 'Agnus dei' or the Christophoros, or even the cup-and-ball imagery of the Fool. A 'fool' type is included among the earliest extant imagery on western cards.

The image of the "fool with threads-and-balls motif" is certainly found in late classical times (e.g. April of the Philocalia), but its context then is the 'progression' of the calendar, with its chief religious feasts. A version of the 'ball and thread' is also, of course, included in the emblemata of the Charles Vi figure.

In other words, we are back to the idea of the almanac, the calendar's progression - which is also that of saints, stars and places - and the 'way of saints', route-marking shrines and so forth: in which context, a 15th century fashion for the Roman military victory theme might better be consdered a variant rather than a primary conception.

I can accept that the last idea might have appealed to fashionable nobility, but that does not prove - as it seems intended to do - that Atout figures begin from that later idea.

Surely it is better translate the term 'trionfi' to show its context - as 'martial victory' imagery, as parade/ceremony souvenir, as 'trump card' etc to make real distinctions in meaning clear to your readers.

 

[mac22]

I can accept that the last idea might have appealed to fashionable nobility, but that does not prove - as it seems intended to do - that Atout figures begin from that later idea.

Surely it is better translate the term 'trionfi' to show its context - as 'martial victory' imagery, as parade/ceremony souvenir, as 'trump card' etc to make real distinctions in meaning clear to your readers.

You raise many good points worthy of further meditation & rumination.

Mac22

 

[Rosanne]

Have I got this wrong?
Marseille type decks that we know of first appeared between 1490- 1550, most likely with what we have, as the Cary-Yale sheet which 'sort of' looks like a Marseille type circa 1500.
Then we have existing fragments also 'sort of' Marseille type for those 50 years from 1500 to 1550 (mainly Tarocchi-dates uncertain but possibly)
Then nothing Marseille type until the Noblet circa 1650.
So we have a gap of Marseille type of 100 years?
It is said that many decks were printed in this hundred years and we have playing cards existing(extant) of this hundred years, but no examples of the decks of Marseille type.We know for example that the Portuguese pattern was printed in a playing card deck- because the results are in the East.
So it seems there is only two directions. They did not print any or they did and there is a reason why none remain.
So if they did not print any- then the Noblet was either a departure from the usual, or a semi copy of decks like the Cary-Yale indicated- which still leaves no available existing examples of the development.
If they did print Marseille type decks in that 100 years, then one must ask why there is nothing left today. What is it about these cards that would make them disappear? So popular they got worn out? They were not popular so they did not get bought? I would suppose then they would cease from printing them.
It, to me is like the Enid Blyton books 'Noddy and Big Ears' looked on some hundreds of years later. First you have them- then you don't- but a lingering memory of them, and then the 'Gay Big Ears' debate is quashed and you have them again because the banning was uplifted. My Noddy books were put away- not destroyed- because burning books was a sacrilege in my home- but my friends had their books destroyed. How come you have decks like the Sola Busca 1572 and other decks still around? More importantly why?
~Rosanne

 

[mac22]

It, to me is like the Enid Blyton books 'Noddy and Big Ears' looked on some hundreds of years later. First you have them- then you don't- but a lingering memory of them, and then the 'Gay Big Ears' debate is quashed and you have them again because the banning was uplifted. My Noddy books were put away- not destroyed- because burning books was a sacrilege in my home- but my friends had their books destroyed. How come you have decks like the Sola Busca 1572 and other decks still around? More importantly why?
~Rosanne

No the Noblet deck "proves" [to me] that Tarot was still in the public consciousness - whether decks exist today from that 100 yr gap or not. Paper being what it is like as not they simply didn't survive.

If they were banned or destroyed during that time frame --- something brought the Tarot back.

Mac22

 

[Rosanne]

Yes Mac, I think they were there- but why have we no examples? This is what I was saying to start with- if they showed dissent or reflected reform or even revolution- then they would be kept from view during that 100 years- like my Noddy books- perhaps it was not socially or religiously correct to play with them, use them. I am only talking about the Marseilles type- not other decks, especially ones that do not look revolutionary or reformist.The Sola Busca is classical depictions for example- very acceptable! The Noblet does not look like a departure from the normal - it looks like it had a tradition of that type- and one has to look back 100 years or so to see it's maybe parent deck.
Sorry to be like a dog with a bone. Where are the Marseille types between 1550 and 1650?

 

[mac22]

Yes Mac, I think they were there- but why have we no examples? This is what I was saying to start with- if they showed dissent or reflected reform or even revolution- then they would be kept from view during that 100 years- like my Noddy books- perhaps it was not socially or religiously correct to play with them, use them. I am only talking about the Marseilles type- not other decks, especially ones that do not look revolutionary or reformist.The Sola Busca is classical depictions for example- very acceptable! The Noblet does not look like a departure from the normal - it looks like it had a tradition of that type- and one has to look back 100 years or so to see it's maybe parent deck.
Sorry to be like a dog with a bone. Where are the Marseille types between 1550 and 1650?

Hehe still a good question. But even IF we don't find them -- I can live with it... Sometimes history has more questions than answers I take it as part of it's charm.... then I'm a historian by education.

It surely does not mean we cannot learn from history.... and keep asking MORE questions... Questions & interaction is how I learn.

Mac22

 

[Debra]

in another way, the 'trionfi' thesis seems to be returning (by perhaps an unnecessarily circuitous route) to ideas and/or conclusions made by others - including me and I think Kwaw and Rosemary .. - that the pilgrimage and other series of journey/progress -imagery is involved.

Just to note that Huck has been posting these ideas here and on his site since early 2003, and kwaw and Rosanne joined and started exchanging ideas here within a year of that.