Andrea Vitali recently published ...
L’HOSPIDALE DE’ PAZZI INCURABILI
di Tomaso Garzoni da Bagnacavallo
and
MUNDUS ALTER ET IDEM
di Joseph Hall
Both articles are related, as Joseph Hall (published 1605) reacted on the Hospidale of Tomaso Garzoni (1586). You find Andrea's articles in English and Italian at
http://www.letarot.it/page.aspx?id=5&lng=ENG
the 3rd and 4th position in the menu to the left.
Both texts contain the word Tarocchi and both use the topic in an rather interesting manner. Garzoni presents a sort of catalog of mental sickness ... the "Taroccho game" takes a position there in Discorso 13, but seems - according my analyzes (which really are handicapped, cause my Italian is only rudimentary) - to carry the value of a meta-meaning, which - in contrast to the circumstance, that it isn't very often used in the text - surpasses the character of a "small role", as the whole catalog seems to be a sort of ironical Tarocchi, a system with possibly 29, 30 of 32 elements, formed by a rather creative gods system, somehow near to the Michelino deck with 16 gods or the 28-gods-system used in the festival of 1475 at the wedding of Camilla Aragon and Costanzo Sforza.
But ... first to Joseph Hall
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Joseph Hall
Joseph Hall, which I'll take here in shorter terms ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Hall_%28bishop%29
in
... published with it a satirical work. Hall had in 1605 an age of 31 years and was married just 2 years ... he had made variously satiric works in his youth, he stopped with it, when he minister of the church England. Later he became bishop.Mundus Alter et Idem (first published 1605)
http://books.google.com/books?id=9XJCAA ... &q&f=false
p. 145 (Liber IV; Cap. V; title: "Moroniae Descr.: Orgilia; alter Ducatus Asperae Moraniae"
(version of 1607)
The passage ...
... uses "Tarocchiu" and contains at the right a reference to Garzoni (related to the use of Tarocchiu).
The complete text of the chapter from a later edition:
The content table of the version of 1607:
Hall uses land-maps to show his fantasy country, which are not readable in the Google edition of the text 1607. In a later edition I found 3 maps, but I couldn't identify the capital Tarocchiu ... here is one of them to give an impression ...
.. according which Moroniae is somehow in the Antartica, at least south of Africa and America.
Hall, who wrote under the name Mercurius Britannicus, stands in a natural tradition with Plato (Utopian republic), Marco Polo (China), Christopher Columbus (America), Thomas Morus (Utopia), Rabelais (Gargantua, mentioned Taraux), Boccanini (the Parnussus state, see recently ...
http://tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=161896
... used Trionfetto ), Robinson Crusoe (had an island), Jonathan Swift (Lilliput and a Macroput called "Brobdingnag"), James Cook (Australia), Neil Armstrong (Moon) and the Hubble (for the rest of it).
Mercurius Britannicus (alias Joseph Hall) published this year 1605, in the same year 1605 Boccanini is said to have started his 1612 published work of the "I raggvagli di Parnasso", from which one chapter Nr. 77 was merged with the small work Fama Fraternitatis in 1614 with rather surprising success. The Fama Fraternitatis had been written according some German researches by the rather young Johann Valentin Andreae possibly 1602-03, but more likely 1605-7.
1605 ?????
I'm puzzled, what social evolution might have triggered the coincidence of interests to produce such fantastic texts if this year 1605. The invention of the telescope ...
The earliest evidence of working telescopes were the refracting telescopes that appeared in the Netherlands in 1608. Their development is credited to three individuals: Hans Lippershey and Zacharias Janssen, who were spectacle makers in Middelburg, and Jacob Metius of Alkmaar.[4] Galileo greatly improved upon these designs the following year.
... happened only short later, so it can't be. But ...
Tycho Brahe moved to Prague (court of Emperor Rudolph II) in 1599, but died in 1601. Kepler (also in Prague) proceeded this work and had an important publication in 1604. Then in October 1604 ...
Inside a world, which still gave a lot on astrology and its prognostic, this might have meant something rather important.Supernova 1604, also known as Kepler's Supernova, Kepler's Nova or Kepler's Star, was a supernova that occurred in the Milky Way, in the constellation Ophiuchus. As of April 2011, it is the last supernova to have been unquestionably observed in our own galaxy, occurring no farther than 6 kiloparsecs or about 20,000 light-years from Earth. Visible to the naked eye, it was brighter at its peak than any other star in the night sky, and all the planets (other than Venus), with apparent magnitude −2.5. It was visible during the day for over three weeks.
The supernova was first observed in northern Italy on October 9, 1604. Johannes Kepler began observing it on October 17. It was subsequently named after him because of his book on the subject entitled De Stella nova in pede Serpentarii ("On the new star in Ophiuchus's foot", Prague 1606).
It was the second supernova to be observed in a generation (after SN 1572 seen by Tycho Brahe in Cassiopeia). No further supernovae have since been observed with certainty in the Milky Way, though many others outside our galaxy have been seen.
Especially interested was ...
The long reigning emperor Rudolph II (reigned 36 years 1576-1612) engaged for alchemy and also astronomy. Although generally already based on difficult emotional conditions, his behavior is considered "relative normal" till 1593, then he started to react stressed by the war against the Turks from 1593-1606, and after this he became "totally hopeless mad" from 1606-12.
Rudolph II. didn't marry. It had been projected, that he should marry Isabella, a daughter of Philipp II of Spain, but Rudolph didn't agree in the conditions of Philipp Ii, who demanded an increasing Spanish influence in Italy. In 1599, after Philipp II had died 1598, Isabella was meanwhile 33 years old and married Albert, a younger brother of Rudolf II, and both reigned in Spain.The biographical dates show:
Grand-Grand-mother: Joanna of Castile, also called Johanna the Crazy ... lived in desperate state from c. 1509 - 1555 and disturbed the life of her son emperor Charles V. with a long dark shadow.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joanna_of_Castile
Mother: Maria of Austria (21 June 1528 – 26 February 1603), daughter of CharlesThough she lived in far distance in Spain since 1582, she might have indirectly stabilized the health of her eldest son Rudolf till 1603.On the 13th September 1548, aged twenty, she married her first cousin Archduke Maximilian. The couple first stayed at the Spanish court and had sixteen children during the course of a twenty-eight-year marriage.
While her father was occupied with German affairs, Maria and Maximilian acted as regents of Spain from 1548 to 1550. In 1552, the couple moved to live at the court of Maximilian's father in Vienna. During the absence of her brother, King Philip II, Maria was again installed as regent of Spain from 1558 to 1561 and returned to Madrid during that time.
After her return to Germany, her husband gradually succeeded his father Ferdinand I as ruler of Germany, Bohemia and Hungary, which he ruled from 1564 to his death in 1576. Maria was a devout Catholic and frequently disagreed with her religious ambiguous husband. Maria of Spain had great influence over her sons, the future emperors Rudolf and Matthias.
Maria returned to Spain in 1582, commenting that she was very happy to live in "a country without heretics". She settled in the Convent of Las Descalzas Reales in Madrid, where she lived until her death in 1603.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_of_A ... an_Empress
RUDOLF II, Holy Roman Emperor (1576-1611), King of Bohemia (1576-1611), King of Hungary (1576-1608) -cr 25.9.1572, *Wien 18.7.1552, +Prague 20.1.1612, bur Prague; he had the following illegitimate kids:
E1. Karl, +murdered
E2. [by Katharina Strada] Julius, Mgve of Austria, *1586, +murdered 25.6.1609
E3. Dorothea, a nun in Wien 1628, *1611, +?
E4. Anna Dorothea von Österreich, a nun, *1580, +1624
E5. [by Euphemia von Rosenthal] Matthias, +Wien IX.1626; m.NN, a Sicilian lady
E6. [by Euphemia von Rosenthal] Charlotte, Mgvine of Austria, +Malines 12.1.1662; m.10.5.1608 Marquis François Thomas d'Oiselet (+5.1.1629)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infanta_Is ... a_of_Spain
Rudolf had then meanwhile a few illegitimate children (not all are known), from which one, Karl, is given as murdered (but I don't find any story about it in the moment), and another, Julius Caesar (* 1586), is given as the one most loved by Rudolf (Julius is said to have been the oldest of c. 6 children of Katharina Stradová and also murdeerred (which seems wrong). Anyway, the things went rather bad with Julius ...
The story is told here ..
http://www.castle.ckrumlov.cz/docs/de/z ... dojuda.xml
.. in German ... actually I had trouble to find any English note about the story, possibly due to the condition, that Habsburg might have arranged a lot in the past to have it outside of the public attention. Julius murdered a female lover and cut her to pieces.
This better informed research ...
http://books.google.com/books?id=4UHmd5 ... da&f=false
... knows the detail, that Katherina Strada was 1592 just 13 years old (and so couldn't have been the mother of Julius Caesar (who was an unknown baronessa), when she turned to become the long-time-lover of Rudolf.
Generally one might conclude, that the mental instability of Rudolf "around 1606") had a lot to do with the mental instability of his son around the same time.
The "mad emperor" 1606-12 (abdicated in 1611) was followed a generally mad Germany from 1618-48, which reduced the population to 2/3rd of it ... as a general reason is considered some destabilization, which happened cause the "mad emperor". Parallel to this we had all these "mad" and cruel witch processes and their victims.
Possibly this explains a little bit the increasing madness in 1605.
********
Back to Joseph Hall
Back to Joseph Hall and his work. Tarocchiu is the capital of the country of the duke of Courroux. Courroux (French) seems to be an expression for " Forte colère" and is associated to "colère, emportement, fureur, irritation".
http://www.linternaute.com/dictionnaire ... /courroux/
And so is the behavior of the people there, as described by Hall. Andrea Vitali gives a translation of at least a part of the text.
http://www.letarot.it/page.aspx?id=152&lng=ENG
Andrea gives this analysis:
By what is written it results evident that Jospeh Hall calling Tarochium the ducal Centre of Orgilia loaned the meaning of “crazy of tarot” that Garzoni in his Discourse XIII of The Hospital of Incurable Madmen had given to those people who go “taroccando bestially with their brain”, that means those who, playing with their own brain as with tarot cards, suddenly burst into flames because of anger.
The passage by Hall has besides a precise comparison in the real life of players, who everyday went in tavern with weapons and who often quarrelled among them until frequent killings, one of the many motives for which gambling was condemned by the Church.
Perhaps it's of interest, that Hall just in 1605 had a journey to the continent ...
... recorded in the wikipedia biography. No other greater journey of him is mentioned. Some location names in the text sound, as if he had been also in Germany. Possibly the whole text is his private ironic amusement about this journey and the people, that he met. Well, perhaps he met German people and other in Spa with enough time to study, that people elsewhere are a little bit different than those in England.In 1605, Hall travelled abroad for the first time when he accompanied Sir Edmund Bacon on an embassy to Spa, with the special aim, he says, of acquainting himself with the state and practice of the Romish Church. At Brussels, he disputed at the Jesuit college on the authentic character of modern miracles, until his patron at length asked him to stop.
I found this review, which seems to have its origin in ...
"Another World and Yet the Same: Bishop Joseph Hall's "Mundus Alter et Idem" (Yale studies in English)
http://www.amazon.com/Another-World-Yet ... 0300026137Obviously, as the translator and editor of this book I am prejudiced in its favor, but I do think it's a book that more people should know about. Written in Latin in 1605, it attempts to show that travel may not lead one to more wonderful lands; in fact, many of the lands one visits may actually be repulsive places. Mercurius Britannicus, the narrator of this book, travels to four very repulsive lands, including a land of gluttons and drunkards, a land of fools, and a land of thieves and mountebanks. In each place he visits, there are recognizable parallels to places rather close to home, places Europeans would know rather well. For example, in the first land he visits, the ruler is chosen by weight and the circumference of his stomach. Should he at any time lose weight, he is immediately deposed, and the crown handed to the next most corpulent leader. Americans, who have been subjected to senators, governors, and presidents who have little to recommend them, should see this hyperbole as applicable to our own government. (And the parallels to Germany's Oktoberfest are obviously intentional.) Written some 89 years after More's Utopia, it is the first dystopia--a genre that has led to such wonderful modern works as Brave New World and 1984. Generally available only in libraries (only 800 copies were printed), it's worth reading if you can find it.
Becoming curious about this Hall dispute in Brussels, I got the result, that the opponent had been a Father Cosperus and I indeed found then a longer passage, which referred to the event:
http://books.google.com/books?id=VzZVAA ... &q&f=false
Considering then, that it might well be, that Tarot games had reached in 1605 the catholic parts of Belgium and also, that "Courroux" is a French word (there are parts in Belgium in which French is the general language), then it might well be, that we find the "true Tarrocchiu" of Joseph Hall in Belgium.
(Generally it seems, that Jacques Vieville, card producer of the oldest Marseille-Tarot-producer in Paris "around 1650", arrived there from Belgium ... I think, I'm not the only one, who got this opinion).
So, let's finish the Hall theme ... at least for the moment. ...
... perhaps I looked too much Hercule Poirot movies these day. Poirot is said to have been born in Spa ... says Agatha Christie.
