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mikeh wrote:Thanks, Huck. So I take it that "Imperiali" and "Lollio" are two sides of the same Lollio coin, two postures toward the game. Which is the real Lollio? Neither and both. It's a typical Renaissance dialogue in which the author hides behind points of view. I would only emphasize that the information you provide does not suggest that when Lolllio disparages the cards he is serious, ot that when he finds nothing there but "fumo, pancucchi,et fanfaluchehe" he is serious either (nor do I mean to imply that such was your intent).
Well, if the suspicion is correct, it's just a literary dialogue with two contributions only. Possibly the declaration, that Lollio knew also about the game Imperiale, not only about Tarocchi.

Yesterdays I found ...
http://books.google.de/books?id=_lIKmFY ... me&f=false
... a quote from James of the Marches (collected by Depaulis), who also knew Imperiale. Giacomo della Marca died 1475 ... if the quote is really from him, Imperiale appears close to the last known note of the Imperatori game(1454 Ferrara). I wonder, if there's a relation between the both game names. And there is the German/Swiss game name Keyser Spiel or Keysern, which might be similar to Karnöffel. All perhaps just a family of trick taking games, as the Trionfi game.
Huck
http://trionfi.com

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Thanks, Huck. A link to a Depaulis article is always welcome. On p. 123 note 20 Depaulis gives c. 1460 as the date of Jacobus's [James of the Marches] text. I don't know if that is the publication date or the date it was given, but I would guess the former. We know nothing about the game "Imperiale", not even whether it is a dice game, a board game, or a card game. From the setting, in a room with dice games--possibly one card game--it would seem a dice game, as Depaulis guesses it was. Since it is a gambling hall, it would probably be a game of luck rather than skill. If I recall correctly, "Sequentia" was simply a matter of what combinations occurred in the cards one was dealt, with no trick-taking at all.

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I am going to press on with my examination of Dummett on "hidden symbolism". I continue (p. 139):
Il Rinascimento fu l’epoca in cui le scienze occulte ebbero la maggiore diffusione. Era svanito il sospetto medievale che ogni magia implicasse necromanzia; gli studi occultistici in quanto tali non erano più oggetto della disapprovazione delle autorità ecclesiastiche oppure degli studiosi seri, ma avevano acquisito una rispettabilità intellettuale e morale che non avevano mai conosciuto e che non ritroveranno in seguito. Non è pertanto intrinsecamente improbabile che il simbolismo occulto fosse presente nel mazzo dei tarocchi.

(The Renaissance was the era in which the occult sciences had the greatest spread. The medieval suspicion that all magic implied necromancy had vanished; occult studies as such were not the subject of disapproval by the ecclesiastical authorities or serious scholars, but had acquired a moral and intellectual respectability which it had never met and did not meet again later. It is therefore not inherently unlikely that this occult symbolism was present in the tarot.
This is somewhat of an overstatement. Pico had his book seized and burned, and himself was fordibly returned to Italy from France as an escaped fugitive. Reuchlin spent his fortune and his energy defending himself for decades against the Dominican Inquisition. He never was exonerated, but eventually the persecution stopped. Ficino escaped the Inquisition only through the intervention of powerful friends (this is related in Book 9 of the English translation of his letters). Nonetheless it is true that esoteric thought received much support and attention during the Renaisance, all the more reason to suspect esoteric interpreting of the tarot sequence. But from the persecution that writing on such subjects received, it is not surprising that nothing would be written connecting it with cards.

I continue (p. 139):
In ogni caso, un tale significato non ha potuto essere debitore dei due tipi principali di simbolismo occulto che gli occultisti ottocenteschi sostennero di aver rinvenuto nel mazzo dei tarocchi: il Cabalistico e l’Ermetico. La Cabala era un sistema esoterico della teologia mistica ebraica, sviluppatosi in Spagna nel XII e XIII secolo, anche se basato su un libro, il Sefer Yetzira, scritto forse nel VI secolo. Diversi autori cristiani del Rinascimento furono colpiti dalla Cabala e la adattarono a scopi cristiani; a causa della sua forte componente magica, essa penetrò la corrente della tradizione magica europea. Il primo di questi autori cristiani fu Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494), le cui Conclusiones Philosophicae, Cabalisticae et Theolo-gicae furono pubblicate a Roma nel 1486. Prima di Pico, nessuno, al di fuori della cerchia ebraica, sapeva nulla della Cabala; è impensabile che un mazzo di carte ideato intorno al 1435 o prima possa aver preso a prestito da essa un qualsiasi simbolismo.

(In any case, such a meaning could not be owing to the two main types of occult symbolism that the nineteenth-century occultists claimed to have discovered in the tarot deck: the Kabbalistic and the Hermetic. The Kabbalah was an esoteric system of Jewish mystical theology, which developed in Spain in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, although based on a book, the Sefer Yetzira, perhaps written in the sixth century. Several Christian writers of the Renaissance were affected by the Kabbalah and adapted it to Christian purposes; because of its strong magical component, it entered the stream of European magical tradition. The first of these Christian authors was Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494), whose Conclusiones Philosophicae, Cabalisticae et Theologicae were published in Rome in 1486. Prior to Pico, nobody, outside of Jewish circles, knew anything of Cabala; it is unthinkable that a deck of cards designed around 1435 or before may have borrowed it from any symbolism.)
Moshe Idel in Kabblah in Italy, 1280-1510, 2010, has demonstrated that this last idea, about Christians not knowing Kabbalah, is quite false; they wanted to know it so as to demonstrate to the Jews the errors of their ways (see http://books.google.com/books?id=T_kD_c ... el&f=false). Pico’s main purpose likewise was the same as numerous Christians before him (such as Lazarelli in the 1460s), to demonstrate to the Jews that their own doctrine implied Christianity. To do so he used sources translated for him by converts, who conveniently read them as justifying their own conversion.

Exactly how much interaction when there was between Jewish Kabbalists and Christians is something I am not clear about. From the Jewish encyclopedia article online on Padua, that city's university in the 14th century admitted Jewish students to its medical school in large numbers, and Jews enjoyed many rights in that city. These were somewhat curtailed after it was taken over by Venice, but not to the exclusion of Jewish students. With such students also came unaffiliated Jewish teachers for private lessons. I would think that Christians would not have been turned away, but I only have information about Lazzarelli in the 1460s, from Idel and Hanegraaf. Idel has argued that a quotation in Lazzarelli's "Crater Hermetis" points to Yohanan Alemanno's manuscript collection of Kabbalist writings, and that since they were both in Padua in the 1460s they probably knew each other (Wouter Hanegraaff, Ludovico Lazzarelli: The Hermetic Writings and Related Documents, p. 86ff).

It seems to me that Christian Kabbalah could easily have been added to Pythagoreanism as a method for interpreting the tarot, because the Sefiroth, Hebrew for “enumerations”. were seen, probably correctly, as Jewish versions of the Pythagorean Decad, with the “En Sof” as an 11th principle outside the sefiroth. (A Neoplatonic version of this is what in fact was taught by Jewish Kabbalists in Padua, notably Alemanno, for whose influence on Pico see Idel.) The soul went down the sefiroth to be born in this world, then had to find its way back up to return to God. Reuchlin’s On Kabbalah had the object, in part, of showing the identity of Pythagorean with Kabbalist doctrine. One of his main Kabbalist sources was Paolo Ricci’s Latin abridged translation of Gikatilla’s Gates of Light. I have worked out the parallels between the 16th century tarot on the one hand and Pico, Reuchlin, and Gikatilla at http://latinsefiroth.blogspot.com/.

To show that Hermetic texts could not have influenced the interpretation or structure of the tarot Dummett says that the Corpus Hermeticum was not even known in the West until 1460 (p. 140f).
Lo stesso vale per i ‘Libri Ermetici’. Essi rappresentano un corpus di diciotto opere in greco che dichiarano di derivare da un originale scritto da un saggio dell’antico Egitto di nome Ermete, a cui fu attribuito l’appellativo di Trismegisto, tre volte grande. Uno di questi libri, IlAsclepius, era noto in traduzione latina nel Medioevo (l’originale è andato perduto); altri quattordici, contenuti in un manoscritto greco trovato in Macedo- [end of 140] nia dal monaco Leonardo da Pistoia, furono da lui portati a Firenze verso il 1460 e offerti a Cosimo de’ Medici. Cosimo diede il manoscritto a Marsilio Ficino perché lo traducesse in latino, ordinandogli di interrompere, a questo fine, il suo lavoro di traduzione di Platone. Fu nel 1463 che Ficino completò la traduzione di queste presunte opere dell’ancora più antico saggio Ermete Trismegisto; essa fu pubblicata nel 1471. I libri Ermetici furono accolti con il massimo rispetto. Fu solo nel 1614 che Isaac Casaubon, applicando i nuovi metodi della critica testuale, dimostrò che essi erano stati di fatto scritti nell’era cristiana; egli riteneva che si trattasse di falsi di mano cristiana, ma oggi è opinione comune che fossero opera pagana greca risalente al II e HI secolo dopo Cristo. Fino ad allora, essi erano ritenuti, senza ombra di dubbio, prodotti della remota antichità; e anche questi libri, che insegnavano dottrine sulla corrispondenza fra microcosmo e macrocosmo facilmente incorpo-rabili nelle teorie magiche, penetrarono la corrente dell’occultismo occidentale. Lo scalpore provocato dal recupero degli scritti ermetici risale, tuttavia, solo agli anni immediatamente successivi al 1460, quando il mazzo dei tarocchi esisteva già da almeno vent’anni: non può aver avuto nulla a che fare con l’iconografia di quel mazzo.

(The same applies to the “Hermetic Books”. They represent a body of eighteen works in Greek that claim to derive from an original written by an ancient Egyptian sage called Hermes, who was given the name of Trismegistus the thrice great. One of these books, The Asclepius, was known in Latin translation in the Middle Ages (the original is lost); fourteen others, contained in a Greek manuscript found in Macedo- [end of 140] nia by the monk Leonardo da Pistoia, it was brought to Florence around 1460 and offered to Cosimo de' Medici. Cosimo gave the manuscript to Marsilio Ficino for him to translate it into Latin, ordering him to stop, to this end, his work of translation of Plato. It was in 1463 that Ficino completed the translation of these alleged works of the still more ancient sage Hermes Trismegistus; it was published in 1471. The Hermetic books were received with the utmost respect. It was only in 1614 that Isaac Casaubon, applying new methods of textual criticism, showed that they were in fact written in the Christian era; he believed that it was forged by Christian hands, but today it is commonly believed that they were a pagan Greek work dating from the second and third century after Christ. Until then, they were believed to be, without a doubt, the products of remote antiquity; and also these books that taught doctrines on the correspondence between microcosm and macrocosm, easily incorable into magical theory, penetrated the current Western occultism. The sensation caused by the recovery of the Hermetic writings dating, however, only to the years immediately following 1460, when the tarot deck had already existed for at least twenty years; it could not have had anything to do with the iconography of the pack. )
The Corpus Hermeticum is a product of Middle Platonism, the same current that produced the works of Apuleius and Plutarch. “Hermetic” does not apply only to the Corpus Hermeticum. It means a whole body of largely Middle Platonic texts, many of which were in Latin and read in Italy long before 1440. Apuleius, thought to have been the translator of the Asclepius, was the author of The Golden Ass, which describes an initiation into the Mysteries of Isis, and several philosophical works. Plutarch was a priest of Apollo. “Hermetism” was a word for “esoteric lore” generally, defined especially by Pico’s “Oration” and 700 Theses, Ficino’s Three Books on Life and other works, including alchemical and kabbalistic ones. It was a vast subject which did include magic as one aspect for some people. Dummett at least recognizes the esteem in which Hermetic works were held.

I have not found any sign of influence of the Corpus Hermeticum in the tarot before Etteilla (and then only slight). Its first book has an ascent through the spheres, but that was commonplace. Later there is a psychomachia,virtues vs. Vices, but that again was commonplace. However Decker in his chapter 7 has applied several of Apuleius’s works to some of the tarot sequence, showing how the tarot could be interpreted with their aid as a journey of the soul down to this world (7 triumphs), through life (7), and back up again (last 7). It is true that the cards weren’t written about in such terms that we know of. In the anti-magical and anti-esoteric atmosphere that extended even into the 20th entury, it was not safe to write about them. Art works weren’t written about at all until Vasari, and even he merely skimmed the surface. Cards were less important yet.

A group of second century sayings imbedded in the works of the Neoplatonists but from an earlier period, became known as the “Chaldean Oracles”. From the second century, they represent a Middle Platonic mythologizing with a Babylonian slant. They came to the attention of the Renaissance by way of Gemistos Plethon, who was in Florence for the Conclave of 1438-1439. Since his edition is considered an early work (he was over 80 in 1438), I cannot imagine that he did not bring copies with him to Italy. It turned up mysteriously in Ficino’s hands in the 1460s, I would expect it to have been given to him by Cosimo de’ Medici, who also gave his copy of Plato’s works to Ficino, a handsome manuscript that Hankins thinks he probably acquired from Plethon (see note 29 at http://books.google.com/books?id=CX06ds ... to&f=false). Because of the Oracles’ similarities to pseudo-Dionysius’s Celestial Hierarchies and other works, newly translated by Traversari, one of the key players at the Conclave, for which see link just given), it would surely have attracted attention there, albeit discreetly, because you never know what people will make of something new. I have worked out the parallels to the cards at http://tarotandchaldean.blogspot.com/20 ... -form.html. The Oracles remained popular, translated into Latin and other languages, including French. Its alleged author was Zoroaster; Rameau did an opera about him, too, portraying him as an evil sorcerer.

It is hard to say how much alchemy influenced the early tarot, because not much of its imagery was available. So-called Llullian or Villanovian alchemy later had a sequence of 20 images and accompanying texts, 10 images then repeated with variations; it was called the Rosarium Philosophorum. I have not found a complete sequence from before 1440. What there is comes mostly from a book called the Heilege Dreifeltigkeit, a Christianized version of the sequence sponsored by the father of the Marchioness of Mantua, Barbara of Brandenburg (n.wikipedia.org/wiki/John,_Margrave_of_Brandenburg-Kulmbach); Barbara was probably a friend of Bianca Maria Sforza. Some of its imagery is suggestive of the tarot (e.g. http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-okgollYdTqo/T ... eWheel.jpg, and, for the World card, its Coronation of the Virgin, http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Nhffs0K_2zQ/T ... nation.jpg). From what I have seen in later versions of the full alchemical sequence, it might have had a Pythagorean base and so some resemblance to the tarot sequence interpreted in terms of the first 10 numbers twice. On the other side, the 1491 Sola-Busca non-standard tarot has what appears to be alchemical allusions in various cards. Finally, there is much commonality between the imagery of 17th century alchemical sequences and tarot imagery, as I have tried to show at http://tarotandalchemy.blogspot.com/. I expect that alchemical writers exploited the popularity of the game to emphasize parallels with alchemy as mystical ascent. The practice of alchemy, at least of a physical kind, was of course condemned by the Popes.

Dummett concludes:
Se ci fu simbolismo occulto nella prima versione del mazzo dei tarocchi, quindi, non può trattarsi di quello che gli occultisti del XIX secolo pretesero di trovarvi; l’ipotesi più probabile è che si sia trattato di simbolismo astrologico. Come già abbiamo osservato, non ci sorprenderebbe se venisse dimostrato che esso era presente, tanto ben nascosto però da giustificare il fatto che la sua presenza venne dimenticata così in fretta, purché si ammettesse che la sua presenza non incise per nulla sull’uso per il quale furono ideate e adoperate le carte. Rimane comunque il fatto che non abbiamo alcuna prova dell’esistenza di tale simbolismo occulto. Ai nostri occhi, i trionfi del mazzo dei tarocchi possono, di primo acchito, sembrare misteriosi, ma solo perché non abbiamo più familiarità con il gusto iconografico del Rinascimento. Il significato dei soggetti raffigurati nei trionfi sarà discusso solo dopo che sarà stata fornita la descrizione delle carte da tarocchi popolari che ci sono pervenute; si vedrà allora che quasi tutti rappresentano simboli comunemente noti nell’Italia del Rinascimento e che [end of 141] non avevano alcun legame con l’occulto. È certo che, prima della seconda metà del Settecento, a nessuno venne in mente di usare i tarocchi per la divinazione; quale che fosse significato esoterico attribuito alle carte al momento della loro prima invenzione, è certo che, prima di quel secolo, l’unico uso dei tarocchi fu quello di strumento di gioco.

(If there was occult symbolism in the first version of the tarot deck, it thus cannot be what the occultists of the nineteenth century pretended to find; the most likely hypothesis is that it was astrological symbolism. As we have already noted, we should not be surprised if it were shown that it was present, so well hidden, however, as to justify the fact that its presence was forgotten so quickly, as long as it is admitted that its presence had no affect at all on the use for the which the cards were designed and adopted. But the fact remains that we have no evidence of such occult symbolism. In our eyes, the triumphs of the tarot deck may, at first glance, seem mysterious, but only because we do not have more familiarity with the taste of Renaissance iconography. The meaning of the subjects in the triumphs will be discussed only after a description of the popular tarot cards that we have received has been given; then you will see that almost all represent symbols commonly known in Renaissance and [end of 148] having no connection with the occult. It is certain that, before the second half of the eighteenth century, no one had in mind using tarot cards for divination; whatever esoteric meaning was attributed to the cards at the time of their first invention, it is certain that before this century, the only use of tarot cards was as a tool in games.
The 19th century occultists (at least the Golden Dawn) did attribute astrological symbolism in the cards, basing themselves on works known in the 15th century, mainly the Sefer Yetzirah--although you wouldn’t know it from reading Dummett’s chapter on Occultism. But from this passage it is clear Dummett considers hidden astrological symbolism a realistic possibility (I assume he means something other than what is on the Star, Moon, and Sun, since it isn’t hidden); that shows, if nothing else, that he does not reject hidden symbolism as absurd. Decker in his chapter 6 has presented a case for astrological symbolism based on several astrological works: the Roman-era astrologer Manilius, who was mentioned by Ficino; the Picatrix, which was the basis for some of the imagery at the Schifanoia Palace in Ferrara; “children of the planets” illustrations, and astrological talismans. It all looks to me very ad hoc; if it was used, it seems to me to have had nothing to do with the formation of the tarot, although later tarot might well have borrowed from its imagery.

Dummett himself has to make recourse to non-obvious symbolism in the case of Manfreda at least (one reason why many who otherwise accept Dummett do not accept him here). Otherwise, it is only by ignoring what is on the cards as “decoration” added at the “whim” of the artist, or of saying the meaning is unknown (but somehow not esoteric), that he can analyze the cards' meanings in Chapter 18. But much of the cards' symbolism remains just as mysterious after reading Dummett on "manifest meaning" as before.

Now I can proceed to cartomancy in the period before the late 18th century.

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mikeh wrote:Thanks, Huck. A link to a Depaulis article is always welcome. On p. 123 note 20 Depaulis gives c. 1460 as the date of Jacobus's [James of the Marches] text. I don't know if that is the publication date or the date it was given, but I would guess the former. We know nothing about the game "Imperiale", not even whether it is a dice game, a board game, or a card game. From the setting, in a room with dice games--possibly one card game--it would seem a dice game, as Depaulis guesses it was. Since it is a gambling hall, it would probably be a game of luck rather than skill. If I recall correctly, "Sequentia" was simply a matter of what combinations occurred in the cards one was dealt, with no trick-taking at all.
David Parlett assumes, that Imperiale was a card game similar to Piquet. Where does Depaulis guess, that it was a dice game?
It's not true, that we know nothing. There are later game descriptions, which show rules. Naturally one does not know, if the later game descriptions are the same as the earlier, or if these later games were just games with the same name.

I captured with not much work examples of German variants at begin of 19th century .. it seems, that the game came from France then.

http://books.google.de/books?id=g-szPmN ... el&f=false

http://books.google.de/books?id=JVxDAAA ... el&f=false

http://books.google.de/books?id=SP1XAAA ... el&f=false

This is from 1770
http://books.google.de/books?id=i0oVAAA ... al&f=false


A French note 1743
http://books.google.de/books?id=tldYAAA ... 20&f=false

France 1739
http://books.google.de/books?id=U8O12L1 ... 20&f=false

France 1721
http://books.google.de/books?id=RkgOAAA ... eu&f=false

France 1690
http://books.google.de/books?id=CFY_AAA ... eu&f=false

**********

"Sequence" names with many variations are known from 15th century. Modern games like Canasta, Romee, Mah jongg, Poker, also Tarot in many versions (as versicole) use sequences as game elements.

It's just natural for common card games, that sequences are used, just as common card deck use hierarchical sequences.

Occasionally the game names took "something with Sequence" in their name as quentzlis, quenzen, schwentzlins, sequentz, à la sequence (collected by Schreiber 1938).
Huck
http://trionfi.com

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Huck wrote
David Parlett assumes, that Imperiale was a card game similar to Piquet. Where does Depaulis guess, that it was a dice game?
It's the last highlighted occurrence of "Imperiale" on the page you linked to. He says "I suspect the other nomina dyabolica (Imperiale, chi non piaci la volta del compagno) to be dice games too":
http://books.google.de/books?id=_lIKmFY ... me&f=false

The examples you give describing Imperale are to a French, and apparently later German, game cited much later (1690). We don't know the Italian game of the mid-16th century. But I grant you that "Imperiale" does sound like a card game where having court cards seems of some importance.

"Sequentia" was the actual name of an Italian card game, maybe indeed several. Andrea mentions "Sequentiae" at http://www.letarot.it/page.aspx?id=238, but with no description, possibly a trick-taking game from the context. I cannot at the moment remember, nor can I find, where I read recently that it did not involve trick-taking. Poker is an example of a game where the winner is the one who has the best sequences, including pairs, etc. as sequences, and does not involve trick-taking. In the present context, the important thing is only that it was a card game.

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mikeh wrote:Huck wrote
David Parlett assumes, that Imperiale was a card game similar to Piquet. Where does Depaulis guess, that it was a dice game?
It's the last highlighted occurrence of "Imperiale" on the page you linked to. He says "I suspect the other nomina dyabolica (Imperiale, chi non piaci la volta del compagno) to be dice games too":
http://books.google.de/books?id=_lIKmFY ... me&f=false

The examples you give describing Imperale are to a French, and apparently later German, game cited much later (1690). We don't know the Italian game of the mid-16th century. But I grant you that "Imperiale" does sound like a card game where having court cards seems of some importance.
Ah, I see, but it contains not an argument. Imperiale appears already in the 1490s as a card game at the Sforza court, according Crawford.


http://books.google.de/books?id=akZGAwA ... le&f=false

Is it possible, that Depaulis doesn't know that? Or that Crawford misinterpreted her letter? Actually I wondered once, when I found the Crawford note, that I hadn't seen a reference to the passage elsewhere.
Parlett seems to have known it ... (?), at least I concluded that from his reference to the c. 1490s (actually he says "late 15th century").
Could Piquet go back to the 15th century? The very fact that it is a trick-taking game without trumps tantalisingly suggests such a possibility, since the idea of designating one suit as trump did not arise much before the end of that period. Nevertheless, several other features suggest that it cannot be much older than about 1500.

1. The earliest version was played with a 36-card pack, which did not come into general use until about that time.
2. Aces outrank Kings. This promotion also dates from the end of the 15th century, though it is interesting (and confusing) to note that the closely related game of Impériale ranks Ace intermediately, between Jack and Ten, as if caught in the process of migrating from low to high position.
3. The valuation of cards at Ace 11, courts 10, and numerals at face value, is not recorded before 1500.

To reconcile these contradictions I can only speculate that a similar game was played in the 15th century with all 52 cards, but did not realise its full potential until the pack was reduced to thirty-six. Whether or not such an ancestor can be identified with Ronfle remains an open question.
http://www.davidparlett.co.uk/histocs/piquet.html

Well, I see now, that I possibly misinterpreted Parlett ... he speaks of "Aces outrank kings", and this should be of late 15th century (though I don't know, where Parlett got this from).

A passage earlier Parlett corrects Dummett about Ronfle in France in 1414 (if with right or not with right, I don't know):
Yet a third entry in Rabelais' list, namely Ronfle, may have contributed to Piquet. Like "capot", ronfle is a prominent feature of the game, namely that now referred to as the "point", that is, the suit in which one holds the highest total card-point value. The English derivative of "ronfle" is "ruff". Although this now means to win a plain-suit lead by playing a trump, its earlier meaning was to discard unwanted cards and draw replacements with a view to forming point-scoring combinations - equivalent to the draw in Draw Poker. This name is particularly interesting, as it occurs as an entry in a French list of card games as early as 1454. (Not 1414 as per Dummett p.182.) It seems very probably equivalent to its contemporary, the Italian game of Ronfa, in which players vied or bragged as to who held the highest-valued flush.
Dummett (GoT) had stated: "the earliest reference to Ronfle in Godefroy's dictionary is from 1414, with another from 1464."

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

Added later:

As I see, the full passage (or an expanded passage) appears also in the Steel sermon:
In sexta stantia sunt sex puncti, significantes sex alios ludos. Quorum primus dicitur Spagnolo reverso, et est ludus alearum. Secundus dicitur Al trenta per forza. Tertius, Ochaba cha (or da) lasso. Quartus, Lo imperiale. Quintus, Passa el diece. Sextus, A chi non piace la volta la dia al compayno. (Vel. Ha un tracto e mezo). Et omnia ista sunt nomina demonum.
as seen at ...
http://www.tretre.it/menu/accademia-del ... s-de-ludo/

Six dice games, and "Imperiale" is one of them.

Depaulis' opinion is understandable by this. Nonetheless Crawford notes Imperiale as a card game in her letter translation.

There's a backgammon game played at a half backgammon board in the chess bok of Alfonso the wise (v. 1284). The game was named "el medio emperadore" and the story is told, that Alfonso invented it itself and so it was called "emperadore". This game was also addressed as Lombard table game.
http://trionfi.com/0/c/10/
"This game they call medio emperador (half emperor) There is another game that they call medio emperador and it has this name because just as the other game that we described above is played on the four tables of the board, so this one is played on two tables. And it is played with two or three dice but there is no prime like the other one but there can be a tie.

And because the game emperador is played on the whole board and this one only on half of it and with two dice, therefore they call it medio emperador.

And this is the explanation of this game."
I wonder, if the dice game "Imperiale" has something to do with this.
Huck
http://trionfi.com

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Good research, Huck. I see nothing to complain about. I am going on with Dummett, now on cartomancy.

His Chapter Five starts out with a question (p. 109):
I tarocchi sono utilizzati per due scopi del tutto diversi. Sono usati per un particolare tipo di gioco di carte e sono usati per predire il futuro e come fonte di teoria e simbolismo occulti. In paesi quali l’Inghilterra e gli Stati Uniti, dove non sono mai stati molto popolari come gioco, la maggior parte della gente che li ha sentiti nominare li conosce solo per questo secondo uso; ma in Italia, come in molti altri paesi d’Europa, si sa altrettanto bene che servono a giocare. La nostra domanda è: per quale di questi due usi furono originariamente ideati?

(Tarot cards are used for two completely different purposes. They are used for a particular kind of card game and are used to predict the future and as a source of theory and occult symbolism. In countries such as England and the United States, where they have never been very popular as a game, most of the people who have heard of them know them only for this second use; but in Italy, as in many other European countries, they are known just as well for their use in games. Our question is: for which of these two uses were they originally designed?)
That is not the question he actually answers. What he answers is something more comprehensive: When were tarot cards first used for predicting the future and as a source of theory and occult symbolism? His answer is that it was not until around 1770 in France. In fact, it seems as though he wants to say that about cards in general, not just tarot cards.

About the original purpose of the game, in my view if we have only vague ideas about what the deck originally consisted of or who invented it, speculation about why it was invented won't get very far. If it started as an expansion of Emperors and incorporated the seven virtues and the seven Petrarchan-Boccaccian virtues, perhaps using a chess analogy, that suggests that it was not invented for the purposes of cartomancy, nor with any hidden meanings. The question for me, as for “hidden meanings” and meanings generally, is whether there are any reasons for supposing these purposes might have influenced the deck (tarot and otherwise) and its use as it developed and afterwards, but before 1770?

One argument is that there are no reports of such uses, and it is something we would expect to have been reported, starting with the "Steele Sermon". Speaking of that preacher, Dummett says (p. 112):
Possiamo solo concludere che, mentre gli erano perfettamente noti la composizione del mazzo dei tarocchi e il suo uso per il gioco, non aveva il più lontano sentore di qualsiasi altro uso. Se i trionfi del mazzo dei tarocchi fossero stati originariamente ideati per scopi divinatori o comunque occultistici, l’aura magica sarebbe rimasta loro appiccicata: ma di quest’aura non troviamo traccia prima del tardo XVIII secolo.

(We can only conclude that, while the composition of the tarot deck they were perfectly known, and its use for the game, he had not the most distant hint of any other use. If the trumps of the tarot deck they were originally designed for divination or otherwise occult purposes, the magical aura would have been pasted
on them: but we find no trace of this aura before the late eighteenth century.)
It is not easy to speculate on someone's motives a long time ago. Either the preacher didn't know or didn't want to publicize this use. If he publicized it, it might get people interested in that use who hadn’t known about it before. If he didn't know, it might have been because there was good reason not to tell a preacher such as this one.

Ross Caldwell (http://www.academia.edu/6477311/Brief_h ... cartomancy) has documented some examples of card-reading for fortune-telling in Spain of the 16th century, and they are all in witchcraft cases, or about fictional witches. If there aren't any for Ferrara or Lombardy, it may be because the records of the Lombard Inquisition were all destroyed in 1787. (Most of what is known is from the memoirs of Inquistors, who boasted of what amounts to about 60 burnings a year in the area northwest and northeast of Milan.) The Lombard Inquistion, assigned to the Dominicans, had jurisdiction over Ferrara, Milan, Bologna, and points north, east and west, except Venice. Andrea has documented one example of the Venetian Inquisition's prosecution of a "witch" using the Devil card to cast a spell; that is not exactly cartomancy. Although the Estensi did what they could to minimize its role in their cities, this did not apply to smaller jurisdictions. especially if requested by their rulers. Count Giovanni Francesco Pico della Mirandola, the more famous Pico's successor, wrote an account of their successful prosecution and burning in his domain in 1515. In 1505, he he had writttn against divination, including with "images depicted in a card game" as one kind of sortilege (literally, the "reading of fates"), Ross documents. Ross also cites other somewhat unclear references that sound like fortune-telling with cards as early as 1450 in Spain. Tarot is not mentioned, however, just "figures",which might mean just court cards. Tarot is not mentioned by name until Etteilla in 1770, in passing and not described. as Dummett observes. However it is mentioned in Marseille in 1772 (cited by Caldwell), and I at least find it unlikely that the woman put in shackles there with a bonnet of "tarots" was already a student of Etteilla's as yet unpublished method of tarot reading.

Dummett goes on:
E assai frequente, per esempio, che gli studiosi suggeriscano, senza traccia di prove, che un qualche tipo di mazzo di carte — mettiamo, il mazzo mamelucco — sia stato usato per scopi divinatori: non viene loro in mente di aver bisogno di prove per un’ipotesi del genere più di quanto non pensino che occorrano prove per dimostrare che le spade erano usate per combattere. Questo atteggiamento è del tutto errato. Come il nome stesso suggerisce, le carte da gioco {chartae lusoriae, cartes à jouer, Spielkarten, playing cards) furono fin dall’inizio considerate strumenti per giocare, come gli scacchi: parecchi secoli passarono dopo la prima introduzione delle carte in Europa prima che venisse in mente a qualcuno usarle per la divinazione.

And very frequently, for example, that scholars suggest, without a trace of evidence, that some kind of deck of cards - say, the Mameluke deck - has been used for divination purposes: it does not come into their mind that they need evidence to such a situation more than they think that there must be evidence to show that the swords were used for fighting. This attitude is totally wrong. As the name suggests, playing cards (chartae lusoriae, cartes à jouer, Spielkarten, carte da gioco) were considered from the outset instruments for play, like chess: several centuries passed before after the introduction of the cards in Europe before it first came to anyone’s mind to use them for divination.)
Mamluk cards had writing on them, adages or proverbs. Here are some examples (from http://www.wopc.co.uk/egypt/mamluk/index.html):
“With the sword of happiness I shall redeem a beloved who will afterwards take my life“ - “O thou who hast possessions, remain happy and thou shalt have a pleasant life.” - “Let it come to me, because acquired good is durable; it rejoices me with all its utility” - “Pleasures for the soul and agreeable things, in my colours there are all kinds” - “Look how wonderful my game is and my dress extraordinarily beautiful” - “I am as a garden, the like of which will never exist” - “O my heart, for thee the good news that rejoices” - “Rejoice in the happiness that returns, as a bird that sings its joy”.
“As for the present that rejoices, thy heart will soon open up“ - “I will, as pearls on a string, be lifted in the hands of kings” - “May God give thee prosperity; then thou will already have achieved thy aim” - “Rejoice for thy lasting happiness” - “Rejoice in the pleasant things and the success of the objects” - “I am as a flower, a string of pearls is my soil?” - “The alif rejoices and fulfils your wishes” - “Whosoever will call me to his happiness, he will only see joyful looks”.
They are like Chinese fortune cookies. Not divination, but instructive regarding one’s proper attitude toward the world. It mostly shows that there was no dichotomy between instruction and game-playing.

However then it appears that even if cards were used in fortune-telling, that is not what cartomancy consists of, in Dummett’s view:
La predizione dell’avvenire non è da identificare con lo studio serio delle scienze occulte o con la pratica seria della magia. La divinazione può essere un semplice passatempo, senza che coloro che vi partecipano vi prestino fede; oppure può basarsi sulla pura superstizione, sfruttata dagli indovini di mestiere. Per gli occultisti sinceri, d’altronde, la teoria delia magia è una scienza profonda, e la sua pratica una disciplina ardua, che si può esercitare solo sulla base di una conoscenza della teoria: secondo loro, bisogna celare sia la teoria che la pratica al volgo, che le fraintenderebbe e ne abuserebbe. Perciò essi disdegnano gli indovini di mestiere e i loro clienti; disdegnano anche quelli che si dilettano di predizione senza essere istruiti nelle scienze occulte. Gli occultisti ritengono che nessun vero mago venderebbe per denaro la sua perizia. Di conseguenza, gli indovini di mestiere sono ciarlatani, e i dilettanti sono frivoli: desiderano i frutti della magia, senza la fatica di ottenerli.

Benché, fuori dell’ambito degli occultisti impegnati, po- [end of 112] chissimi abbiano una vera fiducia nella magia, molti nutrono una credenza parziale. Questi non suppongono che ci si possa rendere invisibili, per esempio, o far apparire gli spiriti dei morti. Pensano, comunque, che un mago possa essere capace di scacciare la sfortuna, per mezzo di talismani o incanti, e di predire la sorte. Per questa ragione, la divinazione è l’abilità principale che la gente si aspetta dal mago. La gente comune non sa niente delle teorie grandiose degli occultisti; per essa, la magia è interessante solo se produce risultati e il primo risultato che si aspetta è la predizione.

Per gli occultisti la divinazione è uno degli scopi della loro tecnica magica; ma le attribuiscono poca importanza, appunto a causa della sua pratica da parte degli indovini di mestiere, che essi disprezzano. Inoltre, essi usano solo metodi basati su un’intera teoria magica del cosmo, che postula sistematiche connessioni fra fenomeni diversi. Un occultista, dunque, di solito non userà come strumento di divinazione un qualsiasi artefatto che gli capiti per caso fra le mani: userà solo cose che, a suo parere, abbiano un significato cosmico e non esiterà a lasciare agli indovini di mestiere e ai dilettanti molte tecniche per predire la sorte. La divinazione per mezzo di foglie di té o di fondi di caffè, per esempio, non potrebbe essere integrata in una teoria del cosmo; per gli occultisti è solo una tecnica inautentica. Da lungo tempo questi predicevano la sorte per mezzo dell’oroscopo; l’astrologia non era principalmente un metodo di predizione, bensì una scienza genuina basata sul principio della corrispondenza fra il macrocosmo e il microcosmo, che forniva la struttura dell’intera teoria occulta dell’universo.

(The prediction of the future is not to be identified with the serious study of the occult sciences or with the serious practice of magic. Divination can be a simple pastime, without those who participate lending it their faith; or it may be based on pure superstition, exploited by the soothsayers of the trade. To honest occultists, on the other hand, the theory of magic is a deep science, and its practice arduous discipline, which can be exercised only on the basis of a knowledge of the theory: according to them, you have to conceal both the theory and the practice from the crowd, who misunderstand and have abused it. Therefore they despise the soothsayers by trade and their customers; they also despise those who delight inprediction without being instructed in the occult sciences. The occultists believe that no true magician would sell for money his expertise. As a result, the soothsayers of the trade are charlatans and are frivolous amateurs: they want the fruits of magic, without the trouble of getting them.

Although, outside the ambit of the committed occultists, [end of 112] very few have a real belief in magic, many have a partial belief. These do not assume that you can become invisible, for example, or bring up the spirits of the dead. They think, however, that a magician may be able to ward off bad luck, by means of talismans or charms, and fortune-telling. For this reason, divination is a skill that people expect from the wizard. Ordinary people do not know anything about the theories of the great occultists; for them, the magic is interesting only if it produces results and the first result that expect is the prediction

To occultists divination is one of the aims of their magical technique; but one to which they give little importance, precisely because of its practice on the part of fortune tellers by trade, whom they despise. Moreover, they use only methods based on an entire magical theory of the universe, which postulates systematic connections between different phenomena. An occultist, therefore, does not usually use as a tool of divination any artifact that happens by chance in his hands: he only uses things that, in his opinion, have a cosmic significance and will hesitate to leave it to the magicians by trade and amateur many techniques to predict fate. Divination by tea leaves or coffee grounds, for example, could not be integrated into a theory of the cosmos; for occultists it is only an inauthentic technique. For a long time those predicted by the fate of the horoscope; Astrology was not primarily a method of prediction, but a genuine science based on the principle of correspondence between the macrocosm and the microcosm, which provided the structure of the whole occult theory of the universe.
Reading Agrippa Three books on occult philosophy, 1531, a primary source for “occult sciences” of the 16th century, I do not see him despising the “soothsayers by trade”. There are different ways in which the macrocosm affects the microcosm. Some people have an intuitive gift, some go into trance, others just seem inexplicably inspired. The wonder for him is that it happens to people who are quite unlearned.

Dummett speaks of occultists as claiming to have the power to become invisible or bring up spirits of the dead. I do not know who in the Renaissance he is speaking of, outside the realm of fiction, such as Ariosto's Orlando Furioso.

We might ask, is predicting the future by means of Newtonian mechanics an example of occultism? By Dummett’s definition, it would seem to be, because Newtonian mechanics involves a mysterious force called gravity. Galileo refused to believe that the moon affected the tides because"the theory smacked of the occult", as a US Public Broadcasting Service article puts it (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/earth/gali ... stake.html).

As to whether occultists took money for their services, it depends on who Dummett has in mind. Ficino certainly took a villa and an income from the Medici. Bruno was paid by universities and private citizens. Cartomancers later were not above taking money for their services. Etteilla famously advertised his wares in the back of his books, with prices.

Pythagoras was in Renaissance Italy associated with divination. For example, there was a "Wheel of Pythagoras" in c. 1500 Venice (http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_5e7P4Y3Wo3w/T ... 6wheel.jpg), in which one asked a question and the fortune-teller did a number-letter correlation for one's name or birthplace, added the numbers, and looked for it in the center of the card; if the number was on the top half of the card, the answer was yes; if not, no (Heninger, Touches of Sweet Harmony: Pythagorean Cosmology and Renaissance Poetics, p. 238; the Image was originally in Christophe de Cattan, The Geomancie, trans. Francis Sparry, London 1591, but according to Heninger the "wheel" is from Venice a century earlier.) This of course is not Pythagoreanism, but merely the use of his name.

Pythagoreans, as much as Newton (and Kepler actually was one), did believe that number ruled the universe, from the smallest to the largest part of it. Renaissance architects built their edifices on Pythagorean principles, as we learn from books like Pythagorean Palaces. When it comes to cards, I expect that the application would have been less substantial, but real nonetheless For example, the ancient sources, such as the Theologumenae Arithmeticae, held that eight month pregnancies have a lower survival rate than seven or nine month ones. Also, an infant is more likely to die in the eighth hour of life than otherwise. It is concluded that these results have something to do with the Ogdoad. So 8 and 18 becomes numbers of trial (and also the transition from one group of 7 to another). There was much written about the properties of numbers. Their application to cards would only be a particular case, not worth writing about in particular and probably dangerous to do so. And which properties were valuable in cartomancy and which not might have been considered a matter of seeing the results and learning from gifted cartomancers.

When I look at Etteilla or de Mellet, both of whom describe cartomancy, according to Dummett, I do not see any explanation of in terms of occult forces, unless Egyptian myths are such. When I try to analyze Etteilla’s number card meanings in terms of Pythagoreanism (in the thread on the sola-busca pips), it makes a kind of sense. So it is possible that Pythagoreanism was a source at some point, the details of which were forgotten. This is my speculation. The details are not in Etteilla, despite his extolling of the “science of numbers”.

I argued in a previous post that the tarot sequence, being numbered, would naturally have been interpreted, and also ordered so that it could be interpreted, in terms of Pythagorean number theory. The Pythagorean associations for each of the first ten numbers were very numerous; just look at the text surrounding the "Tarotica" document, which is a list of such associations. Given that the suits had particular associations--batons to the countryside, peasants, minor nobility, and fertility, swords with soldiers, war, law, etc.; coins with money and other sorts of wealth; and cups with love, it would be possible to generate four types of Pythagorean interpretations of each of the ten numerical suit-cards. De Mellet’s wording (“portend” etc) is both an interpretation of the suit-signs and also an indication of their use in fortune-telling. However he does not invoke Pythagreanism for particular numbers, nor is it clear why particular numbers get particular interpretations. The origin of the interpretations has been lost.

For Dummett cartomancy is intrinsically part of a larger magical repertory. This may have been true for Levi etc., although nowhere in his book does Dummett give any details, even for him, or others who followed. If there were such cartomantists in the 15th-16th centuries, it is not surprising that we don’t know about them. Magic was linked with witchcraft. Even the mildest sort, i.e. wearing certain gems in order to bring down certain celestial influences, was considered heretical by powerful Dominicans, as Ficino found out (described in vol. 9 of his letters).

Dummett moves on to examples in art that have been thought to suggest cartomancy. One is a painting he has already discussed in Game of Tarot, p. 94. Mary Greer has a nice discussion of it, with pictures, at http://marygreer.wordpress.com/2009/11/ ... %E2%80%9D/. She says Lucas van Leyden did it at age 14, in 1508. I don’t know how she knows that; to me it merely seems the earliest possibility, and it is not even clear that he did it. An inaccurate engraving was made of it for a French magazine in 1842, whether she was playing cards or not was unclear in the original, because only her part of the table was visible; the engravng showed much more of the table, with nobody at it. Here is Dummett (p. 114f):
Il dipinto mostra davvero una donna seduta a un tavolo nell’atto di maneggiare carte, ma del tavolo se ne vede molto meno e non c’è motivo per ritenere che la donna non stia semplicemente partecipando a un gioco di carte con altri giocatori che non compaiono nel quadro. Sia nel dipinto che nell’incisione, la donna sta ricevendo — o forse glielo sta dando — un giglio da un giovanotto in piedi alla sua destra, che si leva il berretto davanti a lei; ma, nel quadro, le è molto più vicino e in atteggiamento meno supplice. Il professor Hoffmann ritiene che il quadro raffiguri il figliol prodigo che dissipa i suoi beni in una vita dissoluta. Devo confessare che la gente ritratta nel quadro non mi sembra particolarmente dissoluta; ma, quale che sia il soggetto del quadro, non c’è nulla in esso che implichi che ci troviamo di fronte a un [end of 114] episodio di divinazione, né, per quanto ne so, esiste alcuna prova che il titolo ‘Filippo il Buono che consulta l’indovina’ sia mai stato attribuito al quadro prima del 1842

(The painting actually shows a woman sitting at a table in the act of handling the cards, but of the table we see a lot less and there is no reason to believe that the woman is not merely participating in a game of cards with other players who do not appear in the picture. Both in the painting and the engraving, the woman is receiving - or perhaps is giving him - a lily from a young man standing at her right hand, who holds his cap before her; but, in the painting, has the much closer and less suppliant attitude. Professor Hoffmann believes that the painting depicts the prodigal son who dissipates his property in dissolute living. I must confess that the people portrayed in the picture does not seem particularly dissolute; but, whatever the subject of the picture, there is nothing in it that implies that we are facing an [end of 114] episode of divination, nor, as far as I know, is there evidence that the title 'Philip the Good, who consults the seer' has ever been attributed to the painting prior to 1842.)
Image

It seems to me that if she were playing cards with others, there would have been some indication in the painting. Ot else it is intentionally ambiguous. Greer says that the central figure is thought by some to be Margaretha of Austria and Savoy. She has an interesting history. She was born in Flanders in 1480, daughter of Maximilian I and Mary of Burgundy. At the age of 3 she was betrothed to the Dauphin of France but was sent back to her family at age 10 when Charles VII married someone else (his stepmother, actually). So from age 3 to age 10 she is with the French court somewhere in France, where she becomes friends with Louise of Savoy; then she's back to Flanders. In 1494 she becomes stepdaughter of Bianca Maria Sforza, daughter of Galeazzo Maria Sforza. It is not clear if they actually met. In 1497 she marries the son of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain and went to Madrid. He died 6 months later and her child was stillborn. In 1501 she married Phillip of Savoy, whom she loved greatly and who supported Ludovico Sforza against the French until "they made him an offer he couldn't refuse", Greer says. He died, her brother Phillip the Handsome died, and in 1506 (Wikipedia) or 1507 (Greer) she became Regent of the Netherlands. She vowed never to remarry and took the motto "FORTUNE . INFORTUNE . FORT.UNE, meaning “Fortune, misfortune, and one strong to meet them.” She ruled wisely, apparently. She and her sister-in-law Louise negotiated the Treaty of Cambrai. Greer's discussion on Aeclectic says that Cornelius Agrippa was her "panegyrist." I do not know what that means in particular. (http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.ph ... 534&page=5).

Greer thinks it's either a commemoration of her accession as regent of the Southern Netherlands, with important political personnages around her, or an allegory of fortune, with the person in back of the lady as a professional Fool. If it's about fortune, she would either be playing some game or seeing what the cards foresaw for her. Solitaire wasn't invented yet. It is objected that since she only holds a few cards it wouldn't be fortune-telling. But maybe these are the ones she's drawn. It did not take many cards to read a fortune. There is a hint of more at the lower border, probably the deck she drew from.

It certainly looks to me like she's saying something that the people around her find disturbing. The painting is probably around the time of her vow not to remarry. So I'd guess it has to do with that. Maybe the person in back is a suitor, or perhaps her husband or brother; admirers were sometimes portrayed with guitars to serenade their beloved with (there is a guitar on the man's back). In that context, the cards she has drawn, so far as we can see, contain no court cards. A common interpretation of court cards in Etteilla's method was to predict a romantic interest in the near future: a Jack of Hearts meant a young blond man, etc. (Even in 1450 Spain, Ross quotes an author as saying how, with a special form of the common naïpes that he had designed, players could "tell fortunes with them to know who each one loves most and who is most desired and by many other and diverse ways" [http://www.academia.edu/6477311/Brief_h ... cartomancy].) There are no men in Margaretha's future, in other words. This is not necessarily a formal card reading (which would be important to be able to deny, if there was suspicion that someone was endorsing witchcraft). Actual hands of a game also were interpreted symbolically (as in a humorous round of Piquet in a 1727 book reported at http://marygreer.wordpress.com/2008/04/ ... ing-cards/). The person on our left might be her dead husband or brother, or another suitor (although a bit young). Her husband had called her a flower, Greer says. Her name is the French word for daisy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daisy_%28given_name%29). The flower he offers her is not a daisy, but perhaps that was considered too common a flower to give her.

Her song-book, posted by MJ Hurst at has a tarot-like "ranks of man" picture (http://pre-gebelin.blogspot.com/2013/02 ... nkind.html)
Image


The other painting Dummett discusses appears not to have been discussed in Game of Tarot--or anywhere else that I can find. Here is Dummett. footnote 8 on p. 119):
8. Un articolo di Gunter Grzimek, ‘Warum stets nach dem dernier [corrected from my "demier"] cri?’, in Die Weltkunst, Jhrg. XXX, n. 13, 1 luglio 1960, pp. 5-6, riguarda un quadro, riprodotto, che fa parte della collezione privata dell’autore, a cui egli dà il titolo ‘La cartomante’. Il quadro, che egli data al 1648 circa, mostra una vecchia che guarda dritto davanti a sé con la palma della destra alzata verso lo spettatore. La sinistra poggia su un gran libro aperto, su cui sono buttate alla rinfusa carte con semi francesi, alcune in procinto di cadere dal bordo del libro. Anche se la datazione del dottor Grizmek è corretta, cosa di cui dubito, c tutt’altro che chiaro che la vecchia stia divinando dalle carte, azione che richiede una disposizione ben ordinata. Questo quadro non può essere usato come prova di una pratica della cartomanzia nel XVII secolo.

(8. An article by Gunter Grzimek, 'Warum stets nach dem Dernier cri [corrected from "demier Christian]?',in Die Weltkunst, Jhrg. XXX, no. 13, July 1, 1960, pp. 5-6 relates to a picture, reproduced, which is part of the private collection of the author, to which he gives the title 'The cartomant'. The painting, which he dates to 1648 or so, shows an old woman looking straight ahead with the palm of her right hand raised toward the viewer. The left rests on a large open book, on which are thrown higgledy-piggledy cards with French suits, some about to fall off the edge of the book. Although the dating of Dr. Grizmek may be correct, which I doubt, it is far from clear that the old woman is divining by cards, an action that requires a well-ordered arrangement. This picture cannot be used as evidence of a practice of cartomancy in the seventeenth century.)
It is not at all clear that divination requires a well-ordered arrangement. That is a projection of present practice onto a much earlier time. How can he claim to know what the practice in other forms of divination were, such that this particular method is excluded from being applied here? Throwing objects down and interpreting events from the way they lie is described is described in a 14th century poem about Roland. Andrea talks about it at http://www.associazioneletarot.it/page.aspx?id=449
Il cerchio, le ossa di morti impiccati e le parole infernali sono componenti comuni della ritualità magica. A proposito del cerchio occorre ricordare, in riferimento all’utilizzo delle carte a scopo divinatorio, che un verso del Canto XX del poema La Spagna Istoriata, un romanzo cavalleresco composto nel XIV secolo ma stampato a Milano solo nel 1519, fa riferimento al sortilegio con il quale Rolando cercò di scoprire i nemici di Carlo Magno: “Fe’ un cerchio e poscia vi gittò le carte” il che vuol dire, come argutamente suggerisce il Lozzi in un suo articolo del 1899, che “non gittò le carte come si fa nel giuoco, o nella gittata de’ dadi, ma le gittò entro al cerchio, per iscoprire dalla loro giacitura, determinata da virtù magica (sortilegio) quali fossero e dove si trovassero i nemici dell’imperatore” (9). Non sappiamo di preciso quale tecnica volesse intendere l’autore del poema nello scrivere questi versi, cioè se facesse riferimento ad una lettura di carte utilizzate come gli astragali, in cui il responso intuitivo veniva emesso dall’osservazione del disegno complessivo che gli ossi venivano a creare una volta gettati a terra o se invece si trattasse di una vera e propria lettura come conosciamo oggi

(The circle, the bones of dead hanged ones, and infernal words are common components of ritual magic. About the circle it should be recalled, in reference to the use of the cards for divination, that a verse of Canto XX of the poem Storied Spain, a chivalric romance composed in the fourteenth century but only printed in Milan in 1519, makes reference to the sortilege with which Roland sought to discover the enemies of Charlemagne: "He made a circle and afterwards threw the cards", which means, as Lozzi pointedly suggests in his article of 1899, that "he threw the cards as is done in a game, or in the throwing of dice, but threw them within the circle, to discover from their arrangement, as determined by magic power (sortilege) who were the enemies of the Emperor and where they were to be found" (9). We do not know exactly what technique the author of the poem meant in writing these verses, that is, if it refers to a reading of cards used as knucklebones, in which the response issued was an intuitive observation of the overall design that the bones created once thrown to the ground or whether it was an actual reading as we know it today.)
It strikes me that the book in the painting might have served as a substitute for the less witchlike magic circle.

Dummett next discusses lot-books and why they shouldn’t be considered cartomancy when cards are involved. I will get to that next.
Last edited by mikeh on 30 Jul 2014, 00:37, edited 1 time in total.

Re: Dummett's "Il Mondo e L'Angelo" & More

138
mikeh wrote: Throwing objects down and interpreting events from the way they lie is described is described in a 14th century poem about Roland. Andrea talks about it at http://www.associazioneletarot.it/page.aspx?id=449
Il cerchio, le ossa di morti impiccati e le parole infernali sono componenti comuni della ritualità magica. A proposito del cerchio occorre ricordare, in riferimento all’utilizzo delle carte a scopo divinatorio, che un verso del Canto XX del poema La Spagna Istoriata, un romanzo cavalleresco composto nel XIV secolo ma stampato a Milano solo nel 1519, fa riferimento al sortilegio con il quale Rolando cercò di scoprire i nemici di Carlo Magno: “Fe’ un cerchio e poscia vi gittò le carte” il che vuol dire, come argutamente suggerisce il Lozzi in un suo articolo del 1899, che “non gittò le carte come si fa nel giuoco, o nella gittata de’ dadi, ma le gittò entro al cerchio, per iscoprire dalla loro giacitura, determinata da virtù magica (sortilegio) quali fossero e dove si trovassero i nemici dell’imperatore” (9). Non sappiamo di preciso quale tecnica volesse intendere l’autore del poema nello scrivere questi versi, cioè se facesse riferimento ad una lettura di carte utilizzate come gli astragali, in cui il responso intuitivo veniva emesso dall’osservazione del disegno complessivo che gli ossi venivano a creare una volta gettati a terra o se invece si trattasse di una vera e propria lettura come conosciamo oggi

(The circle, the bones of dead hanged ones, and infernal words are common components of ritual magic. About the circle it should be recalled, in reference to the use of the cards for divination, that a verse of Canto XX of the poem Storied Spain, a chivalric romance composed in the fourteenth century but only printed in Milan in 1519, makes reference to the sortilege with which Roland sought to discover the enemies of Charlemagne: "He made a circle and afterwards threw the cards", which means, as Lozzi pointedly suggests in his article of 1899, that "he threw the cards as is done in a game, or in the throwing of dice, but threw them within the circle, to discover from their arrangement, as determined by magic power (sortilege) who were the enemies of the Emperor and where they were to be found" (9). We do not know exactly what technique the author of the poem meant in writing these verses, that is, if it refers to a reading of cards used as knucklebones, in which the response issued was an intuitive observation of the overall design that the bones created once thrown to the ground or whether it was an actual reading as we know it today.)
It strikes me that the book in the painting might have served as a substitute for the less witchlike magic circle.
I investigated this case of Spagna Istoriata several years ago. It is clear that the cartomantic reading of "gittò le carte" is wishful thinking.

Here is a post to Mary Greer on her query about it in April 2009 -

"Yes, I looked into this a couple of months ago. The short answer is that the phrase fece un cerchio e poscia gittò le carte (he made a circle and cast the cards (or, pages)) doubtlessly occurs in the Milan 1519 edition of "La Spagna". However, it does not seem to occur in any other edition, earlier or later, and in the critical edition of Michele Catalano, La Spagna Poema cavalleresco del secolo XIV (Bologna, 1939-1940), based on the three extant manuscripts, a different phrase is used in this place - fece un gran cerchio e poi gettava l'arte (he made a big circle and then cast the art).

So what's going on here?

I read this on the net somewhere - maybe AT, which referred to Huson. Huson (p. 46) says that van Rijnberk discovered it, but he didn't provide a quote and I didn't have van Rijnberk yet. So I checked my Italian sources, where two of them mention it: Berti (Storia dei Tarocchi, 2007, p. 95), gives the quote and cites van Rijnberk. The second Italian language source to mention it is Terry Zanetti in Vitali and Zanetti, Il tarocchino di Bologna (Martina, 2005), p. 75. She gives a slightly different rendering of the quote - Fe' un cerchio e poscia vi gittò le carte - and instead of mentioning van Rijnberk cites an article by C. Lozzi in La Bibliofilia from 1899.

So it seemed that van Rijnberk couldn't have claimed this discovery - this made me all the more anxious to see what he really said. But in the meantime, armed with the quote in its two forms I managed to trace its history on the web (La Bibliofilia is at the Internet Archive) and through Google Books.

Lozzi mentions a baron Reiffenberg, who also mentioned the phrase in a brief communication "on the antiquity of playing cards" in 1838, in Bulletins de l'Académie Royale des Sciences et Belles-Lettres de Bruxelles (tom. IV, Bruxelles, 1838), pp. 66-68. Frédéric Auguste Ferdinand Thomas, baron de Reiffenberg (1795-1850), actually does claim to have discovered it, or at least its significance for playing card history. In reviewing the recent work of Duchesne, de Reiffenberg writes:

"From his dissertation he concludes that cards are of Italian origin and were invented during the 14th century, without giving a precise year or naming the author of this innovation. That which he was not able to discover, I will hardly reveal with that pride in trivial things so natural to pedants; I only want to draw attention to a passage from an old Italian, a passage in support of Mr. Duchesne, and which has not been noted until now. Indeed, in our country and even in Italy the Spagna Istoriata, one of the numerous forgeries of the ancient epics of troubadours and bards, is barely read. However, in this work, Roland has recourse to sortilege to discover the enemies of the Emperor Charlemagne.
Fece un cerchio e poscia gittò le carte (Canto XX).
He made a circle, says the author, and then threw the cards. Is it a case here of those same cards which serve for idle amusement, and in which diviners (devineresses) read the future? I am disposed to believe it, all the more since the Spagna Istoriata, printed in Milan in 1519, is assumed to have been composed in the 14th century, which agrees with Mr. Duchesne.
"

That might seem the end to it, but while it seems the Baron is claiming the discovery for himself directly from the 1519 edition, in fact there is a still earlier mention in 1812, by P. L. Ginguené. In the Histoire Littéraire d'Italie, vol. 4 (Paris, 1812), Ginguené discusses the Charlemagne romances, and recounts the story as it is given in the Milan 1519 edition of La Spagna, which he believed to be the oldest edition (the first edition is in fact Bologna, 1487). He recounts the episode as "A Sudanese (un soudan), that Roland had converted in Asia, had given him a grimoire: now he worked it, made a circle, threw the cards, read the formula of evocation, and immediately a crowd of demons appeared and demanded his orders." For the phrase "threw the cards" (jette les cartes), Ginguené quotes in the footnote fece un cerchio e poscia gittò le carte (Cant. XX).

Whatever the relationship between Reiffenberg and Ginguené (I guess Reiffenberg found it in Ginguené), Ginguené helped resolve an issue that came up when I finally got van Rijnberk's Le Tarot (1947).

Van Rijnberk's account is: "An allusion of uncertain value can still be found in an Italian poem, Spagna istoriata. This poem, written in the 14th century, was not printed until 1519, in Milan. In canto XX, there is a verse which indicates that Roland, in order to discover where the enemies of Charlemagne might be found, had recourse to magic: Fece un cerchio e gittô le carte. "He made a (magic) circle and there threw the cards (with a divinatory aim)." (pp. 37-38) That's all he says - no claim to discovery. Note also that he or the printer misprinted the accent (a circumflex instead of a grave accent) and he misquotes the verse - it should have 15 syllables, as both the critical edition version and the Milan 1519 have. Anyway, in his bibliography he describes his source: [Item] 153 - Spagna istoriata. Poem written in the 14th century, printed in Milan, 1519. See Tiraboschi: Storia delle letteratura italiana, T. V, parte 2, p. 402."

That reference would potentially push things back into the 18th century, with Tiraboschi's first edition. Luckily, Internet Archive and Google Books both have multiple editions of Tiraboschi, but in none of them does this reference occur. It turns out to be a case of bad editing or bad memory on van Rijnberk's part - the Tiraboschi reference does contain something of interest for playing card history, namely the story of Pipozzo di Sandro which appears to mention cards in 1299. This is now known to be a case of interpolation (see e.g. Kaplan I, p. 31). But the explanation for van Rijnberk's mistake must be that he remembered or had a note of Ginguené's "Histoire littéraire d'Italie", which is the translation of the title of Tiraboschi's work. So in fact, Ginguené must be van Rijnberk's source.

So what about the actual meaning and significance of the 1519 quote itself?

Nobody quotes the whole passage of the 1519 edition, but Ginguené's account describes it well enough. The Catalano critical edition gives it in Canto XXI (this story is not in Canto XX in this edition) -

"Orlando a tal parole alzò le ciglia
e di botto ebbe mala opinione,
dandosi di tal cosa maraviglia.
Parte da Carlo e va al suo padiglione,
e 'l libro in mano subito allor piglia,
de che il Soldano gli fe' donagione.
Dentro del padiglion da una parte
fece un gran cerchio e poi gettava l'arte."

The action seems to me to be throwing or casting open the grimoire (the "arte").

From the description and quotes of other parts of the poem in the 1519 edition in Ginguené, I can compare the same parts in the critical edition, and find that the Milan edition has subtle changes in wording, although they are recognizably the same passages. So it seems that the Milan edition is a reworking, perhaps a unique one, but not one attested in manuscript.

1519 would an early date for a carto-magical reference, but does "carte" really mean "playing cards" here? Given the context of the grimoire, and the fact that cards would be incongruous in this situation (he is not reading them, and how would he invoke demons with them?), I tend to think that "carte" here means "pages", as in the pages of a book, i.e. the grimoire itself. Thus the 1519 edition and the manuscript readings have the same sense - he is throwing open his grimoire, or "casting" the spell.

That's my take anyway. This is the same as Aretino's use of "turn the carta" in his Pippa story. Apollinaire translates it "turn the page" - which fits with the context of the episode, as well as with Nanna's advice to Pippa (or is it vice-versa) earlier in the book to never have cards or dice in her house.

(Later post:

From Canto XXI, La Spagna, poema cavalleresco del secolo XIV (ed. Carlotta Gradi, 1996; reproduces edition of Michele Catalano, 1939-40)

38

Orlando a tal parole alzò le ciglia
e di botto ebbe mala opinione,
dandosi di tal cosa maraviglia.
Parte da Carlo e va al suo padiglione,
e 'l libro in mano subito allor piglia,
di che il Soldano gli fe' donagione.
Dentro del padiglion da una parte
fece un gran cerchio e poi gettava l'arte.

39

Legendo il libro, ben mille demoni
entrar nel cerchio, tra piccoli e grandi.
Tutti gridavan con alti sermoni:
- Che vuo' tu, conte? Che vuo'? Che domandi? -
Temette il conte per tal condizioni,
ch'a pena tien ch'a Dio non s'accomandi;
poi disse lor: - Chi ha più maestria
rimanga qui e gli altri vadan via. -

He has a book in hand, he makes the circle, then he "throws the art", then immediately in the next verse starts reading (leggendo il libro), whereupon thousands of demons, big and small, enter the circle.

I think the best reading for "gettava" here is then "threw OPEN" the book.

So for the 1519 edition, I'm supposing (without having the text to see) that it would be "threw open the pages" - just a different rendering of the same meaning.

Ross

(note - I also posted this here on THF in July 2009 -
viewtopic.php?f=14&t=322&start=10#p4076 )
Image

Re: Dummett's "Il Mondo e L'Angelo" & More

139
hi Ross ... nice research story ... :-)

MikeH .... For the picture:

Image


It's by Lucas van Leyden, who worked for Margaretha



Lucas van Leyden made also this painting, which shows Margaretha (likely) with the Courier chess game. Both pictures are dated to c. 1508.

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

Here are (likely) 3 important players:

Image

also van Leyden
http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/l ... rdpla.html
given with the commentary:
This painting is a good example of the combination of Italian Renaissance tendencies with the artist's native Flemish inheritance.

It is assumed that the subject of the painting may not be the obvious one of card players, but may in fact refer to a secret political alliance at the highest level. In this case the figure on the left would be Emperor Charles V and on the right Cardinal Wolsey, and both would be entering into a secret agreement between Spain and England against Francis I of France. The woman in the centre would be Margaret of Austria, sister of Charles V and regent of the Netherlands.
Other van Leyden pictures ... he loved the card playing scenes, or Margaretha loved to be painted with cards or games.

Image


Image


from http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/l/leyden/

Also ...
http://germany.intofineart.com/upload1/ ... 937793.jpg

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

Your scan and translation machines produced an error.

The title "Warum stets nach dem demier cri?" should be ‘Warum stets nach dem dernier cri?’ and 'dernier cri' is a French expression import to German language, and meaning "last fashion" or "newest fashion".
You're "Demier Cristian" goes very wrong.
Huck
http://trionfi.com

Re: Dummett's "Il Mondo e L'Angelo" & More

140
Ross wrote:
1519 would an early date for a carto-magical reference, but does "carte" really mean "playing cards" here? Given the context of the grimoire, and the fact that cards would be incongruous in this situation (he is not reading them, and how would he invoke demons with them?), I tend to think that "carte" here means "pages", as in the pages of a book, i.e. the grimoire itself. Thus the 1519 edition and the manuscript readings have the same sense - he is throwing open his grimoire, or "casting" the spell.
Made me think of this famous image from a 100 years later, complete with un gran cerchio and casting of a spell from a book:
Image

A woodcut from the front of the broadside ballad The Tragedy of Doctor Lambe (1628).

Phaeded