... :-) ... Chess players themselves are the gods for the micro world of the chess figures.mikeh wrote:....
I still don't see how anything else about the cards could come out of chess, except possibly that. chess allegories cleared some good ground for other allegorical games (although surely there were allegorical games even before chess started being allegoricized).
We know more about the Michelino than we do about the Cary-Yale. How does anything else about chess except the number 16 get reflected in the Michelino trumps? I mean, chess doesn't have 4 groups of 4 each. or 2 goods and 2 bads, or even any gods.
The association of Greek/Roman gods to Chess is proven by contemporary texts, first it's the text of Evrart da Conty and a poem, which preceded this text (which I don't know), another Spanish text followed around 1470 and an Italian around 1515. More precise dates are in the chess collection thread.
And the fourth is somehow the Martiano da Tortona text.
Chess has 8 pairs, cause each officer has a related pawn. Knights for instance are related to a smith, cause they need him for their armor, and they are related to the doorkeeper, who decides, who may enter the city and who not.
Then they have 4 groups, cause there are 4 pawns at the king's side, 4 pawns at the Queen's side, and three officers help the Queen (next 4) and 3 officers help the king (another 4).
The professions show, that the King's pawns have the character of male reign, and the Queen's pawn have the character of female reign.
King's side:
Farmer's pay taxes.
Smith deliver armor.
Barber is needed, cause men have more hair (beard).
Advocat or Merchant are needed for jurisdiction and for economy.
Queen's side.
Physician is needed for women more than for men.
Innkeeper for festivities.
Doorkeeper to protect the cities (Queens rule, when the husband has one of his many journeys.
Messenger for diplomatic contacts.
Of course there are groups of 4.
You're no really informed about the difference between old chess and modern chess. The old Queen was very weak, she became strong between 1470 and 1530, when modern chess developed. Similar the bishop was very limited in his actions, his movement was also reformed between 1470-1530. See chess thread.Then I'd ask the same about the CY. There, you have a definite order of trumps, from least powerful to most powerful.
That order isn't at all like the order of power in chess. The Empress, unlike the Queen in chess, isn't a very powerful card, judging by all later orderings. The Emperor isn't vital to protect. There aren't pairs of cards equally powerful, with a bunch on the bottom like pawns. It seems like you have to go outside of chess to explain the power hierarchy, and then in fact chess is irrelevant. It's good as window-dressing, and dressing something up as though it were like chess might be important to some people, even Filippo, but that's all it is, as far as I can tell.
We don't know, what sort of games was played with the cards. And actually we don't know all old chess variations, which were played. For instance we have already a very old chess variant with the Corier game, where the Courier was already the modern bishop. But this game uses a larger board and more figures. It's first recorded in c. 1200-1210 (Wigalois), but a legend says, that it reaches up to the first beginnings of chess in Europe.
For Tarot we have a general line iof the rules, which survived, but surely not all. Maybe some games used a row hierarchy and others not.
We have in the surviving row of Tarot, that Empress and Emperor are low cards, and indeed in the practice of the old chess game they are weak figures. For rooks (Towers) we have in the practice of old chess, that they are the strongest figures. In the Cary Yale we have Tower symbols as secondary attributes at the cards Judgment and Fame. Look at them, that you understand, what I mean.
Judgment and Fame are later in the Tarot row "high cards" as Rooks have been the strongest figures.
In the Booiardo Tarocchi poem (dated 1487) we have the "ruine" ...
.. in trump 20, so a high card. And also in the Sola Busca (dated 1491), see trump 20:Oblivion di termine e confine
Del tutto sei, Elice e Dido a Lethe
Menasti, e famma e tempo hai in toe ruine.
Oblivion, you are the end and boundary
Of all, you took to Lethe Elice and Dido,
And among your ruins you have fame and time.
Well, that's the period, when Spanish (modern) chess started to invade Italy. In the later sequence we have, that the tower is moved to number 16 (often) and 16 is he number of the chess figures. Perhaps remembering, that the old game was changed.
... :-) ... it isn't so, that older chess history is easy to understand. There are lot of variations and it's a theme similar complex as Tarot history. Tarot for instance is mostly played with the rule, that you have to trump, if you can. This is very different for instance to Bridge and other trumping games. But in chess a variation existed, already known to king Alfonso X, in which you had to take a figure, if you can. So I wrote once:
A chess variant, which is called "forced" or "game of the damsels"This is of special interest, as the later Tarot card games differed from other trump card games, that trumping was "forced" (you MUST capture, if you can) ... as in the chess game of the damsels. "invented it overseas" likely meant, that this version developed in England (?).And we wish next to tell of the game which they call forced. And this is because even though it
may be played according to each player’s will, in it there is also to be an element of force because
a man goes against his will losing his best piece to his opponent’s worst, willing or not by putting
it on a square where the other is forced to capture it, according to the movement of the piece
against which it is put. And this game is arranged just the same as the first and the pieces move
and capture each other in that same way except that there is in addition the forced capture. And
therefore those that play it are to be knowledgeable so that they do not put their best pieces in a
position where they are to give them up to lesser and more lowly pieces. Because in this lies all
the wisdom of this game and its play. And because of this force which we described, they call it
the forced game. But because some tell that the damsels first invented it overseas, they call it the
game of the damsels.
Yes, the Tarot game might have developed from this variant, from which we can't say, how strong it was in the development of chess.
But's it's definitely another game than usual chess with totally different strategies. And it's clear, that this rules lead to a quick game development, so shorter play, something, which might be more according the taste of female players.
There's the suspicion, often noted by myself, that Trionfi cards developed more by female influence than by male. If the forced chess variant was preferred by female players, it seems logical, that a similar behavior might have followed in Tarot rules. From "overseas" might mean from the Spanish perspective England, but also perhaps Italy?
Anyway, the Chess Tarot theory makes only sense inside the original scenario, and that's not modern chess, but the chess development just in the period of 1440-1470 ... before the big chess changes.
Chess unified itself from its many rules to "modern rules" by the influence of book printing. Book printing started c. 1470 in some greater dimensions. Something similar might have happened to card playing rules.