Re: The Marriage Contract

41
http://www.all-art.org/history230-13.html

The reason I have put this here is for this reason..
The prints pinned to the backrest of the long bench resemble those sold during religious festivals or pilgrimages.
I have said before that small cards and pictures were given as gifts on the feast of St JohnThe Baptist and tacked to pews. I knew this also happened at weddings- but have never had pictorial proof.
Now this might be why there is holes in the cards.
Another thing that is interesting is the Bride "never had to lift a finger" on her wedding day.
~Rosanne
The Universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
Eden Phillpotts

Re: The Marriage Contract

43
Debra said it is fun to look at Tarot this way.
Well I think it is Tarot hiding in plain sight.
In reading about the marriage Contract I read about the epithalamia - The wedding oration.
So now there are two places I have seen the Characters of Tarot; the first is in the the fresco of Good and Bad Government in Siena. The second is in the Wedding oration. For example Filelfo wrote at least 6 that have been found... of which it is said
Many orators, on the contrary, would seize the opportunity, not only to flatter the vanity of distinguished hearers, but to load their speeches with an enormous mass of antiquarian rubbish ... Most of Filelfo's speeches are an atrocious patchwork of classical and biblical quotations, tacked on to a string of commonplaces, among which the great people he wishes to flatter are arranged under the head of the cardinal virtues, or some such category, and it is only with the greatest trouble, in his case and in that of many others, that we can extricate the few historical notices of value which they really contain."
Well Fileflo was well liked for his orations apparently- so much so his Oratory skills were printed and copied.
Now it makes sense as to why There is this curious mixture of not quite Christian and not quite Pagan aspects to Tarot.
One author that I found helpful in this search is Diane Robin on Filelfo's writings, and another is Anthony D'elia on Marriage orations in part he says.....
Wedding orations offer a vivid picture of marriage ideals in fifteenth-century Italian courts. Orators added to the pomp and classical atmosphere of weddings with their rhetorical performances and promoted a particular conception of marriage that was drawn more from pagan antiquity than from the Christian tradition. Orators were not pagan in a Burckhardtian sense, as they did not reject Christianity. Humanists usually include prayers to God at the end of their epithalamia and often refer to the sacrament of marriage. The distinctively classical element in wedding orations is the focus on a social and political conception of marriage. Both in sermons and in orations marriage is good from the perspective of Christian morality as a cure for lust and a source of procreation. But, unlike priests and like the ancients, orators also stress that marriage helps rulers achieve personal ambitions. Through marriage, rulers strengthen and expand their empires and gain the economic resources essential for achieving and maintaining political power. Marriage also fulfills the natural desire for physical beauty and sexual pleasure. Orators support such essentially anti-ascetic arguments with the works of Aristotle, Xenophon, Cicero, Livy Lucan, and other classical authors.
I have found they quoted Boccacio and Saint francis of Assisi 's Canticle of the Sun and other poems, Dante,lifes of the Saints, Greek heroes and heroines and where often very long.
The Universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
Eden Phillpotts

Re: The Marriage Contract

44
Now you have not asked or commented on the Premortum (The Hanged Man) when clearly by the time this card was named he had become a Traitor.
I contend that he was the illustration of Money before Death- The grooms money and contribution to marriage.
He was in a very Italian way, a Slave debtor.The cost of the marriage in the 14th and 15th Century was expensive even if you were Nobility or Peasantry or Merchant class.
The idea of a debtor becoming a slave was a very Roman institute.
In shame paintings the image was abstentia and was usually about debt- he owes money and he cannot come back to the city.
It was common for possible Grooms to Contract Marriage and then other better offers came along and it was a balancing act to pay out the Brideprice (because a Contract was a contract) and find another Brideprice. So he was a Traitor. It was just like Shakespeares 'Much ado About Nothing" The prospective Groom slights the Bride to be, and he becomes a traitor to her Virtue.
In most cases of Tarot The HMan comes directly before Death - 'Premortum' and it is strange that Death is in a Marriage Deck anyway. Today the Groom has to pay for the Alcohol at the breakfast and the Flowers if you are been strictly correct...oh and a gift for the bridesmaids...and the Honeymoon. I guess he can become a debt slave to a Bank....
~Lorredan
The Universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
Eden Phillpotts

Re: The Marriage Contract

45
This enquiry on Marriage Contracts, the Marriage Law, and The Wedding Orations has lead me towards reading about Rhetoric in the Renaissance...
From Questia...
the notion of humanism as a characteristic phase of the rhetorical tradition, and the relationship of humanism to scholasticism. Present, however, are the understanding of rhetoric in its longe duree and the insistence on seeing rhetoric in all its social manifestations, i. e., the "artes praedicandi, artes dictaminis, artes notariae, artes epistolandi etc." and the new types of speech and literature: Inaugural speeches given by officials or addressed to them, congratulations or exhortation speeches addressed to princes on various occasions, welcome addresses to distinguished visitors, wedding and funeral speeches, commencement and graduation addresses, praelectiones of professors, descriptions of all kinds of festivities. The extant material is enormous, and it is only part of what was actually being written and said.
Monfansi/Monso

Wayne A Rebhorn writes in is book on Renaisance Rhetoric..
It is well known that rhetoric enjoyed a position of great importance in the culture of the Renaissance. Throughout Europe, students who went to grammar school encountered it as an essential part of the curriculum, and university professors taught it as well, lecturing on it and presenting commentaries on key rhetorical texts from the ancient world, such as Aristotle Rhetoric and CiceroDe oratore ( On the Orator). Displacing dialectic, which had reigned supreme during the late Middle Ages, rhetoric became the queen of the liberal arts. Towns appointed scholars to give public lectures on it, and many of them employed public orators to make speeches on special occasions, especially for visiting dignitaries. Perhaps the most revealing indication of just how important rhetoric was in the period is the vast outpouring not just of editions of ancient rhetoricians, but of contemporary works concerned with the subject. There were manuals and handbooks by the dozens, some of which grew to prodigious length: the Retorica published by the Florentine Bartolomeo Cavalcanti in 1559 is over 550 pages long, while the De eloquentia sacra et humana ( On Sacred and Profane Eloquence) published by the French Jesuit Nicholas Caussin in 1619 tops out at over a thousand. Renaissance writers also churned out books dealing with different kinds and aspects of rhetoric, books on preaching and letter writing, on the topics to be used in the invention of arguments, on delivery and memory
~Lorredan
The Universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
Eden Phillpotts

Re: The Marriage Contract

47
Well as far as I can tell, the Hanged Man with coins falling from his pockets/coin bag is much later 17th 18th century. It also could be considered an deviation in design.
Kaplan writes..."A puzzling aspect of the card is the tranquil, if somewht melancholy, expression of the Hanged Man, and his open, focussed eyes. It is possible that the Hanged Man card might be a more noble meaning than treachery." and goes on to explain about Lent and Pisces and the concept of self denial. (which I think is overly complicated)I think it is entirely possible that the original meaning of the sequence has been lost.
I guess if I was to round up this tale of the Marriage Contract- I would have to say that when the Hand Painted cards were made, it was a visual Wedding Oration, possibly echoing the spoken one at a wedding.
I had no idea before reading about Tarot from this perspective, how for about 100 years the long and complicated Contract requirements, the money involved and the huge amount of diplomatic writing between families (and the Church)- the intensity of all these arrangements had- alonf with political coniving. Just reading about Lucrezia Borgia's Contracts of Marriage and all the bruhaha was mind blowing as well as overblown in verbosity and cynical flattery.... Well all this too-ing and fro-ing was by the Family, the Secretary in the first place and in the case of Visconti/Sforza/Medici was a famous Humanist called Francesco Fileflo- who wrote these wonderful wordy Wedding Orations and followed a particular scheme and form known today as Epideictic Rhetoric- which in some cases was a song- sometimes a verse and sometimes a speech some 60 pages long. The Greeks called it "For display or showing off" and deals with matters of Vice and Virtue- Justice, self control, excellence, wisdom and reason and most of all-Eloquence. It attributed Value or degree of importance to how one "see's, feel's, thinks and does" about the subject (in this case a wedding) I found this most enlightening considering it is a game of trumps with four Suits of coins/cups/swords and wands.
~Lorredan
The Universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
Eden Phillpotts

Re: The Marriage Contract

48
It might be a good idea if I spelt the name correctly.
His name is Francesco Filelfo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francesco_Filelfo
I guess his enemies would do a funeral oration something like...
O glorious Filelfo who saw himself a Cicero or Virgil, who lived like a young Saint Augustine;
a flatterer of the first degree and acid tongued like Balsamic Vinegar, he loved fame and Gold
He died as he lived.....
(He died of Dysentary)
~Lorredan
The Universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
Eden Phillpotts

Re: The Marriage Contract

49
Whilst I await some books, I thought there would be two of interest...
Poetria Nova by Geoffrey of Vinsauf
discussion about it at Universities for the study of Rhetoric
http://www.oslo2000.uio.no/AIO/AIO16/gr ... /Woods.pdf

Classroom Commentaries by Majorie Curry Woods
This has been hard to come by out here in the antipodes...so I await the postal canoe.

There are many manuscripts illustrated from the 1400's about the Trivium (Rhetoric)
and I am awaiting some of Filelfo's Latin works which will take some little while to translate. My Latin classes were a long time ago.

If anyone has gone down this track before in regards to Tarot, or even it is worn path to nowhere - I would love some insight. I have been told there were some rhetoric cards used for teaching (a game) in Late Medieval France- I have not been able to find any examples- but that may be more to do with my poor research abilities, than lack of images.
~Lorredan
The Universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
Eden Phillpotts

Re: The Marriage Contract

50
Lorredan wrote:It is possible that the Hanged Man card might be a more noble meaning than treachery." and goes on to explain about Lent and Pisces and the concept of self denial. (which I think is overly complicated)I think it is entirely possible that the original meaning of the sequence has been lost. ... The Greeks called it "For display or showing off" and deals with matters of Vice and Virtue- Justice, self control, excellence, wisdom and reason and most of all-Eloquence. It attributed Value or degree of importance to how one "see's, feel's, thinks and does" about the subject (in this case a wedding) I found this most enlightening considering it is a game of trumps with four Suits of coins/cups/swords and wands.
~Lorredan
If the inspiration for the cards is humanistic, then a reevaluation is possible for many of the cards. The Miserio could be Socrates or Diogenes conning the people (as batteleur) into wisdom (papess). The accusations that Socratic dialogues and cynic's antics were designed to con people into wisdom is a standard trope in the classical souces. The work of Pierre Hadot is a good guide to this. The picture of courtiers painted in Castigleone, if it is close to true, suggests that making and understanding witty allusions during a card game would be have been something commonplace. Having cards with images on which one could hang anything from current gossip to classical allusions would have been appreciated. In such an environment, the preference would be for cards that are inherently polysemic.
cron