Huck wrote:Well, the idea was to exchange Pope and Popess, and the major part of these exchanges might have been, to make Tarot decks acceptable for protestant regions. But once it was born as a habit, it could be imitated for other reasons (in Catholic Bologna). The Strasbourg productions are earlier, if we follow Depaulis' argumentation.
I've some indication, that this exchange-technique was already done much earlier than the Strasbourg productions. I just work on an article.
The article is here now:
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=837
It's about Johann Fischart and his Rabelais "translation". Dummett/McLeod and Depaulis think, that there is no tarau in Fischart's list. But there seems to be something abut Tarot in Fischart's article, as it seems. The author uses the expression "welsch Karten".
There's (from Fischart's not clear information) a suspicion, that in the city of Geneve might have used the "Bacchus on Wine barrel motif", perhaps before the Tarot game was prohibited in 1609.
Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote:I think it was already a habit in Florence and south (like on the Colonna sheet from Rome, where there is a Sultan numbered 5) to make the papi into secular or non-Christian figures, in the 16th century. Bologna was the last hold-out, until 1725. It reflects this southern trend, rather than the northern one.
Yes, there might be something earlier.
What I think ... after getting some line in late Tarot/Tarock developments in French, Swiss and German developments get a form of sorting, one should check the Italian developments again. What mirrors the "lost Tarot interest in France" in Italy? I don't have enough knowledge about this.
... these last 3 months, in which I didn't care about playing cards, made me forget a lot of things. It's not so long ago, maybe 2-3 years.