Re: A sort of Victory ... playing cards 1303

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At the thread "Bohemia 1309" I had added later reflections to the 1303 document of Brieg:

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viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1064&p=16345&hilit=brieg#p16345

... in a connection to another lightning in the same year (7 dice players dead in Cottbus) that found later attention by a painting at a Franciscan church:

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and also in a later part of the thread ...

Summary to Hübsch
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1064&p=16350&hilit=brieg#p16350

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

Now (June/July 2016) I persecute a specific other early entry of playing cards (Jan van Blois 1362) at ...

viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1103

.. and I find, that one involved person (Albrecht I of Straubing-Holland) later in 1378 indeed was involved in a playing card document ...
The 3rd son Louis of Bavaria, earlier Emperor (1314-1346/47), Albrecht (1436-1404) got possessions in the Netherlands from his mother, Empress Margaret (died 1356).

A real and trusted playing card document from his Netherland court exists from 1378 ...
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=761&p=10875&hilit= ... urg#p10875
17 May 1378: "xvij dagen in meye quarten", payments of duke Albrecht I of Niederbayern-Straubing as "count of Hennegau"
23 May 1378: "xxiij dagen in meye" "quarten", payments of duke Albrecht I of Niederbayern-Straubing as "count of Hennegau"
... and "after the year 1353" (then still not involved in the matters around Holland) he married a girl from Brieg:
Family and children

Albert [= Albrecht I] married in Passau after 19 July 1353, Margaret of Brieg from Silesia (1342/43 – 1386), and had seven children, all of whom lived to adulthood:

Katherine of Bavaria (c. 1361 – 1400, Hattem), married in Geertruidenberg in 1379 William I of Gelders and Jülich.
Johanna of Bavaria (c. 1362 – 1386), married Wenceslaus, King of the Romans.
Margaret of Bavaria (1363 – 23 January 1423, Dijon), married in Cambrai in 1385 John the Fearless.
William VI, Count of Holland (1365–1417), father of Jacqueline of Hainault.
Albert II, Duke of Bavaria-Straubing (1369 – 21 January 1397, Kelheim).
Joanna Sophia (c. 1373 – 15 November 1410, Vienna), married on 15 June 1395 Albert IV, Duke of Austria.
John, Count of Holland (1374/76 – 1425), Bishop of Liège.
One of the daughters even got the honor to become Queen of the German empire, which means Queen of Bohemia, Queen of Germany and Queen of Rome.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joanna_of_Bavaria
The marriage was arranged already in 1370 and it underlines, how important Albrecht I. had been at this time.

Albrecht's position in playing card history is like this:

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The relative small-in-territory Straubing-Holland seems to have some strong importance in this theme. Albrecht is connected to 1378 Regensburg, 1378 Hennegau and 1365 (actually 1362) Near-Amsterdam, also to Nuremberg by the close connections of his father to this city.

Hübsch had noted, that Polish nobility played with playing cards before Bohemia got them. When I researched the case I got, that the most suspicious person in this question would be Boleslaw III the Generous of Brieg and this should have been the grand-father of this 12-years-old girl in 1353 ... and Boleslaw was treated in this thread variously.

Boleslaw III the Generous
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boles%C5% ... e_Generous
Marriages and Children
By 1318, Bolesław married firstly Margareta (Markéta; b. Prague?, 21 February 1296 – d. Hradec Králové, 8 April 1322), daughter of King Wenceslaus II of Bohemia. They had three children:

Wenceslaus I (b. ca. 1318 – d. 2 June 1364).
Louis I the Fair (b. ca. 1321 – d. 6/23 December 1398). [reigned since 1442]
Nikolaus (b. and d. Hradec Králové, 7 April 1322).
In 1326, Bolesław married secondly Katharina (d. bef. 5 March 1358), daughter of Mladen III Šubić, Ban of Croatia. They had no children. In his will, Bolesław left the Duchy of Brieg to his widow, who ruled until her own death.
Louis I of Brieg ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_I_of_Brzeg
Marriage and issue
Around 1341, Louis married Agnes (b. ca. 1321 – d. 7 July 1362), daughter of Duke Henry IV of Głogów-Żagań and widow of Duke Leszek of Racibórz. They had six children:

Margaret (b. 1342/43 – d. 18/22 February 1386), married aft. 19 July 1353 to Albert I, Duke of Bavaria
Henry VII with a Scar (b. 1343/45 – d. 11 July 1399)
Catherine (b. ca. 1344 – d. 10 April 1404/4 October 1405?), Abbess of Trebnitz (1372)
Hedwig (b. 1346 – d. ca. 30 January 1385), married ca. 1366 to Jan II, Duke of Oświęcim
Wenceslaus (b. ca. 1350 – d. aft. 15 September 1358)
A daughter (b. bef. July 1351 – d. young).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_I_of_Brzeg

This might have been the way, how Albrecht I. got a stronger interest in cards. And the young Jan van Blois might have gotten his interests from Albrecht I.
Huck
http://trionfi.com

Re: A sort of Victory ... playing cards 1303

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Huck wrote:
1303: A lightning kills 3 cards players in Brieg (Silesia)
1303: A lightning kills 7 dice players in Kotnitz (Lausitz)
...
Difficult to say, if it's probable, that the both about 1303 are "faked history" or not. The fact, that they appear both at the "first place" an "the same year" makes them somehow not reliable, disregarding the problems, that playing card history has with such early entries, which tell something about playing cards.
One thing your discovery does seem to attest to is the connection of lightning with divine wrath in regard to the vices of gambling games.

I don't think its a coincidence that both the tower/fire(lightning) and the devil trumps are missing from all of the hand-painted trumps. The devil is surmised as missing due to the influence of the Church. But wouldn't God's wrath in regard to the "devil's games" not simply be the flip side of the same coin? Both would have a certain stigma for card players.

Of course I continue to strongly disagree with the tower=light theory, with the expressed wrath aspect being so much window dressing. This thread: viewtopic.php?f=12&t=984

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Re: A sort of Victory ... playing cards 1303

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Phaeded wrote: Of course I continue to strongly disagree with the tower=light theory, with the expressed wrath aspect being so much window dressing. This thread: viewtopic.php?f=12&t=984
Thanks for reminding me of that thread, Phaeded. On rereading it, I wouldn't change anything I wrote. The tower is a prop, an appropriate decoration, something for lightning to strike, just as a tree or person (more dramatically) is. Other props are appropriate for the following cards, since the subjects are otherwise pretty simple, merely schematic (like in the Rosenwald tarocchi sheet) - a star, the moon, the sun. Artists wanted to decorate those bare subjects, make them more attractive.

Someone who doesn't know my background in Tarot explained the rules for French tarot to me the other day. His very first explanation was to remove the two highest atouts and the Excuse, and explain how important they were and the special role of the Excuse. I think something like this is what happened millions of times over the last five centuries of Tarot play. The two highest subjects, World and Last Judgment (or Angel or an angel blowing Florence's horn) are not part of the "lights"; they are just the most overarching and powerful subjects imaginable, appropriate iconographcial substitutes for the highest numbers in an unnumbered sequence in fifteenth-century Italy. Today we might use one of those pictures of the whole visible universe (oval, Milky Way a band across the major axis) and some depiction of the "Big Crunch" or some other cosmological theory's depiction of the cycle of creation-destruction. We don't believe an angel is going to blow a horn to mark the end of time and the Final Judgment anymore.

Of course my Tarot teacher didn't have to explain anything else about the atouts in modern French Tarot besides these Oudlers, since they are numbered and the subjects, while they have a logic, are just decorative. But the players of the original game for a few years, and in Bologna for 300 years, had to have explained something about the merely iconographical logic of the whole sequence in order to sit down and play, since there were no numbers on the cards to assist them.
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Re: A sort of Victory ... playing cards 1303

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Phaeded wrote: One thing your discovery does seem to attest to is the connection of lightning with divine wrath in regard to the vices of gambling games.
There was a genre of literature, which was called "Donner-Bücher" (Thunder books), also "Donner-Predigten" (thunder preachings). I know them only from 17th century, but it might be, that they existed earlier. They often collected historical notes (or pseudo-historical notes) about weather phenomenons, mostly the bad things. The story of 7 dice players in Cottbus and 3 card players in Brieg appears in this period variously, sometimes together, sometimes as single information. The oldest of these was a later reference to a book, which shall have existed in c. 1640.

End of 13th and begin of 14th century there were Franciscans in the region of Cottbus and Brieg. The place of the Franciscans in Cottbus has special attention for the year 1303, possibly as foundation or cause of money that was sponsored at this time. At this place in early 18th century a memorial for the lightning accident (1303) was renewed.
Information to the Franciscan place in Brieg I didn't found much. The document speaks of a "Haus am Ringe" and this "am Ringe" (a street name) seems to be still a known part of an address about 200 years later. It may have been another place for the Franciscans, but I didn't found a confirmation.

Capristan, who preached against gambling and cards in the region in the 1450s was then surely present at these locations.
I see the possibility, that the legend of the double lightning in Cottbus and Brieg took place at the time of Capistran.
Huck
http://trionfi.com

Re: A sort of Victory ... playing cards 1303

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Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote:The tower is a prop, an appropriate decoration, something for lightning to strike, just as a tree or person (more dramatically) is. Other props are appropriate for the following cards, since the subjects are otherwise pretty simple, merely schematic (like in the Rosenwald tarocchi sheet) - a star, the moon, the sun.
Ross,
I respect your research and positions, and that we are to agree to disagree here, but I'd just like to clarify my emphasis is not on the tower (which is a misnomer when used as the name of this trump, IMO), but on the fire as lightning. The zigzag images posted above are clarifying - not something the earliest "tower" trump did. And I was remiss in my statement that no hand-painted tower trumps survived - that's only true for the VS family of cards - as the CVI of course survived and is indeed ambiguous:

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I just think it odd that "light" is always shown in a violent manner, when there were certainly more "Christian" (I am the light) ways to depict light - a halo nimbus, a candle or even the hourglass held by Time/Hermit that gets turned into a lantern. Why should mere light always be shown so consistently damaging?

The other name for the trump in question, sagitta, adequately provides the answer for me.
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Phaeded

PS Sorry to see the violence in your neck of the woods - hope you and yours are safe.

Re: A sort of Victory ... playing cards 1303

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Phaeded wrote:
Of course I continue to strongly disagree with the tower=light theory, with the expressed wrath aspect being so much window dressing. This thread: viewtopic.php?f=12&t=984

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Perhaps, both you Gentlemen are correct? That is, if the divine light, lightning, or solar rays are understood as an aspect of Justice, and with each receiving according to his due?

Vieville's treatment of the subject seems telling, with sheep (the righteous?) to the right of the tree (cognate the Living Cross?) and a goat (the foolish or unrepentant?) to the left of the tree (Cf. Mt 25:33; Eccl 10:2) . . . although, curiously, this goat would seem to have wings??? For the fallen angel(s)?!

Reference to the Medieval motif, Ecclesia and Synagoga, might be of interest. For example, Thomas von Villach's Living Cross (Pfarrkirche St Andreas, Thörl Maglern, ca. 1470-75).

https://plus.google.com/photos/10092022 ... banner=pwa

You'll note the use of a hammer (= lightning/thunder) in relation to Christ's Harrowing of Hell/rescue of the faithful Patriarchs; how the fractured legs of the ass, which Synagoga rides resemble the broken masonry of hell's walls, thus, implicitly identifying her as a Synagogue of Satan; and how Synagoga's crown tumbles from her head as the left hand of the cross essentially decapitates her, consistent with the theme of Justice.

In contrast, Ecclesia, seated upon the Tetramorph, appears with Misericordia (= Charity) to the right of the Living Cross. Directly below Misericordia appear the remaining theological virtues, Faith and Hope, as well as the fourth moral virtue, Justice, holding their respective attributes of a tree, anchor, and sword.

Regards,
Kate

Re: A sort of Victory ... playing cards 1303

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Kate wrote: Perhaps, both you Gentlemen are correct? That is, if the divine light, lightning, or solar rays are understood as an aspect of Justice, and with each receiving according to his due?
Kate,
I don't believe Ross sees any moral connotations in this card, but rather a strictly cosmic-physical one.

Ultimately Ross and mine's irreconcilable differences on this point are due to the fact that we both place this card in a subset within the trumps:

Moi: The lightning bolt is Jupiter's weapon par excellence (the "Mantegna" Jupiter card is very close to the standard tarot images with people, with the tower missing which underscores that it is indeed a prop) and I see that trump as part of subset of the 7 classical planets - ultimately derived from Dante. viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1062

Ross: sees the tower's fire/lightning=light in a series of hierarchical lights based on their perceived brightness (sublunar Fire<Star(s)<Moon<Sun), ultimately derived from Piscina's Discorso (see Ross's own translation: "...Fire [Tower], as the due between the stars, which are celestial, and mundane things...the element that is found before the moon, the Sun and any other Star", 2010: 23 https://www.amazon.com/Explaining-Tarot ... 0956237010).

To me the Sun is the Sun, the Moon the Moon, and the misnomer "Star" is Venus (see the Paduan prototype and the earliest exemplar in the PMB in which the figure makes a del parto gesture of being pregnant - something that has nothing to do with a hierarchy of light but everything to do with the genealogical imagination of the Visconti, of whom Sforza saw himself as continuing via his wife, in seeing themselves as descended from that Goddess; see original discussion here: viewtopic.php?f=11&t=983&p=14562&hilit=Venus+pregnant). The Hermit/Time is rather easily related to Saturn which leaves two more difficult planetary identifications: "Devil" =Mars, and "Juggler" = Mercury (on this last see my most recent explanation at 26 Jun 2016, 19:04 on this thread: viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1101&p=16941#p16941). And to point out once again, none of these seven planets are among the surviving CY trumps, which to my mind supports the argument they were added to an existing set of trumps (14) with the creation of the PMB, which is the oldest exemplars of those trumps (sans, Devil/Mars and Tower/Jupiter, which are missing from that deck).

Back on point: besides "fire", arrow" and "tower", why should the trump in question also be called "House of God"?
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Jupiter, the pagan god of wrath towards humans, was of course a humanist stand-in for the Christian God. Perhaps the Sola Busca trump, Nenbroto (Nimrud), most clearly reveals this meaning: God's lightning/fire wrath towards the building of the Tower of Babylon (where Tower - here depicted as a column - was the name that stuck to this trump, is merely the most renown symbol of human hubris that God had to strike down)
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Phaeded

Re: A sort of Victory ... playing cards 1303

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My apologies to you and Ross for misinterpreting your viewpoints on this subject.

Also, I notice that I posted an illustration from the Vandenborre Tarot, but described it in my text as a similar work by Vieville. Again, my apologies.

Having read through the inputs on this subject by various members of this forum, I will restrict myself to just a few comments, for whatever they are worth. . .

In terms of the Vandenborre illustration, I commented previously on the presence of sheep to the right of the tree and a goat to the tree’s left, although I don’t know what to make of this goat’s attribute of wings—whether positive or negative.

However, I think it worth mentioning that the tree shows no damage from the lightning storm. The same holds true for Vieville’s tree. This is in high contrast to the damage incurred by the tower of other decks. In other words, I don’t think that these “props,” as you put it, are equivalent.

Additionally, in Vandenborre, you’ll notice the stark contrast between light and dark on the tree’s main trunk. This same tree—in its “darkened form” reappears in the Moon trump with Fate.
Back on point: besides "fire", arrow" and "tower", why should the trump in question also be called "House of God"?
Image


Jupiter, the pagan god of wrath towards humans, was of course a humanist stand-in for the Christian God. Perhaps the Sola Busca trump, Nenbroto (Nimrud), most clearly reveals this meaning: God's lightning/fire wrath towards the building of the Tower of Babylon (where Tower - here depicted as a column - was the name that stuck to this trump, is merely the most renown symbol of human hubris that God had to strike down)
Image
Giulio Bertoni (1550) also referred to it as the House of the Devil, whilst the fall of Babylon figures prominently in St. John’s Revelation. On the other hand, the tower or castle struck by Jove's lightening (= "the heavens") in the Court Ballet, Comedy of the Queen (Paris; 1581) belongs to the sorceress, Circe (= chaos, civil war, religious corruption/bigotry), who was determined from keeping France from experiencing the new Golden Age. Further, Circe had enchanted Ocean's Naiads, turning them into various animals. Pan and his satyrs storm the castle. Athene (=Reason), allied with the four Cardinal Virtues, lessen the power of Circe's magic wand. Athene then calls upon Jove to show his power, lightning lays waste to her castle, and the captives are freed for something of a classical reworking of the Harrowing of Hell narrative.
Regards,
Kate
Last edited by Kate on 23 Jul 2016, 16:26, edited 1 time in total.

Re: A sort of Victory ... playing cards 1303

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By the way, if you’ll kindly forgive the hurried (or harried) nature of my post—a consequence of my need to earn a living and too little time—you might find the following to be an interesting read:

Charles Zika: Images of Circe and Discourses of Witchcraft, 1480 - 1580, in: zeitenblicke 1 (2002), Nr. 1 [08.07.2002], URL: http://www.zeitenblicke.historicum.net/ ... /zika.html

Zika somewhat misses the mark, in my view, in terms of the complex political, religious, and social conflicts (internal to France and international) surrounding the creation of the above-cited, 1581 court ballet, Comedy of the Queen, in which Circe—and her thunderstruck castle—figure. That aside, however (this is not particularly relevant to our discussion), you might find of interest certain iconography associated with Circe or her assistant...

The Conjurer’s Tools (See Fig. 2 and 2a, plus related text. Cf. Fig. 4 and related text, “Children of Luna”).

The Distaff and Spindle (See Fig. 7 and 8, plus related text).

Regards,
Kate