Professional Documents
Culture Documents
[DomusDei.gif]
[Michael.gif]
________________________________
Each of the roughly 250 entries has at least one source cited,
and multiple sources are cited in many cases. (The present
version is still very much a work in progress. Most of the
desired entries are included, but many citations remain to be
added as well as internal cross references and links, and many
entries need to be rewritten.) Longer entries, such as a
discussion of the Karn�ffel trump suit or the "Mantegna"
cosmographic series, have been put into separate files, linked
to their entries. (A list of these linked files is also
located at the bottom of the page.) Although my own
perceptions and preconceptions inevitably color many of the
entries, I have isolated some of the more blatant commentary
(whether my own, or mine by adoption) into block quotes,
separated by heavy lines and shown in dark blue text. And in
no case should anything here be considered authority for
anything this is only a chronological listing, with some
quotes and citations, all second-hand.
One must get used to the fact and this will be said time and
again that even now we know precious little of such everyday
things as playing cards.
Detlef Hoffmann
______________________________________________________________
c.400 Spain.
c.1252 ?
1265-1272 Rome/Paris.
c.1275 Italy?
c.1300 England?
pawn is, as usual, the common man, who has the potential to
become a king in heaven; but once he turns aside is taken and
sent to hell. In the continental version, the theme appears
twice. One, called The Game of Chess, was written before 1342,
the other some time later. In that fourteenth-century section,
the King is Christ and the Queen is the Soul. Knights are
militant Christians the eight squares commanded by the Knights
move correspond to the eight Beatitudes and Rooks are judges.
One interesting passage concerns Bishops, wise men who can
move three squares forward intellect, reason, and fortitude or
backward gluttony, robbery, and pride. Murray describes this
version as a hopeless muddle by the translator, who was
apparently working from three or more sources and knew very
little about chess." (JAF.)
1351 Italy.
1360 France.
1366 Italy.
1369 England.
1392 P France.
Decks with animal and bird suit-symbols. Also from the mid
fifteenth century are some copper-engraved decks with animal,
birds, and flowers as suit-symbols. This is the tradition of
the 1544 Virgil Solis deck, and the 1557 Caitlin Geofroy
Tarots suit cards, and related to the hunting-themed decks.
(GT 14; K I:12, 59.)
Meister Ingold wrote Das Guldin Spiel, The Golden Game. About
"Two new packs with green and red marbled backs" were
commissioned from the painter Jacopo di Bartolomeo Busoli,
along with some repair work on other cards, "all for 6 lire ".
(Ortalli 181.)
The year 1440 is about the upper boundary for the invention of
Tarot. The earliest surviving deck may date from 1440 or 41,
and the earliest documented reference to Tarot dates from
1442. "A lower bound for the date of their invention is harder
to determine. It probably occurred around 1425; the earliest
date with any claim to be plausible would be 1410." (WPC 27.)
______________________________________________________________
1440 P Germany.
case, then this would be the latest date for the Brambilla
deck, and Dummett suggests somewhere between 1442 and 1445. (K
I:106-107; GT 68, 78 -79.) Forty-eight cards survive,
including two trumps. (K I:96-98; H 18.)
"In 1450, [Piero] Andrea di Bonsignore was paid two lire for
painting two decks of Emperor cards (carte da Imperatori)".
(Betts 321; Ortalli 187; GT 191.) See Karn�ffel.
c.1450 P Switzerland.
1450 Germany.
"... records state that Borso d'Este played at cards: 'of the
Emperor' (dell'imperatore) in Ferrara around 1454." (Betts
321; GT 191.)
1459 England.
1460 P Germany.
1461 England.
1463 England.
1464 France.
c.1470 * ?
"Mantegna" Cosmograph.
______________________________________________________________
The Goldschmidt cards are from a very deviant Tarot deck which
is unfortunately represented by only nine cards. A bishop is
shown as an allegory of Hope, (with an anchor displayed),
probably in place of the Pope. The Ace of Cups is a fountain
of life, (showing two streams, water and blood), as in some
other decks, (Rosenthal, Victoria and Albert Museum, and
Guildhall), but in this case circled by an ouroborous. The Ace
of Spades is a death card, with crossed bones and a skull
chained to the suit symbols scabbard. Dummett states that "it
is not apparent, from the cards themselves, that they are
Tarot cards at all; not one of them can be identified with any
assurance as one of the Tarot triumphs." The Spanish style of
suit-symbols, illustrated by the Five of Clubs, may suggest a
French origin. (GT 73, 74, 75, 85.)
c.1480
c.1480 P France.
Suit
King
Queen
Knight
Spades
David
Pallas
Hogier
Clubs
Alexandre
Argine
Lancelot
Hearts
Charles
Judith
La Hire
Diamonds
Cesar
Rachel
Hector
1482 +
1485 + Basle
1488 ?
See Karn�ffel.
1496 Germany.
c.1500 P Germany.
1502 P Germany.
"... during the reign of Alfonso (Ercole's son who succeed him
in 1505) an account book for his first year as ruler mentions
the acquisition at the end of June of as many as eighteen
packs: eight tarot packs and ten fra schartini e carte da
ronfa bought to be taken to Voghenza, obviously to help the
1507 P Germany.
c.16 th + England.
"The first extant book using playing cards for divination was
printed around 1510, probably in Nuremberg. Hoffmann dates the
prototype of the woodcuts in this book to pre-1500, thus
earlier, lost editions of the same text are probable."
(Christian Hartman in a post to alt.tarot, citing Hoffman and
Manfred Zollinger, Bibliographie der Spielebucher 15-18
Jahrhundert, 1996.)
1515 Germany.
1519 Mexico.
1522 Italy
with poetry from other authors, was published. (GT 76.) See
The Boiardo Tarot Deck.
While much has been made about the novelty of illustrated pips
in the 1910 Waite-Smith Tarot deck, in the larger world of
playing cards they were not much of a novelty. In fact,
illustrated pips were relatively commonplace from the
sixteenth century.
______________________________________________________________
1526 England.
1528 P Italy.
1534 * France.
1537 Germany.
1538 Germany.
Timeline of Cartomancy.
1542 P Germany.
c.1543 Italy.
1546 Germany.
1549 Italy
c.1550 P Europe.
"By 1550, the experiments that had proved ephemeral had been
abandoned, and the various European types of regular pack had
crystallized into more or less their definitive forms." (GT
26.) See Modern Deck Designs.
1550 Italy.
c.1560 P Austria.
1564 Italy.
1572 Italy.
1584 England.
(Giobbi.)
1588 P Germany.
16 th c. Germany.
c.1600 Italy.
1602 + England.
1603 P Germany.
1619 * England.
1622 + France.
See here the guests of the Assembly, each one with a demon
beside her, and know that at this banquet are served no other
meats than carrion, the flesh of those that have been hanged,
the hearts of children not baptized, and other unclean animals
strange to the custom and usage of Christian people, the whole
savourless and without salt.
1625 Spain.
"Thomas Murner [cf. 1502, 1507] has a second and very much
more illustrious imitator Monsieur Desmarests, who developed
four packs of cards which were to be of assistance to Hardouin
de Perefix, the Archbishop of Paris, in the instruction of the
Dauphin. The etchings were made by Stefano della Bella. When
Louis XIV was six years old, in 1644, he was given the four
games of Les Roys de France, Les Reines renommees, La
Geographie, and Les Metamorphoses, which is also known as Les
Fables. The cards were made as separate packs and were sold by
Henry le Gras. Later, in 1698, the cards were also published
in a leatherbound volume. Della Bellas cards have been
imitated time and time again, and it would take a whole book
just to record the states and changes through which these
packs have passed." Endless educational and commemorative
decks were created in the seventeenth century and later. (H
38.)
The Adam C. de Hautot deck "is almost complete [71 cards], and
contains all the trumps. Save for certain details, it conforms
precisely to the pattern later found in Belgium." The de
Hautot family made cards in Rouen from the middle of the
seventeenth century, and "an A. de Hautot was a founder member
of the confrerie (charitable association) of cardmakers
established in 1658." Dummett suggests that the deck was made
in the second half of the seventeenth century. Kaplan suggests
the first half of the eighteenth century. (GT 208; K II:320,
323.)
1672 +
the cardmaker John Lenthall, who made new ones for some of the
cards." Lenthalls name is generally attached to this deck,
which appears to be the first known divinatory deck. "What we
have here is essentially the transference of the method of
Marcolinos book to a pack of cards, since the questions and
answers, and, in clue form, the intermediate instructions, are
printed on the cards themselves. This represents a step
towards the practice of fortune-telling with ordinary playing
cards, in that it liberates the user from having to consult a
book." (GT 96; WPC 47-48.)
1703 +
1704 +
1735 + England.
1781 + France.
1783 + France.
1783 + Germany.
c.1840 P France.
derived from the Fool in Tarot, and was probably not first
used in Poker until later in the nineteenth century. (P 191.)
1888 P England.
1888 France.
1889 France.
1889 P France.
"Up to 1889, then, the subject [occult Tarot] had so far been
the preserve of a small body of students of magic. But that
was soon to change in France: from 1890 onwards, the Tarot
became a common topic in the growing literature upon the
occult." (WPC 255.)
______________________________________________________________
1910 P England.
1945 P England.
1966 Vietnam.