Re: Affirmative Action

31
The Courier game, which shall have existed c 1206, if I remember correctly, had ....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courier_chess
The back rank pieces from left to right are rook (a), knight (b), bishop (c), courier (d), sage (e), king (f), queen (g), schleich (h), courier (i), bishop (j), knight (k), rook (l). The forward rank pieces in columns (a)–(l) are all pawns.
Image
12 officers, from which 6 (c, d, e and h, i, j) are somehow children of the Persian alfil, the bishops (as bow-shooters) identical to the Persian Alfil, the Couriers are identical to the German Läufer and modern Bishop, the sage presents the wise man or the Adviser of Cessolis, the Schleich is the French Fou.

The Couriers are very strong figures, Schleich and Wise Man are both weak. The document of c1206 is the Wigalois and this has the courier game as a sort of chess for the ladies of the court without description. A next note appears 1290-1300, chess poem of Heinrich Beringen.
A real description of the Courier game appears in a work of 1337, the Cessolis version of Ammenhausen.

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

Persian chess ....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shatranj
Alfil is a Persian chess expression, the Italian "Alfiere" developed from it. It doesn't really disturb, that the Italians understood finally a "Fahnenträger" in the chess figure.
>Also it does not hurt much, that the elephant was interpreted as a rook in Courier chess and not as a bow shooter.
Huck
http://trionfi.com

Re: Affirmative Action

32
Huck wrote: 21 Sep 2022, 06:53 Phaeded,
so you think, that the Cary-Yale Trionfi deck had 78 cards? Or 70?
A better question is what allows you divine when a trump suit or card deck is complete or not? No portion of either of CY or PMB ("original" or with replacement trumps) decks are complete to my mind or just about everybody's else's mind, besides yours.

But I'll answer your question. In my view the Florentine ur-tarot had 70 cards - 14 trumps and a 4X14 suit structure (10 pips, 4 courts, featuring a queen, which had already been long established). The CY had the aberration of matching numbers of males and females in the courts, suitable for dances such as the basse at weddings, thus 16 card suits (6 court cards each) and the 14 trumps for a deck of 78. The ur-tarot of course did not celebrate a wedding, and likely had something more of on the order of the Florentine CVI, which in fact features 3 males paired with 3 females. The CY merely removed those three couples to each suit - this has nothing to do with the trumps which remained the same in subject, of which there were 14. There is no connection of the CY trumps to Marziano's heroum aside from Cupid, and no reason for there to be 16 trumps. The CY court cards take their cue from the ur-tarot's Love trump, not Marziano (in which there is a nary of word of 3 males with 3 females).

No giant leaps of faith here; the presumption is the Florentine ur-tarot Love trump resembled the oldest known Florentine Love card from the CVI deck. Thus, the six figures walking to dance in the CVI are dispersed to each court, while the Love trump is left with a couple (Francesco and Bianca). The Republic of Florence didn't celebrate royal weddings, but the reiteration of just a couple on the Love card in the PMB helped make it the standard depiction of this trump.

Thus the CVI-esque ur-tarot's Love Trump's three couples are replicated for each suit, such as in the CY suit of Batons here (king and knight of batons greyed out as missing in this suit):
Image


Contemporary manuscript illustrations of the basse dance often featured the God of Love himself (e.g., Le Roman de la Rose), thus an established motif that was eminently suitable for the Love trump:

Image

Needless to say this particular innovation of 6 court figures did not catch on and the established Italian decks of King, Queen, Knight and Page remained dominant.

Phaeded

Re: Affirmative Action

33
So where did the basse dance begin? It must have been around in the fourteenth century, as Troubadour Raimond de Cornet wrote of “cansos e bassa dansas” as early as 1340. However, the basse dance rose in popularity in the fifteenth century. This century is when we start to see dance steps being recorded. The first evidence we have of this was in 1445 at a fete in Nancy, that was held in the honour of Margaret of Anjou. Margaret was on her way over to England to marry Henry VI at Titchfield Abbey, in Hampshire (coincidentally where this website’s dance instructional videos were filmed). This movement of people is probably how the basse dance became known in England.
https://www.medievaldanceonline.co.uk/the-basse-dance

As far I know, Filippo Maria was known for interests in chess and also in astrology, but for dancing ....? Some authors believe, that he was crippled and couldn't move very well. Well, he had an elder sister France and possibly there was opportunity, that she informed him about the fashions in France.

Emperor Charles IV. was educated in France before 1330, perhaps he knew something about early versions of the basse dance.
Im Jahr 1355 wurde das durch König Karl IV. in Pavia erworbene Haupt des hl.Vitus nach Prag transferiert, um es, wie damals üblich, im neu erbauten Veitsdom zum Schutz und zur Verehrung aufzubewahren .....
Die Verehrung und die Patronate des hl.Vitus, der im 14. Jahrhundert zu einem der Vierzehn Nothelfer erhoben worden war, weisen zahlreiche regionale und zeitliche Unterschiede auf. Er wurde unter anderem bei Unfruchtbarkeit, bei Bitten um Regen und Sonnenschein, gegen Gewitter und Feuergefahr, bei Schlangenbissen, Besessenheit, Fallsucht, Tollwut und letzten Endes auch bei Tanzwut angerufen. Er galt nicht nur als Schutzpatron der Apotheker, Gastwirte, Bierbrauer, Winzer, Kupferschmiede und Jugendlichen, sondern auch der Tänzer und Schauspieler, wobei der Reigen der Mägde vor dem gefangenen Heiligen bisweilen als Begründung für sein Patronat für den krankhaften Tanz hervorgehoben wurde.[4] Während im süddeutschen, böhmischen und ostalpinen Raum der hl. Vitus als Schutzpatron der Tanzwütigen galt, nahm in den nördlichen und westlichen Teilen Europas Johannes der Täufer diese Rolle ein.
automatic translation
In 1355, the head of St. Vitus, acquired by King Charles IV in Pavia, was transferred to Prague in order to keep it, as was customary at the time, in the newly built St. Vitus Cathedral for protection and veneration .....
The veneration and patronage of St. Vitus, who was raised to one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers in the 14th century, show numerous regional and temporal differences. Among other things, it was used for infertility, requests for rain and sunshine, against thunderstorms and the danger of fire, for snake bites, obsession, epilepsy, rabies and finally also for Tanzwut called. He was not only considered the patron saint of pharmacists, innkeepers, brewers, winegrowers, coppersmiths and young people, but also of dancers and actors, whereby the round dance of the maids before the imprisoned saints was sometimes cited as justification for his patronage of the morbid dance. While in southern Germany, Bohemia and the eastern Alps, St. Vitus was considered the patron saint of those who loved to dance, and in the northern and western parts of Europe, John the Baptist assumed this role.
https://musical-life.net/kapitel/heilig ... -veitstanz
Die erste schriftliche Nachricht eines Schwerttanzes wohl im heutigen Sinn in Europa kommt um 1350 aus Nürnberg. Da sollen die Messerer von König Karl (später Kaiser Karl IV.) das Privileg erhalten haben, den Schwerttanz zur Fastnacht abhalten zu können. Zwischen dem 2. und 13. Jhdt. gibt es keine weiteren Informationen.
automatic translation
The first written report of a sword dance, probably in the modern sense in Europe, comes from Nuremberg around 1350. The knives are said to have received the privilege of King Karl (later Emperor Karl IV.) to be able to hold the sword dance for Shrovetide. Between the 2nd and 13th centuries there is no further information.
https://www.dancilla.com/PDF/Schwerttan ... _Tirol.pdf

Giangaleazzo paid for the duke title in Prague 1395. The Bohemian court might have influenced the customs in Milan inclusive the playing card fashions. The 60-cards-deck of John of Rheinfelden had 5 court cards and the Hofämterspiel from Bohemia had somehow 6 court cards.

Well, generally I assume, that we don't have fragments of all variants of Trionfi decks in the group of the known variants of 15th century in Italy and I would also think, that the group of the unknown variants is considerable larger than the group of the known variants. So I don't mind opinions about these unknown dimensions to make Trionfi decks during 15th century.
In the case of the interpretation the CY-Trionfi-fragment I've another opinion than you. However, I think, that I cannot claim 100% security or something similar to it for my suggestion, so alternatives are interesting.
Huck
http://trionfi.com

Re: Affirmative Action

34
Huck wrote: 22 Sep 2022, 13:01
So where did the basse dance begin? It must have been around in the fourteenth century, as Troubadour Raimond de Cornet wrote of “cansos e bassa dansas” as early as 1340. However, the basse dance rose in popularity in the fifteenth century. This century is when we start to see dance steps being recorded. The first evidence we have of this was in 1445 at a fete in Nancy, that was held in the honour of Margaret of Anjou. Margaret was on her way over to England to marry Henry VI at Titchfield Abbey, in Hampshire (coincidentally where this website’s dance instructional videos were filmed). This movement of people is probably how the basse dance became known in England.
https://www.medievaldanceonline.co.uk/the-basse-dance

As far I know, Filippo Maria was known for interests in chess and also in astrology, but for dancing ....? Some authors believe, that he was crippled and couldn't move very well.
Are you serious - that's your objection? Because lard-ass Filippo might not have danced, no one was going to dance? Dancing was de rigueur at practically all social events - certainly weddings. Are you denying the CVI Love trump shows dancing or that it is the oldest known Florentine Love trump? And your quote above merely notes the earliest date basse dance steps were written down, not when they first popularly enjoyed (which goes back to 1340): "...dance steps being recorded. The first evidence we have of this was in 1445...."

And I said "dances such as the basse at weddings", and quite frankly I simply assumed the manuscript examples showed basse dances but without actual dancing/movement, who knows which specific dance they are actually performing. More generically they might have been referred to as a "ring" dance.

The below is from Filippo's realm, a Tacuina sanitatis folio showing male-female alternating in a dance (clearly just a snip of a larger dance), Biblioteca Casanatense, Ms. 4182, c. 1390-1400, made in Lombardy by Giovannino de Grassi's workshop - the same artist behind the first section of the Visconti Hours:

Image


All of this is besides the point, which is the CY artist(s) followed closely upon the Florentine c.1440 ur-tarot and quickly adapted it: a couple needed to be featured on the Love card for the fête and and so the three couples of the archetype were removed to the suits, and repeated for each of the four suits. Not even Cosimo would have featured, say, his son Piero and daughter-in-law on the Love trump - instead, a communal vision of multiple people dancing for the Florentine Republic was acceptable (like other public communal acts such as the armeggerie), and likely appeared as similar to the CVI. Visconti, by contrast, was celebrating the biggest mercenary coup of his time by securing (so he thought) Sforza away from Florence via a condotte with fiefs and marriage in 1440. Filippo's dynastic imperial duchy could feature a couple, even if the details of succession, in this case, were never put to paper.

Phaeded

Re: Affirmative Action

37
I prefer Carmina Burana ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEllLECo4OM

Ferrara - which had a lot of children of Niccolo d'Este III - had a lot of early .music.
Filippo Maria had one daughter.
Galezzo Maria with a lot of brothers and sisters loved his capella and spend a lot of money on it.
Filippo Maria had one cruel brother.
Bianca Maria danced on the wedding party of Beatrice d'Este, who was a Niccolo daughter.

Generally it's written, that the Northern regions exported their music to Italy via the council of Constance.
Filippo Maria was not in Constance. One of the Malatesta was there. Filippo Maria didn't marry a Malatesta daughter. Niccolo did.

Filippo Maria became the victim of a later opera.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBsUw9jZPJg
Here is Filippo Maria in person, I assume ....
https://youtu.be/AjvIEeUjp8g
Huck
http://trionfi.com