This article will deal with the social and economic milieu within which the Tarot was designed: early 15th century in northern Italy. The article is motivated by misunderstandings about how society was structured at the time and how that structure might have placed constraints on the Tarot’s origins. No attempt will be made to present a general survey, only to address questions that seem relevant to Tarot.
It is important to realize that the Tarot was not born in a rural feudal society with church, aristocracy, and peasants forming the three branches. Duby (1980) demonstrates that this form of society was largely a theory rather than a fact. The strictly hierarchical society was developed after 1000 A.D. as a Neoplatonic theory of how the ideal society should be organized. Based largely on Pseudo-Dionysius, the heavens and cosmos were conceived as a strict hierarchy of greater and lesser. In the 11th century several writers proposed a similar hierarchy as the ideal structure of human society (Duby 1980). Certainly the rural estate with its serfs, manor, and blooded royalty existed in some places in Europe for some periods. But the static social model seldom endured for long in the fact of invasions, wars, famine, insurrection, and other disturbances.
By the 12th century, the rise of the artisan and merchant classes and use of money led to a society with a rather different structure (Sapori 1970, Miskimin 1969). These new classes did not fit the old picture because trade, not just agriculture, became an indispensible part of society (Pirenne 1936). Currency, rather than landed property, became the essence of wealth (Duby 1994) and the aristocracy lost it’s stanglehold. Rise of literacy with secular employment of the educated meant that knowledge was no longer the exclusive provence of the clergy.
The period between 800 and 1200 saw the development of the cities of northern Italy (Moore 2000). Within the cities, the vertical social structure began to change into a horizontal structure with merchants, artisans, and professional classes evolving (Cipolla 1976). Territorial disputes between the cities required the artistocracy to hire mercenary armies with money borrowed from the wealthy merchants (Jardine 1996). When debts could not be repaid, the merchants traded debts for concessions and power began to shift into the hands of the middle class (Lopez 1976). The concessions meant that the accumulating wealth could not be usurped by aristocracy or church and a new self-administered judicial system developed that was favorable to trade (Pirenne 1936).
Technological innovations also played a role in the transformation of society (Gimpel 1976). The heavy wheeled plow, horse collar, improved rotation cropping, and the wheelbarrow improved agricultural productivity and with it, the size of the European population and the quality of its diet. Improvements in ship construction and rigging, the compass, and the clock simplified navigation and enhanced maritime trade. Expanded use of the spinning wheel and larger looms, together with water- and windmills provided products to be traded (Mokyr 1990).
Conditions in the cities were quite different from the countryside. In the cities, more than 50% of the total wealth was in the hands of merchant families. There were still the homeless and poor that constituted ~6% of the population and rose to ~15% in time of war or famine (Cipolla 1976). There were also artisans that earned a meager living but could occasionally afford meat or a dowry for their daughters. A few artisans, such as Venetian glass makers, even rose to the wealthy class (Lopez 1976). There were also professionals, such as physicians and notaries, that occupied an economic position between artisan and merchant.
The cities were far from utopias of social justice, but the people ate better and so were healthier and lived longer lives. Records from 1336/8 Florence show an annual consumption of 4000 oxen and calves, 60,000 sheep, 20,000 goats, and 30,000 pigs. In Milan, 1288, there were 18 fish stores and 440 butchers with 70 oxen consumed each day (Lopez and Raymond 1955). By 1424, meat constituted 20% of the caloric intake of a worker (Hunt and Murray 1999).
In addition to improving living conditions, the increase in commerce created a demand for education. Trade and credit required ledger books and writing of letters and contracts (Pirenne 1936). By the 13th century manuals were being produced to educate merchants and books are listed among the possession of merchants (Lopez and Raymond 1955). Between 1365 and 1410, one merchant exchanged more than 100,000 letters with agents and intermediaries (Jardine 1996). In 14th century Florence about 40% of the urban population had two years of schooling and some ability to read (Cipolla 1976). In 1288 Milan had 70 teachers of reading and writing, 1500 notaries, and 40 copyists (Lopez and Raymond 1955). By the early 15th century, merchants’ sons from all of Europe were travelling to Italy to learn bookkeeping (Swetz 1987).
As a result of the changes in the distribution of wealth and increased literacy, the aristocracy cannot be seen as the only group with the means (Chambers 1971) to commission or purchase a Tarot deck. By the early 15th century wealthy merchants were commissioning many works of art and collecting books and trinkets (Jardine 1996). Confraternities also became important partons (Goldthwaite 1993). Indeed, by 1387, Florentine art and paintings were being sold in other cities (Lopez and Raymond 1955, Larner 1971).
The growth of cities, the dominance of wealth through trade and the expansion of literacy to support commerce combined to produce a relatively independent middle class. Thus, the aristocracy cannot be considered the only social group that could have designed or commissioned the early Tarot. The rising middle class had both the means and the leisure to develop and enjoy a new symbolic card game.
TRADING AND COMMUNICATION BETWEEN EAST AND WEST
During the early middle ages, trade with Islam was primarily conducted by the Provencal Jewish community (Lopez and Raymond 1955). Trade was facilitated by the Jewish communities scattered all around the Mediterranean. The Moslems, for their part, were always interested in commerce since trading was the profession of Mohammed (Lopez 1976). But by the 8th and 9th century the Italian cities began to vie with the Jews in trade with the Islamic and Byzantine empires (Lopez and Raymond 1955).
There is a general impression that Italy was largely cut off from the eastern Byzantine empire during the early middle ages and information flow did not resume until after the crusades. This impression isn’t accurate (Scammell 1981). The southern Italian cities, e.g., Naples, Amalfi and Salerno had been protected from Islamic invasion because the Byzantine fleet had intervened. These cities recognized the emperor in Constantinople and were in continuous communication since the 8th century (Pirenne 1936). Amalfi maintained strong ties to Egypt (Lopez 1976). Venice at the head of the Adriatic, was beyond the reach of Islamic invasions and the Carolingian rule never reached that far (Lane 1973). Venice maintained allegience to Constantinople rather than the Holy Roman Emperor (Pirenne 1936) and maintained trade with Constantinople throughout the middle ages. Venice established trade with Africa and Syria by the end of the 9th century (Ashtor 1983). In the 11th century, Constantinople hired the Venetian fleet to protect it and this resulted in the Venetians acquiring trading rights in the Black Sea (Lopez 1976). Genoa and Pisa entered the arena by expelling the Moslems from Corsica and Sardinia where they had inhibited trade along the west coast of Italy. Genoa and Pisa then invaded Tunisia and exacted many trading concessions when they withdrew (Lopez 1976).
Thus the exchange of trade goods and information between Italy and the Greek and Islamic empires started well before the Crusades. The most important impact of the Crusades was not the acquisition of new knowledge from the east. The most important impact was the further opening of the Mediterranean to Italian shipping (Pirenne 1936). The Turkish invasion that expelled the Crusades was a land war. The Turks did not have great fleets and continued to trade with Venice and other Italian cities throughout (Pirenne 1936).
Several factors seem to explain why the Moslem did not maintain a position as a sea power in the Mediterranean. The first seems to be a strange bias. Although the Moslems had triangular sails that were capable of tacking into the wind, they preferred to sail during the monsoons with the wind from behind. There is an old Arab proverb: "Only a madman or a Christian would sail to windward" (Mokyr 1990). A second and more important reason is that great philosopher al-Ghazali (1058-1111) concluded that science and technology were incompatible with Islam (Mokyr 1990). Islam concluded that all knowledge was already available from the ancients and ‘innovation’, particularly if it originated with the infidels, became suspect as a form of heresy (Lewis 1982). So while the Moslems remained the dominant traders on a global scale (Said 1978) and were the axis of many interwoven trading systems (Abu-Lughod 1989) they became less dominant in the Mediterranean.
The Europeans, on the other hand, were anxious to learn and imitate everything they could. According to Pope Pius II, a young man with pretensions for learning in the early decades of the 15th century went to Constantinople to study (Jardine 96). So the acquisition of eastern wisdom in Italy did not begin with the arrival of the Byzantine ambassadors in the middle of the 15th century.
We will document in a separate essay the historical record of this acquisition. There was a relatively continuous transmission of works on magic, including ritual magic, alchemy, and astrology through the Church. The transmission was justified under the premise that future Churchmen would need to "know thy enemy". There was relatively little access to this information outside the monastery but there isn’t any reason to think that secret pagan societies must be postulated to explain the transmittal. A major emphasis on translating Arabic documents on medicine, astrology and alchemy began in southern Italy in the 12th century. So there isn’t any reason to think that secrets were acquired by the Crusaders or Templars. The connection to the ancient wisdom occurred publicly through the Church and through the Italian merchants.
The Italian city states had acquired considerable independence. So while the new middle class remained fervent Christians, they were not cowered by the Inquisition. Merchants often employed fortune-tellers to predict outcome of dangerous trades (Jardine 1996) without fear of censure. There was also a lively European market in saints’ relics (Brooke and Brooke 1984). They had demonstrated and well-documented access to the ancient wisdom of the east through relatively straight-forward and orthodox means and they had little fear of repression by the Church.
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