Image of le Fou (the Fool) from a fifteenth-century tarot deck
7 October 2024
Tarot is the name of a type of playing card which is often also used for cartomancy (i.e., divination or fortune-telling using cards). There are a wide variety of games that can be played with a tarot deck. Over the centuries, there have been many variations in what tarot decks contain, but they generally consist of four suits, each containing ten pip cards (ace through ten) and four face cards (king, queen, knight, and jack), plus a trump suit of twenty-one cards, known as trionfi (triumphs), and a fool card. References to the predecessors of what we now know as tarot, that is tarocchi, can be found in Italy from at least 1419. There are accounts of tarrochi decks being used for cartomancy from the early sixteenth century.
The name is a borrowing from the French tarot, which in turn is from the Italian slang/dialectal *tarocco (plural tarocchi) meaning fool or foolish. English references to the games date to the late sixteenth century. The earliest I’m aware of is G. Delamothe’s 1592 The French Alphabeth, a textbook on learning the French language:
Come, what shall we doe? What you will, shall we play? What game will you play at? will you play at Tables, at Dyce, at Tarots, at Chesses, &c. No, let vs play at Cardes, to the end that all the companie may play together.
Or ça que fero[n]s nous? Ce q[ue] vous voudrez, Iouerons nous? A quel ieu voulez vous iouer? Voulez vous iouer aux Dames, aux Dez, aux Tarots, aux Eschets, &c. Non, iouons au Chartes, afin que toute la compagnie ioue ensemble.
Until the late nineteenth century, almost all English uses of the term are in translations from French or in references to card games played on the Continent. This would indicate that in these early days tarot, both for gaming and cartomancy, was not particularly common in England. Also, these early uses are all in the sense of games that could be played with such a deck, not the cards themselves.
The earliest English-language use of tarot to refer to the cards, as opposed to a game that could be played with them, is in an 1870 English translation of the second edition of Paul Lacroix’s (Bibliophile Jacob’s) 1869 Les Arts au Moyen Age (The Arts of the Middle Ages):
No original specimen has been preserved of the tarots (tarrochi, tarrochini) or Italian cards of this epoch; but we possess a pack engraved about 1460, which is known to be an exact copy of them. Added to this, Raphael Maffei, who lived at the end of the fifteenth century, has left in his “Commentaries” a description of tarots, which were, he says, “a new invention,”—in comparison, doubtless, with the origin of playing-cards.
We see the word used outside of translation in William Skeen’s 1872 Early Typography:
Mr. Planché, while abstaining from the expression of an opinion upon the principal point in dispute, shews, as a matter of fact in regard to playing cards, that “with the exception of those by the Master of 1466 (an engraver only known by that designation), and a set of ‘tarots,’ called the Mantegna Cards, on one of which is the date 1483, all the specimens of printed playing cards that he has met with display the unmistakeable character of the fashions of Germany, France, and England, during the latter half of the Fifteenth century, and the greatest portion those of the latest part,—Louis XI, Charles VIII, of France; Edward IV, and Henry VII, of England; and Maximilian I , Emperor of Germany.”
And a few pages later Skeen writes:
On this subject Mr. Planché writes, “There is plenty of evidence to prove that cards, drawn, painted, and gilded by the hand, like those of Jacquemin-Gringonneur, and to which the name of ‘Tarot cards’ has been given, found their way into Europe from the East in the Fourteenth century, or perhaps earlier.
To which there is this note:
Gringonneur was paid for the cards drawn and painted for Charles VI in 1392, fifty-six sous of Paris, which is calculated to be about £7 1s. 8d. of our present money, and a single pack of “tarots,” admirably painted about 1415 by Marziano, Secretary to the Duke of Milan, cost the enormous sum of 1,500 golden crowns (about £625).
Two years later, Matilda Anne Mackarness (the daughter of Planché, the playwright and antiquary to whom Skeen refers) wrote in her 1874 Children of the Olden Time:
The old story that cards were invented for the amusement of the poor mad King of France (Charles VI.) is disputed. The mistake has probably arisen from the fact that in the treasury register belonging to that monarch, fifty-six sols were paid to one Jacquemin Gringonneur, painter, "for three packs of cards, gilded and painted with divers colours.” It is the opinion of many learned writers that cards were used in Eastern lands long before they were known in Europe, called “tarot cards,” but they were very unlike our present playing-cards. The gipsies used them for telling fortunes, as they do now; and being all pictures, they would amuse children, and probably they were made brighter and gayer to please the poor king.
So it isn’t until the late nineteenth century that tarot becomes fully anglicized. And in the anglophone world, tarot has always been primarily used for cartomancy rather than gaming.
Sources:
Caldwell, Ross Sinclair. “Brief History of Cartomancy.” Academia.edu. This is an English translation of Caldwell’s “Origine della cartomanzia.” In Il Castello dei Tarocchi. Andrea Vitali, ed. Turin: Lo Scarabeo, 2010, 163–76.
Delamothe, G. The French Alphabeth. London: R. Field, 1592, 150–51. ProQuest: Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Lacroix, Paul (Bibliophile Jacob). Les Arts au Moyen Age, second edition. Paris: Didot Frères et Fils, 1869, 235–236. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
———. The Arts of the Middle Ages. James Dafforne, trans. London: Chapman and Hall, 1870, 229.
MacKarness, Matilda Anne (Mrs. Henry S.). Children of the Olden Time. London: Griffith and Farran, 1874, 26–27. Gale Primary Sources: Nineteenth Century Collections Online.
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, s.v. tarot, n., taroc, n.
Skeen, William. Early Typography. Colombo, Ceylon: 1872, 48–49, and 53–54. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Image credit: Unknown artist, fifteenth century. Lacroix, Paul. Les Arts au Moyen Age, second edition. Paris: Didot Frères et Fils, 1869, 235. HathiTrust Digital Archive. Public domain image.