The Tarot de Besançon, also called the Besançon Tarot,''Besançon Tarot by Jacob Jerger''
at wopc.co.uk. Retrieved 19 December 2023. describes an historical type of Tarot pack used for playing

card game A card game is any game that uses playing cards as the primary device with which the game is played, whether the cards are of a traditional design or specifically created for the game (proprietary). Countless card games exist, including famil ...

s that was made in south Germany, France and Switzerland, including the town of

Besançon Besançon (, ; , ; archaic ; ) is the capital of the Departments of France, department of Doubs in the region of Bourgogne-Franche-Comté. The city is located in Eastern France, close to the Jura Mountains and the border with Switzerland. Capi ...

.''Pattern Sheet 6'' - The Tarot de Besançon
at the IPCS website. Retrieved 9 Jun 2019.

History

The Tarot de Besançon was derived from the older form of the Marseille type, now known as ‘Type-I Tarot de Marseille’, compared with which it portrays characteristic differences, notably that the Popess (trump II) and the Pope (trump V) are replaced by, respectively,

Juno Juno commonly refers to: *Juno (mythology), the Roman goddess of marriage and queen of the gods * ''Juno'' (film), the 2007 film Juno may also refer to: Arts, entertainment and media Fictional characters *Juno, a character in the book ''Juno of ...

and

Jupiter Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the List of Solar System objects by size, largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a Jupiter mass, mass more than 2.5 times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined a ...

. The earliest cards of this pattern came from

Strasbourg Strasbourg ( , ; ; ) is the Prefectures in France, prefecture and largest city of the Grand Est Regions of France, region of Geography of France, eastern France, in the historic region of Alsace. It is the prefecture of the Bas-Rhin Departmen ...

in the early 18th century. During the mid-18th century other sources of manufacture included

Colmar Colmar (; ; or ) is a city and commune in the Haut-Rhin department and Alsace region of north-eastern France. The third-largest commune in Alsace (after Strasbourg and Mulhouse), it is the seat of the prefecture of the Haut-Rhin department ...

Konstanz Konstanz ( , , , ), traditionally known as Constance in English, is a college town, university city with approximately 83,000 inhabitants located at the western end of Lake Constance in the Baden-Württemberg state of south Germany. The city ho ...

Ulm Ulm () is the sixth-largest city of the southwestern German state of Baden-Württemberg, and with around 129,000 inhabitants, it is Germany's 60th-largest city. Ulm is located on the eastern edges of the Swabian Jura mountain range, on the up ...

and

Munich Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, Germany. As of 30 November 2024, its population was 1,604,384, making it the third-largest city in Germany after Berlin and Hamburg. Munich is the largest city in Germany that is no ...

, but the majority were manufactured in

Alsace Alsace (, ; ) is a cultural region and a territorial collectivity in the Grand Est administrative region of northeastern France, on the west bank of the upper Rhine, next to Germany and Switzerland. In January 2021, it had a population of 1,9 ...

. The packs take their name from the eastern French town of

, to which the cardmakers moved their production in the early 19th century. The so-called Tarot de Besançon was superseded in the late 18th century by French-suited tarot packs. The

Swiss Tarot The Swiss Tarot deck is a 78-card deck used for the tarot card games Troccas and Troggu. It is also sometimes called the JJ Tarot due to the replacement of the usual second and fifth trumps with cards depicting Juno (mythology), Juno and Jupiter (g ...

pattern, which emerged in

Diessenhofen Diessenhofen is a village and a municipality in Frauenfeld District in the canton of Thurgau in Switzerland. The village is situated on the south shore of the High Rhine just opposite the German town of Gailingen am Hochrhein. History Diessenhof ...

around 1860, was derived from the Tarot de Besançon.

Description

Typical of card packs of the Besançon type is that the cards traditionally depicting the Papess and the Pope were redesigned to portray the Roman gods,

and

. It is assumed that this renaming took place in order to avoid upsetting religious sensitivities in an area of distribution marked by confessional contrasts. Other features of the Besançon type compared with the Marseille Tarot are: * Cupid is aiming at the eyes of the lovers. * The face of the Moon appears head on and not in profile. * The world is not depicted dancing, but standing in

contrapost ( 'counterpoise'), in the visual arts, is a human figure standing with most of its weight on one foot, so that its shoulders and arms twist off-axis from the hips and legs in the axial plane. First appearing in Ancient Greece in the early 5th ...

. Known manufacturers of card packs of this type are: * Jean-Baptiste Benois * Suzanne Bernardin * J. Blanche, Besançon * J. H. Blanck et Tschann * Louis Carey, Strasbourg * Andreas Benedict Göbl * Arnoult Grimaud * François Héri * Jean Jerger, Besançon * A. Kirchner, Besançon * Joseph Krebs, Freiburg * L. de Laboisse, Strasbourg * Pierre Lachapele * Nicolas François Laudier, Strasbourg * Jean Pierre Laurent * Arnoult Lequart * Guillaume Mann, Colmar * Johann Pelagius Mayer, Constance * Renault, Besançon * Bernhard Schaer, Mumlisweil * Jean Tissot * Wolfgang Weber * Johannes Muller, Schaffhousen * Josef Rauch Miller, Salzburg Giordano Berti, "Tarot of Besançon of Josef Rauch Miller", in ''Tarot in German countries from the 16th to the 18th century'', OM Edizioni, Quarto Inferiore 2018, pp. 23-25 The Besançon Tarot includes the Tarot 1JJ, which forms its own sub-type (see details in that article), and the ''Tarot d’Épinal'', which also has specific variations in design. It was manufactured around 1830 or 1850 by the cardmaker, Pellerin, in

Épinal Épinal (; ; ) is a Communes of France, commune in northeastern France and the prefecture of the Vosges (department), Vosges Departments of France, department. Geography The commune has a land area of . It is situated on the river Moselle, so ...

, the wood engraving comes from François Georgin (1801–1863). Among the features are an additional card with the title, ''Consultant'', which was clearly used as a Significator, which is why it may be assumed that the cards were also used for divinatory purposes and not, like other packs of this type at that time, used exclusively for playing cards. The pictures below, showing the 22 trump cards, come from a pack with coloured wood carvings produced by Renault from Besançon around 1820–1830. The pack is based on a c. 1800 design by Jean Jerger, also from Besançon. File:Tarot de Besançon - Renault - Trump 00.jpg, The Fool File:Tarot de Besançon - Renault - Trump 01.jpg, The Magician File:Tarot de Besançon - Renault - Trump 02.jpg, Juno File:Tarot de Besançon - Renault - Trump 03.jpg, The Lady File:Tarot de Besançon - Renault - Trump 04.jpg, The Lord File:Tarot de Besançon - Renault - Trump 05.jpg, Jupiter File:Tarot de Besançon - Renault - Trump 06.jpg, The Lovers File:Tarot de Besançon - Renault - Trump 07.jpg, The Wagon File:Tarot de Besançon - Renault - Trump 08.jpg, Justice File:Tarot de Besançon - Renault - Trump 09.jpg, The Hermit File:Tarot de Besançon - Renault - Trump 10.jpg, The Wheel of Fortune File:Tarot de Besançon - Renault - Trump 11.jpg, Power File:Tarot de Besançon - Renault - Trump 12.jpg, The Hanged Man File:Tarot de Besançon - Renault - Trump 13.jpg, Death File:Tarot de Besançon - Renault - Trump 14.jpg, Moderation File:Tarot de Besançon - Renault - Trump 15.jpg, The Devil File:Tarot de Besançon - Renault - Trump 16.jpg, The Tower File:Tarot de Besançon - Renault - Trump 17.jpg, The Star File:Tarot de Besançon - Renault - Trump 18.jpg, The Moon File:Tarot de Besançon - Renault - Trump 19.jpg, The Sun File:Tarot de Besançon - Renault - Trump 20.jpg, Judgement File:Tarot de Besançon - Renault - Trump 21.jpg, The World

References

Literature

* Dummett, Sir Michael (1980). ''The Game of Tarot: From Ferrara to Salt Lake City''. London: Duckworth. * Graf, Eckhard (1991). ''Lexikon des Tarot sowie der Orakel- und Selbsterfahrungsspiele.'' Nagelschmid, Stuttgart 1991, . * Mann, Sylvia (1990). ''All Cards on the Table'', Jonas Verlag/Deutsches Spielkarten-Museum, Leinfelden-Echterdingen * Rodik, Belinda (2008) ''Tarot-Lexikon. Grundbegriffe und Schlüsselworte zu Symbolik und Deutung.'' Schirmer, Darmstadt 2008, {{ISBN, 978-3-89767-612-1, pp 323–346. Tarot playing card decks