The Number 21 and the Tarot Trumps

[Teheuti]

I looked up Bianca's biography (Pizzagalli), and found out she was actually *there* in Ferrara, in the middle of a six-month stay (1440-1441)! After that, the ruler of Ferrara, Nicolo III d'Este, accompanied the young woman back to her father, and stayed the rest of his life in Milan, assisting in the government of the Duchy (the rest of his life was short - he died in the early hours of December 26, 1441).

She then married Sforza sometime in 1441.

Here's a note I have to add to the mix:
1440 "Decembrio, the official biographer of Filippo Maria Visconti, third Duke of Milan, wrote that the duke enjoyed playing at a game that used painted figures." This is from Tea Hilander on TarotL.

Also Ross or someone mentioned early on in this discussion that San Bernadino never made a connection between the 21 points on a dice and cards, however we do have from the year before Ross's 1424 quote "The missals are the dice" :

1423 In a sermon against card-playing he represented the Devil as saying: “Nec deficere volo officiis meis Breviaria et Diurna, quae esse jubeo charticellas, in quibus variae figurae pingantur, sicut fieri solet in Breviariis Christi, quae figurae in eis mysticam malitiam praefigurent, ut puta denarii avaritiam, baculi stultitiam seu caninam saevitiam, calices seu cuppae ebrietatem et gulam, enses odium et bella.” Which Moakley translated as: The Devil says, “I don’t want to be without my breviary, [which are] playing-cards, in which various figures are painted, just as they are in the breviaries of Christ, which figures show forth the mysteries of evil. Consider the avarice of money, the stupidity or doggish ferocity of clubs, the goblets or cups drunkenness and gluttony, the swords hatred and war.” p. 98. [Note this early characterization of the suits.]

There's no mention of Tarot but there are of "figurae pingantur" and "figurae in eis mysticam malitiam praefigurent".

It's interesting, though, that he never connects the 21 letters of the dice/Devil with 21 trionfos.

Mary

 

[Ross G Caldwell]

She then married Sforza sometime in 1441.

October 25 1441, to be exact, in Cremona. Standing for Bianca Maria's father Filippo was his procurator, Vitaliano Borromeo (Filippo rarely left the castle of Milan). The Palazzo Borromeo has of course what is probably the earliest depiction of a game of Triumphs, made within a few years of this wedding.

Here's a note I have to add to the mix:
1440 "Decembrio, the official biographer of Filippo Maria Visconti, third Duke of Milan, wrote that the duke enjoyed playing at a game that used painted figures." This is from Tea Hilander on TarotL.

The real date is 1447, precisely between August and October.

The date 1440 is mistakenly given in Kaplan (Encyclopedia of Tarot, vol. I, p. 26), perhaps as a typo. There Kaplan also mentions Steele's article of 1900, but Steele gives the correct date of 1447 (p. 190).

Gardner describes it a little: "Pier Candido Decembrio [the elder brother of Angelo Camillo], who had been one of the two Milanese orators at the congress [a congress held in Ferrara to arrange peace between Milan and Venice], now entered into the service of the [Ambrosian] Republic, and wrote the life of the late Duke, taking as his model the life of Tiberius by Suetonius. Filippo Maria had died in August, but in October Decembrio had completed the work and sent it to Leonello, as to a kind of literary dictator, to ask his opinion of it, before publishing it. The Marquis professed himself much delighted with the book and flattered at it having been left with him in this way, but strongly advised the author, seeing that his writings would be immortal, either to strike out or to veil what he had said concerning a secret vice of the Duke's. Decembrio wrote back that he had not mentioned this vice to bring infamy to his late Prince, but rather praise and glory, seeing that his not passing it over in silence would make people lend faith to what he reported in his favour. Nevertheless, he altered the passage in deference to Leonello's opinion, and the alteration was much commended by the latter."

(Edmund G. Gardner, Dukes & Poets in Ferrara, London, 1904, p. 64)
for a little more information (badly in need of updating) see
http://trionfi.com/0/e/00e/

Also Ross or someone mentioned early on in this discussion that San Bernadino never made a connection between the 21 points on a dice and cards,

That's right. He didn't, as far as I and a few other researchers can tell, or they don't appear in the printed editions of his sermons. There could be some marginal note in an autograph manuscript, but that's a task for someone else at this point. In any case, he never systematized the die-point analogy either, as both Franciscans and Dominicans would begin doing even in his own lifetime (all the ones I know about are in the first post of this thread).

however we do have from the year before Ross's 1424 quote "The missals are the dice" :
1423 In a sermon against card-playing he represented the Devil as saying: “Nec deficere volo officiis meis Breviaria et Diurna, quae esse jubeo charticellas, in quibus variae figurae pingantur, sicut fieri solet in Breviariis Christi, quae figurae in eis mysticam malitiam praefigurent, ut puta denarii avaritiam, baculi stultitiam seu caninam saevitiam, calices seu cuppae ebrietatem et gulam, enses odium et bella.” Which Moakley translated as: The Devil says, “I don’t want to be without my breviary, [which are] playing-cards, in which various figures are painted, just as they are in the breviaries of Christ, which figures show forth the mysteries of evil. Consider the avarice of money, the stupidity or doggish ferocity of clubs, the goblets or cups drunkenness and gluttony, the swords hatred and war.” p. 98.

Unfortunately, Moakley was confused about the particular sermon and date here, as has been the case for many before and after.

Bernardino wrote the Latin sermons between 1430 and 1436, while he was given a "desk job", being promoted to Preceptor of the Observant Franciscans and administering all the new houses that had been set up in the wake of his relentless preaching and the conversions that followed (and, after a relatively sensational trial for heresy, that he had won; but I think the advice was "lay low for awhile"; he was not always appreciated, like the time he got his teeth knocked out (I'll have to find that for you)).

So this sermon, written for his own and his students' use, was written sometime between 1430 and 1436 (the actual quote Moakley used, from a secondary source, is different from the standard edition too, but even if it is an attested variant, her translation should read "I don't want my rites (officiis meis) to be without Breviaries and Hour-books...")

For the date of 1423, this is apocryphal as well. While it seems that Bernardino was briefly in Bologna in late 1423 and preached, the sermons he gave weren't recorded, and would have been in Italian anyway. There *is* one from Siena in 1424 on the sins of games (in Italian), which might be interesting to talk about.

[Note this early characterization of the suits.]

Yes, it's one of the earliest. I think there should have been a corresponding "positive" morality of the suits in the air as well.

There's no mention of Tarot but there are of "figurae pingantur" and "figurae in eis mysticam malitiam praefigurent".

It's interesting, though, that he never connects the 21 letters of the dice/Devil with 21 trionfos.

No, but the Steele Sermon author draws a parallel through the use of "one ladder... another ladder" (unius scalae... alterius scalae) when describing the 21 points and trumps. He doesn't call regular cards a "ladder to hell".

Ross

 

[Teheuti]

Ross -

Thank you for all these corrections. What would we do without you?!

Mary

 

[Ross G Caldwell]

Hi Mary,

Ross -

Thank you for all these corrections. What would we do without you?!

Mary

Sorry for the dry and pedantic nature of those notes - I didn't have much time to draw conclusions or suggest any questions.

To me, the import of the date of Bernardino's sermons is that between 1424 and 1436, Bernardino frequently preached on games and mentioned cards, creating a whole myth (that Bernardino scholars call the "Diabolic liturgy"), and yet he did not even allude to trump cards. He preached all over Italy, from Padua to Rome, Bologna to Milan (maybe not Venice or Naples, but I'm no expert on his itinerary) during the decade 1418-1428, and he knew all social classes - I think he had plenty of opportunity to notice trump cards. So to me he is a good absence of evidence argument for the dating of the invention of the game. Especially as he uses colorful imagery to get his points across, and also noting that some of his immediate successors and disciples among the Franciscan preachers, like Roberto Caracciolo da Lecce (in 1455) and the anonymous author of the Steele Sermon (1460-1480?), did notice them and took pains to include them in their sermons, precisely because of the sacreligious nature of putting figures like a Pope and Emperor, "and even God himself" in a game of cards. Bernardino also referred to an image of the Wheel of Fortune in his sermons at least twice (in the late 1420s IIRC), but it was not drawn from the tarot, since 1) he doesn't say so; 2) he expects that his listeners might not have seen it; 3) his wheel always has six figures, and seems too complex for a card (the ass playing the bagpipes at the top is also unknown to tarot, I think).

Here are his uses of the Wheel of Fortune image, taken from Lina Bolzoni, "The Web of Images: Vernacular Preaching from its Origins to Saint Bernardino da Siena" (Ashgate, 2004 (translation of original Italian edition, 2001).

In her introduction she lists about 8 recent studies (between 1975 and 1999) that look interesting; several are in German, but one (Freeberg, 1989) is in English, called "The Power of Images".

Bolzoni's book is very expensive, but thanks to amazon.com, we can read quite a bit of the book, to a point, and look up brief excerpts (such as bibliographies) to our heart's content.

I found a very interesting section about Bernardino's use of the Wheel of Fortune image in his preaching, and she appended another allusion to it by Ludovico Ariosto in 1523 (who does refer to cards, the most common source of the image by his day).

You can read it in her book on pp. 161-163, but I've copied it out here as well (since we can't print from the amazon.com "Look Inside" pages).

[From Lina BOLZONI, "The Web of Images: Vernacular Preaching from its Origins to Saint Bernardino da Siena" (Ashgate, 2004), pp. 161-163, endnotes with bibliography inserted]

On 27 August 1427 in the Campo di Siena, Bernardino dedicated his sermon to the different moments in which God judges us for our sins.

"And when He passes [His judgements], he turns the world upside down: 'Vox tonitrui tui in rota' [Ps. 77:19 (Vulgate Ps. 76)]; the voice of God is in the wheel. Have you ever seen the wheel of fortune, and its various figures? I have seen it, and with six figures. First, at the bottom, the figures all man, but in ascending higher his head turns into a donkey's head. And then, rising even higher he becomes half man, half donkey, and at the summit he has turned completely into a donkey, and plays the bagpipes. Then the wheel sends him, head first, down the other side and he has the head of a man and the rest of him is a donkey. And further down he becomes half man and half donkey, and then at the bottom he is all man again." (n. 140: Siena, 1427, I, pp. 401-402)

Bernardino is describing here a variant of the Wheel of Fortune, an extremely popular motif in the visual arts and religious playes ever since the eleventh century (n. 141: Doren, Alfred, "Fortuna im Mittelalter und der Renaissance", in Vorlage der Bibliothek Warburg, 1, (Leipzig, 1924), pp. 85-86); Mâle, Emile, "Religious Art in France, The Late Middle Ages: A Study of Medieval Iconography and its Sources (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1986), vols. II, IV; Novati, Francesco, "Fresci e minii del Dugento, con l'aggiunta d'un capitolo medito su: origini e sviluppo dei themi iconografici nell'alto Medioevo" (Milan, Cogliati, 1925), pp. 307-308 and 369-370; Kurose, Tamostu and Chirodo-Ku (eds.), "Miniatures of Goddess Fortune in Mediaeval Manuscripts" (Tokyo, 1977); Pomarici, Francesco, "Fortuna" in _Enciclopedia dell'arte medievale" (Roma, 1995), vol. I, pp. 321-5. On the various uses of the wheel of fortune, see Nelson, Alan H., "Mechanical Wheels of Fortune, 1100-1547", Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, XLIII (1980), 227-33.). He underlines that he has seen it with his very own eyes and describes in detail the six figures that could be found on it. He uses this device to translate into a visual image the concordance which he has just created between two verses from the Psalms; the first verse speaks of the ruins which God will send (Psalm 110:6) 'implebit ruinas, et conquassabit capita in terra multorum. Iudicabit in nationibus' (He shall judge among the heathen, he shall fill the places with dead bodies; he shall wound the heads over many countries); while the second (Psalm 77:9) declares that the voice of divine thunder is in the wheel.

This impressive but obscure biblical image is interpreted literally by Bernardino, who uses the opportunity to link the divine wheel to a well-known image, declaring that the terrible voice of divine judgement will express itself, and express itself many times over, in various forms, by means of the Wheel of Fortune. The 'ruins' prophesied by the Bible, are many, and six are the figures, so carefully described by the preacher, on the wheel.

In the version of the Wheel of Fortune cited by Bernardino, the image of the donkey takes the place of the more usual image of the King; in both cases however the purpose is to suggest in visual form the two extremes of the human condition. The triumphant figure which sits at the top of the wheel - 'at the summit he has turned completely into a donkey, and plays bagpipes' - expresses in radical form the complete inversion in man's state that could occur at any time by a whim of fate; man's human side has been completely taken over by his animal component. At the same time, as Bronzini noted, Bernardino is here reviving a very ancient motif - that of the donkey playing a musical instrument - as a burlesque symbol of the world turned upsidedown (n. 142: Giovanni Battista Bronzini, "Le prediche di Bernardino e le tradizioni popolari del suo tempo", in AA.VV. "Bernardino predicatore nella società del suo tempo", Atti del XVI convegno del Centro di Studi sulla Spiritualità Medievale (Todi, Accademica Tudentina, 1976) pp. 111-152 (see p. 133). On the motif of the donkey playing the musical instrument, see Cocchiara, Giuseppe, "Il mondo alla rovescia" (Turin, Boringhieri, 1963), chapter II, pp. 38-48; Vogel, M. "Onas Lyras" (Dusseldorf, 1973); Garnier, François, "L'ane à la lyre: sottiser d'iconographie médiévale" (Paris, Le Léopard d'Or, 1988). In a sermon delivered in Florence in 1425, the preacher gives a very precise description of a wheel of fortune (affirming once again that he had seen it with his own eyes) in which the donkey is present although it is not playing an instrument:
'And man becomes a donkey as he becomes important; and above all when a poor man becomes rich. Is he rich? Then he is a very great donkey! As a sign of this, I once saw a wheel of fortune in which there was one who was beginning to mount up, and he had a donkey's head; when he was halfway up, he became half-donkey; and when when was at the summit he became all donkey. The the wheel began to turn downwards, and his head became a man's; when he was halfway down he became half a man, and when he reached the bottom he became all man (Florence, 1425, III, p. 128).

A wheel of fortune similar to the one described by Bernardino (n. 143: Delcorno (n. 107 on p. 401 in Siena 1427, I) points out that the description by Bernardino corresponds point for point with a woodblock illustration contained in a German translation of Petrarch's _De remediis utriusque fortunae_ (Augsburg, 1532) and with the miniature paintings and illustrations to _De casibus_ by Boccaccio, the _Trionfi_ by Petrarch, and the _Acerba_ by Cecco d'Ascoli; he refers the reader to Doren (1924 (n. 141 above)), pl. IV, 11C and to Kurose adn Chirodu-Ku (1977 (n. 141 above) pls. 128, 129, 130 and 132. In addition, see Burdach, Konrad, "Vom Mittelalter zur Reformation", _Forschung zur Geschichte der Deutschen Bildung_ (Berlin, Weidmann, 1917), III-I, 247, 271ff.) (with only three figures, but at the top of the wheel is a donkey playing a musical instrument) appears in one of the illustrations to the 1498 edition (published in Paris by Marnef; the artist responsible for the engravings is unknown) of the _Ship of Fools_, a highly popular work by the humanist and expert in law of Strasbourg, Sebastian Brandt (1457-1521)(fig. 4.8). This was a poem of more than two thousand verses written in Alsatian dialect and first published in 1494. It was then translated into Latin - with the title _Stultifera Navis_ - in 1497 by one of Brandt's students, Jakob Locher.

Travelling aboard Brandt's ship are a variety of fools; described and mercilessly pilloried by the author, at the end of the book they furnish us with a complete cross-section of humanity. Each fool is illustrated in a n engraving and one of these depicts the 'donkey version' of the Wheel of Fortune (n. 144 - illustration above).

Bernardino must have seen and adapted an earlier form of this image, part of a long tradition that continues in the text and illustrations to the _Ship of Fools_.

It is difficult to determine exactly when and where Bernardino might have seen the image of the wheel to which he refers. We do know that in 1428; just a short time after his sermon, a Wheel of Fortune very like the one described by him was used in the decoration of a door within the Palazzo Pubblico of Siena. It appears, as Maria Monica Donato notes, in 'one of the marqueteries of the door between the Cappella dei Signori and the Sala di Balia, paid for by Domenico di Niccolò in 1428.' (n. 145: Donato, M.-M., "Un ciclo pittorico ad Ascanio (Siena) Palazzo Pubblico e l'iconografia 'politica' alla fine del medioevo", _Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa_, Classe di Lettere e Filosofia, s. III, XVIII, pp. 1105-1271). In this work four figures corresponding to the four spokes of the wheel can be seen accompanied by traditional mottoes: the figure designated 'regnarò' (I will reign) has the head of a donkey; while the one labelled 'regno' (I reign) and placed at the summit of the wheel is a donkey from head to toe.

Regarding the enduring popularity of the image of the wheel, we cannot fail to mention the _Seventh Satire_ of Ludovico Ariosto, written in 1523. "I shall not allow myself ot be misled by the will-o'-the-wisp of hope any longer", wrote the poet to explain why he had decided not to accept the Duke of Ferrara's invitation to become ambassador at the court of the newly-elected pope, Clement VII:

"I am dismayed by that painted wheel, which every master of playing cards designs in the same way: I do not see how such unanimity can lie. The top man on the wheel is portrayed as a donkey: every one understands the riddle without having to call on the Sphinx to resolve it. There one also sees all who ascend begin to grow donkey-like in their forward parts, while what hangs behind remains human."

(Quella ruota dipinta mi sgomenta,
Ch'ogni maestro di carte a un modo finge;
Tanta concordia non credo io che menta.
Quel che le siede in cima si dipinge
Uno asinello: ognum lo enigma intende,
Senza che chiami a interpretarlo Sfinge.
Vi si vede anco che ciascun che ascende,
Comincia a inasinir le prime membre
E resta umano quel che drieto pende.)

Here the concordance in the iconographic tradition - testified by the tarot - transforms the wheel with its donkeys into a mocking and exemplary warning that, Ariosto notes, we would do well to heed when making crucial decisions that could influence our lives.

Besides its intrinsic interest, showing how the image was interpreted by Bernardino, it is interesting that he doesn't seem to know it from a card (unlike Ariosto in 1523), but the A or Southern type of decks has four figures that go from human to ass (the earliest ones anyway) and back (the earliest known B type does too I think). I was initially looking for how Bernardino might have spoken about the Virtues, since he apparently used the Lorenzetti "Allegory of Good and Bad Goverment" in his sermons, which includes depictions of virtues (I wanted to know if he explicitly cited Prudence as the "Charioteer of the Virtues" (Auriga Virtutum) which was a common motif in theological texts (invented, I think, by St. Bernard)).

It goes into my argument from silence list of sources for more precise dating of the invention of the series. How much earlier than 1442 can we expect the deck to have been invented, and not to be noted in sources that mention various kinds of cards and games?

(There are a lot of other interesting implications in those passages too, of course...)

So, that is just one way to look at the dating issues of Bernardino's sermons, for what they can tell us (or not) about the Tarot in those years.

Ross

 

[kwaw]

*sorry - no can do at moment*

 

[Ross G Caldwell]

I have a copy and if there is anything you would like me to look up that isn't in in the excerpts feel free to ask.

Kwaw

Thanks for that generous offer kwaw. I didn't notice anything else in the index directly related to tarot or playing cards or specific images like the Wheel of Fortune, but I'm sure there's a lot more of value in the book in a more general sense.

Ross

 

[kwaw]

Thanks for that generous offer kwaw. I didn't notice anything else in the index directly related to tarot or playing cards or specific images like the Wheel of Fortune, but I'm sure there's a lot more of value in the book in a more general sense.

Ross

Had to withdraw that offer at the moment because there is a gap in the bookshelf where it should be (next to 'gallery of memory') and I can't find it, and don't remember loaning it to anyone so am in a bit of an upset and panic as I can't find it (and as you say, it is expensive).



Kwaw

 

[Teheuti]

Sorry for the dry and pedantic nature of those notes - I didn't have much time to draw conclusions or suggest any questions.

I love it that you can give us both "just the facts, m'am" AND really sensible yet creative thinking about them. History is a discipline as well as an art and it's not so easy to balance the two elegantly. I've learned more about how to think on the Tarot lists, then I ever did in college. It's one reason why, no matter how frustrated and even angry I get, I really appreciate the challenges and corrections I get in the history discussions. Thank you all. It's an invaluable education.

Mary

 

[Teheuti]

I just found a fascinating article that has a whole section on Thoth, the Egg, the Zero, the Fool/Joker and Jacques Derrida. I think you'll find it very interesting.
http://reconstruction.eserver.org/061/goggin.shtml
Scroll down to "Derrida and the Divinity"

Mary

 

[kwaw]

Rex illiteratus quasi asinus coronatus.

Education des jeunes princes

Pourquoy dit l'en les vu ars libéraulx?
Pour ce que nul s'ils n'estoit libéral,
Noble homme et franc, ou attrait des royaulx,
Le temps passé, ou en espécial
Donné aux Dieux, n'osast en général
Nulz de ces ars retenir ou aprandre.
Pour ce fut clerc li grant roy Alexandre,
Julles César qui tant fut renommé,
Charles le Grant qui fist maint peuple rendre:
Roy sans lettre est comme asne couronné.

En enfance, que leur sang estoit chaux,
Aprenoient li noble et li royal
Les sciences, les vertus cardinaulx,
Gardans leurs corps de lésion de mal
En jeusne temps : puis furent à cheval
Fors et puissans pour tout honeur emprandre.
Ne leur failloit estrange conseil prandre ;
Car chacun d'eulx estoit saige et lettré.
Autrement va : s'en est maint règne mendre :
Roy sans lettre est comme asne couronné.

Moult conquirent roys clers par leurs travaux :
En cellui temps furent monarchial
Plusieurs d'iceulx par leur sens, comme eaux.
Firent citez ; et le bien communal
Amèrent tuit d'amour bonne et loyal ;
Et justice firent à tous comprandre.
Princes non cleres n'y ont voulu entendre ,
Dont les plusieurs en sont déshérité.
Ces ars veuillent tous les nobles reprendre :
Roy sans lettre est comme asne couronné.

L'Envoy.
Prince, advisez vos enfans dès aage tendre
De mettre aux ars: mieux en vaudront leursmembres;
Et ne seront corrompu, n'affolé :
Dont ils pourront mieulx leur peuple detlendre,
Et gouverner justement sans mesprandre.
Roy sans lettre est comme asne couronné.

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=...ig=O_Z-hMWeFwXjBZlobUbHyRd3wcw&hl=en#PPA18,M1

The aphorism of 'a king without letters is like a crowned ass' was common, ubiquitous even, among texts meant for 'the education of princes', to be found from the 14th century on among poets and writers such as Eustache Deschamps, Christine de Pizan, Nicole Erasmus, Jacques Legrand and in many writers over the centuries from that time.

The source of the maxim is the Policratus of John Salisbury translated by order of King Charles V in to French from the latin in the 14th century:

"Je me recorde que es letres que le roy des Romans escript au roy de France je treuve en l'une entre les autres, où il amonnestoit et conseilloit que il feist ses enfanz aprendre es ars liberaulz et en bonnes doctrines, que il disoit que roy qui n'est lettré est comme asne coroné."

(Policratus, bk.4, chap. 6, p.65) trans. Denis Foulechat.

source: The Color of Melancholy by Jacqueline Cerquiglini-Toulet, p.7-9

Kwaw