In the previous seven posts, the Bolognese order has been reviewed in itself and in relation to other decks and artworks, exploring the relationship between the cards’ placement and their meaning. Besides an introduction to the order and to the special Bolognese terms (post one), the discussion can be divided into five parts: first (post two), two cards, one not part of the sequence at all, and one defined by a name reflecting its low status . Second (post three), four cards, the Papi. Third (posts four and five), eight cards, defined by three of the four cardinal virtues, three Petrarchan triumphs (Love, Fame or Pudicitia, Death) and one Boccaccian triumph (the Wheel), with the suggestion that the Hanged Man replaced Prudence. Fourth (post six), the two at the end, deriving from Petrarch and relating best to his Triumph of Eternity. And fifth (post seven), five cards between Death and the last two, paralleling the three theological virtues of the Cary-Yale and Minchiate as well as inserting some cards for Time in the order Petrarch had it.
This division into groups is not meant to reflect
anyone’s original conception but merely the needs of exposition. In fact, the
whole idea of one conception is suspect, as opposed to that of an organic
development over time, with at least the five cards from Devil to Sun as
additions, perhaps also the Fool and Bagatella, different centers contributing
until reaching an optimal number. At that point, a natural division into three
parts would separate the Pope and below on one end and Death and above on the
other, as Dummett suggested, with the card makers respecting it thereafter.[1]
In Bologna the most intriguing feature of the order is probably the “equal papi” rule, the origin of which was discussed in relation to three hypotheses: (1) as equalizing the sexes, subsequently removed but without changing the game; (2) as reflecting the struggles among popes, antipopes, and their competing emperors in the twelfth-fourteenth centuries; and (3) as an adaptation of trumps linked to suits in the game of VIII Imperadori. The second has the most documentary support.
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