4. . From Amore to Carro

After the four Papi comes Love (at right). In an age when popes openly had mistresses, it would have been great fun to see a Papa conquered by Love in the game. But this card is often considered to start a new section in the sequence, a section perhaps partly inspired by Petrarch’s set of six poems known collectively as I Trionfi, The Triumphs.[1] In that case, Love’s power over the Pope card is simply a result of a transition from one set of powers to another of a higher order, that of the sequence of triumphs described by Petrarch, certain fundamental conditions of life. Love of an instinctual nature has its triumphs, but is vanquished by the virtue of Pudicizia (proper behavior pertaining to sexuality, in some fifteenth-century manuscripts the virtue of Chastity); then even a life of such virtue is subdued by Death, in turn conquered by Fame, a person’s reputation after Death, then Time, over which Fame fades, to be triumphed over by timeless Eternity.

What came after Love in the early Tarot sequences varied. In Petrarch’s cycle, what followed was Pudicizia/Castità, both words that applied to married women as well as to celibates, and men as well, if slightly differently. In Florence and Bologna, however, what came next was Temperance, as far as known. Temperance comes to much the same as Pudicizia, both having the meaning of control over instinctual appetites. The Tekely poem used the Bolognese term Tempra, which also meant “temper” in the sense of “moderate.”[2] “Temper your ardor,” the poem advised Tekely, in this case against the instinct to dominate. The Bolognese card (far left below) is a typical medieval image of that virtue, a lady pouring from one vessel into another. She could be moderating wine with water or hot water with cold.

In the A order of Bologna and Florence, two more virtues immediately follow, each with its characteristic attribute -  Justice (middle) with its sword and scales (in Bologna the orb divided into three, for the three traditional continents, conveys the idea of dominion), and Fortitude (far right) with its column. There may have earlier been four, since in the culture there were four cardinal virtues; but Prudence in the surviving cards is seen only in the expanded Tarot known as Minchiate. Four would also have been a nice complement to four Papi and four suits. Florence’s order Temperanza, Fortezza, Giustizia conforms to St. Thomas Aquinas, for whom Temperance was lowest, then Fortitude, then Justice.[3] But the Bolognese order – Temperance, Justice, Fortitude (Strength) - appears in the Bible's Wisdom of Solomon 8:7 and St. Ambrose’s Commentary on Luke (V:62).

Between these two orders, we might wonder which would have been first. In Biblical criticism, there is the principle that if the reading in one manuscript of a text is more rational than another, it is likely that the less rational is prior, because correcting the less rational, perhaps unconsciously, makes more sense than introducing errors into what was already rationally understandable. It is not impossible to introduce additional errors, but less likely. On that principle, the need for a hierarchy among the cards suggests a hierarchical ordering of virtues. Wisdom of Solomon simply presented a list, and Ambrose’s order was in a specific context, according to Aquinas. Aquinas was the highest authority, and for him Prudence was high, governing all the rest, then Justice, which governed the application of Fortitude, which provided the means by which Temperance was achieved. In that sense, Florence’s order would be a correction to Bologna’s rather than the other way around.

This argument is not strong, however. For example, Fortitude might have been preferred so as to connect with the next card, the Chariot, who on the Bolognese card is a military hero in a victory parade (at right, Rothschild Sheet, now in the Louvre, and the Dalla Torre). Although at some point this card was put before the virtues, a list given by Julio Cesare Croce in 1602 puts it after them; and it appears in one of two c. 1500 sheets now in Paris which otherwise have only the last twelve. In Bologna he is shown holding a sword in one hand and the orb of dominion in the other. The wings on his helmet are those typically shown at this time on the helmets of military conquerors, modeled on representations of the god Mars. A similar figure appeared elsewhere, the only variation being that sometimes it was female, like the personification Fama (Fame), and sometimes holding a baton rather than a sword. Orb, sword, and chariot were traditional attributes of Worldly Fame, described in Boccaccio’s fourteenth-century poem, the Amorosa Visione.[4] In putting the Chariot before Temperance, the idea may have been that the lust for power or fame needed tempering, too (as well as sexual lust), as the poem said about Tekely’s type of ardor.

For the next section, click on https://bologneseorder.blogspot.com/2023/09/3-four-papi.html, which will take you to "From Ruota to Morto"(despite what is on the link), or on "older post" at the bottom right of this page.

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[1] Online, the cycle in Italian and English is at https://petrarch.petersadlon.com/trionfi.html. There are also numerous editions in Italian and a few in English available on archive.org.

[2] Tempra and the other two virtues have been discussed in section one of this essay. For more examples in Bolognese literary compositions, see Andrea Vitali and Michael S. Howard, Bologna and the Tarot, an Italian Legacy of the Renaissance: History Art Symbology Literature (Riola, Italy: Mutus Liber, 2022), pp. 123-135, and in Italian, Andrea Vitali, "Tarocchi e Tarocchini Appropriati a Bologna," http://www.associazioneletarot.it/page.aspx?id=869"

[3] Summa Theologiae, II-II-123.12, translated by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province, 1920, online at https://www.newadvent.org/summa/3123.htm#article12.

[4] Giovanni Boccaccio, Amorosa Visione, bilingual Edition, trans. Robert Hollander, Timothy Hampton, and Margherita Frankel, Introduction by Vittore Branca (Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 1986), pp. 28-29 (VI.49-75): “she sat on a triumphal chariot, . . . held in her hand a shining sword, . . . in her left hand a golden apple. . . . Over the lady . . . was a verse written . . . ‘I am the Glory of the Worldly folk.’” (“sovra triunfal carro si sedea, . . . ‘n man tenea una lucente spada, . . . teneva nella man sinestra un pomo d’or . . . Era sovra costei, . . . un verso scritto . . . ‘Io son la Gloria del popol mondano.’”