2 Fool and Bagattino

In the Bolognese literary compositions where the trumps were ranked in order, the Fool (Matto) invariably occurred in the lowest position. Not only that, it was the weakest card in the deck: it couldn’t win any trick, even against a low number card.[1] If trumps are defined as cards that beat all the cards in the ordinary four suits in the trick-taking part of the game, the Fool was not a trump at all. 

On the other hand, when it came to what mattered most, the score, it was one of the most valuable cards, at least in Bologna. First, it was one of the four tarocchi, as the Angel, World, Bagattino, and Fool were called, the two highest and two lowest in trick-taking power, all given a high number of individual points as well as earning points in combination. In contrast, the other triumphs were worth very little, except in a very limited number of combinations with other triumphs.[2] In sequences both the Fool and Bagattino (the latter uniquely in Bologna) could complete or add to point-getting combinations of other cards, filling in gaps as though it were a member of that combination.[3]

Finally, unlike any other card, the player who lost the Fool could get it back for scoring purposes, by trading some other captured card for it. Moreover, the Fool could be played at any time and so was useful to save another card from being lost.[4] These last two features suggest a possible analogy to Christ, who in Christian belief sacrificed himself for humanity and will return at the End Times. His self-sacrifice is an example of “the foolishness of God,” as St. Paul called it (I Cor. 4:10), in that he gave his life when he could easily have escaped. That the card can enhance the value of other cards suggests the same analogy: association with him raises the value of others at the end of the game.

Some 16th-18th century literary products (called Tarocchi Appropriati)  assigned cards to members of a particular group of individuals, for example in ca. 1700 Bologna, a group of ladies in Bologna were so honored, each with a short description of how the card fit. In this group, the card of the Fool went to a lady described - rather unflatteringly, hopefully as a joke - as poco savia, little wise.[5] On the other hand, a list assigning the cards to various canons of San Pietro, presumably a parish church, said the person for this card was Stultus propter Christum,[6] "Fool for Christ," echoing St. Paul. There was also the expression “Like the Fool in the Tarot,” which had two meanings, on the one hand being applied to someone of little worth and on the other to someone who could serve in any capacity, like an exceptionally able servant.[7] These two meanings relate directly to its trick-taking vs. substituting power in the game.

In the earliest extant Bolognese example, that of the non-standard Mitelli deck, 1663-1669 (near right), the card would seem to depict someone of diminished mental capacity, or maybe a clown charged with amusing children.[8] But in what would become the standard Bolognese image, seen in the Dalla Torre Tarocchini of 1670-1700 (far right), a boy bangs a drum and plays a wind instrument, something other than the bagpipes associated with fools. Except for that and the feathers in his cap,[9] the depiction is quite unique in the early Tarot, and not alluded to in any of the literary compositions. I am reminded of the phrase “drumming up support.” Hiring an entertainer to attract attention would serve to publicize any figure celebrating a triumph and so enhance them above others. The depiction seems to fit the card’s role in augmenting the value of other cards that earn points in combination with others, like an entertainer in their entourage performing as they made their way through a town of their peers.

The lowest actual trump, in the sense of a card capable of beating any ordinary suit card, was usually shown as a man at a table performing illusions or challenging people to the game of cups and balls. Among the parishioners in Bologna, it went to a man “who likes to be among boys, and of a light character.”[10] This is surely because the card showed a street performer with four boys around him (far right, Dalla Torre Tarocchini). For the same reason, a mid to late 18th century sheet assigning divinatory meanings to cards interpreted it as “married man”: such a man would naturally have children about.[11] The Mitelli non-standard card shows here an entertainer surrounded by children; that he is not at a table, but rather dancing and pounding out a rhythm, shows that the word for the card included street performers of all sorts. 

Since the Bolognese name for the card, Bagattino, was also that of a small unit of money, perhaps the lowest, it fits the lowest trump as much as "Bagatella," the word for the card in neighboring Ferrara, which meant "little thing that someone has" or "rubbish of nothing."[12] In Bologna, "Bagattino" also served in expressions of contempt. A poem by Giulio Cesare Croce begins, “I hear people speaking of me / saying that I am not worth a bagatino / and that I am not a barbarian, but a goat.”[13] The eighteenth-century philologist Lodovico Antonio Muratori observed, “It was low currency. Even today we say 'I do not respect you one bagatino!'”[14] 

But out of all the types of persons that a designer might find worthless, why a sleight of hand artist, as we see on the card, and not something related to the coin? As already indicated, in the Ferrara area and Brescia its earliest recorded title was El Bagatella,[15] using a word that meant both “trifle” and “tricks and games of the mountebanks,” that is, those who attracted crowds by means of performances on platforms and then sold remedies that licensed physicians considered worthless. As “thing of little value,” the word is a fitting name for the lowest trump;[16] at the same time, it describes what is on the card, either the man or what he did. There is a similar double meaning in English between “trifle” as a noun and “trifle” as a verb. To trifle with someone, to be a trifler, is to play tricks on them. Since Bagatella has a feminine ending, and the figure was male, some might have preferred a masculine ending. Bagattino is such a word, as is Bagatello, the title seen in Florence and Pavia.[17]

Both allegorically and in trick-taking power, the trump suit, which excludes the Fool, contains powers higher than kings. In that sense the Bagattino might seem an exception, in that he is not above kings and queens in the social or cosmic order. (Nor are traitors, unless they get away with their crimes; that is an issue for later.) But when a sleight of hand artist fools the lord who has paid him to do so, that is a kind of power, too.

Moreover, there is a certain analogy between this fellow and Christ at the Last Supper, who, like the man on the Bolognese card, stands in front of a table filled with cups, knives, and other small objects, surrounded by admirers. In the Bolognese tarocchi appropriati dedicated to the Canons of St. Pietro that had “Fool for Christ” for the Fool, the motto for the Bagattino was “Praise the Lord, boys.” Not only is Christ the “Fool of God,” declining to escape his captors, but also the one who fools, i.e., deceives, the Devil, in the way that a mousetrap deceives the mouse, in Augustine’s metaphor (Sermon 263 and others), also alluded to in art:[18] it is the Devil’s killing of Christ that frees humanity from hell. Similarly, a seventeenth-century Christmas cantata compares Christ to a card player beating the Devil by stratagem, whose victory is his death, after which the custom is for the winner to offer gifts to those gathered around.[19] In the Bolognese game, what elevates the card is that the Bagattino, like the Fool, is worth a lot of points, and also like the Fool can be added to sequences so as to increase their score.[20]

 For the continuation of this essay, click on "older post," after the footnotes and the Comments below, and likewise at the bottom of that post to get to the next section. Or you can click on "3. The Four Papi," at the very bottom of this page. (That option unforunately does not seem to be available in later posts. One used to be able to see all the posts on a sidebar at the top, like in a table of contents; however, Google in its wisdom has done away with that useful way of seeing the whole blog at one glance and then going to whatever section you like with one click. )

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[1] [Carlo Pisarri], Istruzioni necessarie per chi volesse imparare il giuoco dilettevole delli tarocchini di Bologna (Bologna: Ferdinando Pisarri, 1754), online in Google Books and archive.org), p. 17: “L’ultimo, cioe Il Matto, non prende alcuna altra carta, . . . “ (The last, that is The Fool, can take no other card, . . .)

[2] Carlo Vincenzo Maria Pedini, Spegiazione del Gioco del Tarocchino, Biblioteca dell’Archiginnasio ms. Gozz. 140, 40v-55r (Ch. 6), at https://www.tarocchinobolognese.it/pages/lorenzo_cuppi/Manoscritto_Pedini.php: “Li Tarochi, che sono Angelo, Mondo, Bagattino, e Matto uagliono cinque punti per una nel contare” (The Tarocchi, which are the Angel, World, Bagattino, and Fool are worth five points each in counting). Court cards also earned individual points, but “Di tutte le altre ò siano Trionfi, ò Cartaccie ue ne uogliono quatro à fare un punto giocando in Partita” (All the others, whether Triumphs or Cards, are only worth four to make one point played in the Game).

[3] On the sequences and the power to fill gaps, Ibid., ch. 7: “Per Sequenza s’intende una sequella, ò sequenza di trè Carte almeno del medemo giuoco, ò di Trionfi, ò degl’altri giochi, supponendo sempre ui sia il Maggiore, cioè ne Trionfi l’Angelo, ne Giochi il Rè, come per esempio il Rè con due figure del suo gioco segnano dieci punti, con trè quindici, quando ui si aggiunge uno de Contatori, che sono il Bagattino, e il Matto segnano uenti punti, con tutti due uenticinque, e quando ui fusse anche l’Asso sariano trenta.” (By Sequence is meant a sequella, or a sequence of three Cards at least of the same game [suit?], or of Trionfi, or of the other games [suits?], always assuming the Highest, that is, in Triumphs the Angel, in Games [Suits?] the King, as for example the King with two figures of his game [suit?] score ten points, with three fifteen; when one adds one of the Counters, which are the Bagattino and the Fool, score twenty points, with both twenty-five, and when there was also the Ace it would be thirty.) For a presentation in English of the current version of this game, see https://www.pagat.com/tarot/ottocento.html.

[4] Pisarri, Istruzione, p. 17, continuation of quote of n. 1: “. . . ne puo egli esser preso, se non nel caso, che non si facesse presa, perche dovendo dare una carta agli Averssari in luogo del Matto, e non avendo altro se non quella, allora si perde. . . . Egli ha poi un’ altra prerogativa, ed e, che si puo rispondere a qualunque sequenza, che sia giocata, attandosi alle medesime col cavarselo di mano” (. . . nor can it be taken, except in the event that one has not made any tricks, because having to give a card to the Opponents in place of the Fool, and having nothing, then one loses [it]. . . . It also has another prerogative, and that is, that one can respond to any sequence that is played by drawing on it, getting it out of one’s hand.)

[5] In Italian, see Andrea Vitali, "Tarocchi e Tarocchini Appropriati a Bologna," http://www.associazioneletarot.it/page.aspx?id=869. Translation in Vitali and Howard, ed., Bologna and the Tarot: An Italian Legacy from the Renaissance: History, Art, Symbology, Literature (Riola, Italy: Mutus Liber, 2022), p. 129.

[6] Ibid. Translated in Vitali and Howard, ed., p. 132.

[7] See Andrea Vitali, "'Like the Fool of the Tarot' of Carducci," http://www.letarot.it/page.aspx?id=650&lng=ENG (also in Vitali and Howard, ed., pp. 319-24).

[8] See Andrea Vitali, “The Madman (Fool),” http://www.associazioneletarot.it/page.aspx?id=112&lng=ENG (also in Vitali and Howard, ed., pp. 217-226).

[9]  Ibid.

[10] In Italian, see "Tarocchi e Tarocchini Appropriati a Bologna," http://www.associazioneletarot.it/page.aspx?id=869: “Che ama trovarsi in mezzo ai Ragazzi, e di Carattere leggiero.” Translation in Vitali and Howard, ed., p. 135.

[11] Franco Pratesi, "Tarot Bolonais et Cartomancie," L'As de Trèfle, no. 37, May 1989, pp. 10-11. List trans. in Vitali and Howard, ed., pp. 355-356.

[12] Dizionario Etimologico Online, https://www.etimo.it/?term=bagattella. That site reports Schuchardt's association of bagatella with bagattino, “as a kind of small coin," derived from "baga," meaning "little round thing, but now "piccola cosella che alcuno posiede; robicciuole de niente." Strictly speaking, the ordinary Italian word for a street performer is bagattelière = giocolariere, as that site indicates.

[13] “Capitolo di Rondone barbaro Famoso del sig. Franc.o Tanari,” BUB (Biblioteca Universataria Bologna) MS 3878_I/10, online in BUB Digitale, https://bub.unibo.it/it/bub-digitale/giulio-cesare-croce/?c_id=ms.3878_I/10: “Poi ch’io sento chiarlare le persone /qual dicon ch’io non vaglio un bagatino / e ch’io non son un barbaro, ma un cozzone.”

[14] Lodovico Antonio Muratori, Dissertazioni sopra le antichità italiane, Già composte e pubblicate in latino dal Proposto Lodovico Antonio Muratori e da esso poscia compendiate e trasportate nell’Italiana Favella. Opera Postuma. Data in luce dal proposto Gian-Francesco Soli Muratori suo nipote, vol. 1 (Milan: Giambatista Pasquali, 1751), p. 610, online in Google Books: “Anche oggi dì diciamo: ‘Io non ti stimo un bagatino.’” For more examples using the term, see Andrea Vitali, “Il Bagattino fra storia e letteratura” in two parts (2018, 2022, in Italian only), http://www.associazioneletarot.it/page.aspx?id=793 and http://www.associazioneletarot.it/page.aspx?id=939. In Part I, "Bagattino è la quarta parte del quattrino fioreutino" (Bagattino is the fourth part of a Florentine quattrino), another small coin. As a unit of money it is referred to in the Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio, who died in 1375 (in archive.org, a Decamerone of Venice, 1557, p. 378 [eighth day, ninth story], in passage quoted in Part I of Vitali's essay just referred to.

[15] From the Ferrara area is the late fifteenth-century “Sermo Perutilis de Ludo,” about which see Andrea Vitali, "The Mystical Staircase in the 'Sermo de Ludo,'" http://www.associazioneletarot.it/page.aspx?id=780&lng=ENG, and “The Ludus Triumphorum: an Ethical Game,” in Vitali and Howard, ed., p. 4. For Brescia of 1502, see Vitali, "The meaning of the word ‘Tarocco,’" http://www.associazioneletarot.it/page.aspx?id=470&lng=ENG, or in Vitali and Howard, ed., “The Words Tarocco and Tarot,” p. 17. The definitions of the term are those of Muratori, Dissertazioni, vol. 2 (see here n. 23), in Google Books and archive.org, pp. 171-72, trans. Marco Ponzi at http://forum.tarothistory.com/viewtopic.php?p=11041#p11041 (Jan. 22, 2012).

[16] The Accademia della Crusca’s Grande dizionario della lingua italiana prototipo edizione digitale (Turin: Utet, 2018), https://www.gdli.it/Ricerca/Libera?q=bagatto, gives as the probable etymology for the current name of the card, Bagatto: “probabilmente si riconnette a bagattella ‘cosa di nessun valore,’ indicando la carta più debole dei tarocchi” (probably connected to bagatella, ‘thing of no value,’ indicating the weakest card of the tarocchi).

[17] For "bagattelo" in a Florentine strambotto, a type of song, see Thierry Depaulis at https://www.academia.edu/30193559/Early_Italian_Lists_of_Tarot_Trumps_The_Playing_Card_vol_36_n_1_July_Sept_2007_p_39_50, p. 41 In a tarocchi appropriati of Pavia, 1525-1540, see Vitali and Howard,  “Tarocchi Appropriati, Triumphs Matched to Persons,” in Vitali and Howard, ed., p. 148, n. 85. Depaulis (https://www.academia.edu/8119803/Thierry_Depaulis_The_Tarot_de_Marseille_Facts_and_Fallacies_Part_II) and before him Rodolfo Renier (“Tarocchi di Matteo Maria Boiardo,” in N. Campanini, ed., Studi su M. M. Boiardo (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1894), pp. 258-59, online in archive.org) give the Pavia spelling as "bagatella." It is in fact "bagatello," as an examination of the manuscript will show (below, reproduced from "Motti alle Signore di Pavia sotto il titolode i tarocchi," author unknown, MS 8583, fols. 268r-269v, Bibliotheque de l'Arsenal, reproduced here from Vitali and Howard, ed., p. 415).

 [18] E.g., an annunciation triptych of ca. 1430 by Robert Campin, where a side panel shows Joseph making mousetraps, also ca. 1440 illuminations in a Book of Hours for Catherine of Cleves. See Meyer Shapiro, “‘Muscipula Diaboli,’ The Symbolism of the Mérode Altarpiece,” The Art Bulletin 27, No. 3 (Sep., 1945), pp. 182-87, online in Jstor and at http://employees.oneonta.edu/farberas/arth/arth214_folder/campin.html.

[19] Andrea Vitali, “Christ, the Great Gambler’ (2010, trans. 2013), http://www.associazioneletarot.it/page.aspx?id=274&lng=ENG. The cantata is Cristofaro Caresana’s La Veglia, 1674.

[20] See here n. 3.