mikeh wrote:On the names Merlino,Grattarognis, etc, see footnotes 3 and 4 in Mullaney, p. xx at http://books.google.com/books?id=X5ms5s ... &q&f=false.

"Merlin" trades on the famous Arthurian magician; Robert de Boron's Merlin (1220) had been published in an Italian prose translation in 1480. For "Grattarognis": Mullaney says

Grattarogna reminds one of the passage from Dante's Paradiso in which Cacciaguida urges Dante to pursue the truth upon his return to the world, even if the truth is upsetting, and "let people scratch where it itches" (e lascia pur grattar dov'e la rogna; Par. 17:12).

In the same vein, "Baricocola," the name of another of the frame-story companions, "means apricot but is also a term for testes," she says.

Hm ... Mullaney doesn't give a sign, that she realizes, that Buttadeus addresses the "wandering Jew". Buttadeus as wandering Jew makes sense, as the wandering Jew story is related to Armenia, and the 5 scholars have their exploration in Armenia. Why should now her interpretation of Grattarognis be the correct solution for the possibly rather tricky ideas of Folengo?
Wordgames like those of James Joyce and Arno Schmidt live with the quality of possible double interpretation. Why should it be different with Merlinus Cocai? He shows all signs, that he loved creative use of language. Similar "apricot" makes no sense for Baricocola, "testes" might be better.
The Venetian wordbook gives "head" or "testes", perhaps the basis for this association is the idea of "egghead". Folengo lived at Venetian territory.
Giovanni ... Butterdeus makes sense as the historic person was called Giovanni Buttadeus. Which persons do we have else in the 5-men-arrangement? The chief speaker is "Aquarius Lodola" ... well, Aquarius might be an association for the penis (a fountain at very natural acts), then the "testes" interpretation makes sense. "Aquarius lodola" ... Lodola is the Lerche (German bird name) and it is known, that birds had sexual association and it is known, that Lerche is the earliest singing bird in the morning. So let me translate "aquarius lodola" with "Morgenlatte", which is a German expression for the usual erection of the penis between sleep and awakening. And when the 5 scholars now go to the details in the East (a cavern with mysteries), I know, that in the context of Baricola-testes and Aquarius lodola I start to think of Dea Syria (somehow in Armenia) alias Venus. And when I hear, that Merlin Cocai lives or lived in the cavern (whereby the usual Merlin lives in a tower), then I start to think, that the tower had entered the cavern and I'm not too far to identify Cocai as the cock ... though this is English and can't be the right solution.

From Giovanni Buttadeo (the person) it is known, that he couldn't sit quiet and couldn't stay longer than 3 days at one place. Always restless ... everybdy might think, what he wants in the given context, how Buttadeo "beat God"
fits in his restless manner in the scheme.

**********

I detected this .. a very early Rabelais interpretation:

http://books.google.de/books?hl=de&id=R ... in&f=false



... which seems to say, that life and math isn't difficult or dangerous, as long you don't count more than 22.

Then my attention was captured by a genealogical list, which attempted to show, how Rabelais arranged, that Gargantua and Panagruel came to the world:







... which are now of interest, and so I took also the explanations ...



... proceeding with the list





So far the list, and returning back to that, what I found interesting:

Fierebras
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fierabras
A moorish giant, who becomes a Christian. Later he becomes a ruler in Spain.

Paladin Oliver
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_%28paladin%29
has with Fierabras to do

Morgan = Pulci's Morgante

Fracasso = Folengo's Fracasso

Ferragus ... this startled me. The person is known ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferra%C3%B9

... but it was not known in the discussion with Andrea Vitali about one of his specific texts:
http://www.letarot.it/page.aspx?id=264

Frotula de le dòne (Frottola of women) by Giovan George Alione of Asti (1460/70 - 1521/29). The text was printed for the first time in 1521 according Andrea. The poem itself might be naturally much older, Andrea has his suspicion on 1494. It contains the word Taroch (and it is either the first first or the second use of the word). As the text is written in local dialect, the translation problems are considerable.

Frotula de le dòne

Nostre done han i cigl ercù
Porton cioche e van stringà
Per fè attende a la brigà
Cogle pias el mazocù.
S'una dona va a remusg
E feis ben so marì bech
El pan ong ne lo pù lech
A travonder chel pan sug
E pos cha a fer gnun ni tug
Ma cla porta a cà di scù.
Le putein ch' aveon pr' un quart
Volon ades un cavalot
S'el consegl nel fa stè ascot
Nostre done andran fer l'art
Speisa tant che Dè gle a part
Valo antorn soi paracù.
Рos chel done han preis al bot
Un vergilli han cià derrer
O gle ha mis el feu derrer
Pr'avischer nosg ciriot
Ch'ancor van nesch stradiot
Ciriant and o circù.
Aristotel nan scampè
Ch'una dona el cavalcò
Se voi done fè dercò
Penitenzia a quater pè
Guardè a non squarciè el papè
Pr'andè a studi in utroquù.
Mi ne seu pu bel pareir
Che fè stragichè el frangougl
Crubir gloeugl con i zenougl
E attacherse ai contrapeis
Cost è un at' chi tost è ampreis
Chi fa fer l'erbor forcù
Guardè done a non fiacher
So sij gravie cho gle i group
Vozì aneing la schina a i coup
E la chiesia su o ciocher
Ma sei destre al sabacher
Degle o so reciprocù.
O gle o zeu del cazafrust
Zeu da cog quant el fa brun
Zeu che doi ne paron ch'un
La gatta orba è ancor pù iust
Ma val poc chi nalcia el bust
Per dè an brocha a piza o cù.
Marì ne san dè au recioch
Secundum el Melchisedech
Lour fan hic. Preve hic et hec
Ma i frà, hic et hec et hoc
Ancôr gli è – d'i taroch
Chi dan zù da Ferragù
Cole chi per so zovent
Ne se san fer der sul tasche
Con o temp devantran masche
Quant gnuni ni dirà pù nent
So dagn per ciò gl'abion el ment
Cho diao san furb el cù.
S'isg bigotz gent dal mantel
Queich fratesche o crestian vegl
Vorran creze a i soi cervegl
Despresiant o nostr libbel
Mandegle autr da preve Raphael
Ferse scrive un k. s. u.

Finis

In the text the word Ferragù appears very close to the word Taroch. Andrea's idea was it, that it just a local name, Ferragu appears as a family name in the region. However, with the appearance of "Ferragus" in Rabelais' giant genealogy the passage gets another face. Alione is ALSO counted as a poet of Macaronea.

The mentioned Melchidesech is ...



... Melchizedek ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melchizedek
... who in the bible offers hospitality to Abraham and his men after a fight. The city Asti (where Alione lived) ALSO offered hospitality in 1494/95 to the French king Charles VIII, before he attacked Naples ... and after he came back rather disappointed about his ideas after 10 months.
The short poem is very much about sexual behavior of the local women. Charles VIII. had a local love affair during his stay in Asti. The translation is, as already said, very difficult and by far not secure.

Very entertaining video. I have no idea what's going on, but very entertaining. I am particularly curious about the pumpkin and other items at the end. "Pumpkin" is the name of one of the discoverers of the manuscript of "Baldo" as explained by Mullaney in footnote 4.

Here is Mullaney's gloss on the relationship of Folengo to his predecessors (pp. xvii, xviii, my emphasis):

In 1521 he referred to his tales as fabulae Milesiae, so one thinks of Apuleius's second-century Golden Ass, with its balance of magic and down-to-earth realism, its frivolity and hard-earned wisdom. (17) Although Baldo is at once too epic and too rustic to be a direct descendant of Petronius' Satyricon, it does draw on the same wellspring of giddy adventures. Folengo makes direct but tangential mention of a couple of Boccaccio's characters (Nello, Buffalmacco, and Mastro Simone, 9.2 and 22. 394), and borrows and distorts many of the names of Dante's devils (throughout Book 19). Young Baldo's reading material covers a dozen works on Orlando and Rinaldo (3.94-114). Merlin tells us that his giant Fracasso descended from Morgante (4.79), and Cingar, from Margutte (r.129); both are characters from Luigi Pulci's Morgante (1478). Pulci's poem represents the free-form, playful, naughty turn that the chivalric epic took in Italy in the late fifteenth century, leading to Boiardo's and Ariosto's works on Orlando. It is difficult to imagine Folengo's work without Pulci's.

Not content to claim just these few entertaining sources, Merlin, in an autobiographical digression, explains how he came to be raised at public expense by the people of Cipada to triumph over Virgil's home town of Pietole...

I found where Folengo uses a pseudonym with his last name an Italian word for "beggar." It is in the Orlandino, Here is Mullaney on that work (p. xiii):

Once outside the disciplinary reach of the Benedictine order, Teofilo published a book of some six hundred Italian octaves, the Orlandino (1526), dedicated to Federico Gonzaga. It tells the story of Orlando as a backdrop for polemical discussions concerning confession, free will, grace, indulgences,self-indulgent clergy, and more, which the author himself signals as heretical. (11) Folengo used a new pseudonym, Limerno Pitocco (pitocco meaning beggar in Italian), and if the metathesis of Melino was not obvious enough, the acrostics of a first-page sonnet spell out MERLINUS COCCAI. An "Apologia de l'autore" published with it is a masterpiece of cheeky misdirection: "And as a clear sign of my sincerity, those few bad words I always put in the mouth of someone from the other side of the Alps where such errors are wont to accumulate...because if I were talking about other matters, less shameful, I would sign my actual name."

Mullaney's short 10 page introduction to Baldo is quite rich. She also tells us that the Pope assigned the Florentine to the Benedictines in Padua precisely to "enforce reforms" regarding "Lutheran heresies" as well as unnamed "abuses in the monasteries" (p. xiii)--after which Folengo left the cloister.

However I suspect that Folengo's thinking went somewhat beyond Luther. Mullaney (p. xvi) notices how

words are strung together in a comical way, as when Baldo's mother asks him, "Quo fugis? Unde venis? Quis te facit ire galoppum?" (Where are you fleeing to? Where have you come from? Who's making you go at a gallop?)--where the first part of the verse sounds vaguely Virgilian, only to terminate in the thud of the non-Latinate galoppum[/].

It seems to me that Folengo might be playing with a quotation from the Valentinian Gnostic Theodotus, as excerpted by Clement of Alexandria (http://www.gnosis.org/library/excr.htm)

78 Until baptism, they say, Fate is real, but after it the astrologists are no longer right. But it is not only the washing that is liberating, but the knowledge of/who we were, and what we have become, where we were or where we were placed, whither we hasten, from what we are redeemed, what birth is and what rebirth.

Folengo's questions are also similar to the words Gauguin, much later, put on one of his paintings: "Where do we come from? What are we? "Where are we going?" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where_Do_W ... e_Going%3F).

Theodotus's theme of "liberating knowledge"--gnosis, knowledge by direct experience--is also the main theme of Caos, I think (and so also of the tarot, if interpreted through the lens of Caos), if we include such imaginal experiences as being addressed in hexameters by Jesus and the Sun.

In Caos the sun has above him another sun, God, "the sun of the sun." This is the language of the Chaldean Oracles (of the same milieu as Theodotus), of Proclus, of Plethon (as discussed recently at length over on Aeclectic). In Baldus, there is Zoroaster. Here is 17.526ff:

While he [Cingar[ observes the scene, he sees a poem hanging over the spring, which reads: "How praiseworthy chastity is, is proven here by death. Leonardo preferred to be killed rather than violated." The nymphs said that the author of this poem was Seraphus, who variously claims to be a student of Apollo or of Zoroaster and who honors heroes with fame and glory. I have already mentioned him, and soon I will mention him frequently, both as a foreseer of events and a guardian angel.

Mullaney comments:

17.531. Zoroaster (Zarathustra): a Persian philosopher prophet (date unknown, possibly 700-900 BCE), in post-classical Europe was accorded with magical powers; he was considered by Renaissance Platonists the source of the most ancient tradition of pre-Christian theology. See also below 19.70 and 171.

As we know.

Apollo is Folengo's sun-god. "Seraphus" seems to me to be his twisted version of "Serapis," although I can't find that in Mullaney.

"Seraphus" seems to me to be Folengo's twisted version of "Serapis," although I can't find that in Mullaney.

Serapis sounds logical ... as far the name form is considered. Just a question: Are they finally in Egypt or in Armenia?

Just a request for clarification on your previous post. You wrote:

I detected this .. a very early Rabelais interpretation:

http://books.google.de/books?hl=de&id=R ... in&f=false

... which seems to say, that life and math isn't difficult or dangerous, as long you don't count more than 22

The image didn't reproduce for me, and when I looked for the URL it said "object not found," So I didn't follow your reasoning.

Ah, now the image appears, by some magic (well, it had a long way to travel, I guess). I see what you are talking about. In Baldo, your Rabelais commentator is saying in effect, the first 22 books are in this world. Then in the 23rd, he and his companions enter Hell.

Huck wrote

. which seems to say, that life and math isn't difficult or dangerous, as long you don't count more than 22.

Well, there are lots of dangers and difficulties before then; and anyway, he doesn't enter hell until Book XXV, at least in the twenty-five book version that we have. Book XXIV ends,

Touch the shore now. With the crossing of this river, the die is cast; and you, Striax, forgive such a long labor.

The river is the river Styx. At the beginning of XXV, they are on the other shore.( Striax is Folengo's macaronic muse assigned to the final five books.)

However there is also the 1521 edition. In that one, Mullaney says (II p. 518), Book XXII ended at what was later XXIV.260. In the posthumous edition that we have, the witch-queen Gelfora's shade, with her body, is taken by devils to hell then. In the 1521 version, Mullaney says, XXII ended with the last verse of the Aeneid,

"vitaque cum gemitu fugit indignata sub umbras"
(and his offended soul fled groaning to the shades below),

Did the line in 1521 refer to Gelfora's soul or to Baldo's? Mullaney does not say. But since in the Aeneid it is not Aeneas's soul that goes to hell, but rather his enemy Tumus's (see http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/aeneid/section12.rhtml), I would assume that in the 1521 Baldo, likewise, it is the witch's soul that goes to hell. (It might help if we knew the equivalent context in the 1517.)

In the posthumous edition, there are still 500 lines before Baldo and his companions enter hell. Since there were also 25 books in the 1521 edition (Mullaney II p. 507), probably he gets to hell at the same pace there. So he gets to hell 500 lines into book XXIII, or possibly not until XXIV.

In the 1517 edition, Mullaney says, the epic as a whole ended with that line from the Aeneid, Again, I would assume it is the witch's soul that descends to hell. In this case, we have the original, at http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k7 ... ngo.langEN. But my Latin isn't sufficient for me to say for sure that it is the witch's. Here is where we need a Latinist's opinion. There were 17 books in the 1517 edition, I see from http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k7 ... ngo.langEN.

Ariosto ended Orlando Furioso with a translation of that same verse in the Aeneid, Mullaney says.

To make it clear that Baldo does not enter Hell in Book XXII of the posthumous edition, Let me say what is in Book XXIIII, XXIV, and XXV. That way we will also see where they end up.

XXIII starts in the back of a cavern in a mountain. Lifting a loose stone, they descend to a lake within the mountain, which flows into a river. Going down the river, still in the mountain, they meet an old man sitting on a crocodile, who says they are on the Nile (Nilus, 74); he is Rufus, god of the Nile, and they are forbidden to go further. They wring Rufus's neck and cross the river on Fracasso's back, Finally they reach the light of day and the end of the cavern. It actually isn't daylight; they are at the bottom of the sea, but it is as light as day on the surface. They meet an old man who says he is coming from Paradise and on his way to hell. Actually, he wasn't in Paradise; he ran an inn just outside the gates, so that the cardinals, etc. arriving could have one good last evening before they entered Paradise. But the inn was a failure; hardly anybody with money ever got there. So he's going elsewhere. As he is talking, a pretty girl comes by, and Baldo and the others follow. She's leading them to Gelfora's palace. Once there, Baldo wreaks havoc, his companions are turned into animals, and Seraphus appears briefly to change them back. End of Book XXIII.

At the beginning of Book XXIV, they fight Gelfora herself, and she departs for hell at line 260; they wend their way toward hell. At the banks of the Styx they go to a decripit tavern, where souls eat rotten food. They also meet one of Baldo's sons, still with his body. When Charon finally arrives, he refuses to carry souls that still have their bodies; but they overpower Charon and cross anyway. I have already quoted the end of XXIV, at line 762.

In Book XXV they see how Hell works, sending its powers upwards to dominate humanity with Discord, Ambition, etc., and with recent popes as mainstays of their policy. Then the companions enter a cavern of phantasms, chiefly the abstractions of scholasticism, out of which they are gently lifted by some unknown force.

580 Ergo abeunt et Baldus eis passata recontat;
nec procul abscedunt, en quidam saltat avantum
bufonus, mattusque magis, magis immo famattus:

(Thus they depart, and Baldo tells them what has happened. They have not gone far, when lo! a buffoon jumps in front of them, or rather a fool, or even more correctly, one who plays the fool.)

I cite both the Latin and the English, because I am not sure that Mullaney has translated correctly. What is this word "magis" doing there?

This "fool" is clad as in the "children of the moon" illustrations you posted, Huck.

He sports two ears made of cloth that point upwards; they are attached to the top of a friar's cowl and have noisy bells sewn onto them. (583ff)

He dances them into a giant hollow gourd (cocochia, 603) pumpkin (zuccam, 604)), the abode of "poets, minstrels, and astrologers who invent, sing, and interpret people's dreams; they have filled books with fables and worthless novelties.[/quote] Later Merlino adds diviners to that list (chyromanti, which Mullaney translates "palm-readers"). What he says about astrologers' predictions is of particular interest, as it seems to give the author's view of divination:

And such things that porters could predict by reasoning and personal experience you say are the result of stellar conjunctions and of Jupiter in ascendance with Vuirgo and Leo (617ff).

In other words, it is not the predictions themselves that are false, but that they are the result of stellar configurations.

In the pumpkin (zucca, 621), all who enter have one tooth removed for each lie they have told. Needless to say, it is a painful process. So now the poet Merlino, having found his place, must remain there, to have one tooth pulled for every falsehood he has put in this immense book. Goodbye, Baldo!

Apparently the book got somehow from the pumpkin to the tomb in Armenia, but how, we are not told. It is neither in the hexameters of "Merlino" nor the frame-story by "Lodola."

Huck wrote,

For the moment I think, it's of interest, what precisely happened at book 13 (Guido's death). This seems to be turning point in the book. And what precisely is meant with Giuberto in the Baldo, cause Giuberto links to the Tarocchi oracle of the Triperuno.

I can't see any mention of Guido in book 13, at least in Mullaney's translation and text of the posthumous edition. Guido dies in book XVIII (line 352ff). Book XIII is where they see the giant alchemical-metallurgical apparatus and briefly meet Manto. Stylistically Book XIII is a turning-point in that before then the narrative sticks more or less to recognizable human reality, but now becomes more fantastic. Mullaney's second volume of text and translation begins with XIII. She comments (vol 2, vii)

We last saw Baldo and his friends oping with a frightening but comical storm at sea. The second volume of Teofilo Felengo's Baldo begins with a melodramatic council of the gods, after which Aeolus is persuaded to withdraw his winds. Our heroes reach land safely and enjoy a brief period of camaraderie and learning, but then the focus of the epic shifts from real people, their roles in society and traditional scenes of combat, to mutating creatures, self-referencing elements and unresolved struggles.

The narrative line which had been so direct in Books 1-12 becomes convoluted in Books 13-25: the men are forever going down into yet another black cavern; we sense meaning just beyond our grasp....

Giuberto is just how Mullaney describes him, in the list of characters that you reproduced:

pacifist musician and song-writer, one of Baldo's friends, dear to Seraphus. (vol. 2 p. 486).

I am not sure he is a pacifist in the sense of being opposed to war; but he certainly doesn't know how to fight and stays out of the action. His role is to make up short songs relating particularly traumatic events in the action; they seem to provide some solace. He is introduced at XIII.350 as one of the passengers on the ship. Folengo says

By chance, among the pilgrims and hermits which that ship carries all together,in her belly, there was a man with lively eyes and a gallant mien, so reserved, so isolated from the others, that during the entire voyage he hadn't said eight words. He was in fact timid both by habit and nature and kept to himself. His name was Gilberto, and by his voice and lyre (an Orpheus in the woods, an Arion among the dolphins) he charmed the ears of the stones and the trees (XIII.350-359).

mikeh wrote: I can't see any mention of Guido in book 13, at least in Mullaney's translation and text of the posthumous edition. Guido dies in book XVIII (line 352ff).

I don't know, by which hallucination I saw him in XIII chapter in the version of 1521. Now I see him appear in chapter XVII, in chapter XVIII he's dead.

Giuberto is just how Mullaney describes him, in the list of characters that you reproduced:

pacifist musician and song-writer, one of Baldo's friends, dear to Seraphus. (vol. 2 p. 486).

I am not sure he is a pacifist in the sense of being opposed to war; but he certainly doesn't know how to fight and stays out of the action. His role is to make up short songs relating particularly traumatic events in the action; they seem to provide some solace. He is introduced at XIII.350 as one of the passengers on the ship. Folengo says

By chance, among the pilgrims and hermits which that ship carries all together,in her belly, there was a man with lively eyes and a gallant mien, so reserved, so isolated from the others, that during the entire voyage he hadn't said eight words. He was in fact timid both by habit and nature and kept to himself. His name was Gilberto, and by his voice and lyre (an Orpheus in the woods, an Arion among the dolphins) he charmed the ears of the stones and the trees (XIII.350-359).

Orpheus accompanied the Argonauts, if I remember this correctly. Giuberto i's said to have had a specific relation to Seraphas. But "Seraphas couldn't have appeared, as long Guido lived" ... something like this I've read somewhere.
Giuberto is the one, for whom the Tarocchi oracle in the Triperuno is made. Giuberto is then together with Falcone, Focilla and Mirtella. Falcone might be the dog-man Falchetto, also called Falco. I don't know what Focilla and Mirtella shall mean.

Serapis is interpreted as an underworld-god, in other words = Hades. He has a corn basket on his head. Egyptia was famous for its corn production, transported from Alexandria, where Serapis was located. Egyptia itself might have been easily interpreted as "underworld" from Greek perspective, once, cause it was far in the south in "dark Africa" and for other reason cause it had a strong cult of the death. So the Serapis cult added the 3-headed Cerberus to Serapis' attributs, which might explain, why the man-dog (similar to an Egyptian Sphinx) was added to Giuberto.


http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/Mythology/Serapis.html

I don't know, what this cow-horn or crescent baton might mean. In Germany we have a farmer tool called "Forke", which is a little bit similar to this baton. Often used to transport and move the bounded corn during the harvest. Perhaps that's the "Focilla"?



Hades was married to Persephone, daughter of Demeter, also a corn-godddess. Persephone was interpreted as the corn itself. Condemned to live in earth for a longer time, then having some holidays in the upper world.
On this basis the Eleusinian mysteries functioned, somehow also involving Iacchos, who also was connected to Bacchus.

Orpheus visited Hades to get Eurydice back. In his death scene he was ripped to pieces by the Maenads ... as the bread made of corn was ripped on the dinner table of the monk in the cloister.

Bacchus - naturally - was of interest for Folengo, who loved wine.

*****************

About Fo-Cilla, perhaps associated to Fo-Lengo ...

Cilla (Greek: Κίλλα) in Greek mythology is a name that may refer to:

One of the two female characters associated with Troy:
Cilla, sister of Hecuba. She was married to Thymoetes, brother of Priam. On the same day that Hecuba bore Paris, Cilla bore Munippus, to Priam. On hearing of the oracle that stated that he must destroy she who had given birth and her child, Priam killed Cilla and her son.[1][2]
Cilla, daughter of Laomedon. Her mother was either Strymo, daughter of Scamander, or Placia, daughter of Otreus, or Leucippe.[3]

Cilla, a city sacred to Apollo.[4]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cilla_%28mythology%29

At least 2 times the association of divination to the name Cilla. As daughter of Laomedon she would have been sister to Ganymedes.

I don't know, what this cow-horn or crescent baton might mean. In Germany we have a farmer tool called "Forke", which is a little bit similar to this baton. Often used to transport and move the bounded corn during the harvest. Perhaps that's the "Focilla"?

Serapis was also, as the Hellenized Osiris, husband of Isis; Isis was associated with the moon and was portrayed with cow's horns in Roman times. Perhaps the scepter is to remind us of Isis. In English, the tool is called a "fork," and "forca" in Italian, according to an online dictionary. But I don't see much similarity--too many tongs. Serapis's would have been hard to use for that purpose.

In Italian, the dining implement is a "forchetta," a little more like "Focilla". Pehaps the association is to Isis as the forked one, who was another magician, or Hecate, another moon-goddess magician (in the Chaldean Oracles).

mikeh wrote: Serapis was also, as the Hellenized Osiris, husband of Isis; Isis was associated with the moon and the cow's horns. Perhaps the scepter is to remind us of Isis. In English, the tool is called a "fork," and "forca" in Italian, according to an online dictionary. But I don't see much similarity--too many tongs. Serapis's would have been hard to use for that purpose.

It's just an idea. I've no explanation for Focilla and Mirtella.
The deciding fact is, that Folengo desires to create a Baldo underworld visit and as there are not too much mythical examples, Serapis in relation to the created Seraphas seems to be the suggested association.

That, what really and definitely is given into the context of the 4-5 Tarocchi sonnets are the 4 persons, which are not explained in the Triperuno itself. With Giuberto we have a real person figure, which appeared in the history of Folengio's career. The person Falcone seems to be an association to the dog man Falchetto, but also to the other dog-man mix, the Egyptian god Anubis. Focilla and Mirtella seem to be female ... -illa an -ella at the end make this plausible. Fo-Cilla might be an idea, cause somehow is Virgil as Mantovan poet in the background and he wrote about Aeneas, who also had a Trojan background. But Cilla is rather unknown, or?

On "Falcone," it seems to me that it might be a shortened form of "Grifalcone," the Francesco Grifalcone of the FR.GR of the beginning of the "third selva" (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/35799/35 ... ELVA_TERZA). As I said at posting.php?mode=quote&f=11&p=10869, on http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/teo ... ografico)/ we learn that the humanist noble Francesco Grifalcone was Folengo's patron in Venice, a fitting person to direct a sonnet concerning the politics of Venice, France, Pope, Emperor, and Turks. It's also great name, combining as it does "griffin" and "falcon." (For some reason, when I click on that last link in Preview mode, "error" comes up. But if I paste the actual URL in my browser, it comes up fine.)

It's confusing, Huck, how you comment on "Baldus" in the other thread (on the "Caos"'s tarocchi sonnets ) and the tarocchi sonnets on this thread (on tarot reference in "Baldus"). I suppose that's inevitable, since we are using "Baldus" to clarify "Caos." But as a result, it's easy to miss things, because you have to search for what was said twice.

Huck wrote

Fo-Cilla might be an idea, cause somehow is Virgil as Mantovan poet in the background and he wrote about Aeneas, who also had a Trojan background. But Cilla is rather unknown, or?

Well, it depends on your milieu. Cilla sister of Hecuba, Wikipedia says, is referenced in the works of Lycophron--or maybe the comments on Lycophron by Tzetzes, I'm not sure (http://www.theoi.com/Text/LycophronAlexandra.html, http://www.theoi.com/Text/LycophronAlexandra1.html). It contains the alleged prophetic utterances of Cassandra, According to WorldCat, manuscripts of Lycophron go back to 1453. I suspect it is one of those brought over by Bessarion from Greece to Italy. Wikipedia says that Aldus published it in 1513 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lycophron). That's in Venice. Lycrophon is said to have been famous for his obscure use of names--and so a kindred spirit to Folengo. But did Folengo know Greek? If not, he probably knew someone who did.

Lycrophon looks like he might be fun to read in translation. Well, the next time at the library, I'll check him out. The book might have more information on its availability, and the availability of the reference to Cilla, in 16th century Venice.

Huck wrote

With Giuberto we have a real person figure, which appeared in the history of Folengio's career.

I don't recall seeing that. Who was this real Giuberto?