Re: New Pratesi note on the Cary-Yale

41
mikeh wrote:I misreported a clarification that Franco made to me. It is not something in the note itself but in a comment I made about the first 7 sections, in my follow-up (viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1086&start=20#p16717). I said:
The other comment is about Marziano in Florence. In clarification, he says that for the period of relevance, we have no knowledge of any relationship to Florence. That is consistent with Ross's research. When Franco wrote about Marziano, he estimated that the project would have been about 1415; since then it has been thought later.
This is wrong. Franco's clarification to me was not about Marziano. It was about the state of our knowledge about triumphs in Florence, which is that we have no knowledge of it before 1440.
It isn't of importance, but the earliest dating suggestion from Franco to the Michelino deck was 1414-1418. When it was researched the life of Michelino around 2003, a note was detected, that Michelino returned back to Milan in 1418 (I remember 1418, but recently phaeded noted 1417, I remember). Perhaps one should take an attempt to become clear about the true date of this return (if this is possible). I don't remember, where this note came from.

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IPCS XVIII/2 p. 33
Huck
http://trionfi.com

Re: New Pratesi note on the Cary-Yale

42
Huck wrote:
If you wanted to make a good minced meat
take the Arezzans and Orvietans et Bessians
and tailors, mule-drivers, and assumed liars,
and make each one well beaten;

It's clear, that this is mockery, but against whom? Tailors, mule-drivers and assumed liars are anonymous and naturally only mentioned to design the mockery.
There were many references to other poets in his work, many to Dante, so they may be literary references, in Hell canto XV, among the circle of Sodomites, Dante meets a troupe who:

They each one eyed us, as at eventide
One eyes another under a new moon;
And toward us sharpend their sight, as keen
As an old tailor at his needle's eye.

Among whom is Brunetto Latini, with whom he talks. The sodomite reference would fit in with sodomy double-entendres. Mule-driver could refer to Franco Sacchetti's Mule-driver, who recites Dante to his mule, interspersed with the vulgar vernacular of his own and the occassional ey-ors - which would fit with the theme of mediocre poets who are but pale imitators of Dante/Petrach/Boccaccio, such being analogous to the mule driver, and to those who appreciate them to mules.

privy-emptier = ?
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https://books.google.de/books?id=2XtWDh ... er&f=false

Excrement + gold is mentioned the 5th part of poem

...
The fifth part:
A parliament of fleas,
how much grace heaven has given them,
that in dragging shit is made the gold.

And we meet shit and gold in one line: gold + excrement, possibly connected to anal sex.
***************
Gold-finder was a slang term for a dung farmer, rake farmer, privie emptier:

1383. Chaucer, Canterbury Tales. 'The Parsons Tale' [Riverside Ed. (1880)], ii., 241. Thise fool wommen, that mowe be likned to a commune gong, whereas men purgen hire ordure.

gong-farmer (or gong-man),

subs, (old).—An emptier of cesspools ; a gold-finder (q.v.).

1598. Florio, A Worlde of Wördes. Curadestri, a iakes, goong, or doong farmer.

•Gold-finder, subs, (old).-—i. An ' emptier of privies. Also Tomturd-man ; Gong-man ; and Night-man. Fr., un fouillemerde; un fifi. Also passer la jambe à Jules = to upset Mrs. Jones, i.e., to empty the privy tub.

1611. Cotgrave, Dictionarie, Gadouard, a gould-finder, Jakes-farmer.

1635. Feltham, Resolves. As our goldfInders .... in the night and darkness thrive on stench and excrements.

1653. Middleton, Sp. Gipsy, ii., 2, p. 398 (Mermaid series). And if his acres, ... cannot fill this pocket, give 'em to gold finders.

1659. Torriano, Vocabolario, s.v.

1704. Gentleman Instructed, p. 445 (1732). We will commit the further discussion of the poet to a committee cf goldfinders, or a club of rake-kennels.

Perhaps in keeping with the scatiological, minchiatar is here simply bullshit? (and for sourness bullshit between them) ? One version has not minchiatar but "agresto minghiattar" , cioè spisciagliare dal verbo
latino mingo; which would give a meaning along the lines of and for verjuice piss in them

Re: New Pratesi note on the Cary-Yale

43
However the association dung/gold may have its roots in alchemy (or vice versa, who knows?). Here is Ben Jonson, The Alchemist, 1610, on how piss and dung are the ingredients from which the alchemist claims to produce gold (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4081/4081-h/4081-h.htm):
SUB. It is, of the one part,
A humid exhalation, which we call
Material liquida, or the unctuous water;
On the other part, a certain crass and vicious
Portion of earth; both which, concorporate,
Do make the elementary matter of gold;...
And Chaucer, Canon Yeoman's tale, enumerating the alchemists' ingredients (http://sites.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/t ... yt-par.htm):
Poudres diverse, asshes, donge, pisse, and cley,
( Various powders, ashes, dung, piss, and clay,)
by such means:
And of oure silver citrinacioun,
(And of turning our silver to a yellow color),
In a demonstration, a quantity of gold apparently is produced, by trickery, so that the observer will be induced to purchase the "secret". I quote these rather than the alchemists themselves, to show how well known the supposed connection was.

"Parliament of fleas" seems like a take on Chaucer's "Parliament of foules", i.e. birds, but also a pun. The other might be a pun, too, in Italian. The word for fleas was "Moscioni". Perhaps someone had that as a name. Pulci, who was a suspected dabbler in alchemy, means "fleas". But that is another word and a later time.

Re: New Pratesi note on the Cary-Yale

44
mikeh wrote: "Parliament of fleas" seems like a take on Chaucer's "Parliament of foules", i.e. birds, but also a pun. The other might be a pun, too, in Italian. The word for fleas was "Moscioni". Perhaps someone had that as a name. Pulci, who was a suspected dabbler in alchemy, means "fleas". But that is another word and a later time.

According to Florio it means 'great brizzes' (?) or 'horse flies'. In "The Animals of Pulci" it says:

XIX, 63:
Se fussin come te fatti i moscioni ,
E' non bisognere' botte ne tino.
The moscione is a species of midge which appears in great numbers
about the vats in wine-making time. Margutte exclaims to Morgante
that if they all drank as he does there would be no need for casks
or vats.

Idiomatic expressions re: gold/shit may be rooted in alchemy - here though it is used in relation to poets and/or politicians.

Whatever the elusive meanings, I think that Trionfi here refers to Petrarch's - and that minchiatar is probably a rude verb; neither in this case referring to Tarot or Minchiate.

Re: New Pratesi note on the Cary-Yale

45
mikeh wrote: "Parliament of fleas" seems like a take on Chaucer's "Parliament of foules", i.e. birds, but also a pun. The other might be a pun, too, in Italian. The word for fleas was "Moscioni". Perhaps someone had that as a name. Pulci, who was a suspected dabbler in alchemy, means "fleas". But that is another word and a later time.
That's an interesting note ... naturally I've read, that Pulci means "fleas". All the documents, which we know, indicates, that Minchiate (and other minch...-words) were used by Pulci since 1466. Pulci is the first with the game Minchiate (as far we know it).
The note of Mosconi (if it really meant also "fleas") in Burchiello's poem might have triggered later Pulci's special attention first to just this poem and then to the word minchiattar, which he transformed according his own taste to the name of a game, Minchiate.

If my hypotheses to the Charles VI deck are true, in which Pulci's "Morgante" was taken to design the Fool ...
*********
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In Canto I the hero Orlando becomes acquainted with Morgante during a stone-throwing battle with giants. The giants throw the stones, not Orlando. But stone throwing is part of the picture. Orlando kills 2 giants, but Morgante is friendly. The Fool on the picture is clearly a giant in relation to the other participants. Morgante gets then a large piece of armour, which clothes only the upper part of his body (similar to the picture). Morgante's weapon becomes the clapper of a big bell, the picture presents a string of smaller bells.

It seems logical to assume, that Pulci served occasionally in educational function for the Medici boys. Lucrezia Tornuabuoni gave him the commission to write the Morgante (so it is reported), but Pulci and his family had a mill close to a Medici villa in the Mugello. It seems, that Lucrezia spend the summer days there with the Medici children and some friends of these. As the male members of the family had their business and were mostly sick (the Mugello likely wasn't easy to reach from Florence), they likely weren't there. It seems, that Pulci accompanied the children on their adventures in the near forests and searched a fallen tree to sit down and make his poems (so it is described by the later poems of the earlier boys). The "Morgante" is actually a children poem with some knight adventures.

Pulci and Lorenzo got a close relation to each other.
*********
... and the action to produce the deck happened indeed c. 1463 (so before the Minchiate note), then Pulci would have had already some experience with playing card production and it is probable, that he participated also in this new production. The name "Minchiate" might be his idea, chosen perhaps cause Pulci loved the Mosconi in the Burchiello poem.
Perhaps a sign, that simply "new games" stimulated "new words", comparable to nowadays, when new products form new expressions in the common language.


*********

Cross-posting: as I see, Stephen suggests horse-flies. It stays, that Pulci used these minch-... words, and we only know about Burchiello, that he used "minchiattar". Somehow a similar situation as in the "Tarocus" case of Bassano some time later.
Huck
http://trionfi.com

Re: New Pratesi note on the Cary-Yale

46
Huck wrote:
Cross-posting: as I see, Stephen suggests horse-flies. It stays, that Pulci used these minch-... words, and we only know about Burchiello, that he used "minchiattar". Somehow a similar situation as in the "Tarocus" case of Bassano some time later.
,

Or Pulci's usage (closer in time) for the midges "which appear in great numbers about the vats in wine-making time."

https://archive.org/stream/luigipulcian ... g_djvu.txt

Minchiatar in context suggest something to replace sour grape juice, verjuice, bullshit is a possibility, but the suggestion of 'piss' makes more sense. (And fruit flies are as attracted to urine as they are fermenting fruit, or sour grapes (or juice thereof) - urine is used as bait in fruit fly traps -- alternatively, flies are attracted to crap. Thus the image of a parliament of midges/flies follows on from all the previous allusion to crap and/or piss, and their gathering about such. Also, shit might be likened to Gold, for flies.)

If you wanted to make a fine mince,
take those from Arezzo, Orvieto and Bessi,
and tailors, lying mule-drivers and emissaries,
and ensure each one’s well beaten;

in order that it’s all done well
you then season with a hunchback,
and for salt mix in a shit-taker
and for sour juice piss among them.
.
Aping the Triumphs -- the great mess
of arms, of love, Brutuses and Catos,
and mishmash of women and poets --

the scribblers endure
late winter nights, and for summer siesta,
sleep at their desks, the fools.

For a parliament of flies,
how gracefully heaven provides for those
who drag through shit to make gold.
Last edited by SteveM on 21 Feb 2016, 03:10, edited 7 times in total.

Re: New Pratesi note on the Cary-Yale

47
From the later development we have, that Minchiate became a nasty penis-related word, at least in regions, which were not Tuscany.
Well, perhaps it belongs to a word development, when people of foreign nations transform neutral words (Minchiate as a card deck name in Tuscany) to bad names (with the intention of mockery for persons of Tuscany). This occasionally is related to different kitchens: "Froschfresser" (frog eater) is a German mockery about French people and "Sauerkraut" is used in negative English expressions (as I've heard).
Pulci's poem with minch-... words follows ironical kitchen problems, and also Burchiello's poem.
Huck
http://trionfi.com

Re: New Pratesi note on the Cary-Yale

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Huck wrote: (Minchiate as a card deck name in Tuscany) to bad names (with the intention of mockery for persons of Tuscany).
It seems to me rather that minchiatar is a vulgar term (piss (which might connect it to penis words), or bullshit or such), prior to minchiate becoming a name for a game of cards?

Re: New Pratesi note on the Cary-Yale

49
SteveM wrote:
Huck wrote: (Minchiate as a card deck name in Tuscany) to bad names (with the intention of mockery for persons of Tuscany).
It seems to me rather that minchiatar is a vulgar term (piss (which might connect it to penis words), or bullshit or such), prior to minchiate becoming a name for a game of cards?
I can't exclude this ... but I don't know about earlier words like "minchiattar" or similar before Burchiello. As I said, the problem is possibly similar to the Tarocus case.
Raimondo Luberti (Italian) once came up with this poem (2003). Likely he also searched for an earlier use. But I don't know so much about old Italian words as you, perhaps you can find more.
Huck
http://trionfi.com

Re: New Pratesi note on the Cary-Yale

50
Hi, Michael,
mjhurst wrote:
Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote:Now if I could just find where I made the bet in 2007 that any new documentation of Trionfi before 1442 would be within three to five years of 1442, and had it confirmed in 2010.
Sorry. A quick search only gets me to your 2009 posts of "The Chart" of earliest evidence. You talk about it there.

Date of Invention
Ross G. R. Caldwell on 03 Jun 2009
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=258
http://ludustriumphorum.blogspot.com/20 ... ntion.html

So perhaps you had an earlier post along those lines but without the chart? Or perhaps in the 2007 article, ("Giovanni del Ponte and the dating of the Rothschild cards in the Louvre: some further considerations"), which did have the chart?
Not in that article. But I'll take 2009; the Standard Model predicted correctly, in any case. I think I understand the source of my two-year confusion.

That is, I have been believing that Thierry informed me of Giusto Giusti's 1440 reference in 2010; three years before 2010 is 2007, and that is when I did my work on the chart and formed my "3 to 5 year window" hypothesis. I must not have published it, however.

I don't know why I began to think it was 2010. Today I have looked at my archive of posts, and it turns out Thierry informed me of Giusto Giusti on January 31st, 2012!

So, it was three years between the prediction and the fulfillment (2009-2012) - just the wrong three years.

Here is a chart giving the same amount of space to the absence of evidence as the evidence, showing dramatically how it is a rapid diffusion (within 25 years every region but Naples, but we have no reason not to think that such a large wealthy city knew of it, documentation or not). I think I have posted it somewhere before, but I have added the two, related, Florentine 1444 references.

It shows a roughly North-South line, with Florence in the middle - coincidentally, also the source of the diffusion, and the likely place the game was invented, very shortly before 1440. I still bet on the three-year window, which was originally made with 1442 in mind, but must now, with 1440, be shortened to only allow 1439. I am confident that no mention of trionfi, carta or naibi a or da, can be found before that year.

Since this chart represents nearly two and half centuries' results since playing-card research began in earnest with, let's say, Breitkopf in 1784, and since data from later than 1440 continues to accumulate, I think it is safe to say that the absence of evidence from every region of Italy before 1440 represents evidence of absence of the game of Triumphs. No trionfi documents, no trionfi cards, no iconography of courtly people playing with large cards, anywhere in Italy before 1440.

Best regards,

Ross
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