Re: What are the documents for Marziano's dates?

241
Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote: 06 Apr 2020, 18:32 ....No, the real message, if we want to find one, is the danger of Filippo Maria's sudden wealth and power. It was not some Virgilian danger from Beatrice-as-Dido in a personal sense.

And you might add that CY King of Cups rejecting the coin, whom I identify with Filippo, as part and parcel of that same theme. Certainly Filelfo, arguably Filippo's most important humanist after he arrived in court in 1439, nagged about the riches versus virtue theme non-stop (even to temperate Alberti), so he would have simply reinforced Marziano's pre-existing theme, to the approval of Filippo.

And from your first response, a good summary: "If there is a personal moral message (and not just a general one), the admonitions against luxury and wealth are explicit and far more prevalent - whole suits are named for them."

And yet there is something nagging at me. Marziano clearly packages the suits into pairs in his introduction, so riches are linked to pleasures, both of which "lead to the deterioration of our station" (your 25). You're certainly not wrong about the "riches" thesis, but does that exclude the "pleasures" angle? You might also note that Aeneas meets Dido in her temple to Hera (who is of course a goddess of marriage and it was Hera that directed Aeolus). Again, I'm focusing more on exposing the full subtext before making any definitive dating proposals, if that is even possible . If the deck was made for Filippo and specifically not Beatrice in 1412, the deck could have been an inside joke of sorts - a consolatio - while Filippo bided his time; the death for which he was being consoled as his own blunted eros (due to the marriage with Beatrice), and perhaps that is why the impossible love of a Daphne is played up right before Cupid?

Go ahead and reply to the above, but I have something for you that I've been working on for a coupe of weeks now that pertains to all this and more: 16 gods (not Marziano's 16, but in Capella's context and thus suggestive nonetheless) appearing in Petrarch in connection with an explicit echo of Dido. I'll try to get it finished it off tonight, but it might affect the way we view the above. Why I sent you that section of Bernardo....

Phaeded

Re: What are the documents for Marziano's dates?

242
Don't forget to give me a few references to humanists using turbo in the metaphorical sense!

You have completely changed - enriched, deepened, opened up - my view of the meaning of the four latter choices; and, thereby, the whole moral message. I am happy, in fact it is the pedant's vice, to credit you for any insight, however small. But these are great.

As a confession, I have to admit that Tarot these days has lost all of its flavor. I am sure it will return. But right now, I only have a taste for Marziano. I'm a one-track kind of guy. But my aim is always to get to the bottom, the last source, the one word, whatever it is, turning every stone, and then thinking about it some more. I can say that it has been nothing else since December.
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Re: What are the documents for Marziano's dates?

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Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote: 06 Apr 2020, 20:59 The palm and laurel as self-mastery and then seeing beyond self could be seen as poetic versions of the Senecan lessons from Barzizza in 1412.

Both men, Marziano and Barzizza, rushed to form the young man in his most dangerous moment, when everything could be lost, or gained.
It is not for nothing that the same Barzizza himself says that Marziano was "most distinguished in the study of the poets."

We can't doubt that besides Dante, it was also Marziano who interpreted the Canzoniere to Filippo Maria. What other poets was Barzizza referring to, using the plural?

Besides the Latin ones, of course.
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Re: What are the documents for Marziano's dates?

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Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote: 05 Apr 2020, 21:50
Phaeded wrote: 05 Apr 2020, 20:12 (many humanists used the Latin turbo - whirlwind - and its variants to describe such fate-altering forces in their works, often in a negative sense).
Can you give me some references for that? It is a crucial observation.
I'm trying to finish other things right now and diving into Latin texts is no small matter, but I've given you some examples below. The context was for me our disagreement over the meaning of the Tower trump - I of course merely saw the tower as a prop for Jupiter's wrath/lightning. I in turn looked at the numerous references in Filelfo (who I see as connected to trionfi design in Milan) , when I noticed the related phenomena of thunder and stormy winds - turbo - but often used allegorically. I thought that usage was characteristic of Filelfo but started seeing that word crop up in other authors, which I haven't cataloged.

The caveat is that the winds have several names but it is usually turbo and its variants that is connected to "bad fortune" - war (especially the enemy) or various calamities. The sublunar world is itself generally "turbo", as you may note the wind gods in the upper corners of each depiction of the planets in De Predis's De sphaera produced for Sforza (thus astral fate depicted in action as winds). Christ himself is thrown into this maelstrom when he became man: "We say he assumed a mortal form in Mary's chaste womb, that he lived in the midst of human floods and whirlwinds (fluctus turbine multo; Filelfo, Odes. 1.6). The winds may also be forced upon a hero's fate by a mythological deity from epic poetry, versus solely the planetary aspect, hence Juno directing Aeolus at Aeneas.

Instead of just tossing Filelfo at you, a late Latin source that would have been of interest to someone like Marziano - Martianus Capella. In the liberal arts section of Grammar, the very name is discussed:
Turbo, si nomen est proprium, ut Cicero declinatur; si autem uim uenti significes aut puerilis ludi instrumentum, ut cupido declinatur.
Turbo as a proper noun is declined like Cicero, but if it means 'the force of the wind' or the child's toy [spinning top] it is declined like cupido.
(Capella, Section 292, Stahl, 88)
In the hands of the liberal art of Rhetoric, her art is likened to a stormy force that compels men:
Metum uero excitaris uoi propriis uel communibus perieulis: ...Ira etiam uehementer animos turbat, ut cum exaggerat Tullius et exclamat in curia sedere socios Catilinae: «o dii immortales! Ubinam gentium sumus? Quam rem publicam habemus? In qua urbe uiuimus? >>

Fear is excited by individual or communal perils....Anger also moves men forcibly, as when Cicero emphasizes Catiline's partners [a famous coup attempt] are sitting in the senate, and exclaims: 'Immortal gods! What people are we amongst? What nation is this? What city do we inhabit?' (Section 505, Stahl 187)

The implication was that against the conspirators among the senate, Cicero was able to stir up opposition like a whirlwind.

More Filelfo examples:
"But when Filippo died, suddenly fortune or a god [like Hera!], overwhelmed the people of the Milanese in a deluge and the whole republic, now tossed amid variable winds [procellis here versus turbo, but the meaning is the same] across the sea" (Ode V.9.164-167, tr. Robins, 339) . Staying in that same Ode we have Sforza defeating the Venetian fleet on the Po River, and by doing so "frees Cremona from its hostile vortex" (hositle turbine, line 184) .

From one of my favorite Odes (it explains so many themes related to the trionfi, in my eyes), an exhortation to peace to King Alfonso (during the wars that culminated in the Peace of Lodi in 1454) he warns of the French threat (not just Rene per se, but the French crown proper) that might ruin all of the Italian states (very prescient). In a Neptune-esque simile, Filelfo's ode is shot through with violent winds everywhere, allegorized as the various states/armies:
And before new storms agitate the oceans, your ship must be equipped with all its ropes. Do you see what whirlwinds (turbines) are menacing us from the Alps and what gales they will bring to Latium's sea? ...Will both sides strive to harm one another, one relying on Zephyr and the other on Eurus, suddenly a north wind [France] from the pole rages, and while it confounds all things with icy Aquilonian winds, a panic-driven flight overwhelms both sides. And yet, I hope I may be a false prophet still. (IV.9.180-192, Robins p. 279).
I could go on, but I think you have a better sense of what I was getting at.

Phaeded
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Re: What are the documents for Marziano's dates?

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Phaeded wrote: 06 Apr 2020, 20:36
Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote: 06 Apr 2020, 18:32 ....No, the real message, if we want to find one, is the danger of Filippo Maria's sudden wealth and power. It was not some Virgilian danger from Beatrice-as-Dido in a personal sense.
If the deck was made for Filippo and specifically not Beatrice in 1412, the deck could have been an inside joke of sorts - a consolatio - while Filippo bided his time; the death for which he was being consoled as his own blunted eros (due to the marriage with Beatrice), and perhaps that is why the impossible love of a Daphne is played up right before Cupid?
Rereading Marziano's introduction through the lens of a mock consolatio , it does make some sense. Regarding pleasure, but surely not in the sense of the carnal suit of pleasures , but philosophically conceived, Marziano notes:
....[pleasure] to which our actions in everything should be directed. ...But I believe that that sort of game, which would be appropriate to the time, place and person [singular], of such character that it allows intelligence to shine, is also fit for a serious man [again, singular], to delight his weary virtue [forced into a "virtuous" marriage].
Is it even possible this card game could be played like solitaire? "Time and place" certainly doesn't sound like wherever Beatrice was at all events. LOL....

And found this:
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Last edited by Phaeded on 06 Apr 2020, 22:26, edited 1 time in total.

Re: What are the documents for Marziano's dates?

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Phaeded wrote: 06 Apr 2020, 22:10
Phaeded wrote: 06 Apr 2020, 20:36
Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote: 06 Apr 2020, 18:32 ....No, the real message, if we want to find one, is the danger of Filippo Maria's sudden wealth and power. It was not some Virgilian danger from Beatrice-as-Dido in a personal sense.
If the deck was made for Filippo and specifically not Beatrice in 1412, the deck could have been an inside joke of sorts - a consolatio - while Filippo bided his time; the death for which he was being consoled as his own blunted eros (due to the marriage with Beatrice), and perhaps that is why the impossible love of a Daphne is played up right before Cupid?
Rereading Marziano's introduction through the lens of a mock consolatio , it does make some sense. Regarding pleasure, but surely not in the sense of the carnal suit of pleasures , but philosophically conceived, Marziano notes:
....[pleasure] to which our actions in everything should be directed. ...But I believe that that sort of game, which would be appropriate to the time, place and person [singular], of such character that it allows intelligence to shine, is also fit for a serious man [again, singular], to delight his weary virtue [forced into a "virtuous" marriage].
Is it even possible this card game could be played like solitaire? "Time and place" certainly doesn't sound like wherever Beatrice was at all events. LOL....
No, this is mostly an epitome of Aquinas, Summa Theologiae II, II question 168, article 2, responses 2 and 3. Even the term "appropriate circumstances" is defined. I haven't posted on it here, but it is not original to Marziano, it is just formulaic. Marziano's summarizes Aquinas, but adds the remark about the ludus puerile .. et parum maturitatis habere, which stood out to me after comparing it to Aquinas.

The real surprise from Marziano is that he doesn't argue - he just contradicts it! "Those who think this way may be right. But I think otherwise, and such a game is possible for a serious man" etc. Of course it is a private document, he is not making a pubic apologia for playing cards, but still, once you absorb Aquinas here, you see how abrupt Marziano is, and wonder why he even bothered with this part.

Hence the sense that he is addressing a (young) man used to being criticized with precisely this moral argument, that it is childish and not for grown men to play cards.

Decembrio notes that Giovanni da Thiene was his first instructor, and primarily in morals, and the sources say that Gian Galeazzo employed him from 1393. That is only at one year old! So Filippo Maria was drilled in what we might essentially call catechism, from before he could even walk.
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Re: What are the documents for Marziano's dates?

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Huck wrote: 06 Apr 2020, 20:30 Livius has a single sentence, which is related in the matter: "Six couches were publicly exhibited; one for Jupiter and Juno, another for Neptune and Minerva, a third for Mars and Venus, a fourth for Apollo and Diana, a fifth for Vulcan and Vesta, and the sixth for Mercury and Ceres."
Don't forget that Apuleius gives the same list, not paired on couches, with the notion that these are for contemplation and intellectual qualities. Note that Apuleius says "contemplate by our keenness of mind" (acie mentis .. contemplantes), and Marziano virtually paraphrases it for Filippo Maria, "your keen intelligence will notice (observe, gaze upon, study)" (ingenii tui acumen conspiciet) the gods.

I only cite Livy first because we know Filippo Maria read him; but there is no reason why he or Marziano may not have known Apuleius too.

Apuleius, De Deo Socratis II,9-19

Est aliud deorum genus, quod natura uisibus nostris denegauit, nec non tamen intellectu eos
rimabundi contemplamur, acie mentis acrius contemplantes. Quorum in numero sunt illi duodecim
[numero] situ nominum in duo uersus ab Ennio coartati:
Iuno, Vesta, Minerua, Ceres, Diana, Venus, Mars,
Mercurius, Iouis, Neptunus, Vulcanus, Apollo

ceterique id genus, quorum nomina quidem sunt nostris auribus iam diu cognita, potentiae uero
animis coniectatae per uarias utilitates in uita agenda animaduersas in iis rebus, quibus eorum sin-
guli curant.


There are gods of another kind whom nature has withheld from our sight, and yet whom we contemplate by intellectual inquiry, contemplating them all the more clearly by our keenness of mind. In their number are those twelve that Ennius, by his arrangement of their names, packed into two lines:
Juno, Vesta, Minerva, Ceres, Diana, Venus, Mars,
Mercury, Jupiter, Neptune, Vulcan, Apollo,

and the others of that sort, whose names indeed have long since been familiar to our ears, but whose powers in those areas that each of them individually governs are inferred by our intellects as we pass our lives.

(translation Christopher Jones, Apuleius, Apologia, Florida, De Deo Socratis (Loeb Classical Library, 2017)

Alternate

Whichever of these opinions is true, for this I shall afterwards consider, there is not any Greek, or any barbarian, who will not easily conjecture that the Sun and Moon are Gods; and not these only, as I have said, but also the five stars, which are commonly called by the unlearned erratic, though, by their undeviating, certain, and established motions, they produce by their divine revolutions the most orderly and eternal transitions; by a various form of convolution indeed, but with a celerity perpetually equable and the same, representing, through an admirable vicissitude, at one time progressions, and at another regressions, according to the position, curvature, and obliquity of their circles, which he will know in the best manner, who is skilled in the risings and settings of the stars. You who accord with Plato must also rank in the same number of visible Gods those other stars,

The rainy Hyades, Arcturus, both the Bears:
Aeneid book iii

and likewise other radiant Gods, by whom we perceive, in a serene sky, the celestial choir adorned and crowned, when the nights are painted with a severe grace and a stern beauty; beholding, as Ennius says, in this most perfect shield of the world, engravings diversified with admirable splendours. There is another species of Gods, which nature has denied us the power of seeing, and yet we may with astonishment contemplate them through intellect, acutely surveying them with the eye of the mind. In the number of these are those twelve Gods [of the super-celestial or liberated order] which are comprehended by Ennius, with an appropriate arrangement of their names, in two verses:

Juno, Vesta, Minerva, Ceres, Diana, Venus, Mars,
Mercurius, Jovi, Neptunus, Vulcanus, Apollo;

and others of the like kind, whose names indeed have been for a long time known by our ears, but whose powers are conjectured by our minds, being perceived through the various benefits which they impart to us in the affairs of life, in those things over which they severally preside.

Thomas Taylor, The Metamorphosis or Golden Ass, and Other Philosophical Works of Apuleius, London, 1822, pp. 293-294.
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Re: Filipo Maria Visconti - A Child of Saturn

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Phaeded wrote: 06 Apr 2020, 15:28 Finally, I've long suspected the Sforza variation of the biscione - a human-headed curled-up dragon holding a ring is related to Saturn but without any evidence. But note Saturn is described by all the medieval mythographers as holding a snake biting its own tail, so "circular" (depicted in the hands of Saturn in the frescoes in Angera) and that in the De sphera 'frontispage 'below the dragon's neck and arms form a circle, mimicking the ring it holds (also note 6 circles on the wings which make the ring #7 - the number of planetary Saturn). The old grey bearded head would be Saturn himself (but given Muzio was given that ring does that somehow reference him in addition to the Visconti Semideus?).

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The title page from Semideus:
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There may be something to your identification here, Phaeded, if we could get a good look at the very bottom of the genealogy in Semideus. Ronan gave me a copy of a an electronic version, but the illustrations are in very low-res (click image for larger version that can be zoomed a bit):
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Hamel describes it as "a green monster, evidently Saturn." I really can't make out what it is supposed to be. Just a few pixels more should do it.

“At the foot of the page is a green monster, evidently Saturn, from whom emerges a crowned face captioned as being Jupiter, king of the gods. His line of descendants runs up the page, first to Jupiter’s daughter Venus, to her son Aeneas, to Ascanius, and so on, right through ancient Rome and continuing up without interruption to Matteo Visconti (1250–1322), Stefano (c. 1287–1327), Galeazzo (1354–78), Gian Galeazzo (1378–1402), and finally his son, at the summit, Filippo Maria Visconti, below the coronation of the Virgin, sixty generations from Saturn.”

The text has been published by Paolo Rosso in 2001, from which I was able to assemble the quote mentioning the genealogy, on page 93 of Rosso's edition, folios 7r-7v of the manuscript he based his edition on:
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A Kindle version of Hamel is available, but I don't know if the illustrations will be any better. It's not expensive, so I'm tempted.
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