Re: Dummett and methodology [was Re: The Sun]

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Re-reading the passage with your exposition in mind, I see your point that previous knowledge of the game of Triumphs on Isabella's part is not implied. Thanks. However I think that "with them you might give considerations to divine things" entails more than just "elevating the mind". Rather, they promote considerations of divine things.

Re: Dummett and methodology [was Re: The Sun]

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Thanks for the Latin, Ross. I hadn't noticed the other thread.

It seems to me that the "rei divinae" was in the context of the ordinary pack, not Marziano's or both. If so, the least speculative interpretation is that "divine things" means divine things.

Added later: Also, the sixteen "gods" are not described by Marcello as divine, but as "sexdecim coeli principes ac barones", sixteen celestial princes and barons. The Graeco-Roman gods were standardly (following Fulgentius, I think it was) considered ancient rulers or heroes falsely considered gods after their deaths. And that is how Marziano presents them, e.g. saying of Jupiter "Therefore on account of his outstanding virtue, the former age venerated him, and he was esteemed by the people as a god" (http://trionfi.com/martiano-da-tortona- ... -16-heroum). So by "divine things" Marcello is not likely referring to Marziano's deck.

Re: Dummett and methodology [was Re: The Sun]

174
mikeh wrote:Thanks for the Latin, Ross. I hadn't noticed the other thread.

It seems to me that the "rei divinae" was in the context of the ordinary pack, not Marziano's or both. If so, the least speculative interpretation is that "divine things" means divine things.

Added later: Also, the sixteen "gods" are not described by Marcello as divine, but as "sexdecim coeli principes ac barones", sixteen celestial princes and barons. The Graeco-Roman gods were standardly (following Fulgentius, I think it was) considered ancient rulers or heroes falsely considered gods after their deaths. And that is how Marziano presents them, e.g. saying of Jupiter "Therefore on account of his outstanding virtue, the former age venerated him, and he was esteemed by the people as a god" (http://trionfi.com/martiano-da-tortona- ... -16-heroum). So by "divine things" Marcello is not likely referring to Marziano's deck.
Sure - Marziano's hermeneutic of the pagan (demi-)gods is "euhemerism" - the mainstream medieval view, also used in antiquity, that the pagan gods were originally human beings who came to be considered divine.

I can't follow your logic in trying to firmly distinguish between the rei divinae in the normal Tarot and the not-so rei divinae of Marziano. But, I think I can see what you are implying - that the first, "unworthy" Tarot had all of the highest, celestial subjects. I agree - it was a "standard" Tarot, with twenty-two trumps and four suits (therefore including, that is, the section Star, Moon, Sun, World and Angel).
Image

Re: Dummett and methodology [was Re: The Sun]

175
Ross wrote,
I can't follow your logic in trying to firmly distinguish between the rei divinae in the normal Tarot and the not-so rei divinae of Marziano. But, I think I can see what you are implying - that the first, "unworthy" Tarot had all of the highest, celestial subjects. I agree - it was a "standard" Tarot, with twenty-two trumps and four suits (therefore including, that is, the section Star, Moon, Sun, World and Angel).
That is not what I was implying, Ross. I am sorry if I was not clear. I think there is a distinction between "celestial", the term that Marcello applied to Marziano's deck, and "divine things", the expression he applied to the ordinary deck. So what was in the ordinary deck were divine things, meaning the virtues, i.e. the seven (or three or four) plus the Petrarchan: Chastity, Glory in the eyes of heaven (i.e. Fama), and the Angel or Eternity, triumphing over the evils of life, in particular Death and Time, maybe Love (which is ambiguous), in the Petrarchan sense, which needs to be overcome. What was in the "celestial" deck were the Olympians, suitable as planets and other entities in the sky. I see no basis for saying one way or the other whether there were "celestials" in the ordinary deck in Marcello's time. If so, they, or one of them, might have represented Time.

Re: Dummett and methodology [was Re: The Sun]

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I don’t see any distinction made between the standard tarot that Marcello knew of and the Marziano deck in terms of either being more or less divine – standard tarot is definitely referred to as “divine” (the Marziano deck implicitly divine by way of the Celestials):

1. Marcello mentions trionfi and that they are related to divine things. (“By some chance the conversation turned to this game, which is called “Triumph”, certain cards that had been offered to me and which I give as they were given…. Thus indeed he [Scipio] affirmed that with them you might give considerations to divine things.”)
2. Marcello says, however, the deck he has is unworthy….(“But these particular cards I regarded as unworthy of so great majesty…”).
3. …but Marcello knows [how - Bianca? Decembrio was on the “inside", working for the Republic] Visconti had a special deck. (“Now I was aware that the most distinguished, illustrious Prince of Milan had thought out a certain new and exquisite sort of triumphs, being, as he was of everything, at one time the keenest in the invention of all the greatest things. I would briefly explain them now to you….”)
4. Marcello goes to extreme lengths to get Visconti’s deck [pat on the head for Marcello] (“I started to pursue it night and day, how by negotiation after the death of the former prince, I might be influential for you. Indeed, for a long time it was difficult for one book and deck of cards to be able to be found among the furniture, so much of the riches and splendours of the Duke being scattered as well as destroyed in the disturbance. And because of the difficulty of things I would not have been able to investigate and to know, in any way whatsoever, unless I had depended on the enemy himself….” [what I have assumed elsewhere were the auctions inside Milan itself, still under the Ambrosian Republic]).
5. Marcello will send the deck via Cossa, but interestingly makes a comment that could be generic to either the known tarot of 1449 (whatever that was) or the Marziano deck: the game in either guise is new and Italian ( “revive the spirit by this new Italian invention”).

BTW: I finally found a color, quality scan of the tarot-like image that Marcello sent to King Rene's commander, Cossa again, on the eve of joining Sforza in the Milan-Venice war in 1453. The Marziano deck to Rene’s wife has to be viewed in the same light in terms of WHY it was sent - the significance of the later manuscript illumination is in the pages from Margaret King I posted in the thread Ross linked above, pasted again here for convenience’s sake:
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=933&p=13638#p13638
The image: Phaeded

Re: Dummett and methodology [was Re: The Sun]

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mikeh wrote:Phaeded wrote
(the Marziano deck implicitly divine by way of the Celestials)
The "celestials" are false gods, for Marziano, Marcello, and every other Christian of medieval, euhemeristic perspective. That a deck of such "gods" is more precious than the ordinary one of "divine" subjects does not count against that fact.
Mike,
The quattrocento's renewed focus on the classical gods as planetary entities by-passes the euhemeristic perspective: planets are divine (at the very least from a Chrisian persepctive, carrying out God's pre-ordained will). Not so relevant for the Marziano deck, but certainly for tarot, as I'll explain elsewhere.

Germane to the Marziano deck, I don't see the emphasis on "false god" here by the very duke who commissioned the deck, and by the very same artist no less:
Image


Filippo rules "with good right" because of the divine descent laid out above - perhaps his divine genealogy is euhemeristic, but there is an element of divine right with Jupiter selecting his line for rule; "Jupiter" as stand-in for the Christian God was a classsical conceit of the humanists (they didn't think that Jupiter literally impregnated a human but that Jupiter-as-God selected the Visconti, via their classical ancestors, to rule via dynastic succession - no less than He did Abraham or David [e.g., even Jesus must be from the line of David}).

Phaeded

Re: Dummett and methodology [was Re: The Sun]

179
Phaeded wrote,
Filippo rules "with good right" because of the divine descent laid out above - perhaps his divine genealogy is euhemeristic, but there is an element of divine right with Jupiter selecting his line for rule; "Jupiter" as stand-in for the Christian God was a classsical conceit of the humanists (they didn't think that Jupiter literally impregnated a human but that Jupiter-as-God selected the Visconti, via their classical ancestors, to rule via dynastic succession - no less than He did Abraham or David [e.g., even Jesus must be from the line of David}).
I don't know where Filippo or his humanists appealed to Jupiter as the Christian God establishing his "bon droit", as opposed to being a notable Greek ruler whose blood it is good to have in one, but I will let that pass. At some point it was a standard conceit, as you say. In any case, Jupiter is not a stand-in for the Christian God in Marziano's game. He is just another mortal divinized by pagans. It's the two games that Marcello is talking about, and Filippo's justification for ruling does not enter in (if it did, it would not serve Marcello's cause). The conceit is explicitly not part of Marziano's game.

Re: Dummett and methodology [was Re: The Sun]

180
mikeh wrote:Phaeded wrote,
Filippo rules "with good right" because of the divine descent laid out above - perhaps his divine genealogy is euhemeristic, but there is an element of divine right with Jupiter selecting his line for rule; "Jupiter" as stand-in for the Christian God was a classsical conceit of the humanists (they didn't think that Jupiter literally impregnated a human but that Jupiter-as-God selected the Visconti, via their classical ancestors, to rule via dynastic succession - no less than He did Abraham or David [e.g., even Jesus must be from the line of David}).
I don't know where Filippo or his humanists appealed to Jupiter as the Christian God establishing his "bon droit", as opposed to being a notable Greek ruler whose blood it is good to have in one, but I will let that pass.
From the Marcello copy of Marziano - the description of Jupiter not as the Christian God (although the examples of that equation are too numerous to note) but certainly in a context of a bon droit and rulership:
Four stars appearing above, attend him [Jupiter], while by the right part a splendour of right reason of the conduct of humanity, in which customs he instructed ingnorant men, the first leaders of the state.
http://trionfi.com/martiano-da-tortona- ... -16-heroum

Filippo's dynastic line descends from those first leaders of state (Troy), clearly borne out by Michelino's genealogy miniature.

Phaeded