Collection: "3 Magi" and "3 theological virtues"

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In the thread "Decker's new book" a series of observations is given, which relate the "3 Magi" and the "3 theological virtues" and the 3 Trionfi symbols "Sun, Moon and Star" ...

This happened from post 61 on ...
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=971&start=61
at least till post ...
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=971&start=79

... somehow already prepared a few posts before with ...
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=971&start=57
All of the theological virtues were associated with the popes – John XXII famously buried with statues of these virtues on his tomb in the Florentine baptistery, but Lorenzo’s father Piero had also adapted those virtues as his own via an imprese that featured them as three ostrich feathers, each in the color of the virtues. These were in fact painted on the reverse of Lorenzo’s birth tray which he displayed in his private chamber until the day he died:
Image
... the appearance of this picture in the discussion, which is the backside of this picture ...

Image


... painted by "Lo Scheggio", who is "under suspicion" to have had some participation in the production of the Charles Vi deck.

In the center of this topic are also the Medici, who in the period 1459-64 paid Benito Gozzoli to decorate a chapel in the Palazzo Medici Riccardi ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palazzo_Medici_Riccardi
... which itself was build in the years 1444-1460.

The decoration of the chapel showed a triumphal march of the "3 Magi" ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magi_Chapel

... and the show has some references to the year 1439, which saw 3 triumphal marches, when the delegations of the council in Ferrara/Florence (1438/39) entered the city Florence in January/February 1439.

This council is "under suspicion" to have triggered a follwing production of "Trionfi cards", which for the current state of research have their first documentary evidence in September 17 in 1440.

Other references of the "3 Magi" show in the chapel lead to the year 1459, when Pope Pius II crossed the city on his way to the congress of Mantova 1459, so to the year, when Benito Gozzoli started to paint the pictures.

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

Research memories ....

The whole question goes back to the year 1989, when the 5x14-theory was established. Naturally a lot of details, known nowadays, were not present then.

2 artists had painted the Pierpont-Morgan-Bergamo Tarocchi with 20 trumps, which by this clearly were parted in two different groups, one with 14 trumps and the second with 6 trumps.
The 14 trumps were (hypothetically) recognized as the original structure of a 5x14 deck, the other 6 trumps were considered a later addition.
In this research situation it was natural to search for the time of the addition of the six trumps. In a book of James Cleugh: Die Medici, translated from an US publication, some (few) details were detected about the change of the Medici heraldic "from 7 palle to 6 palle" in the year 1465 with the indication, that "virtues" were involved.

The 6 trumps of the second artist of PMB clearly contained two virtues (Fortitudo and Temperantia) and otherwise Star-Moon-Sun-World. The hypothesis was then formed, that the six cards meant the 6 missing virtues (only Justice was present in the 5x14-scheme).
An involvement of the 3 Magi wasn't seen in this phase of the "detection of the 5x14-theory". The research about the year 1465 led to a journey of the young Lorenzo di Medici in May/June 1465, which was then suspected as the date, when the Tarot game got 22 trumps (which isn't so clear nowadays; today I would suspect, that there was also a phase with 20 Trionfi trumps).
Nonetheless the limited information allowed to suspect in this time (1989), that the card "World" meant the missing cardinal virtue "Prudentia", and Sun-Moon-Star meant the "3 theological virtues"

Much later (in Trionfi.com's time, maybe 2005 ?) it was confirmed by an information found by Alain Bougearel, that the change "from 7 palle to 6 palle" indeed happened parallel to Lorenzo's journey in May 1465.
Also much later was found the earlier already known observation, that the card "World" inside the Charles VI Tarot was designed with octagonal halo as the 3 other cardinal virtues (and so somehow was similar to Prudentia) and that the Charles VI Tarocchi more plausible belongs to a Florentine production than to a Ferrarese (this improvement happened winter 2007/2008 in discussions at the AT Forum, mainly caused by the initiative of Ross).

The involvement of the 3 Magi must have appeared in my mind before December 2007, cause then I wrote ...
"When Pulci started to write the Morgante 1460 in Florence, in the same time Benoto Gozzoli painted the frescoes of the Medici Chapel. As surely everybody knows, these paintings showed the triumphal march of the three holy kings. As it is not known, but likely, the three holy kings were associated to Star, Moon and Sun (one these kings was black and this was the moon)."
http://tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t= ... holy+kings

... actually I count this in the category "my own ideas", I think, that I didn't got it from somebody else (in more private archives I find notes of 2006, but actually it must have been earlier). As I see it now (after the recent, above addressed, discussion), I wasn't the only one who suspected or knew this.

Well, that's fine.

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

I suggest to collect details, which belong to this theme (or themes), here at this place, maybe as links to earlier discussions" or copies, if the material isn't too complex.
Huck
http://trionfi.com

Re: Collection: "3 Magi" and "3 theological virtues"

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Apertis thesauris suis...


http://www.rosscaldwell.com/images/magi ... 17rmed.jpg
From Codex Egberti 24 (late 10th century), Trier, fol. 17r.

The gifts of the Magi as the Theological Virtues

Looking for comprehensive references to all things Magi led me to Herman Crombach, Primitiarum gentium seu historiae SS. trium Regum Magorum (Iohannes Kinchius, Coloniae, 1654; many scans online).

In addition to, well, just about everything, Crombach lists and quotes scores of church authors who wrote or preached on the gifts of the Magi, in chronological order (t. II, lib. III, cap. xxxff. (pp. 429ff.)). The most ancient and enduring interpretation is one every Christian knows: Gold to signify that Jesus Christ is a king, frankincense a priest, while the myrrh is to show his death. These came to form an anagogical canon of interpretation symbolizing the virtues of wisdom, prayer, and mortification (ibid. cap. xxxix (p. 442); Crombach's citation of Aquinas in the passage immediately preceding ours neatly summarizes this doctrine). At the end of his list of citations, he mentions "Moreover, the same gifts are customarily applied to the three theological virtues", and lists two important examples, St. John Chrysostom (4th century) and Pope Innocent III (Pope 1198-1216).



Although Crombach supplies no bibliographic reference (see the margin), tracking down Innocent III's passage was easy enough, since the original text is in Latin. It turns out that it is from a sermon on the Epiphany, "In solemnitate Apparitionis Domini nostri Jesu Christi", and is most frequently cited in the edition of Jacques-Paul Migne, Innocentii III Romani Pontificis Opera Omnia (=Patrologia Latina volumes 214-217 (1855)), t. 4 (PL 217, or CCXVII, it appears both ways in the literature), coll. 486-490.


http://www.rosscaldwell.com/images/magi ... iphany.jpg

It turns out that Migne based his edition on that of "Cologne, 1575", without naming editor or publisher (not at the top of that section, in any case), so I had to go with that. Some searching led to the Cologne 1575 edition, published apud Maternum Cholinvm, and whose editor the bibliographers name as Jacob van Middendorp (1538-1611). Here is how he has it:


http://www.rosscaldwell.com/images/magi ... ii1575.jpg

It turns out that Van Middendorp's was not the earliest printed edition of the Opera Omnia of Innocent, however. This honor goes to that of Johann Neuss (Joannes Novesianus), whose edition is also from Cologne, in 1552. Here is his version of the passage:


http://www.rosscaldwell.com/images/magi ... ii1552.jpg

Both editions of these sermons are based on a manuscript now called Vat. lat. 700 (early 13th century), which as far as I can tell is one of only two to contain these sermons. This manuscript is not scanned online (at least not at the Vatican Library site, although various libraries worldwide have microfilms of it), so I can't supply what is the undoubtedly fine calligraphy, and perhaps a nice initial.

Innocent neatly blends the traditional interpretation of wisdom, prayer and self-abnegation with the Theological Virtues in his sermon: "Gold - contemplation in faith; frankincense, prayer in hope; myrrh, compassion in love."

After Innocent, looking for the ultimate source of Crombach's reference to Chrysostom was another kettle of fish. Chrysostom's bibliography is very complicated, at least to me, especially when looking for whether or not this or that sermon was in a given collection, or printed edition. So, one must work backward from whatever source one begins with.

Crombach's Latin was no help, as it turns up no Latin translation matching his on Google (which does not mean much in texts this old). So I turned back to Migne, to see what edition he based his edition of Chrysostom on (in Patrologia Graeca t. 61, col. 763; both versions of Migne I found online have flawed scans:


http://www.rosscaldwell.com/images/magi ... nepg61.jpg )

Migne's edition turns out to be that of Bernard de Montfaucon, who published an Opera Omnia of Chrysostom from 1718 to 1738. He in turn based his edition on those of Federico Morelli (edtions of 1588 to 1604) and Henry Savile (Henric Savilius; edition of 1611-1612). This sermon, a Christmas sermon titled "In Natale Domini nostri Jesu Christi" in the Latin contents pages, is always considered part of the corpus of Chrysostom "spuria", which gives us a "Pseudo-Chrysostom"; however, it has descended with his corpus of writings, and I have found no one who questions its antiquity, whoever the author is. Here is Savile's version of the passage, from volume 7, page 403 of his 1612 edition:


http://www.rosscaldwell.com/images/magi ... scolor.jpg

Note the words pistin, elpida, agaphn in the second line, to get your bearings (in comparison to Migne).

Savile edited this sermon from a manuscript at New College, Oxford, but I have not been able to trace it so far. As far as I know, this could be the first time this particular sermon appeared in print.

So, to summarize, here is a comparative version of Savile's passage, with Montfaucon's Latin and Greek versions, and, at the extreme bottom left, a modern English translation by Maria Anne Dahlin in her BA thesis paper "The Centre of All Festivals: A Translation and Analysis of Chrysostom's Christmas Sermons" (New Saint Andrews College, 2012), pp. 15-16
(for a PDF of this thesis: http://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/wp-c ... Dahlin.pdf )


http://www.rosscaldwell.com/images/magi ... faucon.jpg
(click for a readably large version)

So I think we have in Chrysostom and Innocent the earliest witnesses to a correspondence between the three gifts of the Magi and the three Theological Virtues, in Greek and Latin respectively, and that, predictably, the associations are made in sermons, for Christmas and Epiphany. Note that they both give the same correspondences:

Gold - Faith
Frankincense - Hope
Myrrh - Love

The Kings in the Codex Egbert are wearing red, green and white (that is another post, but the attribution of these colors to the Theological Virtues is surely Dante's invention, although based on prior theological and philosophical speculation, most likely a theory of vision, light and color), although the attributions of the names to the ages of the Kings is not consistent. In the codex, Melchior is the middle aged king (brown beard), wearing green, while Caspar is - and most typically - the youngest, wearing red. The "old king" is here Balthassar, wearing white. If, as it appears, gold is the first gift, then Melchior is faith, which should be green. But white is faith for Dante.

For comparison, the famous 5th century mosaic in S. Apollinare Nuovo near Ravenna which shows the offerings of the Tres Reges Magi has an utterly different association of names with ages: Caspar is the oldest king, in front, Melchior is the youngest, in the middle, and Balthassar is the middle aged one.

The attribution of the gifts to the virtues is a homiletic phenomenon, not a theological one, and it is not frequently met with; but the attribution of colors to the Theological Virtues is a poetic invention entirely.
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Re: Collection: "3 Magi" and "3 theological virtues"

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Huck,
Thanks for divorcing this topic from that of "Decker." Two comments:

1. The earliest appearance of the sun. moon, star in the PMB deck have nary an intimation of the Magi. Therefore connecting the "astral" cards to the ur-tarot in a Magi context seems spurious - likely a later modified meaning found only in post-PMB decks (if there is one at all).

2. You wrote (my emphases): "... some references to the year 1439, which saw 3 triumphal marches, when the delegations of the council in Ferrara/Florence (1438/39) entered the city Florence in January/February 1439." Are you saying there were three separate entrances/receptions of the delegates into Florence, all in 1438/9? The only thing the Council would have been triumphant about is not the entrance but the Union itself on 6 July 1439, but for that there was a procession to mass at which the bull was read. I am aware of three separate promulgations of bull of unions for the Greeks, Armenians and Copts (this last not until 1442). All relevant papal bulls and decrees conveniently located here in chronological order: http://www.ewtn.com/library/councils/florence.htm#3

There was a reception of the pope in 1439, but I don't think you can call that a "triumph"; previously discussed here: viewtopic.php?f=11&t=947&p=13950; copy/paste here:
Cosimo’s costly yet successful efforts to have the Council of Ferrara transferred to Florence in 1439 are well known, and when Pope Eugenius arrived in Florence for the occasion, it was Cosimo, elected Standard Bearer of Justice, who marched beside him and held the bridle of the papal horse [fn: Cavalcanti, Delle Carcere, 244]. (Richard Trexler, Public life in Renaissance Florence, 1980: 424).


Phaeded
Last edited by Phaeded on 21 Nov 2013, 14:39, edited 1 time in total.

Re: Collection: "3 Magi" and "3 theological virtues"

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Phaeded wrote:Ross,
Thanks for divorcing this topic from that of "Decker." Two comments:

..

2. You wrote (my emphases): "... some references to the year 1439, which saw 3 triumphal marches, when the delegations of the council in Ferrara/Florence (1438/39) entered the city Florence in January/February 1439." Are you saying there were three separate entrances/receptions of the delegates into Florence, all in 1438/9? The only thing the Council would have been triumphant about is not the entrance but the Union itself on 6 July 1439, but for that there was a procession to mass at which the bull was read. I am aware of three separate promulgations of bull of unions for the Greeks, Armenians and Copts (this last not until 1442). All relevant papal bulls and decrees conveniently located here in chronological order: http://www.ewtn.com/library/councils/florence.htm#3


Phaeded
hi Phaeded,

It wasn't Ross, but me. who opened the thread and wrote the comment about the 3 triumphal marches.

There were 3 triumphal entries in the city of Florence, one for Pope Eugen, who came first (January), then for Joseph, the patriarch and the 3rd for the Byzantine emperor.
I wrote about this earlier, but for the precise dates I've to look it up.

Ah, here ...
27th of January (Pope)
11th of February (patriarch Joseph)
15th of February (Emperor)
... likely somewhere is my source (no time to look it up for the moment). I remember.that Patriarch Joseph shall have complained, that his entry was less impressive than that of the emperor.
Huck
http://trionfi.com

Re: Collection: "3 Magi" and "3 theological virtues"

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Huck,
My bad; I'll edit my post above to your name - I thought Ross finally came out of the closet on proposing the Council as the event sparking the ur-tarot.
;-)

At all events, I see you are still proposing the Council, however those receptions of the Greeks into Florence (and they were already in Italy so the lustre of receiving them had to be shared with Ferrara) were hardly cause for a triumphal procession and the promulgation of the first bull of union was not called as such either.

A new name is entered into card playing and it explicitly references military triumphs (even Petrarch explicitly alludes to Roman triumphs as his model) so the "null hypothesis" would be that a military triumph occured that was celebrated by the ur-tarot. June (Anghiari) and September (Giusti) 1440 are pieces of the puzzle that fit neatly together.

And like Bruni, Machiavelli had access to the Florentine state archives, so his reference to the Anghiari celebrations as "triumphal" has to be taken seriously (he simply does not expand on those celebrations because he denigrates the battle as a whole; "only 1 person died", etc.).
Benedetto de' Medici, finding the report of Niccolo having proceeded either to Rome or to La Marca, incorrect, returned with his forces to Neri [Capponi], and they proceeded together to Florence, where the highest honors were decreed to them which it was customary with the city to bestow upon her victorious citizens, and they were received by the Signory, the Capitani di Parte, and the whole city, in triumphal pomp. (History of Florence, 5.7)
Even Bruni culminates his History with Anghiari in his ‘Memoirs’ (tacked onto the histories so as to bring it up to the current day); he describes Anghiari as a “great victory” and concludes his work thus:
We eventually brought under our dominion the whole of the Casentino, which had never previously been under Florentine control. Thus after the turbulent times when I was chosen [as a member of the Ten of War], a prosperous and joyful period finally emerged and the city was raised to great glory. (Bruni, History of the Florentine People, Vol. 3, Books 9-12 / Memoirs. Ed/tr. James Hankins, Harvard, 2007: 397)
To the very chancellor of Florence, Anghiari essentially marks the beginning of a golden age for Florence that he helped shephard in. Certainly the occasion for the trappings of triumphal pomp.

Phaeded

Re: Collection: "3 Magi" and "3 theological virtues"

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Phaeded wrote:Huck,
My bad; I'll edit my post above to your name - I thought Ross finally came out of the closet on proposing the Council as the event sparking the ur-tarot.
;-)

At all events, I see you are still proposing the Council, however those receptions of the Greeks into Florence (and they were already in Italy so the lustre of receiving them had to be shared with Ferrara) were hardly cause for a triumphal procession and the promulgation of the first bull of union was not called as such either.
... no problem ...

I still see the council as more relevant as the battle of Anghiari, but this doesn't mean, that I'm really fixed on this.

Actually it's only about the question, when the first playing card deck was called "Trionfi" or similar .... it's not about the content of this deck, which might have been rather different to later Tarot.
Games with "trumps" were earlier (so the Michelino deck) than 1440.

.... .-) ... but this thread is not about the Anghiari deck, but about 3 Magi, 3 theological virtues and Sun-Moon-Star and about some correlation between them.
Huck
http://trionfi.com

Re: Collection: "3 Magi" and "3 theological virtues"

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Huck wrote: There were 3 triumphal entries in the city of Florence, one for Pope Eugen, who came first (January), then for Joseph, the patriarch and the 3rd for the Byzantine emperor.
I wrote about this earlier, but for the precise dates I've to look it up.

Ah, here ...
27th of January (Pope)
11th of February (patriarch Joseph)
15th of February (Emperor)
... likely somewhere is my source (no time to look it up for the moment). I remember.that Patriarch Joseph shall have complained, that his entry was less impressive than that of the emperor.
I don't think those entries were triumphal in the sense we need to understand it - that is, a parade with biblical, classical, and allegorical scenes on carts. Welcome celebrations for visiting princes and victorious generals don't count. They don't have that symbolic content. Those latter - and these - are just like welcoming home a victorious sports team, or a highly respected foreign leader (like Obama in Berlin before he was elected); there is protocol and may be some ad hoc symbolism, but nothing like the highly orchestrated triumphal pageants for very rare and specific events.

It seems that February 12 (Thursday) is the day of Patriarch Joseph's arrival. Patricia Lurati, in the paper on the Apollonio cassone I cited in another thread
viewtopic.php?f=23&t=392&p=14483&hilit=lurati#p14483
(paper here -
https://www.academia.edu/Documents/in/c ... i_Giovanni )
- gives some primary sources for the festival events of 1439 (notes 8 and 10), which are Giusto Giusti and an anonymous Florentine chronicle:

Here is Nerida Newbigin's edition of Giusto Giusti for those days -


http://www.rosscaldwell.com/images/flor ... i1439a.jpg

Here is the original publication of the anonymous chronicle, in Muratori Rerum italicarum scriptores XIX (1731):


http://www.rosscaldwell.com/images/flor ... ii550a.jpg

Here is a more recent edition of the manuscript, by Giuseppe Odoardo Corazzini, "Diario Fiorentino di Bartolomeo di Michele del Corazza, anni 1405-1438", in Archivio Storico Italiano, ser. 5, vol. XIV (1894), pp. 233-293:


http://www.rosscaldwell.com/images/flor ... 894298.jpg


http://www.rosscaldwell.com/images/flor ... 894299.jpg


http://www.rosscaldwell.com/images/flor ... 894300.jpg


http://www.rosscaldwell.com/images/flor ... 894301.jpg

Lurati cites a more recent edition of 1991 in note 8, but I haven't seen it. If the early 20th century new Muratori of Carducci et al. had it - volume 19, perhaps part 5 or 7 - I haven't been able to find it online to see if the annotations add anything to the 18th century original version.

So there was lots of hustle and bustle, huge retinues, many horses, lots of feasting and blessing, in those two weeks of high dignitaries' arrivals, but no actual allegorical processions (Lent started on February 18 that year). The main time you hear about these things in Florence is the San Giovanni festival, June 24; after that, during our time, the Epiphany Magi procession of January 6.

Giusti records a "bella giostra a scudi" on Monday the 16th of February 1439, so this festival got in just under the wire before Lent. Lurati notes that Florence had an interdiction on rappresentazioni di spettacoli during Lent (note 13), so she suspects that the first of the two religious rappresentazione that happened during those few months, Annunciation, had to be pushed back from March 25 to the Monday after Easter, April 6.
Image

Re: Collection: "3 Magi" and "3 theological virtues"

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Phaeded wrote:I thought Ross finally came out of the closet on proposing the Council as the event sparking the ur-tarot.
;-)
I don't think that it was, any more than the Great Depression sparked the game of Monopoly.

I can't get that close in time, let alone that deep into the inventor's mind. I do think it was invented in Florence, in the late 1430s, and I'd bet on 1438 to 1440 inclusive, but that's only because of the distribution of the evidence for the game, not because of any external events or conditions that the iconography of the surviving cards might topically reference. There is nothing in the game or the iconography (in the abstract, since we don't have the original design itself) that would be wildly out of place any time after the 1370s, with the spread of the game of cards itself (nothing springs to mind, at least). It is the chronology established by the evidence itself that constrains my dating, nothing else.
Image

Re: Collection: "3 Magi" and "3 theological virtues"

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For January/February 1439

...
Nice sources, better than that, what I had seen earlier.

... :-)
They should have a home at an own thread, which collects material about "Florence 1439, during the council". Actually one should gather all material, what looks like a "festivity" during this time, independent of the condition, if it in its character was totally similar to the later understanding of "Trionfi festivities"
Huck
http://trionfi.com
cron